Posts by Mark Ruit 53 publicly visible posts • joined 2 May 2008
Our current house was designed for us by someone emphatically self-desribed as "not an Architect".
Thirteen years later, from time-to-time we reflect on just how well it works for us - usually just after we have visited somene else and seen how their house doesn't work for them (and wouldn' work for us either...).
To be fair to the proponents of HS2, the banging on about speed rather than capacity was mostly ignorant politicians or ignorant journalists. It was not HS2, who did try to get the capacity message across. But speed is sexy!!! and capacity is boooooring. Sexy sells, boring doesn't.
Even some journos speciailising in transport were guilty of it - but they may have been victims of Edotorial policy. I do recall a couple of them as lone voices in the wilderness.
In my lifetime, the meter replacement cycle was based on the length of time the calibration was valid. You can look that up here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/schedule-4-uk-nationally-approved-electricity-meters. For most models of analogue (rotating) meters it is no longer than 10 years. In my experience (50+ years of home ownership) the consequent replacement cycle was more observed 'in the breach' than compliant. When it happened, like as not a refurbed meter would be installed, IIRC new meters went into new houses. - we never had a replacement that was new-out-of-the-box. I am told that the 'policy' (whose I do not know) is that analogue meters are no longer being refurbed (could be just not enough business?). Since Crapita is involved I don't care to look into the ethics of that situation.
Likely you will be told that you cannot have a replacement analogue meter because 'none are available'. That's sort-of-true (but that truth is absolutely contrived, IMHO): but you may find that, if you fight your corner hard enough you can. But don't then try chasing a different Tariff...
Your should worry. The LV cable supplying half the houses in our street runs under our garden (we are at the closed end of a cul-de-sac). And the cable dates from 1937, now over 85 years old.
When originally installed, it supplied the whole road. And if/when 'our' part of it fails, the current view of such easements should mean that the feeder for the other half of the street takes over. Temporarily that is a simple matter of inserting two fuses, but ultimately that transformer and the cable serving that half of the street (also 1937 unsurprisingly) would need uprating/replacing.
For reasons too complex to go into, we investigated that possibility a few years ago and were quoted £40k for the wiring part – which is loose change for the DNO. Additionally they would also save by no longer replacing the now-failing original junctions to the individual properties. Those are steel-cased and pitch-filled, and are now prone to water ingress. Each replacement is currently carried out at emergency-work rates, of course.
The transformer itself will be time-expired (oil-cooled with currently-grandfathered fire-suppressant) within the next few years. That serving our half of the street has already been replaced (pointlessly IMHO) already!
Curious.
I am on Variable Direct Debit for both* Gas and Electricity, so I pay each time for what I have actually used. Is that option not available to you?
When 'monthly-fixed' was introduced (IIRC that's at least 15 years ago), I elected to stay on 'quarterly-variable'. My very first thought at that time was that it was a system absolutely made for the suppliers "more-efficient-than-the-public-sector-private-companies" to arrange for a chunk of their borrowing to be provided at zero-interest by their customers,. If took a very long time (not until 2022) for the powers-that-be to get a grip on that: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-bill-direct-debits-letter-to-domestic-suppliers
*Separate providers: monthly (changed from quarterly voluntarily) for Electricity. Still quarterly for Gas: monthly-variable allegedly available, but in practice not so easy (so too much effort). My quarters split the heavy-on-heating months quite well.
"Perhaps just the ones the US use, given that's where most of these meter designs actually come from..."
It is more likely that the designs come from Europe: L&G is a Swiss company (with wholly-owned subsidiaries in Europe (covering EMEA), the US, and Australia (covering Asia-Pacific) with manufacturing in India. Possibly (likely) elsewhere as well: I haven't checked. I would not be surprised if some assembly (at least) is not also done in Switzerland.
