No no, First Bus - you use YOUR head!

We were really horrified and angry when, as we were sat inching forward in the heavy congestion on Aberdeen's world famous Union Street yesterday, a bus drove past us in the bus lane with this advert stuck on the back.

(Well, that's not the actual advert - obviously. We're not quite as good at taking photos while driving as some of the other drivers of Aberdeen Cars!)

Anyway, we felt affronted and insulted by this outrageous insult. How dare First Bus tell me to "use my head"! Are they suggesting that the driver of Aberdeen Cars are ignorant? Are they suggesting that the occupants of the bus (usually DSS-ville or student-land bound) are somehow cleverer than me? I would like to point out that if they think that these freeloaders are so clever, where is their nice car? Eh? Where? Come on, where is it? And where is their road-tax disk? "No pay, no say!"

What these First Bus people fail to realise is that most people aspire to the convenience of personal motor transport, pay dearly for the privilege, provide much employment, contribute greatly in taxes, and then people like them expect them to ‘leave the car at home’, while their money is spent creating bus lanes and the like for freeloading poor people.

Many people in Aberdeen invest a lot of time and money in their cars, This is a natural way of gaining respect from those who will see them in their nice cars with cherished plates. To spoil this effect (e.g. when freeloaders overtake them in a bus) understandably infuriates the drivers of these nice cars - the drivers of Aberdeen Cars.

So, let's get Aberdeen moving, let's do the only sensible thing we can. Scrap the bus lanes. What are we waiting for?


Edit:

What's particularly gauling is that First Bus have proably paid some oh-so-clever PR outfit to come up with this insulting advert. Don't they know that you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar? That's why we do nothing but offer praise to the drivers of Aberdeen Cars in our efforts to get them to join our our popular campaign to "Save the Denburn Dual Carriageway!" ('like' us on FaceBook, 'follow' us on Twitter)

Aberdeen SUPER-Cars

Sometimes, we get a bit down. Too much time documenting the activities of the cycling advocacy (so-called) community, too many advances by the Sinister Forces of Re-allocation, too many parking restrictions, and even the advances by the rail lobby all take their toll.

So, sometimes it's necessary for us to comfort ourselves, and luckily, there's a YouTube channel which sorts us out straight away:

Aberdeen Supercars (part 20)


Ah, that's better. Feel all 'aspirational' again!

PaveParker of the Week! DV10OXB - the Gentle Art of PaveParking.

This week, our prestigious PaveParker of the Week award goes to the driver of Aberdeen Car Vauxhaull Astra 1.4t 16v SRi 140 yes, that's the 1.4t 16v SRi 140 with the reg. no. DV10OXB, as spotted on the city's Allenvale Road.

We thought it was time for the PaveParker of the Week award to get back to basics. Over recent weeks we've shown that the enterprising drivers of Aberdeen Cars, in their relentless search for sources of economic growth, have found new and innovative, clever ways to ensure that traffic flow (the fountainhead of economic growth) is maximised. We've shown that the business-savvy drivers of Aberdeen Cars have sought to achieve this via advanced PaveParking techniques.

These techniques have included:

1. Full PaveParking
2. The Double-Yellow Straddle
3. Chevron PaveParking
4. Bollard-Thwarting
5. PaveParkVertising
6. Wingmirror Flipping
7. Cycle- Parking-lane annexation by overwhelming force

All of which is impressive, clever, advanced and innovative; demonstrating the business-friendly credentials of the drivers of Aberdeen Cars and their prioritisation of traffic flow.

But, we think our advocacy of these advanced PaveParking methods is, perhaps, daunting to the novice - the coming generation. Every PaveParker has got to start somewhere - you've got to walk before you can run. And so that's why it's time to give our PaveParker of the Week award to the driver of this charcoal-grey 1.4t 16v SRi 140 Astra.

The driver of this Aberdeen Car shows us the basics of PaveParking - two wheels up. Yes, the driver of this car demonstrates the very distilled essence of the Gentle Art of PaveParking.

Sinister Forces of Re-allocation. Guild St

Can you see what's wrong with this picture? Yes, that's right - it's the most insidious threat to the drivers of Aberdeen Cars - the Sinister Forces of roadspace re-allocation have been at work.


