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Continue reading →: The past. Very much present.
All across the Cotswolds, if you stop for just a few minutes on hilltops, you can find strips of broken concrete, grass growing in the jumbled cracks. Red brick buildings with peeling, grey render and steel framed, glassless windows. Today, they’re derelict, but these World War II RAF bases were…
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Continue reading →: Getting emotional about speed limitsWe may not like to admit it, but we’re run by our limbic brains. That’s the part that looks after keeping us alive by deploying the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ reaction. Something startles or scares you – your limbic brain fires in fractions of a second to keep you out…
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Continue reading →: Stop wasting my timeYou’ll probably live until you’re, near as dammit, 80. 80 birthdays. 80 Christmases, 80 summer holidays. That’s 29,200 days. Not long, is it? And, apart from hoping for decent genetics, laying off the pies and going for the odd run, there’s not a lot you can do to significantly extend…
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Continue reading →: How easy to read was Oxfordshire County Council’s Central Oxford Transport Plan (COTP)?Local authorities are increasingly consulting residents on implementing policy that significantly affects their lives. Oxfordshire County Council alone has 31 open traffic consultations at the time of writing. Even a single consultation takes effort to read, understand and reply to, so each needs to be easy to understand for residents.…
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Continue reading →: Are lower blanket limits the answer for Witney?Speed and speed limits are always controversial. They get a massive emotional response; stand by the side of the road and almost everyone feels angry about ‘those bloody speeding drivers’. Likewise, over the last few years 20mph limits have become an ideological rallying point for some groups – an article…
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Continue reading →: Dumb thinking or intelligent speed limiters?Intelligent Speed Adaptation – not so intelligent and not so adaptable Who’s the best person to control your throttle pedal? You, the person behind the wheel, checking for hazards and moderating your speed according to constantly changing road conditions or your local councillor who’s worried about getting re-elected and under…
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Continue reading →: When a sign tells you more than it’s designed toIn the 1950s, psychologist Eric Berne wrote a paper on Transactional Analysis (TA). In it he talked about how people function and express their personality through their behaviour. TA also works as a tool to analyse the way people – and organisations – communicate. In essence, people can communicate as…
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Continue reading →: TAGging along – the TAG Heuer F1 series
Maybe it’s because I originally bought one of these in 1997 with a bonus from work, but I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for them since. And, as they’re a very long way from Patek money, why not start collecting them? The TAG Heuer F1 series was part…
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Continue reading →: The Lazarus watch
THE LAZARUS WATCH—RESTORING A “FRANKEN-SEIKO” 6139 CHRONOGRAPH Some watches lead pampered lives. They are kept carefully in their boxes, worn only for special occasions when there is little threat of alcohol-induced, watch-threatening silliness before being lovingly polished and put away again. Then there is this Seiko 6139. If it were…
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Continue reading →: The $18m watch they couldn’t give away
Give a watchnerd the keys to Marty McFly’s De Lorean and you’d have a whole different film. Instead of all that faffing about with the Johnny-B-Goode-meets-Eddie-van-Halen thing, they’d set the dials to 1963 and start beating down the door of their nearest Rolex dealer to stock up on Paul Newman…
