Edward
Bartender
- Messages
- 25,078
- Location
- London, UK
My late grandmother used to swear by Jeyes' Fluid to keep cats from digging in her flowerbeds. Thing is, if you ever smeeled that stuff, it'd keep humans away from it too!
The reason property ownership is so fetishised (and thus, as a rule, expensive) here in the UK is that when renting you have almost no rights at all. I'm frustrated that the current economic situation casued by various political circumstances (much moreso than Covid) meant we were unable to sell our flat and get moved ; we'll try again in a year or two. I want to move to a slightly quieter and more residential part of town - but still inner London. I'm not prepared to live without a nightbus, or to endure the hell of a long commute (anything much over fifty minutes). The other big aim is to "upgrade" to a house. With the way things are gonig in academia, I won't ever be able to afford to fully retire (my pension at present should asllow me ot go down to three days a week ,though if some changes our principal supports go through that could rise to still working four days a week. Better than seven, as it often is now, but...), so I do want to get away from paying monthly service charges. Doing all our sums, we should be able to afford a house that would be cheaper to run and have other advantages, but alas the market is currently dead.
Still, we're so much luckier than so many friends who more often than not end up moving house once a year, have no security, and can't afford to save for a deposit on buying because they're paying double what a mortgage would cost them in rent every single month.
Same here. First to scream for their rights, absolutely nil sense of responsibility.
Very much so here in London. Usually they're the type cyclnig in the road rather than using the cycle lanes (where provided) as they seem to think they are above using cycle lanes, and are entitled to hold up motor traffic.
We have *some* cycle paths like that here in London, but unfortunately they don't join up, and typically where you'ed need them most, they just disappear. THe very most arrogant of the MAMILs refuse to use them and continue to get in the way on the road. Others cycle the wrong way, or the footpath. Local to use are a smug family of middle-class cyclists who take their children out, all four family emembers on bikes, and cycle four abreast along the footpath - thus teaching the children it's fien to ignore the law. A couple of days ago, I was nearly hit by an idiot on a bicycle who thought herself entitled to ignore the traffic lights (there are lights specific to the cycle lane out of which she turned left, against a red). Indeed, here in London I'm vastly more concerned about the threat of injury to me as a pedestrian by bicycles than any other form of transport - even when I'm on the pavement.
Unless you're a fan of Brian Wilson's songwriting...
I'm not sure how "fun" a car is anymore in the UK. Those of us who spend all our tiem in big cities are unlikely ever to need a private car. When I moved to London, i was so pleased not to have to run a four-wheeled money pit. I grew up in Northern Ireland where public transport doesn't cover huge chunks of the place at all, and even where it did in those days the last train home at night was 9pm. In my early undergraduate years I went to a gig one Sunday night; had to oganise a lift home as there were no trains after 8pm at that time on a Sunday, and in order to be able to get into town by train, I had to arrive three hours earlier than I needed to be there.... and then wait in the station, because nothing was open in those days..... I only did my test out of necessity there - hated driving, and was very happy not to need it in London. If I moved to much of Scotland or even into the sticks from London, I'd have to drvoie again, doubtless.
And they've even turned that into an SUV:
An electric SUV.
Ugly - though it looks like much else on the roads now. I prefer the (crazily expensive) licensed repros of the 60s Mustangs. One of those in electric...
You'd be surpriswed with its capabilities. There's a TV show on here in the UK called "Vintage Voltage" where they take 'vintage' (including up to the eighties) cars and make them run all-electric. The last one was a Ferrari - a 328(? the Magnum PI model), and the Tesla engine they gave it vastly improved its performance in all areas against the original petrol engine. The cost was a killer - somethingl ike GBP20K, but then the guy paying for it could afford a Ferrari as a daily driver, so....
I suspect it'll be justl ike PC technology, or mobile phones, if you compare where we were twenty years ago to where we are now. The mobile phone I have now - a cheap, lower end model, not even a flagship, cost me GBP120 to buy outright in 2019, and it has vastly superior power to the laptop I was issued with when I started work in 1999. That laptop was GBP1000 then - GBP1746 and change in today's money. More directly, the spec of that phone I currently use was flagship stuff in 2015, when it would have cost me in the region of GBP500-600. A decent electric car is very prciey now - but that will change quickly over the next decade.
Over here, if you spot a Prius you can almost guarantee it's a taxi! Great for minicabs in London, as if they run electric they don't have to pay the congestion charge.
Habit, probably. They're not as effectvie as a better mask, but they can still cut risk of the virus passing by 50%, which is something. I'd rather than do that than not bother at all, as many still do here despite it being a legal requirement on public transport and in shops.
A lot will depend on the nature of the electric motor. If they get cheap and generic enough, then it will be just a matter of buying a new one if one goes 'faulty' - not something just anyone with a little knoweledge and a service manual could set to like the good old A class engines... The danger will be if they are permitted to bo too proprietary and then price-gouge for parts...
