Pot luck

Aberdeen's roads have never been the best and at the moment they are uneven, patchy, pot-holed, cannoned, fissured and just plain dangerous, and the problem is getting worse and there's not a road unaffected. Some of Aberdeen's roads are so bad it's like driving on the main roads of Egypt, and that's one hellava bumpy ride. And I'm sure I saw a tarmac mole the other day. The local council say they have no money to repair these damaged roads, but some how they managed to find £80M to rebuild, repair, and revamp a building that they are only leasing as their new headquarters.

Granted, the current HQ (shown above (28-03-10)) is a visual eye sore, and I can understand the need to have new premises, and I welcome the use of such a beautiful and historical building like the Marischal College - which is the 2nd largest granite fronted building in the world (shown below in renovation & reconstruction (28-03-10)), - but don't tell Aberdeen's citizens’ that there's no money to repair our roads.

Our Council tax already incorporates a portion of the money paid to maintain our roads, so what are they doing with it? Our city should be a shining light,- the gate way to the Highlands, Royal Deeside, some new beautiful modern shopping centres, which bring needed revenue and the Oil Capital of Europe. So why are we still bumping along our roads like we're driving dodgy shopping trolleys?

Come on Aberdeen Council, get your fingers out and sort the roads before the next onslaught of bad weather makes it even worse.

Dumping not Providing

Wednesday just past I was clearing out some cupboards and as I normally do I had a few bags to go to charity. Now as a rule I'll take the bags to the Charity shops - I do a circle donation that way all charities and not just one get something - however this time is was for the Salvation Army. I remembered that they had collection bins in Tesco car park, so i thought that I'd drop the stuff there as it was on the way to my Mother-in-laws and i could then pick up my son. The bins are very big and the SA have signs to tell you how they would like the stuff sorted. That's a sensible thing to do. I tried putting several carrier bags in, two would not fit so that stuff will be going in to a store. I was surprise, on the day, to see that there were a few black bags of items sitting at one of the bins and someone had left a single mattress and a suitcase. What is rather ridiculous and obvious is that the person or persons responsible are just dumping. Baring in mind that the local dump is not that far from Asda and Asda's not far from Tesco. I do have a criticism about the bins, the chutes do not allow for a bulging carrier bag and you would have to use several bags if you have a lot on things, so you can see why people would leave black bags if they didn't known and just couldn't be bothered to take the stuff home again, but this is dumping not providing.

I was at Tesco shopping today and couldn't believe my eyes. The Salvation Army bins were nothing short of disgusting, and the people who left the items behind should be ashamed of themselves. Clothing out of bags lying on the wet ground, now no use to anyone. Why did they waste petrol traveling to Tesco just to dump when they could have just used their wheelie bin and let the council refuge collection dump them instead?

RED Means STOP

5.07pm today three fucking idiots in cars went through the red light on Ellon road after the Don bridge. If I had driven off on the green light that was showing for me at that time the three of them would have smashed in to me, and not only hurt me but my 10 month old son too.

I am moaning about this, because this sort of driving happens too fucking often, even to pedestrians. What the fuck is so important that you have to risk yours and others lives by running red lights?

Anyone who does this are 'fucking arseholes' and they should be banned from driving as it's totally reckless.

You can tell I'm really pissed about this because of the swearing.

Total waste of time

It's been rather windy in Aberdeen lately and I couldn't believe my eyes when I was driving across the Don bridge yesterday. There was a council worker using a leaf-blower. He could bearly stand upright for the wind and the leaves were blowing everywhere. I wish I had been able to photograph or film it. Well he had a job and he was doing it.

Money for Nothing - Part 2

Well would you believe it M&S money called me back on Friday, while I was out, and left a message on my machine. They tell me that a team has listened to my last call and they confirm that I was told that I was due them £2.43 not they were due me. Unbloody believable. How can this be the case? I've 4 months left on my insurance, I cancel, granted, and they charge me £25 for clicking a button that says cancelled etc. then claim money for loss of 4 months business, of which they were paid upfront, then have the mordacity to charge me a further amount. Why did I bother? With an increase of motorist uninsured in this country it really irks me that as a customer they could and would do this.

I’ve reread my policy and terms, which I’d read a year ago when I’d taken it out, and they nicely state the following 'We may also charge a percentage of the total cost of cover, depending on when you cancel.' I give emphasis to the words may and depending. Surely either a fee or percentage should be applicable and enough but not both and certainly not a further charge; so does 4 months not apply?

I am disgusted by this situation and with M&S money, it's one thing to charge a fee but I really don't see why they should get to keep my money for months I won't be insured by them or to pay them more for the privilege. It really does go to show that car insurance and insurance in generally can be money for nothing.

