"Speed Kills" - not any more.

Breaking news on the BBC radio this morning is that diesel fumes cause cancer. Who says this is so? WHO that's who. Thee World Health Organisation have done a two week study and decided diesel is evil.
But this is not the bad news it might appear. Diesel and petrol as we know, are made out of dinosaurs which have been lightly killed for several million years during which time chemistry happened, to produce oil. When man invented the automobile he initially decided that petrol was the best fuel, because it was cheap and smelled nice, whilst diesel was dirty and smelly and was reserved for lorries and taxi drivers.After 100 years of practice we have managed to make burning diesel quieter, cleaner and more efficient than ever before, but it is still a very inefficient way to produce power. And obviously there is a way to go, as we need to work out how to burn the bits that cause cancer. A catalytic converter helps trap some of the cancer, but these are expensive to make and easily stolen by "travellers" for the precious metals they contain which are worth a lot of money as scrap, due to their value in the manufacture of catalytic converters. We need a way, today, to reduce the amount of this newly discovered cancer leaking out of our exhausts.
Happily I have the answer. Remove all the speed bumps and speed cameras, reconfigure the traffic lights and improve the road network to get things moving. Cars sitting in queues and driving slowly are inefficient. Cars driving at sensible speeds and allowed to maintain that momentum, instead of stopping and starting needlessly are by comparison very efficient indeed. My Vectra diesel, for example, will happily do around 60 mpg at 70 mph. At those speeds it is producing less diesel fumes per mile than it is sitting idling at traffic lights, where the fumes it produces are causing cancer. If I slow down to 30 mph the Vectra is unhappy and will only do around 40 to 45 mpg, so the old adage that "Speed Kills" is actually reversed. Speed will save your life. Not only am I producing less cancer if I drive faster, but I'm not hanging around spreading it all in one place. I bet there is a close correlation between kids with asthma (and eventually cancer) on council estates to the ratio to speed bumps on that same estate. So by driving slower we deprive them of the swift death by being run over, that Darwin reserved for them (survival of the fittest) but instead we kill them slowly and painfully coughing up their lungs.
I know some people will disagree and say that driving quickly wastes fuel and causes more pollution. I agree, up to a point Most cars are at their most efficient in higher gears at speeds of around 50 to 60, so that is what we should be striving for. I know only too well that if I thrash the job car, a Volvo V70 D5 up to 140mph it will reward me with single figure economy. But driven steadily at 60 this fully laden two tonne behemoth will still return 40 mpg.
So what I am saying is that whilst speed (allegedly) kills, so in the long term does lack of speed. And surely it is better to arrive at the Pearly gates with your arse on fire having enjoyed the ride that to turn up late, mumbling an apology and with half your internal organs missing?
Best of all, my plan is good for the economy - it gets Britain moving, and mobility is what advanced Britain as an Empire in the first place. Worth a thought I think.

Fast Food

Why do we put up with it? I made the silly mistake of dropping into a Burger King earlier today. What a disappointment.
We are sold the American dream, the ideal of a roadside diner, in the form of a Mcdonalds, Burger King or Wimpey fast food outlet. Well it was a major disappointment or me, and it ought to be for everyone else. I visit such an establishment only rarely, and in this case only because I had some discount vouchers. Normally for a much more Authentic American Diner experience I visit one of the OK diners on the A1 - othes may exist but I'm not aware of them. There was of course the Yankee Burger on Hessle Road, Hull, now sadly closed. They sold proper home made burgers, which actually looked like the pictures on the menu. Plus it had staff that had some idea of customer service.
In Burger King (and McDonalds is similar) the staff , average age 14 , had no idea of of customer service. The restaurant was filthy with discarded food on the floor, the service was sloppy, and many customers seemed to have been served the wrong meal. One couple seemed to have been waiting some time for their meal, causing the bloke to comment that it might help if they had adult supervision in the kitchen. I had to agree. It is disconcerting to walk into what is effectively a restaurant, to be asked "Can I help you," when your gut instinct is to respond, "Well not really, but is your mum in?"
I bought an Aberdeen Angus steak burger, simple because it was buy one get one free. I was offered bacon and cheese with this. What I got was a slice of processed possibly ham, certainly not bacon, and some sort of yellow plastic square sheet. Whilst eating this I found some sort of tomato and onion which I wasn't prepared for. This was advertised as a burger, not a vegetarian option. Eating at even the seediest pub restaurant, some member of staff will eventually wander over and ask if your meal is okay. Why doesn't this happen in McDonalds? Because they are afraid of the answer that's why. It's not alright, okay? Crappy burgers that are half the size of the photograph on the menu, which taste of cardboard, fries instead of chips, breadcakes which taste of paper - it's just not on okay? So go and speak with the small independents to see how it's done. Then spread the word around the world. Only then will MaccyDees achieve the world domination they seek.

