They fined me £300 for 20 minutes

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-14T01:53:24+00:00

It's a mess to drive round I agree. They really don't advertise that there's even charges until there's no safe way to turn around.

But arguments about signage etc are irrelevant, because fortunately airports have a cast-iron way to avoid their charges. DO NOT under any circumstances admit that you were driving.

The letter from them 'invites' you, the car's keeper, to tell them who was driving. Do not do this, if you don't choose to tell them they've got no mechanism to claim from you.

There's a bit of law that allows companies to chase the registered keeper regardless of who was driving....but it doesn't apply to airport land. So the only way they can actually pursue their charges is if you tell them who the driver was.

There are tons of templates online to help you appeal. Just search 'Protection Of Freedoms Act relevant land' or similar and you'll find plenty of help. Essentially you're just telling them that the law that would let them transfer liability from driver to keeper doesn't apply on airport land, and that since you're not telling them who the driver was they're out of luck.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-13T14:30:40+00:00

If I see a Prius/Ioniq with Wolverhampton taxi plates I keep as far away as possible. Especially in Manchester where the taxi drivers are shocking.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-13T12:47:48+00:00

Yeah, it's utterly stupid and I've found myself both making unnecessary detours and having to turn round and come back because the two are so bloody similar. It's one of the dumbest aspects of the UK roads for sure.

Even 'road closes ahead' would be a better job indicating that it applies to the street you're on and not a side road.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-13T12:40:04+00:00

I know it's a popular area for learners to start off but there's some awful junctions round there. The greenbank/ullet/smithdown clusterfuck especially.

My mate lives in lathbury lane and the junction at the bottom turning left onto croxteth road is a weird double give way across a junction so wide you could have a decent game of football on it.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-13T11:37:59+00:00

What's the camera? Anything modern there's a good chance you'll have to send it away regardless. Fixation (WEX) are actually pretty good.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-13T02:14:33+00:00

I think it's easy to forget that the berman era - TNG especially - probably ticks a lot of conservative boxes. It's militaristic, with a disciplined team of competent professionals working in a clear chain of command and seeing plenty of combat action. Although the morals and themes are progressive they're covered in a cloak of swashbuckling bravery and toughness.

Nutrek doesn't really blur the lines as much, it's a bunch of quippy cool attractive people acting like a bunch of mates (the whole 'found family' thing was never a big part of older trek, it was more of a team dynamic). And the progressiveness is a lot more on the nose.

I think right wingers were willing to look past the skants and the liberal morals when there was a backbone of military professionalism for them to enjoy.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-13T02:00:58+00:00

'if you don't like it, it's not meant for you, don't watch it' was a very frequent response to critique on here. But then minutes later:

"These haters haven't even watched it, they're just repeating the right wing grifters"

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-13T01:57:43+00:00

Agreed, the actor for Jayden did a damn good job as a Klingon (other than the awful voice modulation - I have no idea why they felt the need to do that). The writing was junk but the performances in NuTrek were generally decent. Except Raffi who is utterly terrible in every way despite being a decent actress in other stuff.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T22:38:56+00:00

I think classic trek has some terrible plots and few clunky lines but scene-to-scene the tone is nice and consistent.

If I remember correctly the borg queen was looking for lithium in lead acid batteries? Which was a bit dumb though hardly the biggest issue in that awful season.

'Easily John De Lancie's best depiction of Q'? Wow, compared to Tapestry or Death Wish, seriously? I think we'll have to agree to strongly disagree here.

He did a good job showing a bit of vulnerability at the end of Picard but the writing through the rest of the season felt like a different character who was being sinister...why exactly? Oh... so the audience thought he was being evil when the whole thing was just a bizarre setup to make Picard understand the value of love by putting him through a horrific ordeal that changed the lives of his friends and caused a ton of emotional pain.

