Housing Shortage

Why is there one?

Lack of land to build on is the reason often given. Builders who get permission to build a new housing estate then build as many as they can as close as they can for minimum cost vs return. And max return is I believe proportional to the number of rooms a house can claim to have.

Ok that explains why they don't build houses with the very useful/essential item of a cellar, even though it would be worth its weight in gold for most people and add minimum cost to the price of the house (at least I believe this is try, perhaps this is a case of citation needed).

So why not build about 2 stores, one fo the first things a lot of people do when getting a house is to turn the loft into an attic room, so there is clearly desire for it. My guess comes down to planning regulations again. That said the new development near us some houses do have 4 floors, but they are mainly flats so...

All this bugs me, because underground is so well insulated that is effectively perfectly insulated - hell if you dug deep enough you'd have as much free heat as you could ever want ;-) So there should be every reason to dig out at least one layer of cellar if not several. As for building higher, well gardens are that small these days, and many are paved/decked over so the reasons for keeping them in sunlight fall down.

So I would say that if the government wants to improve the housing sitation, get them to build cellars and encourage them to build taller houses.

Bailing out Manufacturing

So this Times article got me thinking.
Bailing out manufacturing vs bailing out the high street.
Call this simplistic, but a person employed in woolworths serves the UK itself, however from a simplistic analysis they do nothing for anyone else in the world. If you use the old cliche of UK PLC, then they don't produce anything that someone outside the UK wants, in fact they consume vast quantities of goods manufactured abroad.

At least car manufacturers produce something that is exported.

This may be 1st year economics, but to the country as an export (i.e. to pay for imports) what use is any of the high street? The high street may make the country itself more efficient, but it doesn't actually contribute to the bottom line, whereas the car industry does.
Ah, you say: that business has been making a loss for years. Well once you take away subsidies farming makes a massive loss and yet there are plenty of arguments for having a local farming industry.

Transport Let me Down

I had an idea for a new blog:
Open to as many people as possible to post(some limitations to prevent abuse). You then give your tale of how a particular form of transport has let you down.

Could be good for collecting tales about transport woes, particularly some sort of relative measure of how much different forms of transport cause woes. It could also be absolutely dreadful.

You never know until you try, next time I get 10 minutes...

Who throws a shoe?

I've been thinking about the current news story of the shoe thrower; particularly the allegations that he was beaten after he was detained.

Now, two options are possible, either he was beaten up after he was detained, or he wasn't.

If he wasn't, and the injuries are from while he was being detained then, then do I think he was justified in the event. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and call it a protest. Not really, no, I don't think it is valid to use physical violence to make a political statement; it happens a lot, but seeking to hurt others in order to further political aims has got to be a big bad, and the cries of 'he did it first and worse' might be valid, but the use of retaliatory action should always be condemned; after all, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. I think if the middle east in general could learn that lesson then things would be much better.
Now let's assume that he was beaten up after being detained. Words fail me trying to say how wrong this is if it were true, this is Guantanamo Bay level of wrong if it is true. Now this man's protest that I think is a bad thing has exposed a larger wrong. It's not quite the level of Jaywalking to bring the attention of Concentration camps to the public eye, but it is certainly I believe a lesser wrong to highlight a greater wrong.
You know I can't help thinking that did the shoe thrower himself put Bush at risk? Not really no, I'm fairly sure that a shoe even to the head isn't life threatening; whereas Bush ordered the bombing of this Journalist's city. Looking at the big picture Bush put this Journalist's life in much greater danger than the Journalist did Bush's.

Maybe it's me, I expect very high standards from law enforcement agencies, well I expect them to follow the law if you can call that a high standard.

So let's assume an almost worst case scenario that he was beaten after being detained and that this is exposed in light of investigations. Do I think the thrower did the right thing. Absolutely not, even if it did expose a greater wrong he didn't know that at the time. Fundamentally in the ideal case a society in all forms must be able to cope with unstable elements and survive without breaking its own principles; if you're going to break the principles at least admit that you are universally breaking this and state that you aim to break them before you break them - i.e. make it official public policy that terrorist suspects even in lack of any reliable evidence will be officially tortured for information on the country's home soil. If you see that any element of this is wrong and therefore want to not do that, then you have to give up on the whole thing.
Or at least that's how I believe things should work, as it stands it looks like I'll carry on being the good little automoton.

Sex Education

Is on my mind at the moment thanks to technocrat.

