#14: Peugeots, Parking and Busses

In today’s show, Steve rants passionately about ho much he loves Peugeots, some observations of parking in Brighton, and an opinion about public transport and particularly the busses.

Andy: So we’re with Steve, this is the third take, I’ve had a bit of a technical problem, a bit of equipment failure here going on with the old recorder but never mind, this is the third take now. Steve you’ve had your brother down haven’t you, apparently he’s a chef from Oz?

Steve Kennard: Yes he is, yes.

Andy: Have you been having nice barbecues and things?

Steve Kennard: Absolutely, yes he’s been making the food taste really wonderful. Being a chef you know he’s – as I say he’s – even something silly like mashed potato tastes totally different, absolutely different. So yes it’s been nice to see him and yes he’s gone back to Oz now so I need to get my work head back on again.

Andy: Yes and there’s loads of – is it Peugeots on the shop floor at the moment? I bet you love French cars don’t you?

Steve Kennard: Absolutely, Fr-

Andy: Let me guess, electrical problems?

Steve Kennard: Yes French cars – most of the problems we get with the French cars that come in are electrical problems. There is… [Car horn]

Andy: Excuse me…

Steve Kennard: Yes. Yes, this is live. Yes there’s…

Andy: No editing here.

Steve Kennard: No definitely not. We actually have a – there is a Peugeot 206 there, there’s not an electrical problem actually, that particular one there has had a cam belt failure. But actually when we looked into it, it wasn’t purely and simply a cam belt failure it was actually a partial seizure on the engine which has then done the cam belt. It’s had a total snowball effect. The result is it requires another engine; it’s not viable to pull that one apart and rebuild it. But-

Andy: What caused it to seize in the first place?

Steve Kennard: Well we haven’t actually taken it out and stripped it down that far; we’ve taken the cylinder head off and had a look to see because it had a belt failure. The engine itself was fairly well locked up and you know it wouldn’t move either way so we took the head off and had a look at it and even with the head off the crank shaft was extremely tight to turn and it shouldn’t be.

If you’ve got the cylinder head off, you’ve got no resistances; if the bottom end of the engine is in pretty good shape then it should rotate pretty freely. This one here it’s taking quite a length of bar on it to turn it over so it’s suggesting to us that the engine has suffered a bit of a partial seizure at some stage and it’s probably that that’s resulted in the belt failure because the belt in fairness didn’t look that bad.

If you inspect the belts, most belts when they’re coming to the end of their working life have got evidence on the belt. If you inspect the belt you can see around the base of the teeth starting to crack up, just a general you know visible inspection of the belt will give you an idea on the condition of the belt. This one here didn’t really look too bad. It ripped off some teeth where the engine had obviously suffered this seizure and that’s it. And of course then it runs out of sync, cam shaft to crank shaft and-

Andy: You get things banging into each other?

Steve Kennard: Yes you’ll get valves touching pistons which is what’s happened, but even then with the head off the engine should still rotate pretty freely. It hasn’t been, or it won’t do that, so it’s telling us it’s got a problem internally and that’s going to result in – you know we can take the engine out, strip it down and rebuild it but nowadays the cost of doing that is more expensive than actually buying a ready built unit to fit in. And that’s what we’re going to do with that one there.

Andy: Peugeots – I see we’ve got one on the ramp there.

Steve Kennard: Yes that one’s just in having a service, that one there is a 307 Peugeot having a service, there is another 206 that’s also having a service.

Andy: You really do – you look like a Peugeot showroom at the moment.

Steve Kennard: It does, but-

Andy: Peugeots galore.

Steve Kennard: But then if you look at it from the other side of the coin you know if you see garages with lots of Peugeots in what does that tell you?

Andy: Mm.

Steve Kennard: You know?

Andy: They break down a lot.

Steve Kennard: Yes, there you go. There is – I mean there are plenty of other jobs in here at the moment but going back to the Peugeot, we had another one in earlier in the week, a 1007, fortunately Peugeot have seen the light and they’ve stopped making them. The problems you get with them – these are the ones with the automatic sliding doors. The theory’s good but maybe they should have built it better, you know?

