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Pork Pie Hat posted:The government are considering a novel solution to the problem of people appealing against failed work capability assessments: Kill all Tories.
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Jul 3, 2015 00:34
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XMNN posted:Why do they need a whole tablet instead of some sort of swipe card. It's not expensive enough.
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Jul 3, 2015 00:35
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It's not like it even needs to be that secure unless there's some quirk of parliamentary procedure which means they have to recognise the 420 votes from the Weedlord Bonerhitler party and legalise it because the computer said so. Not that I would complain. XMNN fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 00:56
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Guavanaut posted:Does anybody even do that unless they're talking specifically about school? It's never in that sort of context. More like "How old was I? Oh yea, ninth grade". Who the hell speaks like that? And I really thought Shappi did well on question time. Her and Corbyn were good contrasts to the Economist/Spectator double team and Jeremy "I can't stop staring" Hunt.
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Jul 3, 2015 08:31
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Taear posted:It's never in that sort of context. More like "How old was I? Oh yea, ninth grade". Who the hell speaks like that?
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Jul 3, 2015 09:04
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Dabir posted:Celsius is easier because humans are bad at bigger numbers.  It's a pleasantly mild 291 degrees this morning.
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Jul 3, 2015 09:19
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Zephro posted:Kelvin is the One True Temperature Scale because it's zeroed at absolute zero Nah, with Kelvin there's still the slight chance someone might be able to understand what you're on about. It's 524 Rankine where I am and that's all I'm saying.
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Jul 3, 2015 09:24
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lonelywurm posted:A lot of people in North America. It's easy shorthand, since only the handful who are homeschooled can't immediately call to mind roughly the age-range involved, and frankly, it's pretty easy to figure when a memory happened by comparing it to other memories formed at the same time, which prior to age 18-22 often involve schooling. I'm sorry that it's become some weird shibboleth thing you just can't understand, but it makes perfect sense over here, and we don't speak for your benefit. Thinking about it I do it too (and a lot of parents I speak to). If someone asks how the kids are I'll say 'Good, Cameron's going into 2nd year and that's Connor ready to start primary one'. Not sure why, guess it's because it covers both their ages and what they are doing.
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Jul 3, 2015 09:28
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I really feel like there isn't enough resistance to all the apprenticeship-worship going on at the moment. They are spoken of as if gaining a practical hands-on skill which would otherwise be difficult to learn is the norm. The reality is that companies poo poo out apprenticeships for anything so that they can pay you £2.73 and reap some tax rewards. When I was looking for work last, job sites were full of things like restaurant, retail and daycare jobs which would traditionally just be entry level minimum wage and you would learn on the job with no prior experience. Except now they are increasingly classed as apprenticeships and it just seems exploitative as all hell. So when the Tories promise 3m new apprenticeships it seems like a cause for alarm. Are there even any rules for what you can call an apprenticeship? It seems like the easiest way (and therefore most likely) to meet their pledge would just be to relax any such rules to the point where even more minimum wage jobs are converted to apprenticeships instead. Terrifying.
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Jul 3, 2015 09:42
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So going back to the heatwave, why is A/C still not a thing here. This is like the 4th summer in a row that's unbearably hot.
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Jul 3, 2015 09:52
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Captain Mediocre posted:Are there even any rules for what you can call an apprenticeship? It seems like the easiest way (and therefore most likely) to meet their pledge would just be to relax any such rules to the point where even more minimum wage jobs are converted to apprenticeships instead. Terrifying. the tories would never do something so despicable
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Jul 3, 2015 09:53
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Zephro posted:Kelvin is the One True Temperature Scale because it's zeroed at absolute zero We've already had the "there's no degrees in Kelvin" thing so please don't bring it back.
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Jul 3, 2015 09:58
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Lord of the Llamas posted:We've already had the "there's no degrees in Kelvin" thing so please don't bring it back. 
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Jul 3, 2015 10:00
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awesome-express posted:So going back to the heatwave, why is A/C still not a thing here. This is like the 4th summer in a row that's unbearably hot. Are you the Yeti? We've had about two solid years of year round blah with occasional snow and if we got a summer at all in 2012 I must have slept in that day.
