Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?

That is not socialism.

That's socialism, Blair style

If you cant see it, it wasnt meant for you to read.

Would you rather have a government that spend £5bn to give 'fair' treatment to someone who claims to be something they are not, or who fixes the potholes in your roads?

I had a whole bunch of new and semi-used batteries in the vegwtable crisper drawer in the refrigerator.

I left the door open a bit for several weeks, and months after I fixed that, I opened the drawer to get a battery and it was full of water. But I'm not willing to assume all the batteries are ruined. I measured them and many were ruined but a few seemed not to be. Especially the Sunbeam brand, which barely exists.

But then the meter stopped working, dead battery maybe, and though I have other meters, I don't kow where any of them are (excwept the one where the battery leaked and it cut the wires to both battery "clips")

NOw I had 5 9-volt batteries. Were any good? If so I could use one in my dead meter.

This was 2 weeks ago before this thread and it took a couple minutes to remember the tongue test. They were all dead. Couldn't feel a thing.

Britain is possibly the only country where they care about which line of the plug is neutral and which live.

Never tried that, but I wanted to do it. I knew it should work.

That's just a convention. And blue is cold. Sometimes cold is green instead; why's that? Maybe green should be hot and red cold, as I think green chillies are "hotter" than red.

Derailleur, from the French /dérailleur/ because the chain is "derailed" onto different sprockets.

(Why did I go through a time of thinking it was named after a Frenchman called "M. De Railleur" who invented it?)

They aren't colour coded; just C and H. Which I reversed as the caps screw on.

Agreed with all of that.

Only really the anorexics, bulemics and those who choose to spend on illegal drugs instead of food.

Depends on what you call decent. Its mostly those who choose not to work now.

But most of us dont agree with the druggys etc.

That's overstated plenty of the immigrants manage that fine.

Don't agree with that. You just don't see very many at all anymore who can't read a jar label in the supermarket and who can only put 'their mark' on a document now.

Yep, his trademark.

Corse it is.

Bullshit.

No reason why the govt can't do both.

Possibly. Back in the '70s I knew at least two people who were illiterate. Both could compensate very well in daily life. One was a good cook and navigated the supermarket without reading labels. Fortunately they don't put pictures of tomatoes on dog food cans.

The other was a competent maintenance man. However when I sent him to a tool rental place to get a Hilti (powder actuated nail gun) he returned without it. There was a 10 question safety form that had to be filled out. He would have known the proper answers if someone had read it to him.

We also saw a pattern in employment applicants. If they asked if they could take the form home to fill it out we assumed a family member was literate.

Consider that most Western people visiting Japan are completely illiterate. They get by.

Nope, plenty of others do too, most obviously with Australia, New Zealand, even some countrys in the EU.

Grip shifters were big in the '90s although I think SRAM has introduced them again. I can't remember ever having them. I transitioned from the old friction levers on the downtube to thumb shifters.

One problem with the grip shifters on mountain bikes is when you're holding on to the grips for dear life a bump can result in an unexpected shift.

Some, particularly the big Harleys and GoldWings. One of my bikes has a screw to lock the throttle, sort of a cruise control I guess.

Probably not. Greenwich is quite far to the east of the island so most of Great Britain is in the western hemisphere.

I know one right now, my kurdish mate's mother, but she grew up in turkey and never went to school at all.

I did have one younger fella bail me up in the supermarket and ask me if it was a bottle of metho. It wasnt clear to me if he used to be able to read and had f***ed his vision by drinking metho. I did tell him that he shouldnt drink it, not good for his eyes and he didnt deny he was planning to drink it.

Sure, but those aren't common at all anymore so the origingal that there has been little change in 113 years is just plain silly.

Getting by isnt what was being discussed. Of course those who can't read or write at all can get by, Not clear what they do about street signs tho.

Doesn't the "national grid" include the pylons at 400kV, 275kV, the smaller poles at 132kV, 33kV, 11kV, the 240V on wires underground to your house or overhead, and all the transformers inbetween?

Depends how you define it. Ownership? Or do exclude the branches to any lower voltage? Are you still connecting your TV to the ring main in your house if it's a spur?

Moi aussi. I always assumed it was a name, not an action.

I thought it was a French manufacturer. And I know how to pronounce it, but not being French can never remember or care how to spell it.

So if it's just the French word for derailer, we should call it a derailer in English. Otherwise we're no better than the frogs doing silly things like buying "le fast food", when they already have a word for fast and a word for food.

I just said that.

I like the name De Dion Bouton.

So he was illiterate.

Places hands in the air like a Frenchman. Does it matteur?

The point is they're s*it, the chain falls off. The whole basis of it is about knocking the chain off and hoping it catches the next cog and not somewhere inbetween. Then hoping you have all the the little grubscrews just right so it doesn't fall off the end. A typically French so what it sort of works design.

When I was a teenager I had my chain come off going up a mountain path (in Scotland). A French couple were out walking. The woman saw me and shouted to her husband who was some distance ahead/behind (I don't remember which way they were going). She shouted "Phillipe!!! Une probleme mechanique!" Phillipe was actually quite good at sorting it, using nothing but a stick.