General Chat

Rollo, terraced houses; but Bovis constructed a variety of houses and I know they were building in Australia too, from memory, in Patterson Lakes, Victoria at one time, and they were not terraced.

However, I get the gist of your posting.

For me the gripe is that builders make a 'killing' moneywise when they build so-called family homes with lower ceilings, smaller rooms and no space in the garden for children to run around, to kick a ball or to swing the proverbial cat

How do they get away with calling the homes 'family' homes? I think it's a con. You only have to see the number of extensions built onto homes to see the unsuitability of so-called family homes. The gardens then become even smaller!

Family homes need bigger rooms and a larger garden suitable for a real family and not a family of the architect's imagination.

Large construction firms appear to be able to call three- and four+ -bedroomed homes 'family homes' without any spatial requirement laid down by councils.

So our gripes seem to be that local authorities will pass anything rather than use their brains and their clout for the benefit of the public.

Yes, there may be appeals but councils ought to stand their ground as it's the only way that the public has a voice. An appeal may never reach the appeals panel/court if local authorities acted cohesively and stood by their minimum requirements. It would also need engineering staff and councillors to stand firm in the face of opposition in the way that they seem able to do against the people who merely pay their salaries and allowances.

I'd better stop now before I rant on about the design and cost of bungalows (single-storey dwellings).

so far the situation in south Somerset seems to be self correcting thanks to very bad driving on the A37.

There is or was a company well known for constructing row houses by the mile ( I forget the English term ) called Bovis Ltd. The latin for a cow is bovis. Munching in gentle boring uniformity chewing the cud is to be bovine.

There has not been any notable increase in employment opportunities in rural areas of England though the agribusinesses are in their death throes. By and large county councils wedge in a few hundred houses here and there in order to meet structure plan demands or else lose control of planning altogether. Destroy a few so as to save the many.

Most jobs will be in the nearest town such as Yeovil or Nailsea. Development regulations have changed recently and now developers can fairly easily escape from making any contribution to local services and demands to build "affordable" housing. Thus developments such as that planned for East Coker constitute a vindictive assault on rural England.

It also creates an unsupportable need for transport along small country lanes, health and schools which will never get built in the sticks.

Crass.

Regardless on who owns them, more homes are needed for a growing population. Is there a Green Belt around Yeovil?

Don't worry. In 50 years time East Coker will have been absorbed by Yeovil. Although its probably somewhere on the Net, one hopes the developers have been instructed to build new surgeries, primary schools etc to cope with the anticipated expanded population.

Some who have deep pockets and high expectations may consider the proposed new homes as nothing less than Cow Sheds. For others, they will be paradise.

Surely a hew housing estate will mean more houses for the 'buy to rent' mob to add to their portfolio, and increase the cost to first time buyers?
After all, why would 'bovines' want to buy their own houses?

OK Rollo, I simply have to ask. I'm sure you don't mean byres at East Coker? If you mean houses, why 'bovine'?

Most of the places you have mentioned with relatively good reception are either within spitting distance of a city, or near the borders of the next county.
Yeovil is over 47 miles from where my brother lives, Bridgwater over 25 miles - not very handy for him.

I'm sure those living on Exmoor, or near it, would prefer to have a signal.
There's living in a remote area - where a person can choose whether to have a phone/internet or not, and there's being ignored as irrelevant by the 'powers that be'.

A lot of schools rely on the internet for setting homework etc, and expect children to use the internet for projects. Seems like the children in rural areas of Somerset are being badly served by the current Government/Internet providers, who, of course don't give a damn, as there aren't many voters there, and it would cost the firms a fraction of their profit to provide a decent signal! :-|

I am a constant visitor to Somerset and indeed lived there for years.
The mobile signal in all of the urban areas is just fine (Clevedon, Weston SM Nailsea Bath Radstock Yeovil Taunton etc ). Bath even has 4G.

Parts of the county are by UK standards thought to be "remote" and certainly wish to be, chiefly Exmoor but also some famous villages where mobiles are banned from popular pubs (hurrah). I have a friend in East Coker who looks after our ancient chiming clocks (seriously unconnected). Amazingly just like my forebears our lives are regulated by the clock chimes rather than the annoying chirruping of a mobile phone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icWQGrhdr7E

The powers that be have decided to inflict a bovine housing estate on East Coker :-( rather than do the obvious thing and tack it on to Yeovil.

Cellphone digital technology was never designed for use in remote or even very rural areas and politically driven attempts to deploy it whether in the wilds of Canada or the Scottish Highlands are doomed to failure. The old analog cellphone system works better in such areas where the low limit of connections per cell does not usually matter. OTOH does anybody still make analog cellphones?

In any case POTS will be dumped and users can thrill to a "mobile" connection via the internet. At one of our places for instance the air phone signal is zilch but thanks to a booster box which plugs into the router I get four bars - as long as the internet connexion is up. You wil only see these devices if (a) you live in a very poor signal area and (b) you wear down the resistance of the telco. Using gadget all my "mobile" voice and data goes via the internet connection so long as I am within 400m. of course.

My mother has one of the help gadgets linked to a fixed phone connection. Of course when she fell over she was not wearing the gadget :-( Although this very crude system remains installed she now has something much better using modern technology.

FAX X400 TELEGRAMS PIGEON POST SEMAPHORE MORSE CODE
- where are they now ?

I wear a watch, cos my phone's usually in the bottom of my bag.
Also, it's easier, even if the phone is easily accessible, when laden with shopping, to just flick your arm to see the time, rather than have to have a spare hand to find the phone!!

One of the Managers has an Apple watch. My goodness is he proud of it.

