You learn something every day (law)

By my age people usually have a reasonable grip on how things work, in this case basics like contracts and law. No, I don't know every law (even though I am, in theory, expected to!).

But one principle which I thought I knew was that it is the person that breaks the law that gets punished, not someone else. Yes, there are situations where another person may also break a law by "conspiring" and so on, but I mean a case where one person is punished for another person's wrongdoing, when the first person played no part in it, did not encourage it, and was not even aware of the wrong doing having happened.

Being the "keeper" of a motor vehicle has various responsibilities. These include things like paying Vehicle Excise Duty, ensuring the vehicle is insured or SORN, etc, etc.

It is not the same as being the "owner" or the "driver", although in a lot of cases all there are the same person.

But even as a "keeper", and even with those responsibilities, you are not liable for the actions of the "driver". If a "driver" speeds, your responsibility is to say who the driver is when asked. That is what being "keeper" requires. This fits with the notion that you are not responsible for someone else's wrongdoing.

Even if you don't say who was driver, unless the vehicle was taken without consent or some other excuse, you can be punished (fined), but your are punished for not saying who the driver is. You are not punished for what the driver did. Indeed, in some cases, such as where a vehicle has a company as a keeper, it can be a lesser penalty (just a fine) to deliberately not say who the driver is. Doing so deliberately could be perverting the course of justice, but hard to prove.

This even applies to things like "contracts" for parking. The driver enters in to the contract, not the keeper. The keeper plays a part in tracking down the driver - the parking firm can ask who the driver was, but it is the driver that entered in to a contract (and presumably did not follow the agreed terms, creating a charge).

However, to my utter surprise, there is an exception.

It seems you can be liable to a penalty for something which someone else does, that you did not do, did not condone or encourage, did not even know about. And indeed, the person that did the wrongdoing is not liable in these case.

Congestion charges

Yes, that seems completely crazy to me, it seems to be a broken law. Indeed, I would hope one day someone challenges it. It breaks an important principle that you are not another persons "keeper" (even if you are a keeper of a car).

For congestion charge penalties the keeper is liable, expect for a few special cases. Not being the "driver" is not one of them.

Now, some have argued that congestion charge is not a penalty, it is a road usage fee, much like VED. Which is fair enough. And a responsibility to pay for that being with the keeper is not perhaps that unreasonable. You pay to allow the car to be used in the congestion zone, much like paying VED.

The issue is when someone drives in to a congestion zone without paying the congestion charge. It is the "driver" that did the wrong thing here, very clearly, not the keeper, I feel.

Yet, surprising, the penalty for this wrong doing falls on the keeper, and not the driver. The keeper cannot pass this on by reporting who the driver was. That is crazy.

How is that not a seriously broken law?

No consent

There is a way out, but not nice. There are special cases for hire companies, but not simply lending your car to a mate. For that you could make it clear they have to ensure congestion charges are paid as a condition of "consent" to drive the car. Perhaps a card on the dash board or a recorded conversation so you can prove it. If you can show the driver was driving without consent then the keeper is no longer liable. The catch is that immediately makes the driver liable to criminal charges for driving without consent. This is very different, you don't give a driver "consent" to speed, for example and it is not assumed you did, so the driver is liable. Why would driving in to a congestion zone be any different?

Windows update

This is likely to be the last home improvement for a while - when we moved we planned, and budgeted for, a few things, and have got to the end of that list. But this is finally a windows update.

As people ask, why and how much: The why is that old windows that came with the house are somewhat cheap and nasty, and I wanted acoustic glass to offer some sound dampening. We will see how that goes, as living on the A40 gets annoying (yes, people have worked out where I live now). I also wanted more protection from sun, especially for my office, and improved privacy, with mirror film (at front of house). How much? Around £800/window on average, including the mirror film, acoustic glass, frames and new windowsills.

The new windows are different...

