tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12926002980189174612024-03-19T09:12:42.524+00:00Idiot ZooWords that nobody will ever readIdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-34941814233182278642023-06-12T17:02:00.003+01:002023-06-12T17:02:44.063+01:00Kia e-Niro - electric car long term review<p>Some time ago I <a href="https://idiotzoo.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-electric-car.html">wrote about</a> a decision to get an electric car. We've now had that car for almost three years and covered about 27,000 miles. We even bought a second electric car, a Renault Zoe, replacing a Toyota hybrid that was awful.</p><p>Here, then, for what it's worth, are my thoughts after being an EV driver for some time.</p><p>There are two aspects to this; the car itself and driving electric with all the advantages, disadvantages and challenges that brings.</p><p>I'm not a car reviewer. I've owned plenty but I can't comment in detail about handling and dynamics... what I can say is the e-Niro has always been a pleasure to drive. It's comfortable, more than adequately powerful, sufficiently well equipped and an all round decent car.</p><p>We have had issues with it. Early on there was a problem with the PTC heater. This meant the heater stopped working accompanied by an alarming message. It took quite a while for the parts to become available and it was a dash out job to fix. We had a courtesy car, no huge deal, but it wasn't great. The dealer was poor at keeping us informed of progress. Still, it got fixed.</p><p>There has also been an issue with the parking brake, remedied by replacing the wiring loom for the rear brakes. Again there was a delay in getting the parts that was irritating. </p><p>These issues are not enough to put me off the car or the brand. They could have been dealt with better and I believe car manufacturers need to do a better job of holding spare parts for the cars they sell, but I digress.</p><p>The acid test for me is: if this car were somehow destroyed would I be happy to spend the insurance payout on another one? Yes, yes I would.</p><p>The other, and probably more significant aspect of switching to electric is, well, the switch to electric. I think for most people that's where the concern lies rather than the car itself.</p><p>Firstly we've been fortunate that we had and continue to have (we've moved) off-road parking where we can install a 7kW charge point. Charging at home is one of the greatest advantages to driving an EV. You plug the car in and it charges overnight, in the morning you have a full battery and that's that. In reality we don't plug in every night and try to avoid leaving the car with a high or low state of charge for an extended period of time (this is, apparently, less good for the battery's long term health) but with the very minimum of planning we really hardly think about this.</p><p>I realise not everybody can charge at home and this can be an problem for some people, though it doesn't mean owning an EV is not possible or even desirable, it's just a consideration we didn't have to worry about.</p><p>Where the car does matter is its range. The e-Niro has a nominal WLTP rated range of 280 miles. What's hard to get across to people at first is what the actual range of the car will be. Plenty of folk will tell you that just as petrol cars don't tend to hit the rated MPG, EVs won't actually get the rated range... Only they do, at least ours has.</p><p>How you drive, especially how fast you drive and the conditions have a significant impact on how far an EV can go. </p><p>What's hard to communicate in simple metrics is the effect of the cold. When an electric car is cold you'll use a bit more energy for heating. The air is denser so there's a bit more drag, which means high speeds will use more energy than in summer. The biggie though is that a cold battery provides less energy.</p><p>The capacity rating of an electric car battery will be lower in winter... sort of.... I think.</p><p>Anyway, what matters are the numbers. In summer our e-Niro has a range of between 270-320 miles. That's excellent, and... plenty. In winter, with a bit of safety margin, we might say 221 is the furthest we could go. Again, that's really quite a long way.</p><p>So range just hasn't been an issue. We've done long journeys, frequently driving between North Yorkshire and Northern Ireland via Scotland. On that run we stop to charge once, on one of the excellent Gridserve rapid chargers on the M6. Whilst it would be a little tight, I reckon the car can do that journey door to door without a charge, but we stop for a break anyway.</p><p>This is arguably one of the great sticking points of driving electric. Charging on long journeys. Can it be problematic? Yes, but it isn't always.</p><p>The e-Niro can charge at up to 77kW. Like many EV stats this is one to pay attention to. Our car <i>can</i> charge at 77kW but only on a charger capable of delivering that when the battery is the right temperature (in the UK this means it has to be warm enough) and only up to about 60% when the rate drops. </p><p>In practice few of the rapid chargers I've ever used can exceed 50kW, often a bit less, so charging our car takes a bit longer than the spec sheet might suggest. </p><p>Only once in almost three years has this been a problem... even thing it was just the case that I had to sit for 35 minutes when I'd rather have got on the road. Mostly it's planned around where we're stopping regardless.</p><p>There are parts of the UK still referred to as charging deserts. The North York Moors and out to Whitby is a good example... No rapid chargers to be found past Malton until you get to Scarborough. Whitby has nothing. That's not great.</p><p>We've also found ourselves having to queue for a charger. It hasn't happened often, but it has happened and meant a journey into Wales, another charging desert at the time, was much longer than we'd planned. That was annoying.</p><p>This situation has got better. I've seen a huge roll out of ever more rapid chargers over the last three years because I've been paying attention. There are simply loads of them around and few places where you can't find one within a stones throw, but those places still exist.</p><p>I took on this car knowing I'd be driving up and down the country, potentially having to go anywhere in the UK and having to deal with the public charging network. In reality there's been less of that than expected and journeys that exceed the range of the car are relatively rare.</p><p>Early on I pushed my luck, and the reliability of the e-Niro's range remaining, known as the Guess-O-Meter to many EV drivers. I'd been working in Flintshire and was returning to York. I'd planned to stop and charge but when I got in the car to head home it indicated I had enough range to make it. I didn't stop, got home with about 8% charge. It was fine.</p><p>I'll happily tell anyone who'll listen that our switch to electric has been overwhelmingly positive. I/We would not switch back to a petrol car by choice. The occasion of hiring a van to move house reminded me of the awful, slow, smelly, noisy engine that had a clutch and gear changes and needed stinking and expensive liquid pouring into it.... awful.</p><p>I recognise that it isn't an easy move for many people, for a whole host of reasons. I do believe that those who can it work should, and most will wholeheartedly enjoy the change. </p>IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-22792567103706918662022-01-17T12:10:00.002+00:002023-06-12T15:38:35.797+01:00What's with hating the tories?<p>I was brought up by very left-wing parents. It was the 80s. I knew I was supposed to hate the tories because my parents did.</p><p>I think I understood <i>some</i> of it. I don't remember the miners strike in detail but I was aware of it. I remember school teachers being on strike but not really why. I knew Maggie was awful... certainly I didn't like the way she spoke, but of course I was a child... I didn't really get the politics.</p><p>As I got older I stayed pretty left-wing. No big tory voting rebellion here, though I did spend increasing amounts of time with people who undoubtedly did vote Conservative. They weren't awful people. They didn't seem to hate poor people. I didn't hate them.</p><p>Most people would consider me left-wing today, but I've moved to a place where I'm far more interested in what's the right strategy to make things better, rather than being driven by ideology. I don't care who owns the means of production - I just want the trains to run and be affordable and, if it isn't too much to ask, us not to scorch the earth.</p><p>But I do, now, in mid-life, hate the tories. This isn't a political or ideological inheritance from my parents. I hate this generation of tory politician on their own merits. The awful, libertarian vandalism. The ignorance and stupidity that somehow does nothing to dent the confidence with which stupid things are said and the UK's institutions are attacked.</p><p>Then there's the nastiness. I've heard it said about Priti Patel that her first instinct is to hurt someone. That seem a fair assessment.</p><p>I can't bring myself to mentioned the names of the others, or watch them on the news, or give a damn about their thoughts... because they'll just spew venom and lies.</p><p>They are hateful people. I do not wish them well.</p><p><br /></p>IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-81726837358376416742021-09-09T11:12:00.000+01:002021-09-09T11:12:28.093+01:00The Unionist's crisis<p>In Northern Ireland most people, politically, fall into one of two camps... they're Unionists or they're not. Unionism has been in trouble for quite a while with the largest party, the DUP in decline. Ever since brexit reared its ugly head things have got a lot worse.</p><p>As I see it there are two fundamental problems right now. </p><p>In the run up to the brexit referendum, what remain campaigners discovered is just how challenging is it to sell everything staying more or less the same. The best campaign tactic was to talk about how much worse everything could be, and this was easily dismissed as "project fear". Many unionists recognise they have the same dilemma. Ultimately their pro-union message is one of maintaining the status quo and so, perhaps inevitably, there's a reliance on fear of the 'other'. </p><p>The other problem is unionism has come to mean conservative. I find this strange because, looking at the DUP policy document a few years ago I found lots of progressive social policy. It was a far cry from the rhetoric we see today and clear the DUP was, perhaps until very recently, much broader in policy approach than one might expect.</p><p>I subscribe to the idea that politics is not about left v right, whatever those terms even mean... it's about progressive vs regressive. </p><p>The DUP have become very much a regressive party and as the largest mainstream unionist political party they've dragged the idea of unionism into a regressive position.</p><p>Northern Ireland overall voted remain in the brexit referendum but the DUP campaigned for leave and got into bed with the tories to support leave.</p><p>Now we have the endless whinging about the consequences of the Northern Ireland Protocol from many unionist politicians, despite the fact it seemed obvious to everyone who paid any attention this was the only viable option.</p><p>I'm a fan of unions. I like trade unions. I like the European Union. I like the United Kingdom. No union is perfect; you can always move towards doing things better, but I do believe we're stronger together.... to quote some advert or other.</p><p>Unionists in Northern Ireland are failing to make the case for the political union. They're increasingly making a case against it. The more the bluster and noise aimed at the consequences of their own campaigning is matched only by their inability to offer any alternative, the less viable their arguments appear.</p><p>I don't think, for a moment, those who are unionists will suddenly vote for a republican party. However it's clear the DUP have alienated many of their voters. As a result the unionist vote will be fragmented, the DUP will lose the majority status they've enjoyed and Sinn Fein will become the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly.