If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now: Brexit tea towel says it'll just be the gigabit broadband The Register's very own "Got Brexit Done" tea towel finally arrived this week and brought with it important news for Blighty's hedge dwellers. We at El Reg love a tortured metaphor as much as the next Leading Global Online Tech Publication and having accidentally ordered a tea towel while researching a piece on Brexit …
Boris Johnson: buying "a share in the future of our country" ?
Much as though I support the idea of giving the FCO a good kicking, do bear in mind Craig Murray is not entirely unbiased. I still remember his completely dingbats conspiracy theory about the Skripal case based entirely on his complete failure to understand how the customs exit barriers at Gatwick Airport work. He may have started off with good intentions but he's shown definite indications of going full-on Shaylor recently.
I absolutely hate the loud hand driers (usually by Dyson) that are everywhere now. Sure they get the job done but at the expese of my current pease of mind and contentment, and my ongoing ability to hear things; in a small tiled bathroom it can be excessively.
Second to that are the ones that (much like the one mentioned in the article) wheeze frigid air so that the rate of drying is extended to the entire afternoon. The trousers have to provide backup.
I am happy to report that at my current workplace the hand dryer is actually perfect; warm, resonable volume and timed to perfection. Its the more tradtional style dryer with the push button and the rotating nozzle.
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May be there are some environmentally conscious (Tory) ladies who have a soft spot for Boris...
"
it's the handle on the door you ought to be worried about.
"
Not that the toilet door handle is likely to have any less or any worse germs than any other well-used door handle in the building. In fact it may well have far less because unlike the kitchen door handle (for example) most people will have washed their hands just before touching it.
Nope. The research (commissioned by a major paper towel manufacturer) showed that bacteria would form on the floor. The floor can be dealt with by daily mopping, while the research found that peoples hands were actually cleaner than when wiped with paper towels. That wasn't quite the result the paper towel folks were after, so they bigged up the "bacteria on the floor" bit.
"The research (commissioned by a major paper towel manufacturer) showed that bacteria would form on the floor"
Strange that hospitals have paper towels rather than driers then (at least for clinical staff).
Anyway, Dyson Blades blow upwards - so bacteria/viruses right into your face (exactly where you don't want them!).
There's research that Conclusively Proves (tm) that hand dryers are better, and there is also research that Conclusively Proves (tm) that paper towels are better.
I bet you'll *never* guess which research is commissioned by the dryer companies, and which research is commissioned by the paper towel companies...
it's surprisingly hard to find research in this area that isn't funded by either, but what there is tends to suggest that it barely matters because a) all public areas are pretty much aswim in Nefarious Little Things all the time yet we all get by surprisingly okay anyway, and b) the biggest problem with hand drying is not how you do it, but *whether* you do - it's much much worse to walk away with not-fully-dry hands, and that happens sufficiently often that it's a much bigger issue than the paper-towel-vs-dryer angle.
"I am happy to report that at my current workplace the hand dryer is actually perfect; warm, resonable volume and timed to perfection. Its the more tradtional style dryer with the push button and the rotating nozzle."
And only slightly less effective at distributing microbiota into the air. Use disposable paper towels instead.
Are they the same people that pump 20 squirts of soap onto their dry hands, rub for 2 secs and then wonder why it takes a gallon of water to wash the soap off? [1]
Perhaps they are also the same people that think underarm deodorant has to be used the way shown in adverts? Namely spray continuously for at least 30 seconds, holding the can as far away from your armpit as possible so that 90% misses and is wasted. Remember kids: if you get more than 3 sprays per can you're doing it wrong.
[1] [For the benefit of aliens new to Earth customs: always wet your tentacles first as then only one squirt of soap is required.]
Soap's a surfactant that emulsifies the oily icky stuff and disperses the lot in water: if you introduce water too soon the soap makes a beeline for it, the emulsion doesn't effectively form and some of the icky stuff is left behind (to be blasted off into the air if hand-dryers are involved).
I get that you're exaggerating with 20 soap squirts but your advice to wet hands first is unhelpful and directly contradicts what the World Health Organisation publishes on hand hygiene. If you mix some cooking oil and washing-up liquid in your kitchen sink, adding water both after and before, you'll see how soap works.