Old

New

We went for brown, to fit with the wood doors and porch. But you will also notice, for example, that this window is not split in the middle now - why? Well, to be a fire escape for a bedroom the opening window has to be a certain width, and they were not before. Indeed, it seems most of the bedroom windows were not up to code - big surprise. ("fire escape" is more for firemen or someone else with a ladder, rather than jumping out from 2nd floor).

The company we used have been amazingly good - very neat and tidy - attention to detail. Small company in Cardiff. Centric Home Improvements. Well worth a recommendation for South Wales.

Leaving things neat and tidy

The whole job is taking a week, which is not surprising for a house of this size. But then the windows update will be complete, and...

Battery pack

I have several battery packs, various types, sat in a box here. I had not touched them for neatly 2 years. You know the sort of thing - battery with USB, so can be used to power/charge a phone, etc. Generally useful things. I had cause to use one, because something else (an endoscope) which had been in a box for 6 months, had a flat battery.

Obviously these various battery packs were now all flat. One of the reasons for a battery back is for when you suddenly find you need portable power for something like this.

All flat, except one!

I can only assume it was getting enough light from my office lights, even in a clear plastic box, to actually stay charged. It seems happy to charge from my office lights (LED panels). This is crazy!

It looks like Amazon still sell some like this, Blavor brand. They seem to have improved a bit.

The fact it was there for me, when I needed it, is worthy of a recommendation, I think.

But just think, right now, sunshine is charging a Tesla battery, that is powering the house, including my LED lighting panels, that are charging this.

P.S. Holy crap, I only just realised it does inductive charging as well, wow.

Latest recipe tips

My recipe tips have been few and far between, I know.

So, my latest tip is that Cathedral City cheese have launched a number of nice frozen meals, via Iceland (and I don't know if others). What makes them special is they are normal things, like "Mac 'n' Cheese" or "Lasagne", or "Cheesy bites". Meals that are common and where the "cheese" is usually somewhat "incidental". But they have made them where the cheese is their distinctive Cathedral City cheese and so made that the key feature of the meal. And it so works, and makes them so nice.

I am impressed. They are really nice. The "Mac'n'Cheese", and "Mac'n'Cheese with bacon", especially so. The lasagne seems lacking in meat, but I have only tried one so far, so we will see. The cheesy bites are what they say, and lovely.

But there is, perhaps, a trick they are missing, or those buying these meals may be missing, so this is my recipe tip...

Marmite!

Oh my! The "Mac'n'Cheese" but with Marmite. I don't know what to say. That is amazing! Really. This is food heaven. ★★★★★★ out of 5 stars. What can I say?

(Thanks Ruth for suggesting it, and no idea how I did not work that out for myself, and thanks to my wife Sandra for making it).

Current clamps

Fun! When I first set up the current clamps, I could not make the figures match my electricity meter.

The comments from "the Internet" were "power factor". And so I assumed this was the issue - that the tasmota stuff was giving me reading that I needed to adjust for the power factor (which it also gives me). This did seem to make things match much better.

I believe I was wrong! It looks like the issue is calibration. The instructions for tasmota do say to calibrate, but an initial test I did with a simple hot air gun showed it using about the rating it said it has. So I figured the chips were close enough.

But no. It seems not. And the power factor fudge was wrong, and unnecessary.

So I got a "resistive load" to test. Look them up, they cost thousands. Unless you just get a two bar fire from Screwfix for £14.99...

Having a power factor of 1.00 I was able to more accurately measure voltage and current and confirm the settings and calibrate the power meter. It confirmed that it was about 25% out.

The result is that now, without trying to apply power factor stuff, I get spot on 220W for my network stuff, which is what I added it up to. And the power usage totals over night by the hour match my electricity meter almost spot on.

This makes me happy as the reported power factor for my network stuff was 0.6, which means I was expanding the usage way more. In practice the usage is not bad at only 220W. Yay!

Geek energy saving (SFW cabling porn)

Obviously, like most people (LOL) I have a small 19" rack at home, in the loft. And obviously I am concerned over energy usage, so looking at what it actually uses.