</p><p>Unionism, if it's to have a viable political future, needs to progress. The old "Ulster says NO!" is very much still present in the current day DUP. The problem is "NO" is easy. You don't need to listen, engage, think, and you don't need to come up with any better options. You just stick your fingers in your ears, shout no and ruin everything for everyone else. </p><p>I don't believe there's anything inherently conservative about the union. Until unionists can leave behind their increasingly far right, regressive and even hateful posturing, they run a very real risk of political irrelevance.</p>IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-91024634402794647232021-08-12T15:15:00.004+01:002021-08-12T15:21:07.444+01:00A pox on the house of Toyota<div>In late 2019 I bought a Toyota Yaris Hybrid. I needed a car, couldn't afford an EV at the time, and so I went for what I felt was the least bad option. At the time I <a href="/2019/12/toyota-yaris-hybrid.html">wrote a post about how much I liked it</a>. How times change.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Yaris has gone, replaced by a Renault Zoe.</div><div><br /></div><div>There were four fundamental problems with my Yaris. It was slow. It actually felt much slower than it really was. When it did run on electric power only it was great... quiet, smooth, but you could only do that at no more than 30mph with the lightest throttle and only for maybe as much as a mile but probably not that far. It wasn't actually all that fuel efficient. A real world 62mpg seems pretty good, but my old fiesta diesel bettered that. Then there's the biggie: my wife hated it. Specifically she hated the hybrid system and refused to drive it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Recently it seems Toyota have been making a lot of noise about how rubbish EVs are and how hybrid tech has a future for at least the next 5000 years or something.</div><div><br /></div><div>Toyota are in big, big trouble and they know it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The company's fixation on hybrid tech being the answer means they've continued to invest in building petrol engines.</div><div><br /></div><div>Toyota also have the Mirai, <strike>one of</strike> the only hydrogen fuel cell car on the market and they keep saying hydrogen is the future, supported by hybrids.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here are the facts as I see them. Toyota put all their energy transition eggs into a hydrogen fuel cell basket and it's becoming very clear hydrogen is not going to be the future for transport.</div><div><br /></div><div>The hybrid drive train pioneered in the Prius seemed futuristic and advanced 20 years ago, now it just feels like a dated tech cul-de-sac with no future.</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps most betraying what Toyota themselves know to be true, that EVs are what they need to be building, they talk about how they've got amazing battery tech just around the corner with their "solid state batteries" which, so far, well... they don't appear to exist outside of the lab - but the inevitable world domination of Toyota's non-existent battery tech is still a line fed to customers by dealerships.</div><div><br /></div><div>Toyota have proved they can build a really good EV because that's precisely what the Mirai is - an electric vehicle that gets its electricity from the fuel cell rather than having a large battery.</div><div><br /></div><div>As a result of all this it appears Toyota have been lobbying to try and hold back any legislation that puts a stop to selling new hybrids. They're also actively lobbying for pro-hydrogen policies and I've commented before <a href="/2020/11/hydrogen-wash.html">how problematic hydrogen is</a> as a fuel.</div><div><br /></div><div>I understand this from a business perspective. Toyota were mocked for the Prius with it's tree-hugging, fuel sipping, weirdness but they persevered. Now the tech is mainstream it's very much out of favour, and for good reason, but that hardly seems fair on the company that worked hard on cleaner cars.</div><div><br /></div><div>But nothing stands still and Toyota's single minded focus on hydrogen & hybrid has left them heading down two different technological dead-ends. </div><div><br /></div><div>Whilst none of the car manufacturers have pivoted entirely to EVs Toyota are now well behind. They're not alone in this, Honda have made the same mistake, but they're still ahead of Toyota in dealing with this having brought at least one EV to market and ending production of their fuel cell powered Clarity.</div><div><br /></div><div>Toyota don't get my ire for making mistakes about their technology direction, but to lobby against the energy transition that's oh so desperately needed is pretty vile. I'd much rather they put their energy into fixing the problem.</div>IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-32651456526503242522020-11-01T14:21:00.002+00:002020-11-01T14:21:19.232+00:00The electric car<p>I have a strong childhood memory of being on the footpath of Gillygate in York, struggling to breathe, gagging on the fumes from the stationary cars.</p><p>It's a fairly narrow street of two-four story buildings with a building across one end that restricts the through breeze and, coupled with the pretty much constant heavy traffic, the fumes hang around.</p><p>It was an awful feeling, and a vivid memory. Every so often I get the same sensation and it takes me straight back there.</p><p>Most recently this happened during in August, during the covid lockdown. With people staying home from work the number of cars on the road plummeted. The air quickly got cleaner. We all noticed.</p><p>I was waiting in a socially distanced queue outside the post office where I somehow also found myself involved in a funeral... but that's another story.</p><p>A single diesel van drove past. Unusual at the time given the absence of road traffic. I felt that same, awful, gagging sensation from the fumes. From one van. </p><p>There are two reasons we've recently made a significant financial commitment and replaced one of our two cars with an EV: CO2 emissions and local air pollution. They're related of course, but actually different issues.</p><p>I'm fully aware the Kia e-Niro sets off from the factory with an underbelly of emissions in the shape of that 64kWh battery. However I also know that over its lifetime the car will result in far less CO2 emissions than even the super efficient petrol car it replaces.</p><p>Equally important to me, this car doesn't directly pollute the air as it's being driven. I can drive past a queue of people and they won't be left gagging from the smoke and nitrogen oxide emissions, because there aren't any.</p><p>I don't consider this a silver-bullet to solving climate change and all atmospheric pollution. </p><p>I do consider EVs are better, and the direction of travel is what's important to me.</p>IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-26821379320161756022020-11-01T13:59:00.000+00:002020-11-01T13:59:00.521+00:00Hydrogen wash<p>When people discuss electric cars, and the need to decarbonize our economy, I've noticed how quickly the topic of hydrogen power comes up as the answer to all problems.</p><p>I suspect this is a continuation of the well worn tobacco companies tactic of spreading <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt" target="_blank">FUD</a> to hold on to the financial advantage for as long as possible. This is no surprise when one considers many of the petrochemical firms are investing in hydrogen production. I don't criticize them for this, just that they should have done it decades ago instead of holding us back.</p><p>The trouble is I think they're still holding us back.</p><p>The problem with considering hydrogen fuel cell powered cars to be the future is essentially it's saying "I'm not going to do anything now, because I'm waiting for this wonderful new technology". Meanwhile we carry on buying and running petrol and diesel cars... while we wait.</p><p>It's important to acknowledge that, yes hydrogen works now as a fuel for vehicles where a fuel cell is partnered with a small battery and used to power the electric motor. It's clever stuff but there are problems.</p><p>Firstly, right now, most hydrogen comes from natural gas. It may not create harmful emissions when it's used in the fuel cell, but actually making the hydrogen is far from clean or renewable.</p><p>Let's say we solve that one and can use renewable electricity to make hydrogen through electrolysis. There's still the thorny issue of how inefficient this is.</p><p>Using electricity to produce hydrogen which then has to be transported before it can be converted back into electricity by a fuel cell is considerably less efficient than generating electricity and storing that in a battery. Sure there are transmission losses in getting electricity from a wind farm to a car battery, but much lower than with hydrogen and nothing new needs to be built.... we already have domestic electricity.</p><p>Maybe we'll end up with so much renewable, clean electricity that it doesn't matter. Right now we're a long way from that.</p><p>But there's more.</p><p>If we're talking about decarbonising the UK's energy requirements we need to think about heat. The vast majority of people I know heat their home with a gas boiler. As well as the inevitable CO2 released, these are also a source of nasty air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides. Not good. With some work, the gas network <i>could</i> be converted to hydrogen.**</p><p>There's lots of concern about the instability of renewables on the electricity grid, what happens when it stops being windy at night, for example. Energy storage is therefore a big part of the conversation. If we're able to make and store lots of hydrogen this can then be burned in a gas turbine to make electricity.</p><p>So I agree that using hydrogen as a fuel does seem to be a good idea. Burn it for heat, pass it through a fuel cell for electricity and in both cases the waste product is water. Lovely. Providing the electricity used to produce the hydrogen is generated cleanly, hydrogen can be a carbon neutral fuel. Effectively it's a storage method for the electricity and it does have advantages over batteries.</p><p>What I don't think we should be doing is using hydrogen for cars. There are other things that we also need, that hydrogen is better for than batteries while batteries work really well for cars.</p><p>If we get to the stage there's so much cheap, clean electricity available.... I still don't think it makes sense to use hydrogen, but then... maybe, whatever.... the market will decide that.</p><p>So back to my initial accusation that oil companies are essentially using hydrogen as means to hold things back. I'm not sure this is even a deliberate strategy, more a 'happy' accident. What's clear is switching to electric transport threatens the existing business model of people who find, extract and refine oil in order to sell you petrol and diesel. </p><p>If they can switch to making hydrogen, quite a lot of the business model looks really similar doesn't it. </p><p>That's a huge part of the appeal for hydrogen cars. People understand driving to a place where they pay money to fill the tank. </p><p>The difference with battery electric vehicles, once you've lived with one, is you realise that's something you don't need to do any more, and it really isn't something I miss.</p><p>** Hydrogen, being smaller than natural gas molecules will likely just leak out everywhere without an enormous and therefore costly effort to upgrade the network. However experiments to mix hydrogen with natural gas show promise. Whilst this doesn't lead to the possibility of carbon neutral domestic heating, it could significantly reduce emissions on the road to better heating technologies.</p><p><b><br /></b></p>IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-25587877196242816972020-05-07T14:01:00.003+01:002020-05-07T14:20:00.715+01:00The getaway car<div>You can learn a lot about my dad's approach to car maintenance from the time it was found the car wouldn't start because the starter motor had fallen off. It was hammered back on with a mallet.