I’ve just finished a return trip to Brighton where I saw a Lotus Elise being used as a Police car. A friend of mine had one for a year and it was the most impractical car you could ever have, blindingly fast but very impractical. It wouldn’t go over the smallest bump in the road without damaging the nose or grouding somewhere else – just forget trying to get over a speed hump. It could carry a Tesco plastic bag as luggage but not a traffic cone. And the rear seats …. what rear seats.

So what possible role could an Elise play as Police car? No good round the town picking up shoplifters and taking them back to the station. No good as a patrol car where they carry accident signs etc. No good over any sort of road surface unless it’s a race track. No good as a motorcyle replacement because it’s too wide. In all it’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot!

PS I’ve just done a google on this I’ve found why they’ve got this car:-

Sergeant Paul Masterson said: “The idea is that drivers will come to us and have a chat. We generally turn up at events where youngsters hang out. With this vehicle they actually come over and want to talk to us. Then we introduce the road safety message.”

Next they’ll be buying a Neoplan Starliner so the bus drivers come over for a chat and a road safety message!

There is more here.

Litepost webmail is a rather nice looking free webmail system. I’ve just registered and was able to get malcolm at litepost dot com! The best I could hope for with Hotmail would be malcolm583598, or something equally unmemorable.

I don’t use Hotmail but I hear that sometimes users don’t receive mail due to Hotmail’s filtering of incoming mail. There is no mention of filtering with the Litepost service. I also believe the problem works the other way round as well, Hotmail users outgoing mail is sometimes flitered out by the recipients mail system. I sent an email using Litepost webmail to my regular e-mail address which uses SpamAssassin to score e-mails and the mail scored a perfect zero!

I don’t have much need of a free webmail service (I’ve got webmail for my own domain) but it may come in handy once in a while.

Is this a first? A Scottish company handing out dollar bills to people in the crowd :-)

The only information we’ve been able to glean is that Winchester MegaBus drivers will be driving the “New service linking Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth and Winchester in the South with Oxford, Leamington Spa, Coventry and Birmingham in the Midlands”. The service is due to start in 6 weeks but we’ve no idea how many trips a day will made in each direction, nor where the stops will actually be. Centre of Oxford or out of town site such as a Park and Ride car park etc.

Now that MegaBus has announced the service in a general Press Release I’d expect them to start targeting the potential customers, the starting point being megabus.com But, no, the bookings website is totally silent about the new service. Click on Press Releases and the most recent Press Release is dated October 2006!

…and sues German blogger for libel”. Not wanting this Megabus blog to be sued as well I must add ‘allegedly’. Full story here.

Here’s how the German Starliner and Chinese Zonda A9 look side by side.

Can you spot the differences?

That’s what this press release says.

So, from 1 October we are going to be using a proper coach station. Hurrah! Greenline coach Station isn’t a coach station at all, it’s a public road one way road on which coaches can stop either side of the road. If the nearside is full up when you arrive you have to pull over to the offside and then disgourge your passengers straight into the road – not onto the pavement. I’m surprised no one has been hit by a car there. Also this place they call a coach station has no public toilets. I can’t wait to see the back of it.

The press release goes on to say “Tickets on sale at Victoria Coach Station up to 10 minutes before departure”. Another ‘hurrah’ but this time a little muted, see here what I wrote on the 7th of August. This still means that tickets cannot be bought on the bus anywhere in the network apart from London.

The final piece of news is the most interesting as far as I’m concerned as a Winchester based MegaBus driver “New service linking Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth and Winchester in the South with Oxford, Leamington Spa, Coventry and Birmingham in the Midlands”. That sounds very nice, just need to see the detail.