So I am obviously for it, I don't believe anything has ever been gained by hiding something that is both useful and truthful to all who hear it. After all, we tell children from a very early age how dangerous knives are, and endeavour to teach them about their proper use as soon as they become capable of using them.
I'm not going to do old arguments to death though, so instead I ask a thought experiment of you: Suppose contraception was 100% effective. Suppose that either there aren't STDs, or even where there are, we have easy effective cures for them. I ask this now in the hope that one day both of these conditions will be met; I doubt they will be met perfectly during my life, but we may get close, so let's think about the impact of this to society.
If sex is risk free what do you teach teens/children about sex? Does it change your opinion on how we do teach sex education if that were the reality?
But which way does your opinion change? Does this mean we should teach about it more or less?
I can see arguments both ways, but if you truly do have sex without consequences then how does society change? Do we go the way of the bonobos monkey, do the swinging sixties actually return and this time include people outside of a tight social group in London? Or does life just carry on as it always has?
Most likely I see us continuing on our current course, England was recently found to have the most one night stands of anywhere in Europe, so this may well continue.

As for education, forewarned is forearmed; if you're talking about the body anyway...

Christmas and the turth

Looks like you can be fired for telling the truth in school.

I can understand why in some ways, but even if this was malicious, is there anywhere in any code of conduct that teacher is out of order? If the teacher was mistaken, then this is even worse. What happened to verbal and written warnings? It's not as if this was criminal? This sounds no different than being persecuted for denying the existence of god.

Which comes back to Santa. It seems to me that the lies associated with Santa are terrible; we tell lies to children in order to make lives easier for children so that they'll behave themselves for a month or so. This sounds like one of those Taboos of the modern world that Paul Graham was talking about.
And don't argue that this is taking the magic or innocence out of youth. If we wanted children to live in blissful ignorance of the real world we'd tell them about faeries at the bottom of the garden and an all loving omnipotent being. Granted some people still do this, but many don't, isn't it time to stop lying to children about Santa in the same way many parents have stopped telling them about that other bearded omniscient being?

Clearly "you'd better watch out"

So you're a child being taunted in the playground...

I was thinking about children who get in trouble in the playground for physically attacking someone who has been teasing them, calling them names, etc.
Then I thought about the pen being mightier than the sword, the idea that ideas are more powerful than actions. Of course when the pen is mightier than the sword it is only when the pen is a proxy for greater physical violence; but the point stands.

Of course no-one ever died from being called a name, but to be telling the child at one point that ideas and intentions are vitally important, and then in the second instant that name calling should be ignored sounds a little vacuous.
Also, what do you want the child to do? In the limit, how much verbal abuse should a person take before they do something else about it.
In the real world (such as the workplace) you'd have someone in court or fired for verbal abuse. Any physical action would cause police investigation with either a charge of GBH or ABH. So why then as a child was I repeatedly punched and kicked in school and nothing was done about it by the police? Why are so many children being told that they should ignore name calling, while adults are taking each other to court and getting serious compensation for racial and sexual slurs.

A few reasons I guess:

• Children aren't yet fully aware of the consequences of their actions.
  

Yes for a three year old I buy this argument. I don't buy this argument for a twelve year old. But where do you draw the line? The answer to me is simple, you have a rapidly increasing punishment and responsibility requirement.

• It happens far too often to bother the police/courts with.
  

Again this is an excuse, not a reason.

• It's part of growing up to experiment with this method of solving problems.
• Adults can't be bnothered to get into the depth of details for children
• Children are often a mirror for their environment, and in their predudices we see our own and we don't want to face this.
  
• A reluctance to treat children as young adults.

My old thought experiment is were I now with my mind, put back in the situations I was in as a child (particularly with bullying) what would I do? the only answer I can come up with is to form the playground equivalent of the UN. Not form our own gang as such, but at least try and convince others to form a united front to be protected as a group.

A ruling elite

Lots of people talk about the problems with a ruling elite. (Ignoring the fact that elite has a very specific meaning) I was just reading an article about the early lives of some of the problem men of the 20th century. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin. All had very humble beginnings, all went onto gain massive power and all are lamented as being some of the worst men in history. Yet they are a rags to riches story. They are, at least in that respect exactly what many people would like to see more of.

Which implies that the only way to rapidly climb to high power is to be one of the most brutal and heartless people in history. Which is not surprising, but it does make me look on the established ruling classes in a new way.

Jazz review

I've had my car now for the past 4 years. It's a Honda Jazz and has so far done everything I've asked of it, however always worth having a check and thought it was worth looking at what else was out there; suffice to say I've come to the conclusion that the Jazz is a sufficiently good car that I'm not changing it any time soon.