</div><div><br /></div><div>Job done.</div><div><br /></div><div>Never particularly flush with cash my parents would buy crap cars, to be honest they were probably borderline scrap, and then spend a small fortune adding seat belts - these were 70s cars and they were knackered. I remember a blue Peugeot 504 with an engine so noisy when my dad started filling it with petrol a guy ran across the forecourt shouting "NOoooooooo" because he was convinced it was one of those exotic French diesels.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the car that looms largest in my childhood memory was a Ford Cortina Mk4. I recall it as being a bright metallic green with a tan interior. KVY 550S was born the same year as me and given my memories I was probably about eight when we got it - I could check... I haven't. Apart from the dutifully installed rear seat belts it was the typical late 70s Ford and on anything other than the perfect day it contributed to the unmistakable suburban sound of engines turning over and failing to start.</div><div><br /></div><div>We used to call it "the getaway car" on account of the bloody thing never starting.</div><div><br /></div><div>With me and my brothers in the car, and my parents arguing about whether they'd flooded the engine again, we'd sit in uneasy silence before commencing further attempts in the desperate hope the battery would hold out. We'd threaten the it with the scrap yard and then it would start. A car with proper personality. </div><div><br /></div><div>I remember alternators and exhausts being annual consumables. A trip to a tiny auto parts shop that stocked, clearly badly, reconditioned alternators was a delight.... so filled with fascinating oily things. Early on my dad had bought a new exhaust from Charlie Brown's that came with a lifetime warranty. That warranty did for the next few years when, without fail, part of it would drop off.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once, with everyone strapped in, my mum went to start the car but the key wouldn't fit the ignition barrel... because it was the front door key for the house. Yet she was sure this is what had unlocked the car. Later, for science, I tried a few other implements such as a discarded lolly stick. Yep, that would unlock the drivers door. In fact anything strong enough to turn what Ford referred to as a "lock" would open the door. We didn't bother fixing that.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually rust ate through the scuttle panel and front bulkhead. This was structural and difficult to fix so spelled the end of the car. </div><div><br /></div><div>Before the final drive of doom to the scrappy, my dad stuck a for sale sign in the window. A chap came along and offered £150. Not bad... scrap was about £25. Done.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was a few weeks later we were sat round the dinner table when the doorbell rang. A policeman. "About your car sir, KVY 550S". In the days when the DVLA was notified by the new owner of the car they hadn't bothered which, it turns out, wasn't a great surprise.</div><div><br /></div><div>The car that would never start had been used, as the getaway car, in an armed robbery in Leeds. </div><div><br /></div><div>A week later, the same again. Same officer even.... Our old Cortina had been used for ram raiding in Halifax.</div><div><br /></div><div>This family car, which can't have been more than 11 years old when terminal rust dealt it a death blow went out in a blaze of criminal glory</div><div><br /></div><div>I was so proud.</div>IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-9559463179204059302020-05-07T13:30:00.000+01:002020-05-07T14:43:50.552+01:00Cars cars cars<div>
Whilst there are too many cars on the UK roads and we all need to drive less, I still bloody love cars. I've never been one for the flashy motor though. The bigger, brasher, noisier, faster.... the less I'm interested in it. </div>
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It's been a lot of years since I really visited this part of my psyche and it's been awoken by EVs. The possibility that I can have a car that's fun to drive, doesn't literally stink and at least has the potential to be propelled by carbon neutral energy is really damn exciting.</div>
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I've also been sucked into the world of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/CARPERVERT" target="_blank"><b>CarPervert, Jonny Smith</b></a>. He's an engaging presenter and I enjoy that he isn't chasing the extreme, outlandish super car nonsense. The man's doing up an Austin Allegro for goodness sake. His love of cars in infectious and really all embracing. He's as interested in the cars of the everyman, the cars with stories behind them, as the engineering marvels that outperform everything else.</div>
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All of this has got me reminiscing about the cars I grew up with. The fascinating Volvo Amazon estate owned by the woman at number 10 who never drove it, ever.... but kept it on the road. The VW camper a neighbour had that burnt more oil than petrol - something he seemed to be proud of, but mostly its the cars my parents owned.</div>
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I can vaguely remember a few of them. There was a Reliant Robin they had when I was really tiny.... the radio didn't work. A Renault 4 with it's weird gear stick. A Peugeot 504 with deeply questionable brakes and maggots under the rear bench seat because me and my brothers had dropped so much food down there. An awful Talbot Alpine Minx that was just the worst sounding thing every created. A white Cavalier Club special edition thing with a tiny little spoiler. Once, with my grandmother in that car, we were parked at MFI. She piped up that we were parked next to a car that was exactly the same..... It was a 911.</div>
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The car I remember most from my childhood was the Cortina. That deserves its own post.</div>
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My granddad had better cars. I think there was a Datsun Cherry, definitely a couple of Nissan Sunnys. He bought Japanese cars that worked.</div>
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My parents didn't buy Japanese cars that worked, they bought old DAF automatics and had their mechanic friend stick some second hand washing machine belts on when they'd fail.</div>
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The first car I drove was a Peugeot 205 1.8 diesel. It was great. Much better than the 1990 Cavalier my parents owned at the time. I once drove that through a puddle and it completely died.</div>
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My first car was a 1986 Golf MKII. My dad taught me everything he knew so I chose badly. It was knackered. Something like 60k on the clock and it hadn't been given an oil change in at least half that. But I loved that car and another Golf has always been on my desired list. Never happened because I've always been too practical or poor... my god I really wanted a MK5 when they came out.</div>
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Apart from that Golf.... oh and the cut and shut Volvo 340 I replaced it with, my car ownership has been fairly uneventful. They've just all worked. I do find myself craving some originality though. The Citroen Xantia estate I owned was great. Yes the boot leaked so badly the rear foot wells filled with water, and the stupid plastic clutch clip failed and left my wife stranded among rowdy football fans, but it was an interesting car and I loved it.</div>
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I'm hopeful the move to EVs will see some interesting cars come back. I may even get one.</div>
IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-46684664411663752122020-05-05T13:44:00.003+01:002020-11-01T14:08:19.110+00:00NRGAs a bleeding heart lefty-liberal snowflake, how I use energy matters to me. More specifically where the energy I use comes from matters to me.<br />
<br />
Like most people in the UK I use electricity from the grid to power things in my home. I have a gas powered combi boiler for the hot water and central heating and I drive a car. We're a two car household by necessity.<br />
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Bottom line is I want to reduce my carbon footprint as far as I can (without selling all my possessions and going to live in the woods). I suspect a lot of people thing the same way, so what can we do?<br />
<br />
The easy wins are efficiency gains. The loft of our house was insulated, about 30 years ago, with approx 20cm depth of fibreglass. That's better than nothing but not by much, so a small amount of money spent on some nice wool insulation has improved things. Worth noting that although it's more expensive, the wool insulation is nice to handle and means in the future anytime I venture into the loft I'm not left all itchy from disturbing the fibreglass insulation.<br />
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Our heating system was also about 30 years old and had started taking a long time to heat the house. A new boiler wasn't so cheap, £2300 to be precise. The replacement uses considerably less gas for the same heat output. Perhaps more importantly it actually works to heat the house quickly. It isn't going to pay for itself and it isn't going to save the environment, but it reduces our gas usage and makes for a warmer home. Thing is, I'm not sure I did the right thing there....<br />
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All our lighting was long ago replaced with LEDs. They're just better. It makes absolutely no sense not to do this.<br />
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Our car purchasing decisions were influenced by carbon emissions and air quality concerns, so the diesels went and we bought the most efficient petrol cars available to us at the time.<br />
<br />
So what next?<br />
<br />
Other small changes include making sure the radiator is turned down in our guest bedroom when it isn't in use. I've also installed Hive heating controller - whilst I don't like or recommend Hive, it does mean we can easily turn off the heating if we're out of the house. This is beneficial as our schedule can be unpredictable.<br />
<br />
Some years ago we visited <a href="https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/" target="_blank">Cruachan power station</a>, It's a stunning feat of engineering that can provide a huge amount of electricity to the UK grid, very quickly, on demand through hydro storage. Unleash the water to drive the turbines when you need power, and then pump it back up slowly overnight with surplus electricity. It was a clever way of meeting peak demand without building huge excess capacity. The example given was balancing the grid during the ad breaks in Coronation Street when half the country turned on their kettle at the same time.<br />
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It's brilliant, but... turn it on its head. Rather than attempting to have generation meet demand, instead regulate demand to the available generation capacity. It's the principle behind the old Economy 7 system that remotely turned on electric heating at times of lower demand, and charged less for that electricity.<br />
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In the past I've always switched to the cheapest energy provider, this time I looked at who I thought was the best and went with <a href="http://share.octopus.energy/lemon-grove-138" target="_blank">Octopus Energ</a>y (yes that's my referral link).<br />
<br />
