No Fuel like an Old Fuel

Cough, hack, cough, etc.

Ecological Armaggedon is upon us, and it's all our own fault for using energy. Having spent the past several tens of thousands of years eating raw food and freezing to death in the winter, Mankind was given the gift of fire by Prometheus, much to Zeus' disgust.

For several thousand more years there were open fires and candles, and then fossil fuels were discovered and exploited. Coal, oil, gas. Enter the Industrial Revolution, releasing ancient carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in vast quantities, causing either a new Ice Age or Global Warming. Unless that's all due to sunspot activity and Anthrogenic Climate Change (or perhaps Bovogenic if cow farts are to blame) all turns out to be a politically-driven myth.

What are we to do? The petrochemical industry produces a lot of our electricity; our food (tractor fuel, fertiliser, pesticides); our drugs; our plastics; anything that needs energy to be made (so everything, then); and of course transportation.

The obvious political decision is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. In practical terms, this means discouraging private vehicle use. As banning cars would have a ruinous effect on the world even if it were possible, a first stage is to encourage motorists to buy and run more economical - and thus more ecological - vehicles. Tiny-engined cars such as Nanny Goat's Aygo sips petrol, and she is rewarded by Her Majesty's Exchequer with a vanishingly tiny annual Vehicle Excise Duty ('VED'; it hasn't been 'Road Tax' in decades). Meanwhile, gas-guzzling polar-bear-drowning bourgemobiles get hammered by the taxman when they're imported, sold, and annually taxed. Plus, of course, thirsty cars use more fuel and thus the owner gets to pay more fuel tax.

So far, so good. Loads of people cash in on these tax advantages. They get wads of cash under scrappage schemes, buy titchy cars, and pay less VED and less fuel tax. And the environment is saved: huzzah!

But with all these bribes to the motorists, the total tax revenue heading to the Chancellor of the Exchequer is reduced. "Oh dear, I hadn't thought of that," says the Exchequer. "What are we to do now?"

Simple, really. We will increase tax on everyone, so now everyone gets punished for complying with the government's wishes. Consider the huge U-turn in the UK when diesel, the erstwhile environmental saviour, is now the demonised Fuel From Hell.

And now the second part. A move to totally electric cars. Ignoring the not insignificant environmental impact of digging lithium out of the ground and turning it into batteries, where is all the additional electricity going to come from? There must be massive investment in power generation - without a corresponding increase in carbon emissions otherwise what would be the point? Renewables, yes, and nuclear fission. Fusion would be better, but we're not there yet.

Somebody is going to have to pay for all this additional infrastructure, and it won't just be the motorist. Electricity prices are the obvious target, so if the Goat charges both his cars and his bike overnight while the little old lady next door boils her kettle for a nice cup of tea while watching 'Strictly' on her gogglebox, we're both paying more for our power because of my desire for personal transport.

Is car (or motorbike, come to that) ownership going to go in the direction of "You may only have a car if you have off-street parking"? If not, expect extension leads in enormous numbers being strewn across the footways of cities. Also anticipate late-night revellers unplugging cars for a laugh to make people late for work.

The answer lies in part with electric public mass transportation. Discourage private car use by discouraging ownership. Who has a car in Manhattan? Or in central London? Or Tokyo? But the system must work well for almost everybody almost all of the time. Not everyone is a commuter into and out of the Central Business District. The Goat is reminded of nightmare trips to and from IKEA Budapest, and he's a reasonably strong and able-bodied pack beast...

Electric aircraft currently seem an unlikely proposition, though. However, wind-powered ships could actually work if some boffins put in sufficient R&D.

Or go back to some Arcadian agrarian society where all two billion of us live, work, and die within walking distance of our birthplace. We have been there and done that.

]}:-{>

Caprine Confusion

The Goat admits that he is nonplussed. The new UAE federal traffic rules were announced on about 29th June 2017 for implementation from 1st July. Some penalties have been increased; others have been decreased; the maximum legal window tint has been increased from 30% to 50%.

But here is where the confusion appears.

It has been normal custom and practice in the UAE to allow a 20km/h over the posted limit. Logical and not unreasonable, given instrument inaccuracy and the known fact that nobody NEVER sneaks, even inadvertently, over the posted maximum. And we are assured that this situation will prevail.  

 

And yet the new list includes a fine of Dh300 for exceeding the posted limit by not more than 20km/h.  

 

So is exceeding the posted limit by say 10km/h a punishable offence or not?

The Goat was surprised and annoyed to receive a speeding ticket earlier in 2017 for doing less than 110km/h in a 100km/h zone. In Fahrenheit, the Goat got busted for doing less than 68mph in a 62mph zone.Incidentally, just past the first 100km/h sign after a long, long stretch of 120km/h highway.

 

This is in accordance with the old Law 183, but is still well inside Dubai's tolerance level. But it's Sharjah; not Dubai.

 

The Goat suspects that these federal rules apply, but because Dubai is Special, Dubai chooses to ignore speeding less than 20km/h over the limit. Other emirates, it would seem, are not as tolerant.

The Goat also observes 1279 fines on the first day. Obviously this count does not include the speed and red-light cameras because the results from these take a few days to come through the process. Moreover, he suspects that most would have been offences under previous laws. But the fact the we see punitive action rather than compliance rather suggests that the system will take a while to become effective.

Or perhaps the novelty will wear off after a few days or weeks, and we will be back to the highway anarchy that we all know and love.

It is gratifying to the Goat to note that, at last, traffic laws pertaining to the American system of having a STOP sign on school buses have now become official. 

 

Compliance and enforcement? Remain to be seen; last time the Goat stopped behind a school bus with its STOP sign out he was hooted at and verbally abused by a nasty man in a large black-windowed Tahoe.

And finally, Law 155. Transporting inflammable ale is right out.