Andy: Oh is this the one where you press a button on the dashboard and the door slides open?

Steve Kennard: Yes.

Andy: They look like the USS Enterprise?

Steve Kennard: That’s it, yes. You’ve got the buttons there, one for each door, automatically-

Andy: My mates got one of those.

Steve Kennard: They automatically slide open.

Andy: Do they go wrong?

Steve Kennard: Oh yes.

Andy: Oh God.

Steve Kennard: Yes, best of luck to him. Tell him he might – all the while it’s running well he might want to consider chopping it in because Peugeots have given up on them, they’ve stopped making them.

Andy: Is it the C then a number that’s like the C – what is it the C-?

Steve Kennard: This is the 1007.

Andy: Oh okay right.

Steve Kennard: It’s the little 1007. I’m not sure how long they made them for but they haven’t been out there that long and they’ve given up with them already.

This particular one had lots and lots of again running issues, management systems, throttle body problems, ECUs. And the car itself was a 55 reg so you know about four or five years old. Again, not that old where cars are nowadays but you know if we’re getting these sort of electrical issues on them now at that age what are they going to be like in another couple of years?

Andy: Yes sure.

Steve Kennard: So a word of warning: anyone out there with a 1007, offload it quick.

Andy: Any issues you want to have a bit of a rant about Steve, motorists, the plight of motorists?

Steve Kennard: Yes absolutely.

Andy: Parking tickets?

Steve Kennard: Yes there’s always – there is always something to talk about in Brighton on parking, it’s a very high profile sort of problem let’s say in this particular town and it’s totally unnecessary. Again it is a tax, a lot of people maybe don’t see it that way but the majority of people do view – they do view the amount of money raised as nothing more than a tax and that’s what it is.

You know if – they keep on about this, we used to call it global warming, it’s no longer global warming it’s climate change, this is how they refer to it now because you know global warming infers that things are warming up. Well we’ve just been through a nice little bit of a winter, how can you convince people of global warming if you’ve got an ice age coming but-

Andy: Well especially if the volcano keeps doing what it’s doing then we’re going to get quite cool if it bellows out much more smoke I’m guessing.

Steve Kennard: Yes well I mean you know they’re sort of saying that the last time that went there were quite a few million people that didn’t draw too many more breaths around Europe when that went. I think this was going back a couple of hundred years but…

Andy: There was a lovely tweet about that actually the other day, there was a – “If Iceland can’t look after its volcanoes properly it shouldn’t have them.”

Steve Kennard: Yes well there is that and I’m pretty sure that they would – if possible they would rather sort of export them elsewhere like. I mean we won’t get too political but I know a few places they would be – it would be a nice idea to send them to but we won’t mention them.

Andy: “Free volcano with every whatever.”

Steve Kennard: Yes absolutely. But yes I mean if the big one blows – because we call it the big one, that’s what they keep referring it to.

Andy: What’s the big one?

Steve Kennard: You know what, I can’t even think of the name of it.

Andy: It’s not the one in the Yellowstone National Park is it, that’s a huge one apparently.

Steve Kennard: No this is the one on Iceland, this is-

Andy: Oh there’s a big one is there?

Steve Kennard: Yes because the one that’s been giving us all the issues is referred to as the small one.

Andy: The baby?

Steve Kennard: Yes and they keep saying that back through sort of history when the little one’s gone soon after the big one goes.

Andy: Oh dear.

Steve Kennard: So it is that one we need to sort of watch out for but whether we’re talking about this year, five years, ten years, a hundred years even I don’t know. I mean in sort of terms of time when we’re talking about these things a hundred years or a thousand years is not a lot of time when we’re talking about these sorts of issues with volcanoes and that.

But all we can do is hope that we’ve got the jet stream going the right way so it’s taking the ash cloud away from us and not you know having one of these freak perfect storm conditions that brings it down across the UK and across Europe.

