h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Carrying on from here F1749279?thread=8305608&post=110804844#p110804843 if anyone wants too...

Getting back to Sho's post though, that's a very good point, and there's more than one way of looking at the heating issue. The issue of people who are in 'fuel poverty' and can't afford to heat their home has been coming up a lot lately in the news and around social meeja.

If those people heat their home the way most working class homes were heated when I suspect most of us in this conversation were kids - only one or two rooms with a source of heat such as a fireplace or gas fire, and maybe a paraffin heater to keep the chill off the hallway or landing and for heating the bathroom - then I think it's scandalous that a country as advanced as the UK should be in that position because although it's very nice to have central heating and constant hot water, and to be able to walk from one room to another in comfort, only heating one room - the living room - and putting up with the cold when you leave that room is a very efficient, flexible and relatively cheap way to get through the winter. A lot of us did it for our entire childhood and we're still here to tell the tale. Some of our parents might not have even had that.

If, however, people can't afford to heat their homes because their homes have central heating, that's a different kettle of fish because now they can't be so flexible, although I suppose it's possible to turn off all the radiators bar one or two and the hot water part of the system but I don't know if a) that's going to reduce the fuel bill significantly and b) if it's a good thing for the CH system.

It's taken away their control over how they heat their home, relative to how it used to be, and the only analogy I can think of right now is the way that control has been taken away from the person who wants to work on their car but they can't because cars have almost become computers now, and you can't fix a car without the necessary diagnostic software. Which is out of the hands of the average car owner of course so you have to take it to an accredited mechanic.

I don't want to start straying into conspiracy theory stuff here, but control over what we do is, bit by bit, being taken away from us in ways like this so that we have to spend money to get something done which, in the past, we might have saved money on by doing it ourselves, or having to spend more money that we don't want to by, for instance, running a house-wide expensive CH system instead of just a gas fire or buying fuel for a fireplace.

Any road up.

Homes aren't being built any more in a way that makes that kind of one-room heating possible because they no longer have chimneys, and a substantial number of those that were have by now been fitted with central heating and the fireplace blocked up, preventing it being used either as a fireplace or as a flue for a gas fire. I know that the houses on my childhood estate had central heating fitted... before so many of them were sold cross

But you can still get around it, I guess. In the late 70s I lived in a flat - the one I sat in the bath reading the NME in bigeyes - whose only heating was storage heaters. I couldn't afford to run them on the money I was making so I bought a paraffin heater and used that. And it's also true that the insulation standards of homes being built now are far higher than before. There was none whatsoever in my childhood home, and it had metal frame windows which were incredibly good at conducting heat out of the place and caused oceans of condensation. Considering how cold those places were in the winter I'm surprised there weren't hundreds of burst pipes every year.

So Sho's right in one of those can't-see-wood-for-the-trees ways that seems so obvious once someone points it out. People managed - for centuries and millennia - to get through the winter before our attitude towards comfort changed, and only in the past few decades by the look of it. It's wrong that people can't keep their home warm through the winter because fuel bills are so high, but maybe it's not only for the reasons being stated by the pundits and the outraged.

"Wants too"

My Father's house (built I think late 60s, early 70s), had, origionally a coal fire (I can't recall it), at some point, it was taken out, and he put in a gas fire, and central heating.
Within the last ten years, he's kind of gone back; still got the central heating, but never really uses it; has had the chimney re-lined, etc., and a wood burner (which also takes coal), put in.
He just heats the whole house now, via the wood burner, adn just* when its really freezing elsewhere in the house (and the problem of damp which he gets a lot is likely to cause trubble), the heating goes on; with just the upstairs radiators opperating, as the fire will be on downstairs.
However, now of course, he's got loft insulation, replacement double glazed windows, cavity wall insulation, so unlike the first time, the house had the coal fire, the entire house is better at holding the heat in.
If he's lucky he gets a lot of wood for free, to burn, but with having to buy coal, and/or wood for the very cold periods of the year, its not much saving on when he last used to just use teh central heating/and/or the gas fire in the front room
Due to teh way his house is laid out though, the heating the entir eplace, with the wood fire, sort of works, due to the layout, and the fact its not really that big a house helps I guess

Now I'm beginning to wonder how my mother kept warm during the day when she wasn't in the living room.

I know that in the winter the gas fire was on for a good part of the daytime, on its lowest setting which just kept the chill off the room on the coldest days, and there would often be a clothes horse in front of it.

I reckon the kitchen would have been kept warm to an extent by the cooking she did, but she wasn't cooking all the time, so I'm getting recollections of the paraffin heater being in there too. There was an electric heater - coils of wire - built into one of the walls, but the fridge was in front of that so it was never used. I seem to remember that's where all the neighbours and friends' parents put the fridge because that was the only suitable place in the kitchen for it. People like us didn't have fridges when those houses were built, which is why it had such a good pantry.

If she had to do anything upstairs like making the beds or hoovering the bedrooms (or go to the khazi), I guess she just put up with the cold. As we all had to when went to the khazi in the depths of winter.

It could have been worse - a lot of my family in Liverpool still had outside bogs at the time.