The complete list, should anyone be interested, is here.

]}:-{>

Both kinds: Country *and* Western

Not my truck

"With the advent of autonomous motor vehicles," it said on Facebook, "It's only a matter of time before someone writes a country song about my truck leaving me."

So here is one.

I bought an F150
In the year 2019.
I gave it bigger tires
So's to make it look real mean.
It had a pair of smokestacks
Both made of polished chrome,
And a central-heated garage:
Somewhere it could call home.

My wife said I spent too much time
Out polishing my truck.
"It's gonna be the truck or me,"
She told me. Just my luck!

One day while I was drivin'
The radio was playin'
My fav'rite country music songs:
The best of all, I'm sayin'
I set the truck on Auto
For my banjo I was pickin'
Till I stopped outside a KFC
Where lunch is finger-lickin'

The truck parked up beside a 'Stang,
A fine automobile,
But when I'd had my chicken strips
My disbelief was real.

For my truck left me!
It ran off with a Mustang.
Yeah, my truck left me!
I shouted and I cussed.
My truck left me!
The moral to this story
Is never trust a truck that is autonomous.

Yeah, my truck left me!
It ran off with a Mustang.
Yeah, my truck left me!
I went home on the bus.
My truck left me!
The moral to this story
Is never trust a truck that is autonomous.

]}:-{>

Take a tip

The usual species of disclaimer: I am sure that there are plenty of Egyptians who do not drive in the manner described below, and as I’ve experienced similar in the Philippines and elsewhere, the problems are not limited to Egypt.

And the driving aside, I have a particular liking for Egyptology. Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, the Valley of the Kings, and ancient Karnak were all wonderful memorable experiences. I took loads of photos. The diving was also excellent, but at the time I didn’t own an underwater camera so my pictures were limited to a few around the hotel.


Way back in the late 1990s, for this is a yarn from þe olde days of yore, I was part of a group on two weeks’ holiday in Egypt. The first week we spent in Luxor for a week of temples and tombs. Then, having been generally pharaoed to exhaustion, we headed eastward towards Hurghada to enjoy the Red Sea Diving Experience.

I didn’t really notice the driving style in the transfer coach between Luxor airport and the hotel, not least because I quickly nodded off following a sleepless night and a problematic departure from London Heathrow that involved many hours of sitting around in the terminal.

However, when we went out to explore the town one evening, a weird and less than wonderful phenomenon became quickly apparent along the ill-illuminated streets:

All the bizarre men by the Nile 

They like to drive, for a lark, 

With headlights off (Oh, way oh!) 

So you can’t see them in the dark. 

Drive like an Egyptian. 

Almost every vehicle was trundling around with no lights on. Anyone who dared show a headlight was immediately vehemently flashed by oncoming drivers. The reason for this, I have subsequently been told by Egyptian colleagues, is that using the headlights flattens the battery. Clearly in Egypt the alternator, dynamo, or even magneto are optional extras. I've heard tell of cars hurtling across the desert roads at night running into the backs of slow-moving trucks, neither vehicle showing any lights.

But the true hairy scary wasn’t this; it was the journey west across the fertile Nile flood plain and then the desert from Luxor to Hurghada.

Following at least one incident in 1995 I think, when terrorists hijacked a tour bus and gunned down a load of foreign tourists in an apparent attempt to stem or more likely eliminate the inflow of foreign tourist dollarpounds, these trips now came with police escorts.

We assembled and found our allocated bus, and eventually about forty minibuses and coaches set off in convoy. At the front was a police Hilux with armed guards, at the rear was another, and there was a third in the middle of the convoy. By ‘armed guards’ I do not mean a couple of police officers with pistols. I mean a 50mm machine gun mounted on each truck and about four guys in fatigues and flak jackets, sporting automatic weapons.

So, with nowhere to go except Hurghada, and with everybody having to travel at the same speed as the police, the convoy threaded its way caravan-like across the Egyptian countryside, right? Wrong.

Every bus and coach driver engaged is a constant battle to get to the front, and every other driver closed up the gap to prevent it. About 260km of terror.

Particularly near the Nile, single carriageways are elevated on embankments to keep the roads dry when the Nile floods. So we have two lanes of traffic confined on top of an embankment by rickety-looking safety fences. And we also have coach drivers attempting overtakes.

A minibus pulls into the opposing lane and overtakes a coach. The coach driver accelerates. Meanwhile there’s an oncoming truck bearing down on us, yes US, and nobody has anywhere to go but through the barrier and into the date palm plantation. Our driver stomped on his brakes and inserted his vehicle back behind the coach. The truck roared past with its horn bellowing stentorian abuse. Then our driver tried it again.

At this point I spoke to the tour guide. “Are you going to tell him, or do I have to? Because I will be a lot less polite.”

Not that it made the tiniest scrap of difference. All forty drivers spent the next several hours in a competition to see who could drive closest to the police Hilux which, of course, still trundled along at a steady speed.

At last, at dear sweet last, we rolled into Hurghada. As is custom and practice, everyone in Egypt expects to receive a gratuity for doing absolutely anything at all. Our driver stood at the door of the bus with his hand out as we all dismounted. Nobody gave him anything.

Actually, not true. I was the only one to give our driver a tip, which was this: “If you don’t scare your passengers, they’re more likely to give you money.”

]}:-{>

That's sandy

Back in Doha after a week’s welcome break, the Goat finds it necessary to put hoof to keyboard in a brief “I went to that Desert Challenge again” web diary entry.

As he flew into Sharjah late on Thursday night on an astonishingly inexpensive Air Arabia, The Goat was unable to get up at sparrowfart on Friday and go to Yas Marina to help out with the scrutineering. Instead, he charged up his bike’s battery and pottered around the Crumbling Villa in Beloved Wife’s absence. The said Beloved Wife was jollying around St Petersburg at the time: that’s the baroque one in Russia and not the one in Florida.

