Do We Need A Charge For Plastic Bags?
I think this is a very difficult one, and although many claim, it has good green credentials, it is a measure that might annoy lots of people.
Take myself!
I generally go to a food store every day or so, as I don’t like food waste and buy just what I need. So I perhaps get one or two bags every day I go shopping. It should only be one per day, but because I can’t buy everything I need at one shop near me, I’ll often make a double trip.
I do have a reusable bag, but because of the useless self-service tills in the Waitrose at the Angel, I don’t use it as often as I should. My bag won’t stand on the tills, and one day something breakable will fall on the floor.
I also do a lot of shopping on my way home from say a football match, or a visit somewhere, so carrying a large bag just in case I need to buy something, is a silly strategy for me.
In fact, the charge will make little difference to me, as it’ll probably cost me about thirty pence a week.
All of the plastic bags I collect are used in my waste bin, which is just a big IKEA plant pot.
I have a feeling, that this could be one of the things, that will drive floating voters away from the Lib Dems.
I do hope that some of the excessive bags, I’ve received from up-market shops will be discouraged. I got one last month, that is a large tough and strong one, that will need to be shredded with a pair of scissors to put in my green recycling bags.
Yesterday, I bought a new rucksac in Selfridges. I was offered a bag to carry it home. I declined and put the bag on my back, with my briefcase and another small purchase inside. I suppose though, I walked out of the shop, without giving them any advertising.
A better way would be to have a packaging tax, so shops found better and cheaper ways for shoppers to get goods home.
Taking the Waitrose self-service tills, I’m certain an origami expert could design a better and bigger version of the ubiquitous British Rail paper carrier bags, used to carry drinks and snacks from the train buffet to your seat. It would stand up wonderfully on the weigher of the self service till. It would probably be quicker as Waitrose’s bags are a nightmare for my hands. I don’t think I’m the only one!
A British Rail Carrier Bag
I took this picture today and I noticed thast the lady in the buffet had them all neatly stacked and ready to use. It’s a classic design!
As in everything, the problem of too many plastic bags is something that we should design and innovate ourselves away from.
After all, if a shop came up with the perfect system, they would be the winners in the shopping wars.
A Missed Opportunity
Was it? But some years ago, I backed a guy making something called a TEBA brush mat. The company failed, but judging by these examples in Oslo, mats are being sold under another guise.
I’ve been lucky in life, but perhaps this is one place, where I didn’t do as well as I should have.
Developments At Cheltenham
Cheltenham is a town, I’ve been to several times. Usually, it has been to go to the races, although I did go there on my 92 Club trip. I went by train to Cheltenham Spa station.
This month’s Modern Railways describes a substantial proposed development at the station, which adds extra platforms and capacity. Given that there is a large development being started at Cheltenham Racecourse and getting to the racecourse by road is a nightmare, I think it would be a good idea to expand the station, so that racegoers could at least get to Cheltenham by train. Provision is made in the station scheme for perhaps a light rail system to link to the racecourse station.
But obviously, a heavy rail scheme would be better, so that luxury special trains could run from Paddington direct to the racecourse. First Great Western are now running Pullman Dining services on InterCity 125 trains to Plymouth, so perhaps the soon-to-be redundant trains could be refurbished as luxury go-virtually-anywhere trains to take visitors to special events in style.
There’s a lot to think about!
But the proposed reworking of Cheltenham Spa station, does show how if you think properly, you can improve a mundane station for the benefit of the rail companies and passengers alike.
Here’s a personal example.
With the simplification of movements at Ipswich, due to the new Bacon Factory Curve, will this make possible, some small improvements? It would be much easier for a train from say Cambridge to come in to Ipswich station and then reverse out to either Lowestoft or Felixstowe, as there won’t be freight trains reversing in the yard outside the station.
I hope Network Rail has got their thinking cap on!
They certainly seem to have got it right with new stations at Cambridge Science Park and Lea Bridge, but they seem to have been unlucky with building a Coventry Arena station, and then have Coventry City move away.
But as I indicated in this post, are Network Rail expanding the railway, by doing lots of small high return projects.
Going Back With Recycling
Most councils use large trucks to collect rubbish and do the recycling. But I was surprised to see this truck outside my house this morning.
Going Back With Recycling
Today, is recycling day and I suspect it was doing a bit of specialist work, before the main collection later in the morning.
Years ago, there used to be a lot more smaller refuse collection vehicles, made by companies like Shelvoke and Drewry. Wood Green used an innovative solution to the collection of rubbish around the High Road, where moving the trucks into the back of the shops was very difficult. They used to use a single Shire horse and a series of trailers for the rubbish. When they retired the horses, they started using Scammel Mechanical Horses. This extract from Wikipedia, explains the logic behind these innovative vehicles.
The London and North Eastern Railway had approached Napier’s, the quality car and aero-engine makers for an answer to the problem of replacing horses for local haulage purposes, while retaining the flexibility of changing the wagons and the manoeuvrability of the horse and wagon.
You do wonder if this concept is one that will be reinvented and put forward as a wonderful new idea. Imagine say on a large leisure site like the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, where for a large event, you might get tens of thousands of visitors. You could have a series of trailers, that had sections for the various types of rubbish and small electric tugs could move them to and from a central collection point, where they were automatically emptied. Hopefully modern technology could be used to make the trailers able to withstand a small bomb and thus get round one of the problems with traditional litter bins.
Royal Mail Iconography
I took these two pictures on Friday and Saturday respectively.
The brickwork has been saved and incorporated into the wall in the new Royal Mail sorting office in Islington and the Penford pillar box is behind the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush.
My Birthday Present To Myself!
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go back to the only mobile phone, I’ve ever been comfortable with; a Nokia 6310i.
My Birthday Present To Myself!
It arrived today and after charging it up, I can’t understand, why I didn’t buy another one earlier!
It does the things I need, like make and receive phone calls and texts and store useful pieces of information.
It’s also comfortable in your hand, in a way that modern phones just aren’t.
I got it on the Internet for £90, which may seem a lot for a twenty-year-old phone.
But then there is no substitute for good design.
Crazy Practical Plumbing
I took this picture on the pedestrian bridge over Paddington station.
Crazy Practical Plumbing
It’s amazing what you can do with flexible rubber hose and a couple of jubilee clips! But then you’ve got to make sure the rain from the roof, goes down the drain and not where people walk.
This is an example of the sort of design I like! It’s clever, stylish, practical and above all affordable!
Men And Washing Machines
There’s an interesting survey about male clothes washing habits going the rounds and it reported in the Daily Mail.
I won’t disagree with the findings, but I always find the instructions on most domestics appliances unfathomable, unless you get out the instruction manual. And of course, you always forget where you have put them.
Most appliances have far more features than you’ll ever use, whereas if I ever designed anything, one of the aims would be to take someone with the intelligence of say a ten-year-old and expect them to work it without instructions, after a brief chat with someone, who understood how it worked.
My washer-dryer is pretty simple, except that the buttons are difficult with my hands and tend to have mind of their own. But it has got many features, I’ve never used. i also fairly unique in that my mother taught me how to wash clothes by hand.
My House Is Hot Today
When I left this house about eleven, I deliberately left the curtains open and the air-conditioning off.
As you can see the sun was also pouring in through the skylight, but the temperature on my return was over thirty degrees. After about an hour the air-coditions has got it down to 27. But it’s still hot!
i do think though, that the skylight is one of the major causes of the overheating. But no-one can make a blind to keep the sun out.
The Anonymous Widower 