At first, you might not notice what's happened. But then you'll see the oddly-curtailed road-markings, the strange mid-pavement placing of a lamp-post. A mid-pavement gutter. And then you realise - the pavement has been built-out onto the motorists road-space! What?! We can see no good reason at all for this unilateral annexation of the roadtaxpayer funded carriageway space in favour of the tax-dodging pestestrians.

The location is Aberdeen's Guild Street and this road forms part of the vital giratory system at the heart of the city's inner-city ring-road. Where once the giratory was three-lanes wide, now it is pinched to just two at this spot outside the Station Hotel. That's a 33% re-allocation in favour of the scroungers.

From this giratory, important executives in their nice Aberdeen Cars are distributed west to the ever-popular upmarket villas of Ferryhill, south to the oil-industrial estates of Tullos and Altens and north on the Denburn Dual Carrageway to the rest of the city. This makes it all the more perplexing and worrying to us that the anti-car, anti-economy, Sinister Forces of roadspace reallocation have chosen this spot to go about their foul business increasing the size of the pavements. We understand that this extended footspace (is that what it's called?) is intended to 'accommodate' increased pestestrian flow between the Trinity Centre shopping mall and the Union Square shopping mall. But that can't be right; both these malls have large car-parks, so what sort of person would want to walk between the two and get all windswept?

A closer look at the photo above perhaps gives us some clues. Not one of these people is wearing a suit. None of them carries a briefcase. What with all those casually-dressed people walking around Aberdeen these days rather than use the lovely big road, the place is looking a bit like DSS-land or StudentVille or something. This sends out all the wrong messages.We can only thank Ford that they are constrained behind those aluminium railings, lest they just come out of nowhere and endanger our no claims bonuses!

But, on a very serious note, this roadspace reallocation work sets a dangerous precedent. We are aware that the Sinister Forces of re-allocation are girding their loins and have the Denburn Dual Carriageway in their sights. That's why it's vital that all Aberdeen Drivers of good faith join our our popular campaign to to "Save the Denburn Dual Carriageway!" ('like' us on FaceBook, 'follow' us on Twitter)

Our numbers are swelling. Our collective voice will be heard!

Edinburgh Trams Could Be Scrapped

We must congratulate our colleagues at Edinburgh City Council and in the capital's business community for their fabulous Kung Fu in making a total farce and failure of the project to re-install a tram system in the capital.

The constant delays and disruption have succeeded in turning the people of Edinburgh against the tram project, and against public transport bodies in general. Not only that, the management of this project is helping to demonise all public sector initiatives and workers. What a result! Contractor disputes, a skeptical press and an outright hostile motoring lobby have all added up to a now almost completely discredited public works project which had been supposed to deliver 21st century public transport infrastructure [sic]. We reckon this is fantastic work by those figures in the city council, chamber of commerce and city centre traders association who have pulled off this clever coup - and all before a single tram has run on the streets of 'Auld Reekie'!

And now we read in the weekend's newspapers that council chief executive Sue (the) Bruce is preparing to administer the coup-de-grace. With the righteous sword of business indignation in her hand she stands ready to kill the project forever, and with it any hopes of other tram restoration projects across Scotland. We can't tell you how excited we are about this forthcoming victory for the drivers of Edinburgh Cars, and by extention the drivers of all Scotland Cars, especially Aberdeen Cars (of course; because our cars are the nicest, and we have the best and most cherished plates in the country).

Well we remember Sue Bruce and how she put the needs of business first (by prioritising car traffic flow) when she held the chief executive post at Aberdeen City Council. She is much missed, but we're delighted to see her continuing her important pro-car work on the streets of the nation's capital - streets upon which will it soon be safe for the drivers of Edinburgh Cars to speed about, park, and go about their important business - it'll create a real feeling of bustle in the capital, when its streets are full of cars again and the important people get to call the shots once more. For they are the drivers of cars - the fountainhead of economic growth. Trams are for other countries, other countries where they do not prioritise economic growth as much as we do.

Aberdeen Cycle Forum is On Our Side

As our ongoing research into the activities of Aberdeen's so-called cycling community continues, we are obliged to visit websites we wouldn't otherwise visit and read newsletters we wouldn't otherwise read. Yes, it's a nasty job, but somebody's got to do it.

