Archive for Gosport
Voter Apathy
It’s polling day for the local council elections today, in our area at least, so I’ll be making a nostalgic trip to my old Infant school after work to visit the ballet boxes.
But who of the “big 3″ to vote for? Well, one of them I’d never vote for – local or general – in any but the most unusual circumstances, so that narrows it down a bit. Alas the representative of the pary I naturally vote for has been in office for three years, with very little to show for it other than a reasonable golfing average. I’ll still vote for their party in a general election, but at a local level they’ve gotten lazy and need a kick up the bum.
So that leaves my normal second choice. The only snag is I went to school with the candidate’s son, and he was a bit of a d*ck, so I’d rather not do that family any favours if I can help it.
A tough choice then. Part of me was tempted to say “screw the lot of them” and not vote. But then I’d feel guilty for not exercising my democratic right, especially when you think of all those places were people can’t vote as easily. Plus I’d loose any moral right to complain about local issues if I’d done nothing to shape how my town is run. Hmmm, sorry to sound a bit preachy there, but I think you all know what I mean.
So I guess I’m going to put personal differences to one side, and vote for my second choice, as they probably are the best choice for my local area if I’m honest. I hope that everyone who reads this will be thinking about what’s best for their community, and making the effort to vote today. 
April Snow in Gosport
Sunday’s snow flurry in Gosport was such a rare occurence – especially for April – that I felt compelled to upload these photos, even though a lot of people have already beaten me to it. 
These where taken from the cosy safety of my house, I’m just glad it wasn’t a work day, so there was no need to go outside.
Gosport Sunset
This evening I paid a visit to a relative who lives in the flats by the harbour ferry. While I was there I captured this cool picture of an especially bright sunset over Gosport. Click the thumbnail for a closer look.
In The News
Three stories on the breakfast news caught my eye this morning. I really should have written about this earlier, but didn’t have the time.
1. Firstly, this odd tale of a “happy slapping” incident at Brune Park caught my attention, as it was a local story. It would seem that a fight was filmed on a mobile phone and a teacher became aware of the footage and had it played on the class projector after the lesson in an attempt to identify the culprits. But alas there were still some students around, who raised a complaint. Seems like a weird thing to do to me.
2. A tourist takes a photo which has someone in it who looks a bit like Madeleine McCann. *gasp* Thats blurry photos of small blonde girls for you I guess! The quality of the photo is so poor that the only common distinguishing features are, erm, gender and hair colour. Awesome.
So of course it later turns out that…no, it wasn’t her! *double gasp* The real question is what the hell did people think she’d be doing strapped to the back of a Moroccan peasant woman? Where they seriously suggesting that a Moroccan peasant flew all the way to Portugal, kidnapped Madeleine, flew back to their village and then walked around with her strapped to their back? Riiiiiiiight…
3. And finally, Halo 3 is upon us. As cool as this is, does it really warrant national news airtime? We queued at midnight for Halo 2, and it felt a bit odd not to be doing the same this time. Trouble is, I don’t own an Xbox 360 yet, so there wasn’t a lot of point. Can’t help but feel I was missing out though…
The Opposite of Undercover
I saw something odd whilst riding the queue from the motorway…no, hold on, “riding” makes it sound like the traffic actually moves faster than a metre per ice age…let’s start again. *Special Effect* I saw something odd whilst enduring (that’s better) the queue from the motorway into Fareham. An unmarked black police BMW forced its way down between the two lines of traffic, blue lights a-flashin’. Okay, nothing odd there, except that it was followed about 30 seconds later by an unmarked Vauxhall of some description, possibly an Omega. Another 30 seconds later, and a convoy of four smaller unmarked cars – again all with blue lights flashing – forced their way down in a line, before disappearing across the roundabout towards Fareham. Finally, once I was actually on the A32 heading back into Gosport, a grey estate whizzed by, heading towards the roundabout, completely the flashing light convoy.
Intriguing, huh? Either there was some serious sh*t going down or all the unmarked police cars were just out for a bit of a race… If anyone knows the truth, I’d love to know, as I’ve never seen that many undercover cars in one place before. Then again, maybe I have and just didn’t notice because they were, erm, undercover….
Return of the “Bad Thing”!