Octopus are at the innovative end of domestic smart-grid development and it's really exciting. If you have a compatible smart meter and know what you're doing, for the true nerd they have an agile tariff that tracks the wholesale electricity price and updates what you pay every 30 minutes. It won't surprise you that wholesale prices are high at peak demand and lower at other times. So if you have a load you can shift around such as heating water or charging an electric car, not only can you save money but you can help reduce the load on the grid. Right now I don't have the big load I can shift, but if it cost me much less to move my cooking time back by 40 minutes, I'd be likely to do that.<br />
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Another increasingly viable option is battery storage. Tesla were in the headlines a little while ago for their work installing the world's largest on-grid battery in Australia. The headline purpose was to provide power continuity on that part of Australia's grid - which is stretched out pretty thin. Worth noting however is Tesla make money from this by storing electricity when it's cheap, from renewables, and selling it when it's expensive, from fossil fuels.<br />
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We all ripped out old hot water tanks in favour of gas combi boilers, but they're going to make a come back. New, highly insulated, mains-pressure hot water tanks will become the standard. Heated by solar where possible and topped up with cheap off-peak electricity.<br />
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The next big change we're all going to make is the switch to electric vehicles. Right now they're either too expensive, not available, don't have the necessary range or a combination of these negative attributes but, crucially, they're being built and in increasingly large numbers.<br />
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I expect one, if not both of our cars will be fully electric in the next 18 months.<br />
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Lots has been said, mostly by those with a finger in the fossil fuels pie, about how electric vehicles will devastate our electricity grid and require new power stations and lots of nuclear and they'll make everything worse. This is designed to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt among the public. It's all about holding back the inevitable.<br />
<br />
Here's what's going to happen.<br />
<br />
Everything will become electric. To heat our homes we'll eventually move from gas to heat-pump systems, though this will take a long time. Faster will be the return of the hot water tank, heated with off-peak electricity from the grid, or solar from your own roof.<br />
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Every daily driver vehicle will be electric, and these batteries can also provide buffer to the grid.<br />
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Those with room will install domestic battery systems to make the most of their roof solar.<br />
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Energy companies (Tesla has just applied to become a UK energy supplier) will build grid battery systems.<br />
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All this electricity will come from renewables.... eventually I really do think all of it will. Every last bit. We'll have enough generation capacity between solar and wind coupled with enough storage to make that work through the night and on the quiet days.<br />
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It's going to take time to get there, but I rather suspect it's going to happen quicker than most of us suspect.<br />
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Meanwhile I try to use as little energy as I can. I turn the heating down, I insulate (myself and my home), I don't drive unless it's necessary and I use an energy supplier that invests in renewables and at least lets me offset my gas use.IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-46105210625590715242020-02-01T11:50:00.002+00:002020-02-01T11:50:49.061+00:00Brexit day reflectionsI can't think of anything recently discussed in the UK that has raised quite as much ire as brexit. Well now we've "got it done", in that the relatively easy part of officially leaving the EU has now happened, there only remains the really difficult part of diplomacy, compromise and negotiation to sort out all those trivial matters of how we, as a nation, go about pretty much everything in this connected world.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As a stupid, lefty, remoaner, as opposed to being a wise, lefty, brexiter (like my parents) this is a sad day. I see no gain, only loss. </div>
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<br /></div>
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It's going to take the rest of this year to understand what this really means for how we interact with EU countries, what it means for business, how the border between the UK and Ireland is going to work.... All the big uncertainties of the past few years remain just as uncertain today.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Given some of the people involved in our government I can't say I trust them to do anything well. Offered the choice between retaining alignment with the EU and throwing away decades of sensible policy for the sake of jingoistic soundbites I have my suspicion which way they'll go. We'll see.</div>
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<br /></div>
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For me it feels like the UK is like an amazing guitarist who, believing they're being held back by the rest, quits the band and goes out on their own only to realise, too late, that actually not many people want to hear 38 minute solos. Meanwhile someone else has stepped up in the band and they're actually doing quite well without us.</div>
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<br /></div>
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My prediction (I'm almost always wrong) is for us to re-join the EU some years down the line with a much smaller role. We'll probably have to be guitar tech, or coil the cables.... or something.</div>
IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-64206433769649107212019-12-08T23:21:00.001+00:002020-02-01T11:57:04.775+00:00Toyota Yaris hybridThese cars have their detractors but I really rather like it. Almost every criticism I've heard, suggesting the car lacks excitement, individuality and dynamism, is exactly what makes it ideal.<br />
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I am going to drive this car relatively slowly on congested roads most of the time. Even out of town it's rare for my average speed to make it over 50mph. You can take your sharp, dynamic handling of the Seat Ibiza and shove it, because it's meaningless in a straight line under 30 as you're queuing round Leeds.<br />
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Last year we bought a Skoda Fabia, and it's a great car. Surprisingly large in estate form, with the 110bhp one litre, three pot turbocharged petrol engine that's surprisingly quick when you need it to be and impressively frugal the rest of the time.<br />
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The Yaris is an interesting comparison because on paper it isn't much slower, but it certainly feels it. I suspect a lot of that is perception. The lack of gear shifts from Toyota's hybrid system seems to upset my perception of speed, but honestly I don't know who I'm trying to kid, the Yaris is slow.<br />
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Where it beats the Skoda is in refinement. The Yaris is smoother, quieter, feels more assured on bad road surfaces and feels like it's a bigger car (it isn't).<br />
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Hybrid Synergy Drive takes a little bit of getting used to. When one's entire driving experience has included selecting the appropriate gear, and engine revs being a key part of driving, it's initially unsettling to have a drive system where engine speed isn't necessarily linked to the road speed.<br />
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There are a lots of videos explaining how Toyota's system works and it's clever stuff but perhaps the best thing about it is you don't need to understand any of this, because once the transmission is in D you drive the car. However, understand how it actually works and this helps you get the most out of the car.<br />
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By most, I mean MPG because nobody buys one of these for the performance. You've bought one of these because you want cheaper motoring (which this doesn't really give you) or you're concerned about emissions and want them as low as possible, which is my motivation.<br />
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So far, with a mix of slow town traffic and longer distances, the trip computer reports an average of 59mpg which isn't too shabby. It's better than the Fabia, which is otherwise one of the most fuel efficient cars I can find. That's also in winter, where the engine will use that bit more fuel while it gets up to temperature.<br />
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So the Yaris is comfortable, easy to drive, reasonably frugal, feels well made and has the legendary Toyota reliability but there has to be a down side and I have four significant frustrations:<br />
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<ol>
<li>No Carplay. This may seem trivial but we have it in the Skoda and it's brilliant. My Yaris has satnav on the clunky, sluggish infotainment system. It'll do but it's already hopelessly dated and that's exactly the problem Carplay solves.</li>
<li>Battery capacity. Toyota have to strike a balance between battery cost, weight, capacity and the available charging power. I suspect they've arrived at the best compromise but I still find myself wishing they hadn't used the batteries from a 1980s camcorder and the electric only range was greater. Two or three miles would be ideal. Instead it's typically less than a mile so a congested urban drive will see the engine running to top up the battery.</li>
<li>Performance. Again this is all a massive compromise but I have had a couple of occasions when I wish this efficiency focused car could give me a bit more poke.</li>
<li>Economy. This is probably the biggest and goes with the previous two. I don't think the engine is very good. Toyota have used their Atkinson cycle engine design that's all about efficiency over power output, but the VW engine in my Skoda is smaller, more powerful and I reckon if you coupled that with the hybrid drive would be even more frugal. I'm a slow driver and have been very gentle with the Yaris yet I don't get close to the claimed economy figures. Yes it's better than the Skoda but perhaps not quite good enough after all the compromises. Let's see what warmer summer mornings bring.</li>
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Despite the misgivings overall I think Toyota have done a good job with this hybrid and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who spends a lot of time in traffic. For me, the bottom line is this car can never truly satisfy because it isn't the EV I want, but can't afford.</div>
IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-57512402305703013682018-07-24T22:22:00.001+01:002020-02-24T07:44:36.451+00:00Outside the church<div dir="ltr">
It's been a few years since I left the employment of a church in circumstances that were undesirable. What I perceived as dishonesty and indifference shocked me and left me questioning assumptions I had made about the approach of people I worked with, shared bread and wine with and I thought loved and respected me.</div>
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A significant side effect of this was I could no longer gloss over aspects of that church's theology and assumed belief that I realised I simply didn't believe. Truth is I hadn't been aligned with the conservative evangelical thinking that pervaded the church for a long time, if ever.</div>
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Despite initial attempts to stay part of that church family it became clear I needed some space and time to grieve the loss of a community that never really existed, but I thought did... and frankly to get over the anger over how I and others were treated.</div>
