Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, alastairq said:

Now, when those countries finally get somewhere near  to to our own, precious, standard of living, and the migrant workers return home, as there is no advantage to working thousands of miles away .....we all start bleating about government policy, politics, brexit, and every other aspect of life which hasn't gone the way we, as individuals, would have wished it to....!

One of the drivers behind harmonisation across the EU is to create a more level playing field, hence such things as the working time directive, aimed solely to protect workers from being exploited by lazy employers who don’t want to train new staff.

But yes, we abolished endentured slavery, and replaced it with wage slavery. Which means that having paid the wage-slaves as little as possible, we then get them to pay it back to landlords.

 

We should all return to communal living, and I think the obvious way to do this is with igloos on the Sahara desert….

[alastairq]

7 minutes ago, rocor said:

Before any young person decides on a long term career as a lorry driver, I would suggest that they take a deep look into the present state of autonomous vehicle development. 

 The autonomous vehicle situation is a bit like the problem railways faced at the end of the goods train era.

 

Goods still needed distributing or leading in, before & after the train journey. [Or, autonomous truck journey?]

 

Unfortunately in this country, the delivery system is faced with a truly ancient infrastructure, which  it has to deal with....In terms of the points of delivery. Few if any of which are laid out to be of benefit to AI.

 

Outside my home, on what may be considered a 'country lane', I can observe several rather large, [44 tonne] artics wending their way past the parked vans, roadworks, etc...on their way to & from the many farms up the road....Bulk this & bulk that....

Not quite the M25, but these vehicles are a daily fact of agricultural life....

[Regularity]

30 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

More stuff means more trucks means more drivers - except that there aren't more drivers, so in consequence there will be less stuff.

Or possibly, a more integrated system for delivery that uses a combination of road and rail transport, with the managed expectation that maybe the day after tomorrow is a perfectly acceptable timetable.

But wait, isn’t that what we had, in the pre-grouping era?

[rocor]

28 minutes ago, alastairq said:

 The autonomous vehicle situation is a bit like the problem railways faced at the end of the goods train era.

 

Goods still needed distributing or leading in, before & after the train journey. [Or, autonomous truck journey?]

 

Unfortunately in this country, the delivery system is faced with a truly ancient infrastructure, which  it has to deal with....In terms of the points of delivery. Few if any of which are laid out to be of benefit to AI.

 

Outside my home, on what may be considered a 'country lane', I can observe several rather large, [44 tonne] artics wending their way past the parked vans, roadworks, etc...on their way to & from the many farms up the road....Bulk this & bulk that....

Not quite the M25, but these vehicles are a daily fact of agricultural life....

 

Full autonomy is for the robot vehicle to manage any task that a human driven vehicle is capable of.

 

The current state of the technology is way beyond enhanced cruise control driving down a motorway. Modern systems can cope with narrow streets and pedestrians and cyclist weaving around it.

[Regularity]

54 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

Full autonomy is for the robot vehicle to manage any task that a human driven vehicle is capable of.

 

The current state of the technology is way beyond enhanced cruise control driving down a motorway. Modern systems can cope with narrow streets and pedestrians and cyclist weaving around it.

The biggest problem is the sheer unpredictability of human drivers mixing with robots.

[Northroader]

Every lorry I see on the road has a driver in it, what’s this about no drivers?

[Caley Jim]

2 hours ago, alastairq said:

 Outside my home, on what may be considered a 'country lane', I can observe several rather large, [44 tonne] artics wending their way past the parked vans, roadworks, etc...on their way to & from the many farms up the road....Bulk this & bulk that....

Not quite the M25, but these vehicles are a daily fact of agricultural life....

We have the same at the back here, though its narrow sections and tight bends, rather than parked vehicles which are the problem. Not only bulk deliveries, but triple decker sheep floats, especially when there's a market on in Lanark. 

As far as long distance bulk deliveries go, there's a train comes up to Mossend every day s with blue containers labelled 'Less CO2' in the corporate style of a large supermarket. 

