Early Risers.

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

* many other amusing and colourful phrases of nautical patois are available for use for a mere few doubloons and are available our resident Cornish Pirate @Gwiwer

Funny you should say that.  

 

We had guests over for lunch.  They arrived bearing pasties; our contribution was tea and chocolate cake.  Dr. SWMBO makes a rather good chocolate cake.  The frosting even includes rum.  

 

His Furship's contribution was the deposit of several "logs" in the porch shortly before guests left which required swift removal.  To the accompaniment of male guest singing the well-known shanty line "He wasn't fit to shovel s**t from one place to another" 

 

A good thing we like these people and know their little quirks!!!  

 

Meanwhile in the kickballing festivals his team won but my BiL's team - whose results I follow - thumped their Sarflunnen opposition into the turf with a resounding and somewhat one-sided display of their skills.  

 

My Crystal Palace-supporting friends, mostly former House of Fun colleagues, are remarkably silent on the subject currently.  I wonder why.  

[Barry O]

BYD derived bus in Bradford (was one of 10 in service) burnt out.next purchase does not include BYD components...

 

Baz

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

On a more serious note, I find it rather hypocritical to be lectured to by these young activists about how I have to save the planet, when they are rushing out to buy the latest smart phone, trainers, fashion, accessory etc., that will be replaced by an even newer smart phone, trainers, fashion accessory etc., in barely a year or two!

That presumes the activists are the ones rushing out buy the latest of everything. I think you'll find that the activists themselves are very much into things like thrift stores and reusing, rather than buying into consumerism.

 

And then while some will consider it praiseworthy, others will accuse a gen-z celebrity who actually wears a thrift store find to an 'event' as "virtue-signalling".

 

Don't confuse gen-z with advertisers selling to gen-z. And of course, like all generational generalizations, gen-z is not monolithic. Some will be eco-warriors, some will be Insta-obsessed fashionistas (or whatever).

[big jim]

Job cancelled today so wa still to keep my phone on, well I did but went 100s of meters underground where there was no phone signal! 
 

had a trip over to speedwell caverns near Buxton, I passed them the other week on my way home from Hope on a possession job and decided to visit them today with the family, a great trip, took about an hour, I could see gethin was a bit anxious when the boat set off, admittedly I was too as it was a bit more claustrophobic than I thought it would be but after a couple of minutes I felt fine and we enjoyed the trip, the threat of ‘no refunds for claustrophobia’ willing me on 

 

 

 

then gethin decided to sprint up a mounting for a picture! 

[Ozexpatriate]

6 hours ago, The Lurker said:

there is a certain sameness to the looks of a lot of electric cars that makes Teslas, Polestars, etc indistinguishable at a glance to the untrained eye

No differently to all the ubiquitous compact/crossover utility vehicles on the road.

 

I was staggered to see the uniformity of traffic on an English road (I think it was Leeds) during a tennis tournament last year.

 

At least the older generation of EVs have traditional 'sedan' shape - though the current models like Hyundai/Kia and Nissan are all of the CUV shape. 

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

More amazing that you still have a post office

Indeed. We are lucky to have one in a quite modest town of 4500 folk. We are even more lucky that it opens every day of the week; from 7am until 6pm except Sundays when it closes at 1pm. 
 

Nearby Pendeen post office recently closed having been open six mornings and two afternoons although they retain a “mobile” service. Open from 9 - 10am on Mondays only. So in effect ours serves their population adding a couple of thousand. 
 

Even quite large towns are now finding the Post Office is now just a counter at the back of WH Smith and obliged to comply with their hours. But often not on Sundays at all and not always on Saturdays even when the host shop is open. 

[NGT6 1315]

And a version with vocals:

 

 

The proper kind of music for a naval band for sure, eh?

[Ozexpatriate]

1 minute ago, Gwiwer said:

Indeed. We are lucky to have one in a quite modest town

I've observed a deterioration of Post Office services in Australia as well.

 

In my understanding it was quite common for small English villages to have a 'Post Office' counter in a local shop. This existed in Australia but even small communities had a dedicated Post Office structure. Much less so now.

 

When I was young the PMG (Post Master General's Department) was also responsible for telephony. Often the post office also housed a telephone exchange. The local post office was quite substantial and there was a small retail branch in some shops closer to home. 

 

Telephony was removed from the PMG to form Telecom Australia (later Telstra) in 1975 and free standing post offices are now much less common.  Service has declined as well. My cousin only receives about two deliveries a week - Mum and Dad see three.