The cats were both out when the Goat arrived and settled down for a quick pie and a pint before bed. They came in through the cat flap and when they discovered that the Goat had landed, it was as if all their birthdays had come at once on Christmas Day. A long session of cat-lap later, the Goat retired to his bed and slept the deep sleep of the extremely relieved not to be in Qatar.

Saturday would see the Desert Challenge Super Special Stage in Al Fursan, Abu Dhabi around a dirt track that included some extremely damp areas owing to recent rain. But first some running around Dubai by motorcycle on some errands. The Goat arrived in Abu Dhabi too early, and was assigned traffic control duty all day. This – unfortunately – meant that he saw precisely zero racing and missed delights such as this.

OK, so now all the competitors had been around the track two at a time and their times recorded, their positions for Saturday’s start were determined. The Goat picked up his goody bag full of this year’s marshals’ shirts and his car numbers, and then headed back to Dubai, running the gauntlet of ya shabab on the Abu Dhabi to Dubai road where there is allegedly an enforced 140km/h speed limit.

An early night was mandated by an incredibly early start on Sunday. The Goat had to be at White Sands ADNOC by 0730, and that’s halfway down Hameem Road in the back of beyond. He was up on his hind legs before the sparrows had even finished their sprout curry, and rendezvoused with the rest of the Finish Team. The convoy set off a further 30km south to the Special Stage 1 finish. They set up the Flying Finish and Finish Stop, and waited for the first competitor to arrive. Once everyone had been through the gate and got their finish times, the Finish Team packed up and headed to the bivouac near Qasr Al Sarab for luxury camping. Electric light and power in the tent, nearby warmish running water and for now civilised loos, and food.

Finish post. In the rain!

And repeat for five Special Stages across the planet Jakku. An Imperial Star Destroyer crash landed here some time back, but it has now been dismantled and removed.

The bivouac. Probably a remark hereabouts concerning a hive of scum and villainy

At closure of SS-05, the Finish Team headed back to Yas and dropped off all the marshalling kit. The Goat drove to the Ceremonial Finish, but arrived too soon and was selected from a host of applicant to undertake traffic control. Generally speaking, competitors had to queue up their tired and damaged vehicles in reverse order over here, whereas spectators and support teams would be parking over there. The Goat was somewhat amused by the catastrophic inability so many drivers have in the skill of reversing.

And then the after-show party with food and beverage, prizegiving, applause, live jazz quartet, and a stagger back to the Rotana. The Goat really did not fancy a drive back to Dubai after a hard day and a skinful of lager.

Beloved Wife had by now returned from Russia, so when the Goat arrived in Dubai on Friday morning, she cooked him a splendid Breakfast of Champions before he went and got the car washed and the wheels swapped around.

]}:-{>

D*ckhead Day

In a fight between a Patrol and a Sunny
 there can be only one victor.

One is perhaps given to wonder if there’s been a rash of New Year’s resolutions to drive extra badly this year.

First, we note that Qatar Police have introduced some new ‘no messing around’ rules, including a QAR1000 fine for undertaking and penalty points for speeding. You collect 15 of these and get a bicycle. Therefore undertaking is definitely a huge no-no.

I encountered the first d*ckhead at about 0615. On a two-lane dual carriageway with a 120km/h speed limit and no other traffic around, he was bumbling along in the left-hand lane at 80km/h. As coming up behind him and flashing headlights counts as aggressive and offensive driving I couldn’t do that, and I couldn’t whiz past on the inside. After about ten minutes, the driver of the pick-up finished his Facebook post, glanced in his mirror and at last moved over to let me past. Then he moved back into the left lane.

Now, normal procedure when waiting to turn left on a local road, I thought, is to wait in the middle of the road with the left signal flashing, wait for a gap in the oncoming traffic, and then make the turn. Apparently not. At about 0635 I had to stand on my brakes when a rickety Yaris suddenly turned left at full speed right in front of me. Just as well I was doing only the 40km/h speed limit and there was nobody behind me. Indicators? What are those?

Now 0930, and I was on my way up Al Shamal Road to a meeting. This expressway is four lanes in each direction and has a 120km/h speed limit. In the usual way the right-hand lane was empty because only inferior drivers lacking in the trouser department drive there. The second lane was full of water tankers and labourers’ buses. Lane 3 had a variety of cars and pickups generally trundling along at 110 to 120km/h, and there was me in my Nissan Sunny. Small Nissans receive zero respect from those magnificent men in their ginormous SUVs, and generally speaking I use the left-hand lane to overtake, getting the hell out of it as soon as is safely possible.

Enter the Chevrolet Avalanche, a humungous pickup with a 5.3 litre V8 engine and a nut holding the wheel. I was in the middle of an overtake and right up at the speed limit (which is rigidly enforced by cameras every few hundred metres) when I saw him, but he came up so fast I could neither accelerate nor slow down before being tailgated at about six inches. Flash Flash Flash. Hitting the gas under these circumstances is futile in a Sunny. The Avalanche swung into Lane 3, spotted the car I was overtaking, and hit his anchors. Then he was back, undertaking me before I had chance to move out of his way, cutting in front of me so that I have no idea how the vehicles didn’t hit. Then, as anticipated, I was treated to a brake test.

The next tailgater (d*ckhead number four in three hours if anyone’s keeping score) was about five kilometres further up the same road. This one was piloting a shiny new Nissan Patrol. He didn’t even bother slowing down, choosing instead to overtake me on the left-hand breakdown lane. Alas, the hard shoulder is narrow, a Nissan Patrol is wide, and I couldn’t move over because of the stream of slower cars to my right when the driver ran out of talent.

