The grumpy thread

[cort16]

What's the horror?

 

Bare wires covered in a single strip of insulation tape disappearing into the wall. Okay then I'll just screw this back on and walk away.

[cort16]

^^ I'm a sparky and you've landed with a real bastard of a situation there. At least it could be if you absolutely must have faceplates flush with the wall. Don't try to alter the steel conduit, far more trouble than it's worth, and butchered plastic back-boxes behind the fittings throughout the house is definitely a no-no.

 

Easiest solution is to fit "extra shallow" 1-gang square surface-mount boxes which screw onto the face of the wall over the existing round box and hole. Very easy to do but you do need to have (or extend) a bit of spare cable to reach the switch terminals. Extra shallow boxes are only 16mm deep rather than standard ones which I think are about 30mm.

 

Metal faceplates on white plastic back boxes might look a bit unusual to some but lots of people couldn't give a fk about it. I'd prefer white plastic faceplates but your choice. Often only a sparky would notice it. But ffs do mount the flush boxes level or it will look mega shit.

If you do fit metal faceplates you MUST earth the faceplate, leave the existing earth wire connected to the conduit as it's earthing the conduit in case the conduit is broken somewhere further back and take a new earth wire from the conduit to the faceplate.

 

You can do it, don't panic! Check with your sparky if he's coming round anyway.

 

I wish I'd just bought decent plastic ones now the metal ones are already dirty and seem impossible to clean.

 

 

 

If you do fit metal faceplates you MUST earth the faceplate, 

 

Hadn't done this. This is why it's best I get in an electrician.

[Pillock]

500000 signatures in support of uber. This country is definately 60 million people racing to the bottom. I hope all those that signed because black cabs are more expensive all end up working for the gig economy.

 

They'll get no sympathy from me.

 

How about because they don't want London to be a test case and suddenly Uber is banned across the country? Can I get a black cab to my house? No, I can't. I can get a minicab if I phone up and speak to someone who will lie through their teeth to me about it being 2 minutes away, and then the driver will charge what he wants by going the long way. Or I can get an Uber which is tracked, the price is quoted in advance, and I can pay with my phone.

 

That's the other thing I don't understand, minicabs have been around for donkeys years. Uber is just a way of summoning the same thing, and has a few nice features on top like ride sharing and reviews.

 

You struggle to get a black cab anywhere apart from popular touristy places in London anyway. Yes there's tens of thousands of drivers, but they're all waiting outside Euston when actually I'd quite like something a bit nearer me.

 

Black cabs only take card payments because firms like Uber did, they're playing catch-up.

[Guest Hooli]

Taxis, private hire etc are all a bloody rip off anyway. I've used them about three times in my life & one of those was over £5 to travel about 3miles back in the 90s, in a bloody Lada ffs.

 

The sooner the whole lot go out of the business the better. They spend all day ripping people off & trying to cause accidents, I can only assume they have to cause a set number of fatal accidents per year to keep their licence. There is no way that many people can drive so dangerous by accident.

[richardthestag]

, in a bloody Lada ffs.

 

 

there are many folk on here who would pay extra for this

[bub2006]

My dad is a taxi driver for a company in sutton in Ashfield and has been for 20 years. His fare tarriffs are set by the local authorities, not him or his company. He has been attacked with a knife and had his face slashed,had his nights takings stolen but he keeps doing the job because its all he knows is to drive. The only accidents i can recall are when someone reversed into his front wing on the Peugeot partner and someone slammed up the arse of his sierra years back. Not all taxi drivers rip folk off or cause accidents. I can say though ive never seen such dire driving as i have seen by the private hire cars in derby city centre. The amount of times ive had someone cut me up,dangerously overtake and just blatantly bully their way through the city when i was delivering kitchens in a luton sprinter was unreal.

[sierraman]

I couldn't give a shit about Uber going down the pan. They just orchestrated yet another race to the bottom.

 

Not sure most taxi drivers get up with the sole intention of causing an accident or creating a modern take on Dick Turpin. You have to do some long hours to make anything like a living cabbing where I live.

[bramz7]

Happy that I managed to get back from Perthshire in record time (we reckon 8ish hours driving, not bad at all), but unhappy how this morning unfolded! 

I was following my mum in her Panda 4x4 near Crieff and some shitty rot box in front of her decides to shed its exhaust, which then gets wrapped up in her front wheels. Neither of us had a jack either, as Fiat are tightwads and someone stole the 405s, so had to call out some local mechanic just to dig out the absolutely trashed exhaust from under her car. 

