Persecution on Parry's Lane

Some militant cyclist, bristolcyclista, sticks up a video of a journey so uneventful it doesn't merit a mention:



Except, by putting up the video of the car F54NWG, the driver has found a photograph of themselves swearing at the tax-dodger.

Needless to say, this persecuted driver has reacted in the only way left: to complain that placing the video up is a privacy violation, to which youtube react by blocking the video. There's now an updated one with the face blurred out.

The cyclist claims as now that you can only hear the abusive shouting from the passing vehicle, it is hard to identify the driver. Consider this. How does "bristolcyclista" know that the driver doesn't shout and swear like that to everyone? His family? His friends? Anyone he works with? Now anyone in the area of Parry's Lane -that's Stoke Bishop, an "under-documented" region- who has someone walk up to them and shout abuse will know "hey, that's the man in the F54NWG youtube video".

This is persecution.

We know that he's been persecuted by the way that he found and complained about the first video. Perhaps he's felt it necessary -as we have been- to create a google alert with our registration number in, sending us an email when yet another video of our driving appears on line. Alternatively, someone who knew him saw the car, heard the shouting and thought "I know of only one person who swears at people like that as they drive a silver car" -and broke the news. At which point the driver and his acquaintance now know what his driving standard is.

Of course that's an invasion of privacy!

Google's paper, Building High-level Features Using Large Scale Unsupervised Learning, [Le 2012], showed how they ran an image-feature identification program through still images, each of which was taken from a different youtube video. At the end of the exercise, the computer could take any image and categorise it into "face","body part", "cat" or "other". We suspect that before long, that program would start to recognise from-bicycle driving videos. If that's the case, youtube could just use it as part of its upload process: to identify all cycling-troublemaker videos and then refuse to accept them.

It's only through the application of such technology that our right to drive how we want can be preserved.

Gregor heating - don't compromise on vehicle use!

Gregor Heating and Renewable energy.

We were worried that you were tarnishing the long fought image of the white van man. With your fleet of 35 clearly identifiable vehicles, we feared that they were too small to assert your position on the road and your near tree hugging business was too contentious to make a mark on normal society.

How delighted we are to have been proven wrong, and you are really just plumbers at heart. It is not the size of the van that matters, it is how you drive it that really counts.

Take this example. Posh people in Stoke Bishop don’t want to give up their cars – they want to feel better by installing solar panels to heat their swimming pools. So your driver is quite right to force this tax dodging cyclist out of the way in this quiet residential street on the way to a very important client no doubt.

Maybe the use of your horn could have been better. It was early but these tax dodgers really do need to know their place and it was probably time for Quentin to wake up and get in the 4x4 to school anyway. Transits have better horns, another good reason to consider bigger vans.

But we salute you Gregor Heating. Keep up the good work installing renewable energy for the rich tax payers of Bristol, and well done for treating a carbon free form of transport with the contempt it deserves.

Considerate parking 2

Stoke Hill is a nice long and fast road (despite the 30 mph signs) and it is no wonder that it is safer to park on the pavement than inconvenience fellow motorists. We have a rare sight here though - a pedestrian IS trying to push a buggy up the hill.

W109VAX is not being inconsiderate though to this new Mum. It is just possible to get the buggy past if the wing mirrors are carefully folded in, and this additional action reminds her that the internal combustion engine was invented to avoid the need to walk up a hill, or in fact at all!

Considerate Parking

Thank goodness we motorists are considerate. This photo is a perfect example.

Yes the road is wide, and yes, we could park AC58ARZ on it completely legally. And yes, the wing mirrors would probably remain in place if we did.

But imagine how difficult it would be for the tax dodger on the bike if he'd had to avoid the vehicle.

Nobody ever pushes a buggy up this hill, after all, this is the natural habitat of the 4x4. There is even a bus service on this road for the poor.

So we are considerate. Even in Stoke Bishop.