Money for Nothing

Insurance is a necessary evil and it would appear that if you risk not having it for something you need it and if you have it your paying for nothing. Last year I changed my car insurance company to M&S money, who have BISL as their administrators, as I was saving a reasonable amount, however this year my husband bought a second car, which is fine, it's nothing exiting just a run about to get to and from work. So I contact my insurance company ahead of time to ask about the procedure of insuring another car while he had not acquired any no-claims and was a named driver on my existing policy. I was told that is wasn't a problem and that my no-claims would be mirrored and he'd get a good saving. Great I think; wrong. Couple of months later husband buys car I call insurance company, go through loads of questions and they say, 'insurance will be £350' just as well I was already sitting on the floor. That was almost the same price as the car and double the insurance for my car. We talked about moving my no-claims to my husband but that just cost him £220 and me £400. CRAZY. There I am sitting on the floor going what the hell. Anyway, I tell them in no uncertain terms that we're not paying that. Hence I manage to get both our cars insured elsewhere for a total of £300; that's with my husband having no no-claims bonus of his own, amazing how one company can do this and another can't.

Although you can have two insurance policies on one car you can't claim on both so who would have two? I therefore called M&S Money back and told them I was cancelling the policy and why. The policy had until September to run so I knew that I would be losing something. After they told me that I’d have to pay £25 cancellation fee, then there was the loss of business expense of 90% of the remaining policy which would leave me with £2.43, WOW, enough to buy a fair-trade coffee. I say that it’s all ridiculous and told them to refund the amount, well it’s mine.

Few days later I’m checking my statement and there it is a debit for £2.43, they charged me. On the phone I get and then I’m told that they don’t refund anything under £10, first I knew, I pointed out that that didn’t give them the right to charge me and that they now needed to refund me £4.86; if I keep going I’ll get to that £10. Well I’m still waiting for the refund and the call back. They’ve got until Friday and if they haven’t they’ll be hearing from me.

Pedestrian vs Driver

As both a regular driver and pedestrian on Aberdeen’s streets I have a vested interest in the use, courtesy, general misuse and down right rudeness that comes from both. Firstly as a driver I find that far too many motorists think that the road is just for them and that traffic lights are there to inform them to drive faster to get through them. Then there is the fact that on certain roundabouts the give way to the right seems not to exist and that during traffic hour a stream of cars will actually park around the roundabout stopping the flow of traffic, this seems only to happen in Aberdeen, and just because no one wants another car to get in front of them and put them further back in the queue. Crazy when you consider that our traffic jams are not jams as the traffic has a reasonable flow. I wish I could say that the part-time traffic lights work but they at times just add to the rush to the next bit and that inch closer to that bumper. And why oh why is there confusion as to who has right away at a crossroad – for those who don’t know, it’s the driver going straight ahead then the one going left, that goes for crossroads that are not completely straight on – like the one on Ellon Road.

My biggest problem with drivers, is that many seem to ignore pedestrian crossings, I stop at a crossing if there is another car before me and there is not a clear space behind them for me not to sit on that crossing, after all there will be someone wanting to cross the road and I’d rather they didn’t walk around my car – more on this later.

Now life on the pavement can be dangerous, for all the reasons mentioned above, drivers seem to see pedestrians as targets as well as a nuisance, now granted there are people out there that while walking put themselves at risk by crossing the road between cars and before reaching or using pedestrian crossings or simply run out on the road to get across before a car comes. Such decisions baffle me. As a pedestrian I generally hate drivers, this comes from the fact that they don’t think about what they’re doing only that they have to get somewhere and are on autopilot most of the time and if I didn’t pay attention on those pavements and road crossings I’d be dead. I can’t count how many times I have stood patiently at a crossing, in the rain, only to have a car speed up to get through that light before it changes and that green man appears or that a car moves on to the crossing lane and blocks my path those seconds before the lights change. I may be wrong but I’m not going to walk around a car, bus – they are big criminals on this count – trucks etc. and risk someone moving off and hurting, maiming or killing me. I will however get extremely annoyed and rant at the offender and they know that they’ve done wrong, because they sit there looking straight ahead pretending that you’re not there and they’ve done nothing wrong.

I have to say that pedestrians really get a raw deal from motorists, not only do they have to put up with bad behaviour and discourtesy on the roads, but the weather is also against them with it; how many times have you seen a car drive faster in the rain and splash those rivers of water on Aberdeen’s roads just because they have to get somewhere, big news the pedestrian is going somewhere too and we’d like to get there in one piece.