Ever felt you've been had?

BBC: Wind farm at one third capacity

One of the UK's biggest offshore wind farms is producing less than one third of the electricity it should be, according to a new report.

The 30-turbine Scroby Sands wind farm built off the coast of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, has generated 28.9% of the power it was built to provide.

It's worse than that: according to the official report (493K PDF), the wind powerstation's performance during the second half of the twelve-month study (allowing a little time for wear and tear to set in) dropped to less than 25%.

Anyone might think they had sexed-up their original projections in order to get planning permission (and lots of lovely green subsidies).

Open prisons

Everyone should have a few harmless hobbies. As well as taking a keen and highly knowledgeable interest in horses, strangling the occasional peasant, and waving at bemused fat blokes, Her Majesty the Queen takes great delight in opening major public buildings. You name them, she's opened them: libraries, schools, courts, hospitals, railway stations. So keen, in fact, is the Queen on declaring buildings open that they often let her do it retrospectively, long after the buildings have become fully operational.

But it has just occurred to me that I've never heard of Her Majesty opening a prison. Which is pretty odd, as they all seem to be named after her.

Can you just imagine the Queen declaring a prison open and then having to walk down a line of specially selected, well-behaved inmates, making polite conversation with them?

"Hello. What did you do?" I hope she would say.

Erratum: For peasant read pheasant throughout (with a tip of the hat to Sellars and Yeatman).

 

New Labour

I had a great idea for a new reality TV show today: Big Mother… Fifteen heavily pregnant women locked up in a house together. Contestants are evicted the moment their waters break. The winner is the woman who holds it in the longest.

Then I thought to myself, that's such a ridiculous idea, it must have been done already. It turns out I was right (more or less).

Well, it would be better than Love Island, at any rate.

Published
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Neologisms

Until I met Stense, I didn't know the meaning of the word ditzy.

That came out all wrong. What I mean is that, until I heard Stense use it, I was not even aware of the word ditzy. Likewise schlep. Ditto filmic. That's three new words in sixteen years.

Apparently, until she met me, Stense didn't know the meaning of the word asshat. You can't say our friendship hasn't been mutually educational (in a ratio of 3:1).

Last week, Stense sent me a text message intended for someone else, the ditzy cow.

Her words, not mine.

No claims bonus?

I renewed my house insurance yesterday. My insurance broker provided me with two quotes: one to renew my exisiting policy, the other to take out a brand new policy with exactly the same cover with exactly the same company. The second quote was £77 cheaper.

In other words, my insurance company wanted to charge me £77 for the privilege of continuing to give them my custom.

That's not how it's supposed to work, chaps.

HOLY SHIT!!

A FUCKING HUGE moth just flew into my right ear!

Jesus! Bloody illuminated laptop screens!

(I think it's gone now.)

See also: In a flap

Significant anniversaries

Five years ago today, Jen moved into our new (well, rather old, actually) home in the Pennines. I moved in a few days later.

Twenty years ago today, I started my first job after university. It was in a torpedo factory (no, really). The following weekend, my uncle asked me how I was enjoying work. I said it was a bit boring. "Well, get used to it," he said, "you've got another 40 years to go!"

Half way there!

Offline

Apologies if there are no updates in the next few days: my landline is down for the tenth time in five years. Normal service will be resumed as soon as BT can be bothered to sort it out.

Update: After eight phone calls last night and today, I finally managed to convince some chap in India who was reading from a script and who kept calling me Mr Richard that one fault every six months really shouldn't be seen as perfectly normal. The bad news is that BT have narrowed the problem down to a box of wires buried underneath the road outside the house, and they're going to have to get some temporary traffic lights set up and our neighbours to move their cars before they can sort it out. The good news is that my landline seems to be working semi-OK at the moment, but I'll be damned if I'm going to tell them that.