Sunday, March 30, 2008
The two sees
In this case computers and capitalism. Generally thought to be a good thing but the combination of which can sometimes have unfortunate consequences. The beef this morning being the elaborate fare structures that some industries go in for - my electicity utility and mobile phones being the two in mind. On Saturday I got a letter from EDF offering me a fixed price tariff for next year - which appeared to be some 15% more than the current tariff. But the whole thing came with an elaborate package of premium rates, seasonal rates and nectar points, the overall effect of which was that I couldn't be bothered to wade through it all. Not too mention elaborate provision for notification of tariff changes and cancellation of contract being explained in small print somewhere. Now in the days before computers, a utility could not bother with all this stuff. Its antiquated billing systems would collapse under the weight of tariffs.
So bring back the days when there was just one electricity company which was, no doubt, a bit dossy, but it had one rate for selling electricity and which one could trust not to rip one off too much. At least not by making large profits or paying their senior managers a lot more than I ever got paid. And even if they did make a large profit they were a nationalised industry so that was just a form of tax and so that was OK too.
But a mild counter stroke comes to mind, in the form of a short piece, I think from the Evening Standard, from the days when there was an Evening Standard and an Evening News, about how the divisional directors of London Buses did themselves OK, in a very discrete way, with elaborate panelled dining rooms and chauffer driven rollers. I guess this is all swept away now in the days of SouthWest trains the bosses of which no doubt go in for buying small Carribean Islands and hob-nobbing with P&B's. Maybe a bit of discrete self-indulgence was the lesser sin. I suppose the rich have a bit of a quandary here. A main point of being rich is to be richer than the next chap. And this does not have nearly so much savour if you don't know that the next chap knows it. But this also excites envy which might have untoward consequences. So do you enjoy your riches in private and bask in the dim glow of public approval or do you go for celeb-ration?
Yesterday, force majeure, we went in for a slighly novel recipe for the sage and onion stuffing with which to stuff our virgin reared organic vegetarian chicken from darkest Wales. Possibly from a subsidiary of the Duchy Grocers, definately via Cheam. The problem being that we had no sage - at least no more than a teaspoon of dried and no fresh - and no hazel nuts. We were reduced to using dried marjoram (which did not seem to smell of anything much at all) and Brazil nuts. Quite eatable but not, I think, quite up to snuff. Chicken went down OK though and the bones having been boiled for soup are now en-route to the compost bin. This last being a two stage process: into the bucket under the sink. From there to the dustbin on the patio. From there to the compost bin. The trick being to remember to empty the dustbin before it gets too heavy.
Yesterday our back lawn was more or less water-logged, although short of standing water. Very squishy to walk on, as I discovered when I went looking for the aforementioned sage. So this morning, when I finally have a slot to get back onto the allotment, is the ground going to be good for anything? Still, at the very least, I can take the cabbage cages to peices.
And I am now ready for the slugs. Decided not to spend £50 with Geo. Kelly on copper strips, rather to recycle the reel of 5 amp cable that had found its way into my garage roof. Maybe 50 meters of the stuff. I discovered that you could rip the white outer cover off: a good pull and one did about 60cm. Given that I had taken on some alcohol during the day, quite sweaty by the time I finished this first phase. Then left with a red plastic strand, a black plastic strand and a copper. Neither red plastic nor black plastic seemed to rip off so I had to take it of with a knife. Slightly faster - per strand - than the white stuff. Peel off a segment of the red (or black) cover, rather like peeling a potato, and the cover pulls off as easy as pie. Maybe 120cm at a time. All done by 2000.
I think I shall use the cable twisted into three, as it has been put back on the reel. Then make the twists up into L-shaped lengths. Maybe a metre long with 10cm returns. These can then be assembled into thin rectangles guarding the rows of seeds, pegged down at two of the four corners.
