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Entries tagged: edinburgh

Edinburgh to Glasgow train link to take only 35 minutes

Posted by Jon Grant at 2:32pm on Monday 17th August 2009.
Tags: bbc, edinburgh, glasgow, trains, trams
£1bn boost for high-speed trains

Oh my god, FINALLY. This is what we should have been spending all that tram money on: something that people actually want and need and will benefit people's lives, not a stupid tram service that could be easily replaced by putting on a new bus route without any of the billions of pounds worth of disruption.
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Why your bags always take forever to come out at Edinburgh Airport

Posted by Jon Grant at 4:35pm on Thursday 4th June 2009.
Tags: BBC News, airport, baggage, edinburgh, link
I've never understood why it takes upwards of 30 minutes to unload and drive your luggage the 100 yards to the conveyor belt at Edinburgh when other airports (Southampton being a good example) can somehow seem to get your bags there before you even enter the terminal.

I guess this would explain it: Air worker 'dodgem' drivers fined. And while those two guys have been sacked, I don't doubt that it will be a deeply embedded culture in the place and it just so happens that these two got caught.
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Edinburgh Drivers Are Crap

Posted by Jon Grant at 3:49pm on Wednesday 3rd December 2008.
Tags: accident, driver, edinburgh
Warning: I'm annoyed so this post may contain venting and/or bad language!

On Monday evening, I'm driving the family back from a trip to Tesco on a route I've driven hundreds of times. We approach a T-junction, driving straight across (from right to left on the top of the T), and we have a green light. Literally just as we cross the line of the junction, the light goes amber. Suddenly there's another car coming from the opposite direction turning right across in front of me. I stamp on the brakes but unfortunately am unable to stop in time and hit his front passenger side.

The other driver (an off-duty policeman by the way) says he had a green filter arrow to turn right, which I don't dispute. Many times I have been in his position and traffic continues to cross for a few seconds after the filter light goes on, which indicates a problem with the traffic lights... but since when do you ever just blast across a junction when turning right without even looking? Filter or no filter. Imagine there was a bus that could only make it half across the junction and therefore was blocking the road for his right turn. By his reasoning he would just drive straight into the side of the bus?!

Unfortunately due to him being a copper, he knew all the right things to say. It was like hearing him reading from a script the way he recited his story of the accident. Fortunately it seems pretty cut-and-dried and my insurance company believe I'm in the right.

So yesterday we get a replacement hire car, and today I drove out to a nearby shopping centre at lunch. I'm driving happily down the road; there are no traffic lights and no junctions this time, it's a completely open road... and some stupid bint comes from a concealed entrance on the left and cuts right across in front of me, trying to turn right.

I slam on the brakes (getting used to that maneuver) and managed to stop about 3 foot before hitting her, horn the crap out of her, and she just looks straight ahead and drives off with a guilty look on her face. It's so icy today she is lucky I was able to stop.

Seriously, are Edinburgh driving instructors all smoking crack or something? I've honestly never seen as many bad drivers anywhere as in this city. Twice in the past I've been in accidents where the other driver basically drove into me, and twice now some idiot has pulled out in front of me either actually or nearly causing an accident. And what the hell is up with that retarded "I'm signaling right on the roundabout but actually I'm going straight across" thing? Where the hell do these people learn to drive?

They should run some sort of "bad driver report" thing where you can report people's number plates and if they get a certain number they get 3 points on their licence. Maybe that would get the bloody idiots off the road.
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