After stopping he leapt from his car and demanded first in Arabic and then is good English why I’d rammed him and not moved over. When I said “Overtaking. Hard shoulder forbidden” he got all bent outta shape in the manner of varous pieces of Nissan hardware.

Enter my passengers. Both eyewitnesses, and both Arabic native speakers. The Patrol pilot very quickly decided that it was his fault, and in due course we ended up at the police station. There were discussions in Arabic, and I was given my copy of the police report, also entirely in Arabic. I got one of my colleagues to tell me exactly what it said. I’m not daft.

At this juncture I learned that the Patrol was covered only by third-party insurance. Not only was the owner going to be hours and hours late for his meeting, but he was due to incur a massive amount of expense. Driving on the hard shoulder is a serious offence.

And so to the car rental office to replace my Sunny.

“This police report says it’s your fault,” I was told. “Says here.”

“It most certainly does not. You imagine I can’t read Arabic? It actually says here…” and I proceeded to parrot what my colleague had told me.

“No, no, Mr Mohammed. You are to blame. It says so on the form.”

“It does indeed say that Mr Mohammed is to blame. But do I look like Mr Mohammed, with a Nissan Patrol? Or is it more likely that I’m the other party; one Mr G. Goat, driving a rental Sunny hired to him by your own good selves?”

Clearly an attempt to extort my insurance deductible, their pathetic attempt at subterfuge was exposed. “Now apologise!”

I decided to return to Cloud City and hide from society for the rest of the day. I have just been disturbed by Room Service. Someone ordered a Turkish coffee and gave my room number instead of theirs.

]}:-{>

You had one job

Another weekend aviation experience. The economy FlyDubai was just fine and relatively inexpensive. I booked another flight for Thanksgiving weekend at an astonishing QAR382 return including 20kg checked baggage allowance.

But that’s in a fortnight’s time. Here is what happened when I attempted to board last Saturday’s flight.

We all piled on to the airport bus and were driven lumberingly out towards the row of parked FlyDubai aircraft. The bus driver swung to the left and stopped at the steps, and the self-loading cargo waited for the door to open. The bus went forwards, and backwards, and forwards again. It would appear that the bus driver had taken a wrong turn and arrived at the wrong aircraft. That is in itself a big bag of oops. Then the driver tried to drive his ponderous bus around the front of this aircraft.

Here was the problem. There was a sign pole and a safety fence in the way to the left, and a pushback to the right, attached to the nosewheel of the aforementioned aircraft. Instead of realizing that an airport bus wouldn’t fit through this tiny gap, the driver jammed the bus between these two obstacles and stopped. He may have realised his error, but didn’t immediately reverse. Meanwhile, other ground crew rolled the boarding ladder away from the aircraft and blocked the bus from reversing.

Was this a prank being played on Nobby Newbloke?

We waited. Time passed. Thorin sat down and started singing about gold. At last somebody noticed the problem and moved the steps. The bus reversed, unblocked the road, and ten minutes’ worth of airport vehicles were released like Formula 1 cars when the safety car returns to the pits.

And once this queue had dispersed, the bus driver had another run up. This time the pushback actually moved out of the way, pushing the aircraft. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes!

But it still wasn’t over. The bus eventually pulled up alongside the correct aircraft. Were we allowed out? Oh no! The bus had to reverse so that the passengers could be directed to either the front or the back of the aircraft. This is all fine and sensible, and yet apparently not in “Airport Bus Driver: Rules. For the Reading and Understanding and Compliance Of.”

It gets better: there was a second bus following this one’s every move.
]}:-{>

You know nothing

So much for the Goat’s PhD. In the previous blog post he noted that it wasn’t a thesis, which is just as well because it was easily demolished by an Anonymous commentator. The basic population Dubai figures are so wide of the mark that they might as well be a Michael Fish weather forecast.

Referring to the Expatriates in the UAE Wikipedia page is a useful, or lazy, shortcut to a summary of populations. Of significance is a reference to 240,000 Brits in the UAE, which is extremely wide of the 11,000 in Dubai previously cited. And there are doubtless others. And measuring the consequences of traffic collisions as a ‘per population’ requires accurate population figures if there’s any hope of producing meaningful data.

Another point is the Dubai Police figures for Accidents by Nationality of Accused Driver. Those 2013 figures show Britain scoring 4 fatals out of 20 total. Further down the same table, UK scored one slight injury. A bit of a difference. Who knows how many other errors there may be in the same form. Conceivably Britain may be a misprint for Bahrain, but this is speculation solely based on Bahrain not appearing elsewhere on the page. 

Anyway, the Goat reworked the Fatal per 100,000 population, making the assumption that 60% of the UAE population lives in Dubai unless actual Dubai figures were available. Looking at 30% and 80% as alternatives actually produces very little change in the overall results, and obviously the relative values don’t change at all:- 

• The “High” scores are Angola, Brazil, Khazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, New Zealand, Oman, and Pakistan with 20 to 250. 
• India, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Russia, USA, UAE, Yemen get “Medium” scores of between 4.5 and 12. 
• Everybody else manages less than 4.5 and counts as “Low”. 

So, a few corrections; an apology to everyone the Goat may have misled, especially the British who score around 4.8 and not over 36 as stated before; and a note to self that Goats and PhDs are probably incompatible.

Oh, and naturally these new figures are also subject to the Goat's incompetence, so E&OE.

]}:-{>

Let he who is without sin...

Dubai Police periodically publish statistics for traffic accidents in Dubai. The latest figures available are for 2013. Leaving aside that ‘accidents happen’ whereas ‘vehicle collisions are caused’, which is why the preferred term in the UK is ‘collision’, (although the Goat prefers ‘crash’ or even ‘prang’), let’s not get buried in semantics here. Local law requires that the police attend every vehicle incident however minor; the data collected should be comprehensive and reasonably accurate.

