Cllr. Gavin Ayling

Like most people I try to avoid public transport wherever possible. Not only is a car normally, cheaper, but it’s more comfortable and quicker too.

But to be fair to the services available, I had not yet tried the journey from my new home to my old work. My new home is only a two minute walk from the railway station and Legal & General in Hove is a pacy fifteen minutes walk. So the combined journey time, with the fifteen minutes on the train itself, is about half an hour. This compares very favourably with the rush hour journey time by car (because, of course, of the lack of public investment in viable roads from Shoreham past Chichester).

So, in future, if it weren’t for the frankly bizarre prohibitive cost, I would be more than keen on using this alternative. Actually, I’ll have to again tomorrow as my car remains at the garage.

On the cost, I still need to have it explained to me. How can it possibly cost more to transport many passengers than to transport one? And if you can share your car not only is the cost halved instantly, but it also becomes even more competitive. The do-gooder socialist environmentalists wish to correct this imbalance by charging car drivers more for the privilege of moving about their own country by private means (where do-gooder socialist environmentalists could, without too much squinting, be replaced with the single word “facists”).

As a short exercise, here is a comparison of the costs:

1. Private car: 13 pence per mile (if through town) or 10 pence per mile (if using the A27 trunk road which I do). This is a total of £1.20 for the 9.2 mile journey.
2. Train: £3.10 in each direction (ignoring spurious discounts if you choose to use the train every day)

Even if we add the 48 pence per day of road tax (which presumably exceeds expenditure on roads these days) the car remains a cheaper option. And if we removed the imbalance caused by fuel duty the car would be nearly a half cheaper again.

But why? How do economies of scale not come into play here? The train was full and the train in front of it was full too (I had to watch it pass as it does not stop here in Lancing) so the passengers on the train were not subsidising empty seats. The train uses electricity which everyone knows is created relatively efficiently (much more efficiently than burning a small amount of petroleum under the bonnet of several hundred vehicles) and, to cap it all, the train companies are largely subsidised by Her Majesty’s wealth-suppressor (sorry, the tax man).

So, someone, tell me why!

This is genuinely a question to my readers, not some deeper philosophical rhetorical question:

Why does Germany buy fewer games per head than the UK or France:

[Germany] is the third-biggest market for video games in Europe, behind the UK and France, with PC titles dominating the market.

This from a story about the PS3’s new PVR capabilities: BBC News

It would seem to me that Germany’s cultural similarities concerning alcohol and free time would make the number of games bought there similar to in Britain… But obviously not.

There are plenty of do-gooder tree huggers at Heathrow peacefully protesting. One told me that he tried to fly in from Glasgow but couldn’t get a flight. “We need a new runway at Heathrow really” he told me.

I’ve renewed my membership of the Planetary Society.

If you believe that the world’s States alone cannot make the best of space (or even if you do believe that they can); if you believe that we, as a species, need to leave this planet eventually to ensure our existence; if you believe that ‘progress’ is a reason enough in itself…

… then join the Planetary Society as I did a year ago, and join in that effort. See the progress that the Planetary Society’s efforts are achieving and know, in your heart, that you are part of something great, momentous and meaningful.

Join me, join the Planetary Society

During a week where wild fires have spread across Greece, literally unprecedented rain has affected England and killed four and where Italy and the surrounding area have experienced unusual heat, it is difficult to avoid the suggestion that climate change is having an effect. I still have a nagging doubt, but it’s meaningless to debate anyway in my opinion.

Interestingly, though, June’s Scientific American magazine has a passage which I think presents the barrier to solution quite clearly:

To accomodate the economic aspirations of the more than five billion people in the developing countries, the size of the world economy should increase by a factor of four to six by 2050; at the same time, global emissions of greenhouse gases will have to remain steady or decline to prevent dangerous changes to the climate. After 2050, emissions will have to drop further, nearly to zero, for greenhouse gas concentrations to stabilize.

Assuming the scientific community’s poor understanding of the climate is accurate then it is reassuring that the solution (technology) as proposed by the author (Jeffrey D. Sachs) costs approximately 1 penny per kilowatt hour. That’s on top of a current electricity price of approximately 8.1 pence.

I have long said that environmental-socialism is not the solution and I am heartened to read the technological-solution being espoused.

I’m now trying Safari (Apple’s browser) on my Vista PC and I have to say it’s surprisingly quick!

Here’s the link if you want to try it too: Apple Safari

Anyone who has known me for a long time will know that for all my criticism of the modern, socialist green movement, I have always been one who cares deeply about the environment. Before it was cool I used to chide friends who didn’t visit the recycling point (before doorstep collections) and I have always been amazed that you get free stuff by composting.

So, despite my criticism of the modern, socialist green movement, I bought an Electrisave recently and have enjoyed (perhaps too much) seeing what impact each device has on power consumption.

At the rate of 8.192 pence per kWh (kilowatt hour) a 100W lightbulb uses 0.6 pence per hour. A 20″ LCD TV and two 19″ LCD computer monitors don’t register any cost at all. A kettle uses a comparitively amazing amount (around 20 pence per hour) and an electric shower uses 38 pence per hour.

My PC (which is reasonably specced) uses a little less than a lightbulb and when it is on standby makes no impact on the meter at all. Fascinatingly, though, a 20″ CRT computer monitor registers a little less than a lightbulb on its own. And a 25″ CRT TV uses a little more than a lightbulb.

The most expensive things are kettles, electric showers and vacuum cleaners. But the most surprising thing of all was my Xbox 360. While that is running it costs between 1.8 pence and 2 pence per hour. When two PCs, an LCD TV, two LCD monitors, one CRT monitor, the fridge and double-height freezer, two cordless telephone base stations and two cordless telephone charger points as well as all the household’s standby lights and LCD clocks were running, the Xbox 360 doubled the amount of power being used!

So if you have an Xbox 360, and you care about your bills or wasting fossil fuels (or even CO₂ emissions if you’re an extremist) turn off your Xbox 360 when you’re not using it.

Oh, and in case you’re interested, a Wii doesn’t register even 1/10 of a penny while it is running.

The Electrisave is a sinch to install and works beautifully, I’d strongly recommend them to anyone who asked.