Love the accompanying map image... "Bell End"
ROFL
Britain's Ordnance Survey is beginning to provide businesses with real-time information for the first time – almost. A partnership with Intel's Mobileye autonomous driving unit will provide information on roadside infrastructure such as manhole covers and markings. Utilities are intended to be a primary customer. They should …
Potentially they can use this data to identify and prioritize fixing of potholes
IME it is rarely lack of knowledge that stops councils fixing potholes, it is allocation of resources and will power. Luckily my county council is rather good in this respect, but I've done enough driving to know that some county councils really couldn't give a toss (a big shout out to Oxfordshire CC here, as one serial offender).
rather than sprinkle "autonomous mapping" shit all over them.
I guess I'm a weirdo.
Well, sounds like O.S. have their shit together - The local councils don't seem to
Perhaps you should start a campaign for the O.S. to take over managing Road Works for the entire country....
Such a vastly inflated organisation would invariably become a fat quango struggling to cope with the overload in no time - i.e. almost a true Government Department.
Such a vastly inflated organisation would invariably become a fat quango struggling to cope with the overload in no time - i.e. almost a true Government Department.
Already been done for trunk roads, which are managed by Highways England (and yes, they are a fat quango struggling to cope...).
As it's the Ordnance Survey, presumably it still has some military function which has kept it in public ownership? There is an invisible line which defines what can be sold off and what must be retained in public ownership, but it doesn't seem logical. I'm sure that there are many military functions which would attract foreign interest, even if it was only for sponsorship. I've always thought that the 'Hitachi Grenadier Guards' would look well outside Buckingham Palace, for instance, and why are we still naming Navy ships traditionally instead of utilising those big grey expanses for advertising - a big horizontal Pepsi bottle would be almost as good as dazzle camouflage, and would bring in the sort of steady, reliable income so sadly lacking in the military tradition.
sponsored by BowWows, the Corgi's choice
Don't you mean BowWows, by Royal Appointment
You don't see those added to labelling anymore? Aren't Hello magazine doing their job of finding out which pile cream elderly member of the R.F. are using to combat the effects of too many photo-ops next to cold stone walls in kilts...? (that's the people in kilts, not the stone walls - although with some of them, it's hard to tell the difference I know).
You mean the Galileo project that we're no longer part of because it's run by those beastly Europeans.
Back to the subject - according to Wiki (so it must be true etc) "part of Ordnance Survey has operated as Ordnance Survey Ltd since 2015"... it begs the question which part has been ring-fenced as its own legal entity and for what purpose? Maybe the team that has the worlds biggest collection of coloured pencils for all that shading work.
Also the Met Office was until recently MoD-'owned' but now an "Executive Agency" (such a lovely term) and a Trading Fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Even our war-fighters need to know whether to bring an umbrella to the battlefield.
I'm very disappointed in you all.
The picture element accompanying this story that focuses on "Bell End" is clearly an invitation by the author for us to use the comments section in a highly futile, pathetic and childish manner to highlight other British place names with rude connotations to them.
Cocking for example, which is in West Sussex.
Oh, you've done it now!
Let's avoid the obvious ones, like Scunthorpe and Penistone, shall we? Oh, too late...
Cockermouth, Cumbria
Ecclefechan, Dumfries and Galloway
Lickey End, Worcestershire
Little Snoring, Norfolk
Lower Assendon, Oxfordshire
Lower Dicker, East Sussex
Upper Boddam, Aberdeenshire
Shall I go on?
Manhole covers?
Or bollards, apparently. I taught my two young nephews that word and had them say it every time we came across one while walking the national mall in DC. It drove their parents up the wall but kept the kids happy. They're never too young to be taught basic principles of security.