NHS Direct has the skids well and truly under it. Vandalism! Cutbacks! Distruction of the People’s NHS cries Labour.
But what was it all about? If you were ill, you were supposed to call NHS Direct and they’d tell you what to do about it – generally “Get the down to A+E or your GP service to check it out.” If you, or your child are ill, this is what you’re going to do anyway.
Having an telephone helpline for discussion of medical matters is a good thing, especially for anyone without any books on the subject or access to the Internet. Apparently this is just what we’re getting instead – it’ll be cheaper than having medically qualified on the end asking the questions and then suggesting a personal visit anyway. “Civilians” cand do that, as long as they’re briefed not to overstep their remit.
GPs came out against NHS Direct yet again in June, so presumably we’ll be hearing they’re pleased with the result. No one I know has every had much joy in calling them, although the “worried well” may have had some comfort – or had their hypochondria fueled. It’s just New Labour, upset that the new government has stopped paying for their gimmick. As to the staff that’ll be made redundent, apart from the management consultants they’re generally qualified nurses answering the ‘phone. Don’t we need more nurses actually nursing to the extent we’re importing them from the third world? I don’t see a problem with them being redeployed.
The CPS isn’t going to prosecute anyone over the death of Mr Tomlinson at the G20 protests following an unprovoked attack by a police officer (Simon Harwood). They say that he was definitely assaulted, but they can’t prove the link between the assault and his subsequent death. “There is no reasonable chance of a conviction” because of this. Two pathologists though he was killed because the injuries lead to a heart attack, one thought it was a heart attack that might have been from natural causes.
Actual Bodily Harm was also ruled out because, apparently, there’s dispute as to whether the internal injuries caused by fall lead to his death, and the appropriate charge would then be manslaughter – and you can’t have both.
Common assault (from the baton attack), which caused a less serious injury, can’t be pursued because the six month time limit has expired.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (Kier Starmer QC), Steven O’Doherty and Tim Owen QC are responsible for this decision. Kier Starmer (named after Keir Hardie) is, of course, closely associated with the Labour party and the previous government (appointed in 2008) .
Am I missing something here? Raoul Moat, a established life-long violent criminal, went on a rampage with some guns and shot three people, killing one of them. The police finally corner him, and at great risk to themselves, try to talk him into surrendering. When he finally gets around to shooting himself, the next thing we hear is that the Police Complaints Commission is going to investigate, and BBC journalists are wringing their hands and talking to his friends and relatives, who are moaning and wailing about their tragic loss. What about the relatives of the people he murdered or seriously injured?
Good riddance! The only reason I can think of for the police not to have shot him on sight (once identify had been established and he hadn’t relinquished his weapons) was so that he could hang later – but that’s wishful thinking.
I wouldn’t normally approve of the police shooting criminals, but in this case the facts appear so clear cut – no misidentification, and clearly armed and dangerous. Whoever got close enough to fire a Taser at him deserves a medal for bravery. I can only hope it hurt like hell.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley and media personality Jamie Oliver are on a collision course, if you read the headlines. But they’re both right.
Jamie Oliver headed a campaign a couple of years ago, the thrust of which was that we shouldn’t be feeding children junk, and school dinners were a prime example of junk. Andrew Lansley said it wasn’t the business of the establishment to go lecturing people, and to do so was counterproductive. This isn’t the same as saying Oliver’s point was wrong.
Statistics are now being bandied about, the latest being that the uptake of school dinners has risen slightly. Very slightly. Yesterday’s statistics were used to suggest that less children were eating school dinners than before the campaign.
This is missing the point – it’d still have been a success if the numbers had halved. Apparently about 40% of pupils have school dinners. This means that over the last couple of years, 40% of pupils have stopped eating junk and are now eating something decent. Result!
Lansley is also right – there’s no point in lecturing idiots. Intelligent people can, and will, review the evidence and make a good choice. You don’t need to lecture them. We will always have idiots, too, and they’ll always fly in the face of the facts – more so if you keep mentioning them. Whatever the solution to the junk food problem is, lecturing idiots is not the answer.
Speaking of statistics, I’ve recently heard the one about life expectancy being much reduced for lower social classes being trotted out, especially by New Labour types. It’s true. Someone living in an inner-city dump in Scotland lives on average 10 years less (in rough terms) than someone classed as “affluent” and living in London. However, if you look at these figures alongside the smoking and alcohol consumption rates in the same areas you’ll see it has nothing to do with disposable income or educational level. More people die young in Glasgow because more of them smoke. This is nothing new, but it’s not mentioned by “social” politicians trying to get a bigger handout for their part of the country. Attenuate these statistics with diet too, and I suspect the death rate disparity will disappear altogether.
Have you replaced a 60W traditional tungsten bulb with a 60W-equivalent low energy compact fluorescent and thought it’s not as bright as it was. You’re not imagining it. I’ve been doing some tests of my own, and they’re not equivalent.