L&G have at least four of the major electrical 'retailers' in the UK sewn up. It's those who specify the meters, irrespective of who actually installs them: so their 'one-size-fits-all' is what you get here in the UK
It doesn't help that the meter itself (L&G seems to have a (near?) monopoly here: M&MC please investigate) is has crap affordance.The faiure rate (to be fair not usually L&G, but the comms package, or the back-end) is ridiculously high https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9zqn77ezno , forcing customers to submit their own readings. I cannot read my meter without using a torch, even in high summer, because the the display contrast is very low and the actual 7-segment digits are made of lines less than the thickness of a razor-blade.
The meter is in a bog-standard exterior cabinet, so the display is a bit shaded, but that is the enclosure for which it should have been designed. And because there is a light-coloured wall opposite it there is actually more light in the cabinet, and less lighring contrast with the area outside the cabinet than usual; both of whichare making the display more visible.
There is a backlight for the display, but it's on a multi-function button. When I turn on said backlight, I have to step through vaious readings - and often the actual reading (units consumed since installation aka "the meter reading") is not actually shown.
My Chrome-only website problem is not so much the usual run of commercial or media websites, since most of those I can do without. "If your pages won't work in my browser of choice, then I have no interest in your offering thankyouverymuch (and goodbye)".
I am faced daily with the websites of two different Banks which are 'difficult' with Firefox: things like having to log-in twice, or problems with printing or downloading (eg statements, tranaction details).
Even worse is a SaaS which I am constrained to use for my (voluntary) work, which essentially will not work at all due to scripts which do not respond. Yes I can by-pass those, but only after a fixed delay. Everyy one of them costs me waiting time, when I could be productive.
On the basis that the current UK Monarch is designated "King Charles the Third", my set of ordinals (YMMV) indicates that the only other odd-numbered Caroline was "King Charles" [1].
Whence cometh the plural in "odd ordinal english Carolines ", please? Are you including the current King [2]?
[1] Contemporary documents show that during his reign he was referred to by that moniker: ie with no ordinal. A "non-ordinal Caroline" if you will; so not in the set at all?
[2] At age 75 the current Monarch has significantly exceeded the average life-span of a 'UK Male born in 1948' (currently a bit less than 67 [3] years according to DNS).
[3] As not all of the set of 'UK Males born in 1948' have died yet (obvs), that average is still increasing, albeit marginally. But simple arithmetic shows that Charles III will exceed the average, whenever he goes...
"It's trivial. Don't use broadcast TV or iPlayer."
This.
It is what we have done for some sixty years, fifty of them at the same address.
The only drawback is the monthly threat-o-gram from TV Licencing (TVL) telling reminding me that I need a licence to ‘watch television’ (my approximation).
I know that I cannot expect their algorithms to realise that I am both aware of the law and of the fact that I am not breaking it. But said algorithms either ignore the fact that I have been (apparently) "getting away with it" for fifty years: or they don’t “do” history.
Completing their ‘No licence required’ declaration requires giving them personal information, which under GDPR they have to legal cause to hold, and in any case would only shut them up for one year – my privacy is worth more than that short relief. (The operators of TVL aren’t referred to around here as “Crapita” without cause...)
For all those years our entertainment has come and does come from (legal) audio recordings, or from 'live' (generally streamed these days, so in reality slightly delayed) radio. If I want to watch a film, I go to the cinema.
Alternatively, I read. Real print on paper.
In the UK,all electricity meters used for determining consumption charges require certification: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/electricity-meter-certification
The certification is time limited. The list of certifucation periods is here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/schedule-4-uk-nationally-approved-electricity-meters.
Although some meters have certification lives of 25 years you can see that the majoriy are only 10 years: and the liklihood is that any domestic meter fitted 10 years ago is actually out of, or about to go out of certification. Although suppliers' records for earlier fitting are dire, they are catching up, and I only know of one meter well over its certification.
It used to be that meters (the old rotating-disc ones) were refurbished and re-certified. But not these days: it is an excuse to fit a smart meter.
Then you have five years more, at best. The certification on an electicity meters run out after 10 years maximum (a few are shorter), and the supply compny is required by law to replace an out-of-certification meter with a freshsly-certified one. And my supllier's position was "We don't have any dumb meters, no-one is making them any more, nor are the ones we take out being re-certified because no-one is interested in doing that.". Clearly at least to some degree a porky, but it lft me unable to argue.
