I want one of those sandpapered-look top of the range cars

You must have seen them in a matte black finish looking like at the end of the paint finishing process a minimum wage person has been handed a piece of sandpaper and told to take the shine off the vehicle so it looks like it’s just been undercoated, because the unfinished look is presently seemingly trendy.

Well, I came across one today on my cycle ride and whilst pondering on how bad they look, to me anyway, something else hit me. No, not the that car but the fact that I could barely see the driver as the windscreen was so dark/black too. Had it been inadvertently sandpapered as well?

My point here, joking aside, is that I was taught very early on as a cyclist to try to make sure drivers make eye contact with you at junctions. If they don’t they’re a danger to you so in this case they were a danger because I had no idea if they’d looked at me or not. Surely windscreens should not be so dark as to only be able to make out a vague outline of the person driving? Frankly, I couldn’t even tell if the driver was male or female!

It reminded me of the young lads we see in every community these days, all dressed in black with their hoods up no matter how hot/sunny the weather is. Some even have their faces covered too trying to look like gangsters, even though most will not be, but it’s cool to look like one if you’re young, or so it seems.

So have I now come across the adult car version of a black-hooded disguised teenager? If the car had stopped and a driver dressed all in black from head to toe had got out it may all have made more sense:-)

 

The things I’ve learned as a cyclist

 

 

I came back to cycling about 15 years ago following a 20+ year lay off. The things I’ve learned are:-

* There’s far more traffic about and most of it is being driven at least 10mph over whatever speed limit is in force for any particular road.

* Driver behaviour (I’m a driver too) has got far worse. So many selfish drivers who think the whole road is there’s and no one else on the road matters at all.

* BMW’s, Merc’s, and Audi’s, when driven by males say under 50, are usually a danger to all road users. It’s as though they’ve read a driving manual that simply says ‘You’re the King of the Road’.

* Company vehicles/white vans often seem to be driven madly. Targets to reach and parcels to be delivered meaning speeding is all but required?

* A significant number of pedestrians only seem to listen for the noise of approaching vehicles rather than looking to see what’s coming. As cycles make little or no noise I’ve taken to treating all pedestrians who are not looking at me as as a potential danger to me and indeed themselves. My most amusing encounter was a chap in his 30’s walking backwards into the road, right in front of me, to take a photo!

* Do driving schools teach trainee drivers how to overtake cyclists safely? I’m wondering as I’ve been close-passed by such cars at times. Are there refresher courses for driving school drivers? You’d think whenever there are changes to the Highway Code they’d be called in for such refresher training; are they?

* Painted on Cycle lanes mean absolutely nothing as vehicles just park in them causing danger to cyclists. Indeed, there’s an argument to be had that they create danger rather than make cyclists safer as those of us who pedal have to turn into fast moving traffic to get around park vehicles. Well meaning but damn dangerous.

* The police generally (my experience is within Merseyside & Lancashire) seem not to have any remit/willingness to deal with drivers who act dangerously around cyclists. It takes a cyclist to be knocked off before they’ll take much, if any, notice.

* Dogs on those extendable leads can get well into the road and often do only to be pulled back rather too late. I’m guessing the dog walkers simply listen for vehicles behind them and only when hearing a vehicle approaching pull the dog in?

* Some motorists (always youngish and male) seem to like shouting at cyclists simply because we’re there. Things shouted at me ‘get off the road you’re slowing the traffic down’, ‘get on the pavement where you belong’ and the classic ‘read the Highway Code and get insured’. Of course, cyclists should not be on pavements except young children but sadly the police don’t enforce this. Cyclists usually know the Highway Code better than drivers! Oh, and I’m insured as are all the cyclists that I know.

* On country lanes beware the young farmer with his tractor that’ll do 40 mph pulling a trailer far wider than his tractor or with the bucket down charging at you!

* When a cyclist gives way to allow a vehicle to pass or waves a vehicle on few drivers can be bothered to raise a hand to say thanks. It’s as though they expect cycles to give way to them whatever the circumstances.

* When I’m driving and overtaking a cyclist I go as far as I can in the opposing lane to pass them only to see following vehicles passing the same cyclist far too closely. I guess many fellow drivers have no idea about trying to allow 1.5m between a cyclist and passing vehicle and look at me as doing something odd?

* I’ve only once seen the 1.5m for passing cyclists HC advice advertised on a dot matrix highway sign, that was in Bradford this year. A Sefton Council highways officer told me that when the new advice came out of government and the Highway Code was amended accordingly they put the new advice out on social media and I congratulated them for it. They responded saying they’d taken so much abuse from drivers about the posting that they’d taken the advice down/stopped promoting it!

* There are some bad cyclists out there, running red lights, riding at speed on pavements and acting just like bad drivers. I suspect a bad driver is a bad cyclist.

* Our roads generally are becoming like the wild west with the only law enforcement being after the accidents apart from the odd speed camera.

 

When the IT goes down for whatever reason

Back in the day i.e. some 7+ years ago or more, when I was a civil servant and therefore before I retired, one of my jobs was to try to keep a local business continuity plan (BCP) in place and up to date. It helped guide us through what to do when disaster struck – fire, flood, utilities down (water, gas electric), terrorism, local/national IT problems etc. etc.

