Monday September 04, 2006

More why does

Since writing the previous Why does... I have thought of some more...

The maintenance man visits you at home when you are on that important conference call..

When a shower head gets clogged up with limescale why is there always one jet that squirts water straight into your eye wherever you stand in the shower cubicle.

You want a screwdriver. You think you need a slotted one but when you have gone downstairs riffled through your toolbox and brought it back up you find the screw head is a philips.

If you wash your car or water the garden it rains the next day, or you drive through the muddiest puddle and mess the nice clean car up.

If you don't have a coat or umbrella it will rain.

If the council close one road to do road works , they will also close the most convenient alternative road the day after leading to travel chaos.

If you wear walking sandals you will end up walking through inches of water or mud. If you take boots it will be red hot and your feet will roast inside the heavy boots.

During a visit to the toilet you realise far too late there is no loo paper...

Hosepipes - banned of course at the moment. As you take them off their hose tidy they will get nice kinks in them and even after unkinking these the hose will after you turn your back kink up again. Finally as you wind the hose back on the tidy it will get caught around everything in sight...

Friday August 18, 2006

Odd things inside and on cars

It should be of no surprise to me the odd decorations people put on or inside their cars ( but I am..). Here are some I have seen.

The extra bodywork people bolt on their cars to enlarge the wheel arches, and round the front and rear bumpers. Fantastically wide wheels, as if the standard ones were clearly not wide enough for safety reasons..

Odd stencil details like flames around the wheel arches etc

Registration plates, which mimic people names/ their trades or related to the car itself eg BMW1 etc. A whole weblog could be written on these alone...

The no badge option you get on BMW and Audi cars - where the badge with the model/size of the engine is not fixed on the bodywork. Amazingly neither manufacturer charges for not putting the badge on.

Odd badges on the front/rear of cars proclaiming membership of an organisation - one dubious one would be the Caravan club.

Silly signs on the rear window like "my other car is a Ferrari".

Large fluffy dice hanging from the rear view mirror on the windscreen.

England flags when the team is playing in a tournament which fall off very quickly and are left littering up the road. Even odder is having those flags still on your car months after the event has finished.

The bad taste plastic fingers that give the impression of them being trapped inside a car boot etc.

The nodding dogs on the back parcel shelf now revived with the insurance company Churchill.

Pictures or words on the rear tyre case on the back of 4X4s. Like "another piggin 4X4"..., or pictures of dogs, cats or Indians etc..

Friday August 11, 2006

Why publicise these ?

First it happened in the tabloids, then on ITV news ( if you can call it that ) and now the BBC news is doing sensational stuff like this. The news item usually is about a group of people or children who do something that is either silly and or dangerous. It is captured on a mobile phone. The story is then relayed around the country showing in explicit detail how to repeat the incident. Bad enough that people are stupid enough to do the stunt first time. Doubley stupid is showing it on TV encouraging people to do copy them.

Wednesday August 02, 2006

Mind the gap! or better still close it off.

I am constantly amazed at the design of our road system and how really dangerous features end up in the final design of a road and then get left in there despite the obvious danger to all road users. I am talking here about gaps in dual carriagways where cars can cross over the the opposite lane. These are often put in place to provide access to a road which turns off on the other carriagway. The idea is a car move over into this gap and when it is safe to do so they complete the crossing of the other carriagway and then continue their journey. This is not too bad on quiet roads but you often see cars making very last minute moves to cross the road when there is heavy traffic about. Where the A40 leaves the M40 heading into Oxford there were many of these gaps. Thankfully a lot of them are now closed. What it means if a driver want access to the road on the other carriageway is they have to carry on to the Oxford ring road and then go all the way round the roundabout and return back on the other side of the road. If such a roundabout does not exist then traffic lights should be provided to provide safe passage across the path of oncoming traffic.

Thursday July 27, 2006

The cheek of it

Even cheekier than the Cheeky girls is this. These were being handed out at our local railway station last week. I wish Thames Water would spend money on improving their water systems instead of getting giving out teabags to us all - a worthless excercise. It is telling us to only fill the kettle for one cup so we do not waste water. I do not know anyone who fills a kettle to the brim, boils it, fills a teacup and pours the rest down the sink. Now from the point of view of saving electricity part filling it makes sense of course.

Thursday July 20, 2006

Jars of preserves...

When you visit a hotel or pub I get really annoyed when they have those minature jars of preserves that are for one serving. These are made of glass and have a metal lid. Their shape makes it almost impossible to get any more than 50% of the contents out of them. These containers are a real waste of resources. In fact the best jam jars are French and a lot of supermarkets now sell them. These jars have gently sloping sides and no awkward ring of glass at the top preventing the removal of the last of the jam. I hate to say it but the French have got one thing right..

Thursday June 22, 2006

No peeping!

If you go to a newsagents very often you will see people in front of the magazine stand reading magazines. I have found over the last few months more and more magazines are wrapped up to prevent this. I can understand the motivation of the publishers - if someone can spent half an hour reading the interesting bits out of a magazine why bother to buy it ? The problem is it is another source of un-recyclable waste that ends up in the bin. The publishers will say they are doing this to ensure their product reaches the consumers in tip top condition. If they want to stop people doing this then they need to make their publication better value and have more interesting stuff in there to make casual browing happen less.

Tuesday June 20, 2006

A believe a day....

Over the last few weeks I have been worried about my favourite chocolate bar. It has taken on a new new name.