 

Jim

[alastairq]

[rocor]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

The biggest problem is the sheer unpredictability of human drivers mixing with robots.

 

The object of the programme is to ensure that the robots are overall the safer of the two groups, before they are released en masse on to the roads.

[Nearholmer]

That’s a poorly-informed Yorkshireman, given that decent southern beer (by which I’m thinking of Harvey’s and the like) is of the “a few bubbles round the edge of the glass” variety, and hasn’t had CO2 near it.

 

 

 

[figworthy]

8 hours ago, alastairq said:

 Except that this has been the situation in the industry for many years now.....

 

My jibe was at us, actually, 'wanting' more stuff, in the first place.Not just 'wanting', but, demanding, more stuff.

 

Thus 'supply' will always be playing catch-up.

 

 

I think the above is basically right, but it isn't just wanting/demanding stuff, it's wanting/demanding it NOW !

 

Most mail/online order set ups only seem to cater for immediate (or near immediate) delivery.  I'd be happy with an option for "some time in the next ten days" if that makes for a more efficient distribution system.  Be honest, how often do you need that thing tomorrow ?

 

Adrian

[Nearholmer]

“Just in Time” logistics and the “I want it now!” mentality live in symbiosis - it suits suppliers not to have money tied-up in the plant, staff, and premises that go with “slow” delivery, and once us customers have sampled the dual benefits of speed and economy that it delivers, we are like crack addicts for it.

 

I’m with Alistair that “wanting stuff” is at the root of this, a bad habit promoted by rampant consumer capitalism (and now even consumer communism, of all things), which is the biggest form of crack going (except possibly crack), and that we’ve got used to having it all too cheap, exploiting others and, bizarrely exploiting ourselves, and every natural resource conceivable, in the process.

 

it’s about time we learned the word “enough”, because it isn’t sustainable in any sense of that word …… if we in the top few percent of the global population decided that “late-1970s comfortable” was enough in material terms, we could beat every CO2 reduction target going. But, we seem unable to do that - stopping us humans gorging ourselves whenever the chance presents itself is like trying to dam the Amazon with a twig.

[Regularity]

7 hours ago, rocor said:

 

The object of the programme is to ensure that the robots are overall the safer of the two groups, before they are released en masse on to the roads.

I thought the object was to eliminate humans from the second-most demanding task (after flying a helicopter) that they are like to do. And that’s a good thing, I think.

[Regularity]

Driving around the outskirts of Huddersfield, on my way from somewhere to somewhere else this evening, I saw a queue forming at a petrol station.

 

And so madness begins again.

[monkeysarefun]

22 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Driving around the outskirts of Huddersfield, on my way from somewhere to somewhere else this evening, I saw a queue forming at a petrol station.

 

And so madness begins again.

No doubt it'll happen here too as soon as our simpler folk see videos of your petrol queues on their facebook feed.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

stopping us humans gorging ourselves whenever the chance presents itself is like trying to dam the Amazon with a twig

Well, they do seem to have become very successful with their business model, and a twig isn’t much use against a 44tonne delivery lorry…

[monkeysarefun]

 

Re UK  truck driver shortage... Has no one in charge there thought of  offering the Wagyu  beef or vegetarian option?

 

 

 

Western Australia truck drivers—who typically earn more than $100,000 a year—play a vital role carrying gold-rich ore from deep underground or truck liquefied natural gas to mines to power operations.

To win the skills race, Roy Hill Holdings Pty Ltd. is banking on financial incentives and even offering Wagyu beef and vegan meals on menus to make living at a remote mine more attractive. The iron-ore producer said its truck drivers, among others, will this year receive bonuses worth roughly 50% of their base salary.

 

That's ya problem, apart from having too many trees like I've pointed out before.

Edited September 25, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[Nearholmer]

6 hours ago, Regularity said:

Well, they do seem to have become very successful with their business model, and a twig isn’t much use against a 44tonne delivery lorry…

Precisely.