My thoughts went back to those days when I walked into my local Co-Op and saw significantly empty shelves caused by their IT systems being hijacked, as indeed has also happened to M&S.

I started to wonder what the BCP’s look like for the data/IT/distribution centres of big national retailers? Do they have/is it possible for them to have back up traditional manual stock systems? Surely, being able to reasonably quickly revert to the old way of doing things has to be firmly in the mind of business planners as hijackings by criminals/rogue or enemy states must be expected on all but a daily basis.

Yes, keep updating the IT security to try to make your systems are as inaccessible as possible, but also plan for the fact that breaches, with far reaching consequences, will happen. Take all your staff, particularly frontline staff in shops, through what the back-up systems are, how to do a daily manual stock-take and phone through requirements each day to try to keep the shelves as full as possible. This is particularly an issue, I assume, with food retail.

I wonder how seriously both having a BCP and most importantly keeping it up to date are taken? It’s no use turning to it in times of crisis only to find that it was last updated some years ago and no one can remember when the last run through of it took place. Oh that was when Mary was in charge but she left 3 years ago. I think you get my drift here.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to suggest that the Co-Op’s BCP’s (or for that matter M&S) weren’t up to scratch, they could well have been and hopefully were, but the longer a business can’t fully function following a crisis the less robust the continuity planning. Well that was my way of looking at the process.

 

44 years on the last Merseyside County Council 

election still causes the odd rumble/grumble

Social media outlets can often be strange places where people just say what they’re thinking, sometimes without any filter or indeed knowledge of what on earth they are talking/upset about. This is particularly a thing with social media community groups I find.

In the lead up to this May’s local elections I saw postings raising concerns and offering some odd all but conspiracy-type theories regarding why there were no local elections in Sefton Borough/on Merseyside this year.

In fact we’ve not had local elections one in every 4 years on Merseyside since our County Council was abolished back in the Thatcher era. The last County election* was as long ago as May 1981. That’s some 44 years!

Here’s a link to a Wikipedia page which tells the story of the rise, fall and short 12 year life of Merseyside County Council - created 1974, abolished 1986:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merseyside_County_Council

OK, I was involved in local politics on Merseyside for 40 years so like any other politician, of all political colours, I know why the Boroughs of Merseyside** have 3 consecutive years of local elections and then one with none and that this electoral cycle has been embedded for a very, very long time now. On that basis why have a few voters cried foul in May 2025, asked why they’ve not had polling cards, even pondered on who may have put the brake on their local elections? Do they have such thoughts every 4 Merseyside years I wonder?

My first ever local election campaign was actually the very last set of Merseyside County Council elections of May 1981 where my good Liberal friend Jack Parkin was the candidate in the oddly named West Lancs No.3 Ward. Odd in that the ward was not in West Lancs at all and had actually been removed from West Lancs Rural District back in 1974 when local government had been reorganised. I recall that the ward was actually referred to as Maghull South, West & Melling. That Jack came pretty close to winning from a standing start has long been a fond political memory of mine.

Electoral graphic - Wikipedia

 

But turning back from my personal nerdy election memories to the reason for 2025 being ‘fallow’, in local election terms, on Merseyside. When it was explained on social media, by me and indeed others as to why we have no elections this year I got the distinct impression that some folks still seemed to cling to something being wrong even to the point of thinking that their right to vote may have been removed from them.

When you consider that only around one third of voters, or even less, actually usually vote in local elections (and only two thirds in General Elections) that means the Apathy Party actually tops the poll at pretty much every local election, so why the cries of foul when a quite legitimate ‘fallow’ year, in terms of local elections, comes around?

As a parting aside, I recall how difficult it was in my campaigning days to get people to vote in local elections, so the irony of some folks protesting about how their ‘opportunity’ (there wasn’t one) to vote in May 2025 was ‘taken away from them’ by forces unknown is not lost on me.

* Merseyside County Council was abolished in 1986

** Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley & Wirral & St. Helens

 

Our railways need to be a 7 day a week operation

Like the NHS, social care and retail our railways need to be a 7 day operation and the staff working for them probably need to be on something like 5 out 7 day contracts. I include managers/bigwigs in that too, I might add. 

 

I say that as a life-long trade unionist. That our railways have long relied on staff doing overtime to deliver a 7 day a week operation is frankly ridiculous. That some of our railway lines don’t operate on a Sunday, at all, is also ridiculous – Ormskirk/Preston comes to mind.

I listened to the new big chief at Northern in the YouTube video (It's a long watch) linked below. He certainly talks the talk, but will he deliver?- 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxBDa9mP_Yg

Maybe Northern could shed a couple of lines to help them cope and reform? Ormskirk – Preston and Kirkby Headbolt Lane – Wigan should be turned over to Merseyrail with a more intensive, 7 day service. Probably Bidston – Wrexham needs to be become a Merseyrail service too i.e. no longer Transport for Wales.