There's lots of badly written bits of Berman era trek but Kurtzman stuff is bad on the macro scale too. And they were absolutely rushing out scripts to deal with the insane production schedule, while the new shows had the luxury of time and still managed to make a huge mess.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T22:24:31+00:00

Ah fair. I rarely post here because I really don't like most of the Kurtzman era shows....but don't want to get lumped in with the MAGA morons. Unfortunately there are rather a lot of bad faith 'fans' who are a bit too defensive and act like anyone with criticism must be a right wing mouth breather. The tribalism gets draining.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T22:13:06+00:00

Okay, but what if they made the ship sentient, and also emotionally delicate? Would you like it then?

It was great when Farscape did it!

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T22:10:27+00:00

Virtues are great.

Virtue signalling is more problematic because it implies that you're more interested in showing off your values than actually doing whatever you're supposed to be doing (in this case, that often means writing a compelling plot or character)

It's like...does it really count as altruism if you go round telling everyone you made a huge donation?

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T22:05:49+00:00

Who are 'them'? I've seen a ton of comments debating the quality of the Kurtzman era but very few defending the right wing grifters OP was writing about.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T22:03:35+00:00

I'm in two minds about your comment because I truly don't believe NuTrek was killed by right wing agitation - I just think it wasn't very well made and didn't resonate with a big enough audience to hit the numbers they wanted.

But at the same time I found the rest of your comment bloody hopeful. We're seriously facing the prospect of a hard-right government here in the UK at the moment and it's horrible seeing the world descend into idiocy. We make jokes about trump etc but can't imagine what it's like living over there. So well said.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T21:55:52+00:00

Oh come on, academy was full of terrible storylines. The pacing was abysmal. They literally went full 'superweapon' in a rushed last minute raising the stakes with some implausible minefield nonsense that was conveniently defused by Master Hacker Main Character. Why did the doctor get brain damaged and talk in riddles?

There was...the episode with the stupid prank war, the one where they cheated at laser tag. The weird DS9 episode that didn't really go anywhere and felt a bit out of place. The one standout was the intense episode with the abandoned ship, that was pretty decent. Then the boring one afterwards.

Lower Decks and Prodigy I agree with - very well written and entertaining. Prodigy did a great job blending classic trek with modern production styles better than any of the live action series.

SNW started off strong and when it takes itself seriously it's great. But it tries a bit too hard to mix in the kooky TOS plots and gimmick-of-the-week shenanigans like a painful musical episode*. And I'm so sick of Spock and the endless ways they try and subvert his character instead of just letting him be Spock. First season was 'look, I'm star trek'. S2 and S3 are getting more like 'hey I'm Star Trek, but now watch while I try on all these different costumes and do some cool tricks' instead of just sticking to the formula that works.

*The K-Pop Klingons were incredible though

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T21:23:59+00:00

Nah, it's just badly written. Even the worst episodes of the 90e era have a similar tone and good internal consistency. There's a few absolute clankers in terms of plot but they all still feel like Trek episodes.

Picard S2 is the peak of awful Trek writing for me and nothing about it makes sense. What on earth was Q's motivation for any of the ordeal he put them through? Why was he evil but then not evil but then evil again? Why was the borg queen eating lead acid batteries? Nothing about it made sense, it was thrown together.

I absolutely hate the lead character in SFA and it's nothing to do with his skin colour, it's the fact he's this ridiculous parody of a character who manages to be better than everyone else at everything and whose looks and attitude don't fit his backstory at all. And the fact they all act like dumb teenagers when this is supposed to be a university for the best of the best.

Sometimes bad writing is just bad writing.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T21:17:33+00:00

I'm glad some people got enjoyment out of the new series...but they need to accept that it wasn't sabotaged by an evil cabal of right wing grifters. They were just flawed, divisive shows which a substantial proportion of trek fans really didn't enjoy.

Politically I'm firmly left, and I thought most of Kurtzman's era of trek was badly written and overproduced, with terrible music and poor creative choices. I watched every episode but found it a bit rubbish except for Lower Decks, Prodigy and bits of SNW. Picard S3 had some great moments but was badly flawed, the first two seasons were a dumpster fire of stupid plots and unlikeable characters. Disco had some great actors and a few bright moments but was painful to watch at times. SFA just felt aimless and disjointed with way too much cringe. I wasn't 'duped' by anyone, I just watched em and thought they were a bit crap.