> your advice to wet hands first is unhelpful and directly contradicts what the World Health Organisation publishes on hand hygiene
Your WHO must be different to my WHO in that case! Please look at page 3 where it says to wet hands first then apply soap.
https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Hand_Hygiene_Why_How_and_When_Brochure.pdf
traditional dryers - slow, energy inefficient (and ergo dirt cheap to buy, hence why so many companies still have them and why maintenance companies on price work contracts install them as replacements, more profit gov) Time to dry properly - ~2 to 3 minutes
High speed air blade type dryer about 30 to 40 seconds and no need to rub your hands together. Better energy efficiency
Both are inferior though to paper towels, particularly in terms of leaving your hands clean rather than sprayed with bacteria that grow inside hand dryers generated from sucking in filthy air from the bathroom
Hence why the local hospital has no hand dryers and still has paper towels even in the public toilets on the concourse
Main reason folk put hand dryers in, isn't to save the planet (thats just an excuse) its because they are dirt cheap to buy, saves on cleaning costs (ever noticed how much dirtier toilets with hand dryers often are?) due to less need to empty bins of paper towels and no need to restock the paper towels.
High speed air blade type dryer about 30 to 40 seconds and no need to rub your hands together.
You must be using the AirBlade Mk10000 then.
No blade-style dryer whether by Dyson, Mitsubishi or anyone else I've ever tried to use dries my hands effectively before I've given up in frustration.
As discussed elsewhere here, the ones that are even halfway effective are unbelievably loud.
Because you can't rub your hands together you can't tell when/whether they are dry.
Rubbing one hand over the other when using a conventional hand dryer spreads the remaining water out and therefore increases the area over which evaporation is occurring, speeding up the process no end.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - James Dyson patented a quite good way of designing a vacuum cleaner back in the day by using an already well-known way of separating solids from fluids by centrifugal/centripetal forces. Everything since is sheer bull and ludicrously overpriced. (Two hundred & fifty quid for a desk fan? With Bluetooth? Digital motor? Quatsch!)
The people who buy consumer Dyson products buy them for the same reason they buy iPhone, Lacoste & Burberry - for the name.
Dyson commercial products are chosen for the same reason - to try to make the visitors to the site think that the company is affluent and "cutting edge".
The consumer stuff isn't even very well made - I've got acquaintances who've been through four of five Dyson vacuums over the period I've owned one Samsung that cost less than a hundred pounds and still works perfectly. Some of them even keep buying Dyson while bitching about how flimsy they are.
Go figure.
</rant>
which, frankly, look like a class of pre-schoolers were left alone with the crayons for a little too long
This activity is what takes place in Cabinet meetings these days, now that the yes-men are in place and Classic Dom is left to get on with his masterplan, free of oversight by Parliament or any other check or balance whose constitutional value an honourable Prime Minister would recognise.
Back when the web was young, and most people still didn't know what the Internet was, the web site for the British Trust for Ornithology used to get ~100 hits a day, but that suddenly leapt to a few thousand a day. It turned out a search engine (probably Alta Vista given the year) had just registered a new scholarly article on Great Tits, and the hopeful hordes had turned up and been mightily disappointed.
My house used to be the only one on the estate with a decent garden. (Especially after I'd done major excavation work to remove the debris left behind when it was built 20 years previously. The soil was in such a bad state when I moved in, it barely even grew dandelions.) Since that gave them a nice stopover point with bushes to hide in and worms and insects to eat, hedgehogs on their way across our estate tended to go via our garden. And occasionally they'd get frisky.
I can report that amorous hedgehogs do not need porn. More of an issue is that group sex is very much a thing for hedgehogs, and they are *noisy*.
It's those hand "dryers" that need to die a death. Bloody things. We have them in our bogs and they're akin to being coughed at by a moth with cystic fibrosis - when the damned things deign to turn on at all. All in the name of hygiene, which is to say your immune system never gets any bloody target practice.
Then they wonder why we keep getting diseases. Tossers and beigists, the lot of them.
