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16

General Car Chat / Re: New tyres....

« on: 06 April 2025, 21:12:19 »

Almost all aircraft tyres are remoulds/re-treads - and some of them are rated to a lot higher speeds than any Omega will ever go - aside from driving off a cliff.

17

General Discussion Area / Re: Tariffs.

« on: 04 April 2025, 13:26:29 »

Interesting that  US 10 year Treasury Bond yields have tumbled from 4.8% in January to 3.95% currently, which saves the US taxpayer hundreds of millions in interest payments on America's massive debt pile of around $36.5 trillion.

The biggest drop has happened in the last week from 4.4%, probably as investors have dumped stocks and moved into 'safe haven' bonds instead.

That's not how bonds work. A 10y bond is sold by the govt with the promise it will pay a fixed amount of interest for 10 years. The amount of interest it pays on a bond is fixed - it does not go up or down with the markets, so it won't "save the US taxpayer hundreds of millions in interest payments on America's massive debt pile of around $36.5 trillion". Bonds already issued have to be paid at the issue rate.

As the owner of such a bond, you can sell it on for whatever they want. Say you paid $1 for the bond, and the govt promise to pay 10cents per year interest - effectively a 10% interest rate. If you sell it to a new owner, then the 10cents interest will be paid to the new owner. At the end of the 10 years the govt will pay the current owner their $1 back. It will therefore have cost the US treasury $2 to borrow $1 for 10 years.

If during the bond period you sell it to someone else for less than you paid (say 90 cents), the new owner will still receive the promised 10 cents interest, so the new owner effectively sees 11.1% interest, but the govt is still only paying out 10 cents. Similarly if you sell it for more than you paid (say $1.1) the new owner still receives the 10 cents interest, so the new owner effectively sees 9.09% interest, but the govt is still only paying out 10 cents.

The only time the govt is really bothered about the bond rate is if/when they are trying to sell NEW bonds. If you crash your economy then buyers of new bonds are going to want more interest before agreeing to give the govt any more money. The bond rate can therefore be seen as a measure of investor confidence in the countries economy.

The fact China holds huge amounts of US bonds is a problem for China, not the US, providing the US can continue to pay the initially agreed interest (which it always can by just printing money if required).

18

Omega General Help / Re: V6 Camshaft Sprocket Bolt Renewal and How to Prevent Sprocket Rotation

« on: 31 March 2025, 21:15:20 »

The rule of thumb is that any bolt where the tightening spec is X Nm plus Y degrees should not be re-used.

The reason is that the vast majority of bolts tightened this way will stretch past yield, meaning that they are permanently stretched/deformed - i.e. when you take them out they will be longer than when they first went in. A bolt can only be stretched so far before it shears off, and calculating how much stretch is allowed is a complex process. Therefore, it's best NOT to re-use them, especially if they are in a difficult to get at place, or are safety/failure critical. A secondary consideration is can you be sure how many times have the bolts already been re-used? Each re-use will use up some more of the total available "stretch"

It's true that most of the time you will 'get away with it' re-using bolts, and only you can decide whether it's worth the risk or not. In the words of Dirty Harry - "Do you feel lucky punk - do ya?"

19

General Discussion Area / Re: Ukraine peace deal

« on: 16 February 2025, 15:11:54 »

Fibre-optic drones, Oreshnik and Avangard hypersonic missiles, the air-launched Kinzhal glide missile, S-400 Triumph air defence system, Uran-9 unmanned ground vehicle, Su-57 and Su-35 advanced fighters etc, etc.

At the start of the war, Ukraine had no defence against any of those items - their forces were at least 30 years out of date. And worse they were 30 years out of date Russian equipment which is 10 years behind western tech anyway. They are now, slowly (too slowly IMHO) being equipped with (basically) 10 year old western fighters, tanks, missile defense systems etc and that has neutralised the majority of these threats. If they'd had this more modern stuff on day one, then we wouldn't be where we are now.

As for the rest of your post: the Russian army has gained thousands of volunteers, they do not conscript from prisons

False

At the start, Russia had no intention of capturing Kiev.

I'll call that false as well. No point in capturing Hostomol airport unless you intend to use it as an airborne bridgehead, supporting rolling tanks down from Belarus into Kiev. I believe they thought they could capture Kiev in 3 days, and after that the whole country would fall within a few weeks. When that didn't work, they had little option but to pull out the way they'd come in.

