Siting of panels for solar water heating

In message , Andy Hall writes

On 2006-11-30 03:01:53 +0000, John Beardmore said:
I have no more right to dictate than anybody else does. What we have been talking about is what we WANT, and the axioms that underpin our relationship with the environment and government.
Ultimately, these are the axioms that underpin most things. If people experience too many things not to their liking, they will take action. This begins with choosing to buy elsewhere, including behaviour at the ballot box.

Yes. Seen any parties offering the unbundling of state services ?

It also includes people ignoring stupid legislation, as we are starting to see.

Well - perhaps we all have a duty to do that - at least while the human spirit has some strength.

But I do have a right to express what I think the priorities should be in making a determination, which I do. I contribute my thoughts freely to the debate in the hope, rather than expectation, that they will help what I regard as 'common sense' prevail.
It may seem like common sense to you, but I would prefer to take the a la carte menu and to choose which things I believe to be worthwhile and leave aside things that I don't. I am not interested in people who can't come with definable cases for actions and outcomes attempting to run my life for me.

I'm sure you're not, but I'm not sure if you are more concerned to protest at lack of choice assess the environmental issues objectively.

I freely acknowledge that acting on my wishes would deny you access to uniformed sycophantic bin men and other perks of the market, but the very act of establishing a competitive market is also likely to undermine the environmental outcomes I seek, even if the service we have now continues to be available, so simply putting a market in place may deny me, and others, my preferred outcome.
That's fine, but then you will understand that others will not hold that view and will make decisions not to co-operate with schemes where no choice is on offer.

Understood - but slightly offended that you are more motivated by lack of choice than the environmental issues.

I don't think there are any overriding 'rights' here. We should all have a right to make practicable choices, and we should all have a right to live sustainably as far as is practicable. In the technical sense of the word, this is a classic 'messy' problem.
The issue here is around the definition of practicable. For me, that strongly includes the amount of time taken and the economic factors. Any of these things have to pass those two tests first. If they don't, then for me they are not practicable.

For most people, it takes seconds and costs no more to do. This makes it hard to sympathise with your position.

I seek to address it by asking people the real value of the outcome they seek, and the real cost of the alternatives. All of the above said, if somebody wants to put up a detailed LCA case for a market based solution that indicates real net environmental benefits, I'm up for examining it.
That would need to be done by a set of impartial and disinterested people,

It needs to be done accurately for sure, but to criticise the people that prepare the data rather than the quality of the data itself generally seems to be a poor excuse for inaction.

and one is quite unlikely to do so.

To do what ?

I would count environmental benefit as anything that results in more *sensble* recycling provided that there are choices in how that is implemented in terms of the impact on the customer.
I am not going to buy into anything that doesn't meet the economic and convenience factors first.

Well, unless you plan to place some value on the environment which you don't seem to, that makes you more or less unable to make any of the sorts of sacrifice that may be necessary to make society sustainable, never mind the contraction and convergence agenda. A pretty mean spirited and selfish stance in my view.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

On 2006-12-02 16:20:45 +0000, John Beardmore said:

In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-12-01 08:12:24 +0000, David Hansen SENDdavidNOhSPAM@spidacom.co.uk> said:
To my pointing out that it is not too difficult or takes too long you accepted that it isn't difficult. Hopefully you will soon come to the realisation that it doesn't take too long either. It is simply a matter of organisation.
No it isn't, it's a matter of customer choice.
Personal choice even.

Always.

Those who are too stubborn to get the hang of new ideas do seem to find it rather more difficult than the general public.
It is not a matter of getting the hang of new ideas either.
Well, you certainly seem to be choosing not to.

I already told you that it isn't a case of not getting the hang of new ideas, but questioning them and choosing not to espouse them.

The lack of runaway success by "alternative" collection services does seem to show that most of the public are coping.
Since the market is closed to them because of the local authority monopoly, there are no alternatives.
Oh there there ! Can't you find an important problem to worry about ?