Andy: Now going back to the subject of parking tickets, is there a federation of Brighton motorists? If not me and you are going to form it now and I’m going to propose – between me and you, this is our committee meeting – that we will impose a license fee for anyone to serve a document on our motor cars of £350 per year. Do you agree with that?

Steve Kennard: Oh yes, that…

Andy: So if we get a ticket, “Can I see your license please?”

Steve Kennard: Absolutely.

Andy: If they haven’t got it then it’s a £1,000 fine plus they have to buy the license at £350.

Steve Kennard: Absolutely, fight fire with fire and all that lot. But there is actually the People’s Parking Protest – I’m not sure of the exact name that they have but-

Andy: Do they wear berets with stars on?

Steve Kennard: I don’t know but it might not be a bad idea actually mightn’t it? Let’s get some higher profile rather than hiding behind sort of closed doors, let’s get out there and do something. It’s like everything, instead of us all having a bit of a moan and a whinge here there and everywhere, like tonight when I go to the pub and have a drink with mates you know we put the world to rights and that’s as far as it goes. We have a little moan about this and that, various issues.

Andy: We’ve had this conversation before haven’t we and you always hold up the French with revere because they do stuff?

Steve Kennard: Well yes I mean they’ll put up with so much for so long-

Andy: And then say “Non.”

Steve Kennard: And then like the volcano they blow their top so maybe we ought to really take a leaf out of their book and protest against it. They’re saying that the local budget, the council’s budget, was actually – 25% of that was made up with – 25% which was the amount of money raised by what the council so endearingly call the-

Andy: Parking services?

Steve Kennard: Parking services, now to me if someone said to me parking services I would think “Oh that’s a helpful bunch of people, parking services.” That infers that’s a service, it’s not a service, let’s get it right.

Andy: (Laughter) It’s a tax.

Steve Kennard: It’s not a service. What they’re doing, they’re trying to raise as much revenue as they can. And again they’re saying that it’s working because over the last three years the actual amount of fines they’ve issued has actually dropped. The worrying thing is that they’re going to be looking at it thinking “We’re not getting the revenue now.” So what are they going to hit next?

They’re going to start looking at it and they’re going to be looking at it from the point of view “We’re not getting as much money in now so how can we make that up?” That’s the worrying thing and I do think that we’ve still got more to come. But people really need to make it known that the amount of charges is not necessary. The cost of the car parking is too high.

If we want people to get on public transport then let’s offer them a good service. You need to have good park and ride systems in this town, it’s the only way to do it. You can’t put a ring road round it. I mean we’ve spoke about this before, south side we’ve got the Channel.

Unlike Oxford and places like that where you can put a ring road, you can’t do that in Brighton, so we don’t have that luxury of being able to put a ring road round to divert traffic around us. All we have is the A27 to the north of us which suffers its problems but the A27 again is bitty, it’s not the continuous road that it was meant to be. It’s meant to be the Folkestone to Honiton trunk road.

It’s supposed to take – when it was first talked about back in the ‘60s/’70s there was the road they were going to put in along the South Coast here called the Folkestone to Honiton bypass trunk road and it was going to actually take the traffic from like east to west along the sort of South Coast, along a route that – it would save people from having to go up onto the 25 along the M4 corridor and then down the M5 down to the West Country. It was going to be a link road from east to west without having to send the traffic up to London.

I mean it’s no different to the town, if you want traffic to go freely from A to B it’s no good channelling everything onto one route because it’s going to jam up and anytime you get a problem – and let’s face it, you get an accident or something like that, the road gets closed, there’s no alternative. Where does the traffic go? And this has been found to happen many, many times.

When we have a problem on the Coast Road it can create all sorts of traffic jams four or five miles away, nothing to do with that particular area. Look at Saltdean, this bus route through Saltdean, that’s an absolute farce. It’s about time that they re-looked at that and done something about it because we still have lots of traffic issues through there.