Back to the future - the future is green

For the last fifteen years i have lived in a house with a garden to the front and three other sides, or more accurately two sides and a back. Originally much of it was grass, and the design was crap, and it took hours to mow. Over the years I have widened and tapered the drive, concreted part of one side to provide hard standing fro a caravan, and made the remainder of that side into a vegetable plot with a greenhouse. The other side has the "Scout Hut" on it, this being the nickname my neighbour gave our rather large shed, which at 20 x 10 feet is big enough to house several Chinese families, or in my case a home gym, a working scale model Landrover, five cycles, plus lawnmowers and garden tools etc. The back of the garden has been landscaped and planted with shrubberies and all that sort of stuff, but still has a sizeable lawn. The back lawn in fact has TARDIS like properties. When playing football with the boy child, or badminton with the young lady child it is not big enough, and even though I have few remaining friends even the smallest of barbecues fills the available space. Yet when it comes to cutting the grass the lawn expands exponentially.
I have over the years owned and used several lawn mowers and all took equally long to complete the task. I have had petrol mowers which would have been more effective if you simply poured the petrol on the lawn and set it alight. One I had was a posh powered petrol mower which would pull itself along, dragging the operator behind into the bushes and trees. Other simpler petrol mowers simply polluted the atmosphere and drank petrol like Oliver Reed and George Best drank beer. With the rising costs of petrol it seemed sensible to switch to an electric mower. These are not without their problems however, in my case not least being my habit of running over the cable. Avoiding doing this meant holding the cable and tripping over it constantly, and to be honest the TARDIS lawn simply got bigger and took longer to mow. It was enough to drive me to drink. It was not uncommon for me to finish my last night shift at 7a.m. and spend all morning mowing the lawn before retiring to bed at lunchtime, pissed and knackered but able to sleep like a baby. (i.e. getting up every three hours, crying and having pissed the bed)
I had noticed as well that every time I mowed the lawn my electricity consumption shot up by 5 or 6 KW/hs per day.
Now however I have the ultimate green solution inspired by the past. A hand pushed cylinder mower. No petrol or diesel, no electricity, no emissions. Why do we need 7 horsepower engines on our mowers simply to cut grass? Grass is a weak flimsy material that you can cut with scissors or pull up by hand. Why do we need electric motors doing 3000 rpm when 100 rpm is more than enough speed for the blade to cut a stalk of grass. We have been fooled by the manufacturers into thinking a flymo is great but it just isn't. It may have an electric motor to turn the blade, but it's still pushed along by human power. The traditional hand pushed cylinder mower requires little if any more effort, but the pushing motion turns the blades by clever little mechanical cogs that just don't go wrong. No spark plug to foul, no cable top sever an no running costs. The effort of pushing it gives a little exercise and saves money going to the gym. A win win situation all round. Why have I not realised this sooner?
This is saving energy in more than one way too, as Thomas, 9 years decided it looked so much fun that he took over, saving me a lot of energy in every sense of the word. And unbelievably between us we whizzed round both the front and back lawns in less than 1/2 an hour, thus saving time and money.
This has promoted me to think about other labour saving devices around the house. Do they really save that much time and money, or could we do without them. Now I'm sure I could lay my hands on a mangle if I really tried...........