Up until then I relied on a Geo to check my 'usage now' rate, and a daily read of the supplier's meter to track my overall usage. (The latter initially showed that the Geo (cable-clamp version) was originally way off and had to be adjusted, but at least that facility was there.)
The actual history of this (in the UK is all I know) was that too may MCBs (of whatever function) were total crap. Too much history of overheating and so being the cause of the fires. Banning the brands concerned (by country of origin) would have been seen as a restraint of trade...
This old git has not only seen Strowger "in the field", but stood there in the room watching it do its stuff. Not to mention watching a Post Office (sic) engineer working on one section and explaining to me the clever tricks which routed the call to an Operator when "0" was dialled or to an Emengey Opertor when "999" was dialled. In those days,any call outside a local area had to be manually routed. (Some of the "local"areas - like the London Director Service) were quite large, but ours was something betwen 10 miles ant the closest and 17 miles at most, IRC.)
But then I am also (just) old enough to rember being in a house where the phone had no dial and all the local connection/routing was done by a human operator in a back room at the local Post Office...
"I've noticed that many of the more reputable websites, on clicking the "customise" option, show essential cookies on (can't change that) and ALL other cookie options default to off."
The goody-two-shoes company John Lewis & Partners is one site which does not act that way. All cookies are on by default. As a result the site has gone from being almost the first place I look for items, to being the last.
Many years ago I worked allegedly standard hours as a support technician for a group which provided 24/7 gatekeeper service to manufacturing. I used to get called in fairly regularly but the group manager denied both payment or TOIL and and even refused recompense of my telephone rental (this was long before mobile telephony). The same manager never took an outside call to my knowledge, but his rental was paid.
Then I moved house, from ~2 miles from the factory to ~25 miles (and we sold our car as part of the financing). I spun the tale (credible in those days) that there was an issue which prevented me taking over the phone contract,. The inevitable crash took about three weeks: the group's set-up (not IT) went out of spec, test results were meaningless, and production shut down on the Saturday night.
Monday morning was interesting. I came out of it with an agreement for time-and-half payment (not TOIL) for call-ins on weekdays and double-time for Sundays (always including travel time), coverage of taxi fares both ways, and my phone rental fully paid. And the boss was moved-on about a year later.
The extra money did help us get on top of our new mortgage a bit quicker...
"As you say, regulations must be passed into domestic law."
WRONG. Regulations are directly acting on Member States, as those in my own industry know well (and relish because they provide certainty, and by preventing the sort of local differences that can add prohibitive costs to doing business in countries that use that technique to favour home suppliers).
'Directives' do have to be transposed into National Law.
For the hard of thinking the clue is in the name.
Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 2257/94 makes it absolutely clear:
"This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States."
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31994R2257:EN:HTML
What sort of economist doesn't know that distinction?
I used to like Worstall's pieces - he was particularly perceptive on the true effect of economic forces in the Rare Earths market (and I still believe his thinking there to have been accurate). But I gave up when I started seeing the the sort of alternative truth implied here..
Fermacell is brilliant. You can screw straight into it as if it were wood, and (allegedly) you can put 60Kg on a sngle fixing. Dunno about that, quite, but out of interest one day I weighed the books/files/2500-sheet box of A4 paper/why in my study and it came to 71Kg . All stored on vertiical (adjustable) rail-mounted shelves, the rails simply screwed to the Fermacell. Wonderful.
Even our floors are Fermacell. In fact there were no wet trades (except tilers - do they count?) inside the house at all.
Rawplugs? Stud locating tool? Masonry bits? Only for exterior work.
If the downlighters are the same LED luminaires as I I have, then they pull about 10W each wth PF~0.85. Twenty of them would barely pull 1 amp in the UK. That's a still a fair bit these days, but the room illustrated is large and it would be - to my way of thinking - grossly under-illuminated with less than 300W of Tungsten (pulling 2.7A).
