Early Risers.

[Winslow Boy]

4 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I was quite pleased that something that hadn’t  worked for me before worked perfectly today. We sell our surplus electricity to our energy supplier. They contact us and ask for,an export meter reading from the smart meter and to upload a photo of the meter and the reading. It used to crash at that stage and I had to email the photo. The company can read our export values, as a nice lady read them back to me once when I was asking about another meter matter. So I wonder if the people who actually handle the export payments can’t access the smart meter data. Wouldn’t surprise me, as they only seem able to pay me with a cheque!

Tony

I only had to send a photo at the beginning when I started to export my surplus electricity. In addition my account is credited, rather than having to mess around with a cheque. My last payment was more than the cost of the electricity.

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

I think you might be shocked by the number of police that have immediate access to firearms.  All they need is authorisation to retrieve them from their police car.   In some cases that authorisation is automatic in that a set of circumstances authorises them to access weapons without the say-so from above.  

Not half as many as you think. It's still a small percentage. 

 

Jamie

[polybear]

1 hour ago, Sidecar Racer said:

 

FIFY .    😎

 

You could be onto something there......His & Hers Apartments, with an interconnecting door.  iD @iL Dottore could then have the Kitchen of his dreams........

 

ION.....

Fancy ballasting this?  Or cleaning the track?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wx31x1yljo

[Sidecar Racer]

8 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

Not half as many as you think. It's still a small percentage. 

 

Jamie

 

Spot on Jamie , when I was doing the kitting up for Avon and Somerset I did the ARV's too .

 

To the best of my memory we had 4 or 5 spread over the force area , so each major traffic

department would have one , certainly only in performance vehicles and probably not all out on

the road at the same time but certainly 1 or 2 would be .

 

 

[Tony_S]

17 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

I only had to send a photo at the beginning when I started to export my surplus electricity. In addition my account is credited, rather than having to mess around with a cheque. My last payment was more than the cost of the electricity.

To complicate matters , the cheque they issue can’t be read by any of the cheque paying in bank apps. No banks in Benfleet, but the Post Office have special envelopes you can include your cheque and a paying in slip, assuming you can find such a thing. 

[Winslow Boy]

2 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

To complicate matters , the cheque they issue can’t be read by any of the cheque paying in bank apps. No banks in Benfleet, but the Post Office have special envelopes you can include your cheque and a paying in slip, assuming you can find such a thing. 

I'm with Octopus who so far I've found ok, but I've only been with them for six months and slight less for the solar. 

A relative also has solar and with Octopus, but like you he gets a cheque. 

[monkeysarefun]

4 hours ago, Sidecar Racer said:

 

 This from a Wiki article ,

 

 Surveys by the Police Federation of England and Wales have continued to show police officers' considerable resistance to routine arming. Although in the Federation's most recent (2017) Officer/Arming survey, 66% of respondents were against the routine arming of police compared to 82% in 2006.

 

A full history of police and arms here .

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

Conversely if you asked the cops here if they should have their guns taken off them I'd be guessing that the result would probably be exactly the reverse, its just a case of what you are used to I guess!

 

A serious question, do security guards there, ie the ones who drive money around in Armourgard cars  to deliver payrolls, collect bank takings etc there have sidearms?  Here they are invariably  (or used to be, theres less of them apparent these days in our cashless society) older gents, looking close to retirement age, but they'd all have a Smith and Wesson on their hips. I remember when I was doing my traineeship in 1982,  Wednesdays were tech college days AND paydays and halfway through the AC circuits course two old fellas would knock on the door and lug in a cashbox and dole out our paypackets.

 

Both had sidearms but we never thought anything of it. I guess its something we are  used to but when guys like that (and the NSW transit police!) are carrying  a pistol then seeing the police armed is a complete non-issue  and therefore the question of "should the police be armed" is not one that even comes up here, its certainly not the end of civilisation because they are and we aren't a police state because of it.

Edited April 29 by monkeysarefun

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

It was 2002 not the 1980s but I was travelling on the Hunter Valley train from Newcastle to Maitland when exactly that happened - two Transits boarded and found every fault they could with ticketing.  Including ordering two children of about 12 years of age off the train at fairly remote Sandgate station (where not all trains stop) at gun-poin

 

 

They've taken their guns off them these days so they are left with expandable batons. Actually the modern day ones have definitely cleaned up their act and have a happier customer face.

 

 

They roam the trains and station platforms in pairs, mainly during the off-peak daylight hours and into the evening. Not that I've ever felt threatened on trains here or seen anything occur that made me feel unsafe even when riding at night, but then again maybe its due to these guys wandering the carriages. 

Edited April 29 by monkeysarefun

[Sidecar Racer]

9 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

A serious question, do security guards there, ie the ones who drive money around in Armourgard cars  to deliver payrolls, collect bank takings etc there have sidearms? 

 

 

 Short answer , no .

[Sidecar Racer]

 

 South African payroll attempted heist .

 

 

[Tony_S]

37 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

I'm with Octopus who so far I've found ok, but I've only been with them for six months and slight less for the solar. 

A relative also has solar and with Octopus, but like you he gets a cheque. 

I tried to get an Octopus account when we got our solar panels but at the time they were not accepting new customers. By the time they were our supplier had considerably increased the amount they were paying for our exported kWh. The photo and cheque seems inefficient but gives me something to do. I don’t multitask, so it was photograph the meter today, leaving tomorrow to fill up the salt hopper for the water softener. Then lots of time busy doing nothing. 