Comparing light sources is a bit of art as well as science, and lacking other equipment, I decided to use a simple photographic exposure to give me some idea of the real-world performance. I pointed the meter at a wall, floor and table top. I didn’t point it at the light itself – that’s not what users of light bulbs care about.
The results were fairly consistent: Low energy light bulbs produce the same amount of light as a standard bulb of three to four times the rating. The older the fluorescent, the dimmer it was, reaching output of a third at a thousand hours use. Given that the lamps are rated at two to eight thousand hours, it’s reasonable to take the lower output figure as typical as this is how it will spend the majority of its working life.
This gives a more realistic equivalence table as:
CFL
Wattage
Quoted GLS
equivalent
Realistic GLS
equivalent
8W
40W
25-30W
11W
60W
35-45W
14W
75W
40-55W
18W
100W
55-70W
Table showing true equivalence of Compact Fluorescent (CFL) vs. conventional light bulbs (GLS)
So what’s going on here? Is there a conspiracy amongst light-bulb manufacturers to tell fibs about their performance? Well, yes. It turns out that the figures they use are worked out by the Institute of Lighting Engineers, in a lab. They measured the light output of a frosted lamp and compared that to a CFL. The problem is that the frosting on frosted lamps blocks out quite a bit of light, which is why people generally use clear glass bulbs. But if you’re trying to make your product look good it pays to compare your best case with the completion’s worst case. So they have.
But all good conspiracies involve the government somewhere, and in this case the manufactures can justify their methods with support from the EU. The regulations allow the manufactures to do some pretty wild things. If you want to look at the basis, it can be found starting here:
For example, after a compact fluorescent has been turned on it only has to reach an unimpressive 60% of its output after a staggering one minute! I’ve got some lamps that are good starters, others are terrible – and the EU permits them to be sold without warning or differentiation. One good thing the EU is doing, however, is insisting that CFL manufacturers state the light output in lumens in the future, and more prominently than the power consumption in Watts. This takes effect in 2010. Apparently. Hmm. Not on the packages I can see; some don’t even mention it in the small print (notably Philips).
However, fluorescent lamps do save energy, even if it’s only 65% instead of the claimed 80%. All other things being equal, they’re worth it. Unfortunately the other things are not equal, because you have the lifetime of the unit to consider.
A standard fluorescent tube (around since the 1930’s) is pretty efficient, especially with modern electronics driving it (ballast and starter). When the tube fails the electronics are retained, as they’re built in to the fitting. The Compact Florescent Lamps (CFL) that replace conventional bulbs have the electronics built in to the base so they can be used in existing fittings where a conventional bulb is expected. This means the electronics are discarded when the tube fails. The disposable electronics are made as cheaply as possible, so it may fail before the tube.
Proponents of CFLs says that it is still worth it, because the CFLs last so much longer than standard bulbs. I’m not convinced. A conventional bulb is made of glass, steel, cooper and tungsten and should be easy enough to recycle – unlike complex electronics.
The story gets worse when you consider what goes in to the fluorescent tubes – mercury vapour, antinomy, rare-earth elements and all sorts of nasty looking stuff in the various phosphor coatings. It’s true that the amount of mercury in a single tube is relatively small, and doesn’t create much of a risk in a domestic environment even if the tube cracks, but what about a large pile of broken tubes in a recycling centre?
So, CFLs are under-specified and polluting and wasteful to manufacture, but they do save energy. It’d be better to change light fittings to use proper fluorescent tubes, however. They work better than CFLs, with less waste. I don’t see it happening though. At the moment descrete tubes actually cost more because they fit relatively few fittings. People are very protective of their fittings. The snag is that with CFLs you need at least 50% more bulb sockets to get enough light out of them.
Standard bulbs produce less light than they could because a lot of the energy is turned into heat (more so than with a CFL). However, this heat could be useful – if your light bulbs aren’t heating the room you’d need something else. This is particularly true of passageways and so on, where there may be no other heating and a little warmth is needed to keep the damp away. The CFL camp rubbishes this idea, pointing out that in summer you don’t need heat. Actually, in summer, you don’t need much artificial light either, so they’d be off anyway. Take a look at document “BNXS05 The Heat Replacement Effect” found starting here for an interesting study into the matter – it’s from the government’s own researchers.
But still, CFLs save energy.
Personally, however, I look forward to the day when they’re all replaced by LED technology. These should last ten times longer (100,000 hours), be more efficient still, and contains no mercury anyway , nor even any glass to break. The snag is that they run on a low voltage and the world is wired up for mains-voltage light fittings. I envisage whole light fittings, possibly with built-in transformers, pre-wired with fixed LEDs which will last for 50 years – after which you’d probably change the whole fitting anyway.
