please tell me wales has not got the rally "GB" for the next ten years !...... we are made to pay the dearest entrance fees as speccies than the rest of the world,we get ripped off by so called caterer's....£4.50 for a cheese burger!!!(obviously sanctioned by the forestry comission)or was it by the the welsh tourist board,because if it was i did'nt see it in the "lets sell wales to the world on the back of the rally GB" programme!!!.please dont get me wrong the rally itself was great,the marshal's were great,even the bus service to the super special was great!,but then lurking in the shadows were the boy's in blue(our protector's)(and paid by our taxes)who go out of their way to trap people and take money off them and they did'nt even have the sense to wear mask's whilst committing highway robbery.BRING THE RALLY TO WALES AND WE WILL STUFF YOU UP THE JACKSIE AND MAKE A LAUGHING STOCK OUT OF YOUR GREAT SPORT AND GREATEST DRIVERS BY DRAGGING THEM THROUGH THE COURTS IN FRONT OF THE WATCHING WORLD !!!!. the most sophisticated vehicles on earth driven by the best drivers on earth and they pull them !(and people make jokes about the irish). it's a pity they dont have prizes for the most copper's seen drinking tea outside someone's house while car's are being broken into half a mile away !!.... NICE ONE WALES,LETS SHOW THE WORLD HOW WE CAN RUN A RALLY !!!!!!!

What a load of crap...do you really think it would be any different any where else in the british isles??
The country as a whole is a rip off !! The good old days of a cheap weekend watching the rally are long gone no matter where you are,so you might as well get used to it and stop attacking the welsh as we're in the same boat as you only we live closer.

2 points.....

1 Food prices are set by the organisers to keep everything the same price.... a normal cheese burger would not have cost £4.50 - a half pounder and chips may well have been which is a fair price I think!!

2 Why should the drivers be exempt from the same laws as everyone else? Any driver that gets caught speeding should be treated the same as you and me. Loix for example got caught 7 times by the same camera on the same day hence his fine and ban.


It really is time people realised that the Rally GB is absolutely no different to any other rally in it's set up and that because of the FIA rules it won't move from wales the same as all the other events that run the same route every year.

it was £4.50 for a half pounder,NO chips and not much beef(unless you count cows eyelids and lips).... just glad i did'nt have lamb!!and its two of you now who have said "thats the way it is"and to get used to it! you are either coppers or caterer's. then again you could be spineless fools who will take any crap thrown at you whilst the great tradition of rallying goes to ****... like i said...NICE ONE!!!

I take it you won't be coming next year then :)

NO,Sweden Spain and Roger clarke rally next year ! Rally GB is being strangled to death as we watch and the profiteering vultures are pecking its eyes out before its even dead, how can anyone condone what the police did and possibly jeopardise Rally GB in the proccess!.... PATHETIC.

OK if a half pounder was £4.50 then so be it - you have the choice to either buy one or walk past no big deal.

You have got to accept that the rally will remain where it is - fia rulings state that no more than 20% or the route can change from year to year so try working out how long it would take to get it to scotland.... I doubt it is even possible.

If you think it's not worth going to then fair enough, you are entitled to your own opinion, go watch other events and quit wasting time crying over something you have no control over.

BTW I'm a fan, not a copper or caterer, who enjoyed a very well organised event.

And what was it the police did exactly that would jepodise the rally????

read the report.
www.worldrallynews.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid 1068557262,89936,

OK, read the report and ask again what the police have done to jepodise the rally????

Is it not the drivers fault then?? If none of them had been caught then none of this would be an issue. Drivers caught repeatedly (Loix)at 50mph+ in a 30 limit should be punished accordingly which is exactly what has happened. The fact it was a 30 limit in the first place means it was probably a built up area - no excuses at all.

Nice pionts about the food and speeding.

Having said that I have been to Monte Carlo and Spains rally this year, and let me assure you that the cheese burgers did NOT cost £4:50, and seeing as I bought a few, I would not say that they are regulated.

Second thing we went to both service parks at both the afore mentioned rallies and they cost NOTHING at all. So why do the British ones cost anything? Any one know? Thought not!!!!!!

