Fags4U

Phones4U's posters are big and brash but to read the microscopic terms and conditions you need to get about 6 inches away with a magnifying glass. Mostly they involve you committing lots of money to them over two years. But that isn't what this blog entry is about. Phones4U in Stroud used to be an horrible place to walk past at 8.55am. The suited workers would clutter up their King Street doorway puffing their last fag before the shop opened. I'd steer away from them to avoid the passive smoke. But today the posters were not obscured by smoking suits. It turns out that with the recession they have a new place to smoke and this is the doorway of an abandoned estate agent. A loud hacking cough came from the girl sheltering from the rain with her colleagues. At least I didn't have to detour around them this morning.

The Secret Diary of Tania Patient

Browsing in the book section of the RSPCA shop I saw The Brownie Annual 1988 and inside was a scrap of diary written on a yellow envelope. After all these years the truth can be revealed in Tania's own words:

Spec and Speedy
very importnt not to forget.
one - something to eat
two - something to drink
three- take a map.
and we set off at nine o'clock,
Next morning Brown Owl said half past nine didn't she?
one- something to read (first aid book)
two - some invisable ink
three - make a hat

Which is where the thrilling account ends

Lidl Let me (tyres) Down

I had a track pump from Lidl about seven years ago. It was efficient and well designed and reliable until now. It could switch from Schrader to Presta by reversing the nozzle components. Understandably, the rubber hose began to perish and eventually it had to split. So that works out at £1 per year of use which is a good bargain.

I could see the end was coming for the hose so I got another track pump in anticipation. The new Lidl pump has a lot more metal in it but it cost less than £4. Unfortunately, while the pump is mostly OK, the delivery nozzle is utter rubbish. When I needed the new pump it failed to deliver anything. The nozzle has a dual head and it failed to fit both Schrader and Presta. The Schrader is too shallow and pops off when pressure is applied. The Presta is far too narrow and you fear that you will pull off the valve core because it is too tight. So I took the old nozzle off and fitted it to the new pump.

Dear Lidl please take note: The next time you look to stock bike goods, please take a real cyclist with you to test them first.

Another bit of useless Lidl kit was the pannier set that I took around Ireland. How can they think that Velcro can secure fully laden panniers? The liberal use of double sided Velcro straps managed to stop them from falling off the bike but I dumped the bags as soon as we got home.

And their crank extractor tool fell apart the first time that I used it.

Not all is bad news from Lidl. The cycle clothing is pretty much as perfect as you can imagine and mitts, shirts, base layers, shorts, socks and jackets all perform really well.

And on the food front the bread mix for Bauernbrot is miraculous. Out in the West country a loaf of Bauernbrot isn't easy to find. Maybe the Polish shop stocks something similar but I haven't tried. Just add water and mix, and after bit of kneading and rising it turned into a very sticky mess. After baking it emerged as an authentic looking loaf. It tasted authentic too. Hurrah for Lidl!

Weasely Advertising

Here is praise from a "satisfied customer" of Smart Energy in a mail shot.

We have more than halved our gas consumption this quarter compared to this time last year.

Sadly they fail to mention which quarter and I have a shrewd idea why not. If it was the summer quarter this is the peak output of a solar system and there is no gas used for central heating. This makes the fraction saved much bigger than for other times of the year. Also I have a deep suspicion of nonsense jargon like "Variable Thermal Response (VTR)" and "Auto Weather Compensation Software". Why don't they say "It switches on your boiler if it isn't sunny enough."? Most tellingly, they don't give ANY figures for savings. At least Everest, whose mailshot arrived at the same time, gave some typical figures for savings.

How the Station Works

This title is one that graced an advertising feature. Unlike the travel company which writes terms and conditions to ensure that people can't read or understand them, The Green Shop near Stroud is actually writing advertising copy to sell things this way. They had an advertising feature in the Stroud News and Journal (April 22, 2009, page 20). They could have written it in an interesting way but they threw it away in the first sentence, "The Princess Elisabeth station is equipped with 24 m2 of TUBO 12 Compound Parabolic Concentrator panels developed by the German company CONSOLAR.".

So what is this station? Was it one that Mr Beeching missed in the 1960s. Why does it need solar water heating? If you stayed awake in your school physics classes you could guess that "m2" must mean square metres and "Compound Parabolic Concentrator" is a darned fancy name for a mirror. I expect that everyone else had moved to the next column by now. Not many people would realise that this is an Antarctic research station but oh dear, the article forgot to mention this fact.

If you stick with it goes into a lot of technical details about efficiency and insulation. There is a lot of badly translated technical details with malapropisms such as "recuperate the energy" where they really meant "recover the energy". Also mentioned in an over complicated way were the "thermal buffer tanks" and "static water mass". And then it adds a "whereas" that a lawyer would be proud of and the plot is well and truly lost when it mentions that the heat is used to "melt the snow". So where does the heat for the appliances come from? Is it the "bioreactors" that were casually mentioned without explanation?

Photo-voltaics get a mention too where we learn two facts. 1) Thermal panels are not lined with semiconductor material. 2) Photo-voltaics need to be pointed at the sun just like thermal panels. They might as well have explained that an AA battery is not the same as an hot water bottle.

Why these facts are disjointed is because they were cut and paste from a press pack. Plagarism is obvious and confuses the message.

The message should have been, "If an antarctic research station can go green, so can you too with the same technology". But what we got was a jumble of poorly connected facts and figures. Or Epic Fail as the kids would say these days. Come on guys, you'll never get the green revolution going like that.

So, if you want to sell anything then you need to learn the art of story telling, and for heavens sake, make that sure your message is clear.

