epsilonGreedy

If the original installer has ceased trading where does liability end up?

I prefer solving things through market forces rather than employing more people in the public sector. One very simple change in the law would tip things towards better quality and prevent 105% mortgages or overvaluation. In other countries homeowners have the right to return the keys and walk away free of mortgage debt. If the banks had to face the prospect of owning shanty new builds they would ensure better quality homes. The current state of affairs is a David v. Goliath situation, if the banks had a vested interest in quality it creates a more equitable King-Kong v. Goliath contest.

You assume Government inspectors are better! Stafford hospital investigator berates CQC regulator https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/may/01/stafford-hospital-investigator-berates-cqc-regulator Lord Turner admits FSA failures in financial crisis https://www.pensionsage.com/pa/lord-turner-admits-fsa-failures-in-financial-crisis.php

Your different experience can be attributed the Government implementing policy through contracted out spending. The MOD once provided civilian maritime search and rescue but today it is a commercial service. I knew someone operating a private business providing Ofsted inspections for the department of education. This chart of public spending demonstrates how world wars lead to a bigger state. Andrew Marr is correct in saying WWII gave progressive liberals a taste for exercising more authority via the State on the basis they did so well in the war. The creation of Fighter Command at short notice was a spectacular example of technology, process and management being thrown together in a rush with high competence. Compare that to the disaster of the HMS Astute submarine development. Today's industrial military complex in the UK cannot design and fit a marine toilet in a submarine given a £ 1 billion budget and the luxury of a 10 year procurement programme.

We are going around in philosophical circles. They have an axe to grind, it is called banking the next pay cheque and striving for the next promotion. It is impossible today for any climate change doubting scientist to hold down a job that is funded by the tax payer. You should be thankful there are a handful of counter thinkers maintaining a debate in the mainstream scientific mono culture.

This is what the ideological confrontation distills down to at the end of the day once the science and data is striped away. As Andrew Marr opens a TV episode in The History of Modern Britain he is standing outside the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He states that 4000 civil servants in that building once ran the British Empire covering 1/4 of the world, yet today a minor government agency would employ as many. He goes on to explain that the WWII experience of a collective centralize managed economy gave a generation of ideologues a taste for fixing problems though a highly centralized state apparatus. The desire lives on today 75 years later in a much larger public sector and climate change is an excuse to expand the State and its power. There is a divide of opinion here that can be associated with those who were employed by the State or not. Under pinning this is a belief that the people need to be saved from their own stupidity and we the noble chosen ones of the public sector will save them.

I measured this on a kitchen display at a trade show and reckon not less than 1m. Small kitchens are efficient though in your specific case does the cook have to allow for passing traffic in the gap?

The number of facing bricks or dimensions would help people quantify the scale of the job.

I have to question whether "the next level" is a worthy aspiration. Happy and content humans is my yardstick of a good house. For some that equates to debt free simplicity, for others it is a co2 neutral house. Those who pursue the next level such as musical composers often end up being driven mad by their quest.

Just a few thoughts: If a kitchen is too small to support a communal seating experience at the island there is still the option for a cook's perch. For this function the overhang can be less as the cook will typically sit at 90 degrees to the counter. @ProDave's photo is close to what I have in mind. I lived with a small dual height island for a few years and saw some benefits, the lower portion was a tea making area and hid the associated surface clutter.

Some kitchen design dilemmas I am facing would evaporate if I could convince myself of this point. The problem is we have been so wedded to the range in ex. chimney alcove concept for years it will be difficult to flip the proposed kitchen around.

This is an excellent point for comparison. The personal computer was based on scientific innovation, followed by product development and then free market adoption. There was no need for PC usage feed in tariffs, penalty taxes on pen & paper or formation of the United Nations Congress on Bio Cerebral Overload.

A recent thread of mine touches on this subject.

Fledgling parliamentary democracy in Russia did not end in 1917 because they ran out of votes, it ended because a group of political thinkers persuaded the people they had a better idea called communism. The stone aged faded away over centuries as people incrementally discovered a better technology through proven trial and error. The rush towards the creed of climate change feels far more like a politically driven social convulsion than global human progress.