He has taken to rolling up his sleeves so that everyone can see it. He uses it in combination with his ultra-complicated smart phone, which he carries in his other hand, and is constantly fiddling with them both.

Me? I have two watches, both battery, one for work, one posh. And a smart phone that I use for talking into and texting................oh and storing a load of photos on, so that I can bore everyone silly with.

But I don't quite get the point of wearing a watch, and carrying a phone, when they are doing the same thing.

Please don't try and explain it to me....................I don't care.

:-(

Personal alarms for the elderly would have to be re-designed. The type which has an intercom facitily to the control/monitoring centre are hard-wired to a static phone line.

Most of Somerset is hardly 'remote' - yet very few areas can get a signal.
Until the phone companies/Government sort out the anomalies, they have no right to cut landlines.
Also, amazingly, a high proportion of the UK don't have mobiles, or computers!! Strangely, like car and home ownership, some people just aren't interested in technology - and I don't think it's compulsory - yet!!

errrrrrrrrrr

Rollo .............

I may be a dinosaur, but I am not ignorant

I do know that you call them "mobile phones"

but they are called cell phones over here ............ "mobile phone" actually has a different meaning

and I refuse to continually change my language to suit you.

You expect North Americans to know what a "mobile phone" means ................ I at least know what it means, but also expect you to know what a cell phone is, and NOT to correct me as if I was an ignorant little woman


I also know that you over there have much cheaper rates that we do here ............... it's called competition. You have many more service providers than we do.

And that really is because a) the government maintains control and b) not many companies are willing to get into not only providing service but building the service to very remote areas of the country, and then maintaining it at reasonable cost

Your "remote" areas do not in the slightest compare to the "remote" areas in Canada, or even the US.

It is easy enough to supply cell phone service to, for example, Churchill on Hudson Bay. Not so easy to extend it out onto the tundra 100 miles from Churchill for the use of maybe 10 people year-round, or a thousand tourists in October/November.

Nor is it easy to extend service when there is a bloomin' big mountain range in the middle ............... and the province of BC, for example, has 5 mountain ranges running from north to south. Small communities are in the valleys between those ranges, and will have cell service, but not over the range into the next valley.

I know ........... I researched very carefully whether a cell phone would be of any use to us when we were regularly driving around the province. The answer was that outside about 200 km east from Vancouver ............ bloomin' useless.


Now, if you want to talk about satellite phones .................................

(for Sylvie) It is impossible to get an internet adsl / cable connection without a landline in the UK. The govt imposes a £ 14 (plus vat) per month tax on each and every landline (inc business) even if they are not provided by BT or ar vrtual numbers. The money is used to subsidise comms to remote areas. Currently that means slightly faster internet and 2G cell phones. BT has scooped most of the pot.

Anybody on contract in the UK gets a free cellphone every 2 years on average. The term "cell phone" is not used in Europe they are known as mobile phones. Europe was a whole lot faster in ditching analog cell phones in favour of digital than North America. Generally Euope's deployed comms technology is way better (and cheaper). OTOH if you really want to see how bad telecomms can be in a supposedly modern country try Australia.

The landline business is unprofitable seen as a dinosaur business by the telcos who want to move to a person rather than location based system. Much of POTS has already disappeared as physical lines.

In third world countries + Canada termination fees on international calls is a sig source of govt revenue. However the real cost of modern international dialled calls is diddly squat.

I rely on my Rolex Diver for the time. It is always correct, never needs any battery power and is tough n waterproof. Quite how a fragile contraption from Apple could beat it I've no idea except of course on price, the apple watch being a lot cheaper. Yer pays yer money ...

We're more dinosaurs!!!


We both have at least 2 watches

............. mine are both analog, battery driven. OH's day watch is digital (and ugly!!), his dress watch is analog

We have landline phones only, one is old-fashioned (although not a rotary dial), and the other is cordless

We do not have even a flip cell phone, let alone smart phones, iPhones, iPads etc

We have two desktop computers, and one laptop, no tablets, etc



We are in fact often advised to have a landline, although many people only have cell phones .....................

but then not every country is like the UK, with cheap very easily available cell service.

There are even areas of this country that do not have landline phone service ............. they have to make do with radio phones :-D

the telcos - all of them including EU and north america - plan to drop "landlines" aka POTS.

me too!!! :-D

Oh good - we're not the only 'dinosaurs' :-D

We used to astound the the mobile phone providers " How much do you pay per
Month? we can save you money when you switch ".
We each might top up our PAYG by £10 in a year :-D

exactly :-D :-D

I have a watch. It ticks and tells the time. This is all I expect of it.
I have a mobile phone (currently at my daughters, as I accidently left it there).
I would like to point out, that, despite not having my mobile until Sunday - when I shall see my daughter - my life hasn't fallen apart.
People occasionally contact me on my mobile, but if they know me, and get no response, they phone my landline, as they know my mobile is probably in a coat pocket, the bottom of a bag, or left at home, I'm out and I can't hear it.
If they don't know me - who cares? If it's important, they leave a message on my landline.
My mobile phone doesn't get the internet. If I want that, I use my PC or, very occasionally my tablet, which quite often isn't charged.

I have a life. A life that doesn't revolve around a bl**dy phone, or being in contact with vague 'friends' - people we used to call colleagues. I have a camera to take photos.

think: Steve Jobs. seriously weird, designed the Apple stuff to fit what S.J. wanted out of life and more importanntly technology.
think: those that can adapt to the awfulness expense and control freakery that is Apple must be or hope to be cast in the great man's image

everyone else gets on with android and clockwork

Darwin probably had a word for it. Mine is winter lemmings.