Come on kids, lets go buy an Indonesian piece of junk. (By Ozzyfrog)

Do not be fooled into thinking that there is no such thing as a bad car these days. The Proton Savvy is a bad car. The Dodge Caliber is a bad car. The Ssangyong Rexton is bad, along with the Chrysler Sebring and the Dodge Nitro, and the Holden Barina. See, I can rattle off one hundred bad cars that you can but today, but the question is, why do people buy them? I can’t imagine walking into a Proton shop, and thinking ” No, I wont buy the far better Toyota Corolla, I will instead buy an Indonesian piece of junk with an awful name”. Thing is though, lately, cars seemed to have been getting worse. Until recently, if you asked 100 people what the ugliest car in the world was, you would get 100 different answers. However, the world was suddenly united in this area as soon as Ssangyong released the Stavic. Never, in my life had I seen such a horrid looking car. I was walking home from school with a friend one day, and we both saw one at the lights. Both being car anoraks, we bolted as fast as we could until the danger had passed. Here is a photo of the Stavic, but be warmed, the following photo may frighten young children;

It looks twice as bad in real life. Then, just as we thought nothing could top that, Dodge introduced the new Nitro;

Bear in mind, the Nitro pictured above is the old one. The new one looks 1,000 times worse. It’s getting serious, more and more rubbish is coming onto out streets. Have you actually tried leaning on the headrest in most new cars? Don’t, it’s awful. Most seats now feel like they’ve come out of army jeeps, and just take a look at the tyres found on cheap Korean cars. Even Holden’s are beginning to be made in Korea. But he worst shock I had, was with Cessna. I currently fly a Cessna 152, a trusty old bird. However, most 152’s were built in the ’80’s, and so Cessna have released a new one, called the ‘Skycatcher’. It features a glass cockpit (which means it doesn’t have mechanical instruments, all are computerised) and it looks very snazzy.

Cessna152                                                                                                                                       Cessna Skycatcher

But, then I read in horror that the new Cessna will be made in China. IN CHINA. So sorry Mr Cessna, but there’s no way I’m climbing into an airplane that’s made in China. I’d be too worried that the door would fall off, or the Glass Cockpit will be replaced by lovely black screens in the middle of a cloud. So next time you climb into a light aircraft, just check that there are no “Made in China”stickers on it.

Police, Soccer and Sony Vaio’s (By Ozzyfrog)

There has been much bruhahah about the fatal shooting of a 15 year old boy by police in the news, and the parents are saying that he was ‘just a scared little boy”. A scared little boy armed with knives, it would appear. Many are questioning the tactics used by the police, but really if you attack a policeman with a knife, then you can’t really complain if he shoots you. And anyway, we are no where near as crazy as the Americans. A few days ago, in America, a man had spun his Ute on the road, and the police came to investigate. He was shaking and not responding to their commands of “get out of the car, sir” and so they wrestled him onto the ground and tasered him. Turned out that he was in fact having an epileptic fit, and couldn’t comprehend what was going on around him. He was rushed to hospital and the police were left feeling very sheepish. That is America. Although I still don’t understand why the police need Hummers in the “safe streets program”. But that’s another story.

This blog has very little direction, so maybe I’ll move onto some car news. But first, I believe it is necessary bring up this picture:

Moving along now to cars. Royal Auto  has released the one interesting article for the whole of the year;  their car of the year awards. Interestingly, not a single Holden in a total of 12 categories could bring home a prize, not even the ‘incredible on every angle’ commodore. It would seem that Holden are slipping, especially to their main rival Ford. If I may, for the non car anoraks here, I will liken this contest to a game of soccer. Both teams are at the kickoff, and Ford begins it with their new Falcon. It tries to get past the Commodore, but the Commodore kicks it towards Ford’s defence. Ford has the tired Focus, and the Fiesta, but these run rings around Holden’s Korean Barina. A goal is scored against Holden. They kick off and the ball goes to the Ford Territory, the large four wheel drive. Holden’s answer to this is their (once again) Korean made Captiva, and the Ford easily goes around it. Holden’s last defence is the Vectra, but this simply puts the crowd to sleep and the brilliant Ford Mondeo scores multiple goals. End score is 3-0 to Ford. My Economics teacher once used a word against Fords which I shall not repeat here, but quite simply, Holden dropped the ball.

That’s all the time I have for now, I have just bought a new computer. Time to go and see how beautiful it is.

