tax efficient motoring?

A wry smile today in the underground car park when I parked next to a neighbour's newly acquired car.

Is it an instant sign of the new economy, the election result cash-in, tax efficiency or a pension liberation strategy?

Anyway, it's a Lamborghini Gallardo, the special Superleggera kind with the extra lightweight carbon fibre body.

I notice the white car behind it is a Maserati. Perhaps I missed the memo?

smile at the sky

Through a pretty garden, musing about the difference a day makes.

Probably the walk's rustic influence, but the increasing list of resignations reminds me of Gabriel's sheepdog in Far From the Madding Crowd, driving the sheep over the cliff.

Farage, Clegg, Miliband. Whole parties. Fresh petals.

The silent majority followed their instructions, so meet the new guy, same as the old guy.

X marks the spot

Even at quarter past seven our own polling station was busy with lines of traffic into the adjacent car park and queues forming at the desks to get ballot papers.

I noticed that most of the party leaders were also early voters, presumably to ensure the press coverage.

Not all of them though, with the Reuters feed below showing Witney's polling station at around nine o'clock which seemed to have far more press than voters.

Look carefully and you'll see that a temporary chicane has been placed on the road. It's so that a Jaguar and Range Rover can arrive uninterrupted.

The single unsuspecting normal voter that tried to get into the polling station whilst the special voters were inside discovered that the doors had been temporarily locked.

I guess the surprise of meeting the P.M. leaving made up for it. The P.M's entourage was soon noisily on its way and the rest of the press could emerge from the bushes.

another delivery of dark shadows?

I was planning to post about something else today, but then I heard this morning's interview with the Prime Minister. It struck me as both a great lesson in answer avoidance and a great example of the use of FUD.

I remember the whole Good Things and Dark Shadows approach to Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, from being marketed to back in the last century. It used to be applied mainly to large-scale computer sales but has drifted across many other areas.

The prime incumbent's campaign has gone negative, resorting to slagging off the competition rather than extolling its own virtues. And, naturally, don't tell the electorate what to really expect after the results are in.

Perhaps it will be the betting shops that give the best view of outcome, although even they seem stumped by this one, judging by this summary extract.

In this social media era, politicians still use the air war of radio and television for their simplistic sound bites, along with tokenistic sponsor-paid visits to far-flung corners for their ground war missives.

The so-called direct social media experience seems to comprise mainly of requests for money to support campaigns, in some cases with the possibility to get into a raffle to win something or someone for a dinner.

Judging by the predictions for who will govern, there's still a good further week of news stories to follow as people start to haggle over the meaning of the words on Page 14 of the Cabinet Manual, produced by David Cameron and Gus O'Donnell.

I'll be voting tomorrow.

It is likely, of necessity, to be a tactical vote and I shall probably wear a Mickey Mouse tee shirt to the polling station.

Alternative tee-shirt serving suggestion?

down by the canal

The canal paths around parts of London can also be useful short cuts between areas, like my route from St Pancras to Camden.

There's the added dimension that the routes can be relatively calm compared with main thoroughfares, although there's always the need to listen out for bicycles which can be surprisingly stealthy.

Like the normal cycle routes, there's increasing amounts of TfL style signposting which can also encourage travel.

Bank Holiday?

Bank Holiday weekend, which included spending part of yesterday out of London in one of the most badly designed town-centre road systems in the country.

Today it's been easier, as we've been out on twisty lanes. Our original plan for the Bank Holiday was to become short term exerts on kitchens. It didn't work though. Counterintuitively for a Bank Holiday, I noticed that some banks were open although the kitchen showroom we'd targeted and its near neighbour were not.

in which I use a paperclip to change the bike chain

I swapped the chain on the mountain bike, doing that thing where you count the number of links before putting on the replacement.

As I counted out 106 links (twice) I noticed that some of the ones on the old chain were slightly twisted. They say that chains don't stretch, instead its the little rollers that lose their roundness. I'm not sure about this twisting though.

Then I had to lop 8 links off of the new chain with one of those special little gadgets, making it 105 links in length (It has a 'golden powerlink' to join it all back together).

Thread the new chain through the gears, rig up a paperclip to hold the ends in place whilst connecting the powerlink, pull the chain tight and then spin the pedals to test it.

No skips and a much smoother gear change. Try out all 3x9=27 combinations, even the ones that are not recommended. Yes, it all works.

Now to put the front wheel back so that the bike is functional again.