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Jul 3, 2015 10:05
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Yeah England is actually p nice on the rare occasions it has a summer. It even has the good grace to cool down in the evenings, which doesn't happen in the tropics.
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Jul 3, 2015 10:07
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Jedit posted:Are you the Yeti? We've had about two solid years of year round blah with occasional snow and if we got a summer at all in 2012 I must have slept in that day. We had a nice week in 2013; because I went away for a month after it happened and got to see everyone moaning about it while sitting on a beach in Lithuania
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Jul 3, 2015 10:11
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awesome-express posted:So going back to the heatwave, why is A/C still not a thing here.
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Jul 3, 2015 10:12
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Jedit posted:Are you the Yeti? We've had about two solid years of year round blah with occasional snow and if we got a summer at all in 2012 I must have slept in that day. Looks like I am. Every summer I dread the lack of A/C. Doesn't help that my apartment is exceptionally warm by virtue of being on the top floor. The panoramic windows don't help much either since they face the sun during the hottest time of the day.
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Jul 3, 2015 10:12
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awesome-express posted:So going back to the heatwave, why is A/C still not a thing here. This is like the 4th summer in a row that's unbearably hot. If you told them there was a revolutionary system that would not only allow them to pay less for heat in winter but also provide cold in summer (like a bi-directional heat pump) they would shrug and go back to fitting their tesco value boiler because hey, this is only one of a hundred houses they're renting out to the proles and who cares if they die as long as you can sue their estate for the rent? Zephro posted:Wait, why are there no degrees in Kelvin?
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Jul 3, 2015 10:17
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LemonDrizzle posted:Mainly (in residential buildings) because the uncomfortably hot periods typically only last for a few days of the year if that, so it's more cost-effective to just wear shorts and a T-shirt on those days. It's not like we're in Arizona or Singapore where you get air conditioning or you melt. Same reason our houses tend not to be all that well insulated; the country almost never gets so cold that you really really need it. edit: if you're really struggling to sleep at night you can try wetting putting a dry towel on your pillow and then a damp towel on top of that (the dry towel is to protect the pillow). It makes a big difference, especially in Britain where the humidity never really gets all that high so evaporation can do its thing. Zephro fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 10:21
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yeah, the Kelvin's what you jump into if you don't get a degree.
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Jul 3, 2015 10:22
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Zephro posted:If you have heat pump-based central heating you can often run it in reverse, in which case it'll cool your house down. But they're pretty rare - I know one guy with a new-build flat who has one but that's about it. My pad is a new build and we only have central heating. :|
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Jul 3, 2015 10:24
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More tips! 1) Sleep on top of the sheets 2) Sleep naked 3) Buy a little desk fan from Argos, even stirring the air a little bit helps a lot 4) Have a shower right before you go to bed Source: I lived in Hong Kong where it's 30C and 80% humidity for 6 months of the year and for the first 11 years we had no A/C in the flat.
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Jul 3, 2015 10:31
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UKMT August 2015: We Need To Talk About Kelvin
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Jul 3, 2015 10:49
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Might be useful next time you're considering changing services: telecoms complaints data Fixed broadband complaints per 1,000 customers  Mobile pay-monthly complaints per 1,000 customers 
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Jul 3, 2015 10:59
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Prince John posted:Looks like EVEL has been fleshed out. Are you takin the piss? You just described a voting process that still has MPs walking through one of two doors as "very high tech".
