mercuryg

It's a lovely idea, and one that would make things much more viable, but still doesn't get away from the fact that simply 'dropping a battery in place' is a far cry from what is needed. Have you any idea how many batteries these things actually use? There is some truth in this, but when taken in the context of the 100 years it doesn't add up. Granted, these days the fuel companies have a stranglehold - but the reason is more that they have something essential, not that they are stifling the development of alternative fuels. When Jenatzy made his breakthrough in 1899 there were no major fuel companies with their hands around the necks of alternative fuel proponents. If you take that further, the power that the fuel comapnies now hold over us did not manifest in any serious way until the middle of the 1960's. Despite people's ignorance to the matter the electric car has been a subject of great interest for all of that time, and was particularly during the period 1930 to 1950 when serious problems with accessibility to fossil fuels were very real indeed. Some of the technological advances that took place in that time (particularly during the war years) were quite astonishing and developed much, much faster than they should have. The electric car, or electric propulsion systems in general got where? Nowhere. There ar many reasons, not least the inherent reliability on inefficient, expensive and difficult to store battery dependant electricity. Shot yourself in the foot a bit there, mate; the ban on smoking in pubs has resulted in a colossal reduction in tobacco sales. That's a different matter, though.

A good point, but one that needs greater scrutiny. Transporting electricity across the grid is not efficient at all, and never will be. A great proportion of it gets 'lost' along the way. As a demonstration, build yourself a massive scalextric set or electric railway, and you will need to boost the power at various points around the circuit as it does not travel well. The same happens with power lines - it dissipates with distance. This is a point that will always be with us, however, for we no other methods of transporting electricity - bar batteries, which have the same problem and more! The idea for more 'advanced' power generation techniques is great, but what are they, where are they, and what do they cost?

I wouldn't be telling Mrs Vic to Get Them Off; she probably will.

You are joking? You don't have to buy floor mats; you need the charger. Come on, get sensible mate! But you ARE being stung for a new battery every 50,000 miles (probably less.) That is the biggest cop out i've ever read. How can you say that how the the power is generated is 'another conversation'? It's not! It's an integral part of the problem. Far from being 'non polluting' electric cars use 1)batteries that contain very dangerous pollutants and 2) need electricity, which needs to be generated, and which cannot be entirely generated by non-polluting means. Far from being very efficient, it's not efficient at all - what it needs to achieve its prupose is far in excess of even a standard internal combustion engine, never mind an advanced one: even the industry acknowledge this. This is getting a bit boring with just you and me batting things around, and I wish others would pitch in because it's an important argument; we DO need to look at the future, but we need to recognise when something is not the answer and stop pursuing expensive dead ends. Electric, battery powered cars are very much a dead end, which is why - despite a hundred years of development - they have got absolutely nowhere. Here's a clue; the first car to pass 100kmh was driven by a pioneer of motoring, Camille Jenatzy, in 1899. That's 110 years ago. It was electric, for back then even the great minds were looking for ways to superceded the internal combustion engine. he did 65 mph and took the then world land speed record. 110 years ago, and where has the electric car gone since then? Into oblivion, that's where. What needs to be looked at, as has already been said, is the advancement of synthetic fuels for IC engines (these exist already in basic forms) for these WILL be non polluting, and willenhance the efficiency of the already efficient IC engine. There are enough problems with generating sufficient electricity worldwide without having to tax ourselves by adding tens of millions of motor vehicles to the list! It's a non starter.