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Getting a new job, stepping away from the church and taking a few years to slowly reflect on my faith has been difficult, often painful and a huge part of me would much have preferred everything just to stay as it was, but life moves on and so must I. </div>
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I went to work for a University and the first thing I noticed, looking back, was how small the church was. When I was in there, part of the staff team, "serving God's transformation of the north" it felt like I, like we were part of something. I really did start to believe we were within a subversive movement and that one day revival would come, with supernatural force, and our society would be transformed for the better. It felt like we were part of something big.</div>
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Truth is the church is small and getting smaller. That particular church has seen people leave faster than new people have joined, and the wider evangelical movement in the UK increasingly looks like a fringe group of crackpot fundamentalists in our increasingly secular society.</div>
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I also felt less stress... eventually. I moved to a new job with a steep learning curve and brought my good protestant work ethic and desire to do well, so pushed myself, yet this was far less stressful than the role I left behind. </div>
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I've subsequently spent a lot of time reading, thinking, listening to podcasts that challenge and inspire me, all in the name of trying to understand what I actually believe.</div>
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Some people are, by nature, very black and white about things. There's right and wrong, good and bad and nice roles into which people can be slotted. I think I've long been able to see the grey inbetween, even if I didn't always understand it, though I've found age brings a greater appreciation of how rarely the nice simple categories work.</div>
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Mostly I've concerned myself with Jesus. </div>
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Christianity is supposed to be centred around Jesus but interestingly not very much of the behaviour I've seen from Christians over the years (and I include myself in that) seems to reflect much of what Jesus actually taught. </div>
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Part of the problem is many, probably most people in churches don't have the first clue what Jesus’ teaching means. They don't understand his words and actions within the context of him living as a Jew under Roman occupation. The way in which the Bible is read and understood is so devoid of colour and life as to make it almost meaningless and it's often taken as as either a set of literal instructions or a historical document... of course it's neither.</div>
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At some indeterminate point I’ll probably take a subject and try to explain what I believe about it, at the time of writing, and why I think it's important to consider alternatives to the widely received churchy approach. I am probably wrong about everything, I am no scholar or theologian and I have not extensively studied the Greek... these will be personal musings. I'd love to hear your comments.</div>
IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-54080329516006251892018-05-21T22:31:00.000+01:002018-05-22T11:41:44.079+01:00 Juin Tech R1 brakes Back end of last year I got a new bike on the cycle to work scheme. A local bike shop had last season’s Genesis Day One 20 available for a good price. It fitted the bill with disk brakes, mud guards fitted and the hub gears I wanted so I bought it.<br />
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Having lived with this bike for a while here are my musings. It’s pleasant to ride. Comfortable, stable at speed and generally mostly what I’d hoped for from a fast commuter bike.<br />
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There are downsides though, the paint finish isn’t good enough; it’s very easily scratched and seems really thin. A gentle altercation with a colleagues machine in the bike shed has left me with a surprising amount of bare metal showing, which will rust quickly left alone as the bike frame is steel. Of greater concern are suspect pin holes visible near some of the welds. I suspect this bike will rust badly, which makes me sad and more than a little disappointed.<br />
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Probably the biggest issue I have with the Genesis is the choice of components. Some are just not good enough. This isn’t a very expensive bike, but it isn’t cheap either and I’d expect things to work properly. The gear shifter is apparently known to cause problems, though mine has been fine so far. But the brakes are really the big issue.<br />
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The fitted promax dsk-717 is a cable operated mechanical disc brake and imho it’s terrible. In fact the brakes setup on my bike has been so bad I’d say it was dangerous. This is the first bike I’ve owned with disc brakes and I expected good things. I’ve previously had rim brakes and I have a beaten old carrera subway 8 with Shimano roller brakes. These should be out performed by the more modern disc brakes, but they weren’t,<br />
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The comparison with roller brakes was particularly interesting because these are not well regarded for their stopping power. I actually quite like them because whilst they may not be the most powerful brakes, they are consistent in all weathers, which is worth a lot on a commuter bike.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I set off with my shiny new bike and was immediately disappointed by the brakes. I expected improvement with bedding in but it never came. Eventually I realised the rear was particularly bad and I wasn’t safe indicating right with traffic around. Something had to be done.<br />
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Adjustments checked I couldn’t find a way to lock up the rear wheel at any speed other than a crawl. Not good. So new pads, following a clean of the rotors with isopropyl alcohol in case of oil contamination. It was better but not good.<br />
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Because mechanical calipers only have one piston, the arrangement requires one pad to be as close as possible to the rotor, which means there’s always a small element of flexing the disc to squeeze it between the pads. Get this out of adjustment due to poor installation or worn pads and it dramatically affects the braking effort.<br />
<br />
Despite clean rotors, new pads and numerous attempts at setting things up I couldn’t get satisfactory performance so I opted to replace them with the Juin Tech R1.<br />
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The R1 isn’t cheap at £151 delivered (they come as a pair), that’s a hefty price tag for some bike bits... for me at least, but brakes are something I don’t like to skimp on. There are Shimano hydraulics available for sensible money unless you have drop bars when they suddenly get very expensive. I also quite liked the idea of just replacing the calipers, rather than having to re-tape the bars of my not very old bike.<br />
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The Juin Tech R1 is a hybrid hydraulic brake. It’s cable operated, so works with my existing levers, but is internally hydraulic. The most obvious advantage is both pads move against the disc which means you avoid the regular fine adjustment of having a pad almost dragging all the time. There’s no wasted effort of flexing the rotor, just two brake pads neatly clamping the disc.<br />
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Because I’m fabulously lazy, and for a couple of other reasons I opted not to change the rotors, just giving them a clean once more. The mountings from the promax lined up nicely so actually installing the R1s was just a matter of swapping them over and took me no more than 15 minutes.<br />
<br />
The difference is like night and day. Suddenly I get the disc brake experience I was expecting. The Juin Tech R1 has a nice feel with good modulation and significant stopping power when required. I’ve yet to test them thoroughly but I immediately felt far more confident for my 8 mile ride home.<br />
<br />
I suspect I could probably have got decent performance from a different mechanical brake (surely they’re not all useless), but I like a gadget and had heard good things about these and similar hybrid designs. As a very simple swap out I’m delighted with the performance. My only frustration is Genesis fitted such terrible brakes to begin with.<br />
<br />
Which reminds me, there’s one other disappointment with the Genesis, the CST tyres.... terrible. Got a puncture at both ends of the bike. So they were replaced with Schwalbe Marathon Plus for a drama free commute. Perhaps what this says is, as I suspected a while ago, I should have spent more money on the bike in the first plce. Still, making these gradual improvements is actually quite fun.IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-83727226382383495122018-02-20T12:27:00.001+00:002019-12-09T11:09:41.988+00:00I had an exam today, for a professional certification. For this sort of event I like to overcompensate for my tendency to be late. Which is why I ended up in the bland waiting area of an office in Leeds, listening to some calming music.<br />
<br />
An Ending (Ascent) by Brian Eno is a favourite of mine. It's a seemingly simple repetitive piece that's actually got more going on than first appears. It's been used as the soundtrack to many things, Jeremy Clarkson driving a v12 Aston Martin for one... but it's a wonderfully evocative piece of music. There's a sadness to it, but it also makes me think about moving forwards.... Maybe that's just the title.<br />
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As I listened an instagram notification popped up and after a few moments I was checking out the feed of someone who had liked one of my pictures; someone I didn't know who had one or two children and had posted some beautiful pictures of their child with their partner.<br />
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My childlessness hits me sometimes, but rarely with so much force. The combination of mild pre-exam stress, a less than brilliant night's sleep, the soundtrack, the beautiful pictures of a happy child with happy parents...<br />
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I tend to avoid spending time on Facebook, filled as it is with curated pictures of perfect family life. When something you want, others have, it's easy to project. I know full well social media is pretty much everyone's best side. I understand it isn't reality.<br />
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We all want to appear as if we have everything together, but we so rarely do and it was all I could manage not to be the middle aged weeping man in the corner of a room. Very awkward for those folk wandering through to get a drink from the water machine.<br />
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It's a sadness, an ache.... a grief for the life you thought you might have. It's unresolved and not something you talk about.<br />
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So my social media of choice is being snarky at idiots about politics on twitter. My wife complains it makes me grumpy, and she's right. Really though it's all a great distraction.<br />
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If you, reading this, have children and know people who don't... and you've never chatted to them about why not, a favour: please avoid moaning about family life. Please don't tell them how lucky they are not to be tied down by the commitment of children. Please don't assume they don't have children by choice.<br />