 

No damage to her car but I thought rotten bangers with metal dandruff was a thing of the past. Hope their wheels fall off next....

[greengartside]

Decided to take my wheels off the Astra today so I could fit some different ones to it, the tyres on the old wheels were cracked and perished after all that time standing so decided it was best to replace them all.

 

Everything was going amazingly well until I went to undo the second wheel. The absolute knuckle-dragger that tightened up the wheels has done it with so much strength I'd wager Geoff Capes and Superman nipped them up to be sure.

 

So naturally the fucking locking nut key has snapped it's splines off.

 

If anybody has got a spare locking wheel nut key (I think it's a 191 'M' - the 'M' is stamped on the top) that they can lend me I would be very grateful. I've tried hammering a smaller socket over my wife but that didn't work either.

 

 

It looks like this.

[Eddie Honda]

How about because they don't want London to be a test case and suddenly Uber is banned across the country? Can I get a black cab to my house? No, I can't. I can get a minicab if I phone up and speak to someone who will lie through their teeth to me about it being 2 minutes away, and then the driver will charge what he wants by going the long way. Or I can get an Uber which is tracked, the price is quoted in advance, and I can pay with my phone.

 

To suggest that licence taxis (NOT private hire) are unavailable outside London is disingenuous.

 

I used to drive a Toyota Carina E, licenced TAXI. E.g. the fare was regulated, metered and I could pick hires off the street and wait on ranks. Private Hire a.k.a. minicabs is a different story altogether.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

How about because they don't want London to be a test case and suddenly Uber is banned across the country? Can I get a black cab to my house? No, I can't. I can get a minicab if I phone up and speak to someone who will lie through their teeth to me about it being 2 minutes away, and then the driver will charge what he wants by going the long way. Or I can get an Uber which is tracked, the price is quoted in advance, and I can pay with my phone.

 

That's the other thing I don't understand, minicabs have been around for donkeys years. Uber is just a way of summoning the same thing, and has a few nice features on top like ride sharing and reviews.

 

You struggle to get a black cab anywhere apart from popular touristy places in London anyway. Yes there's tens of thousands of drivers, but they're all waiting outside Euston when actually I'd quite like something a bit nearer me.

 

Black cabs only take card payments because firms like Uber did, they're playing catch-up.

I think most private hire firms have an Uber style app. these days. Last week when I used an app from a local minIcab firm, I tried my Uber one first and the price was £8.00 compared to the £6.50 I was charged.

In fact I've only ever used Uber in San Francisco, where the totally unregulated, unlicensed and uninsured nature of cabs is perfectly suited to Uber, Lyft et al.

 

TFL have given Uber every chance to put their house in order and it must be remembered private hire wasn't invented by Uber and even though London was a long way behind the rest of the country in regulating minicabs they do know what they're doing and that's to protect the travelling public.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Taxis, private hire etc are all a bloody rip off anyway. I've used them about three times in my life & one of those was over £5 to travel about 3miles back in the 90s, in a bloody Lada ffs.

 

The sooner the whole lot go out of the business the better. They spend all day ripping people off & trying to cause accidents, I can only assume they have to cause a set number of fatal accidents per year to keep their licence. There is no way that many people can drive so dangerous by accident.

That 3 miles would probably cost £5.00 today too, the only difference is that it'd be in a financed to the hilt E Class or Prius, that would be rigorously tested every 6 months by the local council.

 

In 1993 I could and often did buy a Montego or Sierra from an auction , License it for £50 or £60 , do 2 or 3 weekends work in it, the profit from which would more than pay for the car. Tart it up and sell it for a small profit.

In fact I could clear £500 quite easily working Thursday and Friday evening and through the night on a Saturday, 25 years on and talking to people still doing local cab work, they're struggling to make that in a full week.

 

This week I've spent just under a grand on a Local Authority test, licence and main dealer electric handbrake repair, that should excuse me from having to cause any accidents for a few weeks. I bet Lada man didn't spend that in year including buying his car brand new.

[richardmorris]

Just cooked a nice steak and chips courtesy of m&s dinner for £10, mushrooms beans and garlic butter. Then the damned heat alarm (not smoke) goes off. Why? All windows open. Kitchen door open and me waving at the thing with a teatowel rather than enjoying my meal with a nice Rioja.

[wuvvum]

500000 signatures in support of uber. This country is definately 59,999,988 people racing to the bottom and a dozen blokes posting up pictures of Talbot Solaras.

FTFY

[LostnotFound]

I do think the Uber thing is getting confused.