Which sounds like a confession that 20 years ago the technology could not produce a mainstream 60 mpg car for all. Perhaps engineers did not have super computers that could model combustion chamber flow in fine detail or engine micro chips sensing and tweaking fuel injection every millisecond.

A telling remark that illustrates the authoritarian tendencies of many on the vociferous wing of climate change. Underpinning that remark is a presumption of intellectual superiority.

I am not so sure the technology was sitting on the touchline waiting to be called into play. Could the automotive world have delivered 60 mpg in ordinary cars with the technology available 20 years ago? A ticking financial time bomb is sitting out there for sure. I think the danger is fragmentation of nation state authority when the central banks run dry. Since WWII the West has become reliant on the expanding nanny state rushing in to solve all problems. The right to the pursuit of happiness as envisioned by the US founding fathers 260 years ago has become the right to state funded happiness. The mega eruption that bothers me is the hot air arising from the collapse of social cohesion and shared values that bound countries together for centuries. The level of tribal polarization in the USA is deeply worrying, it is a slow motion coup. I don't know if the Internet is the pathogen, transmission mechanism or cure, this thread suggests it is the pathogen.

I can agree with that but think the cause and effect only applies when natural climate change is slight which applies now as post glaciation rates of change are coasting to a halt. Earth's biosphere has coped with higher temperatures in the past and has indeed thrived during a period of much higher co2 so the fiery demise of life on earth due to man made global warming, as promoted by the media, feels like propaganda promoted due to an agenda. Skeptics mention that climate change science has consistently failed to account for the most powerful variable in the atmosphere namely water vapour. Climate Skeptics now refer to the "evident greening of the world" which is a natural consequence of higher co2 levels. It is so evident to them they do not bother to substantiate that claim which leaves me confused but they are correct in saying plants have a growth spurt with higher atmospheric co2 which is one example of the biosphere applying a climate change brake. Twelve years ago the alarmists were predicting a collapse of the polar bear population once loss of summer sea ice reduced to current levels. The opposite happened because their food source (seals) benefited from the arctic warming. This is another example of nature surprising us with its resilience.

I do not think it is impossible to model or unpredictable, I just think the models are immature and do not provide a basis for throwing a spanner in the works of the global economy. That in itself is another example of scientific fraud which permeates thermogeddonist culture. The origin of that claim was a single Aus research team which speed read 11,000 scientific papers by trying to determine a stance on climate change from just the abstracts. In 2/3 of cases no such leaning could be inferred. So an alternative conclusion was that 2/3 of scientists were keeping an open mind. The same team also refused to make their raw data public. Furthermore I believe in man-made climate change, I just think it is minor compared to long term historic natural climate change. Most scientists would say "ofcourse man made co2 is real and nudging the climate but how serious it is or how should we respond is another issue".

I was thinking ahead to a time when the combined effect of co2 hostile policy and the aging of our nuclear capacity will lead to winter generation capacity gaps that can only be managed by aggressive dynamic pricing.

Exactly what I was thinking, a smart app will ping and advise consumers that in two days time when a winter high settles on the North Sea the pending load of washing will cost twice as much.

I think we are at peak climate change alarmism because it is looking more like a desperate plate spinning publicity exercise where climatic reality is not conforming to the alarmist predictions. Eventually normality will resume, quiet sensible science will continue and climatic models will improve. When the marginal effect of man made co2 is quantified properly free of political agenda, people will relax. There are problems ahead because unlike the past when neolithic humans coped with rapid climatic change, today humanity has run amok on planet earth and our society is vulnerable to any climatic change, natural or otherwise. We now need climatic stability to survive at present population levels and this will give birth to a new science call man-made climatic tuning. Some centuries the boffins will call for more co2 and in others they will switch on the windfarms or explode trillions of biodegradable mirrored particles at high altitude. Today's climate change frenzy will delivery long term benefits as material science and field engineering acquire skills in diverse energy production.

All part of the narrative that co2 is a nasty poison instead of a raw material for life. There is some sense to the deeper message about smarter consumption.

This is odd because climate change skeptics use aliens to demonstrate that association is not causation. Statistics show there is an association between UFO sightings and sea temperature, this analogy is then used to question the occasional statistical link between co2 and global temperature.

True but that is a choice spot and the fast ferry runs straight into Portsmouth Harbour railway station with onward commuter links to London.