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The exam went well. I bet if we had kids revising would have been much harder.IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-83998110624769808752017-07-25T16:36:00.000+01:002017-07-25T16:36:08.024+01:00Fitbit and their terrible customer serviceI own a Fitbit Charge HR. I've had it for about two years. It's nearing the end of it's life, as the strap will soon fail, and I need to think about replacing it. The most obvious choice would be the newer model, or the slightly flashier smartwatch style offering. But at the moment I think I'll move on. Here's why.<br />
<br />
If you make gadgets, as fitbit do, you have essentially two ways to create customer loyalty. You can either make the best damn thing you can and roll out improvements to it as software development allows. Or, you can wall it off, keep make it incompatible with everything else and try to lock the customer in.<br />
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You also have two ways to sell more gadgets to your existing customers. You can make the best damn thing you can and keep it updated, rolling out improvements as software development allows. Or, you can only add new features to the new trackers, even though they're software features based in the app and nothing to do with the tracker.<br />
<br />
It's this last point that has really annoyed me.<br />
<br />
To make sure your tracked distance is as accurate as possible it's necessary to calibrate your stride length in the fitbit. In the Charge HR this is a manual process. With the Charge HR2 there is a feature that uses the smartphone GPS to measure how far you've walked/run, work out your stride length and update the fitbit. This is purely an app feature and there's no reason not add this functionality to the earlier fitbit devices, yet fitbit have chosen not to do that.<br />
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Even more annoying is the Charge HR doesn't have the facility to track a workout using GPS. The newer model does but, again, this is purely a smartphone app feature and nothing to do with the fitbit itself.<br />
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As far as I'm concerned fitbit is withholding features from earlier customers in the hope we will upgrade.<br />
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That stinks. So no, I probably won't upgrade. I'll look elsewhere.IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-72545138556686396062017-07-14T17:18:00.003+01:002021-10-17T19:27:52.924+01:00Pipo X10 touchscreenIf you had a Pipo X10 and wanted to reinstall windows, you'd find some of the drivers are not part of the standard Microsoft offering. You'd do a google search and find links to a driver bundle that pretty much makes everything work. Then begins tearing your hair out at the fact the touchscreen isn't working as well as it used to, and no amount of recalibrating in windows will get it quite right.<br />
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What you need is the correct touchsettings.gt file. This goes in c:\windows\inf<br />
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I had great difficulty finding this file for the Pipo X10, but finally managed to download the entire original software build from Pipo and so present you with a link to the one file that otherwise I couldn't find.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B10ZM_bm89GlTW4xTy1mZzN0aU0/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-QYciZ-fOjErumhaB2-whIw">Pipo X10 touchsetting.gt</a><div>Link updated 17/10/2021</div>IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-3214099835964279622017-05-14T22:55:00.002+01:002017-05-14T22:55:28.602+01:00Stagnating<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Current talk in the UK news about wages had me interested. As just one example, which I don't claim is representative, my salary is pretty much the same now as it was 17 years ago.</div>
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A lot of that is the result of decisions I've made along my so called career and it could be argued I was overpaid back then, but now I'm more experienced, skilled and some might even say more mature. I work hard in a fairly skilled field and I have seen my wages stagnate in figures and therefore drop in real terms.</div>
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According to the <a href="http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/resources/inflationtools/calculator/default.aspx">Bank of England UK inflation calculator</a> for my salary to have simply kept pace with inflation, equaling what I was paid at a lower end of the same field, I'd need to be paid £14,705 more.</div>
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This isn't to say that I feel terribly hard done by. We're quite comfortable, and much better off than many, though that's in part because we don't have children and have stayed in the house we bought in 1998. That in itself is interesting, because it means this perfect first-time-buyer's home has never come on the market, possibly won't for many years. That's another story...</div>
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As I say, between us my wife and I have enough. We're not just scraping by. Don't feel sorry for us. </div>
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What really concerns me is those of us who are now middle aged, the Gen-Xers are perhaps the last to be ok. </div>
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Assumptions that could be made by my parents generation: that wages would rise with age and experience and a decent pension would be there at the end, I don't see that for me. </div>
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How much worse for next generation unless things change?</div>
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IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-45471185860385389242016-07-09T19:45:00.005+01:002016-07-09T19:46:07.470+01:00'Christian Voice' is nothing of the sortThere's a group, well it might be just one person but let's assume there a few of them, called Christian Voice. It's led by Stephen Green. He got an undeserved level of exposure by forming Christian Voice and sending out lots of press releases. Eventually he was picked up by the media and the BBC, in one of the many immature attempts at balance, put him on panels opposite atheists. A fundamentalist Christian balances out a fundamentalist atheist as only two crazy people shouting from opposite ends of a see-saw can.<br />
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I have a problem with Christian Voice. I don't consider very much of what they say to be authentically Christian. It's all pretty angry... and it's easier to say what they're against, than what they're for. Christian Voice is very certain about a lot of things. There are lots of Bible verses peppering their communications, few of which mean anything out of the original context.<br />
<em style="color: #333333; font-family: "lobster two", arial, serif; font-size: 25px;"><br /></em>
<em style="color: #333333; font-family: "lobster two", arial, serif; font-size: 25px;">"Who will rise up for me against the evil doers, or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?" </em><br />
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The above verse from Psalm 94 is used on the About Us page on their website. The answer, it seems, is Stephen Green and anyone like minded who wants to get involved. It's taken woefully out of context though, as is all scripture used by Christian Voice.</div>
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So let's strip back the christianese nonesense, the King James Bible verses, and the holy justification for being unpleasant... what do we have here?</div>
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They're politically towards the right wing end of the Conservative party and support causes that are thus aligned. They dislike gay people, anyone of a different faith, multi-culturalism, Europe. </div>
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They like the church having a privileged position in society and see any attempt to give those with a different view point some sort of equal weighting in our society as an attack on their faith and evidence of the sinfulness of the nation.</div>
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If this group were called 'Conservative Voice' or 'Wasn't everything better in the past Voice' then I wouldn't have a problem with them. There's nothing unusual in the views espoused by this group, unfortunately.</div>
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Here's the bottom line. If you can't be 'Christian' without being unpleasant... If you're known by what you're against rather than who you're for... If you stand where some people want to build a really impressive Mosque and call on the Lord to put a stop to it all, rather than offer to help them and be their friend... Well, there's the oft quoted, somewhat trite staying "what would Jesus do?" and I wonder... what? Because I don't think it's what this group do while claiming his name.</div>
IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-37514789018338685182016-01-17T22:19:00.001+00:002016-01-17T22:19:27.158+00:00Where I'm at todayThis post is intended as a personal snapshot of where I'm at at the point I write it. I've no doubt things will change and move on. I certainly hope so, as I like to think things don't stay the same.<br />
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The only church I've ever considered myself part of would probably be described as evangelical. An Anglican church that didn't really fit the mould and attracted a very wide range of people. Some would be very much right wing, conservative evangelical in their politics and theology. Others far more liberal in their beliefs and possibly socialist in their politics. It was, as they say, a broad church and the leadership were generally good at treading a careful path through areas where not everyone would agree.<br />
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That started to change a few years ago when the leadership increasingly moved towards what I, probably unfairly, consider to be an American style of conservative evangelicalism. It's marked by a few characteristic beliefs such as: the Bible is the inerrant word of God, homosexuality is sinful, women shouldn't be leaders, those in leadership are specially ordained by God for that leadership and questioning is not taken particularly kindly. Most importantly there's a confidence and certainty that doesn't address grey areas of life, faith and theology. It's all about black and white, the right answer. This leadership would tell you that if you disagreed then you were wrong.<br />
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I was working for the church at this point and I was becoming increasingly concerned that I was fully behind an organisation that was starting to teach views I disagreed with. Eventually, before I really had to grapple with this, a catastrophic bit of decision making and HR incompetence meant I knew it was time to leave.<br />
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It's been a difficult, painful time. I've had to grieve for my church, for the ministry I believed I had but that others failed to recognise, for a huge part of my life that will never be the same. It's been hard.<br />
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What I've come to realise is that my faith, politics, personal prejudices and theology are not compatible with that preached by the leader of this church. I know that many of the views I hold will cause some I know to have grave concerns for me. There are others still who would say my views are against God and I cannot be a Christian.<br />
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I know that I have, in the past, held and repeated views that I now consider to be wrong. Many of us grow up, move on, and discover life is not black and white. The old certainties melt away and it becomes increasingly hard to see a path through the fog, but I wouldn't have it any other way.<br />