That sounds like something which anyone who can do, should consider doing if the can afford it. I know it's not possible in a lot homes that were built from the 60s onwards, tower blocks and suchlike, but I've spent a good part of my life in 1950s-built council housing, all of which were all built with fireplaces and coal bunkers, so the possibility exists if the place hasn't had the chimney blocked off.

My Dad's chimney hadn't exactly been blocked off; I vaguely* recall, he switched from coal, to having the gas fire there, because the price of coal went up (must have been when I was young, as I can't recall the origionall coal fire, so possibly early 80s?), anyhow, the chimney was left, with the gas fire put in where the coal one had been, and the gas fire vented up through the same chimney; but he had to have it re-lined when he had the wood/duel-fuel (coal and wood), fire put in recently, as the lining was old and dangerous... cost a few thousand pounds, all in all to re-line the chimney, and put in a new 'fir esurround', on the wall, and then buy the wood burner itself; for the first few year he had it though, he burnt fuel for free (he was getting a lot of free wood, due to his work then as a gardener), he gets some free wood still which he can burn, and buys in some wood, and some coal

Its useually pretty damn cold using the loo/bahtroom at my Dad's, which is upstairs, but... well one just gets used to it and the new (ish), double glazed windows and loft/cavity-wall insulation helps somewhat anyhow

I can't have coal or wood here, as there is, and never was any chimney, and as far as I recall this is still, officially a smoke free zone (or wahtever that used to be called... though I might be mis-remembering that), anyhow, I've no outside area, for a coal bunker or anywhere to store it, or wood here

This place origionally when it was built, had some weird underfloor heating, and ceiling heating (little bits of the electrics unfortuantely still remain; odd switches on walls etc!) but judging by the radiators that were here when I movee in, it was switched to central heating some time in the late 70s I'd guess

I must admit, I've gotten very used to having the combi boiler; and instant hot water for showering etc; though I do recall back in teh day, at my Dad's having to wait for the emersion to heat up, to be able to shower etc (he's got a combi boiler now too, but mainly it just gets used for the hot water, not for the central heating, though he still does ahve the central heating, if* it is needed) I'll have to try remember ask him, waht he's paying a year now, for solid fuel for the wood fire, be interesting to compaire it to my gas/electric bill

Mind, having said which, the combi boilers end up being a rip off, with their oh so short life expetancy (I'm on my second since moving here in, err about 13 or 14 years.. and they're not cheap to ahve fitted, anyhow... (actually qutie cheap to buy, but plummers charge thousadns to fit them))

we were just cold when we weren't in the heated room. We lived in Army quarters all the time so apart from a few minor issues with some of the actual building work sometimes, mostly they were centrally heated. My parents being war children were very very careful (as most of our parents were, I'd guess, given our ages) and didn't waste anything if possible.

That meant that when cold winters came out came the Esso Blue or Pink Parafin heaters (remember them? My brother and I used to have to take it turns to walk to the hardware shop just outside the estate where we lived and pick up a jerry can of parafin. I used to love the smell of that shop.

We also used to have hot water bottles a lot more than people do now but skipping to the loo in the middle of the night, or going into the bathroom in the morning meant gritting your teeth for the most part.

At school the heating was awful. We did have radiators in the dorms - well one small one at each end - but the building was pre WW1 and the 3 main dorms were for 20 girls, they were very long and very high and in deepest winter if you left a cup of water on your dresser overnight it wasn't unusual for there to be ice on it in the mornings. There was no way they could have heated those caverns efficiently (or at all) so it was a matter of grin and bear it.

And now I've realised that I've forgotten one deaail about those dorms so I have to find out

Totally sorry about that.

Even more off topic - the idea of sending kids to get something like paraffin, and yes, that was something I did too, at the local Esso garage. Which is still there btw. Hardware shops did have a particular smell didn't they

It also wasn't unusual for kids to be sent to buy fags for mum and dad. Usually with a note asking for 20 Guards, Embassy, Woodbine, and the woman who ran the local sweetshop/tobacconist knew all the kids and who their parents were so you couldn't get away with walking in and asking for some for yourself. It'd get back to your parents.

I don't ever remember being cold at school, nor when walking to and from school. I suppose it could be that it's one of the details your mind doesn't recall in later years, but I do remember it when I was a teenager: the feeling of cold when leaving the living room to go upstairs or to make a cuppa, making sure the heavy curtains were properly closed, keeping the draught excluder tight up against the bottom of the door, wishing we had central heating.

It's so easy in conversations like this to fall into that 'Things were hard in my day' Four Yorkshireman kind of thing, and I really don't want to end up sitting in a room with others of my age saying things like "Remember waking up with ice on the inside of the bedroom window? Good character building stuff, that. That's what kids today need.", but I do honestly believe that a little deprivation in one way or another keeps your feet on the ground in later years.

well I did go to boarding school so there was a lot of feeling cold at times that if I'd been home I would probably have been warm. But that's just my past. We used to walk to school or walk home sometimes to save our busfare when I was in junior school - mine all went on books, some of my friends spent it on sweets etc. But there wasn't a feeling of hardship about it, it was just how things were.