Come on Brumby, on your bike. (By Ozzyfrog)

Premier Brumby has today announced part of the new transport plan in Melbourne. Good stuff, was the initial response I had, but it appears that this response could not have been more wrong. Brumby has decided to have a push for motorbikes and scooters, and urging drivers to leave their cars at home. Oh, ok Brumby, I’ll just forget about my nice $30,000 Peugeot in the garage, and I’ll go buy a new motorcycle for a few thousand dollars. And get a motorcycle license. And all the gear you need to ride motorbikes, like helmets. And extra insurance. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because in a few weeks I’ll be in hospital with a broken spine, or dead. No, no, it really doesn’t matter that motorbikes are just about the most dangerous means of transport there are, and that they cost a huge amount for what is basically a road bike with a noisy engine. It’ll be fine.

Also, is there a more useless way of getting what you want other than ‘urging’ the public to do something? Last time I checked, we do not do something because some twat ‘urges’ us to. It doesn’t work. But back to the point. Brumby has said that the government will try to make the roads safer for motorbikes and scooters, and the important word of this sentence is ‘try’. What on earth can they do to make the roads safer for bikes? Motorbikes don’t use bike lanes, for obvious reasons, so extending those will do nothing. Maybe we will end up with humongous yellow signs everywhere warning us to look for bikes. They’ve already started that on television. Don’t think that the timing of those recent ads to “look again for bikes” is a coincidence. Of course, there will be so many signs that they will simply obscure the view of oncoming bikes, and so they will be mown down like pigeons (and no, I don’t know why pigeons are mown down, it just sounds cool).

And we should remember that we currently have a shortage of nurses and doctors, and hospital waiting lists are enormous. So sending halve the population to serious injury is not really going to help. Of course, as Brumby points out, the alternative is public transport, and he is correct. Unfortunately, we don’t have public transport. We have a few bus routes that are always late, trains that don’t turn up and trams that can’t stop because of their pathetic brakes. Imagine going to work on a tram surrounded by people on motorbikes. The windscreen will be so full of pieces of bike and people that the tram has run over that the driver won’t be able to see, and so trams are out of the equation. And buses, for that matter. Trains will be safe, but they’re overcrowded as it is so that won’ t do.

In my book, if adding a seat belt to something makes it more dangerous, then that thing is not worth travelling in. Normal bikes are the exception, as they are fun and don’t go fast enough to cause serious injury. But motorbikes? Uh uh, no way Brumby. Keen bike enthusiasts of course will be jumping for joy, and will all go out for a ride and be killed, because of humongous yellow signs and extended bike lanes. So what are waiting for Brumby, go on, on your bike.

Formula 1; The race for refuellers. (By Ozzyfrog)

Many many moons ago, automobile racing was extremely dangerous, exciting and nobody could ever tell who would come out on top. But (insert sad violin music here) over the years, formula 1 racing has become duller and duller, and it is now at the point at which races seem to be won or lost in the pits.This is mainly due to do new rules coming in every five seconds and making the race ‘more standardised’. Hmmm. Well, it has worked, but it has also made racing unbearably boring.

For instance, not too long ago (as in last year), each individual racing teams could choose whatever brand of tyres they pleased. This meant that some cars had better tyres than others, and this is why Renault was winning so much (Michelin tyres). However, Mr Michelin one one day made a mistake on the tyres sent to the F1 races, and as a result all the Michelin tyres exploded sometime during the following race. So a new rule was set in place, that all cars must run on Bridgestone tyres. Wonderful. Not only did this make racing less interesting, they chose the worst bloody tyres in the world. Honestly, Dr Hong tyres would have been better than Bridgestones, and what we should have done was stick to the best; Michelin. But, because of one problem, they decided to choose the worst tyres on the market. And then they started standardising the engines, so all cars had similar engines. So drivers are now is practically in the same cars as each other now, which means that it all comes down to the pits.

Now look, if I wanted to see a group of middle aged men putting fuel into a car, I would simply pop down to my local shell garage. But, strangely, few people do watch people refuel their cars, as most of us would classify this as “not interesting”. What we want to see are crashes, high speed overtakes, drivers literally on the edge of their seat and the different teams individually tuning their cars. The best race I ever watched was in Brazil, where oil leaked onto the track. In the end, only about five cars actually managed to stay on the road and finish. It was brilliant.

Moving entirely along, I have discovered the new ‘poll’ button, which I shall now test.