 

Thanks to the efforts of Benjamin Franklin, the US Postal Service enjoys a constitutional protection that makes it difficult to privatize - despite being made something of a political football. In the meantime, Post Offices are a regular thing here. I live between two large late-20th century post offices less than 7 miles apart. They are busy places, though they have little architectural merit.

 

We still have six deliveries a week. (They missed one during the ice storm a couple of weeks ago.)

 

My local branch quickly outgrew their premises and the parcel facility (where they store 'held' mail) is in an industrial park. There is a forlorn public anteroom with a Dutch door with a "please ring the bell" sign. It's not welcoming but is functional.

 

Older US Post Offices can be quite grand. I am familiar with this one in the Chicago suburbs.

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

When I was young the PMG (Post Master General's Department) was also responsible for telephony. Often the post office also housed a telephone exchange

Similar here. The General Post Office (GPO), once created, was responsible for all mail, telephony and telegraphic services other than a few purely internal business systems and the always-independent Hull Telephone Company. 
 

The GPO also owned the air as it was from them that one had to purchase the television licence. And it was through the GPO that one applied, if one was suitably qualified to do do, for an amateur “ham” radio operator’s licence and call-sign. 
 

It was all privatised over the years. Phones went to British Telecom, mail went to Royal Mail plc and the actual post office buildings and the retail operations were run by Post Office Counters Ltd. 
 

There were and are a good many smaller associated businesses, such as ours in town today, managed by the local Sub-Postmaster / Mistress (of which the news is currently reporting massive miscarriages of justice) and typically also offering the services of a small “corner shop” or general store / mixed business. 
 

Service has declined as sharply as prices have risen. Competition entered the parcel-carriage market challenging the former Royal Mail Parcelforce monopoly. 
 

Royal Mail is still required to provide mail distribution on six days a week other than in remote areas but is pressing for the Saturday delivery requirement to be dropped. 
 

In London we not unreasonably got mail delivered on all six required days of the week. It’s a big place with a lot of addresses and (junk aside) still plenty of personally-addressed mail in the system.
 

Currently we are “required” to have mail delivered on those same six days of the week but in reality the postman only comes twice a week. Tuesdays and Fridays. On the other days he is covering the other side of town or the nearby villages. As all are within the TR19 postcode the Royal Mail claim they are meeting the six-day delivery requirement.
 

They are not.  
 

But they will now collect mail at the door if it’s pre-booked and prepaid. Which never used to happen. Everything had to go to the pillar-box or to the Post Office. So they have caught up a little way with the parcel services who have offered door-to-door (and seven-days-a-week) service for some time. But not for letters. Letter mail is protected as a Royal Mail only function. 

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. All set to visit the Rayleigh toy fair tomorrow, modelling tokens at the ready. I've ordered the correct memory card for the dash cam from E-bay, in fact I've ordered two. The dash cam is an Apache and incorporates a motion detector that automatically records the previous five minutes if there is a sudden stop.

[monkeysarefun]

4 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I've observed a deterioration of Post Office services in Australia as well.

 

 

I haven't found that to be the case to be honest, in my bit of the woods at least!. Most original Post Offices are still in their original buildings in towns that had them and those that had smaller shopfront versions are still all open.  (Oh, except for nearby Picton, which moved from its original 1880 purpose built building to the inside of a shopping centre when that was built, but that was for customer convenience. And the original building was apparently haunted which spooked (nyuk nyuk!) those working there.)

 

For example I drive through 5 small towns to get to work - The Oaks (pop 3777), Silverdale (pop 4535),  Warragamba (pop 1300), Wallacia (pop 1627) and Mulgoa (pop 2126) and they all have a post office presence, usually in the newsagency.  In fact, last year before they knocked the small Silverdale shopping strip down to build a bigger one in its place, they first put in a demountable building across the road to house the post office, despite Warragamba PO being literally a 3 minutes drive away and the Wallacia one about 5 minutes. 

 

I prefer the ones in newsagents to be honest since they keep the newsagency hours so if I want a parcel diverted to a PO instead of getting it dropped on my front step I nominate The Oaks because I can pick it up at 7AM  or 6PM rather than a normal PO which is a working person inconvenient   9 to 5 proposition. 