Battersea and Chelsea Bridge changes

There's a few famous pictures of Battersea Power Station, like the one with the pig on the Pink Floyd album cover. Most people take their picture from the side of Grosvenor Bridge.

My casual attempts are a result of my regular walks backwards and forwards across Chelsea Bridge.

I took the top picture and the one just above in December 2013.

Look carefully and you can see the exploratory work on one of the chimneys before it was dismantled by the builders redeveloping the area. There's a special regulation that all four chimneys must be preserved and that one must be standing at all times during any restoration work.

So above, a full year later, in December 2014, the first chimney is removed, to be replaced before the other three can be simultaneously replaced. Notice the sign that says 'Spot the Difference?'

Now, five months later, the sign is hard to see because of the work that has been taking place. The first batch of new apartments have more or less blocked the lower view of the power station from Chelsea Bridge.

Slightly further east along the river, other new blocks are being prepared, although the new residents of both this area and the adjacent Embassy Gardens are likely to be rather international.

pause a-while

Sometimes it's good to just sit and watch the world go by.

There's a spot along the Regent's Canal where they put in those green astro turf steps. Although artificial, it makes an inviting break in a journey.

It's fascinating to watch commuters stop here for a while instead of just powering back home.

don't pass the doughnuts

Thursday evening I was along to the Guardian's offices to be part of a pre-election discussion. Yvonne Roberts is pooling thinking to write this Sunday's Observer leader article to show a position. This count-down discussion took place in the hour or so ahead of the BBC's televised debate which further reinforced some of the points raised.

One frustration is the way that the politicians (particularly the Tories) won't explain where the savings they intend to make will actually come from.
There’s a similar integrity gap around discussion of the statistics released a couple of days ago, causing both the major parties to declare victory for essentially opposing points of view. It isn’t just slapdash (which would be almost forgivable) - its a more calculated disdain for the voters, exemplified in the Tory positioning.

I've also wondered about some of the topics being used to drive the debates. Europe and 'the deficit' being a couple of examples. Will Hutton and Andrew Rawnsley raised the point about the deficit and its financial treatment. It was along the lines of ‘borrow cheap money on long term repayment and use it to build economic strength’. A subtle point that runs counter to the Tory position and doesn't get much airtime. Instead we get Cameron saying work hard, take the medicine, further austerity (I suspect he's been told to dial that down now) and more undisclosed cuts so that he can 'finish the job'. I've noticed he uses 'I' a lot, rather than 'We', when talking about his party and its direction. He's not using the phrase 'Small State' yet, but I expect it will emerge sooner or later.

For Europe, the televised debate actually surfaced Nick Clegg's positioning, which amounts to only holding a referendum if there's a surrender of Sovereignty. Again it's subtle but avoids the EU-debate as a noisy distraction and major source of economic instability. His position comes out against the 'Small State' argument: be alone and potentially fragmenting or be part of a 500m people market.

John Mulholland added points about electoral reform, first raised in some of Polly Trenow’s commentary about the middle-aged white men running things. There’s a game being played in the political system, where regular faces have right of tenure to the comfortable club.

Of course Cameron and his sound-bite puppeteers like the current set-up and shape of Parliament. Westminster may temporarily move across the road whilst the Palace gets rebuilt, but there’s still a high probability that the £3bn rebuild will keep the same sword-length system in place. If so, it will be such a waste of money. Contra-voters in habitually-voting massive-majority constituencies like mine have little real chance to affect anything - no wonder people become disengaged.

Well, that's the fifth week of eating election doughnuts. One more to go.

hippy dippy eggshell moment

Okay a bit of a hippy dippy post today.

Simply the blossom in the garden fallen from the cherry tree.

Next I spotted an empty blue robin egg although - oops - this one was a bit close to the back door and I accidentally scrunched it. I could still see the little raggedy line around one end where the fledgling bird had pecked its way out.

realigning the gears

The first stage of getting the mountain bike checked over. Cleaning it with Muc-off helped and has made the garage smell quite fragrant. Then I put it onto the spinny thing to realign the gears.

After I've reset the cables and the derailleur adjustments the gears are changing like a new bike. It has that SRAM system that lets the gears go up and down in 2s and 3s also, which was entertaining as part of the tests.

It does need a new chain though, the current one is occasionally skipping and I've worked out that it has stretched.

Still, I was expecting to have to buy several bits and pieces and in practice a new chain seems to be all that is needed.