And if we get a problem – last year we had a problem with the lights at the bottom of Longridge Avenue, I’ve mentioned this before; that resulted – in the rush hour – in traffic actually queuing in Freshfield Road. Now how the hell should traffic get affected in Freshfield Road from a problem with traffic lights in Saltdean?

This was all because traffic that goes through Woodingdean to the Falmer Road, down to Rottingdean, couldn’t move, nothing was moving. And it resulted in Elm Grove being jammed up, Freshfield Road was jammed up, Bear Road was jammed up, Falmer Road was jammed up, the University bypass – because of one set of lights. Now how good is that? That is a transport system – is it?

Andy: Have you ever been to a city anywhere in the world where you think that the transport system – they’ve got it right?

Steve Kennard: There’s lots and lot of places where traffic does flow and yes they have the setup just about right. Yes they have more area, more space to be able to have decent road systems. And with Brighton it is difficult because of the age of the town and you’ve got to remember that all of these roads were built for horse and carts, so it’s – unfortunately we need to utilise what we’ve got and make the most of it.

And I do feel quite strongly as comes across sometimes that these road planning people, whoever it is that are responsible for trying to keep this city running, they’re just not doing their job. I mean they’re being paid to do this job, to keep the city running, it’s not happening. Everywhere you go, every day there is a problem somewhere because the majority of traffic is being channelled onto one or two routes and that is it, there is no alternative.
Everything channels you to a certain route. East/west you’ve got the Coast Road, the A259, north to south you’ve got to go up London Road to get out up onto the A23, you’ve got to up the 27 to go up the Lewis Road. Look at the state of those roads.

Bus lanes again, why do you need a bus lane on those main routes that perhaps see a bus every – even if you see a bus every ten minutes, one bus every ten minutes using that route, how many cars are using that route in ten minutes? So in an hour, if you’ve got a bus every ten minutes you’ve got six buses use that road, their own personal lane, which let’s face it is paid for out of the public purse.

And again – I’ll say again, that is a private – the bus company is a private company, that’s a public highway and they’re actually being given the public highway for their own use to make money as a private company, because they don’t pay for it. What do they contribute to the actual road building in this town?

I mean the Go-Ahead Group which is what the Brighton/Hove buses are part of, part of the Go-Ahead Group, I’m not sure what their latest reported profit figures are but three years ago it was around 100 million was their profit. Now they’ve got shareholders understandably like a private company so any money they’re making going to shareholders it should actually be used to build their own roads or pay for the roads or pay a lot more towards the road systems in the towns.

It’s not a public company; it’s a private company, that’s the difference. If it was a public company then the public can fund it, I don’t have a problem with that. When the buses used to belong to the public, publicly owned and run that way, that’s fine but when you’re talking about a private company and that’s what we’ve got – excuse me – that’s the difference. It’s profits for shareholders but we’re actually paying for it.

Andy: Well Steve we’d better leave it there. I really do think we should try and get the buses and you together having a debate – and the traffic wardens might have a debate.

Steve Kennard: My friend Roger French, yes. I mean he’s just got an award this week I believe for his 25 years at the helm of the buses in the town. Good luck to him, he’s doing his job and he’s doing it fine for what he does. But the point is it is at the expense of a large group, mainly the motorists, it’s at their expense really.

Andy: If I could persuade Roger to come on the show would you be up for a debate with him?

Steve Kennard: Oh I doubt very much whether Roger would want to sit down and have a chat. I mean we’ve-

Andy: We could stand up and have a chat.

Steve Kennard: Well we’ve actually sort of had a little bit of a rally let’s say in the local Evening Argos. I’ve had one or two letters in there that again have voiced my opinions and Roger French has had his say back and its – I haven’t actually put a letter in for a little while so maybe it’s about time I sort of ruffled his feathers again.

Andy: (Laughter) Well Steve Kennard, passionate about motoring issues and cars and especially Peugeots, thank you very much indeed and don’t forget everyone 1st Class Garage, Kemptown, Brighton, UK is the place to come to get your car fixed.

Steve Kennard: Thanks Andy.