Edited February 3 by monkeysarefun

[monkeysarefun]

12 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

One of our neighbours just bought this, a BYD LEAP electric car. I'm not sure if BYD are sold in Britain but he gave me a ride and it's a beautiful car, it loses nothing to European premium brands in terms of cabin ambience and comfort and the neighbour assures me it drives superbly. Chinese cars are really catching up, looking at this it's a properly desirable car.

 

 

 

Nice.....colour. And probably makes a lot more sense in Singapore than here.

 

BYD are the second highest selling EV brand here after Tesla, although with sales of 11,747  last year out of a total of 1,216,780  new car sales, its not exactly a sensation.

 

EV makers shoot themselves in the foot by promising ranges that just aren't being met, causing people to go off them. For instance BYD reckon  a range of 560km on one particular car, but testers driving them in actual conditions - heat, hills, headwinds, using aircon  etc are finding 390 to 520 to be more like it.

 

And the one market that might actually benefit from having an EV due to not driving actual real-world  distances - ie inner city types who can charge overnight at home -  are finding that they have to be rich enough to have off-street parking to do it in because councils are cracking down hard on those who run an extension lead across the footpath to their car parked out the front of their  expensive terrace house. 

 

Annnnnnd one more thing!  EV owners go on  about not having to pay for petrol but 48.8c per litre of petrol bought goes  into road maintenance for the roads they drive on. If I had my way roads would have 2 lanes - one for petrol cars, which gets maintained out of the fuel levy, and another one that EV's have to use, paid for out of what they choose to contribute to road upkeep. See how long they last before they complain because they  hit a pothole and their battery exploded in a ball of flames. 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 3 by monkeysarefun

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

I haven't found that to be the case to be honest, in my bit of the woods at least!

How many mail deliveries do you see per week?

 

The Google Maps link I shared was the post office building when I was little. I don't know if the building is listed but it is still in use - but not as a post office. The retail post office function was moved to local shops long ago but I haven't been there in a few years. I think the retail post office in a little shopping center near home is still operating. 

 

I don't know if PO boxes are still available or where they might be.

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

EV owners go on  about not having to pay for petrol but 48.8c per litre of petrol bought goes  into road maintenance for the roads they drive on

EV registration fees are much higher here than for internal combustion - to partly compensate for lost gasoline taxes for the roads.

 

The reality is that much (most?) of the damage to roads is by trucking*, not cars. Despite the fact that commercial trucking does have to pay higher taxes/fees for haulage than just fuel taxes, they don't pay their share of the maintenance cost proportionally to their impact.

 

* Plenty of internet sources will disagree with this statement, but they are trying really hard to disprove physics.

 

There's a reasonable argument that for the same 'class' of vehicle, a battery EV will do more cumulative damage due to increased weight on the road. Having said that I get frustrated when television 'reports' highlight the 'dangers' of EVs due to their increased weight. They usually fail to note that a full-size SUV (like a Chevy Suburban at 2.7t) is a lot heavier than a vehicle like a Tesla Model 3 AWD (1.8t). 

 

Edited February 4 by Ozexpatriate

[monkeysarefun]

19 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

EV registration fees are much higher here than for internal combustion - to partly compensate for lost gasoline taxes for the roads.

 

The reality is that much (most?) of the damage to roads is by trucking*, not cars. Despite the fact that commercial trucking does have to pay higher taxes/fees for haulage than just fuel taxes, they don't pay their 'fair' share of the maintenance cost.

 

* Plenty of internet sources will disagree with this statement, but they are trying really hard to disprove physics.

 

 

Not here they aren't:

 

Electric vehicles and some low emission petrol-electric hybrid vehicles receive a concession on motor vehicle tax. The discount is automatically applied when you register your car.

To be eligible for the concession, vehicles must be:

a manufacturer designated petrol-electric hybrid, diesel-electric hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or electric vehicle

have carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions no higher than 150 grams/kilometre (g/km) in the ‘combined’ driving cycle.

Vehicles that were awarded a 4½ or 5 star rating under the previous Green Vehicle Guide will continue to be eligible for lower tax.

 

There is a pro-rata weight component to car registration so trucks pay more, as do heavier cars. Except for EV's, despite their heavier weight compared to equivalent sized non-EV cars.

I'm not against paying  for road-funding no matter who causes it, after all trucks aren't just driving around enjoying Country and Western music and talking to each other on the CB radio, they are actually delivering stuff etc.

 

  What does stick in my craw is that EV's don't contribute to road upkeep, but rather than being all apologetic, or at least keeping quiet about it, instead use the "We don't' pay for petrol, hence we are awesome compared to you suckers!" line as a smug selling point.