Worried that the marketing folks at Mars have overstepped their mark I did some investigation. It is all revealed here . It has been temporarily renamed "Believe" in England for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The company have also involved Uri Geller to help our team on. Good luck tonight chaps.

Thursday June 08, 2006

Bang Bang who is dead?

A rather disturbing thing happened to me on the way home the other day. I had taken a different route to pick up this years hanging baskets. I was following a car which was one of those 4X4's and one of the rear windows was open. As we approached a roundabout a gun appeared out of the window. It was rather sinister in the way it appeared as if it really was going to take a shot at something. However as more of the gun was revealed I could see a small hand was holding it. It was a kid pretending to shoot at something. Now I am not going to make any judgement on wether kids should have toy guns except to say since we stood upright on our back two legs our offspring have always done this sort of thing, perhaps with sticks and stones years ago before guns were introduced....not being a parent I also don't need to worry about making such decisions.

Friday June 02, 2006

Leaking away - what a waste

I took this picture of a leak in a water main and then waited to see how long it took for it to be fixed. I have no idea how many gallons/litres of water was wasted by the time it got fixed but it must have been the equivalent of several hosepipe's worth. Of course this is a visible leak many others are leaking from on pipes buried underground out of sight. I heard that my water company Thames water had not met their water loss target but had not been fined. Either way when we are told to save water by not leaving taps running etc etc to pass this visible waste of water for two weeks before it is fixed does not impress me in the least. The other thing that really annoys me is that we have only recently had a letter from our water company which told us why we are in this situation, how much money they are spending on fixing the leaks (500K GBP per day) and so on... Our company is trying to have a desalination site sited in the Thames estuary and a new large reservoir in Oxfordshire to help resolve the water shortage problem - largely of their own making. Less profits more new pipes please!

As a footnote to this we have had the wettest month of May for years. To add insult to injury we are also told this rain is the wrong sort. It is running off the ground into rivers and then the sea. Well if any of the rain on my garden gets to the sea I will be surprised. A further observation was made by Chris this week. We all get worried and irritated by the spectre of standpipes if this drought gets worse. As he said there are people in this world who have to walk miles to get water which is usually infested with all sort of unpleasant things and carry it on their head back to their houses. Perhaps it would do us good to have this sort of restriction to make us realise what a valuable resource water is and how not to waste it.

Finally on the waste issue there is a lot of concern about old computers ending up being shipped to Asia where there are taken apart to recycle valuable parts like copper etc. This article explains more about this and the environmntal legacy this is leaving. It seems PC's now have a lifetime of two years and this is making this problem even worse. Another reason why our Sunray technology is a good thing as its lifetime is much longer than that and there is hardly any of it to be taken apart so when it does go into its technology graveyard its impact on the environment is much less.

Friday May 19, 2006

Overtaking cycles

While driving to/from work I meet a lot of cyclists. I was wondering if my approach is right in regards overtaking them. I imagine if I caught up with Chris at the speed he wizzes along there would be no point in even trying. Here are my ideas:

Before even considering overtaking think about potential road hazards/features that mean attempting to overtake is not a safe thing to do - eg wait until it is safe ( blind bend, car approaching from other direction etc)

Obey any road signs/lights etc that relate to the bit of road you are on.

Keep well back. Unless you can read the mind of the cyclist you have no idea what they might intend to do. Also if they fall off you don't want them to go under your wheels.

Before overtaking. Again ensure it is a sensible thing to do again.

Look once more and indicate.

Overtake giving the rider a clear berth.

Don't blindly follow another driver overtaking. You won't be able to see other cars coming in the other direction.

Don't cut in as soon as you think you are clear of the rider give them room.

Any other ideas ? Do add these as comments.

Thursday May 04, 2006

Car reviews ?

I really get irritated by car reviews in papers and on TV. The reviews never cover a car or model of a car I would buy. It is always a large or top of the range vehicle they review. The worst reviews although I appreciate they are tongue in cheek are Jeremy Clarkson's which are in the Sunday Times papers. If it is not a expensive Merc or Beemer he just is not interested. The car shows on TV also are a little bit reckless I think showing the presenters wizzing around race circuits tyres squealing, engines screaming. That is not responsible behaviour I think. What we need to encourage is people to buy sensible cars, environmentally better than the large 4X4 petrol guzzlers everyone is buying nowadays.

Wednesday April 26, 2006

Stop means Stop

Friday April 21, 2006

Sixty pounds is not enough

The rules on using phones in cars is well known. But look around you and it is clear the current small fine is not putting people off. The fine however is soon to be double to sixty pounds and points will also be added to the owner of the driving licence. I am afraid that make any difference. The risks of getting caught are too small. The traffic police have enough to do without trying to catch people doing this. As I have said before I think the onus should be put on the mobile phone manufacturers. Stop them working in a car that is moving. It cannot be that hard to do. Taking it one step further I think using a mobile while undertaking any movement walking, running etc is dangerous. How many times have you nearly been canoned by someone so wrapped up in their conversation that they don't look where they are going. Maybe a trembler device ought to be fitted to mobiles...

Tuesday April 11, 2006

Baby on board!

People stick some pretty crazy messages inside their cars but the one that amuses me more than anything else are the ones proclaiming people have their offspring are in their car. I wonder how this is meant to persuade other drivers on the road to do differently? For me it means the driver of a car with the message inside may be constantly distracted by their offspring causing havoc in the car so I should keep well clear (which I guess is what they want in the first place..). It might also mean that the child inside in a fit of rage rips off its nappy and lobs it out the window and it then ends up on my windscreen ( imagine the wording of that insurance claim..).