When Tungsten (or fluorescent tubes) was all you could get, my living room (about one-third that size or less) always had a 100W centre and a couple of table lanps.That was 220W (~ 2,400 lumens). My current livng room (probably a bit smaller than the illustration) has 14 downlighters (~6,000 lumens) and needs them all: but they are in 4 zones and not usually all on at once.
If you look carefully at the timeline, you can see that every time the AI's inputs reclassified the object, the Artificial Ignorance dumped the history table of the previous 'classified object'. How the f*** can any program calculate a future path if it only has one point to work on?
HMRC is simply not fit for purpose.
That said I need to note that HMRC have no part in setting either the threshold nor the rate for inheritance tax That is done by the bunch of shysters now drawing more than £70k pa for the next four weeks and doing SFA for it (I don't count their finagling around to get on the gravy train for another five years).
They are the ones who have done nothing about setting clear boundaries between employments/self-employment. They are the poltroons who won't grasp the nettle of international rules of intenational flows of profit (and capital). The list of what they have not done vastly exceeds the list of what they have done.
Or the house could be like ours: in the middle of a triangle of rather distant (and topographically-shaded) base stations, such that the signal is poor even outside. Then there is lots of lovely Aluminium foil in the wall insulation with the overall result that there are rooms which never get a signal, while all the others are no better than 'iffy'.
We've tried most of the providers and they are all much-of-a-muchness.
Mobile is simply not a back-up option for us.
That is why we have a conventional wired phone permanently plugged in.
A 1936 Austin Seven of my acquaintance had a very lage button with very large cables attached to it. There must have been something like a Bendix gear involved because there was no other physical action involved. In operation the whole thing jangled like a set of crazy church bells - you certainly knew it was working.
Maybe a few more than countries than three - but 'countries' is not really a helpful measure. I read somewhere that an acedemic had used national GDP as a proxy for printer paper usage and come up with a figure of about 25 percent of world GDP being countries where "letter" sizes were standard: the rest of the world all used 'A' sizes.
My last four printers (all non-US brands) arrived with the tray-stops already set to A4, and the default paper in the firmware also set to A4 (ie overwriting any paper size defined in the print file). Those manufacturers obviously realised on which side their bread was buttered...
(And until today I though PC stood for "Personal Computer" although I worked out the meaning of the message - "load letter" was enough as I had spent 30 years working for a US subsidiary and we always had some copiers running 'letter'-sized paper.)
Curiously, this is the second recent BA problem where Cruz has been totally absent from the story (the other is the BA pilots' dispute). Walsh appears to be leading on both. Given the way Cruz handled the previous IT cock-up, I suppose that is not illogical.
But is Cruz still alive? Enquiring minds want to know.
Perhaps the Supreme Court might be persuaded that the "Right" was to bear the arms available at the time the Amendment was written: generally single-shot weapons and IIRC muzzle loaders at that. The cylic rate for a well-trainerd operative is no higher than about 3 rounds a minute. For those with a fear of beaing attacked in their own hone - well, they'd better just be very good at target practice.
@AC
"Or as long as crap software like Sage keeps insisting on having Excel installed"
We dumped Sage specifically because of that piece of crass stupidity. But Sage's problem as a company is is that it is managed by accountants. not by software specialists: and that shows in a lot of other places in their software too. The most user-hostile pice of software it has ever been my missfortune to use. When we were moving to the cloud Sage One was not even in consideration.
@AC
"Or as long as crap software like Sage keeps insisting on having Excel installed"
We dumped Sage specifically because of that piece of crass stupidity. But Sage's problem as a company is is that it is managed by accountants. not by software specialists: and that shows in a lot of other places in their software too. Sage was the most user-hostile pice of software it has ever been my misfortune to use. When we were moving to the cloud Sage One was not even in consideration.
And once disqualified, the crooks can't be a director, can't be involved with forming companies, running them, or undertaking marketing
Which is just what the IS had already done to the 'board' of the first iteration of this business scamshop: all one of him. Barred for 11 years IIRC.
