Ooops

Sometimes you just have to despair, don’t you? Following all the stories of the London Blackout last month, National Grid Transco has revealed what caused the power outage. Someone had replaced a 5amp fuse with a 1amp fuse – which then blew.

Admittedly, I’m quite intrigued as to what would a 5amp fuse would be used for in a fecking huge power supply main – but as I’m not an electrician, let alone someone who’d know about power supply mains, I suppose it’s not unfeasible that I wouldn’t have a clue.

Blogger Bits

Oooh – I bet that there’s a few Blogger Pro people who aren’t overly amused today. Blogger Pro ceased to exist yesterday, and most of the features are now available to us miserly Blogger users. I wonder how long it’ll be before there’s a small subscription charge for Blogger use?

Moose-Box

I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t post anything else about moving/packing. I lied. Actually, it’s only a small post, because I’d forgotten I’d taken a photo of the mooses (Meese? Moose?) in their packing box, and I found it again while sorting out other stuff last night. So here you go…

(The purple bits are candles, Anony hasn’t suddenly grown purple pop-eyes)

UPDATED : Following on from the comments below, I suppose it’s possible that some of the meese are actually reindeer. However, as there’s no genetic test to ascertain the parentage of fluffy toys, I’m going to stick with referring to them all as moose. For some reason “reindeer” just aren’t as cool/funny as moose/meese. So there.

The first post of the Festering Season

Regular readers will already know my general loathing of the Festering Season™, and in particular the way it’s now seemingly held hostage by retailers and materialists. Anyway, today’s Guardian has a story about the Crhistian advertising group. (and there was me thinking that Ad execs were strictly Satan’s property, along with lawyers and estate agents) You may recall their other effort, portraying Jesus in a similar pose to Che Guevara.

Well, this year they’ve gone one better, and instead have come up with a portrayal of the birth of Jesus, with the baby dressed up as Santa. (A larger version of the ad on it’s own can be seen here Will it be successful? I have no idea – but anything that puts the idea forward that Christmas isn’t all about materialism can’t be all bad.

I am so proud

I’ve just been looking at search referrals (and no, I haven’t mentioned anything about them for a while now – I’ll do a bigger selection soon, promise) and it turns out I’m now #1 in Google for “kenny everett bomb the bastards“.

*proud – sad, but proud*

Techie humour

Today’s User Friendly sums up the techie attitude to so many of life’s essentials. Practical. *Grin*

Pub(l)ic Transport

I have to say, I really don’t find the news that nearly a third of all motorists wouldn’t give up their car and use public transport instead to be all that surprising. Nor do I find it surprising that 1 in 10 drivers have no idea how they’d even use public transport – i.e. what bus route they’d need, that kind of thing. I’m actually far more surprised that the figures weren’t higher.

What organisations like TravelWise (who are organising TravelWise week, a project to get people out of their cars and onto public transport) always forget – and so do the Government when they release all the plans and so on to get more people onto public transport – is that public transport is a pain in the arse. And bear in mind, I use it every day, so I know all too well.

First of all, most people are fucking lazy. It’s easier to “leave the house, get into a car, drive to work, get out in the works car park, and be at work”. Public transport involves “leave the house, walk to the bus-stop/train-station, *wait*, travel, possibly *wait for next connection*, travel, get out, walk from nearest station/bus-stop to get to work” When the weather’s crap, it’s even worse. When it’s winter, it’s worse again. If public transport were to go door to door, people would use it. Possibly.

Second, it’s not reliable. Stuff all the garbage spouted about “investment in infrastructure” – make everything run on time. Not just the oft-maligned (and normally maligned by me, I admit) trains, but the bus system as well. My journey to work involves two bus journeys, and can take anything from 40 minutes to an hour and a half. It all depends on how the buses are running. Some days (as today) I get to the bus-stop and the bus is there. Other days I can get to the stop at the exact same time (or even earlier) and wait 20 minutes for one to appear. The second service is even worse, and the only thing I can guarantee about the “high frequency” service that runs “at least once ever ten minutes” will (probably) provide a bus within half an hour. If the services were reliable, and ran to their timetable, more people might use them.

Third, and perhaps crucially, public transport involves having to deal with other people. For a large number of people, the drive to work is really the only quiet time they get, the only real time to themselves. So why would they want to spend it in the company of yelling schoolkids, screaming babies, and – well – just people in general? I don’t think that one can be sorted out. Just look at the number of people who drive to work in their cars without no passengers, and you’ll see why.

So – is there hope for public transport as an alternative to cars? No, probably not. It’s an essential for those of us who (like me) don’t drive, but getting drivers onto public transport? I doubt it’ll happen, and definitely not in any significant numbers. It’s like smoking – the government can tax it, initiate toll roads and so on, but people will still drive to work. Simple as that.