 

I was aware of that possible alternative reading as I wrote it, and it seems an appropriate one.

 

Sellotaping yourself to the M25 seems to sort-of work, though.

[Edwardian]

Managed to fill up yesterday in order to drive to see the Aged Ps.  Bit of a queue given that the chief cause of panic buying in the UK is government Ministers assuring us there is no need to panic buy.

 

I considered a thoughtful, fact-base piece about the continued shortage of HGV drivers and the implications of embedded consumer habits upon supply chain logistics and the environment.

 

Then I thought ....

 

 

Edited September 25, 2021 by Edwardian

[alastairq]

11 hours ago, figworthy said:

 

I think the above is basically right, but it isn't just wanting/demanding stuff, it's wanting/demanding it NOW !

 

Most mail/online order set ups only seem to cater for immediate (or near immediate) delivery.  I'd be happy with an option for "some time in the next ten days" if that makes for a more efficient distribution system.  Be honest, how often do you need that thing tomorrow ?

 

Adrian

 I find it disturbing that, when I order stuff, I usually get a delivery date of about a week to 10 days hence.

 

The disturbing bit is, it usually arrives tomorrow instead!

 

Now, what I cannot get my head around is, customers often have a more expensive shipping option of 'next day', etc.....

So how come one pays more for 'next day', and f one opts for the week or so delivery, it still carrives next day?

Who is making, or losing, money on that one?

 

 

I also still cannot get my head around why it takes a UK car parts supplier nearly a fortnight to send me a package?

Yet when I order a car part from the USA on the Tuesday, it's on my doorstep just after Friday lunchtime???? [Especially having told me it wouldn't likely arrive until the next week?]

[CKPR]

14 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

“late-1970s comfortable”

That is pretty much the material reference point in my life  and all my hobbies, interests  & home comforts are aligned with and can be met by what was available then. Most of my leisure shopping for my main hobbies (railway modelling, old-school military modelling  and wargaming, analogue hi-fi) involves searching for NOS or re-usable stuff from 40-45 years ago ! 

Edited September 25, 2021 by CKPR

[Compound2632]

12 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

“late-1970s comfortable”

 

Yes but please without the curtains.

 

 

There are limits to nostalgia.

[Nearholmer]

I actually rather liked Habitat stuff of that period - a bit like modern IKEA, but using mostly different far superior materials. I still have six sets of collapsible (in a good sense!) bookshelves from then in use to hold my toy train stash. They must have been well made, because they spent decades groaning under the weight of my NG railway book collection without subsiding.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I actually rather liked Habitat stuff of that period - a bit like modern IKEA, but using mostly different far superior materials.

 

My mother was a devotee. Our curtains weren't quite as orange/brown as the ones I posted - which are really more early than late 70s - think Bob and Thelma. More like these, but with some blue in them:

 

[Ramblin Rich]

 

2 hours ago, alastairq said:

 I find it disturbing that, when I order stuff, I usually get a delivery date of about a week to 10 days hence.

 

The disturbing bit is, it usually arrives tomorrow instead!

 

Now, what I cannot get my head around is, customers often have a more expensive shipping option of 'next day', etc.....

So how come one pays more for 'next day', and f one opts for the week or so delivery, it still carrives next day?

Who is making, or losing, money on that one?

 

 

I also still cannot get my head around why it takes a UK car parts supplier nearly a fortnight to send me a package?

Yet when I order a car part from the USA on the Tuesday, it's on my doorstep just after Friday lunchtime???? [Especially having told me it wouldn't likely arrive until the next week?]

I'm wondering if it's more efficient and environmentally friendly for one driver and van to be making multiple drop home deliveries, versus everyone getting in their own cars to fetch things. It's much less traffic, but there will be some unproductive mileage between drops. And the van might be less fuel efficient (discounting those who use an SUV to go 3 mile to a shop ..).

I do know logistics companies run some algorithms to get the most effective routes; I think DHL (?) even try to make the route as much left hand turns as possible to reduce traffic conflicts.