This is how I might have started the same advertising feature:

--//--

What would you pick if you were asked to name the coldest place on Earth? You might be thinking of the Earth's poles. What you wouldn't be thinking is that this would be an ideal place to install solar heating but this is exactly what the Princess Elisabeth Antarctic research station is doing. For extreme conditions like this if you want to go green you need the best technology etc.......

Spot the Difference

We went past Cross Hayes, Malmesbury today. What has changed in the last 40 years?

1960s

From Box-G5

Today

From blogpics

As you can see the trees have been added and all the vintage cars have been replaced by modern cars.
Another modern car I saw today on Rodborough Hill was parked on a double yellow line and bus stop. As you can see, this location makes it very difficult to see traffic coming down the hill.

From blogpics

Legalese

Booking with Lastminute.com they insisted that I read reams of terms and conditions. One such page is quoted below and I suspect that many people wouldn't bother to read this gibberish. Trying as hard as I can I find it impenetrable. If it was translated into simpler English, I think it would read "When you give us your money, even if by some extraordinary effort you do manage to make a valid refund claim, we will hang onto £100". And what is a "compy"?

##AM_XML BETWEEN UNITED KINGDOM AND THE UNITED STATES CHANGES BEFORE DEPARTURE CHARGE GBP 100.00. CHILD/INFANT DISCOUNTS APPLY. NOTE - A CHANGE IS A ROUTING / DATE / FLIGHT MODIFICATION WHEN MORE THAN ONE FARE COMPONENT IS BEING CHANGED THE HIGHEST PENALTY OF ALL CHANGED FARE COMPONENTS WILL APPLY //// // BEFORE OUTBOUND DEPARTURE // //// NEW RESERVATION AND REISSUANCE MUST BE MADE AT THE SAME TIME PRIOR TO DEPARTURE OF THE ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FLIGHT. IF CHANGE DOES NOT OCCUR ON THE FIRST FARE COMPONENT OF THE JOURNEY NEW FARE WILL BE RECALCULATED USING FARES IN EFFECT ON THE PREVIOUS TICKETING DATE AND UNDER FOLLOWING CONDITIONS - IF SAME BOOKING CLASS IS USED NEW FARE MAY BE LOWER OR EQUAL OR HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS AND A / MUST COMPLY WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THE ORIGINALLY TICKETED FARE B / OR MUST COMPLY WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THE NEW FARE BEING APPLIED - IF A DIFFERENT BOOKING CLASS IS USED NEW FARE MAY BE EQUAL OR HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS AND A / MUST COMPY WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THE NEW FARE BEING APPLIED ----------------------- NEW RESERVATION AND REISSUANCE MUST BE MADE AT THE SAME TIME PRIOR TO DEPARTURE OF THE ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FLIGHT. WHEN CHANGE OCCURS ON THE FIRST FARE COMPONENT OF THE JOURNEY ONLY OR ON THE FIRST FARE COMPONENT AND OTHER FARE COMPONENT OF THE JOURNEY NEW FARE WILL BE RECALCULATED USING FARES IN EFFECT ON DATE OF REISSUE AND UNDER FOLLOWING CONDITIONS - IF SAME BOOKING CLASS IS USED NEW FARE MAY BE LOWER OR EQUAL OR HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS AND A / MUST COMPLY WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THE ORIGINALLY TICKETED FARE B / OR MUST COMPLY WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THE NEW FARE BEING APPLIED - IF A DIFFERENT BOOKING CLASS IS USED NEW FARE MAY BE EQUAL OR HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS AND A / MUST COMPLY WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THE NEW FARE BEING APPLIED CHANGES NOT PERMITTED IN CASE OF NO-SHOW. NOTE - // BEFORE OUTBOUND DEPARTURE // // NO SHOW // IN THE EVENT OF NO SHOW - WHEN CHANGES ARE REQUESTED AFTER DEPARTURE OF THE ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FLIGHT - CHANGES ARE NOT PERMITTED AND CANCELLATION RULES SHALL APPLY AFTER DEPARTURE CHARGE GBP 100.00. CHILD/INFANT DISCOUNTS APPLY. NOTE - ///// // AFTER OUTBOUND DEPARTURE // //// NEW FARE WILL BE RECALCULATED USING FARES IN EFFECT ON THE PREVIOUS TICKETING DATE AND UNDER FOLLOWING CONDITIONS - IF SAME BOOKING CLASS IS USED NEW FARE MAY BE LOWER OR EQUAL OR HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS AND A / MUST COMPLY WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THE ORIGINALLY TICKETED FARE B / OR MUST COMPLY WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THE NEW FARE BEING APPLIED - IF A DIFFERENT BOOKING CLASS IS USED NEW FARE MAY BE EQUAL OR HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS AND A / MUST COMPLY WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THE NEW FARE BEING APPLIED CANCELLATIONS ANY TIME TICKET IS NON-REFUNDABLE IN CASE OF CANCEL. TICKET IS NON-REFUNDABLE IN CASE OF NO-SHOW. NOTE - ANY TIME CANCELLATIONS RULES APPLY BY FARE COMPONENT WHEN COMBINING A REFUNDABLE TICKET WITH A NON REFUNDABLE TICKET PROVISIONS WILL APPLY AS FOLLOWS - THE AMOUNT PAID ON THE REFUNDABLE FARE COMPONENT WILL BE REFUNDED UPON PAYMENT OF THE PENALTY AMOUNT IF APPLICABLE - THE AMOUNT PAID ON THE NON REFUNDABLE FARE COMPONENT WILL NOT BE REFUNDED - THE AMOUNT PAID ON THE NON REFUNDABLE FARE COMPONENT WILL NOT BE REFUNDED