So in typical me style, let's look at its good and bad points:
Good:

• Carrying capacity - can be converted into a van like back which is great for carrying anything up to and including a 3 seater sofa.
• People Capacity: Can fit 4 large adults in or 2 large + 3 small ones in the back. Even someone with long legs like me is fine and there is plenty of headroom.
  
• Size - Externally it's quite small which is good for parking.
• Good visibility - not as good as a land rover or similar, but fabulous for a small to medium car.
• Good fuel economy. Your only choice is a petrol engine. I used to get about 50-60mpg, now I get 40-50mpg. It depends on the speed I'm doing. But it has definitely gone down as it has aged.
• Good enough handling. It's not going to challenge a Lotus Elise any time soon, but it is predictable and with that engine you can certainly have some fun provided you're willing to rev the engine like crazy and deal with the understear.
• Excellent Engine. Again it's not going to win any prizes for power (my 600cc motorbike produces more horsepower); but that's fine, it becomes a challenge to get some performance out of it: and that is fun. Especially since the engine loves to rev unlike any other car engine I've ever driven and it's great fun.
• The front windscreen wash jets have a fabulous spray pettern that works brilliantly.
• Electric windows all around (more useful than I thought it would be)
  

Bad Points:

• Comparatively expensive to maintain - Honda parts and servicing aren't the cheapest on the planet.
• Rubbish rear wash squirter. It's like a 5 year old peeing on your back windscreen.
• Wiper blades are none standard - so you have to buy from Honda
• Car stereo is intentionally none standard size. This is sold as an anti theft device, however it is a bloody pain as it is now really showing its age (no mp3 or aux in being the big ones) and there is nothing I can do about it.
• The wing mirror fold in motors should be automatic
• The passenger electric window should have the auto function like the driver side does. Not having it is just petty bean counting.
• No rear window intermittant wipe
• Hondas are expensive to buy but this is supposed to be balanced by a high resale value. Unfortunatly a recent valuation on mine (a low milage, full service history in perfect condition) proved this wasn't the case.
• Poor street cred*
  

I believe the new model Jazz fixes most of these problems, but they're all very minor and livable with so no plans to buy that until this one breaks.
But if you want an all rounder that will carry a huge ammount to the tip one minute, and take 4 large adults out for a meal the next, and you want low tax and fuel consumption then i think you'd be hard pressed to find a better car.

* Hondas and especially the Jazz have poor street cred, they're seen as an old man's car. I don't mind this at all though, in fact I somewhat revel at it. reminded of the days when people used to take the piss out of me for driving a tiny Fiat Uno; and my retort was just that I was compensating for something. I try and claim the same applies now, but I don't think I'm fooling anyone.

Page Visits

I have head the comment that many bloggers judge their personal worth by page views.

I'm now worth 16!
and at least 5 of those must have been me checking that it worked. Still according to Google analytics I'm 433% up!

Somehow though I don't I'm not going to take over the world quite yet.

A Change To Clarkson

Bear with me and assume for the moment that Jeremy Clarkson is is hit on the head by a heavy object and suddenly loves Motorbikes and Caravans.

What would change?

Trailer racing
Best tow car - POWER!!!!!
Motorbike vs Car challenges - Hammond and May would love this

Comming not so soon to a shop near you.

This may start off sounding like I'm blowing my own trumpet, but years ago I predicted the many bladed razor. They'd just released the dual blade Mach 2 and I joked that it was only a matter of time before they did a 3 bladed one (if you're in the game of one upmanship). Then years later when they did this I joked that the only thing left was the electrification of them. An electric disposable razor would be the thing. I thought they'd have it oscillating, but I believed it would be quite a significant stroke action to do much of the work of shaving for you, as it turned out it was a pezzy vibrate, but the idea was there.
Whether you believe any of this or not is immaterial I just mention it in passing...

So I was doing my ironing this morning and I had another idea. For decades if not the greater part of a century we've had a better solution that the thermostat clicking on and off. Well if by better you mean more precise/expensive.
Now I don't claim this idea makes good sense in the real practical world, but I do believe that if a 4 bladed razor can be marketed and dominate the market, then so can this.

What you do is simple, take some sort of thermocouple or similar temperature sensing device, infra red sensor would do, as would termistor or anything really that will sense temperature electronically. Then you hook that up to a standard dimmer unit, thyristor or triac based. If you're feeling fancy stick in a PID.
The result? You have an iron that much more exactly follows the correct temperature and can react as you change the thermal load on it.
Will that iron clothes better? Probably not, but I'm not really convinced the none stick base in my iron does much either; that doesn't matter it could be a new gimmick.

So in 2/10 years time when this comes out I'll be looking all smug again.