Fozzie

The media seem to be whipping up a storm, you almost think they want Boris to win. He doesn't have to even lift a finger, he just has to let the media portray him as the thing that can come back and oppose Starmer. I personally think there is some merit to that, the hardcore Brexit lot love Boris. But on the whole, it will alienate more of the electorate. I genuinely think the tories have a choice, go for election now and lose, or push through and lose the next 2 at least. Providing Labour don't stuff it up.

I think as I saw with the 17 year old, the youngsters get priority. Which you'd expect, and I was ok with at the time, it was the nurses I know personally who felt I'd been poorly treated, and let me in on the time frame you're meant to be seen with my problem. And I wasn't alone, I was in a room with 5 others who were in varying states, one with an appendix issue same as me, but he'd been left too long and needed an infection draining. My area (Manchester) has seen hospitals close, and everything be focused on Wythenshawe, and it can't take it. And I've heard complaints from areas around me, Macclesfield, Southport, Liverpool to name some. And at work I've recently be moved to public sector, so seeing a lot of hospitals, and there's a clear pattern emerging I'm sorry to say. Before this, I'd have sung the high praises of the NHS. Now, I think its been broken by a few factors, from poor government, to no one addressing the bloated middle management layer I routinely hear nothing but scorn about.

Unfortunately she didn't have her fall in London, where she would have been met with state of the art hospitals, and pleasant staff who are still very busy, but considerably better equipped than what you find up't north. I waited 3 days for my appendix to be removed earlier this year. It blew a hole in it, and I woke up having a weird seizure (rigor), which was unsettling. Ambulance never showed up, GP was amazed I was standing and tried to get me immediate admittance to the surgical ward. Took 4 hours to get by the hospital reception. Then it was 3 days of tests, and mostly waiting, with a 17 year old then coming in with the same thing as me, and being worked on first, as he wasn't tolerating the pain. It was a shambles. All I've heard from friends in London is it's busy, but they are seen and treated in much quicker times, in much better facilities. I'm working at Macclesfield hospital at the moment, the place that worked on me when I was in an accident at 19, it's looking fairly rough now. And the place wants to de-gas and switch to heat pumps... Haven't the heart to tell them what that's going to do to their electricity bill. Even with gas what it is.

These groups are creating increasingly insane splinter groups as they aren't challenged. There was a squad in both London and Manchester letting down tyres, including those of EV cars, as "they still contribute to congestion, and therefore deaths". Another group has just thrown soup/paint over art exhibits/car showrooms. I'm unsure on if it's true, but some reports link the stop oil group back to an oil heiress, which I'm on the fence with as it's coming from unreliable often alt right sources. But it would make sense, as it's done exactly what you'd want as an oil baron, which is turn people against these protestors and keep people buying oil based products. No doubt the story with these protestors is they woke up that morning in a gas heated home, ate cereal from a "100% recycled cardboard box" that still has a plastic bag inside, they then got on board a train either powered by diesel, or an electricity grid averaging 50% gas, while arranging with their friends via a smartphone chock full of rare earth metals how to cause disruption, then they commit an act of petty vandalism, go to tesco for a meal deal in yet more plastic wrapping, and declare moral victory... As a side note, Robert Llewellyn has a youtube channel, and his home is fitted with solar panels, a heat pump, an electric high efficiency electric boiler, and actually openly discusses the challenges, and benefits in a nice way that doesn't f**k anybody off.

I've always disliked weddings, but the one I went to last weekend was ok as people chose the music that played, so you got a good mix rather than a bad DJ rattling off best hits from 30 years ago that are badly mushed together. I actually danced for a while, whereas usually I'm found at the bar with the first motorbike/F1 fan I can find Still don't do well with the ceremony bit. Especially the church ones where you get half an hour of chatting about gods love. Far too preachy for me, and it's eating into the time most marriages these days tend to last.

In my view he took the 20-80% charge level too seriously. Keeping between those limits effectively limited him to 60-70 miles per charge, so doing 2300 miles was going to be a mammoth undertaking. But he had to back track to recharge on a couple of occasions, and charging in Scotland seemed to be a real problem! Their infrastructure was a lot worse than Englands, even though I thought we had it bad. But it highlights while outside of commuting, lithium batteries don't make sense in motorcycles. We need the next generation to come through, carbon based or graphene batteries. There's even a couple of nickel types that would boost energy density by 3-400% and allow rapid charging even at the <10% and >90% levels of charge.

