daveydave

Last week, representatives of the Tyne & Wear PTA, Nexus, subitted a £600m, 20 year investement plan for the Metro light rail system. The Tyne & Wear Metro was built in the late 70's and opened, in stages, from August 1980 - the first such system in the UK, outside of London. I used Metro almost from day one, and for the following 18 years, until work took me away from the reaches of the network. It was a fantastic system in the early years, but like most large projects in this country, suffers from a lack of sufficient investment and a lot of the existing infrastructure needs replacing. It has the potential to be great again, but it is also forecast to cease operating in 2012 should the necessary investment not be made. Hence the proposals delivered to Downing Street. I cannot stress how important it is that these proposals are accepted - Metro caries something like 130 000 passengers every working day. Just imagine (those of you who know and love the roads around Tyneside...

Having finally got my grubby mits on a digital camera over Christmas, I thought it would be a plan to review how I publish my pictures on the interweb. I have been using flickr for a while now, but I've hit the limit of the free service and it is time to pay. Before doing that, however, I thought I'd take a look at Picasa from Google. So far so good for Picasa. The client software is excellent and allows you to manage your web albums very easily. I'm going to run with it for a while - until I reach my free limit of 250MB - and then decide which way to go. For those of you who like looking a other people's poor attempts at photography, you can see some of mine on flickr or all of them on Picasa .

I've harped on about this in the past, but the time is rapidly approaching when the Jimny must go and something must replace it. Now, I've thought about all sorts of possibilities, from cheap run-arounds to executive saloons. Latest thinking however, is for another 4x4 - boo hiss from the green brigade, but I like the high seating position. So, I started making a shortlist. The Freelander is out straightaway because it's too expensive, I don't like the look of the X-Trail from Nissan, and I'm not sure why I'm not considering the CRV or Rav4. The Suzuki Grand Vitara is on there, because it looks smart. Others that sneaked on the list over the weekend were the Hyundai Tucson and the Kia Sportage. That's the 3 for now, although very much subject to change of course! First thing you need to do is get yourself a big pile of brochures, and this is where you start to score the competing companies. So far we can sum up performance thus: Suzuki GV 5dr : a smart looki...

I can't hold off any longer. It was all over weeks ago, but you like to think there may be a chance, however small that we may snatch even a draw. It wasn't to be. The last 5 wickets collapsed, leaving the Australians a meager score to reach to achieve a well deserved whitewash. It's so very disappointing to see such little fight and passion from the England team. There were moments - Collingwood's 206 in the 2nd test, Harmison's 4/48 in the 3rd test, Monty's 5 wickets in the same innings - but they were few and far between. We were comprehensively outplayed by a far superior team. So now we move on to the post-Ashes inquest. I suspect this will be run by those who ran the team and therefore produce no useful outcome. The press will be up in arms for a while before returning column inches to football. Nothing will be done, no real changes at the top, no radical overhaul of the way the game is run. And come 2009 we will be no nearer regaining the Ashes than we wo...

A little while ago, I had a minor rant about the design of Ford's PAG cars. I was not particularly complimentary in places, particularly about Jaguar. At the time, the first photos of the new XK had been released and I wasn't sure about it but, sensibly, decided to wait until I'd seen it in the flesh before going for the jugular. Fortunate for me that I did. As it turns out, the new XK is a rather good looking vehicle with a welcome, fresh look at interior design. (I.e. no bloody wood). Of course, such a car is well beyond the financial means of mere mortals such as I, so I must rely on those offerings further down the range. At the moment, there is nothing there that I would consider buying new. X, S and XJ are fussy, throw-back designs that have, quite rightly, not sold well thus leading directly to Jaguar's current financial predicament. However, the new XF concept has just been shown to the press and boy, what a stunner. It is expected that this car will form the ba...