And you ask me if i'm for real? beyond reading about the Tesla and ogling over its admittedly great looks, have you actually considered the implications of running an electric car? You full charge on $5 is at US electricty prices; given the average day/night kw/h price over there is currently around 8.5c, and ours is around 11p, you can see where the problems set in. Furthemore, you clearly haven't got much idea about the battery situation. Very few electric cars come complete with batteries because they are very, very expensive: instead the norm is to lease them. You pay for them, in other words, on a monthly basis. This costs anywhere between £60 and £100 (or more, depending on your vehicle, considerably more in the case of the Tesla!) per month. That's a minimum of £700 quid a year. Given that the saving on fuel costs alone - at current US rates, not UK - is estimated at around £800, the chances are your electric car is going to cost more, not get you as far, and be more expensive to purchase than its equivalent in the first place. In addition, your 230 (miles or kilometres?) is at an optimum speed, just as mpg figures are quoted as an average. In addition, if you want a fast charging point - not everybody, after all, can get all their journeys in in one go - it will cost you at the bare minimum £2000; for the three and a half hour quoted charging time for the Tesla it's at least three times that. The conversation we are having here simply highlights how little the genral populace know about electric cars; you accused me of towing the oil compaines line (then later informed me BP are pessimistic about its future) while blindly take in all teh information about running costs and efficiency of electric cars without questions? They're not efficient, they are not 'non polluting', thy are not cheap. Electricity, in its current battery form, is a blind alley; if you want to look to the future try investigating the hydrogen fuel cell method, but even that is littered with major problems. For the meant8ime, we're stuck with the ICE, and making it as efficient as possible is the way forward for now.

This I agree with, and sorry I seemed to skirt around your point earlier. i won't name my business advisor for that would be unfair - he has been absolutely excellent in the help he has given me and so on - but he was, quite clearly, a man from the 'old school'. No disrespect to him for that, for it's to be expected to an extent, but his job involves talking to schoolkids and such about going into business, and the intention is to inspire youngsters to look at alternative employemnt -self employment -in the future. he fully admitted to me that he had absolutely no idea what I was on about when I went to him with my proposal; the internet, and it's commercial power, had clearly not permeated the world of Go Wansbeck to a sufficient degree. The majority of his business start ups were, after all, hairdressers, painters and decorators, and the like - traditional businesses and, if I may say without insult many of you, very 'northern' too. He has, I must say, many successful start ups in these areas, but I did broach with him the merit of forwarding funds to yet another hairdresser; off teh record, he agreed, but it's not his choice, it's the choice of a board and his job is simply to mentor these new businesses. Not knocking hairdressers - I have a cousin who's been in teh business in this town for decadeas and does very well - but there are only so many heads! If there's anyone out there who wants to look at starting in businss i'm more than willing to advise them on the route to take; I would also advise them to do it NOW for funding is likely to be gone in two years, thanks to the new council shake up, and with no visibl plans to replace Go Wansbeck (just as Wansbeck works has gone by the wayside). If you have an idea, it's worth pursuing; mine is low overheads (a computer, broadband, office) and relatively high profit. The future may not be entirely internet based, but when you consider that global advertising expenditure on the net overtook the traditional methods for the first time this year you have a clue. feel free to contact me if you need advice - i'm up for helping any prospective hairdressers, painters, or undertakers (now there's a profession that will never die....)

Oh it's pretty, Monsta, but what does it cost, and why does it cost that? How far does it go? What's it's annual running cost? Where does that electricity come from? The tesla is less efficient than a future IC engine will be; it's a red herring, as all electric cars are.

Yes, i'm for real. What is the average range, fully charged, of an Electric car these days? When were they first developed? How much electricity does it take to power one? How many batteries are needed? How long do those batteries last? What materials are needed to make the batteries? How do we create the power to charge up a country full of electric cars? How is it possible to use alternative energy sources to power a country full of electric cars when its well known we can't power the countruies homes that way? Why, after so long, has the electric car not become de riguer as, after all, the oil companies make billions supplying the fossil fuels for our power stations? It's not as simple as 'Oh, great, we'll all build electric piowers and charge them up by windmill' - I wish it was, but it's not, and it never will be. When I finished school in, let me see, 1982 I was told that there would be no oil left in thirty years. Now we're told there will be no oil left in thirty years, or twenty, or fifty, or a hundred, depending on who you read. Furthermore, the hyper efficient IC engine does not necessarily need out-of-the-ground oil; there is already a prevalence of synthetic oil for lubrication, and the oil companies are working hard to produce synthetic fuels for the later range of efficient internal combustion engines. meanwhile, the electric car of nowadays is no more efficient, cheap, or less polluting than those of fifty years ago. We haven't moved on since the milk float, and until - unless - someone comes up with a super efficient battery storage system that is big and powerful enough to power a car, doesn't involve the use of expensive exotic materials, and so on - and lets face it, they've been trying for a hundred years - we are not going to move on from the milk float. The electric car is a red herring, which is precisely why the current raft of 'energy efficient' vehicles are hybrids.