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So I repent of my past certainties. I declare that I am a Christian who loves Jesus and proclaims salvation through him by his death on a cross and his resurrection from the dead. In his name I seek to respect other people, to love them and to be their friend if they'll let me. I pray daily for guidance from the Holy Spirit, that I would please God and through my actions make him known.<br />
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There remain certainties in my life; some of those absolutes that I've learned along the way. But increasingly I regard those who speak with the confidence of completely certainty that everything they believe is absolutely right and that if you don't believe the same, you're wrong... well I increasingly regard their views with suspicion.<br />
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Everything I know about Jesus was attractive. People were attracted to him, wanted to engage with him and trust him. There are so many who speak in his name but with the opposite effect.<br />
<br />IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-21200907063290034952015-08-27T18:41:00.001+01:002015-08-27T20:50:26.072+01:00I'm sorry you feel that way...If you're sorry, say sorry. If you're not sorry, don't say it.<br />
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Here are some things people said to me at various times, and what they really mean.<br />
<ul>
<li>"I'm sorry you feel that way" - What you say to someone who's ill.</li>
<li>"I'm sorry if we hurt you" - I don't think we did, you do and you're wrong.</li>
<li>"I'm sorry you think that" - You're wrong and I feel sorry for you.</li>
<li>"I'm sorry you see things that way" - You're entire outlook on life is wrong.</li>
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Really they all mean the same thing: "I'm not sorry, I have nothing to apologise for but I want to smooth things over and sound like the good person I know myself to be".<br />
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There's a way of thinking that says you should never apologise for what you believe to be true; that you should never compromise on your vision or be swayed by those who are emotionally or ideologically weak.<br />
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These ideas are lies told by people who consider the art of manipulation to be the best way to get ahead in life.<br />
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Should you apologise if you don't think you're in the wrong? Maybe not, it all depends on the circumstances but the key is to be honest. If an apology is expected/demanded, and you're not prepared to give one... don't.<br />
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The fake apology, using the word sorry without actually meaning it and inserting a little condition that pushes the fault back to the third party, is a favourite of corporate communications people. You never admit fault, but you do want people to feel better...<br />
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It's more lies... Just admit your failure.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">How to apologise</span></b><br />
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Here's something we teach children when they're about three years old: "say sorry", "SORRY!", "no, say sorry and mean it"...<br />
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If you're older than three and you still haven't got that I'm not sure what hope there is for you, but here are some pointers:<br />
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<li>Admit wrong without condition</li>
<li>Apologise without condition</li>
<li>Look to move forward</li>
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It really isn't difficult. Here are some examples:<br />
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"I can see we handled this badly and this has upset you. I'm sorry. Will you work with us to resolve things?"<br />
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"When I said that, I didn't mean to imply that you were dishonest<insert here="" something=""> but I understand it came across that way and I'm sorry. Can you forgive me?</insert><br />
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"I genuinely thought I was doing the best thing for all concerned but I didn't listen to what you were saying and I'm sorry. Can we start again with this?"<br />
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See?<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">But I'm really not sorry...</span></b><br />
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Ok, you want to placate this upset/angry person but you don't really feel you've done wrong... what can you do?<br />
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Maybe nothing. It's entirely possible that you can't fix this because you feel strongly about your position and you're not willing to compromise. All you can do is seek to understand the third party's position, whilst being open to the possibility that you're wrong.<br />
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So what do you say? How about this:<br />
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"I know you feel we handled this badly and I'm not saying we're perfect, but we do think we've done the best we can. What are your specific concerns and what would you like me/us to do about them?"<br />
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"I stand by what I said, but I think you misinterpreted it."<br />
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"I understand you don't feel I've listened to your concerns. Let's talk about that. I want to make sure we understand each other's position on this."<br />
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It's a little bit harder isn't it... But it's honest.<br />
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Personally I suspect that if you're in this position, you probably should be accepting some responsibility and saying sorry... but meaning it. If you tend to think you're always in the right and have nothing to apologise for, you're probably wrong.<br />
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Finally I would suggest that if you're really not sorry, and you're not prepared to consider the possibility of being wrong, in my experience you're definitely in the wrong. Then again you won't listen to anything I say.IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-50455128913266106152014-08-04T10:56:00.002+01:002014-08-04T10:56:49.105+01:00Three optionsI'm part of a large church (by UK standards) and we, like many churches, are challenged by consumerism; that is people approaching church as a consumer asking what can they get from it. This approach has a significant impact on what we can do and how we go about it, in short in how effective the church can be.<br />
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If we're going to do something, whether it's a regular Sunday services or a special event, it needs people to do the stuff. The planning, the prep, the actual doing and then the tidying up and cleaning afterwards.<br />
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There are essentially three options: we pay people to do the work, members of the church community do the work, or we don't do the thing (whatever it is).<br />
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In our case it's a blend of the first two most of the time. We have a staff team. This allows us to do stuff that smaller churches just couldn't do, because we have the financial resources to pay some people to make things happen. But it needs to be a blend of staff and volunteers because whilst, yes we have a staff team, it's a small team who can do the planning and a lot of the prep, manage events and keep things running smoothly, but certainly can't do all the work themselves.<br />
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But it isn't just that the small team needs help from volunteers, there's something more fundamental at play. If you're part of a community then you need to find a way to be involved. If you're not involved in your community then you're probably just being a consumer of things that community does.<br />
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Everything that happens around where you live needs someone to have done it. But because we pay taxes to local and national government, we can assume that it's someone's job. It might be, but it's amazing how often it isn't. I suspect often what makes the difference between a tired neglected looking area, with rubbish and weeds everywhere, and a beautiful well maintained area with flowers planted and clean streets is whether people in that community bother to make a difference. Whether they actually live in community or just near each other.<br />
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I think most people just don't consider what they <i>could</i> do... They only think about what they <i>want</i> to do. This is just consumerism by the back door. So if you're a musician, you'd love to serve in the worship band (because playing your instrument is what you like to do) but you're a parent and can't commit to the rehearsal. You <i>could</i> help with the cleaning one day a month... but you don't want to do that.<br />
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Are you only prepared to serve if it's an activity you particularly enjoy?<br />
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So step up, or pay up. Maybe you think, genuinely, that your church should employ more cleaners rather than you get involved. If so, you'll need to give a bit more so your church can afford it.<br />
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Maybe you already give what you consider to be plenty of money to the work of your church. So because you're paying in money, you don't need to also practically serve... After all you're paying for staff. If that's you, then ask yourself this question: What would you do if all staff left? Would you step up then, expect instant recruitment, or leave for another church that offers a better experience for your money?<br />
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Recently I've come across a number complaints from people in my church which, when you get down to it, contain an expectation that someone else will do something. I'm going to come right out and say that I don't consider this to be ok. Share ideas by all means, but if you think that something practical needs to be done, don't contact the staff team (or vicar) with your gripe unless you've first attempted to do something about it, recruited some people or found some funding and are being part of the solution.<br />
<br />IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-21516506747707035242014-05-19T09:57:00.000+01:002014-05-19T09:57:49.688+01:00The difficult conversationIf you're in a position of leadership or management the difficult conversation is something you're going to have to initiate from time to time. But what if you just don't like having them?<br />
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<a name='more'></a>I should probably define what I mean by the difficult conversation. It could be someone is being dismissed from their job (whether paid or voluntary); it might be someone isn't performing well at their role and something needs to be done; it might be changes are coming and people are not going to like them. It might be someone's behaviour isn't acceptable... you get the idea. It isn't necessarily one to one, it could be as part of a larger group but the key thing is that one or more person involved doesn't want to be dealing with the issue.<br />
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Of course the difficult conversation is a two way thing and sometimes you have initiate one with someone who is above you in the pecking order. This can be really difficult.<br />