TeapotOne also did a big electric bike trip recently, part 3 is due out this week I believe. He did a 96 hour iron butt challenge on an electric bike, and did the four furthest corners of the UK, including lands end and John O'Groats. A good watch for those who like seeing this tech develop.

No need to censor yourself here, you can just say cocaine

Corbyn, yes. He made many life long labour voters who lived through the 70s all shout out "not again". Keir is much more technical, and centre left, but he doesn't fly his colours or show us his principles. Too much of a lawyer, and doesn't give punchy soundbites that reverb with people. I thought Johnson was more the devil you knew, and he certainly talked a good talk about hospitals, environment etc. And generally, when a left/right wing leader borrows good bits from the other wing, you can get a good result. Keir did a good interview at the weekend, and he's actually laying out what he would do... Being an opposition, finally! And where are the lib dems at the moment? Back in 2010 I gave my vote to Clegg as I thought he'd balance out Cameron, and instead went back on every promise he made. That party further fell into irrelevance when it claimed it would reverse brexit, but even so, there's been a huge amount of political capital up for grabs lately due to the tories handling. I like to have a third choice as I don't like 2 party politics, you end up going tribal like America has.

Well Kwasi, or Kami-Kwasi as I will now call him for this latest budget has flown his colours loud and proud. Lets fix the country by relieving tax, and removing bonus caps from a group of people who sought to deregulate banking to enable them to effectively gamble money backed by things like our housing market, so that they could make money out of nothing, which then had to all be paid once it went wrong. And the worlds governments had to bail out banks, which were meant to be working for them... These tax cuts are worth 50k a year to someone making a million. Everyone else gets to deal with 10% inflation, stagnant pay rises, and the rise in cost for basics to go with it. Polls indicate labour are now on course for a landslide. And even life long tories, some in my family, are thinking "yeah, probably about right". And the rest of us thinking "Why did it have to get to this point?".

Bugger it, I've caught covid. Think I was coming down with it late last week while I was in America. Big headaches for a day yesterday, a bit of a cough, but compared to my first encounter, a complete pussy cat that has lost its teeth. Will be working on my bike in the garage feeling sorry for myself, and keeping hydrated/fed. Hopefully see it off in a few days.

When you put the spark plug in, did you tighten it properly as stated on the box (as tight as you can on fingers and 1/4 to 1/2 a turn on a wrench)? Did you top the oil up to the correct level before trying to start? And can you charge the battery and see what happens with a brief press of the starter button (I think YBR's of that age have both). If it turns over very quickly, that's a big sign you've lost compression. Engines are fairly cheap second hand for these bikes, but may as well find out exactly what has let go first.

Cheers chaps, I'm fairly happy with how the situation panned out. A couple of colleagues and my old man advised against it as they said the company would play a numbers game, and I couldn't expect my co-worker to make the same condition, which I didn't. I chose to do it anyway and play a straight bat with my boss. So when my co-worker said she was leaving over the situation, my boss pointed out they were losing 2, not 1. And I think what helped most was it wasn't emotional or impulsive, it was a plan left lying in wait, and I'd recently updated my LinkedIN and CV, so the writing was on the wall.

Did you tighten the alternator bolts back up properly? And with the right bolts? Can you get a video and put it up? I've seen a bike before where a nasty knock became a loud grinding noise. The alternator was loose, and eventually rattled off and began scraping the case. But not having lights sounds like you blew a fuse, as the battery should still power everything. Did you connect the relay into the terminals snugly? You might have a loose connection.

Good news for today! I mentioned a while back that I was taking a lunge on a position that was 2 levels above where I am now. The aim of it was to at least force/trigger the next step in my career. I've essentially been doing the role above for nearly 2 years anyway, so it's more recognition I'm after. There was a lot of drama while I was away on holiday, as basically there's a colleague that has been in her role for a similar amount of time to me, who also wants promotion. We've both been fighting a joint battle, but I was the only one to take a lunge for the principle position 2 rungs up. I missed out on the principle position, but came close enough to the person who got it (who is a lot more experienced than me) that the feedback was to expedite me up to a lead engineer role, and then develop me to principle within the next 1-2 years. My colleague asks if that means a role for her will also be produced, and she's told to apply for it. However as we are open with each other, she knows it was promised to me and there's only 1 available, so she tells our boss that she is going to leave. However, I told my boss that if I didn't get the role, I was leaving, but also that if I was given the role and my colleague not, I'd also be leaving as I wouldn't stay with a company treating my peers that way. So my boss tells this to the hiring manager, who is basically forced to go upstream to get approval. And we were both made lead engineers. Result!