You seem to think that it's an important issue. I don't *worry* about problems. If I can address them, then I do, otherwise I don't attempt to do so

Even if you believed that customer choice was the most important issue in the world, you could still do us all a favour by sorting your waste and fighting this battle in other ways

I have also explained to you that I choose not to sort waste, but expect the supplier to do it if he wishes it to be sorted. At this point, there is no battle involved in that because he does it.

In message , Andy Hall writes

On 2006-11-28 20:22:55 +0000, John Beardmore said:
If there were a competitive market the LA might not do especially well, but there might still be less waste in simpler provision from a single contractor.
Then the question to ask is why wouldn't the LA do particularly well?

Well for a start they don't have much experience at marketing and advertising. Their history is in providing a service, not selling it.

Profits could perhaps go into local authority coffers, but losses could not be made up from them - any borrowing would need to come from the market. Hmmm... Well.... if it's viable, it should not be a problem..... That seems a bit naive. The markets support projects that make money for the markets.
Absolutely, and that's how it should be.

Only if making money for the markets is the ONLY thing that matters. But it isn't.

Arguably they have less interest in end users that LAs do. You don't vote for merchant banks !
The end user holds the cards because he can choose to buy elsewhere. That is a very effective form of voting.

Only if you get the sensible options to choose from.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

John Beardmore wrote:

In message , meow2222@care2.com writes Owain wrote: Andy Hall wrote:
At present the nation is expected to put a sizeable amount of hours each week into rubbish sorting at home, for free, when the companies that get the sorted goods should be responsible for this.
Hours ?!?

lets say 5 mins per person per week, x 65 million = 325 million minutes = 5.4 million manhours per week = 280 million manhours per year, at a value of 2 billion pounds, if we value it at �7/hr. Guess I should have said millions of hours.
NT

David Hansen wrote:

On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:27:21 +0000 someone who may be John Beardmore wookie@wookie.demon.co.uk> wrote this:-
those customers wiling to spend their valuable time sifting their garbage.
Well - it doesn't take long.
Indeed. I think the main thing needed is a little organisation, just like many things.
As Phil said the main thing is to reduce the amount of packaging and the like taken into the house and reuse some of it. After that it depends what the scheme is on one's area. If there is a scheme where staff sort a mixed box at the kerbside then anything recyclable just goes into a suitable container, to be taken out when convenient. If there are separate bins then it makes sense to have separate containers (or a multi- compartment container) corresponding to each bin, which are taken out as necessary. The containers can be canvas or string bags hung on hooks, some sort of box or even just little piles somewhere convenient.
Properly organised one has the item in one's hand and instead of throwing it in a residual waste bin one throws it in the appropriate container.
Taking things out to put in a box or bin beside the residual bin is no more difficult than taking things out to put in the residual bin. Wandering past a recycling point and dropping things in can generally be organised as part of another trip.
If some people really think this is too difficult or takes too long then perhaps they should ask their local waste advisor to give them some advice.

Sounds like you live in a perfect world where those extra containers dont take up space or get in the way, the bags of junk dont fall over and blow junk everywhre, the boxes of cans dont fill up with neighbourhood rubbish, and the binmen actually take the junk away. In many areas none of the above apply.
NT

In message , Andy Hall writes

On 2006-11-26 13:42:37 +0000, John Beardmore said:
In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-11-25 11:41:17 +0000, David Hansen SENDdavidNOhSPAM@spidacom.co.uk> said: On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 18:07:56 +0000 someone who may be John Beardmore wookie@wookie.demon.co.uk> wrote this:-
Indeed. Some would rather pay for a monthly general bin collection. Would be fine for me, though I'm still not convinced that private contractors sound that great. It was fashionable at one time. Whether individual householders have so much time on their hands that they can individually arrange waste contracts is debatable. I suppose some have, typically the retired. However, such people would have little bargaining power with the contractors. If one wants to involve contractors then the way to do it is probably to do so collectively, as is done with many other things, like roads. Collectivism is the poison of advancement. Only if you can't opt out, which in this case you can.
No I can't, because I still have to pay. That is not the ability to opt out.

