Your abusing are language

Today I want to vent my frustration at some of the careless grammatical mistakes that seem to be becoming increasingly prevalent in written communication and are gradually mangling the beautiful English language into something incomprehensible, yet when the offenders are challenged they fail to even understand what they've done wrong. While I have no formal language qualifications beyond a GCSE in English and I'm not immune from getting things wrong, I do feel I have an above average grasp of my native tongue (which I hope is apparent in my writings on this blog) so what to me are such basic mistakes really do annoy me as it should be very easy to get these right. Don't get me wrong, I would never have a go at anyone who has a genuine communication difficulty such as dyslexia or similar, and I'm talking about what should be basic fundamentals of grammar learned at primary school.

Consider the following sentence: "Your write, we except Paypal has payment for are products". There are so many things wrong with that, yet it is made up entirely of valid English words and to a growing number of people appears to be a perfectly coherent sentence as they don't know any better.

A burning issue

Please don't set fire to your models!

Something I've noticed recently that is spreading among the younger members of the model bus community is a trend towards depicting a burnt out vehicle by setting fire to it. For many reasons this really isn't a good idea at all so I cannot condone such behaviour and I feel I must write something to warn of the dangers and hopefully put an end to this idiotic practice before someone gets hurt.

This makes me cringe. So dangerous and not even realistic.

Clearing up a Facebook misconception

Facebook seems to be one of those Marmite things that you either love or hate. For all its faults (and there are many) it serves a useful purpose, but there is still strong resistance to it in some quarters, especially among the older generation who may not fully understand the world of social media. One particular misconception is especially prevalent among those who don't use it: there is a widespread belief that Facebook is one of those platforms that is completely invisible and unusable unless you have an account, which is not the case at all and there is a great deal of content that can be viewed without a Facebook account being necessary. Read on to find out how so much of the world of Facebook is available to you even if you don't have an account.

The worst F1 car ever? That's Life

Formula 1. Supposedly the jewel in the crown and the pinnacle of international motorsport, but quite honestly something that no longer interests me at all. With entry fees alone costing many millions and an extremely complicated and restrictive rule book, only the largest and wealthiest teams can afford to compete and the racing has become very clinical and boring as a result. It wasn't always like that though: in the late eighties and early nineties, the fees were much lower and the rules more favourable to smaller independent teams, resulting in entry lists so large that many races had to feature a pre-qualifying session to weed out a few of the weaker cars before the qualifying proper. All sorts of small and now forgotten outfits came and went during this period, usually trundling around at the tail end of the field and rarely even managing to start a race, yet alone finish. The strange stories behind them provide far more interest than the mundanity of today's top teams, none more so than the ill-equipped and ill-fated Life Racing Engines. The very reason for this team even existing is hard to fathom...

Putting the car before the horse

Uriah Smith and the Horsey Horseless

One of my favourite places on the internet is the Autoshite.com forum, a little corner of the web where those who appreciate old and unloved cars gather to share their mutual interest. Like all good communities it has its own collection of memes and in-jokes that outsiders wouldn't understand, one of which involves regular mentions of a mythical veteran car called a Horsey Horseless. I had assumed this was something that had been made up by a forum member some time before I joined, but it turns out the Horsey Horseless was a real car - well, sort of: it certainly existed on paper but there is no proof any were actually built.

The only known image of the Horsey Horseless. Would this mutant horse-car fool our equine friends?

Atlas Editions get weirder

My recent article on Atlas Editions and their strange business practices has proved popular and readers generally agree it accurately reflects the truth, but far from persuading them to buck their ideas up, in recent weeks they actually seem to have defied all expectations and got even worse, if such a thing is possible! Instead of learning from criticism like most other companies, they're simply burying their heads in the sand, censoring complaints and pretending all is well, which is a truly bizarre mentality.

R.I.P. Glenn Frey

Just a week after David Bowie's death, another of my musical heroes has passed on. The name Glenn Frey may not mean much by itself to some younger readers, but I guarantee everyone will have heard of his band, the Eagles, and their biggest hit, 'Hotel California', as they are among the greatest of all on the American country-rock scene and have sold simply vast quantities of music over a period of almost 45 years. Even more so than Bowie, the Eagles, both as a band and as solo artists, have had a profound influence on me: they rank among my all-time favourite musicians and have provided the soundtrack to my life through good times and bad ever since I discovered them in my early teens, so Frey's death came as a great shock and I couldn't let it pass unmarked.

The weird world of Atlas Editions

Today's post focuses on a company with the strangest business practices I have ever encountered. You may have heard of Atlas Editions as they advertise extensively; their business model is offering subscriptions to collections of items, principally diecast models but also such other collectables as ornaments and plates, with much emphasis on them being exclusive to Atlas and not available anywhere else, which isn't always true. Each collection begins with a loss leader at a very low price but subsequent goods are more expensive, and they will continue to send items at regular intervals unless you choose to cancel. This all sounds quite reasonable but Atlas often go about their business in strange, disorganised and amateurish ways that have resulted in them not having the best of reputations.

In my favoured 1/76 scale, Atlas have produced a number of collections: Eddie Stobart, Great British Buses, Trams of the World, Fire Engines of the World, the Greatest Show on Earth (funfair and circus vehicles), the World of Stobart, and Classic Coaches. I am personally subscribed to two of these (Greatest Show on Earth and World of Stobart) and my experience so far has been satisfactory, but there is an Atlas Editions Collectors group on Facebook where complaints vastly outnumber positive posts, and numerous threads about the company on consumer advice forums. Read on for more about the weird world of Atlas Editions and their bizarre ways of running a business...

R.I.P. David Bowie

This week got off to a rather shocking start as I woke this morning to the completely unexpected news that David Bowie has passed away. I was reading through my Facebook feed and wondering why so many of my friends were talking about him, then I saw the announcement of his death on his official page and let out a few involuntary profanities, such was the shock. While I wouldn't class myself as a die-hard Bowie fan and there are parts of his work that I don't like, particularly some of the more bizarre material from his later years, I do enjoy listening to the classics and his music has had a great influence on me. It's not an overstatement to say the man was and is a legend: everyone has heard of him and he was very influential over a long period, not just through his music but also for his persona and stagecraft.

Facebook's secret feature change

I'm sure many of you will agree that a lot of the changes Facebook make don't improve the user experience at all, and I have been very critical of them, but for once they have actually made a beneficial change that is genuinely useful and solves a real issue. However, they seem to have neglected to tell anyone about it as the majority of users haven't realised anything has changed and the problematic behaviour it was supposed to prevent is still occurring so I feel more attention needs to be drawn to this change. It affects what happens when you reject a friend request: that person now no longer has the ability to send you another request so you won't be bombarded by those annoying persistent users who keep sending a new request every time you reject one, and this should have put an end to that irritating practice of friend requests being left pending indefinitely.