But turning back to my trade union angle. Where presently employed staff don’t want to work 5 out of 7 contracts then they should be offered a generous opportunity to leave the railway. Things have to change if we're to try to meet climate change targets and get more people using our railways. My view is that if the UK builds a reliable frequent railway then passengers will come and use it. Reopened lines have proved this and one, The Northumberland Line, is referenced in the video.

Oh and an old hobby horse of mine, the circular buses that connect communities to their local railway station (Maghull on the Merseyrail Network being an example) should be free and frequent.

 

 

Some thoughts on Northern in Tyke Country

A week away in Beverley in a holiday let right next to the town’s rather grand station, so what do we do but travel with Northern three times to Scarborough, Hull and York on separate weekdays.

 

A Northern Class 170 at Beverley

 

All the trains (6) were on time, clean, well patronised and had very robust on-train ticket checking. I did notice though the Northern and indeed wider operating rail company’s problems of Sunday cancellations due to lack of train crew.

A downside with Northern was our pre-booked, via their own website, tickets to Scarborough. I inadvertently selected the wrong Monday, should have been 24^th March but I booked for 31^st March. I realised my error straight away and tried to change the tickets to the correct day – wait for it!

The original tickets were £22 ish ,I recall, and the new ones were £27 ish. No problem thought I, I’d pay the extra and a small admin fee. Oh how wrong that thought was. The admin fee was quoted as £40!!! I was stunned and had to just buy new tickets and let the wrongly dated ones go. Yes, I know it was my error but £40 to change them to the right day that I wanted to travel on when the tickets were in the £20’s strikes me as appalling. Northern, a public company these days, should be ashamed of such a stunt.

 

A Northern Class 155 at Beverley

 

Other thoughts - Scarborough Station was a right old mess as it’s clearly undergoing major works. The trouble is there’s nowhere for the diesel fumes to go as the temporary roof is only a short distance above the trains. You had to walk down the platform to the uncovered part to escape the fumes.

 

A TransPennine express Class 185 at under refubishment Scarborough Station

 

OK, I’ve had a grumble but the Class 170’s were a great ride (I’d previously sampled the East Midlands Trains version of them on the Robin Hood Line down in Nottinghamshire) and even the refurbished and elderly Leyland-built Class 155’s to York were passable. So that was our experience over in Yorkshire of Northern. A bit of a curate’s egg.

 

The death of UK coal mining

Being born and raised (until the age of 6) in a mining community makes me someone with a clear link back to an industry that has now completely gone.

 

By the time I was born (1958) it seems coal mining was already in decline. Both of my grandads were originally miners but both finished their working years doing other work – one had a fruit and veg horse & cart round in Kirkby-In-Ashfield the other worked in Boots the Chemist factory in Nottingham. Of my dad’s generation, amongst my family, 2 of the men were miners but 3 were not. Of my generation (all born 1950’s) none of the 3 males became miners.

Frankly, mining was a dangerous job which many fathers clearly did not want their sons to follow on to, if there were other employment opportunities available. However, for generations alternative employments for men were few as mining communities had been developed to provide miners for local pits. The railways were the obvious alternative as wherever there was a pit there was a railway working to it. My uncle Ken Calladine took the railway route to employment.

I recently came across a YouTube video from June 1968, which I link below:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00PpizDxVG4 *

The video is of a Nottinghamshire NUM Miners’ Gala/Demonstration through Mansfield. What particularly took my eye was the white ‘coffin’ regarding the demise of Kirkby (Summit) Colliery (closed 1968) as that was where my grandad Walter Calladine had worked many years ago. He died of pneumoconiosis, I might add.

So only 10 years after I was born the decline in coal mining was clearly deepening. Add another 40 years on and UK coal mining was all but gone with mining communities suffering great hardship due to the lack of alterative employments; some still struggle to this day! Friday 10^th July 2015 saw the last Nottinghamshire coalfield mine close – Thoresby.

Many of us, if we think about coal mining at all these days, will look back to the miners' strike of 1984/85 and probably see it as the defining moment in the run down of the UK coal industry. In many ways it was, however, more mines were actually closed during Harold Wilson’s governments than at the hands of ‘Thatcher the milk snatcher’.

The video is a wonderful piece of social history as much as it’s a record of proud but declining mining communities. Just imagine if we were expecting our present generation of young men to go down a pit; there’d probably be demonstrations against such dangerous work and the wording on that ‘coffin’ may change to:-

‘***** Colliery - Don’t send our sons to be murdered down a pit’

 * Acknowledging the MuBu Miner YouTube channel/original recording by Ken Smith

Archive footage of the 1968 Nottinghamshire NUM Gala and Demonstration passing through Westgate, Mansfield in June 1968. The theme of pit-closures is evident from the various floats, 1968 was the worst ever year for pit closures in Britain. Branch Banners, Coal Queens, Colliery Brass Bands and Carnival Bands all feature in the footage. Original footage by Ken Smith of Underwood

 

Archive footage of the 1968 Nottinghamshire NUM Gala and Demonstration passing through Westgate, Mansfield in June 1968. The theme of pit-closures is evident from the various floats, 1968 was the worst ever year for pit closures in Britain. Branch Banners, Coal Queens, Colliery Brass Bands and Carnival Bands all feature in the footage. Original footage by Ken Smith of Underwood