Well - to be strictly accurate, you can opt out of using the service, but you can't opt out of paying for it. Just like education etc...

Of course people can arrange their own waste collection agreements in exactly the same way that they buy food, gas, electricity, telecommunication and most other commodities. Not that most seem to want to.
That is not a reason for not offering a choice.

Well - I would have thought it should be a factor.

If the business model of the incumbent supplier is sound, he should have nothing to fear.

That assumes that it is about protecting the incumbent supplier. It might just be about efficiency of delivering the service.

There is no issue with bargaining power unless there is a monopoly as there is today. Guess we've done this one to death, but be it better or worse than a monopoly, it is an aspect of state behaviour that is more akin to 'bundling' than a monopoly. In effect you want to 'unbundle' waste disposal from the facilities we pay for out of taxes.
Yep. That would be a good start, and an easier one than tackling the health service first.

Not sure you'd get much support for that either...

It doesn't require a big bureaucracy to organise people's lives for them. ?
If you don't understand that......

I can understand it, but surely a big bureaucracy is worse ? And presumably what the bureaucracy does is also of some significance ?
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

In message , Andy Hall writes

On 2006-12-02 16:20:45 +0000, John Beardmore said:
Those who are too stubborn to get the hang of new ideas do seem to find it rather more difficult than the general public. It is not a matter of getting the hang of new ideas either. Well, you certainly seem to be choosing not to.
I already told you that it isn't a case of not getting the hang of new ideas, but questioning them and choosing not to espouse them.

Well - you don't seem to have looked into it in any depth.

The lack of runaway success by "alternative" collection services does seem to show that most of the public are coping. Since the market is closed to them because of the local authority monopoly, there are no alternatives. Oh there there ! Can't you find an important problem to worry about ?
You seem to think that it's an important issue. I don't *worry* about problems. If I can address them, then I do, otherwise I don't attempt to do so

Well, here is one that you can address easily, yet choose not to.

Even if you believed that customer choice was the most important issue in the world, you could still do us all a favour by sorting your waste and fighting this battle in other ways
I have also explained to you that I choose not to sort waste, but expect the supplier to do it if he wishes it to be sorted. At this point, there is no battle involved in that because he does it.

It has also been explained to you that there is greater efficiency if waste is sorted at source. There is no need for battles either way.
J/. -- John Beardmore

John Beardmore wrote:

Understood - but slightly offended that you are more motivated by lack of choice than the environmental issues.
Well, unless you plan to place some value on the environment which you don't seem to, that makes you more or less unable to make any of the sorts of sacrifice that may be necessary to make society sustainable, never mind the contraction and convergence agenda. A pretty mean spirited and selfish stance in my view.

You appear to be presuming your view is in the interest of the environment, which I dont believe is the case.
NT

In message , meow2222@care2.com writes

John Beardmore wrote: In message , meow2222@care2.com writes Owain wrote: Andy Hall wrote:
At present the nation is expected to put a sizeable amount of hours each week into rubbish sorting at home, for free, when the companies that get the sorted goods should be responsible for this.
Hours ?!?
lets say 5 mins per person per week, x 65 million = 325 million minutes = 5.4 million manhours per week = 280 million manhours per year, at a value of 2 billion pounds, if we value it at �7/hr. Guess I should have said millions of hours.