Edited February 4 by monkeysarefun

[monkeysarefun]

20 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

How many mail deliveries do you see per week?

 

5 days a week as per always. Though I rarely get any actual mail now. All I can think of that still gets into my letterbox  is my quarterly council rates, hard-copies of my annual car registration, and that'd be about it, everything else is emailed.

[jjb1970]

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

EV makers shoot themselves in the foot by promising ranges that just aren't being met, causing people to go off them. For instance BYD reckon  a range of 560km on one particular car, but testers driving them in actual conditions - heat, hills, headwinds, using aircon  etc are finding 390 to 520 to be more like it.

 

 

That's a fair comment, but just as true about internal combustion engine cars.

 

My last Audi A6 had a claimed fuel figure of 67mpg combined, I considered it was doing OK to hit 50 and even on an A road at a steady 60mph with no acceleration or braking for a long run (which is about the optimum condition) it was barely above 50. My wife's Golf TSI was worse. Officially that was near diesel fuel figures (it had a highly blown turbo charged petrol engine with a DSG gear box and all sorts of fancy tech) but it was so far off the figures it was ridiculous. We weren't fast or aggressive drivers, even takingit easy and avoiding hard acceleration and speeding the fuel figures were miles off what was claimed.

 

The only car I ever had which achieved claimed figures was the Subaru Legacy. It's official figure was mediocre, but it did it, which raises an interesting question - how much real difference was there between it and cars with much better nominal fuel figures? The Legacy wasn't that far behind the Golf my wife had in real world driving.

 

Unfortunately car manufacturers have gamed official testing for decades and every effort to improve things just opens new opportunities to game the system. That said, hilly conditions will hit the figures.

[monkeysarefun]

3 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

That's a fair comment, but just as true about internal combustion engine cars.

 

 

With an ICE car though, its just a disappointment. With an EV  (here given our distances at least) it can mean that you suddenly find  that your carefully planned trip via the two or three charging stations on the route suddenly becomes a source of panic as your range drops below what you'd planned for and you have to  try to recalculate a way of getting to a charging station before you end up conked out on the side of a road. Your previous fears, that the charging station that you'd originally planned to use  a) doesnt work , or b) has a queue of half a dozen other EV cars already waiting, take second place.

 

Again, I am not anti-EV, but they are so far from being an oven-ready practical  replacement for what we have already that the promotion of them is just plain irritating, so I do tend to arc up a bit when I see a picture of one, some kind of pre- warning would be helpful.

 

A Hybrid makes perfect sense, plug in rechargeable cars just don't.

 

[jjb1970]

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

Nice.....colour. And probably makes a lot more sense in Singapore than here.

 

 

People here are obsessed with cars and they're a status symbol, even though Singapore has one of the best public transport systems in the world.

 

The number of cars on the road is controlled by the government. To buy a car you need a certificate of entitlement, which lasts for ten years which are released for auction. The current going rate is about S$100,000, and that's before buying the car. And then car prices are anything but cheap here. The upside is the roads are great, congestion is unusual and most roads are free flowing. 

 

The flip side of the coin is that public transport is superb and cheap. There's a very comprehensive bus network with many routes running through the night, and the MRT rail network is now comprehensive and still expanding. If you need to carry something heavy or don't like walking to a bus stop or rail station then taxis and ride hailing services are pretty cheap too. Another option is there are hire by journey car services, you sign into the app, click, get the car and drop it off and move on, those are more expensive than bus or train but still pretty cheap. All buses and trains are air-conditioned and kept immaculate and regardless of time of day/nigh anti-social behaviour is extremely rare and I've never felt threatened or uneasy on a bus or train here. Given that and the nature of Singapore as a city state I really can't see the point of having a car, it's not like there's many places to go. If we did want to drive off into Malaysia we could just hire a car.

 

For all that the government here could be described as anti-car, certainly with much more validity than when that laim is made against the UK government they have at least provided an alternative and created conditions in which you don't need a car. In Britain politicians keep whinging about cars and vilifying car use but in most of the country public transport is not great. London is probably the only part of the country where public transport is good enough to provide a genuine alternative unless you are in a position to plan your life around timetables.