Just as being warm, central heating, having a phone, having a fridge and having inside plumbing are part of how things are now.

In the future I expect the gruesomes will be telling their children about things they had to put up with that would seem like luxury to us as kids, but to their children it will sound primitive.

At least, I hope so. We are supposed to progress as a spiecies, after all.

That's an intriguing notion. What will be today's kids equivalent of the kind of things we've been talking about here?

The days before the internet, when people had to make their own entertainment by watching television?
The days when you couldn't take your phone everywhere?
The days when phones only made phone calls?
Public toilets that also had a convenient payphone?
The days when there was a National Health Service? (Ooh, bit of political comment there ladies and gentlemen my name's Ben Elton GOODNIGHT!)
The great recession?
Places called pubs where people went to drink together?

with a bit of luck what they will find odd is the concept of thousands upon thousands of people driving to an "office" instead of working from home, or the local park or coffee house or whatever.

Welkl, in deffernce to 'times of old', adn my childhood.... I've turned hte heating up... its tatters here tonight
I'm turning soft with age... I should still be swanning about in the house, in shorts... its only* November...

It's a fair point, Sho. When you think of the time, money and energy spent on commuting to jobs that could be done from home just as well, it's a massive waste.

There there dear, don't take on so It's our right as British persons to have the entire house heated to the same temperature as a Miami beach all year round! We can't have the fuel companies taking that away from us! Winston Churchill will be spinning in his grave like an Iranian centrifuge

Iranian uranium... trying saying that ten times quickly

Well, you know KB, we were all supposed to have nuclear-powered flying cars by now that would get us to work quickly, efficiently and for next to no energy expenditure

Seriously though, as long as the current commercial model exists there will always be a need for people to go to work somewhere other than their computer desk at home, most obviously in the manufacturing sector and to a lesser extent in offices, but you're right, more working from home ought be happening by now with the proliferation and comparative ease of video calling and conferencing.

I've come to the conclusion, though, that it doesn't make any differnce, how high the thermostat is turned up, nor for how long; nor, indeed as it turns out, it doesn't matter if you put in a really effecient new boiler, and radiators, new windows, loft insulation; the bills just go up, irrelivent of wheather one trys to cut down usage, or not, so I figure it might as well be warm, seeing as how its costing £140 PM in gas/elec (nah, I can't figure out their billing, and neither can they, to seperate gas (heat), from elec)

I've even found so-called new media style companys relaly reluctant to let people work from home , well, they were good for it, at my last job, but another even trendier new media company I applied for a job at, woudln't have it at all; far far better I took up office space, at their office, in London, and gave the rail company, nearly £5K per year... I never got that* job though... thank BoB... more than a third of the salary woudl have gone straight on the cost of getting myself to the office each day

The thing is, it would require a major corporate culture shift in a lot of places to let people work without being watched. In fact, with the open plan fetish of the last lot of years, the trend has been in the opposite direction - concentrating all staff in one huge room rather than dispersing them more.

Perhaps, but there is one - often overlooked - aspect of manufacturing that's been done from home for a good while now, and it works because if you don't work you don't make any money, although I'm not sure exactly how it could be transposed to office procedures - piecework.

For instance, all across the east end of London, and no doubt in other cities too, there are women, most often from the Indian subcontinent, at home working at sewing machines and being paid so much per piece. Every few days they get cut cloth delivered and a few days later someone picks up the sewn garments and delivers more cloth. The sewing machine is usually provided by the company because the work requires an industrial machine.

It's a simple system and it works for both parties, but like I said, if you don't do anything you don't make money. Bearing in mind the philosophy of Arthur Seaton (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) though, if you make too many pieces they'll cut your rate and you'll end up working harder for the same money, and they'll end up making more profit for the same cost.

Now what does that me think of...

I guess it kinda worked like that in the last job I did have... I had certain bits of work, to do each day, which I did and then other bits of work, week by week, I was given, as I did it all, in teh time frame they wanted it, they knew I was* working... and, if they wanted me to do more, they just sent me more... and I did it... (well I never really paid any attention to the actual hours I was meant to be doing, as it was ment to be 3 days a week or something, but it was easier if I just did some* work every day, and I always held work back, to do over bank holiday weeknds, etc., as I find them so boring, (the bank hols, not the work), the work was a nice relief from the tedium )

Does anyone here remember Shea U63974 and TJ U174844 ? They were good friends (despite the fact they were ghastly Thingites ) who visited me and the former Mrs Gosho in Austin when TJ was still living in Houston, and vice versa (yes, I got to see and touch the famous bowl 9-)).

After they got married and TJ went to live with Shea in New York (last I heard they'd moved to Iowa), I visited them for a few days, must have been six or seven years ago. TJ's job at the time, and possibly still, was to provide some kind of IT support for the company he worked for, which he did from home, through the night, and via some kind of company chatroom if I remember rightly, as well as by phone.

Although I know how a lot of the companies that provide IT support and call centres are control freaks (remembering stories about how employees - grown men and women - have to put their hand up to go to the toilet, if they're even *allowed* to go to the toilet ), that strikes me as ideal for working from home.