1st November 2016 Tick, tick, tick.

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Tuesday 1st November, 51F, 11C, heavy overcast with light winds. Possible showers early on. Still struggling with the clocks going back. No walk today. No ride either. Spent the morning at hospital having tests for Borrelia after multiple deer tick bites probably from my almost daily walks in the woods.

Low mist hanging in the woods.

Fines from the fleet of police speed camera vans have doubled in only two years. There is political pressure to reduce the number of manned police vans and replace them with automatic speed cameras. The hope is that fixed cameras at known traffic black spots will reduce driver's illegal speeds rather than increase fines even further.

From my two decades of experience of driving and cycling on Danish roads it will take more than a few cameras to slow the vast majority who treat speed limit signs like roadside trees. i.e. Completely invisible unless you actually run into one. Finding any roadside tree without serious vehicular damage around the base is quite another matter.

I assume we can look forwards to vandalism and vocal protests at the unfairness of actually being caught breaking the law. They already had to change the policy of using non-police personnel in the camera vans. They were being attacked and abused so often that it took manning the vans with armed police officers to keep the raving sociopaths at bay. I kid you not.

Wednesday 2nd 42F, 5C, light winds, heavy overcast. Still completely bunged up with my cold and feeling awful. Went for a modest walk anyway. Cool and rather cloudy but with the promise of sunshine in between.

Investigation of the motorway terrorist attack with concrete blocks, which killed a German mother and seriously injured the father, has made some slight progress. A series of DNA tests on the motorway bridge and the weaponized blocks has provided traces of an, as yet, unidentified individual. Victims and witnesses at the scene of the attack have been excluded from the DNA results. Unfortunately the DNA does not match any known offender on the Danish database.

I'm not sure whether the Danish police still have access to other DNA data bases after leaving the European association of police forces. Presumably this was to save money to allow tax cuts for rich, Danish, non-tax payers. The ultra-right wing parties which gained office with promises of blocking open immigration make such dogma driven, tax reduction demands for cooperation with the multiparty coalitions. Like those elsewhere in Europe, some of these ultra-right parties are now being investigated for fraudulent use of EU funding for boat trips, restaurant meals and other personal expenses.Ironic that these same parties usually campaign on reducing money "wasted" on social security. As many of those made unemployed by exporting every manual job to China are now caught in a downward spiral into poverty and homelessness. Tents, which were once considered totally unfit for immigrants, may soon house the new Danish born homeless in "benign socialist" Denmark.

Meanwhile, back at the motorway: A lorry driver has come forward to suggest that two people were kneeling on the bridge at about the time of the motorway terrorist attacks. Despite 450 tip-offs from the public the police seem no nearer to finding the terrorist[s.] So now a 250,000 Danish Kroner or £30,000, $30,000US reward is being offered for information leading to the culprit[s] capture.

The massive concrete paving blocks used in the brutal murder were carried over 8 miles from a shopping mall building site, on the edge of Odense, to a very quiet, rural motorway bridge. This strongly suggests it was deliberate, premeditated  attack. Rather than brain dead vandalism using locally found materials. The bridge would be completely unknown to anybody not intimately familiar with this area. Or, who had not done some very careful research. The Danish Lorry drivers association has stumped up 50,000DKK equivalent towards the large reward. I can well imagine why with repeated copycat motorway terrorism by the equally brain dead.

The E20 motorway is the only route across Denmark [or Western Europe] leading to all the other Scandinavian countries and Eastern Europe. The only other motorway route is through Germany and runs right around the vast Baltic Sea through Poland and Russia. The planned Femern crossing from Germany to Danish, Southern Sjaelland is still quite some way off after endless delays. A tentative 2028 opening date is suggested.  But only with a following wind blowing through the record long, 18km, sunken, undersea tunnel.

How do you plan to ventilate a tunnel which will carry [supposed] electric vehicles in the future rather than the present diesel and petrol? Who knows what major technological or political changes will have occurred by 2028? Putin could be ruling Europe by then and it will be back to Lada, Skoda and Yugo hybrids burning cow dung and vodka. Still not well enough for a ride. Or anything else, for that matter.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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