The Irish Boiler Problem
When I think of Scotland being independent, I’m always reminded of a problem, that was ongoing at a hotel we stayed in, in Dublin.
The boiler for the central heating had failed and the poor plumber was trying to get it going again. The boiler had been made in England a few years before and it wasn’t a cheap one. But it turned out that as it was rather a special, the spare that the plumber wanted wasn’t held in Ireland. And as it was about six on a Friday evening, the factory in I think Birmingham had closed for the night.
So the hotel had to wait a few days for heating. At least they had an immersion heater for hot water.
The plumber told me, how this was often happening as with expensive plumbing and its spares, was generally not kept in Ireland as it was only a small country and it was usually ordered overnight from England.
One of the things that might be a problem with Scottish independence, is that companies don’t keep stock north of the border and it becomes much more difficult to get something urgently. You might also have more paperwork and different currencies and VAT rates.
Prices in Scotland might rise! Or they might fall. Who knows?
An Advantage To The Rest Of The UK Of Scottish Independence
If Scotland becomes independent after Thursday, then we won’t have to suffer, when the weather forecasts give out the often more depressing forecast for north of the border.
The weather forecasts would be even better, if Northern Ireland were to become independent as well.
Does The Fashion Industry Think People Have More Money Than Sense?
Over the last few days, I’ve been through several glossy supplements to Newspapers and they seem to supporters by the big fashion companies, selling over-designed and over-priced clothes and accessories. They are mainly for women, but you do see adverts for watches that are more difficult to understand for the average Joe, than Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time.
I’ve always had a policy of not buying any clothes with any form of branding on it, unless the design is what I want. C was very much the same and usually her handbag was lacking any obvious label, although often they were expensive.
But seeing these adverts and also observing ladies around the world, why is it that they overpay for a handbag and then have some enormous advert slapped on it, which generally ruins any style the design had in the first place?
C once bought a very expensive bra and knickers set, because it fitted her so well. When she put it on for the first time, I asked her if she really wanted to show off where she had spent her money. She was rather embarrassed and after that first wearing, it was never seen again. When she died, I sold it for a lot of money on eBay. Just because of the name!
I think where fashion is concerned, there are several born every minute!
Action By The River
There was a lot going on in London by the river.
The pictures show the preparations for the Tour of Britain and a barge race on the Thames.
I met a lady from Stoke Newington, who was on her way to see Harmondsworth Barn near Heathrow.
I think there are millions of us, who use their Freedom Passes to explore London.
Match Six – Ipswich 2 – Millwall 0
Town got their second win of the season and the match was again lit up, by a sparkling display from the eighteen-year-old Teddy Bishop. He combined well with McGoldrick and their joint persistence made the first goal.
Walking to the ground from the station is easy at Ipswich, especially as you can see the ground virtually all the way and there are several maps. But surely those near the ground, should show the layout of the stadium to ease the walks of supporters and visitors.
History But No Stand Information
But at least Ipswich has got maps, which is more that can be said for most large cities and towns.
Millwall have a bad reputation for fan behaviour, but on the way home, I was sat with three fans and they were just phlegmatic about their teams performance.
The police told me, that they’d just had a nice trip to the country.
Art At Spitalfields
It is always good to walk through Spitalfields to get to Liverpool Street station.
The goat has been there for some time, but it’s the first time I’ve looked at Cecil Balmond‘s work!
London’s Garden Station
With the English love of gardening, you’d think that there would be lots of railway and Underground stations in the capital, which celebrate gardens.
But there are only three; Covent Garden, Kew Gardens and Ruislip Gardens.
The first is not really a garden now and who has heard of the last, but everybody has heard of the second.
So as I had heard the station had a pub on the platform, I went to take a look.
I just had a glass of real cider, but unfortunately the pub called the Tap On The Line had one of the most coeliac-unfriendly menus I’ve found in a long time.
The piece de resistance, was that the chips were oven chips, which as any coeliac knows are enhanced with wheat, so are not gluten-free. Even McDonalds manage to make their fries gluten-free!
