In motoring terms, England is broken.

Having left the UK 8 years ago, it never ceases to amaze me how much is broken about England when I return for visits. This time around it occurred to me how ridiculously small the parking spaces are. They're not quite big enough to get a car into. Well - they are, but only if you don't want to open the doors and get out.
Then there's the new mayor of London - Boris Johnson. Now he wants to tax motorcycles for parking in the city centre. Typical. They introduce the "congestion charge" to try to encourage people to use bikes, motorbikes and public transport instead of cars, and it works to some extent. Now so many people have swapped to motorbikes, BoJo has decided it's time to tax those too.
Then there's the traffic police - or lack of them. So many speed cameras have been installed since I left that by the police force's own admission, they've slashed the number of actual traffic police. In some cases by as much as 90%. So whereas an physical policeman pulling you over could assess the road and traffic conditions, as well as your driving, and thus make a subjective assessment of whether or not you truly deserve a ticket, now the country is presided over by automated cameras that fine you two weeks after the offence. Which is of course totally ridiculous. Take me for example - if I get a speeding fine in a rental car, two weeks after I've left the country, then it tells me two things.
1. I don't need to pay it because they can't prosecute me outside of England
2. It didn't make the road I allegedly committed the offence on any safer because I wasn't stopped at the point of my alleged offence. In fact after two weeks, I'd be lucky to even remember where the hell I was with the amount of travelling I do.

Yes. England is well and truly broken. But if you still live there, you already know that.

And don't get me started on the price of petrol.....

More crap car design.

I've got a Ford Galaxy MPV on rental at the moment (apparently Hertz think that's in the same class as a "compact 4 door saloon"). It drives OK but it's laced with awful design problems. The three that stand out immediately are the handbrake, the interior lights and the heating and ventilation system.
The handbrake is this interesting double-pronged affair that looks like the throttle control from a fighter jet. It's cleverly designed so that when you release it, it traps your thumb between the release button and the centre console.
The interior lighting is very art nouveau - soft dimming, soft illuminating, accent lighting in the footwells etc. It's all very clever but totally useless because there's no light at the ignition switch. So when you get in in the dark, you end up scratching up all the plastic on the steering column trying to find the ignition key slot.
And finally, the heating and a/c system. In manual mode it's fine. In Auto mode it's totally useless. For some reason, when you use Auto mode, Ford seemed to think that what you want is a right foot that is either baked or frozen. In Auto mode it only uses the footwell ventilation outlets, and on the driver's side, it's pointed straight at the accelerator pedal. So if you want to heat the air up inside, you end up with a burned foot long before the air actually begins to circulate out of the footwells.

This is the 21st century isn't it? Because those sorts of design decisions are reminiscent of the horse-drawn carriage.