Instead of having a moan, just for a change I thought I'd post up two stories which have really cheered me up no end today.
The first concerns Reading and former Hibs player Ulises de la Cruz, who it emerges has been sending part of his wages back home each month to Equador. Amongst other things, his money has helped to bring clean running water and a community centre to his remote village, as well as providing books for the local school.
Second is the return to the (very) small screen of Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond, after his horrific 300mph crash in a jet-car last September. We all know the story, but to have come through an experience like that and be back at work with no apparent ill effects, takes a level of guts, grit and determination which, frankly, leaves me in awe of the man.
As far as I'm concerned, they count as two of the good guys. Long may their respective lums reek.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I was chuffed to see Hammond back as well, but scunnered by the predictable criticisms of those who seek to knock the show. http://www.theherald.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1155471.mostviewed.top_gear_glamourising_speeding.php
Some drivers will always be idiots. They don't need Top Gear to inspire their idiocy!
Agreed. Speed can kill, but then so can lots of other things like carelessness, inattention, fatigue, inability to percieve hazards, machanical failure or general lack of competence. These pious, dreary, killjoy, attention-seeking wee homilies about speed in isolation, just make me want to reach for the motion sickness bag!
I'm an intelligent adult. I know driving too fast isn't big or clever. That's why I like watching people who are better drivers than me fling cars I could never afford round a track at speeds they would never dream of hitting on a public road. It might be risky, but in the right circumstances its also fun - a concept which seems to have escaped a whole legion of safety campaigners.
Its the sort of risk-averse, lowest common denominator approach that leads McDonalds to warn us that their coffee is hot and that bags of dry roasted peanuts (brace yourself)... may contain nuts. Worse, it probably means that people are less inclined to listen to those safety campaigns and statements that actually do have merit. This is one occasion where they should just have kept quiet.
The final word should go to Chief Inspector Tom Forrester, head of roads policing in Grampian, when he says:
"The motoring public must take responsibility for their own actions. Roads do not kill people, cars do not either; it is people doing things they should not, or not doing what they should, which inevitably ends in death."
Post a Comment