With respect, I think that a misguided response. Ideas do not simply become workable businesses without means, and many people do not have the means. Granted, this doesn't explain why we have a glut of hairdressers (although the lack of smaller retail units is easily explained by the ugly behemoth on the market place). "If you go into any of these business advisory services like Business Link help is usual only available if you can provide business plans, five year forecasts and case studies." Of course it is; someone comes to you and says 'i've got this great idea, it's going to make loads of money' and you give them it, do you? Come on, be real. I began my own business this year, in March. It's something completely at odds with the usual local start ups, and to be absolutely honest the advisors at Go Wansbeck and Wansbeck Works didn't quite understand what I was intending. They helped me - for nothing - to draft a businss plan (simple, really, it's just what you are going to do, who is going to buy it, and how much it will cost and sell for, and when) and put my project to their relevant boards. I needed £1500 - I got it. I didn't need a five year plan, and I didn't need case studies. Help is there if you want it, but it follows that the likes of Go Wansbeck (WW no longer exists) will be more willing to finance straightforward ideas - such as hairdressers - rather than off the wall ones.

"we need somewhere where we can 'hang out' without being moved," But you can do that outside anywhere so long as you're not causing bother! The problem is that the minority you mention DO cause bother. "Most of time, its people rebelling." This is wht I don't get, though - rebelling against what? "back when you were younger, the roads were safer so we could play football, now lunatics go speeding around" I was brought up in an area with much more traffic and a much bigger population than this as it happens, but that's beside the point. "that answer relies on providing these people a better alternative to where they are and what they are doing now!" Partly, yes, but it also lies partly in trying to restore the values that the older generations were imbued with. An example, and this ties in with the comments about graffitti and such in another thread: yesterday, Sunday afternoon, I watched a few youngsters on bikes on the new market place. I know they're not meant to ride there, but I wasn't complaining, they were'nt causing any bother, they were keeping out of the way and the place was dead. What struck me was this - despite hem all, four or five, sitting on these bikes right next to the new benches and bins they all proceeded to drop their crisp packets or whatever on the ground. Why? Why not put them in the bin, right next to them? Where does that attitude begin? How has it come about? Does it cost anything to use the bin? Is there some sort of social stigma attached to using a bin? It makes no sense to me whatsoever, and while to you (and Monsta) it may seem like a trivial think, it's not, because this is where the sort of breakdown in social attitude begins - with minor, simple things that to me and my kin would have seemed at odds. I was no angel, and neither were my friends, but to be frank we'd have thought someone deciding to drop rubbish on the floor when stood next to a bin a bit stupid! The incident makes me ask this: we give those kids somewhere to go, to hang out, without being moved, whatever, and would they look after it? When they can't even be bothered to move six inches and use a bin? "P.S. there is only 1 social every 2 months, and its because people like those who hassle Jester go there that i dont." fair enough: i'm not getting at you personally, understand, just replying to your posts.

Afraid it's not. Electric cars are inefficient, expensive to make and completely reliant on power being generated from alternative means. They are, in truth, no less polluting than modern petrol or diesel vehicles. There is a very good reason why the internal combustion engine still holds sway: because it's the best way of powering road going vehicles. Rather than concentrating on heavy, battery laden electric vehicles which ahve been proven time and time again to be a red herring, the motor industry is - somewhat quietly - looking towards super efficient small capacity engines that include high tech supercharging methods; these are very impressive in terms of CO2 output (so little will emerge that all the trees will die) and don't need plugging in to charge up every night, thus causing a massive surge in electricity requirements when ten million people replenish their batteries every night (try building enough wind farms to deal with that, then.)

I'm not sure that's the problem: how many types of viable businesses can someone who wants to be self employed conceivably set up these days?