I used to have an 8 port PoE switch, then two 8 port PoE switches, and then it was up to 4 of them... I have recently replaced with a single 48 port PoE switch (+2x10G) from FS. Not cheap, but ironically cheaper than the 4 switches I had before. In practice I have a dozen PoE devices, but having every port PoE capable just makes things simpler. My work linux server is in the rack too, and recently upgraded (which saved some power). It all looks pretty neat now.

I just used a cheap in-line power meter plug from amazon. It gives me a good idea what uses what, at least in relative terms. So here is the breakdown of what it shows - for normal usage levels.

• 9W BT fibre NTE
• 3W VDSL model (backup internet)
• 5W FireBrick FB2900
• 5W FireBrick FB2900
• 14W Power supply working various doors and environmental sensors around the house
• 4W Raspberry Pi
• 36W CCTV recording box (has actual hard drives!)
• 25W Main linux server (when idle)
• 118W Switch with PoE devices

The switch is the interesting one, of course. It claims to be supplying 60W for various PoE devices, so is using only 58W itself. The PoE includes CCTV, Access Points, Small switches behind TVs, Phones, etc.

This adds up to about 220W, which does not quite match what my current clamp on the circuit is seeing, but I cannot be 100% sure my current clamps are right either. So let's assume the 220W is right.

So how does that relate to cost? Well, 100W would be 2.4kWh a day, and 57p for October pricing. So 100W is around £1.37 a day, or roughly £500 a year. That makes it simple, each W is around £5 a year. It does put things in to perspective.

If this was business premises, we'd be doubling those figures yet again.

Of course, in my case, a lot of electricity is from solar, and I should soon have the remaining electricity on a saner tariff (because of solar and battery).

Not saving energy

This is from Boris Johnson...

Boris Johnson - Buy a new kettle & save £10 a year on your electricity bill. 👀 pic.twitter.com/IMtIiwJk4k

— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) September 1, 2022

Please can we have competent people running the country, just some times?

So, let's explain...

• An electric heating element, even in an old kettle, is 100% efficient at turning electricity in to heat. All the power used goes to heat. There is no "waste" due to being "inefficient" as waste is heat. [pedants: some very small part may go to light or sound]
• Yes, some of the heat may not go directly in to the water - e.g. the body of the kettle, and the air. A more modern kettle may have a body that holds less energy, depending on the material (e.g. plastic not metal, etc). Again, this is a small part of what is used. Most goes in to the water.
• Being "slow", so taking longer to boil, does not change that - it means that it is using less power (for longer time), but the total will be the same. There is an amount of energy needed to raise a volume of water by an amount of temperature - simple physics. The electrically energy is turned in to heat in the water. For the same volume of water getting hot by the same amount the energy used is the same.
• Even if it was true (LOL), spending £20 to save £10 a year is hardly a newsworthy, or even useful, "tip" in this cost of living crisis - they seriously have no fucking clue do they?

What can help?

Old kettles used to have an element in the water at the bottom, and this had to be covered. It meant the minimum you could boil was more than one cup worth. This is wasted if only making one cup of coffee and leaving the water to go cold*.

New kettles often have an element in the base allowing you to only boil what you need, even if only one cup. That can cut down the power usage for each cup of coffee*.

* Such savings are less useful than they sound as that wasted energy, e.g. leaving a hot kettle of water to cool after making only one cup of coffee - ends up heating your house anyway. It is power used for something useful. It may not be as cheap as gas central heating or overnight storage heating, but it is power used to heat your house, so not entirely wasted in winter.

P.S. It gets worse!

If the walls are well enough insulated, which they should be in a modern house, this makes fuck all difference. Yet again, a basically lack of understanding, and yet again a total waste of time against the costs families are facing, they are fighting fire with water pistols, no - with eye droppers, empty eye droppers!

Martin Lewis’s face when she brings out the fucking tin foil pic.twitter.com/NGW8qou5r9

— James Felton (@JimMFelton) September 5, 2022