The police in those 2 countries did alot to help the rally. They organised traffic to help the drivers and spectators cars move as smooth as possible, in Spain the police were also on the stages to help the marshalls so no stage got cancelled. But guess what, they did not have speed cameras trying to skim of the spectators money. This is not to say I don't like the police, I just wish they knew how to do more than try and put everyone of the roads with speeding fines.

Anyway it is Sweden for me next year,car hire,hotel, any stage we wish,and a week there too, and all for the price you pay to go to the british rally for 3 days. See ya later.

I'm normally with you map-man but feel a couple of things need to be said:
Is it not the drivers fault then??
In between the stage exit and the speed cameras, there were no speed limit signs. The camera was sited in such a way that the cars would be lasered before entering Abergarwed. If you'd driven down from the previous village you'd know you were in a 30 limit thanks to the signs further up the road. If you'd driven out of the forest however, you wouldn't have. As it was a single carriageway outside a built-up area, many could have been forgiven for thinking that the area they were driving in was in fact a 60mph limit (as indeed it was until a couple of years ago). The only time you'd have wondered otherwise would have been when you saw the national speed limit sign at the exit of the village...

If none of them had been caught then none of this would be an issue.
If the camera hadn't deliberately been set up to trap them it wouldn't have been an issue. If the drivers had been pulled over and cautioned at the time of their first offence, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as much of an issue.

Drivers caught repeatedly (Loix)at 50mph+ in a 30 limit should be punished accordingly which is exactly what has happened.
If Loix was considered to be a danger, why was he permitted to do this [/b] seven [/b] times? If this was any other sort of crime the officer who witnessed it would be castigated for dereliction of duty.

The fact it was a 30 limit in the first place means it was probably a built up area
The speed camera was sited at the entrance to a built-up area, and the cars were actually caught on the exit of a blind corner a good 300m further away. It's eminently possible that they could have slowed down as they actually entered the village and driven through at much more moderate speeds.

- no excuses at all.
In the light of the facts (of which I hope you are now in slightly better possession), that judgement is simplistic to the point of being unfair.

[Edited by greasemonkey - 11/11/2003 5:32:14 PM]

Fully appreciate your comments but with regards to not knowing the speed limit, this would not be the case even if there was no limit signs passed as limits are in the competitors road book. As an example look at... http://www.walesrallygb.com/downloads/files/rgb/Bulletin%202%20complete.pdf
... which is the revised roadbook section for this years shakedown.

Loix not being stopped is probably a result of proceedure, I doubt the police officer manning the camera would be writing all the registrations and there would be several cars that look the same so it's possible that it was only noticed once the camera film was viewed. I'm also sure that if any of the drivers were a real danger then they would have been stopped, I've driven down that road myself and I wouldn't necessarily consider 50-60mph dangerous in a normal road car between the villages but it is above the limit and that really is the only important fact any court will act on. Also, have you ever been in a rally car on gravel tyres on tarmac?? believe me they offer next to no grip at all and should you need to stop quickly to avoid anything, it won't happen!

This is a very contentious issue and everyone will see it differently but for me they broke the limit, knowingly or not, were caught and have been dealt with in the correct manor.

Fully appreciate your comments but with regards to not knowing the speed limit, this would not be the case even if there was no limit signs passed as limits are in the competitors road book.

The route for last year's shakedown (and indeed this year's original one) were in Rally Guide 2, not the proper roadbooks, and thus it's likely that the crews would have been relying on the maps.

Even if they had the roadbooks, as this year's amended shakedown tulips show, there's no notification of the prevailing speed limit upon rejoining the public road at the end of the stage (which was the start of the shakedown last year). There's also the fact that as the shakedown route was the same as on the 2001 event, most of the drivers would already have known the road section and thus the co-drivers wouldn't necessarily have had either map or tulips out.

As an example look at...
I know what a roadbook looks like. ;)

Loix not being stopped is probably a result of proceedure,
There is no excuse for them not stopping him. All they'd have needed was a car placed a few hundred yards further down the road linked by a radio to the camera operator. It's not rocket science.

