Grumpy Old Man

I know this is going to come across as middle aged Grumpy Old Man, and is nothing really to do with Australia, but an event today is enouraging me to put pen to paper on my rants about Sat Navs. There are 3 things that really annoy me about these things:

1. People lose any kind of sense or context of where they are. You leave your house in the UK to see friends - wherever, somewhere, it doesn't really matter. 3 hours later: Tom, Emily, Sean, or for the terminally bored John Cleese, or Billy Connolly tell you you've arrived. Unfortunately if I showed you a map of the UK, you'd first say "where is that?", then have a complete inability to point on the map to where you are, or where you've come from.

2. Local knowledge/power is lost. If you're ever in a traffic jam, typically caused by an accident (and lets face it, in the South East of England this is a daily occurrence), you head off the main road for the secret rat run you know, and hey presto, 5 mins later than usual your at your destination, having whizzed over 2 bridges sneering down at the jam on the major road. Nowadays though, everyone types in "Find alternate route", and Tom/Emily/Billy sends everyone to your rat route, creating 2 jams instead of one, and getting you stuck in the process.

3. Finally, and along with a lack of alchohol, the trigger for this rant, the ability for anyone to become a taxi driver. You just roll up for a job in a new place/city, stick the Sat Nav in and you guessed it, Tom/Emily/Billy makes you an instant expert. Unfortunately today the cabbie had no Sat Nav! We gave him directions to a place 8k from where he picked us up, so its not like local knowledge is an issue. 2 minutes later he asks me which choice of 2 routes he should take. I think he is casing me for the extent of my knowledge, in case he wants to take us (on the meter) by the scenic route. However, it turned out to be much worse than that. We ended up driving miles past where we wanted, telling him then where to go, and closer to our ultimate destination having to give him turn by turn instructions. I've only lived in this part of the City for 4 weeks fer chrissakes! Luckily he heard my mutterings in the back and decided to stop the meter about 2/3 of the way through the trip.

Sorry about all this - I'm off for a drink.