Westward
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Posts posted by Westward
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Well they fooled me so perhaps I'm dumber than I thought.
To my simple mind I thought that if we minimised our electricity usage during the stated period we would be rewarded with money. Not so; what they really do is compare your usage today against your previous usage and reward you if you use at least a Kw less.
We are retired and the kids are long gone so compared with when we worked, we get up an hour or so later, have lunch later and supper later. This means that our electricity usage was normally very low before 6 p.m., consequently we get nothing back from the scheme.
In a word Oops!
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2 hours ago, udderlyoffroad said:
Agreed: way, way, overdue.
Ban them except for registered disabled and serving overseas armed forces personnel. Simples.
Yep. Remember teflon coated Keith Vaz in East Leicester??? Postal vote rigging on a massive scale.
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Agreed. Every other major trading bloc is outperforming the EU by a huge margin.
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2 hours ago, udderlyoffroad said:
I'd save your metaphorical breath.
I've written it on here before: "these horseless carriages will never catch on" Seemingly am being too conceited or too up myself with this remark for some posters to understand what I mean.
A hundred years ago, all a certain group of old farts saw when an early car went by, were the problems & costs associated with running one. They knew and understood horses, and to them they were 'peak technology'. They just couldn't envisage things changing. A very similar situation exists now.
The point is not that EVs are a drop-in replacement for all applications now, it's that the technology is coming. Absolutely, with current battery technology, EVs don't work for certain applications. What's slightly surprising to me is that this 'current' generation of old farts grew up with battery-powered milk floats delivering to their doors daily - EV's have been practicable, for some applications, since the 60s!! Equally, back then, nobody was seriously suggesting milk-float technology be used a replacement for a sales rep's Ford Anglia either.
And this persistant idea that people without driveways or dedicated parking will be unable to charge their cars? Absolute hogwash. True, there have been a few lamppost-based ham-fisted attempts that don't work too well, but the idea that we can't solve the problem that is a cable strewn across a pavement is pure defeatism.
A final thought: Even the likes of Clarkson & James May have opined than an electric motor is superior to an ICE as means of powering a car, for many reasons. Torque curve, orders of magnitude fewer moving parts, RAM, no need to idle the thing...It's just that how precisely you power that motor isn't a settled question yet.
How amazingly patronising.
I haven't ever said EVs will always be useless except for short to medium runs. No doubt they will get better - but that's not the issue. Charging is the issue, both availability of charge points and time spent charging, and there's no way that problem can be properly and fully resolved by 2030. the National Grid is in trouble today 23rd Jan, and paying consumers to limit use between 5 and 6 to avoid the eye watering costs of starting up coal power. How will they cope with 30 or 40 million EVs in 15 years or so?
If people want to drive an EV that's okay but I don't, and I suspect that a majority feel the same way.
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Not just households. I saw a report a couple of years ago that reviewed every region's revenue balance. This covered the whole UK, but the only 2 regions that had a positive revenue balance were London and the south east.
Basically, Greater London with about 12% of the population produces around 30% of the nation's GDP.
Without a massive restoration of manufacturing and a positive trade balance the country is slowly sinking. We can't rely for ever on inward investment to keep paying for everything.
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7 hours ago, Mungler said:
Or that per mile they are cheaper to run
Only as long as you can charge it at home.
Several recent tests pointed out that longer journeys in a standard EV using public fast charge points - if you can find one that works - cost significantly more than petrol cars for the same journey and take significantly longer door to door.
There are 100s of thousands of people in this country living in houses with no on property parking or in blocks or towers of flats who will have to rely on the few public charge points for which the infrastructure is years away. Here in Glos, as with most shire counties, there are dozens of small villages tucked away miles from any town. For the residents personal transport is essential as buses are virtually extinct. How will EVs work for them if they don't have private parking? No charging infrastructure company is going to install charge points for a dozen people who only use their car twice a week.
Boris' idiotic, knee jerk law banning new ice powered cars by 2030 is a fantasy dreamt up by people who have no clue what life is like for the majority in this country.
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2 hours ago, old man said:
Maybe the problem here is the way people now think that the NHS has responsibility fo everything related to personal health, even the odd aspirin for free? The system is now blocked?
They stopped prescribing the sort meds you can get from Tesco for a few pence several years ago.