[jjb1970]

I must admit, those who proselytize about anything annoy me as too often it turns into virtue signalling. I love vegetarian food but virtue signalling vegans wearing it on their sleave pee me off. I'm a cycling enthusiast and love bicycles but virtue signalling cyclists claiming they're saving the world pee me off. I interact with green NGOs all of the time and even though I agree with most of their substantive positions I get completely turned off by all the virtue signalling (and in some cases there is more than a whiff of ends justify the means which I find scary). Similarly with EVs, I love EVs and am a huge advocate, but there's a type of EV driver who flaunts their expensive car in front of people struggling to afford a car of any sort to guilt shame others and virtue signal which pee's me off.

[monkeysarefun]

15 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

I must admit, those who proselytize about anything annoy me as too often it turns into virtue signalling. I love vegetarian food but virtue signalling vegans wearing it on their sleave pee me off. I'm a cycling enthusiast and love bicycles but virtue signalling cyclists claiming they're saving the world pee me off. I interact with green NGOs all of the time and even though I agree with most of their substantive positions I get completely turned off by all the virtue signalling (and in some cases there is more than a whiff of ends justify the means which I find scary). Similarly with EVs, I love EVs and am a huge advocate, but there's a type of EV driver who flaunts their expensive car in front of people struggling to afford a car of any sort to guilt shame others and virtue signal which pee's me off.

 

 

 

One more... Why does every charging provider require you to set up an account with them and expect you to enter all your personal and financial details into them before you can use them?

 

Why can't you just use tap and go like petrol pumps have? 

 

Even the "Free" provider (Exploren) that the local council-installled chargers use requires you to have an account with them.. If its free why can't you just plug your car in anonymously? I don't need to download an app and register in order to put air in my tyres, why is this different?

Edited February 4 by monkeysarefun

[Ozexpatriate]

31 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Again, I am not anti-EV, but they are so far from being an oven-ready practical  replacement for what we have already that the promotion of them is just plain irritating, so I do tend to arc up a bit when I see a picture of one, some kind of pre- warning would be helpful.

They are perfectly practical for city commuters who have a garage - like me. My driving pattern is not unusual.

 

As you've pointed out, they don't work for people with long commutes from 'the bush' or who drive long distances in the country regularly, where a plug-in hybrid is a good choice.

 

Range anxiety is not limited to EVs. I remember driving to the Oregon coast with a rental car before I moved here.  I was not familiar with the vehicle and hadn't paid close attention to the fuel gauge. I was headed up the mountain pass over the Coast Range towards Portland when the fuel light came on with the gauge on "E". It was night and besides the dashboard glow and the road where the headlights shone, the only light was a "v" of starlight between the tall firs. (Like this but in almost total darkness.)

 

It was about 50 miles (80 km) between gas stations. (This is a major state highway.)

 

Edited February 4 by Ozexpatriate

[jjb1970]

20 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

 

One more... Why does every charging provider require you to set up an account with them and expect you to enter all your personal and financial details into them before you can use them?

 

Why can't you just use tap and go like petrol pumps have? 

 

Even the "Free" provider (Exploren) that the local council-installled chargers use requires you to have an account with them.. If its free why can't you just plug your car in anonymously? I don't need to download an app and register in order to put air in my tyres, why is this different?

 

That's been a big issue in the UK too, I don't know if it's improved but the way public charging networks worked was ridiculous. To the point that a big selling point of Tesla was their super charger network which just worked. A lot of people are anti-Tesla (maybe because of Elon Musk) but as well as designing excellent cars they also put a lot of thought into making the whole EV ownership proposition work in a way other automotive manufacturers don't appear to have done.

[monkeysarefun]

22 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I was not familiar with the vehicle and hadn't paid close attention to the fuel gauge.

But that could have been easily averted by closer attention to the fuel gauge! 😛   Then it would have been a simple matter to just pop  into the next servo for 5 minutes to put in a quick 10 dollars worth or similar. Also, there is quite a safety margin built into fuel warning systems,  at least if Top Gear "how far can we get on a tank of fuel" segments  are to be believed, where they'd get a considerable distance with the trip computer saying "Range: 0 miles".

 

I assume that if an EV says you are going to come to a stop   50km from the nearest recharger, you really are going to come to a stop  50km from the nearest recharger.

 

I have run out of fuel in my younger days, due to a fuel gauge that swung back and forth like a metronome.  A lift to the nearest servo and back again   from a friendly non-murdering Samaritan who pulled up to check on me, and armed with  a 5 gallon can I was on my way again. Until someone invents portable booster batteries or something for an EV, it will mean a tow. 

 

 

 

(We post away as the UK sleeps!)

Edited February 4 by monkeysarefun