One of the tables is appallingly racist: a list of the numbers of accidents by 68 different nationalities of the accused driver. What we find is that in 2013, Pakistanis caused 373 accidents, Indians 315, and Emiratis 298. Further down the scale we learn that British drivers caused 20, Filipinos 18, and Canadians a mere six. So south Asians and locals apparently can’t drive. QED.

“But,” the Goat hears you protest, “There are so many more Indians in Dubai, therefore…”

Fair comment. The Goat actually found some figures for the demographics of nationalities in Dubai. Various uncited sources, because this is a blog and not a thesis, come up with several conflicting sets of figures, all broadly showing similar things:-

Dubai’s population in 2013 was around 2.11 million.
Around 340,000 are south Asians living in labour camps, and probably don’t drive.
Around 260,000 Emiratis.
Approximately 740,000; 340,000; 190,000 Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis respectively.
Filipinos make up some 61,000 of the population and “Britishers [sic]” a mere 11,000.
The “Others” comprise the remaining 168,000.

A widespread measure of risk is “per 100,000 population.” It’s generally perceived by the luminaries who keeps such scores that low scores represent better, or at least safer, drivers. Numbers of road deaths in the range of 5/100,000 population tend to be scored in the over-regulated and over-policed northern Europe, whereas across equatorial Africa scores of around 20 are more common. The worst one on the Goat’s list is Eritrea at 48.4/100,000.

Smeed’s Law (1949, based originally on 1938 data) relates traffic death rate to numbers of vehicles and population, and predicts around 24 for UK, which is almost the same result as Dubai in 2013. As the current figure of less than 4/100,000 it is possible to infer that British roads are safer than they were in the 1930s. Given seat belts, drink-drive legislation, decent brakes, headlights that actually work, tyres that grip, and frankly better roads, this isn’t rocket surgery, is it?

Anyhoo, by the measure of accidents per 100,000 population we learn that:-

• The best drivers in Dubai are Filipinos, scoring 30;
• Indians and Bangladeshis are next, with scores in the 40 to 45 range;
• Emiratis and Pakistanis score a less impressive 110-115;
• The British manage an atrocious 182;
• The very worst drivers of all are these mysterious Others with a horrifyingly spectacular score of 270. 

Many countries don't require police attendance at damage-only crashes, and a lot of these can go unrecorded. International figures, Smeed's Law, and that stuff all concentrate on fatal accidents only. This morbid measure of deaths per 100,000 population shows us that:-

• The best drivers in Dubai are Indians, Filipinos and Bangladeshis, scoring 2.6 to 3.8;
• Emiratis and Pakistanis score a less impressive 9.5 to 12.0;
• These mysterious Others have a horrifyingly spectacular score of 34.5...

And what of the British, we who cockily consider ourselves some of the best drivers in the world? The sun must get to us, because in Dubai we score an appalling 36.4: Brits drive ten times worse in Dubai than we do at home.

The elephant in the room is of course the absolute magnitude of the figures. Scoring 36 in Dubai when at home you score lower than four is rather like picking up the cleaner end of a turd. Unlike equatorial Africa, the Dubai fleet consists largely of new, modern vehicles with the latest in safety technology. Vehicles are subject to annual roadworthiness tests. Roads are of exceptionally high quality with road budgets far exceeding those of comparable UK highway authorities, and policing – especially through the use of red-light and speed enforcement cameras – is widespread.

The Goat will leave it to commentators and the Letters page of 7DAYS to come up with how this little corner of the world should be put to rights.

]}:-{>

Anniversary

Again, Beloved  Wife and her Goat were in different countries for their wedding anniversary. Still, the Goat found a cheap flight, for a given value of cheap, and spent the weekend in Dubai.

Beloved Wife promised that there would not be a massive list of DIY tasks for the Goat to perform. The FUBAR dishawasher appears to have a broken pump impeller, according to an NVQ in Googlomics. It's a fifteen-minute fix following the inevitable Not Coming In Dubaitis and subsequent Amazon. Maybe Beloved Wife can find a suitably-qualified repairman to come to her house while her husband's away...

After Flying Dubai and consuming ale and pork pie, the Goat retired to his pit, and was only disturbed a few times by Los Kittehs and their gifts of - mercifully - artificial butterflies and not lizards and putrefying rodents.

Everything pertaining to vehicle insurance and maintenance is closed on Friday, so after a huge English breakfast, BW and Goat headed off to the cinema to see either Minions or Mr Holmes. They picked the latter; being a talky film with little in the way of explosions, gunfire, or car chases unless you count a thermonuclear event in Hiroshima, it'll doubtless have gone by close of play next Wednesday.

A four-course haute-cuisine on board Bateaux Dubai followed that evening. Happy Eighth Anniversary, Beloved Wife.

Owing to construction works on the waterfront outside the British Embassy, Bateaux Dubai has moved to the other side of the creek. Bear this in mind before your own dinner cruise.

Nobody got the Merlot team hangover and, after Saturday's full English, the errands started. Shisha first, then jump-starting Kermit the VW Polo, moving an irreducibly complex table across town in a small 4x4, buying a motorcycle battery and some teaching supplies, and gassing up the car with newly-expensive UAE petrol.

Let's see... low oil price -> reduced gubmint income -> increased fuel tax.
High oil price -> high raw material cost -> increased fuel price.

Yup. Makes perfect sense.

Yes, yes. Compare with Europe. Know where the airport is, yadda, yadda.

The bike battery will sit dry until the Goat is ready to get his motorcycle re-registered, at which point he'll return to Dubai, add the H₂SO₄, and install the thing. One imagines that in other parts of the world the Goat might have been confronted with "Oh, no, you can't be trusted with sulphuric acid despite your Chemistry A-level and the fact that you're a grownup." But this was - huzzah - also Not Coming In Dubai.

