A couple of days late but still releveant

20 October 2011

At the moment we pay Eon £140 for our gas and electricity.  So Jan was having a moan about it and I suggested she go on to USwitch website and see what she could find.  Well, that's how we found Eon in the first place.  So she did just that.  And signed up with Npower saving is a massive £20 a week on our bill.  Such a large saving can only mean that the energy companies are indeed making far too much profit from us customers.  I can only encourage you all to likewise.  I'm now waiting for Eon to call and offer to reduce our payment to keep us with them - which only shows just how much they are currently making to allow them to do just that.

The Dorktown News front page has a story about artic trucks double parking on the roads of a large industrial estate on the edge of town.  This has already led  to one death and after 6 years of it the residents in the nearby housing estate are up on their hind legs making a big fuss about it.  One has called for double yellow lines along the both sides of the roads followed by effective policing of them.  OK, fine - but will the trucks actually pay the fines?  This brings me to one of my pet hobby horses and gets me on my hind legs too.

Drive down any length of road where there are speed cameras that actually work and you will see truck drivers ignoring the speed limit.  The reason is that the company pays those fines that are issued.  BUT ... no-one gets the 3 points on a licence that goes along with the fine!  And that really bugs me!  The argument is that the company doesn't know who is driving which truck at any one time.  CRAP!!! 

All trucks are fitted with a tachograpgh.  The paper records that into the tacho record all sort of things, like the hours spent actually driving - which one one of the main reasons they are checked by the cops.  But they also record the speed the truck is travelling at!  Did you know that?  Well they do.  They also have to have the full name of the driver hand written on to it.  Each disc has to be kept in the truck for about a week and then handed in to office where they have to be kept to hand for some time as well.  It takes a few days for the fines to arrive on the company desks but it won't be long before the tacho discs to be handed in to be checked against the ticket details.  That's the long way araound it of course.  But in reality it's a lot easier.  A driver is allocated a truck and he keeps that truck until he gets allocated to new one the company has just bought.  No, the reason is that so many of these tickets are issued to trucks that it wouldn't be long before we had a large shortage of drivers when the bans start kicking for clocking up too many speeding offences.  So what's the answer then?

Perhaps it's time that trucking companies rearranged their schedules to make it easier for their drivers to keep to the speed limits.  But that means that costs will go up.  So top and bottom of it is, it's all down to money! 

Now then, remember the double parking above?  If the cops or the new traffic wardens that the county council are supposed to be hiring now, do issue the tickets, will the offending driver pay them?  I bet they don't.  I bet they hand them in to offices and the company will end up paying.  And remember this folks ... it will all add to the costs which will ultimately fall on us consumers in one way or another!