Toby, Great response and interesting to hear from someone with a current insight into the 'youth problem'. You raise some great points, but also miss some: while I fully understand you have - or had - 'nowhere to go' you clearly point out, conversely, that that is not the case. You have a home - granted, your parents like their privacy - and you have friends, and you have sixth form socials, which you choose not to attend. Quite why is your choice, but it does draw some questions. I can clearly see how you're frustrated at being glowered at by old ladies; I walk down the street in my full length black leather winter coat and they glower at me, and i'm 45! You're in the majority, for the majority of 'kids' - I use the term to describe a wide range of the younger generations, and without prejudice or other - are great, enjoyable and truly lovely people: I know, I work with many occasionally, have been involved with employing youngsters, and know a great number of the local youth through friends and family. The minority, which you rightly poin out are those who the likes of Jester has a problem with, are a true minority, and that is something we should be thankful for. Before I conclude I would like to draw your attention to this: "As i was growing up, if i had a centeral place where i could 'hang out' and somewhere where my parents will believe i am safe, i would have been alot more comftorable in groups my age " The problem I have is this: when I was growing up I didn;t have anywhere sich as you describe, those that followed me didn't, those that preceded me didn't, and so on. What's changed? What is it that this generation 'need' that we didn't?

What was said was that 90% of 'climate researchers' believe; how one defines a climate researcher i'm not sure, but it's safe to say the spread among those who do agree is varied. This is a particular bugbear of mine - not that climate change (note the non-use, these days, of 'Global warming') is happening, for it is, but that we, the human race, are solely responsible for it. Logically, we can't be, for without going into the details here - I don't have them to hand admittedly - the figures simply don't add up. Schoolkids these days are being fed the line that leaving a light bulb on at home kills a polar bear; it might if its a new fangled low energy one and the poor bear eats it, but otherwise it's !*!@# . I'm a known and hardened skeptic - i simply don't believe the !*!@# we're being fed.

Budget? What budget does it take to paint over a few bits of dodgy graffiti? How much does a community service bod cost? If your ideal is that we tolerate it, it will get worse. As for doing it ourselves, we'd probably be done for defacing public property!

With due respect, and while i agree it's 'not that bad', this is the sort of attitude that is part and parcel of the problem; or is it simply the complacency of modern man? Deeming that spraying obscenities on fences, signs and walls is in some way 'acceptable' 9and from your post i'm in two minds as to whether you think it is) is a sign of the times, surely? The thing is, not only is it not acceptable, but it's easily rectified. I must admit to being an avbid reader of graffiti - when it's funny (the eternal 'Poo' on the way down the bank gets me every time) but that such stays there for so long, as do the instances mentioned by the original poster, is curious to say the least. Mayor Guiliani, when in charge of New York, began his crackdown on crime in that city with th 'broken window' approach: no longer were the minor, seemingly irrelevant problems left to fester, they were dealt with straight away. Bedlington is, however you look at it, rife with graffiti that has been there for years - where are the community service bods with their whitewash? It doesn't take all of us to buck up our ideas, but it only takes a few thinking 'well, it's not that bad' to leave it as it is.

Absolutely; couldn't agree more. What I have found to be of interest - in particular in the past year or so - is the way the demographic on Facebook has shifted. Personally, i've noticed an increase in 'older' participants - and I mean 40 plus - which I initially put down to me communicating with those of my own age group. Research has proven, however, that i'm not wrong - there is a shift to the more mature user. It must be cafe world. Love the snow, by the way.