Well OK, but if you want to aggregate things, have you looked at the cost and environmental impact of centralised waste separation ? You don't really have a decision to make until you've got both data sets.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

John Beardmore wrote:

In message , meow2222@care2.com writes Andy Hall wrote: On 2006-11-27 22:40:25 +0000, John Beardmore wookie@wookie.demon.co.uk> said:
There will always be a vociferous few, but where as I've met lots of people that want LAs to do better, you are the first one I've met who wants them out of the loop except in a licensing and policing role like they are already.
That shows just how politically clueless our population has become.
Or that alternative bin collections are seen as really underwhelmingly dull and / or pointless !!

that only demonstrates British political naivety again. Basic political principles tell us that an open private market will deliver more efficiency. This is not a concept specific to bin collection, but a basic political principle that applies across the board. The lack of any wish to change the system indicates ignorance of this, rather than anything to do with bins per se.

Does that mean you would like to be able to decide what others get instead of them deciding?
No - it means that I want to point out that I think, (as do some others !), that there are other important things.

see the point above, many say thats important. That its relevance to the bin game wasnt immediately apparent shows just how lost politically Britain is.
NT

On 2006-12-02 16:43:21 +0000, John Beardmore said:

Yes. Seen any parties offering the unbundling of state services ?

Not yet, but then elections are a little way away yet. Dismantling would be better, of course.

But I do have a right to express what I think the priorities should be in making a determination, which I do. I contribute my thoughts freely to the debate in the hope, rather than expectation, that they will help what I regard as 'common sense' prevail.
It may seem like common sense to you, but I would prefer to take the a la carte menu and to choose which things I believe to be worthwhile and leave aside things that I don't. I am not interested in people who can't come with definable cases for actions and outcomes attempting to run my life for me.
I'm sure you're not, but I'm not sure if you are more concerned to protest at lack of choice assess the environmental issues objectively.

Both issues are important.

I freely acknowledge that acting on my wishes would deny you access to uniformed sycophantic bin men and other perks of the market, but the very act of establishing a competitive market is also likely to undermine the environmental outcomes I seek, even if the service we have now continues to be available, so simply putting a market in place may deny me, and others, my preferred outcome.
That's fine, but then you will understand that others will not hold that view and will make decisions not to co-operate with schemes where no choice is on offer.
Understood - but slightly offended that you are more motivated by lack of choice than the environmental issues.

The point is that unless the market issues of choice are addressed as well as customers being convinced that proposed courses of action are genuine and have value, then they are not going to buy into the environmental issues to the extent that you might like.
Some people are happy to sit back, pay their taxes and let the state run their lives for them. Others do not appear to require very cogent presentation of the justifications for various recycling and environmental actions and the single approach offered to address them.
Some people fall into both categories. I don't fall into either. That does not mean that I do not think that activities to protect the environment aren't important, but simply that they need to be presented more honestly than they are being and with the implications as well as the environmental implications considered. Those include the economic effects in all aspects including the burden on the individual.

I don't think there are any overriding 'rights' here. We should all have a right to make practicable choices, and we should all have a right to live sustainably as far as is practicable. In the technical sense of the word, this is a classic 'messy' problem.
The issue here is around the definition of practicable. For me, that strongly includes the amount of time taken and the economic factors. Any of these things have to pass those two tests first. If they don't, then for me they are not practicable.
For most people, it takes seconds and costs no more to do. This makes it hard to sympathise with your position.

I'm not looking for sympathy. I don't agree that it takes seconds. There are the issues of assorted containers hanging around the place for weeks and the choice for the individual.

I seek to address it by asking people the real value of the outcome they seek, and the real cost of the alternatives. All of the above said, if somebody wants to put up a detailed LCA case for a market based solution that indicates real net environmental benefits, I'm up for examining it.
That would need to be done by a set of impartial and disinterested people,
It needs to be done accurately for sure, but to criticise the people that prepare the data rather than the quality of the data itself generally seems to be a poor excuse for inaction.

Then it should be made clear by them that the data is inaccurate and that it is not possible to form the positions or implement the policies and procedures arising from them genuinely.
That then begs the question of why they are being implemented, but of course that doesn't suit the activists.
The considerations that should be going into this are which things are worth doing and why and to provide solid evidence. Then consideration should be given to a range of options that can be offered to the customer. All the time that the arguments continue to be based on weak data, poorly explained and only one option given, the whole exercise remains discredited.