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Jul 3, 2015 11:08
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Guavanaut posted:Because people are traditionalists who still put hydronic central heating in new build houses even though it is demonstrably awful. There is so much Wrong on that link... We're in the UK Here and do wet-heating a Lot better than the US. 'advantages' 1. Zoning- now we have Thermostatic Radiator Valves, each room is it's own zone with no additional cost 2. In 15 years servicing and repairing wet central heating, I've seen 2 baseboard heaters - they are bad but also practically non-existent. 3. My combi doesn't make the kitchen hot when I run the hot water; I'll grant that heating a cylinder via a heat exchanger is less efficient than directly using an electric element, but as gas is cheeper than electricity that's not really an argument. Also, combination boilers only heat what you use and you never run out. 4. Indeed, a solid-fuel boiler is possible, and I've even seen one(1). 5. This sounds more like a disadvantage of Warm-Air. 'disadvantages' 1. Fitting a new heating system is expensive. In the UK, replacing a warm-air unit is as expensive as fitting a complete new wet system- and if the house wasn't designed for it, practically impossible as there's no ducting for the air. 2. Modern condensing boilers can be had for as little as £600 and come with a 7 or 10 year warranty. 3. Boilers now how a thing called an 'Overheat Thermostat' that stops this happening- it's fail safe, so if the stat breaks, the boilers won't run. 4. Yes, leaks can be a problem- no system is perfect, but modern sealed systems with chemical inhibitor added are less prone to leaks than old 'open' systems. However, if the heat-exchanger in a Warm-air system pinholes, it tends to blow carbon-monoxide round the whole house (Natural gas is a 'wet' gas, so still get corrosion in an warm-air system) 5. Boilers are cheep, self contained units now- and more companies work on wet than WAU's 6. This One I'll concede, but others have said, A/C isn't really a thing here. 7. When was the last time we had an ice-storm in the UK ? Again, modern boilers have frost-thermostats (and these can easily be retro-fitted to older systems) to stop this- even when the house is empty or the heating off. I don't think prolonged power-cuts are anything like as big an issue in the UK either. If the house is empty for a long time, draining a system takes around 10mins (depending on house size). The boiler in that picture is a lovely old Open-Flue one, massively inefficient, needs air-vents to outside and stands a chance of poisoning you if the vents or flue go wrong. It's not legal to fit these anymore (energy efficiency legislation) and you just can't get them. And why is he paying $600 for a pump that costs £77 in B'n'Q ? source: 15 years Corgi / Gas Safe registered, working for British Gas. Renfield fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 11:11
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Cerv posted:Are you takin the piss? You just described a voting process that still has MPs walking through one of two doors as "very high tech".
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Jul 3, 2015 11:11
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Renfield posted:There is so much Wrong on that link... Gas is cheaper than electricity, but using a heat pump you can get efficiencies higher than 100% by pulling in outside heat against a gradient, so you can get 25kW of heat from 5kW of electricity usage, making it cheaper than gas again (especially if we start running out of gas). Carbon monoxide is only a problem with gas systems, and gas systems with bad burners at that. There's no way a heat pump system is going to blow carbon monoxide anywhere. Yeah, fitting ducted air into an existing property is a complete ballache because there aren't any plenums and you have to tack ducts onto things, but not making a concerted effort to move towards better more efficient technologies in new builds (heat pumps over hydronic or gas forced air) is a bad move on the part of the builders. (And lack of A/C is why the whole discussion started, the insistence of UK builders on keeping hydronic heating is a big reason why.)
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Jul 3, 2015 11:22
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Pork Pie Hat posted:UKMT August 2015: We Need To Talk About Kelvin
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Jul 3, 2015 11:34
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You can fit a heat-pump to a wet-system as well- although that's so new I've only seen it in the workshop, and there are even boilers out there now with a sterling engine that generate electricity when the heating/hot water is on. I don't think it's just scale, energy in the US is cheaper overall, so using open-flue wet systems or inefficient warm-air systems (and they are nothing like as efficient as a condensing boiler) isn't as big a problem. We do have forced-air heating here (often with a 'summer' switch to provide airflow- no cooling though)- it was a big thing in council housing in the 70s and there's a lot of it around where I live. It's so much more expensive to run than even an older boiler and a pain to work on as if they go wrong they can poison the whole house- a lot of independent fitters won't touch them at all (working for BG though, I had to work on anything and everything that came up). The other thing is, the house is only warm when the heating's on, but a wet system stays hot for a half-hour after it's turned off and is generally more comfortable. Some people love it though, and it does mean no wall space is lost to having radiators. I don't mean to sound het-up, but everything in that article is looking at the US and just doesn't apply here- no one in there right mind would build a system with 6 pumps (Grundfos did a duel-pump system for a while but quietly dropped it after a couple of years). Having much cheaper heating is probably worth more to most people than having A/C when it gets too hot here.
