That's what Spouse used to do in a school with ESN boys. He took our virtually dead Ford and it was made roadworthy - by several CDT classes over a couple of years. It was sold and the profit given to the charity which had founded the school.
Mary
Products such as Dyson vacuum cleaners are practically unfixable, and as such should be made illegal.
This could be indirectly enforced by :
Every manufactured object should be recycled by the manufacturer or subsequent companies at no cost to the consumer. Directors should be held financially liable for this, irrespective of limited company status. Well, are we serious about this or not ? Products not bearing a certification number, traceable to a company or individual should be illegal - as with current (granted pointless) CE certification.
Oh look, imports of shoddy cr*p stopped overnight !
And while we're at it, directors should be financially liable for dealing with packaging - everything from TV sets to McDonald's burgers.
Oh, look, biodegradable packaging suddenly became a reality ! Imagine, packaging you can put straight onto the compost heap.
Zoinks !
The message from Ian White contains these words:
There are lead mines near here the tailings of which have been reworked up to three times.
The message from Chips contains these words:
Apart from it being "Reduce, re-use, recycle" at least round here, I've always taken re-use to include repair.
The message from Adrian C contains these words:
Trouble with round here is that you so rarely find a decent skip as all our industrial areas are seperated from our residential areas.
The message from Zoinks contains these words:
Are they? I thought pretty well every part was available.
You can get most of them from dabs these days - just go to dabs.com and click on "spares" in the bottom left of the screen.
I don't think there's much they don't do spares for ;-)
-- ETV
Repair is the option given to those who actually_hold_ the broken items
- they normally don't bother because they don't understand what, how, why, if the item is broken.
Also what is not understood by them, is that there are *plenty* of people who _can_ freely take the items and make good use out of them, with most of the items kept in their original form, or close to it.
And industry is too concerned that if something is going in a freebie direction, money is then not changing hands, and future profits and sales are at risk. So recycling is more about ripping perfectly good products to component parts (metals, plastics) and either trying to make profit out of that, or simply deny other peoples pleasure for the hell of it.
Governments encorage it through recycling policies like WEEE and local councils (London Borough of Harrow certainly) banning me taking away and reusing other peoples scrap.
This is so wrong.... :-(
Spares ? Huh ?
Replacing the whole body of a vacuum cleaner is not repairing it, it's just forking out a load of money for a new body ! And because the whole thing is made out of large plastic blobs you can't repair any specific part (say a cracked housing or snapped-off lug) without bodging.
Dyson has clearly developed the design specifically to maximize profit, not for the thing to be repairable. Planned obsolescence is one of the most miserable side-effects of mass consumerism.
Oh and yes, they do suck as hard after a month as when you first buy them. They suck big time.
Chips.
The message from Adrian C contains these words:
For a time, Hounslow used to actively encourage it. Then it stopped.
*g* And they could probably get a number of swimming pools worth of fuel=20 used over the country.
Warwick
The Z88 was a brilliant concept. We used lots of them in my departments. Anyone need a Z88, I've still got several... Douglas de Lacey
Yeah, I'll take one (c:
Chips.
I'd need at the very least valid contact details ... Douglas de Lacey
Wow, sorry, wasn't sure you were serious !
My details are as follows:
EM 3.22 Earl Mountbatten Bldg Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh EH14 4AS
Will gladly pay postage of course. Thanks.
My intended use is taking notes in infernal meetings, for which it seems very, very well suited. Perhaps as a terminal to my router, etc. etc.
Craig.
And was hoping for some beer tokens or equivalent for my troubles! Now what am I bid for a couple of Z88s? I also have some memory modules (help, I can't even remember what they were called now)-:, and power cables; if there's real interest I'll go and find them and make up a list.
Douglas de Lacey
eBay is your friend ;-)
In good nick they are fetching around £30 each.
I'm trying to decide between the Z88 (nicer keyboard, I think, at least nicer-looking, and possibly better software) and Amstrad NC100 (plasticcy appearance, Amstrad brand name, but better screen?) as to how I can waste another few ££ on Ebay buying things that appealed at the time but I have no real use for.
Owain
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