Ah yes, I hear the moaners starting, but I want to keep my existing light fitting. Okay, sit it the gloom under your compact fluorescents then.
We’ve all seen them and wondered. Every gadget suppler has a small electric fridge or cool-box, usually supplied with a cable to run it off a 12V vehicle supply. I’ve even seen some very favourable reviews of these devices, from people with no credentials. Then, last week I needed to cool down various perishable foodstuffs whilst on a road trip, so I bought one. This is a review of this particular unit, but the principles will apply to the whole family of products.
I opted for the Halfords 8-litre cool-box, largely because I knew where to find a Halfords and I knew I’d seen cool-boxes there. I chose the 8L version because I knew the cooling principle they all utilise isn’t very energy efficient; I didn’t want to cool more space than I needed.
The Halfords 8L cool-box is certainly well-made and insulated. It’s very solid, with a hinged lid and catch that suggests quality. This is only to be expected; the Halfords models are not cheap.
The cable storage compartment is a thoughtful touch
One nice feature of the 8L box is a fitting to hold it securely between two rear seats of a car using the lap belt, allowing it to double as an arm-rest. It’s also small enough to tuck away easily on one side of a boot. After fitting the supplied strap it’s also easy to carry and in another thoughtful touch there’s even a small compartment to store the power cable.
The power lead itself is long enough to reach from the dashboard to the boot without too much trouble and is fitted with a standard lighter plug on one end. The cool-box end of the lead has a proprietary connecting plug fitted, which might be tricky if a replacement is needed. Halfords do sell spare leads, but they’re not cheap!
Coolbox (with test supply and thermometers)
Halfords also sells a mains adapter for something like £25 – ouch! This is one of the most expensive 12V adapters I’ve seen, but the cool-box is rated at 3A so you do need something a bit chunky. I decided against this purchase.
So far so good – the food was loaded into the cool-box and off we went with the cooler running while the engine was on. 3A is no problem for a car’s alternator but I didn’t want to drain the battery. The instructions also made it clear that running of the battery alone wasn’t a good idea.
However, at the end of the day’s driving, which amounted to several hours, it wasn’t at all clear that the inside of the box was any cooler than the outside. On our return I decided to test it properly to see what was going on.
Theory
These coolers all work using a thermoelectric effect. If you really want to know /how/ this works try looking up the Peltier or Seebeck effects in a good physics textbook. The short story is that if you take two plates made of different metals and place them together you can make a heat pump. As heat passes from the hot plate to the cold plate it generates a potential difference (voltage) between them. This is one of those electrical effects that works both ways, so if the plates are the same temperature and you pass a current across the plates they’ll drag heat from one plate to the other. In other words, is you pass a current through the two plates one gets hot by taking heat from the other, which gets cold.
This sounds very useful! All you need to do is place the plate that’s getting cold inside the box, and cool the plate that’s outside the box with a fan. This gives you a fridge with no moving parts apart from a fan, and as moving parts go, fan’s are a lot easier to manage than compressors and the associated plumbing for the coolant. Unfortunately there’s a snag – it’s not a particularly efficient process. Just how efficient it was in practice, I decided to find out.
Testing
Using a lab power supply and a several thermometers with remote probes to measure temperatures inside and outside the box I left the subject running while empty, after sealing down the lid. The inside and outside temperatures were recorded, with the inside being measured by the temperature of the plate.
Graph 1 – Temperature over time (empty)
The manufactures claim that it can reduce the temperature of the contents by up to 20C compared to the outside. With the normal summer temperature tending to be 20-25C and a reasonable fridge temperature being 5-10C this would certainly be a suitable performance even allowing for a margin implied by the ‘up to’ preceding the actual figure stated.
The actual performance is shown in Graph 1. As you can see, after about an hour the temperature inside dropped from the ambient 22C outside to just 3C inside, where it stabilised; a drop of 19C. Pretty impressive! But remember the 3A current drain – it turns out it needs 3A constantly so you definitely can’t run this without taking power off the engine. Sill, once cooled it should stay cool for a reasonable period, right? Actually, wrong. Take a look at Graph 2.
After disconnecting the power it returned to room temperature in about 20 minutes. Very disappointing!
Graph 2 – Temperature restored when empty
However, this isn’t really a good test, is it? Who needs to cool down a empty box – you really need to cool the contents, and what matters is how long the contents then stay cool once the power is removed. To test this I chose to use 1.5L of water in a sealed plastic box as the payload.
Test payload in Halfords Coolbox
This choice was largely governed by the sealed plastic boxes I had available. There wasn’t space for 2L of water, so 1.5L was a compromise to make calculations easer – and besides, 1.5L or 1.5Kg of food is a reasonable payload for an 8L box. The results can be seen in Graph 3 below.