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Jul 3, 2015 11:35
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I don't have any specialist knowledge but a heat-pump / ducted-air setup seems pretty good if you build the house for it - a heat pump is just a big air conditioner running backwards, so there's no toxic combustion gases to worry about, and if your house is well insulated you can just set a target temperature and forget it. I have a house with lovely plumbing and I do worry about hidden water leaks, but who cares if there'a a small hole in an air duct.
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Jul 3, 2015 11:40
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Yeah, there's a lot in that article that's North America specific, there's probably North Americans looking at A/C prices in the UK and asking why the hell everything is so expensive too. Maybe I'm biased because the last time I had a problem with a heat pump type air conditioner it took a few hours for them to bleed the system, change the compressor, and re-gas it, whereas the last time I had a problem with a hot water type system it took a few days for everything to dry out and needed plaster and carpet replacing. I've seen the wet-system heat pumps, but afaik they only provide heating, forced air heat pumps provide heating and cooling at the flip of a switch. With either system it would work out cheaper than gas once the cost of the pump was paid off, and it would be nice if the government would encourage new builds to switch to systems like that which would increase efficiency and reduce fossil fuel dependency too. It would be nice if the government would stop trying to actively kill disabled people too, so I'm not going to hold out much hope.  e: Oh, apparently some systems might be suitable for a Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) payment. Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 11:44
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Cerv posted:Are you takin the piss? You just described a voting process that still has MPs walking through one of two doors as "very high tech". No! I was genuinely amazed that our dear elected representatives were using tablets to automatically register votes. I think my expectations are much lower than yours!
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Jul 3, 2015 11:49
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The other thing is, with the housing market like it is now, no builder is going to do more than the minimum to get a serviceable house- there's a lot of new builds round here and as soon as the 2-year guarantee runs out, we where in them fixing stuff that had gone wrong already- not because it's a wet system but because it's done as cheaply as possible. Fun thing- looking round a show-home on a new build estate ? Sit in the sofa - the furniture they put in there is typically 80% scale to make the rooms look bigger ! Renfield fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 12:07
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Presented without comment, from the National Archives: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33361999
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Jul 3, 2015 13:25
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Captain Mediocre posted:I really feel like there isn't enough resistance to all the apprenticeship-worship going on at the moment. They are spoken of as if gaining a practical hands-on skill which would otherwise be difficult to learn is the norm. The reality is that companies poo poo out apprenticeships for anything so that they can pay you £2.73 and reap some tax rewards. When I was looking for work last, job sites were full of things like restaurant, retail and daycare jobs which would traditionally just be entry level minimum wage and you would learn on the job with no prior experience. Except now they are increasingly classed as apprenticeships and it just seems exploitative as all hell. So when the Tories promise 3m new apprenticeships it seems like a cause for alarm. I'm pretty sure this is what they're doing, yeah. Apprenticeship is a gilded political word because of what it represented in the past: learning a trade or specialised skill. In my small town alone I have seen ads this year for apprentice supermarket workers and glass collectors. As for why there isn't more resistance? I'm guessing it's because if you're unemployed these days you have to do what you're told or be cut off from an income.
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Jul 3, 2015 13:34
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Renfield posted:The other thing is, with the housing market like it is now, no builder is going to do more than the minimum to get a serviceable house- there's a lot of new builds round here and as soon as the 2-year guarantee runs out, we where in them fixing stuff that had gone wrong already- not because it's a wet system but because it's done as cheaply as possible.
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Jul 3, 2015 13:38
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Zephro posted:Yeah. Britain's housing has always been poo poo and apparently always will be poo poo. I'm not sure what heating system is worst when you're dealing with a baseline quality of 'poo poo'. Everything gas related has the risk of monoxide and gas leaks, especially if your landlord is a poo poo (had this problem with the standard council house style ceramic heaters in a house in Coventry). Hydronic adds the possibility of lovely water going everywhere. Heat pumps are cool but mechanically complex, which doesn't go well with cheap and fast. I guess there's not much that can go wrong with storage heaters, but they're expensive to run. Comedy option: Actual national investment into housing stock. Upper-middle class option: Why don't they just buy an Aga?
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Jul 3, 2015 14:04
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Your landlord has a legal duty to have your gas appliances serviced yearly and an LGSR produced (you should receive a copy as well). If they don't do this you can report them to the HSE.
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Jul 3, 2015 14:16
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