I doubt the police officer manning the camera would be writing all the registrations and there would be several cars that look the same so it's possible that it was only noticed once the camera film was viewed.
The camera operator doesn't write down the registrations at all, their only job is to point the camera at the car.

The camera displays a real-time reading of the tracked car's speed. Even if the operator couldn't see the registration number, all that would be necessary was for them to radio down to a colleague and ask them to pull the "white, blue and red car in front of the black Mondeo", or whatever it may be.

I'm also sure that if any of the drivers were a real danger then they would have been stopped,
The magistrate claimed they were a real danger in his summing-up yesterday.

Also, have you ever been in a rally car on gravel tyres on tarmac??
Yes. Several thousand miles over the last couple of years, never got the feeling I'm skating on ice. Have you?

believe me they offer next to no grip at all and should you need to stop quickly to avoid anything, it won't happen!
Rubbish, they're nowhere near that bad. It's not like the drivers were pussyfooting through Dixie's and the Leaps on Saturday, was it, or indeed the various bits of tar dotted around Margam and Rheola.

Gravel tyres aren't that different different from normal treaded road tyres on tar. If the grip was as bad as you're making out, the police would insist on the fitting of tar tyres for road sections. They don't, end of discussion.

[Edited by greasemonkey - 11/11/2003 7:33:58 PM]

Well I am of the opinion that the police in this country really could put a little more effort into other forms of crime instead of treating the motorist as the biggest criminal. Perhaps we are but I would feel better if I new that when my car / house gets broken into they stand a chance of catching the little bugger instead of just taking the details then when you leave the station get the camera out and go and make a few ££££££ for the pay for the time you have just used of their's. Where I live the only time i see a copper is either in a camera van or some form of traffic monitoring or in the local takeaways, what happened to coppers on the street reducing crime.

The only thing they seem realy good is working out the best place to put a camera where they know they can get loads of people/money.

Lets hope the police don't spoil it for the rally GB as it brings in Thousands for tourism in wales.

I have to agree with you all the way greasemonkey..........& to put it bluntly the way the police operate in this country

STINKS!!!!!!

So how much longer will it be before ALL our police turn into the American style doughnut eating lard ass wanna be traffic police?

Why was it that as soon as we crossed the severn bridge, there were coppers in speed vans monitoring the M4??

All the way from London, we hadnt seen any speed cameras on the motorway.

Welsh police have a serious problem with motorists, maybe its because they see the car as a threat to their backward way of life??

So I guess you havn`t heard about the Welsh Police Forces little fetish with cameras then Dan?

By the way.....I forgot what the best thing to come out of Wales is........aahhhhh now I remember,

" it`s the M4 "

have to say on the a40 into wales as you go down the dip past the dragon and into wales not more than 150m saw my first mobile camera of the trip then they were everywhere

{quote}
In between the stage exit and the speed cameras, there were no speed limit signs. The camera was sited in such a way that the cars would be lasered before entering Abergarwed. If you'd driven down from the previous village you'd know you were in a 30 limit thanks to the signs further up the road. If you'd driven out of the forest however, you wouldn't have. As it was a single carriageway outside a built-up area, many could have been forgiven for thinking that the area they were driving in was in fact a 60mph limit (as indeed it was until a couple of years ago). The only time you'd have wondered otherwise would have been when you saw the national speed limit sign at the exit of the village...

{/quote}

whichever way you approach abergarwed you would notice the 30 mph signs (and i know cos i live barely 5 miles up the road)

that particualr stretch of road has never ever been a 60mph limit, it is on the stretch further up and further down but NEVER in abergarwed or between abergarwed and resolven!

where the camera was situated is visible from both up and down the carriageway, and this isnt even relevant as if they hadnt been speeding then they wouldnt have been caught!

as for the police not helping traffic then why were they holding the traffic lights on green in glynneath to let the people coming down from walters arena join onto the a465 without a lot of stop starting!

it seems to me that because some people have predjudiced views they are jumping on the bandwagon of slaggging off Wales as host without looking at its good points!

and as for the welsh being backward! hahaha

maybe your being backward cos u think things would be any different in any other part of the country!