And all too soon, the spell of Goat Banishment was invoked, and off to the airport he trotted to his day job that has now become little more than repeated rebuttals of orchilalia.

]}:-{>

I've got your number

OFFS. It fits, but those two black pads
are supposed to support a short plate.

I may have been visited by the OCD fairy.

No, I am not OCD. Neither am I CDO. It is not a disorder to want stuff ordered and tidy. How would you find the book you wanted in the British Library if all the books were piled in one dishevelled heap labelled ‘Miscellaneous”? 

Checking you’ve turned the tap off 36 times, and then having to go home from the airport because you’re still convinced you left it running? That’s a disorder.

I don’t know why it bugs me so much, but what is wrong with the people who put number plates on vehicles in this region? Having just lashed out maybe hundreds of thousands of riyals on a new car, I’d want the plates to be on straight, and not sticking out in an unsightly manner. Clearly I’m in a minority of one; everyone else just blithely drives around with wonky and ill-fitting plates and doesn’t give a shit. 

There are two basic shapes for car registration plates: long and thin, and short and fat.

Cars come with plate-shaped spaces. Most have some kind of space or hanger, or bolt holes on the front, and pretty much all of them have a special space on the back, complete with lights. Again, long and thin, or else short and fat. 

Doesn't the shape of the bumper give you a clue?

So why do they stick a long thin plate in a space that’s clearly designed for a short fat one? I had a friend who protested that his Land Rover’s long thin plate had to be tucked under the spare wheel, and could he have a short fat plate please? No he couldn’t. He got a ticket later from the same police force that issued the plate, for failing to display it clearly. 

I protested when my Terios was provided with a short fat plate in a long thin space. The plate stuck out below the bumper and kept catching on the sand and getting bent. I was told that they’d run out of one type of blank. Unlikely. I was also told that you can’t have one of each. Lies.

And what is this pop-riveting thing? What’s wrong with using bolts in the threaded holes provided? What’s wrong with using a frame that the plate clips into? No, my new pride and joy has to have holes drilled in it to mount the plate on the piss. They can’t even get it on straight.

Maybe the pop-rivets are to prevent tampering. Clearly nobody has ever in the history of metal fasteners drilled out a pop rivet. And riveting tools are only available to the licensing authority, and not to any old Joe shopping in a hardware store.

]}:-{>

The stupid: it burns!

This example lifted from many versions
that may be found all over the internet.
There seems to be a lot of it about.

It was at the dive club one evening when I was expounding on my theory that Diving (or, come to that, Motorcycling or Hang Gliding, or Bungee Jumping) Is Safe Because It’s Dangerous.

The argument, fundamentally, is that because there are clear and obvious hazards where underwater swimming is involved, the first of which is that you can’t breathe the stuff. Thus you only do it after undertaking training that includes dealing with equipment malfunctions and operator error. After being scared shitless in the classroom, the novice discovers that most dives are incident free and this scuba thing’s quite easy really isn’t it? Yes it is, right up to the moment when something goes wrong. I sketched up a rough graph of how I saw Risk versus Experience.

I was therefore astonished later to discover that a very similar theory had been expounded in 1999 by Davin Dunning and Justin Kruger of the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. They won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for this work.

Quoting Errol Morris in the New York Times: “The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate.”

1. Incompetent people overestimate their own ability.
2. Incompetent people fail to recognise competence in others.
3. Incompetent people can’t see that they’re incompetent.
4. Minimal training doesn’t improve ability, but does improve ability to recognise the lack of it.
5. True experts underestimate their own ability.

In scuba diving, or indeed any other field where skills have to be learned, an individual with zero knowledge performs badly (A). A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing, as some training initially produces confidence well in excess of actual ability (B). Then comes the fall: some incident or scare that shatters the individual’s self-perception and self-confidence (C). I read an article that described the plunge as into the ‘Jon Snow trough.’(D) Only with further training and experience does true ability increase (E).

In another example, think on how cocky a young driver is after getting past the gosh-aren’t-hill-starts-difficult stage and getting his full licence. And then how this illusion of ability comes crashing down after the first time he has a near miss, he crashes, or he gets nicked. Perceived ability subsequently increases with experience, but typically never gets as high as true ability because the individual is now wise enough to understand that, however good he is, he isn’t the best there is.

At a professional level, I have developed an interest in highway pavement design and actually considered myself something of an expert until recently. Then, over a series of workshops with actual card-carrying pavement engineers, I realised quite how Jon Snow I was on the subject. I discussed this with a friend; the Gnomad who had introduced me to the concept of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and I argued that I had been exhibiting precisely those symptoms.

“Not at all,” he reassured me, “Because you recognise the greater ability in others.”

But of course, it can happen to everyone. My perception of my ability to play a musical instrument is up at (B) right up until I show up with real musicians, at which point I get the Jon Snow moment.

Although Messrs Dunning and Kruger got the name of the effect, it isn't a new phenomenon.

Confucius: "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance."
Socrates: "I know that I know nothing."
Shakespeare: "The Foole doth thinke he is wiſe, but the wiſeman knowes himſelfe to be a Foole."
Stephen Hawking: "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge."

Leaving the reader to think up numerous other examples of Dunning-Kruger in real life, I offer another one:  Those who think they can drive while using a mobile phone.

There remains an important difference between incompetent and just plain stupid. Incompetent means exactly that. Not competent, owing to lack of training and experience. This is rather different to the one that really irks me, which is those who ought to know better, yet continue to make the most ludicrous decisions because they think they know better than the experts whom they employ.

John Cleese expounded on the phenomenon here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU

The skills you need to be good at something are precisely the same skills that enable you to see that you're not any good at it!

And this blog post is brought to you by an over-irked Goat, who’s been confronted almost continuously by the Dunning-Kruger effect for twenty years.