50m metres of three strands gets into what looks like quite a tangle on the extension floor. But resisted the temptation to meddle and it all pulled out OK. Remembering the Boy Scouts' adage that the worst way to deal with a tangle is to try to untangle it. (There is a proper word for this sort of thing but I can't remember what it is. Something of classical flavour. Aphorism perhaps? Maybe it will come to me by the time I next post). Learning, by the end, that the earth strand was, over the 50m, about 30cm longer than the shorter of the live and nuetral strands. With the longer being about 15cm longer than the shorter. Was this some quirk of the way that the stuff is made or was it some quirk of the way that I wound the three coppers back onto the reel?
So bring back the days when there was just one electricity company which was, no doubt, a bit dossy, but it had one rate for selling electricity and which one could trust not to rip one off too much. At least not by making large profits or paying their senior managers a lot more than I ever got paid. And even if they did make a large profit they were a nationalised industry so that was just a form of tax and so that was OK too.
But a mild counter stroke comes to mind, in the form of a short piece, I think from the Evening Standard, from the days when there was an Evening Standard and an Evening News, about how the divisional directors of London Buses did themselves OK, in a very discrete way, with elaborate panelled dining rooms and chauffer driven rollers. I guess this is all swept away now in the days of SouthWest trains the bosses of which no doubt go in for buying small Carribean Islands and hob-nobbing with P&B's. Maybe a bit of discrete self-indulgence was the lesser sin. I suppose the rich have a bit of a quandary here. A main point of being rich is to be richer than the next chap. And this does not have nearly so much savour if you don't know that the next chap knows it. But this also excites envy which might have untoward consequences. So do you enjoy your riches in private and bask in the dim glow of public approval or do you go for celeb-ration?
Yesterday, force majeure, we went in for a slighly novel recipe for the sage and onion stuffing with which to stuff our virgin reared organic vegetarian chicken from darkest Wales. Possibly from a subsidiary of the Duchy Grocers, definately via Cheam. The problem being that we had no sage - at least no more than a teaspoon of dried and no fresh - and no hazel nuts. We were reduced to using dried marjoram (which did not seem to smell of anything much at all) and Brazil nuts. Quite eatable but not, I think, quite up to snuff. Chicken went down OK though and the bones having been boiled for soup are now en-route to the compost bin. This last being a two stage process: into the bucket under the sink. From there to the dustbin on the patio. From there to the compost bin. The trick being to remember to empty the dustbin before it gets too heavy.
Yesterday our back lawn was more or less water-logged, although short of standing water. Very squishy to walk on, as I discovered when I went looking for the aforementioned sage. So this morning, when I finally have a slot to get back onto the allotment, is the ground going to be good for anything? Still, at the very least, I can take the cabbage cages to peices.
And I am now ready for the slugs. Decided not to spend £50 with Geo. Kelly on copper strips, rather to recycle the reel of 5 amp cable that had found its way into my garage roof. Maybe 50 meters of the stuff. I discovered that you could rip the white outer cover off: a good pull and one did about 60cm. Given that I had taken on some alcohol during the day, quite sweaty by the time I finished this first phase. Then left with a red plastic strand, a black plastic strand and a copper. Neither red plastic nor black plastic seemed to rip off so I had to take it of with a knife. Slightly faster - per strand - than the white stuff. Peel off a segment of the red (or black) cover, rather like peeling a potato, and the cover pulls off as easy as pie. Maybe 120cm at a time. All done by 2000.
I think I shall use the cable twisted into three, as it has been put back on the reel. Then make the twists up into L-shaped lengths. Maybe a metre long with 10cm returns. These can then be assembled into thin rectangles guarding the rows of seeds, pegged down at two of the four corners.
50m metres of three strands gets into what looks like quite a tangle on the extension floor. But resisted the temptation to meddle and it all pulled out OK. Remembering the Boy Scouts' adage that the worst way to deal with a tangle is to try to untangle it. (There is a proper word for this sort of thing but I can't remember what it is. Something of classical flavour. Aphorism perhaps? Maybe it will come to me by the time I next post). Learning, by the end, that the earth strand was, over the 50m, about 30cm longer than the shorter of the live and nuetral strands. With the longer being about 15cm longer than the shorter. Was this some quirk of the way that the stuff is made or was it some quirk of the way that I wound the three coppers back onto the reel?
# posted by Jim @ 11:28 PM 