I would count environmental benefit as anything that results in more *sensble* recycling provided that there are choices in how that is implemented in terms of the impact on the customer.
I am not going to buy into anything that doesn't meet the economic and convenience factors first.
Well, unless you plan to place some value on the environment which you don't seem to, that makes you more or less unable to make any of the sorts of sacrifice that may be necessary to make society sustainable, never mind the contraction and convergence agenda. A pretty mean spirited and selfish stance in my view.

You are making loaded emotional arguments that are saying that
- unless one participates in a set piece policy and implementation that one doesn't care about the environment. Untrue. There can be many different ways of achieving objectives.
- unless one makes some kind of sacrifice, society isn't sustainable. The concept of society is questionable anyway and contraction and convergence is unlikely to be a realistic goal anyway.
Sacrifices tend not to happen, but rather a better and more acceptable alternative comes along to replace them.

In message , meow2222@care2.com writes

John Beardmore wrote:
Understood - but slightly offended that you are more motivated by lack of choice than the environmental issues.
Well, unless you plan to place some value on the environment which you don't seem to, that makes you more or less unable to make any of the sorts of sacrifice that may be necessary to make society sustainable, never mind the contraction and convergence agenda. A pretty mean spirited and selfish stance in my view.
You appear to be presuming your view is in the interest of the environment, which I dont believe is the case.

Well we are all free to hold our own views, and I can live with people not sharing mine, though there is more than simple environmental interest to ideas like contraction and convergence.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

On 2006-12-02 16:47:49 +0000, John Beardmore said:

In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-11-28 20:22:55 +0000, John Beardmore said:
If there were a competitive market the LA might not do especially well, but there might still be less waste in simpler provision from a single contractor.
Then the question to ask is why wouldn't the LA do particularly well?
Well for a start they don't have much experience at marketing and advertising. Their history is in providing a service, not selling it.

Therein lies one of the basic problems. They don't know how to run a business.

Profits could perhaps go into local authority coffers, but losses could not be made up from them - any borrowing would need to come from the market. Hmmm... Well.... if it's viable, it should not be a problem..... That seems a bit naive. The markets support projects that make money for the markets.
Absolutely, and that's how it should be.
Only if making money for the markets is the ONLY thing that matters. But it isn't.

Of course not. The product has to meet the requirements of the customers in order for them to want to buy.

Arguably they have less interest in end users that LAs do. You don't vote for merchant banks !
The end user holds the cards because he can choose to buy elsewhere. That is a very effective form of voting.
Only if you get the sensible options to choose from.

Of course. The options need to be sensible from the perspective of the customer.

"John Beardmore" wrote in message

In message , Mary Fisher mary.fisher@zetnet.co.uk> writes "John Beardmore" wrote in message
This has a direct negative environmental impact, as those hours could be spent doing something genuinely useful, some of which things would inlude the things you want to see happen, such as installation of insulation, solar hw,
Andy seems to have changed his opinion about solar hw ...
:)
Well - we put another one in last week. 2.75sqm flat plate for �2,406. Granted it's not at all easy to make money at those prices, but it worked and was described as "well insulated" by the agency that commissioned it.

I read that as "well insulted".
Thought Andy was doing his bit again.
Mary

Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

"John Beardmore" wrote in message

In message , Mary Fisher mary.fisher@zetnet.co.uk> writes
I wonder, if they're hard up, how they can afford to replace their furniture
DHSS ? Local charities ?
We've never replaced furniture in 47 years and while we're officially poor we don't feel hard up.
:) I don't even want to think about it !

Nor do we, that's why we haven't done it. If it ain't broke ...
We do occasionally strip something and polish it or re-upholster but everyone here (in uk.D-I-Y) will be doing that of course.
Mary