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Not everybody finds these conversations difficult, but most do in one way or another and chances are the cold, unfeeling manager who doesn't seem to care about you or your family is probably putting up a bit of a front in order to keep some distance.<br />
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That of course is not how one should deal with these things... so how should you do it?<br />
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I certainly don't have all the answers but here are some of the things I've learned:<br />
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<b>Have the conversation, no matter how difficult</b><br />
The temptation is to avoid the elephant in the room. There are many strategies for this and in my view none of them are acceptable. You might just ignore things and hope they get better. You could spread rumours and gossip in the hope something might change. You could engineer a situation that sees the other party feeling they have to step down. You could use scatter gun communication that risks tarring an entire team with the same brush of failure rather than talk to an individual.<br />
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Each of these I have either done or witnessed. No matter what anyone might tell you they are not valid ways of dealing with something. They are dishonest. Don't do it.<br />
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There are no short cuts or easy ways out of the difficult conversation. If you think you've found one, you're probably lying to yourself (and others).<br />
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<b>Make notes beforehand</b><br />
If this is to be an emotionally charged conversation it's wise to make sure you know what you need to say. Everyone is different in how to best handle this. I've found having some bullet points, making sure every point is clear in my mind, help me to keep focussed and ensure I say what needs to be said.<br />
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<b>Listen</b><br />
As I mentioned <a href="http://idiotzoo.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/do-you-listen.html">here</a> listening is extremely important. It's easy to focus on delivering the difficult thing you have to say and not really listen to the response. A conversation is a two way thing. Give the other person chance to respond and be ready to listen, understand and process what they have to say; it might change everything.<br />
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<b>Don't brush it off</b><br />When something comes up, deal with it. Too often I've heard something like: "This isn't the place to talk about this". That is almost never true and usually means: "I don't want to deal with this now". You might not want to, but you probably should.<br />
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<b>Talk before it's too late</b><br />
Reconciliation is always possible, but it's much better to avoid the need for it. If something isn't going well be upfront about it. Talk about it directly with the person involved. Don't discuss it at length with others first, just grow a pair... and talk.IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-66948857589551475212014-04-03T08:57:00.001+01:002014-04-03T13:34:37.398+01:00Do you listen?I've found myself wondering recently how many of the world's problems are fundamentally about listening. Listening is something I'm pretty sure I don't do as well as I might and I'm sure I fall into the trap mentioned by Stephen R Covey in his book 7 habits of highly effective people:<br />
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"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply."<br />
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When you listen, do you seek to understand the other's perspective, idea or feelings, or do you look for something you can pick on to justify your own position, question their motives or defend your actions?<br />
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Recently I found myself in a position where something that could have a substantive impact on my job was being discussed in a way I felt inappropriate. I said so and made it abundantly clear there was no way things could proceed as proposed whilst being ethically (or potentially legally) sound. My argument was clear, simple, could easily be demonstrated to be correct by consulting any good HR professional and yet it was ignored.<br />
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The reason? People weren't listening. Good people who know better just weren't listening to what I was saying. They, I think, were hearing me demand no process at all, a desire for my job to be untouchable. I believe they heard me defending my position and, significantly, they heard that I was upset.<br />
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I was upset. But that didn't mean what I said didn't have substance and could be written off as inevitable personal feeling that would pass. Of course the initial upset has passed, but the fundamental problem hasn't.<br />
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As I've attempted to resolve things through talking to people, surely that's the best way, some of those involved have consistently failed to listen, resulting in my motives being questioned and accusations that I'm out to trap people through inconsistencies. That couldn't be further from the truth.<br />
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In the situation I find myself in today, sadly it seems that I am not trusted. The reason is simply because people haven't listened. They've heard the words coming out of my face, or read my emails and looked for the threat they assume to be there, misinterpreting what I have said and making a bad situation worse.<br />
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My words have been twisted into accusations, all because people have only listened with the intent to reply, rather than an intent to understand.<br />
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Listening is hard but it's the only way to reconcile differences without a fight. That might end up with a difficult compromise, but no compromise is possible if you won't trust and you can't trust without understanding and you can't understand without listening.IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-53526664671608010742013-07-15T17:28:00.004+01:002014-05-19T09:59:03.285+01:00It's not so badI use something called Drupal (you don't need to know what that is) and I'm an avid reader of the blog by drupal developer Aaron Winborn. Any time I feel things are getting me down, a read of his blog is enough to get things in perspective. In case you're wondering this isn't a blog about software development and is worth reading.<br />
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Aaron suffers from ALS, better known to Brits as Motor Neurone Disease. The most famous sufferer is probably Stephen Hawking.<br />
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The thing about Professor Hawking is that he's quite an unusual case. The disease kills pretty much everyone who suffers it, and usually fairly quickly. Hawking has lived far, far longer than anyone initially expected.<br />
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For Aaron things don't look so lengthy and this father, husband and (as far as I can tell) all round great guy isn't going to be around much longer. Over the last year his ALS has progressed from the point of him being able to sit on a blanket with his family (July 2012) to being completely wheelchair bound, unable to move his limbs or speak (July 2013) and he doesn't expect to see his next birthday.<br />
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Though I'm sure there have been times of borderline, if not actual, despair, and many tears cried, Aaron comes across as a positive yet realistic character; his greatest concern being for his family.<br />
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If you have a moment, take a look at Aaron's blog. Particularly if you find yourself feeling that things are going badly. His positive realism might be helpful to you as in my own experience, when things seem to be going terribly... they could be so much worse and more than anything, I just need a reality check.<br />
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<a href="http://aaronwinborn.com/">aaronwinborn.com</a>IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1292600298018917461.post-37949634356532245662013-02-07T22:36:00.001+00:002013-02-08T07:49:52.998+00:00DemocracyI hold democracy as something of great importance, that somehow seems to be the 'right' way to do things.<br /><br />What I don't know is whether that's just because I've always lived in a largely democratic society and, having been told it's the way to go, just generally accept that. Maybe it's like how one's native street signs or currency just seems right and everyone else's seems strange and not quite as it should be.<br /><br />The problem with democracy is that just because the majority want something or agree with it, that doesn't make it the right thing to do.<br /><br />I've recently been listening to archives of The Life Scientific from radio 4. Many scientists interviewed comment on the public's general ignorance or scientific matters. It strikes me that many great innovations and major progressions in our collective knowledge have been met with popular resistance (although I can't come up with good examples right now).<br /><br />There are various ways the people at large can make their feelings known, with market forces being and example. How we behave with our spending habits can betray our preferences and prejudices. Even a big company can be brought down if enough people choose to avoid it.<br /><br />But democracy is usually about government. Based on the idea that the majority gets their way (usually) it makes a lot of sense when it comes to selecting which political party or politician will be in power. But it is fallible.<br /><br />Our idea of what is 'right' can so often be relative. When all was rosy in 1920s Germany the Nazi party didn't do well in elections. When the Great Depression hit and people were scared for their economic future, the hollow promises of Hitler became far more appealing, and you probably know where that ended up.<br /><br />It's important to remember that just because the majority have voted for something, doesn't mean that same majority isn't basing their decision on completely the wrong criteria.<br /><br />Take the recent UK parliament vote on redefining marriage. How many of those who voted no did so because they don't like change and have prejudices against those who are gay? How many of those who voted yes did so because it's trendy to support gay rights or perhaps because (most of them weren't Conservatives) it's a potential nail in the coffin of David Cameron's premiership. How many MPs really considered the people or the potential consequences behind their decision? Politics is rarely black and white.<br /><br />There are issues in education, a policy area that for some reason most people think they have an opinion worthy of note, where education secretaries have usually failed to take heed of professionals (eg teachers) and pushed through policies based on personal agenda (and often scant academic research).<br /><br />I still think democracy is a good way to do things and probably the best way to achieve the level of accountability necessary. But it's important we're not blind to the faults of any system and can call out those who try to gloss over the cracks.<br /><br />I'm reminded of the fabulous clip of Sky TVs Kay Burley interviewing someone for the campaign group 38degrees and saying something along the lines of 'what right do you have to intervene in whether the lib dems go into coalition or not, people have voted for this!'. Of course nobody had voted for that and faced with such pathological stupidity and failure to understand the democratic process the poor man didn't know what to say.<br />IdiotZoohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17967979613471292225noreply@blogger.com0