It would seem that the stupid morning queues to join the motorway at junction 11 have returned in their full congested horror. The lengthy waiting began on Monday, but I was willing to put that down to the lorry that shed its load. But unfortunately they persisted and now we’re back to the disruption of a few weeks ago. So they’ve fiddled with the traffic light timings again, but for what gain? The M27 itself is still just as slow in that area. Methinks we need Alex to send another snotty letter.
That’s Better.
Okay, so it seems that the queues along Eastern Way in the mornings have returned to their normal states, i.e. non-existence. It actually started to improve at the end of last week, but I wanted to wait a few working days to confirm it wasn’t all some crazy dream.
Sheaf was so incensed by the whole thing that he e-mailed the Highways Agency to complain. Their reply was apologetic, but still laden with excuse. Here’s an exert:
“…we are currently undertaking a major scheme to improve the operation of the junction. The works being carried out will provide adaptive traffic signal control, based on detectors activated by passing traffic. This aims to increase capacity and minimise delay at the junction by continually adjusting the signal timings according to traffic flow.
Unfortunately, during the installation of new signal control systems, it is not uncommon for some disruption to occur during the transition period. [*snip* It goes on a bit here.]
We expect the works to be completed within the next two weeks, when the full benefits of the traffic signal changes will be achieved.”
So now the two weeks are up, and things are back to normal – just as this e-mail predicted – Gosport commuters can go back to worrying about the congestion on the A32 instead. Oh happy days…
A Special Kind Of Madness.
As my fellow commuting drones will already know, a change has occurred to the traffic light timings at J11 on the M27 (Wallington Interchange). This became evident just after Christmas when queues started appearing back along Eastern Way in the mornings. Normally once you’ve slowly worked your way up the A32, you’re treated to a relatively free run before a slight bit of waiting again on the M27. But now the waiting goes on just that little bit longer (in “the straw that broke the camel’s back” sense of little bit).
And for what gain? To let more people join the M27 westbound when coming from Boarhunt? Even with the old timings you often saw no cars going that way anyway, so why was it decided these phantom vehicles needed more time? I imagine the frustrated motorists sitting at the end of Eastern Way have a lot of empty space to gaze wistfully into while they await the blissful green of the traffic lights. The perhaps it was to remove the queue from the M27 itself? This news just in: the queues are still there.
But on the bright side, allegedly it’s only a test, and may well be changed back. But it must have taken a special kind of madness to devise this scheme in the first place. I can almost picture its architect, perched on a throne draped with the flayed skins of all those Gosport commuters who have been driven insane, cackling maniacally to flickering CCTV monitors and giving praise to the god of first gear as he watches us toil and crawl and stop and start. But then again, I do have an overactive imagination…
Let It Snow…
…let it snow, let it snow! Ah, that song always reminds me of Die Hard 2. And snow, obviously. Anyway I’m back writing the blog after nearly a month of absense, what with one thing and another. As you may have guessed, I’m fairly excited about all the snow we’ve been having these past few days. It makes a change to see snow in Gosport! Shame it wasn’t over Christmas though. Images of my back garden below.
The BBC comes to Hampshire’s roads…
This article pretty much writes itself. I had the following e-mail sent to me today, as a forward of a forward of a forward, etc. I think it would be useful for any readers from the Gosport area, so I’ll copy & paste it below:
“I received from a mate, a tip off about some filming that Hants Police are doing for a television programme series starting yesterday (26th September) for seven weeks.”
If you use the M27 or the M3 this potentially affects you so please proceed with caution and pass onto anyone who you feel might just need to know. The program a BBC South commission called “Traffic Cops” will be filmed covering the area from Ringwood concentrating on Ringwood M27 up to M3 J9 and a team
working the ringroad around Southampton (Totton will have a unit working it alone), Cosham M27 stretch to J5 of the M27 (Southampton Airportturn-off).
The fourth concentration is working from Winchester Services covering M3 to J10 M3 (Winchester South) using five unmarked cars, two Black Skoda 03 registration Octavias, an 05 plate dark red Mondeo and two Volvo saloon cars.
The BBC unit are going to be based out of Southampton and will also be covering the armed police response unit and the Southampton Airport Police Security / British Transport Police team.
The BBC team are in Citreon Picasso MPVs leased from Arriva. To make it even more effective the Traffic police have authority from Chief Constable to “work to rule” So instead of the laid back approach to the usual Hants traffic police this will be a lot more concentrated to make it effective filming. “
There you have it, so remember…keep watching the skies! Erm…roads.
