As we go about our lives, we see (and occasionally perform) some strange deeds. Last week we had the usual “the UK is going to freeze” warning, while everybody (except the mid rift showing feminine types) zipped and buttoned up, I saw something very strange.

While taking SWMBO to work, I passed a truck (spreader in the UK) showering the road and cars with its antifreeze salt crystal variant, following at a sedate pace about a quarter mile behind the ‘spreader’ was a road washer/sweeper. Nice one guys!

Anything strange happen to someone else?

Yeah,was returning home about 0500 from Manchester airport at the end of July a couple of years ago,and on the M69 from Cov there were 2 gritters out gritting???????

Eric,

This is 'joined up Government' just like the Home office. NOT



Craig

Not quite official silliness but....

Many years ago when I was an ATM (Autoteller, Hole in the Wall etc) Engineer, me and my mate had to move an ATM from one Bank branch to another.

The machine was emptied of money and we disconnected the entire ATM, hoisted it onto a trolley and dragged it out to the kerb waiting for the van to arrive to transport it.

As we stood leaning on the completely disconnected machine with wires wrapped all round it, a flustered SWMBO rushed up, fished her card out of her purse and started to insert it into the card feeder slot.

As we stared at her in sheer incredulity she gushed "Oh thank you! I hope I'm not too late!"

The Bank WAS NOT impressed with the two Engineers rolling about on the pavement howling with laughter!

Got a b*llocking from the BIG Boss for that one!

Official Sillieness

Telling me, whilst heading London Bound on the M20 that Southampton Docks are shut, on an overhead matrix sign. The plant life in the car in front decided to slam his brakes on so he could read it, nearly causing an accident. All this for a Dock that is a good 150 miles away, in the other direction.

Anything the Highways Agency does - like shutting 2 lanes on a motorway in rush hour becausethere is a car down the embankment. No one trapped in it, no police or ambulance, just two lanes shur, so one day a recovery truck can pick it up. It was still down the embankment three days later.

Rant over.

Andy

SWMBO just reminded me of the fun we had a few weeks back. When the UK had its Gale force wind warning out, they had decided to upgrade the street lighting in the high street.

Firstly they started out with the digging of holes at every existing street lamp and a nice large one at every 5th or so lamppost, necessitating the closure of a lane with the mandatory traffic light. These were promptly besieged by the warning barricades, not the old thin ones, no the new wide High visibility ones. Friday, work promptly stopped for the weekend.

Friday night the wind picked up and promptly blew the barrier/barricades all over the street. Plus as is usual, the temporary traffic lights went haywire and at one instance one traffic light was blown over and the other not- prompting one lane of traffic to guess whether it was safe to try and go round the corner or not.
MAN, WE HAD FUN THAT WEEKEND!

Also the phone number that you have to call (painted on the barricades) in case of emergency had a message telling you that their offices were closed for the weekend! WE KNEW THAT!

hang on

These posts are all from Brits, surely it can't just be us, there MUST be something else from the EU at least

craig

Probably not much with regards to officaldom.. our continental bretheren are very good at ignoring the stupidity that maskerades as the European Parliament... (Now I thought a parliament was elected and accountable... )

Cheers
Henk

Would that be the same person doing the prediction, who last winter forecast that we would have the coldest winter in a generation? We had all the contingency plans instated, in case we would be unable to get to the farms, for the farmers to bring their milk out to special collection points... We had exactly 1 (one) evening of snow... :-) light snow mind, nothing to worry a six axle 44 ton truck.

If I want a weather prediction, I look out of the window.. :-)

Cheers
Henk

Here in the States, you will notice that as soon as a road is repaved, lines painted and made to look nice and pretty, another construction crew will be along shortly to dig up the pavement and replace some sort of underground item, be it water mains, sewer lines, phone lines, electrical lines, gas lines or whatever.

Happens every time.

Or during the tourist season (summer), there's a panic to get as many road crews out as possible to dig every single road that they can find. THEN, the workers disappear for a couple of months......and the holes lies there nice tidy. :-)

We had a big flap over just that in Houston during the reign of a recent mayor. It was a fairly important thoroughfare, all nicely redone, then ripped to bits by crews laying fiberoptic cable.

And now that that mess has been cleaned up, the mass-transidiot office wants to convert it to a light rail route.

A real stunner here was to save energy by switching off street lights on residential streets - all well and good until it was pointed out that turning the lights off also negated the 30mph speed limit. Thus residential streets would become pitch dark race ways - genius!

So they went away to think a bit more about that one.

David