However, to our great surprise we find that, in common with our own undercover agent (Codename JannieJumbo) the so-called cycling activists are actually double-agents promoting policies which will actually benefit the drivers of Aberdeen Cars! We delightedly exposed the pro-motor activities of CTC Grampian the other day, and so today we've been looking at the activities of that other cycling 'pressure group' - Aberdeen Cycle Forum (ACF). And we were delighted by what we saw on their website!

Firstly, their website abounds with the word "challenge": Aberdeen Cycle Forum Challenge, Chief Executive Cycle Challenge, Annual Commuter Challenge. Brilliant! The message is clear - cycling is a challenge, something hard, something difficult and unusual, like mountaineering or world-record attempts.

Secondly, we notice a little bit of friction between Aberdeen Cycle Forum and CTC Grampian over the issue of bike lanes at pedestrian refuge pinch points. We do not propose to examine the esoterica of this arcane dispute, it is enough for us to note that the two groups are at each other's throats over this inconsequential piece of nothing. Divide and conquer; as long as these two groups are busy knocking lumps out of each other over this and other issues, they will not impinge upon the activities of the drivers of Aberdeen Cars. Good.

Sling up a sign. That's all that's needed to keep
the cyclists quiet, and more importantly -
out of our way!

Thirdly, and probably the most clever piece of tradecraft exhibited by the Aberdeen Cycle Forum double agents, is that ACF appear to be in love with the 'shared use' pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure which we see popping up all over the place in Aberdeen "City and Shire" these days. Everywhere we look there are "Dual Use" paths and "Toucan" crossings. Brilliant. These serve our aims in four ways. One - they encourage cyclists to get off our road and out of our way. Two - they make the authorities appear to be doing something green, something for the cyclists, all the while spending the very minimum and not actually doing very much at all in the way of creating suitable new infrastructure for cycling. Three - these dual-use facilities do not reduce the amount of roadspace allocated to cars, while in effect reducing the amount of space available for walking (by forcing cyclists onto the pavement) and marginalising cycling (by treating cyclists as equivalent to pedestrians). And four - they put pedestrians and cyclists into direct conflict, making the cycling experience difficult and making the walking experience unpleasant and dangerous. All of this couldn't suit us better! The more the disincentives to walking and cycling which groups like ACF manage to put into place the lower the uptake of cycling and walking as transport modes around Aberdeen "City and Shire" and the higher the modal share for cars.

Finally, in their newsletter material, ACF are usually keen to picture themselves. In contrast to the trendy aspirational look promoted by successful cycle advocacy groups worldwide (like the infamous Copenhagen Cycle Chic), ACF rock a quite different look.

But which...

...is which?

As everyone in Aberdeen "City and Shire" knows, more cars on more roads is the one and only way to ensure that the necessary economic growth is created to enable Aberdeen to pull the rest of UK plc out of recession. We therefore applaud and thank Aberdeen Cycle Forum for working so hard to put barriers in the way of the uptake of cycling as a mass transportation mode, for their craven kowtowing on behalf of all Aberdeen cyclists to the needs of motor-transport, and for their enviable success in making those cyclists look like total arseholes. Thank you very much.

PaveParker of the Week! SV10YYL

To the winner go the spoils! This weeks winner of our coveted PaveParker of the Week award is the driver of Aberdeen Car Vauxhaull Corsa SRi reg. SV10YYL

Employing the Full PaveParking tactic on the corner of Gray Street opposite Broomhill School, the driver of this Aberdeen Car is doing sterling work for the community.

Kept safely as they already are behind pedestrian railings (where they need not trouble our no-claim bonus), corralled and penned by the aluminium, banned from playing football in the playground (lest the ball go out of the playground and into the path of a passing car, causing the driver to mis-spell something as he or she texts her estate agent) the children of Broomhill Primary are rightly schooled from a very early age that being outside is dangerous and that walking to school is second-best; walking to school is for losers; cars have precedence.

This week's PaveParker takes this lesson that little bit farther by demonstrating that the pavements too are for cars, not pedestrians. Congratulations.