Round here the surgery seems to have a priority system in place. It seems you get near the top if you're really old or a young child or, like me, being treated for cancer. The surgery will give my D-I-L a next day appointment for our grandson and I can always get an appointment for my hormone implant, but my wife has simply given up trying to see a doctor even though she needs an examination and probably a scan on a damaged ankle. Factor in that the doctors here do 9-5, work from home 2 or 3 days a week and that the surgery is closed on weekends and it's easy to see why people call an ambulance for anything more than a headache.
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There's a problem with electrical resistance on one of the battery connectors. This causes the voltage to drop when current is drawn. Starting is a really heavy current drain and the more the current drain the more the voltage drop and that's why the panel lights go dead. Clean the contact area of the battery terminals and the cable clamps with light sandpaper and refit.
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4 hours ago, oldypigeonpopper said:
Have you looked to see what the Nuffield charity pay the CEO ?
No but I am aware of that too many charity CEOs get eye wateringly large salaries. Cancer research, which is really a promotional vehicle for the the pharma industry and is a charity in name only, pay their CEO £240K.
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16 hours ago, Agriv8 said:
Nuffield health income nearly 1 billion in 2019 l! Because people can’t wait for there nhs operation!
Nuffield is a charity. Surely they help the NHS rather than plunder it.
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30 minutes ago, Agriv8 said:
No it will keep limping on too many big companies taking cream off the top and paying to keep politicians in there pocket !
Agriv8
For example???
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Aneurin Bevan, always ready to take the credit, merely implemented the parts of the Beveridge Report which related to health. Since Labour continually claim to have invented the NHS it might be worth noting that Beveridge was actually a liberal and the report was commissioned by the coalition government under instructions from Churchill. Beveridge having been Churchill's private secretary early in the 20th century.
From it's earliest beginnings, pre WWI, the welfare state was always a liberal concept. This was when the liberals were actually a sensible and electable party and long before they became "Labour Lite". Just about all the Labour Party has ever done for the NHS over the last 70 years is to complain that the conservatives starve it of cash.
The NHS needs to be free of government interference and the government needs to be freed from being held responsible for the structural shortcomings in the NHS. Neither of which will happen whilst it remains untouchable.
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4 minutes ago, Rem260 said:
What do you do with people who have existing health problems. How will they get insurance or should they use their life savings.
The NHS wasn't a fully functioning system from day1. It all started the year I was born but when I was 3 my mother spent 18 months in a TB sanitorium in South Mimms. My dad had to work 5 and a half days a week at his main job and 2 evenings at White City dog track in order to pay the bills. Of course no one would do that now, present day people simply assume that it's the government's job to pick up the bills. And that's what would happen for people who couldn't get insurance, much as it is in other civilised countries with working healthcare systems.
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The NHS model hasn't been sustainable in the long term for at least 40 years. The idea of cradle to grave care, free at the point of entry, is unique to this country AFAIK. Originally it included free dentistry and free eye care along with illness and injury. Since then many hugely expensive new services such as IVF have been added and the ever increasing expectations from the public and the government as to what the NHS should be providing is dragging it further and further into meltdown.
Labour and their supporters of course cry "Tory cuts" as if it's lack of money that's the problem, but it's much more than that and simply throwing money in does nothing more than delay the inevitable.
The NHS is the last survivor of the era of the great nationalised monoliths like British Rail and the GPO and like them it's a socialist white elephant that has no place in the 21st century.
I agree with Rewulf, restructure into a sustainable, partly self funding service or face the inevitable collapse.
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1 hour ago, Gordon R said:
Reading Mungler's list, it would be easy to say it is slanted and dismiss it out of hand, but it looks scarily accurate to me.
Just missing a couple of things like refuse hospital entry to drunks. Let the ambulances drop them at the nearest police station to be thrown in the cells to sleep it off.
As for the topic I've no doubt things in the hospitals would be easier if the GPs - who seem to do less and less these days - were more available to those who pay their (often huge) salaries.
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On 01/01/2023 at 12:12, morgan said:
For sure, but it is getting to the point that young people, even if they work hard and pull themselves up and do all the things that traditionally society required of their parents to get a start in life - learn a good trade or go to university and get a professional qualification. Yet they will never afford to buy a house, consequently pay massive rents and maybe be forced to visit foodbanks.
My wife and I are both from modest working class backgrounds, especially my wife. We have 3 sons whom we supported through university costing around £10K each, but since then none has asked for any further financial support apart from one who moved back for a year to save up his deposit.
They all live in their own (mortgaged) homes and none has been to the food bank.
