Speed Cameras - is that all they look for?

The upper part of Stockport Road in Hyde between Dowson Road and Mottram Old Road is mainly used by local traffic - any vehicles travelling between Hyde and Stockport usually take the shorter route along Dowson Road. Along most of this stretch of Stockport Road there's a gentle downhill gradient as you drive towards Hyde town centre and about half-way down, just after a slight left-hand bend in the road, there's a speed camera. Unusually for Tameside the camera is painted yellow, the normal colour being a more inconspicuous dark green - "the corporate colour of Tameside" as a former Leader of the Council jokingly claimed. The gradient of the road is such that as you drop down Stockport Road from the point where it joins Mottram Old Road doing 25 mph and take your foot off the accelerator by the time you pass the camera you're doing 35-40 mph and get a fine and 3 points on your licence. Fair enough, the speed limit's 30 mph and you know what to expect if you exceed that. But look at the two photographs below:

This is the view from behind the camera looking up the gradient

This is the view as you approach the camera from the opposite direction

Look at the car coming towards the camera in the first photograph - it's had to move towards the centre of the road because of the car parked just before the bend (and with two wheels on the pavement). Any car going in the opposite direction would similarly have to move into the centre of the road because of the car parked on the other side of the bend - and this is a common occurrence as there are invariably cars parked on both sides of the road at this point. It's a recipe for disaster, particularly as the road is also a bus route. What I'd like to know is this: when the police prosecute a motorist for exceeding the speed limit do also prosecute any motorists seen on the relevant photograph to be parked in such a dangerous place, or do they just turn a blind eye as they do when they drive past in their police cars?

Maserati 250F

Stirling Moss has said that that the Maserati 250F was the nicest front-engined F1 car that he ever drove. It was also the car that Juan Manuel Fangio drove to win the last of his World Championships in 1957. Here's a short YouTube film of him driving a 250F round the Modena Autodrome in what the title to the clip says is 1950, but looks to be either 1957 or 1958. Click on the 'full screen' icon and turn the sound up to get the best effect - and just look at the track he's driving on. The surfaces of some of the minor roads maintained by Tameside Council are in better condition than that one!

The photographs below are of a Maserati 250F at an Aston Martin Owners Club meeting at Oulton Park in September 1986. The car was at that time owned by Anthony Mayman.

The car at Lodge Corner being driven by Rodney Felton.

The Maserati 250F chassis numbers are well documented and this excellent site shown the full racing history of each of them. This indicates that the Maserati pictured above is chassis number 2516 and this site gives additional information about this particular car.

20 is Plenty

All over Tameside these stickers are to be seen on wheelie bins in a move supported (or perhaps instigated) by the organisation '20's Plenty for Us'. The campaign is obviously backed by a lot of Local Authorities and in fact Tameside Council appears to have gone one step further judging by this sign on Werneth Low Road:

which appears to suggest that '30 is dirty'.