I saw this on a group with a lot of cyclists, and I got in some hot water when I replied to a particularly lengthy rant post with "Knock knock... Whose there? Consequences of cyclists actions... Oh! You're late!" It went down about how you'd expect.

Oof, I bet you felt a prang when that went! I think as long as the torn ends aren't "diseased" (basically too battered to join) it can heal. Or am I thinking of the wrong ligament? But still, bet that's going to be a slow recovery. How are the pain levels?

Happy birthday! Hope you've had a good day!

Hello from Florida! Been here with the mrs for a week, been up to a lot and turns out we are returning home to a new PM and new monarch. Queen Liz is all I’ve known my entire life so was sad to see she’d passed, especially as my 98 year old gran adored her and was hoping she’d see her centenary letter written to her by the queen. Me and the gf raised a glass when we learnt of her passing. Here’s a couple of pics, doing all the Disney stuff. We’ve done the universal parks, and this was a 2 year delayed 30th present to myself. As I wanted to go to the Star Wars land they’ve built here.

I'll give you the small rant, as I had a bad feeling before hand, which I feel has more than been confirmed by a couple of projects. Heat pumps are a gimmick. For homes that can power them with solar/battery or on an EV car energy tariff (only lasts 4 hours a day), they could just about make sense. But as a direct replacement to boilers, they are horrendous. They don't even do much to offset the gas you would have used, as the grid is 50% gas fired turbines. Here's the live link, and I bet it's around 50% no matter when you click it this year: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ Which makes you ask why the gov would scramble to litter their NHS hospitals with them? Conspiracy to drive up costs so they can sell it off? No, in my view that would require a degree of intelligence they don't have. More likely is this is the latest knee jerk reaction, similar to when they ran towards diesel with reckless abandon. They've just seen the headline "replace GAS boilers", and that's their focus. What was infuriating on a recent site visit was I walked all over the roof of a hospital doing cable routes, finding supplies for BMS outstations to control all the kit they are throwing in, and when asked why they aren't doing the solar array... Roof would need replacing as it's a bit old, and they don't have the money for it. They are going to see their electricity costs rise 300% without...

If your factory area has a big area, and it has heat requirements. See if they would be interested in a solar array on the roof, battery backed installation. If they have gas boilers for hot water, or steam, these could be replaced with gas engines up to 8MW worth easily. Likely less as it's only really efficient sizing it to your thermal requirement, the electricity it makes is just the bonus. The pay back at the minute is only a few years. And current predictions show this crisis persisting for a couple more yet. So maybe worth a shout. We are up to our eye balls with work for the NHS who are throwing in solar, heat pumps and whatever else they can to off set gas consumption. When the gov has money to spend on that, it says a lot about what they think is likely over the next few years!

If having it on has no noticeable effect on whats coming out of the vents he's having you on I think. An aircon system loses about 10-15% of its refrigerant every year. So most places suggest 3-4 year intervals, though I've seen as little as 2 to keep it working effectively. However, it completely not working after 2 means you're losing more than 50% a year, which is abnormal. This is way above the normal rate, so I'd say you have a bad pipe/seal somewhere that is letting more by than it should.

The cost of electricity going up is in part due to the fact we have over 50% of our power generation coming from CCGT. Gas turbines! Price of gas goes up, the cost of turning that into electricity rockets. The Netherlands are already looking at altering their fleet of CCGT's to run partially on hygroden! We've been caught with our trousers down by Russia turning off the taps, as Europe is scrambling for gas reserves from elsewhere. Other sources have increased their production, and with it the price. New generation nuclear plants (the fail safe boring ones that don't make weapons) would have been a great step forward, one was even planned for Anglesey (since scrapped). Produce a huge amount of base load with well placed nuclear plants, and then back fill a network of micro-grids with solar/wind that is battery backed. Keep going until we are in surplus. And there's a few good strategies to follow. My company a couple of years back said "There's 15 years left for gas engines/turbines". I laughed and was told I was a cynic, now neither of us are laughing.

You didn't have any lightning storms in your area did you? Were a few about last week. Just occurred to me that my gfs sister had this happen to her, it hit a flag pole down the street and knocked her RCD off.

Cheers chaps Working today, but hoping for a chilled evening. Got a holiday just around the corner when I can properly unwind!