Scare Traffic Control

Pilots over the north of the UK must have been scared witless as they made their final approach, only for the instructions of air traffic control to be replaced with the sales patter of an Ulster used car dealer.

Such was the panic on the flight decks, as wind speed and heading instructions were replaced with wheeler dealing over a number of weeks, that a full scale hunt for the culprit was put in place.

A spy plane and detector van pinpointed the unwelcome interference to a car yard in Ballymena. The unsuspecting tradesman was completely unaware of the havoc he had wreaked, all caused by an illegally imported cordless phone with a range of 10 miles, which had inadvertently been set to the Air Traffic Control frequency!

More from the Mirror and the Register.

Un-Pimp my ride.

Have you had enough of Xzibit and Westwood?

Well apparently, so have VW, as these great ads from the USA demonstrate.

Mini Mania

Check out the HIC Mini Squidoo, which contains tons of info and links related to the original small car, and still everybody's favourite, the BMC / Austin / Morris / Rover Mini.

Drunk Driver: "Have you seen my snake?"

An Aussie drunk driver managed to escape the police by threatening them with a live snake.

Check out the full story here.

Hit in the Bollards

Councils across the land are installing rising bollards in an attempt to keep motorists away from routes they're not supposed to use. You would think placing a solid obstacle in way of the forbidden route would be more effective than just signs.

Clearly the designers reckoned without the British public.

I feel a claim or two coming on.

Slow Dane

This video, believe it or not, is an official Danish government "Kill your speed" style ad campaign.

Please do not watch this clip if some mild nudity is likely to cause offence. (I did say they were Danish, didn't I?)

Wam in the papers.

Wam's awesome victory in the table football has made it into the local papers. Check out the full story in the Lynn News, as well as the Eastern Daily Press.

Just a reminder, if you missed the lunchtime bulletin, this story is on tonight's Look East at 6.30 on BBC1, or Sky channel 981 if you live outside East Anglia.

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Stop Press,

you can view the current edition of Look East online from the BBC East site

The Flux segment begins at around 6m40s

Speed is of the Essence

Everyone seems to be obsessed with speed just at the moment!

First there was the news all over the papers about the "points sharing scams" featuring some of the ludicrous lengths people will go to to avoid extra points or a ban.

A chap in Manchester is now doing time after inventing a fictitious South African driver, and another got an £11,000 fine after pretending to be a fictitious Bulgarian and going so far as to fly to Bulgaria and post a letter back to the authorities.

Much of this kind of behaviour arises through the prospect of a driving ban as well as rocketing prices for insurance after just a few speeding convictions. The government does seem to recognise that the current plethora of highly accurate speed measurement cameras on our roads is causing drivers to lose their licenses over fairly marginal breaches of the limit, as they are now in the process of introducing a much more flexible system of graduated speeding penalties.

With many companies, though your insurance premium is still likely to rocket if you have a couple of motoring convictions, but we take a much more understanding approach. See how much you could save with our car insurance for drivers with speeding convictions.

Meanwhile Frank Bruno has picked up his third SP30.

Set your videos! Flux vs HIC on the BBC

Much excitement yesterday as the BBC turned up to film the grudge match of the football season so far. As King's Lynn FC are set to travel to Bishops Stortford on Saturday for a crucial FA Cup First Round match.



In anticipation of this, an even more crucial footballing tie was arranged, between Steve Yardley, "Wam", of Flux (based in Lynn) and Paul Challis of Stortford based HIC, the company Adrian Flux bought last year. Wam and Challis are both massive fans of their respective hometown clubs, and so the stage was set for a sporting fixture with more bite than Jermaine Defoe and Mike Tyson put together.

This was Extreme Table Football



HIC boss, Andy Morton, and Flux's own PDA joined the fray and the stakes were high, both companies backed their respective champions by putting up £500 - the winners football team would win £1,000 in crisp folding money. Even the BBC turned up with floodlights.

A crowd gathered in one of the new Rec Rooms. The tension was palpable as the match kicked off. Despite a promising early 3-0 lead, the Flux team went in at the half-time break trailing 5-3.

The massive home support started to count though, aided by a cocky and overconfident half time interview from Andy, and Wam and PDA stormed into an 8-5 lead after the break. Chalmers and Morton managed to pull it back to 8-7, but Wam put the winner into the back of the net, and the packed room erupted, as the assembled Linnets fans anticipated a similar result on Saturday.



PDA's victory celebrations made Alan Pardew's verbal assault on Arsene Wenger sound weedier than Pee Wee Herman, and an intervention from the TFA seems likely.



All that remained was for the KLFC representative to be presented with the cash, and for Wam & PDA to receive the trophy from Look East's roving reporter, "World Cup Mike" Liggins.



The whole thing will be covered on BBC Look East at 6:30 on Friday (tomorrow), as part of the build up to the Bishops Stortford vs Kings Lynn clash. Anyone outside East Anglia who wants to see it can watch BBC East on Sky Channel 981.

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Wam's classic quotes of the day:

Mike Liggins (BBC):

So, Wam, what does £1,000 mean to a club like King's Lynn.

Wam:

Maybe they could buy a few players.

Mike Liggins:

Will you be at the match on Saturday.

Wam:

Yes I'm taking the train. It's at 8:56.

Naked Girls? Rally Cars? I make that the perfect stocking filler.

Check out the Gravel Girls website, where you can buy the must have Christmas gift that will just keep on giving - a 12 month calendar featuring naked rally girls.

But these aren't the typical pit lane glamour girls you see at most motorsports events.

No, these girls are actually genuine rally drivers and navigators, so they not only look good in the buff, they can also change a flat tyre in under three minutes - what more could you wish for in a woman!

Joking aside, these girls are raising money for a great cause, the Wales Air Ambulance charity. They were spurred to action after Nicola Parker, a young female driver, was involved in a horror smash and decided to raise some cash to help her rescuers.



You can order your copy on their site.

Modsters Squidoo

Adrian Flux has just done a new squidoo lens on modified cars. You can check it out at http://www.squidoo.com/modsters

Slotcar Havoc

Mazda have posted this cool ad for their Speed 3 model onto Youtube.

Enjoy.

Casino Royale DBS, DB5 & Ford Bondeo

Way back in June we blogged about James Bond's new Aston Martin DBS and how they'd destroyed 3 of these awesome cars. Well now you can see how that stunt turned out, because it's featured in the trailer which you can get from the Casino Royale site.

Not only that, but you can find out how very difficult it actually is to roll an Aston Martin, by reading the film's blog.

That's not the only car Bond drives in the new movie though, he also has a gorgeous Aston DB5, and, somewhat more attainably, he drives around in a new Ford Mondeo, which had to be built by hand as it's not in production yet. Ford paid 14m for that bit of product placement.



The film is released on November 17th.