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Use it or lose it

“You have worked since September, so you’ve accrued nine days of annual leave to year end. Use it or lose it.”

I noted that Qatar National Day would produce a public holiday on Thursday 18^th December, so exploited the long weekend to get myself a Christmas break. They’re calendar days, which is a bit of a swizz, and I work on Saturdays, but I would be able to get away until after Christmas. Not enough leave to extend the break to include the New Year, so apologies and thanks for the invitation, but I’m unable to attend the Bring-Your-Speciality-Dish party in Dubai on 31^st December.



Beloved Wife and I decided to go to Spain. We’ve not been since 2011, and I’ve not been to Andalusia since 1987. Having arranged accommodation in both Granada and Madrid, I set off from Doha and arrived in Madrid, picking up the rental car from the airport. It was no small irritation to learn that I had to pay €150 deposit even though I’d already paid everything including insurance and CDW up front. “It hweel be refhunded, Señor Macho Cabrío, once you hrethurn the car undented ahnd with a full tahnk.”

I headed off to Keef and Noelle’s for, in no particular order of preference, bed and board, beer, and immense frustration with parking.

Madrid Municipalidad, in a fit of Mad, has installed paid parking all around the residential area. The machines take cash or credit cards, but don’t take paper money (and I had no change and the few corner shops were shut), and didn’t wish to talk to any of my several plastic cards. Having eventually dragged Keef from his flat with a pocketful of change, I got him to feed the meter for the maximum permitted two hours, and we went to the pub. Two hours later, none of the machines wanted my money. It would appear that the car had become Auta Non Grata. At this point I totally lost it. I was forced to drive around Madrid – after several beers; something I was loath to do – looking for somewhere to park the bloody car. Having given up and returned, the machines had apparently seen fit to allow me to park again, and I paid for a further two hours that took me to past 9pm when parking became free overnight. Pub. Chillax. Recover temper.

If they don’t want cars to hang about or return, why do they provide annual permits? You can park for a maximum of two hours, or up to one year. Nonsense.

The following day, Keef and I went into town and found an underground car park with minuscule spaces just big enough for my rented Citroën C1, aka Toyota Aygo, aka Peugeot 107. We did some shopping and sightseeing, I took photos, and then I dropped Keef at home while I retrieved Beloved Wife from the airport. She’d taken the same flight as I, but because the UAE didn’t have a holiday on Thursday she was 24 hours later.

A brief stop chez Keef later for tea, chat, and dropping off Christmas presents, and then Beloved Wife and I were off into Madrid’s Mad evening rush hour, heading generally south to Granada.

Clarissa had been briefed with 2010 mapping and the hotel’s location, I had checked out what the place looked like using Google Street View, and we rolled into the hotel’s free parking in time to wander into town in search of food.

TripAdvisor suggested that there might be vast queues at the entrance to La Alhambra (Spanish translation of Arabic, which ultimately comes back to English as “the the red [one]”) merely to buy tickets, followed by a further queue in order to gain admittance. So we bought our tickets in advance at the hotel. Admittance to the Nasrid Palaces is at a specific time stated on the ticket, but you can wander around the rest of the complex at your leisure. I took many, many pictures. There’s a small selection here, but more Alhambra pics in this Picasa album.

Snow in the Sierra Nevada.

Lion Courtyard.



Alhambra from Generalife.

Islamic influence all over.

As the running gag with this blog post is parking, I’ll mention that it cost about €10 to park the car for a six-hour visit, but the Pay-As-You-Leave machine was happy taking paper money and dispensing change. As the car parks were virtually empty and the queues weren’t too awful, I’m offering this piece of advice: Don’t Visit in August!

The following day we explored Granada’s old town. Beloved Wife wished to avail herself of an alleged “Christmas Market”. However, we’ve been to München and Nürnburg, so these had already set the bar extremely high, and the market stalls were underwhelming. We did pick up some food and sweeties, and settled down to Chocolate con Churros, something that was to become a pleasant, albeit colossally unhealthy, habit.



Extruding a churro.

Happy now?

Churros are similar to doughnuts, but extruded through a nozzle into a vat of hot lard and deep-fried, then served hot for dunking in drinking chocolate. What’s not to like? I’ll tell you: frauds who pull their rubbery churros from the freezer and microwave them. Fresh ones are much better.

We discovered the latter on a day-trip to Ronda, the traditional home of bullfighting and famous for its New Bridge (1751-1793) which, in turn, is infamous for having Nationalist sympathisers tipped over its parapet during the Spanish Civil War, or so said Ernest Hemingway.

New Bridge.

Precarious cantilevered viewpoint.

View from the bridge.

I decided not to mess about, and pointed the car at the first public car park I could find. As usual, expensive Pay-As-You-Leave and underground. But everything to see was within easy walking distance.

As I’ve not been to the Costa del Sol since 1987, I suggested the coast road back to Granada. We got stuck behind a tiny car whose driver wanted to do the entire 30km mountain road from Ronda to the coast at 10km/h slower than I wanted to drive. At the only overtake, she steadfastly sat in the overtaking lane. I’m going to invoke Hanlon’s Razor here and conclude, because her door mirrors were folded in, that she was simply oblivious to anything behind her. And I thought that was the First Rule of Italian Driving.



There’s a new motorway along the coast, largely behind the development and stuck to the foot of the mountains. As it was a peaje, I decided to take the old N340 to Fuengirola and Los Boliches before heading northwards back to Granada. The whole coast area appears to be colossally overdeveloped. I thought it was a bit full back in the 1980s, but I was wrong. Fuengirola, holiday destination of choice for many, was shut.

We tried to extend our hotel stay in Granada by one day, but as Christmas was coming the hotel would be shut. So Beloved Wife got on to Booking.com and found a cheapish business hotel in Seville, a city where we’d both never been.