That said, who remembers the old Initial towel machines? Guaranteed to need three pulls to get the bugger to move and the loop was just big enough for one fingernail...
Guaranteed to need three pulls to get the bugger to move
And when it did you only got the bit you were holding because the water on your hands had soaked into the towel and made it too soggy to pull out..
Mind you, I despise the handblowers as well. Need a proper conceirge service to provide proper towels and change them regularly.
>The person who wrote that now famous tweet was a remain campaigner, just so you know.
Really? @ColinBrowning44 describes himself as "One of the 17.4 #Brexiteer" on his twitter profile. Spend 5 minutes reading his tweets and then come back and tell us all whether you still think he was a remain campaigner. As an aside, he seems to have a massive downer on cyclists too. You can start with his tweets from 31st Jan;
Had you said that the queue Colin experienced was unrelated to Brexit then you'd have made a valid point, but to claim he was a remain campaigner is more than a little hard to believe. Unless, of course, you have some evidence you'd care to share...
@CliveS: "One of the 17.4 #Brexiteer"
After Mr Brown's hilariously uneducated tweet, the Gammon army were quick to describe his account as a 'parody' account, but I too went and read back through his tweets, and there wasn't a single hint of parody to be found anywhere,... the guy is a brexiter who likes football and despises cyclists, it's not funny, or entertaining in any way, and falls far short of 'parody'.
This won't be the brexit anyone voted for, if for no other reason than they're still trying to make it up as they go along. If you need a first rate model for not having a clue, you need to look no further than "government". The only thing they've excelled at since the Blair era is spin.
It's just a spring clean for the May Queen....
Though the May Queen, and any accompanying Jack-In-The-Green types, in many places, are mightily dischuffed that the traditional early May public holiday has been moved by BoJo/Cummings to celebrate VJ day... safely away from Labour day.... surely the reason for moving the holiday can't be related to the latter?
IT angle of this post? Nah - none really. Just an old IT guy showing off his slim knowledge of 70's prog rock and being grumpy about the not so random moving of a hoiliday.
moved by BoJo/Cummings to celebrate VJ day
This the yack a while back about a possible 'Trafalgar Day'.
Yeah, fully expect something like it to be broached again in the near future, probably now a Brexit Day anniversary.
Followed by a Hungarian type makeover of Education.
knowledge of 70's prog rock
Then you should know that Ian Anderson was insistent that the Jack in the Green was plural and should properly be called Jacks in the Green.
Mine's the one with the original version of "Bursting Out" in the pocket. You know - the one with the bit of toilet humour elided from the remastered version..
There was a very good Long Read article in The Grauniad a while ago about the battle between the towel industry and the hand dryer industry...each one putting out negative propaganda about the other. The hand dryer industry funds and publishes a study about the environmental impact of paper towels, and Big Towel puts out a press release about how Airblades are basically a machine for spraying germs around the washroom. It's really serious stuff.
Worth a read or, as I did, search it out on your podcast delivery mechanism of choice.
As I understand it:
On the plus side, Brexit Got Done™. So obviously we know all the answers to these questions, right?
@Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?
"As I understand it:"
Lets see if I can help some
"An end to free movement of people, whilst maintaining free movement of people"
And end of the promised land free movement and instead a points based system like some other countries.
"No border in the Irish Sea, while there is a border in the Irish Sea"
Still under negotiation it seems but basically the EU has no rights over anything on the subject. If they want to make a border in Ireland they have to do it their side unless Boris makes some agreement.
"It saving loads of money, while it costs loads of money"
The remainer argument is valid here- 'we are still in the EU'. So this is costs of still being in. However our leaving the EU is set to leave a £60bn hole in the EU's budget that they are struggling to fill.
"Being free of "unelected bureaucrats making all the decisions" while we currently have unelected bureaucrats making all the decisions (I'm looking at you, Mr Cummings)"
Actually valid to be free of a layer of unelected bureaucrats even if its only one layer of. Aka adding more politicians over politicians just makes more politicians.
"The easiest trade deal in history, while it is in fact probably the most complicated trade deal in history"
Something which seems to have got a lot simpler now leaving is on the table. The EU in a panic over standards, budget and the UK willing to walk away with no deal and gain the competitive advantages the EU fears.