The truth is that Russia has been fighting NATO. Ukraine has been a proxy.

You can make the argument that they're fighting against NATO tech now, three years on, but not during the first days, weeks, months. They were on their own then.

20

General Discussion Area / Re: Bin Collections

« on: 05 February 2025, 09:41:05 »

For us in South Somerset....

Weekly, on a Wednesday ... Brown Bin = Food Waste, Blue Bin = Plastic & Tin Cans, Black Bin = Cardboard & Glass
2 Weekly, on a Tuesday ... Green Wheelie Bin = Garden Waste
3 Weekly, on a Wednesday ... Black Wheelie Bin = Everything else

Basically, driving home on a Monday and Tuesday night you have to look out for what colour bins the neighbors have put out, hope they've got it right, and copy them.

I suspect Bristol are talking about the Black wheelie bin going 4 weekly.

21

General Discussion Area / Re: Money Transfers (UK to US)

« on: 28 January 2025, 18:53:01 »

I use WISE to transfer cash to relatives in Australia - for things like birthday and Christmas presents.

If you are already in the country where the person lives, then a Halifax Clarity credit card (or similar) is best. You take the cash out of an ATM, and then pay the bill immediately it shows on your statement (typically a day or two). No FOREX loading, no charge, and interest of a few pennies as long as you pay off immediately.

22

General Discussion Area / Re: This will lower knife crime

« on: 26 January 2025, 20:49:17 »

A kid had dribbled water into a socket and then was trying to force another child’s fingers into it. He called him a “ stupid boy” and dragged them both away. Later in the afternoon he was called into the heads office where both parents were present with the offender. “ Did you call this boy stupid?” Well he was… “ No, did you call him stupid? Yes. “ We don’t call pupils stupid, apologise now.

I would have declined to apologise, and invite both parents, the kid, and the headmaster to the room with the socket, and demand all four to poke their fingers into the socket. That way it would be possible to establish who the real idiot(s) are. Not sure if I'd want the headmaster or kid to go first though.

23

General Car Chat / Re: Further drop in cost of a new leccy Jag.

« on: 10 January 2025, 12:22:32 »

And I suspect those would were early adopters, but found 70-100 miles a day was either not enough, or causing battery issues due to regularly taking below 20-30%, have given up and gone back to ICE.  And then the arse has dropped out of it.

In these parts, we're mostly either London or Brum commuters.  Both of which are 75 miles each way. 7kW home chargers aren't sufficient.

Assuming you can charge for 12 hours each day (full charge) that would mean 7 hours of cheap leccy and 5 hours of standard rate electricity......currently around 28p KW hour plus VAT form Octopussy.

Anyone good at maths?

Assuming 8p per KWh off peak...
((5h * 0.28p/KWh) + (7h * 0.08p/KWh)) * 7KWh = £13.72. Plus VAT @ 5% = £14.40

So sub £15 if you can charge at home, and do less than 200 miles per trip or per day.  Works for a shopping trolley and school run mumsy bus.

24

General Car Chat / Re: Further drop in cost of a new leccy Jag.

« on: 10 January 2025, 10:50:29 »

There is something wrong with that Autotrader calculation.

2.3Kw to 100% = 43h
7.4Kw to 100% = 12h36
22Kw to 100% = 9h18
50Kw to 80% = 1h25
100Kw to 80% = 0h50

The 22Kw figure makes no sense. I think the car has a 90KWh battery. You are much more likely to charge it to 100% at home. So 90KWh/2.3Kw = 39 hours, right sort of ballpark. 90KWh/7.4Kw = 12.16h, again about right. 90KWh/22Kw = 4.09 hours, so should be more like 4.5 hours.

If you're going on a long trip you typically plan to get down to about 10% charge, and then charge them back up to 80%.  The batteries do not charge at a constant rate - the charging starts to tail off once you go past 50-60% charge, and the bit between 90% and 100% takes forever. So it is usually quicker to stop again and take two 45% charges rather than one 90% charge.

However, what this really means is that the advertised 100%-0% range of 279 miles is in reality a 100%-10% range of 250 miles for the first stint (starting from home), and then subsequent stints of sub 200 miles (80%-10%), and stops of around and hour to charge in between. And that's assuming the 279 mile range is realistic in the first place, which it probably isn't.

