Hammond

Sent him an e-mail telling him to get a life.>

I like that disclaimer "As a motoring writer, I suppose I should be an avid watcher of motoring programmes." its called your job if you ignore them you getting money inder false pretenses - bit like the X factor really but without 3 people to tell you that you appear a useless pratt. I won't pick holes in the rest of the article sinply not worth the effort. Derek

Donations to the YAA here:

I've just sold the trialler, so £20 of the sale is on it's way there.

(Sorry if this has been posted before, but I didn't see it.)

The oh-look-how-dangerous nitwits are already on top of it.

comments are pretty funny. him an e-mail telling him to get a life. It won't take long before 'they' tackle our beloved sport... Sad enough.

>>> Sent him an e-mail telling him to get a life.>>>>

Given my new hobbies (in my sig) I thought it best to donate!!!

If you're off-roading on them, best take a GPS so you can gasp out the OS grid co-ordinates so they can find you! A lorry yard I went to recently had the OSGB co-ordinates written on the wall in big letters billed as the "air ambulance location reference", they were quite far from civilisation.

The KTM is a Motocross bike, but can be used for pretty much any off road use bar trials riding. Took it out yesterday & by god it has some power & is very controllable. It's got that much engine compression you dont seem to need the brakes at all!! The gears are sweet too, only 4 of them to worry about & then

1st really a hill climbing gear. A novice rider could easy scare themsleves to death on something like that.

I put a quiet exhuast on it as i dont like silly loud 'look at me' pipes & they do not improve performance anyway.

I'm a sensible riuder anyway & dont take any risks i shouldn't, but i hear you!!!

..what with numpties putting wire across byways to catch motorcyclists. Mind you I've only heard of one such case so far.

Is the Yorkshire Air Ambulance the one that is going to come and pick you out of a wall though? I know the family have requested that donations go to the YAM but don't forget all the others around the country, would it not be better to support your local one?

The Great North Air Ambulance has been struggling recently, indeed two of their three helos have been grounded in the past due to lack of funds...

Good news on the Hammond front, lets hope he's back driving his Series

1 soon. All this talk of the H+S nannies is really annoying me. If 'they' get Top Gear pulled because it's too dangerous then whats next...hows about Eastenders coz it's so godamn depressing!. If the show is that dangerous then how come it's been going for so long?. This accident is AFAIK the only serious one that has happened. Word of warning about OSGB refs and the emergency services.......

Rang up the cops and said that there was a crash on the main road out of Cheltenham.

"Where abouts exactly Sir?" Gave them a 6 fig grid ref "What do those numbers mean sir" said chap in control room Explained what a grid ref was "Never heard of that sir, are there any large buildings nearby" "Er no it's out in the countryside" "Ah well where is the nearest village then sir?." Told him and he said.......... "Oh thats not on our system sir" Argggghhhhhhgggghhhhhh "Right" says me "Tell which ever emergency service is coming to drive out of Cheltenham on the A40 towards Oxford and stop when they see a very upset man waving a torch at them".

They did find me eventually

Dom J

I live in between Leeds & Bradford, most deffo Yorkshire!!!

Given that more people die through suicide than die through car accidents in this country (according to the beeb anyway, not looked up official figures) you could probably make quite a convincing case on logical grounds, unfortunately you'd be up against the hordes of muddle-headed housewives so logic won't do you any good.

Bloody hell, doesn't hold out much hope.

Then again pilots have to be a tad more trained than telephone monkeys, and you can't go by landmarks so much as you can on the ground so the air ambulance lot should be able to sort it out. Then again you have to get through the telephone monkey first!

Mind you at least someone came out! When my first car locked its rear axle on a fast road just over the prow of a hill, traffic was swerving dangerously to dodge it with lots of locked wheels and brown trousers. Police didn't give a shit. It was the A36 between Ower and West Wellow, a notorious accident blackspot extending for many miles. The roundabout outside my house used to occasionally get power cuts and when it did, you'd regularly hear the squealing of tyres and a crunch as cars piled onto the roundabout. We'd call the police and they'd not bother coming out to that either, they suggested we stand outside waving a torch all night or put up reflective notices, like the ones they have and carry in the backs of the cars they drive around in for example. The local bobby had to sod off sharpish because he got caught shagging a local hardnut's wife and they never replaced him.

Copy that in a letter to the Chief Constable together with time and date of the call so they can review the tapes. It is not acceptable that their systems cannot (apparently) accept an NGR. If their systems can handle an NGR the that operator needs a "refresher" course...

Bloody hell mate, you have my utmost sympathies! I had the misfortune to be in that neck of the woods some years back, having a "reconditioned" ford granada autobox repaired for the second time at a place called "Sticker Lane Transmissions" or "Northern Gearbox Exchange" (depending what ad. you read!). It was near a roundabout with a McDonalds type place next to it, what a god-forsaken place, I genuinely felt unsafe just walking down the road (looking for somewhere to get a pub lunch while the 'box was repaired again) and that was in broad daylight and I'm 6'1" and heavily built!! On-topic (ish), I'm heavily involved in motorsport (rally) recovery, some years back we assisted with a microlight pilot that crashed next to the hotel we were staying in on the Isle of Mull (we'd been over for the "Tour of Mull rally"). He offered a relatively sizeable donation to a certain organisation (within the motor sport world) of which most of us were members, but we suggested seeing as it was effectively an aviation incident that he donate to the air ambulance service instead, which he did. Decent bloke, he also phoned me on my mobile the following year and got 2 rounds in via his credit card over the phone for us at the hotel! He keeps threatening to come back across to spectate one year, we said "ok, but come on the ferry, please." Badger.

Fairy Nuff... B-)

Ney bother mate!!

Hear, hear, same up on the North Pennines. There was a mugging last month, first one I've heard about in 7 years of being up here and not heard stories of others previous to that. Regular crime is fairly petty, theft from motors/sheds/barns or minor criminal damage. Even those are currently running at about 2 or 3 incidents/month (yes month).

Same here, I fully intend to die here and be scattered over the paddock.

A what?

Criminy! What'll they think of next! Horseless carriages?

In the village (no not *that* village number 6) there's a crime warning regarding a spate of burglaries in the area, there were two in the space of 4 months! We'll all be murdered in our beds! The "area" covers almost half of North Dorset. The report was last updated 8 months ago ;-)

Not sure I'll die here, not enough parking space for toys! I've got four and only have space for another two with only covered space for one :-( Now that's a crime.

I'm up in SW Scotland, and the local paper is filled with crime reports every week.

All right, so most of them are things like "Joe Bloggs, 34, of 27 Random Terrace, was cautioned by the Sheriff on Tuesday for failing to wear a seatbelt", but still.

And we had a murder a few years back. Someone chased down his dad in the Co-op car park and decapitated him with multiple blows with a baseball bat.

Other than that, though, it's just boy racers in their pimped tossermobiles[1], and the drug capital of Scotland....

[1] - I've seen one - a metallic blue *van* - with a spoiler. Except it was obviously too tall for his garage, because the spoiler had been lowered to be flush with the roof

We've had one robbery in our village in 15 years. Someone took the number of the getaway car and the police went round to the registered owners address to inform him. They found the car parked outside the house and the lads at the kitchen table counting the dosh.

We laughed until we pissed ourselves. TonyB