Seville is very congested in parts.

We arrived in good time to drive into the old town and get horribly lost in the medieval alleys. Once more I gave thanks for having the wisdom to pick a tiny car and not some Hummeresque battleship. Beloved Wife eventually found one of those underground car parks, and we walked to the Cathedral, checked out Christopher Columbus’ tomb therein, climbed the 34 ramps and 15 steps up the bell tower to enjoy the view, avoided a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, and grabbed something to eat and drink.

 

Cathedral exterior.

Cathedral minaret, er, bell tower.

Cathedral nave.

Christopher Columbus.

Gargoyle.

Another gargoyle.

It was nearly chucking-out time at Real Alcazar, the Royal Palace and Gardens, by the time we found it, so we decided to visit the following morning before heading back to Madrid. As we emerged from the subterranean parking, I got Clarissa to remember the location.

And then at the hotel I shut down and slept 14 hours straight.

Refuelling the following morning at a comprehensive continental breakfast buffet, I commented that one should “starve a fever and feed a cold.” I’d not knowingly been in the company of any snot monsters, but had managed to pick up rhinopharyngitis anyway.

Beloved Wife and I were glad not to have attempted Real Alcazar in 30 minutes. It took hours and hours, even though the hedge maze was barred and not available for use. We wandered around the gardens and enjoyed the various grottoes, walls, and gateways before disappearing inside to look at the tapestries, tiles, and courtyards. As at the Alhambra and the nearby Cathedral, there’s a lot of Islamic influence in the architecture and decoration. Indeed, the cathedral used to be a mosque, and its bell tower a minaret.

Formal courtyard garden.

Less formal orange and Swiss cheese plants.

Back on the subject of tiles, I took pictures of the tiles cladding the Pavilion of Carlos V (1360) in the gardens that depicted, among other things, a Goat, a weird two-legged Centaur archer, a Unicorn, and a Faun smoking a pipe, which Beloved Wife said reminded her of someone… All these tiles were reproduced in the gift shop, except one. Guess which one. I had to satisfy myself with a goat-tile fridge magnet.



Pavilion of Carlos V

These are not fridge magnets.

Not coming in Sevilla, Señor Macho Cabrío

Initial estimates of rolling into Madrid mid-afternoon were trashed. Clarissa decided that the best way would be to follow the Portuguese border up to Badajoz and then to turn right and head directly for Madrid. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect €200. Even sipping fuel at 50mpg the rental C1 needed to be gassed up, I needed espresso, and both Beloved Wife and I needed to use Los Facilidad. It’s long way; Spain’s a big country. We passed numerous medieval castles. Perhaps a future visit might involve a castle tour.

There was, of course, nowhere to park in Madrid on Christmas Eve. Not even a stable. So, assisted by Noelle, I drove to the airport and dumped the car keys in the deserted car rental area. Hmmm, Marie Celeste Car Rental Central. Then back into town by Metro, and food and drink. Yay! Christmas!

Christmas itself was only excellent. It included the usual plethora of junk food, booze, and pressies. Then a nice walk in the sun. I should mention that the weather throughout had been sunny and only cold and frosty at night. Should’ve brought sandals. Keef cooked an amazing turkey dinner in a minuscule kitchen that must be bigger on the inside, which is a sneaky segue into noting that we watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special; the one in which the Aliens encountered on LV-426 meet Inception.

Keef doesn’t only do excellent turkey. He also makes pies that are on sale at selected pubs and bars in Madrid. And here is the gratuitous hyperlink to Keef’s stuff:-

Keef Cooks

We went touristing in Madrid on Boxing Day. As this isn’t a holiday in Spain, where the Big Event is on Twelfth Night, everything was open except the Irish bar where we were due to have lunch. So we went to the James Joyce instead. I did my usual thing and took photos, we failed to get in to see the Nativity display, and then we all headed back to the flat, for many people were coming over for mulled wine and Christmas carols.

The Goat's shoes disguise his hooves.

No comment!

Old and new.

Decoration dated 1919.

The main Post Office.

A further splendid evening later, and it was time to pack and go. Without a car this time, Muggins wheeled Beloved Wife’s overstuffed orange suitcase through the streets to the Metro. Thank you again and again to the genius who first though of sticking little wheels on to suitcases.

At the airport I checked with the car rental people, and was advised that €60 of my deposit had been withheld because I’d hnot hreturned the car hrental paperhwork. That’s right; I’d not handed it in to their non-existent staff on Christmas Eve, nor had I put it into the slot labelled “Car Keys Only.” My bad.

“You shhould have left hit in the cahr,” I was advised, in accordance with what is an obvious known fact and not written. Also not written was this punitive €60 fine. They said they’d refund it, they phoned to say that they had, but the money has yet to appear. It finally showed up after 42 days and my very public complaints on social media. I'm curious as to why the need to lie repeatedly to a customer that the payment had been made when, in fact , the problem was that Atesa had lost the paperwork.

Of course, this left me fuming. But I put a lid on it and smiled sweetly at the Qatar Airways ticketing counter. Sweetly enough, in fact, that I was able to get the last two seats in Business Class for frequent-flyer miles rather than cash, despite having received an email a few days before stating that my request had been refused. But I wasn’t going to tell them that at the ticket desk, was I?

For once, I ended a holiday on a high: Comfy travel, Business priority lane at immigration so no queue, and as I only had hand luggage I was in my bed less than an hour after landing. And up again five hours later for work. It’s only a four-day week, though. The memo came round confirming 1^st January as a holiday.

Pity Beloved Wife. She had a further hour to wait for her flight to Dubai. This was apparently full of drunken Spanish yoofs flying over to see some foopball. And it took a further hour for her orange suitcase to appear on the carousel in Dubai.

]}:-{>