You would be better off bringing a picnic to eat in Kew Gardens, which is four hundred metres away.
A Control Engineer’s View On The Result Of The Scottish Referendum
I trained as a Control Engineer in the 1960s and applying what I learned then to everyday systems is fun.
Avoid Discontinuities
One of the first things, you should do in designing a system is avoid discontinuities.
Take riding a bicycle. One of the things you try to avoid is steps, as even a single one like a kerb is a discontinuity to be got around. It is much easier to ride along a nice flat, smooth road.
I live in London and as I walk around, I see more and more instances, where steps have been removed or made easier. Even our Class 378 trains on the Overground, are in most instances step-across to get in or out.
So whether the Scots vote for independence or not, the trend in life is to remove discontinuities, so Edinburgh and Westminster must work to remove them. Here’s a few that we should have, as we share an island.
- An Interchangeable Currency
- A Public Transport System, that is continuous.
- A Legal System, where a crime in one country is a crime in the other.
- A Health System with similar access.
- Continuous Telephone and Internet
There are probably a few other things, but these don’t impact on the minutia of daily life.
We should be eliminating these, but politicians love creating a few more or are stopping the elimination of some. Take metrication and adjusting the clocks to European time, for two simple examples.
Avoid Large Control Movements
When you control a system, like our simple example of riding a bike, imagine you only had the options of turning the handlebars hard left or hard right. You’d soon fall off!
So in other words to make a system better, you do everything in a softly-softly mode. If you need to get from one state to another you do it in a smooth set of planned movements taking account of conditions over which you have no control.
Just think of the complicated process of landing an aircraft. It probably goes fine, until the aircraft gets struck by an unexpected lightning bolt. After that the experience and training of the pilot takes over.
Plan Ahead For Change
Changes can be difficult, if you don’t plan for them. That is why natural disasters like floods and earthquakes cause so many problems in the world.
But take some recent earthquakes in California and Japan. Some large cities like Tokyo avoided anything other than minor damage, because of good planning.
At present there are two mega projects in the UK; Crossrail and the Scottish Referendum.
I am surrounded in London by disruption caused by Crossrail, but everything has been planned minutely, to cause the smallest amount of pain. This planning was a long process taking many years.
Where is the planning in the separation of Scotland and the rest of the UK? Alex Salmond has decided to inflict all the pain afterwards.
In other words, he is like most politicians. Fuck you Jack, I’m alright and I’ve made my place in history!
The others are no better, as Devo Max should have been devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the first place. After all, the Isles of Man, Jersey and Guernsey seem to get on well with us all and isn’t that what they’ve got.
A Safari To The Wilds Of Barking
This morning, I took the bus to Barking Riverside to get a feel of the area, that in a few years time will be served by the Gospel Oak to Barking Line Extension to Barking Riverside.
The Ripple Nature Reserve in the area, is just like some of the industrial wastelands, that I remember from my childhood in London after the Second World War.
One Tax We Don’t Have To Pay
I was reading an article in the Sunday Times about how Germans are leaving churches in droves as they don’t want to pay the church tax. Here’s the jist.
When it comes to a choice between God and mammon, German churchgoers are overwhelmingly choosing mammon.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens have been leaving the German churches every year, appalled by child sex abuse scandals and outrageous spending by clerical fat cats.
It would appear that for the average wage earner, it could be several thousand euros, which all church members pay to their chosen church.
There’s more about the so-called church tax in Wikipedia and I was surprised at how many countries have one. Here’s what Wikipedia says about the tax in Austria.
Church tax is compulsory for Catholics in Austria, with a rate of 1.1%. This tax was introduced by Hitler in 1939. After World War II, the tax was retained in order to keep the Church independent of political powers.
The Sunday Times said that some Catholics in Germany, who don’t pay the tax might be refused a religious burial. How charitable is that, when apparently the Catholic Church in Germany is said in the article to be worth £341bn.
Many of us moan about tax rates, but at least here’s one tax, that we don’t have to pay.
The Anonymous Widower 