 

No one has an issue with the app style or how cheap it is to use. Which is separate to;

 

TFL having an issue with the fact Uber pretend they are giving you a fully insured and checked driver when they don't really give 2 fucks. This part I don't know enough about to make massive claims but taking out insurance for a certificate to email Uber then cancelling the policy is something I had read about.

 

and the other bit not related to them having their licence revoked;

 

Is the above mentioned race to the bottom issue, that any employees of any company (and I reckon well over of 95% of Uber drivers are full time driving just for Uber and are therefore employees in my simple mind)  don't get minimum wage, sick pay, holiday pay the new auto enrolment pension etc... If the prices Uber charge don't cover this then it would be a broken business model if they didn't get around it by passing those risks and costs onto their workers and you and I the tax payers in terms of the pensions etc...

 

App based mini cabbing and properly licensed private hire drivers / cars aren't mutually exclusive, any more than selling books online and paying your tax are even though it appears so due to the way the market operates.

[LostnotFound]

My actual grump is the following;

 

 

 

My poor bike survived 20 years without being dropped. Until it unfortunately ended up in my possession and then it only took 3 weeks.

 

Lovely weather and a nice not stupidly early shift had me kitted up and ready to ride into work with the hope of taking the long route home later. After safely rolling backwards down the drive I got off to lock the garage up, three paces away later I discovered I hadn't put the stand down properly. Now running a tad late for work I dumped it back in the garage and drove in, meaning I had to be reminded of my stupidity by the dozens of people out enjoying their bikes in the sun all day.

 

On the upside the local dealer got me a new lever in next day, and the fairing damage is irritating but not the end of the world.

[hairnet]

I am now officially in my late 30s.

I'm 44 today

[Pillock]

Yeah, I tried to use one of those minicab apps for my local firm.

First they verified my debit card 6 times which caused my bank to shit themselves and text me to say there's dodgy activity and they'd stopped my card.

Then I ordered a taxi, it said I could track it but it never showed up on a map. At the suggested ETA the app reverted to "you've got no taxi booked".

I phoned up, no record. I told them to ram it and phoned another firm. Taxi #1 showed up.

Taxi #1 then took me a stupid route, and tried to charge £30. I told him I'd paid via the app, it was £18. He started moaning that I should have told him that - he didn't say why, but I presume so he could have gone the £18 route instead of the stupid long way.

 

And yes - licenced hackney carriages exist outside London, but still only in built up areas. The idea of Uber is that there are far more part time drivers, so more likely to be someone in your area. I'm 15 miles from the nearest hackney carriage rank but I can get an Uber.

[Guest Hooli]

My actual grump is the following;

 

clutchlever.JPG

 

fairing.JPG

 

My poor bike survived 20 years without being dropped. Until it unfortunately ended up in my possession and then it only took 3 weeks.

 

Lovely weather and a nice not stupidly early shift had me kitted up and ready to ride into work with the hope of taking the long route home later. After safely rolling backwards down the drive I got off to lock the garage up, three paces away later I discovered I hadn't put the stand down properly. Now running a tad late for work I dumped it back in the garage and drove in, meaning I had to be reminded of my stupidity by the dozens of people out enjoying their bikes in the sun all day.

 

On the upside the local dealer got me a new lever in next day, and the fairing damage is irritating but not the end of the world.

 

Daft sod.

[Felly Magic]

Fucking cunting Mondano has shat it's fuel pump according to Manchetts Recovery, was dragged home recently, relays and fuses fine, tank has to be dropped to swap the pump thanks to the stupid fucking tiny hole in the boot floot,, oh well, tin snips and a 2nd hand pump will be the order of the day. Fucking bastard twatting thing

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Yeah, I tried to use one of those minicab apps for my local firm.

First they verified my debit card 6 times which caused my bank to shit themselves and text me to say there's dodgy activity and they'd stopped my card.

Then I ordered a taxi, it said I could track it but it never showed up on a map. At the suggested ETA the app reverted to "you've got no taxi booked".

I phoned up, no record. I told them to ram it and phoned another firm. Taxi #1 showed up.

Taxi #1 then took me a stupid route, and tried to charge £30. I told him I'd paid via the app, it was £18. He started moaning that I should have told him that - he didn't say why, but I presume so he could have gone the £18 route instead of the stupid long way.

And yes - licenced hackney carriages exist outside London, but still only in built up areas. The idea of Uber is that there are far more part time drivers, so more likely to be someone in your area. I'm 15 miles from the nearest hackney carriage rank but I can get an Uber.