[Winslow Boy]

11 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I tried to get an Octopus account when we got our solar panels but at the time they were not accepting new customers. By the time they were our supplier had considerably increased the amount they were paying for our exported kWh. The photo and cheque seems inefficient but gives me something to do. I don’t multitask, so it was photograph the meter today, leaving tomorrow to fill up the salt hopper for the water softener. Then lots of time busy doing nothing. 

I've signed up for the Go option. This means I get cheaper electricity during the early hours and get a higher rate between four and seven in the evening for exporting. I currently charge my batteries on the cheap rate but as the days  get longer I'll be looking to reduce this. One thing i do though is limit the amount of battery discharge so that in the evening I don't run out juice and have to import it.

[Tony_S]

54 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

I currently charge my batteries on the cheap rate

Using the cheap rate to charge batteries  is specifically excluded on my tariff. Our batteries used to discharge slowly  to the grid overnight too if we were not using it. We added an extra battery recently and that means at this time of year there is still enough stored for our morning electrical use until the sun shines on the panels. 
Tony

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Well, I’ve had another busy day, mainly in the garden, both front and back. But the weather after dinner looked very dodgy, so I went to the workshop and spent a couple of hours working on the small industrial locomotive. Today I’ve been building the brake gear, which is quite fiddly, however, I’m making it more difficult for myself by wanting to make them removable! So far, I’ve completed the rear brakes and I’ve prepared the front brakes, I’ve just got to connect them together. 

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[Gwiwer]

Dr. SWMBO has safely returned from her day in Paris and is back in her London-area digs.  I can go to bed now.

 

G'night all.  

Edited April 29 by Gwiwer

[jjb1970]

The Hawker Hunter was a lovely looking aircraft, it remains one of the most elegant looking aircraft ever built IMO. 

[jjb1970]

On the guns argument, many years ago when a colleague wanted me to develop my career in regulatory policy he used a nice analogy - if you have a leaking roof you can put a bucket under the leak or you can fix the leak. He was a Japanese lawyer who basically ran the external affairs department of a marine classification society I worked for at the time. I can't help feeling the analogy is germane to Policing and law & order.

 

I don't dispute that the Police need the tools to respond to and deal with bad people and nutters, but the real issue is why they have to do so in the first place. Society has always had bad people and nutters, but over my life what was once abberant has become quite common. And it's not just an American phenomenon,  there have been mass killings and severely messed up behaviour in lots of countries. If it had always been so, or was universal we might say it was part of the human condition, but it hasn't always been so and isn't universal.  Which begs the questions of what, why, how. 

Edited April 30 by jjb1970

[jjb1970]

Look on the bright side, if the tarantulas and monitor lizards don't get you marauding gangs of macaques will:

 

https://stomp.straitstimes.com/singapore-seen/bukit-timah-condo-under-attack-by-monkeys-that-enter-homes-and-leave-trail-of

[Ozexpatriate]

14 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

They are considered non-lethal weapons of defence not lethal weapons of force. 

In practice, they tend to be used as weapons of force - in the "put your hands up or I'll tase you" scenario. Or the local scenario in a recent court case with one pressed against a shoplifter's intentionally uncovered family jewels - to subdue someone who stole candy.

 

14 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

 Victims are disabled instantly and for such time as it takes to secure them and remove them from the scene. 

Often not. It can take multiple charges to disable a determined individual.

 

14 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

... their efficiency at ending violent confrontations is not in doubt.  

That is the hope. It doesn't always work that way.

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

No police force is immune from employing a 'wrong un' but to employ rejects from another police force is just asking for trouble.

One of the problems with Police Unions here is that an officer's discipline record is not public or accessible outside the department. An officer can literally be fired for serious issues and get a job as a sworn officer in the town next door, because there is no tracking of their discipline record outside the original department.

 

I support their right to unionize and their work to protect their members, but not at risk to the public.

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, TheQ said:

Killings by law enforcement in 2020:

 

🇺🇸 USA: 1,021

🇨🇦 Canada: 52

🇦🇺 Australia: 16

🇩🇪 Germany: 9

🇬🇧 UK: 5

Officers per country: (multiple sources including Wikipedia)

 

US:  708,000

Canada: 70,000

Australia: 65,000

Germany: 289,900

England and Wales: 135,301

Scotland: 17,296

 

Law enforcement killings per 1,000 officers:

US: 1.44

Canada: 0.74

Australia: 0.24

Germany: 0.03

UK: 0.03

 

Yes, the US numbers are higher but only 2X that of Canada. I think your premise is sound, but relative comparisons should be used.

 

Edited April 30 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

This means that ALL my 4mm rolling stock, kits, accessories, etc., Will Have To Go, as will the majority of my Railway Books (prototype and modelling). Plus I will need to find new homes for The Brunel Pub, The Georgian Terrace Houses and other buildings.

Can you rent a storage shed on the downlow?

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Society has always had bad people and nutters, but over my life what was once abberant has become quite common.

I think there's a pendulum effect in rule of law.

 

There's no end of stories of highwaymen on the roads of jolly old, jumping in front of carriages with their trademark "Stand and deliver!".  "Lawlessness" seems to ebb and flow in societies.

 

The same tales exist in the "Wild" west of the US (holding up the stagecoach or robbing a train) or the bushrangers of Australia etc.

 

Rule of law seems to sit better when societies have their "needs" (shelter, food, etc) covered. Lawlessness increases with opportunity and when a society does not offer basic needs.