An 600 mile trip therefore typically needs 3 charges, so 3 hours. Most petrol cars can do the trip with one stop for fuel (say 15 minutes), and a Diesel car could probably do it without stopping at all.

25

General Discussion Area / Re: Immigrants

« on: 09 January 2025, 17:45:23 »

I feel like I'm being cancelled/gas-lit/dog-whistled. Who do I complain to and what letter do I need to claim to be (gender wise) in order for anyone to take my complaint seriously?

26

General Discussion Area / Re: Trump One

« on: 08 January 2025, 20:07:31 »

Re Greenland, I expect a deal will be done with the Danish Govt for a nice big US military base there to keep an eye on the Arctic. 

Although with Global Warming Climate Change maybe it will be possible to grow crops there again in the future as the Vikings did during the Medieval Warm Period, and the Orange One is just planning ahead?        

For the future , there is a lot of mineral wealth as yet untapped.

So when Trump uses military force to take Greenland, NATO would trigger article 42.7 and come to the defence. The USA is a member of NATO and would be duty bound to come to the defence too. I guess Trump would divide his forces in two. Half on the attack and half for defence.

I agree though . A nice big military base or two on long leases and dropping punitive taxes for the EU oh and a pardon for Macron and Sarkozy and Starmer..

There are already 3 or 4 very large US military bases on Greenland - there have been US bombers deployed there in the very recent past.

Article 42.7 is an EU thing, not NATO.

Article 5 is probably what you're thinking of wrt NATO. However, the agreement doesn't explicitly cover an attack by one member of NATO on another. Turkey and Greece are basically at war with each other.

27

General Discussion Area / Re: Immigrants

« on: 06 January 2025, 15:57:28 »

Fine, swipe your card to get into the building or join the queue around it.

So you are advocating that everybody - legal or illegal, born here or born abroad - be issued with an ID card which gives them access to UK services? And must be carried at all times under penalty (of what)?

Can't see any govt going for that.

28

General Discussion Area / Re: Immigrants

« on: 06 January 2025, 15:49:27 »

Being born somewhere, or not, is largely irrelevant. Presumably the people you mentioned reside in the UK legally.

Migv6 said "I dont see any reason why people who live in the UK but werent born here cant be made to carry identity cards.". The people I listed fall into that category.

Identity cards would imply some form of formal registration of otherwise undocumented people. Although you might argue that with formal registration comes DNA and fingerprint databases for everyone at the point of registration. Most people would be just as wary about that as they are about the idea of literally stopping the boats rather than encouraging them.

But how does it stop someone accessing the NHS or other services, unless everyone must have that ID? Even then, Doctors, Nurses and Ambulance people don't want to be checking ID's before offering A&E care, so to do that you'd end up introducing yet another layer of non productive managment and admin types into the NHS structure.

29

General Discussion Area / Re: Immigrants

« on: 06 January 2025, 00:16:23 »

I dont see any reason why people who live in the UK but werent born here cant be made to carry identity cards.
Then the authorities would have some chance of actually finding out who should and shouldnt be in the country, which would be a start, compared to where we are now.
I have a suspicion though that the authorities dont actually want to know. If they knew the size of the problem they might actually have to try and do something about it.

They do this elsewhere, but it does automatically allow access to the system. That said, here they get that perk without being traceable, so perhaps there's mileage to the concept.

How? If the idea is to stop illegal immigrants gaining access to NHS services, then unless you make everyone carry ID, they'd just claim to be British (and thus not need ID) and we'd be no further forward.

Also remember, Boris Johnson wasn't born "here", Joanna Lumley wasn't born "here", and I'm sure lots of other prominent UK residents were not born here either.

30

General Discussion Area / Re: Typical...

« on: 31 December 2024, 22:20:02 »

Not familiar with your boiler. On mine, (an Ecofit 412) the LCD display is permanently on, but to get the backlight to light you have to push any of the front panel buttons.

If the display isn't lighting up or showing anything then I'd be looking for an electrical fault in the mains supply to it. Either an isolating on-off switch somewhere (there should be one) or a fuse/circuit breaker.  But you say the pump is working, so perhaps not.