Facebook itself will, as I said, be replaced by 'new improved' versions of similar resources. The future of communication, as I believe you know, is in the area we are looking at with Facebook - and similar - now, and these are developing and still very young areas of the genre. I'm not saying Facebook is the be all and end all, but that it represents something that is very much of the moment, and is a blueprint for future advances. With respect, I disagree. There is - and was - a massive difference between the concept behind FR and that behind facebook. The former had a very limited appeal, as you rightly acknowledge. I couldn't agree more, but there are problems with your assurance - and again no offence - that it is in the 'true spirit of the original internet'. That spirit, that original, is gone. The future is very different. Far from saying that the future does not incorporate sites such as this, it does: as mentioned elsewhere I run a website with a very specific audience, too, and understand the limitations when faced with the global behemoths that inhabit this world. I agree, however, that it is easier to see the point of this than it is of Facebook, but that is something that will change as the world does. An aside - during the coverage of the recent floods in Cockermouth local news took in a piece about a woman, hundred and odd years old, going back to her now condemned flat to recover her belongings: dear to her was her PC. As to: "I've also had a number of discussions with councillors today who are keen to embrace it and want to work with the site on future issues so it's all looking very promising indeed." Brilliant. This is what its all about.

As I think I might have touched on in the other post, this is not something that should be blindly accepted - no offence, 3G, but something that needs to be addressed. That these people see 'no point' in posting on Facebook is a problem that it is necessary to overcome. Facebook is not a fad, it's not a here today/gone tomorrow youngsters game, it's a blueprint for the future of internet - and general - communication. Granted, it's not perfect, but it's a workable idea that has many imitators, and will only become defunct when something better, and easier, comes along. perhaps those who see no point in posting on Facebook - and i'm talking of those you refer to who make things happen - need to take a closer look at what it's about, and what it can achieve; I speak as one who has, and has had their eyes opened to a great degree. This is a great website - I enjoy it very much and it speaks to a clear and defined audience - but it will never have the cache or the reach that something like Facebook does; i'm involved in instructing businesses how to use Facebook, and similar, to achieve results, and believe me, the number of those who 'see no point' yet end up getting it is quite astonishing. As for the Summer Fair, great idea, but is it viable? These days of massive insurance policies for such things have put paid - in many cases - to such events, and there is little that even Facebook can do about that. Still, let's push it, and let's see if we can make it happen. Need any help, i'm up for it.

Interesting discussion. As someone who works in internet marketing and promotion I can see both sides of the story. I'm no computer savvy kid but a 45 year old bloke who knows how to turn a computer on, send emails, and write words. I couldn't programme if my life depended upon it, and haven't a clue what binary is. the thing is I don't need to know any of that to see what is happening; someone asked 'what happened to the telephone?' - it's there, in everyone's pocket, portable and in most cases internet ready. That's how communication is going, that's how it's going to develop. I use Facebook as both a leisure tool and a way of keeping in touch with people across the country without incurring costs that might otherwise be there - I use email the same way. I'm also deaf, and being able to communicate without using a phone is a Godsend in many ways. However, back to the point, and while I understand 4g's comments about Facebook not being good for collaboration, that is something that should be addressed with the originators. I would venture that, thanks to facebook and the events of the last two weeks, this website has recieved a great deal of exposure that is valuable. That people have to sign up for a Facebook account to read what's going on there is surely neither here nor there - it's a free, five minute job and, after all, yo have to sign up here, too, to participate. Personally, I think Twitter is doomed to failure: it's limited and restricted, and has 'fad' written all over it, but that's another story. I hope that the recent publicity has imbued local people with a sense of what this website is all about, and that discussions such as this continue and add to the purpose of what is a very worthwhile forum and portal. Build on it, and who knows what can be achieved, but keep it's profile high on the likes of Facebook, as that's where the popular vote will come from.

Brilliant band - great foot tapping stuff and much fun.

Absolutely brilliant! Well done to Sian and Andrew for such a protracted campaign - people power!

I was going to enquire about my good friend Mrs Vic as it happens, good point.

yeah, you get interesat at what - half a percent or something? You know what the banks keep? I don't think Somalian pirates are turning to piracy because of the dire economic status of their country, but because they see rich pickings in the busy seaways off their coast. To be a pirate, after all, you need a boat, arms, and so on, and the tools of piracy are not available to the average Somalian who is starving and destitute. For the record, it might not have occured to you but the reason this country - the UK - is bankrupt (and it is)is down almost entirely to the banks.

I hate to tell you this, but banks don't give you money. You have to give it to them, they invest it, lose a fortune, and then tell you its all gone.