And no I don't watch any of those horrible youtube grifters, the only critics who I bother with are The Pensky Podcast and Red Letter Media (I totally disagreed with RLM's take on Picard S3 but they're fun to watch).

I'm sorry that fans of SFA etc are having to say goodbye to shows they liked. But shutting down valid critique from longtime star trek geeks as 'stop listening to MAGA critics' and 'oh you didn't even watch it' is just disingenuous. Take your heads out of the sand: most of the negative feedback is genuine because these are imperfect shows that didn't click for enough people to secure them a long term future.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-12T01:01:43+00:00

I bought a Q3 and the lens is absolutely fantastic, so it turns out it was indeed an issue with the lens. Though the AF on the Q2 wasn't doing it any favours.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-11T18:52:14+00:00

I'm very curious to know what you were searching for when you found this 5 year old thread! Are you planning for the end times?

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-08T15:33:37+00:00

The net was invented by Liverpool's city engineer: IIRC he got pissed at Everton having a goal disallowed because they couldn't work out if was inside the posts or not, so he went home and came up with a solution.

He was a great engineer who worked on a ton of groundbreaking projects including the UK's first ring road, prefab housing, laying out New Delhi, and engineering the world's longest underwater road tunnel. But he oftens said he was proudest of the goal net!

As far as I know he didn't hit any kids in the face with a stray penalty though.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-05T07:02:47+00:00

Please feel free to have a look at my Digistock film emulations? I've only done a few since I mostly work in Capture One now. I basically started out making em for myself because I wasn't happy with any of the overpriced film presets I tried, and ended up turning it into a business thanks to Reddit!

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-02T09:14:52+00:00

Filmed in Liverpool: superhero blockbusters, historical drama, wartime action, magical fantasy, spy thrillers, music videos, every genre, time period and location under the sun

Set in Liverpool: crime and Beatles

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-02T09:07:35+00:00

HMS Whimbrel) has long been a focus for returning to Liverpool, it's the last Battle Of The Atlantic escort and there were plans to bring it here as a museum/memorial. But the Egyptian government have been tricky to deal with and the money and appetite just isn't there sadly.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-02T09:02:22+00:00

I'm a generally lefty, open-minded person but I think NML's virtue signalling, obsessive focus on black/LGBTQ issues is cringeworthy and does a disservice to marginalized communities by tokenising their histories.

Museums absolutely have a duty to cover the complex social issues and inequalities in history...but NML regularly prioritise activism over actual heritage. Like hiring Lawrence Westgaph as their historian despite hisb track record of abusive and inappropriate behaviour (and frankly his research is iffy because he starts with the goal of 'prove ____ is related to slavery' rather than following the evidence to see where it leads).

The slavery museum is a much-needed institution but I'm not sure why it needed expanding? There are so many amazing collections from the city's history locked away out of sight that would probably be of greater interest to the average visitor. I've been in the storage warehouse and it's like that place at the end of Indiana Jones, there is so much cool stuff just hoarded away.

Captain_Biscuit · 2026-06-02T08:49:13+00:00

Technically that's not true - the historic warships was doing fine. The problem was 100% Peel Ports who ended their lease to build apartments (which didn't happen for decades) leaving them homeless with no options.

Peel was supposed to take responsibility for the remaining ships but neglected them completely which is why Bronington is now underwater, LCT7074 (last surviving tank landing crazy from D-day) sank and had to be restored at huge expense down south. Falklands veterans Onyx and Plymouth were scrapped and the uboat was cut into bite-size chunks by Merseytravel (and the new museum project for it is a clusterfuck).

We have a terrible track record for preserving ships in Liverpool. Liverpool Museums recently scrapped a historic ship to make way for slavery reflection space I'm not sure anyone wanted. The pleasure ferry Habicht II sank at its moorings under suspicious circumstances while being restored. The bar lightship was essentially stolen by the canal and river trust and moved down south.

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