Graph 3 – Cooling effect when full
As you can see, after a full hour the temperature had only fallen by 3C – not much good to anyone. I decided to keep the experiment running for a further eight hours, during which the payload’s temperature eventually stabilised at 10C below ambient. The graph shows the measured temperature a bit lower, but by this stage the outside temperature had also dropped, so it was 10C less.
This isn’t really much good for cooling food down; even after running it all day it’s unable to reach ‘refrigerator’ temperature; your food wouldn’t last long. The only useful thing you can do with it is put pre-cooled items in it and hope they stay that way due to the insulation, because even with the power full on it’s only going to stabilise at about 10C . Graph 4 shows what happened.
Graph 4 – Warming up when full
As you can see, thanks to the insulation of the box it does at least manage to keep its contents cool. The tests were carried out away from the wind and sun – ideal conditions, but only sensible.
Conclusion
This is a nicely made piece of equipment, but its real-world performance makes it completely unsuitable for its intended purpose. The best you can say is that if you place cold items in it, it’ll keep them cool as long as you keep it supplied with a lot of power. If you don’t use the electric cooler it’ll work almost as well thanks to its insulated construction.
If you are looking for a workable solution to the problem, and insulated box and a block of ice will easily out-perform this arrangement, at far lower purchase and running costs. The low-tech conventional cool-box (Esky) and freezer pack still has a lot going for it. Don’t waste your money on one of these.
At the weekend I said it’d be two weeks before they decided that the risk from the volcano wasn’t that substantial when weighed against profits, and that political pressure would lift the flight ban before the cloud had lifted in about two weeks. It’s actually taken them less than one.
Engines stop and show signs of wear from time to time, but this time it’s going to be reported and a load of concerned hacks who know nothing about aviation will get very excited.
So queue the flying scares – engines stopping, or nearly stopping and one almighty row.
So the Icelandic volcano makes it impossible to fly in UK airspace. Hmm. The idea is that the volcanic ash, containing silica, turns to glass in jet engines and causes them to stop spinning.
Well I wonder how this one’s going to play out? Let’s see…
I’m sceptical that the ash is that much of a threat – jet engines do fly through dusty and sandy air. This dust seems to be fairly well dispersed (i.e. you can’t see it and radar, apparently, can’t see it). But even it does increase the risk, the “safety is paramount” argument just doesn’t hold water. If it really was the primary concern they’d stay on the ground instead of flying. Flying is more of a risk than staying on the ground, whatever the weather. They’re taking a risk by taking off.
So just how much risk is acceptable? Well when balanced against airline profits I’d say quite a lot. The volcano, by all accounts, shows no sign of slowing down and the weather system we have at this time of year aren’t likely to disperse the ash any time soon. Anyone who knows anything about weather isn’t going to put money on it, I assure you.
I’d give it two weeks – I doubt the cloud will disperse but by then the airlines will have put so much political pressure on NATS and the government (before an election) that they’ll decide that safety really isn’t paramount and start flying again regardless.
There’ll also probably be a big row.
There’ll also probably be a big scare as soon as someone finds a jet engine with glass in it, followed by an even bigger row.
Your local council is collecting the names and addresses of all non-English residents and passing them on to the British National Party. What a great idea!
That isn’t the intended plan, as far as I know, but most PC councils are doing it in the name of “diversity monitoring” or some such nonsense. Whether this is a justifiable use of taxpayers’ resources is one matter, but the fact remains that the databases they’re compiling will be making it in to the hands of every anti-immigrant group both now in the future. The government can’t keep a database like this secret for long – it requires the cooperation of every single council employee and councillor with access to the data, including the BNP councillors.
I was asked to fill in one such form today, when attending a council Easter-holiday event for kids. My usual response is to refuse to fill in this information on principle and explain, at length, why they shouldn’t be asking. I’ve never had any argument with this approach. Today, when I pointed out that this would tell the BNP where all the Muslims in the area lived, who was in the house and where their kids went to school, one of the ladies with the forms went quite pale.
Ted Relf from Shadoxhurst (near Ashford, Kent) has got himself into a spot of bother with the local plod. His crime? Well he put up a sign warning people about potholes in the road outside his house.
Potholes are lethal. They’re bad enough in a motor vehicle, but for someone on a bike they’re murderous. If you can see them you swerve to avoid them and hope following traffic reacts accordingly. If they’re filled with water or it’s dark you’ll probably be thrown off, and you have to hope that following traffic will stop.
Mr Relf’s sign was a public service, but according to Kent police, someone complained. Why is it that police and council officials feel the need to act when someone complains? If anything, this guy deserves a commendation protecting the public. Face with a complaint about the warning sign, the police should have told the complainant where to go in stead of wasting time and putting the public in danger by taking action against Mr Relf.
The police claim they’re under-funded; this proves the opposite – they’ve just lost their way.
I wonder if they were acting on orders from the local council, who may not have wanted attention drawn to the quality of the roads.