It's not about going to university, it's about taking the right course at the right university. Too many go primarily for the freedom and lifestyle and take any old subject that's not too demanding like textile design or philosophy then, when they leave, they end up working somewhere like the local council because they can't get the well paid career position they expected.
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7 hours ago, Scully said:
I think it more or less does its job, but it’s not meant to be a documentary. If people want the definitive history then they need to read a book.
The book which is the basis for the TV series was written by Ben Macintire who also narrated a 3 part documentary telling the real story and containing clips recorded in the 80s from a number of survivors of the original 60 or so L Detachment recruits. These clips included David Stirling himself.
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During lockdown I was appalled at the way Sunak dished out a staggering amount of cash in business support without any proper checks into the veracity of the claims. That, along with furlough abuse, cost the country an eye watering amount of money, many billions of which was claimed fraudulently. Almost the first thing he did after becoming PM was to wind up the fraud enquiry. No doubt it would have reflected poorly on him.
But I strongly approve of him overriding the medicos and ordering that people arriving from China will be tested for Covid before being allowed entry.
Sunak isn't a billionaire, but he is a typical product of the values of many Asian families in that he worked hard and did well at school and later qualified as a pharmacist. His wife is very rich in shares though as is the daughter of a billionaire business owner. She was non-dom but became resident when he became chancellor. That was probably a condition of his appointment.
I'm prepared to give him a chance as I think he means well and is handling union dogma about right. If he can quiet down the awkward tory rebels the country might start to look on the government more favourably.
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On 30/12/2022 at 13:30, steve s×s said:
My god, I learnt that a long long time ago, these people are supposed be intelligent
I'm not sure anyone would accuse Harry of being intelligent and his wifey is just a scheming, streetwise opportunist.
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22 hours ago, 12gauge82 said:
I think you've made some very inaccurate assumptions about my background and situation to be honest.
It wasn't directed at you personally.
To explain. What I find incomprehensible is the lack of appreciation in the more deprived areas that education is important and is just as accessible to them as to those in the middle class areas.
I keep hearing reports that poorer people have worse education - and they're always loaded with the underlying implication that it's worse simply because they poorer. My attitude is that it's really the other way around; they're poorer because they don't prioritise education and they don't comprehend aspiration so, as they did themselves, their children leave school as soon as possible, meaning that mostly they can only get carp jobs.
Twenty years go by and the seething envy so many have for those who've done better in life is revved up by the Mick Lynch type of rabble rousing oratory and the usual demands for better pay and conditions (which is always code for more money).
Sigh! And so it goes on, generation after generation.
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I can hear your arteries hardening from here in Gloucestershire.
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8 minutes ago, 12gauge82 said:
the working masses are being robbed blind.
Same old same old.
Why not prioritise an education, pass exams up to A level, slog through a 1st class degree in a "real" subject at a "proper" university and get accepted on a grad scheme with a major employer. Then be willing to put in 12 hour days for years, just like one of my sons who is now reaping the rewards.
No one got rich sitting on their backside and whining about how unfair it all is.
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1 hour ago, henry d said:
Too simplistic.
Man A gets a pay increase, the product he produces increases in price. Man B buys this product but unless he buys it daily then how on earth can he need a pay increase? True socialist control of means of production would feed back any surplus to society as a whole.
Amazing! And I thought the loony left finally died when Corbyn was ousted.
Socialist control has never benefitted society as a whole anywhere, ever; not even China - and it never will. Socialism is designed to benefit a tiny few at the expense of those who's interests they claim to represent.
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1 hour ago, Stonepark said:
Science.....
Dead right.
Real science assesses the data before deciding what the result is. As it is we all have to live with the consequences of the stupid Nett Zero nonsense thanks to so called scientists who assumed it must be CO2 "Because we can't think what else it could be".
And all the time it's hiding in plain sight above their heads.
Energy Saving Scheme.
in Off Topic
Posted
Sadly indeed but as an old **** I well remember just how awful the public utilities and transport systems were.
That sort of misses my point which is that the message sent out and which is still being recycled by the media, is that all you had to do was avoid using high power consumption machines like dryers, dishwashers etc and Hey Presto they give you money.
Perhaps I'm just gullible but as a side issue these problems with the grid are there because we rely on imported energy to make up the difference when the wind doesn't blow and their much vaunted and beloved (cough) renewable energy isn't producing. This week they haven't been able to import as much as they wanted due to because... Guess what? Yep, higher demand in Europe therefore less available for us. What a fiasco!