And those part time drivers are the problem. It is very unlikely that they can make it pay working part time if they are properly licensed and insured. Buying a car new enough to license, insuring it , paying for car and driver license. Then of course there's whatever you pay for your work, a ball park figure of £1000 per month is probably not far away, that's before buying fuel.

A lot to pay for a bit of pin money, especially if you're not even getting the proper rate for the job.

 

As I said I used Uber in San Francisco earlier this year and it was very easy and cheap. But talking to the drivers , all they have to pay to work is their fuel and whatever percentage Uber take, there is no special insurance or license required. One trip we took was in a V8 Toyota Highlander , that sounded completely knackered. The driver was a 19 year old student who said that her whole family do a couple of hours a week in the same car, when they'd got some spare time. This model cannot work in a heavily regulated country such as ours.

The taxi trade has many problems, but letting a company ignore safety regulations just because they're big is not a solution. Uber in other UK towns and cities operate within the local licensing regulations and as far as I know there are no instances of any of them having any problem keeping their licenses.

[95 quid Peugeot]

Obligatory mouth breathers on eBay and gumtree. Listed Mrs 95 quids gaylander with not insignificant explanation of any faults and the fact it's priced at is to reflect that not a starting point for haggling. Every fucker to a man that's contacted me. What's the problems with it. Twats

[Eddie Honda]

After safely rolling backwards down the drive I got off to lock the garage up, three paces away later I discovered I hadn't put the stand down properly. 

 

Do I get a whiff of putting the stand down on the bike whilst on it?

 

Because I can't see it happening (well I can) whilst putting the stand down whilst standing beside it.

[LostnotFound]

Do I get a whiff of putting the stand down on the bike whilst on it?

 

Because I can't see it happening (well I can) whilst putting the stand down whilst standing beside it.

 

Yep, I've got a steep short drive that you need to sit on the bike to roll it down backwards. What I think I did was I kicked what I thought was the side stand down, when in reality it was the centre stand that I pushed half down, enough to hold it for long enough to walk away. I even remember thinking it was lent over very much but seemed 'stable' so I'm even more stupid then first appears if that's possible. 

[Guest Hooli]

Takes effort to be that daft, well done.

 

Last time I did something similar it involved parking downhill and not putting it in gear, I got as far as the gate to close it & heard a crunch behind me.

[Kiltox]

I work in London and use cabs/private hire/uber twice a week to get between the office (SE1, near London Bridge) and Victoria coach station

 

Black Cabs - the most expensive option but they turn up on time (when booked through an app like Gett) and know where they are going. Shortest journey times by far whether they are on the meter or fixed fare. £18.

 

Addison Lee - cheaper than a black cab and reasonably reliable although sometimes turn up late. Drivers are mostly knowledgeable but occasionally a bit too reliant on sat nav. £16.60 although £14.98 because I'm a regular customer

 

Uber - cheapest. Similarly punctual to AddLee although often have problems with the drivers not knowing where they can legally stop to pick up resulting in confused phone calls trying to find them. Extremely reliant on sat nav and the journey times are definitely longer due to taking stupid routes or getting lost. £12-£15.

[Eddie Honda]

Yep,

Now you know why they teach you to get off the bike first, then fanny around with the stand(s). I always get off first before deploying stand and retract before mounting.

 

Whilst I have done plenty of low speed crashes, I can't remember dropping a bike off a stand. I may have done a static drop of a heavily laden Honda H100, with an equally heavily laden rucksack and losing my balance when kickstarting it. This may not have happened though as it was dark and nobody was around...

 

Being a light bike, falls softly and easier to pick up.

[Cavcraft]

Fucking cunting Mondano has shat it's fuel pump according to Manchetts Recovery, was dragged home recently, relays and fuses fine, tank has to be dropped to swap the pump thanks to the stupid fucking tiny hole in the boot floot,, oh well, tin snips and a 2nd hand pump will be the order of the day. Fucking bastard twatting thing

 

Focus just done the same. What a hopeless effort that little bung in the boot floor is, probably a design to get you to go to a dealer for them to drop the tank.

[DeeJay]

The hole is there so you can get an easier start with your tin snips.

[clayts450]

Back to Uber again, but they lost a Tribunal case about employee status (Tribunal said drivers were clearly employees, qualify for sick pay and min wage), but typically Uber are appealing it - two day hearing for the appeal starts on Wednesday

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/19/uber-appeal-uk-employment-ruling-drivers-working-rights