The new balance

After years of messing around with the excellent free service provided by No-IP, and making use of the jdv.hopto.org subdomain to host my personal site, I decided I might get something more permanent. It made me think of the old days as an impoverished student, never daring to stump up the £15 to register my own domain, even for what was to be a profitable company.

But here we are: jdv.me.uk, just for fun. And why did I get a .me.uk domain? A few reasons:

• They only came out c.2002, so not as many are registered, hence I could get the three-letter one I wanted!


• They were selected by Nominet to be personal domains, just as 07*** numbers in the UK are for get-me-anywhere, personal numbers.


• It made a lot more sense to get the .me.uk than the .org.uk: I really am never going to be an organisation!

Along with this, I have upgraded my Serendipity blog software to the latest version, and may create a new top banner, although I'll probably stick with the Kubrick theme, which I've always like, and that I know many people connect it with the blog idea going way back. I will be changing some of the paragraph and character styles, though. I can't stand the spacing of bulleted lists, and much prefer square bullets.

I will be adding articles about my Rotary involvement, and trying to garner local support for that, and links to a lot of services I hardly use, like some VoIP addresses that you won't get me on any more, and the community sites I hardly use.

Having read the information in Burnham Library, I cannot help but feel that some of the proposed changes around the Burnham and Taplow area will serve no purpose other than to frustrate drivers who use these roads during quieter periods of the day. Reading the "supporting information" which shows the Council's thinking on this matter, it is clear that some of the reductions are based on conjecture and subjectivity: although the number of accidents per million vehicle kilometres has been given for some of the recommendations, some of them are terribly vague, area Ref no 10 (Dorney Wood Road) being a case in point, where a cut from 60 to 30 is suggested:

"Not meet DfT criteria for a reduction to 30, but 40 limit likely to seem incongruous..."

at which point, the comment tails off and is not printed. It seems the accidents and average/85th percentile speeds are only given when they help the cause.

Regular users of these roads are capable of judging the safe speed to use. The ones who drive recklessly as to whether injury will be caused will continue to do so without expensive enforcement in any case, regardless of the posted limit.

Please take a read of the supporting information and come to your own conclusion. If I have any support here, I will write a joint letter, even though the deadline has passed.