Guns, boats and a house that eats people

Reviews

Miami Vice Been to the movies twice since my last review. David and I saw Miami Vice last week. I don’t remember the original TV show, but this was a great film. The camera work in the final battle was really good with handycams being mixed in with normal cameras. The film might have been a bit long in the middle and one of the plot lines was so obvious that you could see it coming from the first few minutes, but still it was better than a lot of the other films out at the moment and I want that boat. 7/10

Monster House The next film I’ve seen wasn’t on the list of films to watch this summer, but as we had Heathers niece and nephew over and Heather was at singing practice I agreed to take them to the cinema. They choose Monster House. The animated film is based around Halloween and has a House which eats people. I do enjoy watching children’s films, only on Monday we watched the Shrek 2 DVD, but the film wasn’t that great. The plot was boring, the animation wasn’t near the levels expected these days and the kids didn’t seem that excited once the film finished. 2/10

20mph zones

Council

20mphI live in a 20mph zone, we have terminal signs at all entrances informing people that they are entering the zone, but once in it they are only reminded it is twenty when exiting the zone.

I wrote to County to see if repeater signs were possible as they are in the West End. After months of waiting I got this reply.

Regarding your query about 20mph Zones and additional signs, the Sincil Bank Area is subject to a 20mph Zone and as such the use of 20mph repeater signs within the area is not allowed under the signing regulations. Any motorist, when driving off from being parked in the area, should know that they are within a 20mph Zone as they cannot enter the area without passing the 20mph Zone signs.You refer to the West End scheme, this area is covered by 20mph speed limits which does allow the use of repeater signs. This was introduced in this area, rather than a Zone, because of a bus route running through the area, which prevented the use of road humps and speed tables.

Surely this couldn’t be correct, a 20mph zone isn’t allowed repeater signs?
So I used Google to look for more information (notice how I didn’t google 20 mph zone).

After finding many local council press releases I found the Department for Transport website. I read through 20 mph speed limits and zones which didn’t tell me either way, next I tried Speed: Know your limits which on page 11 told me.

30mph Speed LimitThe 30mph speed limit is predominately used in urban areas (and more recently in many villages) and usually is indicated by the presence of a system of streetlights. The presence of street lights is the way we recognise this speed limit and it is the reason why you do not see, apart from where the limit starts, 30mph speed limit signs. Some believe this to be an odd way of indicating a speed limit, but really it is simple. If there are streetlights and no signs to the contrary a 30mph speed limit is in force.

30mphSo surely here was my answer, driving away from being parked outside my house at no point do I see any signs to the contrary, so the speed limit must be 30mph. But I knew that it couldn’t be that simple.

Looking at the References in the 20 mph speed limits and zones from earlier I could see something that might be useful TA Leaflet 1/95 Speed Limit Signs – A Guide to Good Practice, a search on the DFT website lead me to this page which states

20 mph speed limit zone – NO REPEATERS

Wow capitals, so County weren’t lying, we can’t have repeaters in the Sincil Bank Area.

Time to pester one of those Transport Minsters I think.

More channels on our box

TV

FreeviewYesterday after having enough of only being able to watch channels 1 to 4, I went out and bought a Freeview box.
I plugged it in, followed the instructions and got BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three/CBBC and BBC News 24. So I went from getting four channels to four channels.
So today I phoned for an aerial engineer called R W Parish, he was here for an hour. Installed a new aerial and replaced the coaxial cable as the old cable was pretty much damaged and now we have lots of channels.
I got Freeview because I wanted BBC Three, BBC Four, E4 and More 4 whilst I think Heather will be happy with just CBeebies.

Betting against Chelsea

Other

I’ve been with Betfair.com for some years now, and I think this is the first time I’ve bet against something.
Looking at the odds for the Premiership it seemed that the best bet was against Chelsea. I think they’ll come second or third this year, but just have no idea who’ll win. So by betting against them if any of the other 19 teams win I’m £20 up.

Interest rates up…

Other

..but only in Lincolnshire?
Well that’s the view that Lincs FM news team gave twice today. They claim that “it’s bad news for people in the Lincs FM area as interest rates have gone up by a quarter of a percent.”
Now I’m wondering if you live in Nottingham and have quite a good aerial that you too might have your interest rates increased, but your neighbours with a bedside alarm radio won’t.

That was long

Council

Today’s Development Control meeting lasted 2.5 hours, longest meeting I’ve had so far on the council.
I knew that when I put my name forward to be on the committee that meetings could go on for some time and I’ve been expecting worse.
We had 12 applications to consider with the longest being the land to the rear of 41-69 Hykeham Road. It was obvious in advance of the meeting that this might take some time. The applicants had submitted two applications offering two options for access to the site and there were 40 pages in the agenda taken up. Almost everyone who lived on that bit of Hykenham Road objected, as well as the 3 ward councillors and for the first option even the County Council Highways and Planning department.
The rules for speaking to the committee are 5 minutes against, 5 minutes for any councillor and 5 minutes for and we had all of these twice.
In the end we voted against the development (as per the recommendation from the officers), but I’m sure we’ll see an official objection to the decision.
Six applications were approved without much fuss. One extension application was obviously going to lead to neighbours not talking, but either way the vote went that would happen (we approved it). The new development for 29-31 The Strait and land to the rear were exciting to see and also approved.
The only application which split the committee was for the former Community Rehabilitation Centre on Long Leys Road. I felt that we couldn’t object to the application, in line with the officers. Others felt the building were too high, too dense and not following the draft for Long Leys Urban Village. The application was rejected, but a vote on the rejection lead to a chairs casting vote against the reason to object. Finally I proposed a motion to reject based on the officers opinion which was passed.

Whilst it sounds confusing that’s nothing compared to LDYS policy debates.

Weekend in Brum

Other

On Friday (actually more like early hours of Saturday) me and Heather decided to go to Birmingham for the weekend. We booked a room at the Premier Travel Inn and then after a short sleep made our way towards Bournville.

Cadbury We had attempted to book tickets in advance for Cadbury World however you can’t book tickets on the day via the website. At £12.50 each it was a little dear, and the free chocolate was melting quickly. However the historic facts about Cadbury were interesting and it was a nice day out.

We then headed to the hotel to check-in, and then went out to the Bull Ring. I’ve been a couple of times to the new Bull Ring and it’s amazing how the place is so much nicer than before. We wandered around the shops until we almost fell asleep. The only problem I had was the litter. It was really disgusting. Some of the litter was from a red mobile phone company, but most of it was wrappers from an ice cream van that was giving out freebies.

We then headed back to the hotel for dinner and a good night’s sleep.

White Rhinoceros On Sunday we made our way to West Midland Safari Park, this was only £8.99 each and we got a lot more for our money. We spent two hours driving around the safari and there was loads to see. I think we both enjoyed the elephants most. However as they were the furthest away from the car the photos aren’t that great. After parking the car we had a look around the rest of the park, and whilst watching the snake man do his presentation I managed to get stung by a wasp, who decided that flying up my sleeve was a great idea. I panicked like a small child until the wasp finally flew away. We had a look at the theme park rides but at an extra £8.75 each to go on all the rides, and none of them being that exciting we gave that a miss.

Overall though we had a really nice weekend.