Like WHOIS, Companies House 'tells you more'. In this case, more than appears in the article. That on the BBC had more information!
Do modern bank sites work at all with scripting turned off?
The on-line banking sites of four different banks work well enough for me. Apart, that is, from a really strange problem with the site one bank, which problem:
a) I could work around and
b) seems now to have gone away.
I get that unspeakable Rapport pop-up as well, every time, for the same reasons, with the same fatuous suggestion from that bank on how to suppress it. Oh for a browser that will let me run in private browsing, but stores just the cookies I choose and refuses/dumps all others...
What makes it worse is that the Rapport pop-up often takes so so long to be served that I am half-way through logging-on, and I have to abort, close the page, and start again...
Whilst it is not an insurmountable problem, "40.773006, -73.962301" lends itself much more readily to data-mining than "Corner of East 75th Street and Park Ave" which first has to be parsed to the former format or similar before it can be processed. It is the inevitable error rate in that parsing that is the issue.
I think I saw something like this on my Haemorrhoid fartsmone yesterday - but I canned that search so fast I cannot be sure.
If this is true, the real canning of the phone will be almost as fast as the virtual canning of the search.
Mine's the one with a spare "dumb-phone" in the pocket.
Slightly odd charity BPAS. It doesn''t (AFAIK) go in for chugging, street-bombing for DDs, or tin-rattling. IIRC it is essentially funded by the private clinics.
That is not any sort of accusation of misfeasance, let alone malfeasance. Their work as a counter to religious zealotry is probably very valuable. (And note that I only 'clause' that because I have no yardstick for it, never having come anywhere near its services.)
But somehow I don't think BPAS is necessarily wanting for competent management or trustees
DP is about atitudes and for too many the attitudes are that it is unimportant.
BTW - if the record was only of those wanting a call-back, and assuning that separate, more secure, systems were in use to hold the data of those who actually became "clients", then the record itself, by its very existence and never mind the lack of security, contravened several of the 'eight principles'.
I'm not sure I have this exactly right, but I believe that BT scooped an extra bit of sugar when they got title to all the ducts and cableways. As I understand it, none of that legacy infrastructure is liable for NNDR* on the grounds that it wan't liable for NNDR at the point of acquisition as it had been owned by HMG. That "point of acquisition" was not the privatisation, but a few months before, since BT had to exist before it could be sold.
However new duct/cableway infrastucture installed by a Telco, including anything installed - but not simply repaired/replaced - by BT post-privatisation, is liable.for NNDR as it is physical business real estate. Mobile networks similarly pay NNDR on their mast sites. Athough it may only be pennies per Km of duct or per manhole, it still adds up to a lot. Presumably Virgin are being hit by that.
Anyone know anything about this aspect?
*"National Non Domestic Rates", the business equivalent of Council Tax. It is collected by Local Authoriries but is all paid over to the Treasury.
The software majors complained (directly to POTUS IIRC) that the NSA was pissing in their soup. Those outside the US would chose non-US hosting, routeing, and software to escape the NSA's polite attention, they said.
This sounds a bit like Dropbox is pissing in its own soup. (Just as GCHQ is pissing in the UK industry's Brown Windsor.)
As an optimist, I would like to think that Icahn has bitten off more tha he can chew with Apple and now eBay/PayPal.
His loudly touted "victory" at Apple gained him only a tiny fraction of what he was asking. Yes that's a well known trick - ask for a lot, settle for a little; but it soon gets callibrated, as then does the response.
Instead of "Icahn", I'm hopeful his nickname may become "Ican't" (or in the context of Apple, perhaos with a different vowel?)
There is always going to be a balnnce between the benefit for the many and the damage to the few in operations such as these. That those adversely affected may themselves be working on the same benefits only makes striking that balance more difficult.
It will always be those who have lost something in that balance who will shout the loudest; and it will always be the less-principled end of the media that finds that take on the story the most newsworthy.
Whether the balance was right this time I don't know, and I suspect never will. No-one will agree where it should be anyway. Only time will eventually provide any sort of perspective.
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