Yes, many people still believe the way it is being spun. When none of that comes true, there's bound to be something or someone else to blame it on. Meanwhile either thousands of foreigners will be granted an exception to the points-based system, or we will have to import most of the food presently supplied by UK farms. Which admittedly would give us a lot of extra land to build houses on.
@Mark Dempster
"Or did you really think that the predictions made by actual experts were just 'project fear'?"
To be fair, while the official leave campaign spouted as much crap as the remain campaign, the 'predictions' from the 'experts' have been shown to be bunkum or misrepresentation. Hell one of those experts Carney was taken down a peg quickly by the expert King who held the job before him.
@Jamie Jones
"No, to be "fair", the leave campaign only spouted crap and bullshit"
When I first saw the official leave campaign my first assumption was a stitch up to look as stupid as possible so remain would win. Then I saw the remain campaign and realised they were both looking stupid.
"Most of the stuff brexitters called "Project Fear" has, or will come true."
Not quite. Remainers predicted 2 recessions (day of the vote, then when art50 is handed in). They predicted economic doom (we have full employment, wage growth, etc). The bits they got right were funny and the misrepresentation. Carney did his spiel on how bad the economy will be, except what he called doom was the aim of the bank of england and treasury since 2008 (king called him out on that). The project fear of airbus leaving has been u-turned, nissan also not looking as certain to leave as claimed. Basically the project fear was as such and shown to be hollow threats and lies.
I dont defend the official leave campaign, both sides were shameful.
"we have full employment, wage growth, etc"
That would be questionable - "full employment" is largely due to a significant number in precarious employment (zero hours or short fixed-term contracts), and "wage growth" is either small or sector-specific (e.g. higher education is significantly below CPI). However, I wouldn't say that either of these maladies were necessarily brexit-related, as they largely existed before the vote too.
@AC
"That would be questionable - "full employment" is largely due to a significant number in precarious employment"
Thats fine, but then your questioning the official methodology used in the developed world.
"and "wage growth" is either small or sector-specific"
Sector specific or not it is still wage growth which is all I am inferring from it.
"However, I wouldn't say that either of these maladies were necessarily brexit-related, as they largely existed before the vote too."
Which decimates a lot of the project fear. This wasnt to show the amazing greatness brexit provided (at least the vote to leave as we aint gone yet) but it destroys the project fear considerably as it goes against their predictions.
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"Got brexit done"?
Did I miss the negotiations? Maybe I was mistaken that the UK is following EU rules until the end of the year.
When everything goes to shit next year, Boris is hoping we'll forget brexit as the cause...
"Got brexit done"? Naaah, it's only just starting.
Is the UK doomed to argue for the next 20 years over 'Brexit' ?
How long can you keep calling people Remainers or Brexiteers ?
Is the real intent to make the UK as bad as possible for as many as possible, hoping that somehow we will go back to the EU and all will be fixed ?
If the people are so split now and, seemingly resolved to *never* get over the result of the referendum, then the UK is dead even if we went back to the EU tomorrow !!!
This constant bickering only benefits all our competitors and damages the UK for no gain.
Is 'winning' so important that destoying the country is worth it !!!
My parents lived through WWII and like many others suffered real hardship but the UK's people worked together for the country and their families.
Would all those people be proud of what we have become ...... Petty, spiteful, vindictive and selfish beyond measure ?
It would appear we have the Govt we deserve and over the next 5 years we can each choose to *try* to make things worse or better.
Which side are you on ?
P.S. I hope your emergency 'Backout Plan' works !!! :)
The French had a revolution, the USA had a civil war, Germany had to recover from the evil political mindset that took it over in the 1930s, and so on, and so on. Now, perhaps, it's the UK's turn to have to shake out the unpleasantness in its population.
None of these things were resolved overnight. The important thing is that, in the end, the right side eventually won.
Brexit is an unbelievably foolish act of self destruction, and we will continue to fight against it, precisely because we know that our country is better and stronger when acting in cooperation and friendship with our neighbours, rather than as a pathetic and now insignificant isolationist pariah.
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