Dragons Dens Series 6 Ep 1

The sixth series of BBC2’s Dragons’ Den kicked off tonight, and managed to deliver the now familiar mix of worthy cases for some funding, together with a dash of hopefuls that have you wondering if there is a team of orderlies in white coats  waiting at the exits with those jackets that are tied shut at the back, and have no holes for the hands to exit the sleeves.

But first, a word about the camera operators - are they ex-Top Gear employees? This programmes, also BBC2, used to suffer from truly atrocious camerawork as the operators seemed to view with one another from week to week to see how could produce the most irritating and intrusive and fades while moving from scene to scene, leaving you eyeballs feeling as if someone had used them to play ping-pong. Dragons’ Den seems to have the same problem now, with jarring step focus changes, odd angles, and unnecessary changes of view. We can only hope the operators are spotted by a music video producer, and moved on quickly.

There’s really one team of cowboys to comment on this week, and its the pair of con artists that turned up caliming to produce water from air. When you’re presented with crap that like from the moment they open their mouths, you know you’ve got trouble, and they went on to prove this in style. They were full of it every time they opened their mouths, even suggesting that producing water by using electricity to condense it by chilling the air was green and environmentally sound - as one of my colleagues used to say when presentations like this started “At least Dick Turpin wore a mask”.

Deborah Meaden- was spot on when she picked on the browbeating techniques of the “super-salesman” and pegged him as a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman, not only was he willing to admit that he had been such a bully, he was ready to boast about it. You can go find Kirby yourself, I’m not advertising for them. This has to be one of the most reprehensible companies around, and you may remember them for their repeated appearances on That’s Life with Esther Rantzen. As far as selling goes, Kirby’s salesmen had one tool, get in your door and don’t leave until you’ve made a sale, if that means browbeating the customer for hours (the pitch can be 2-3 hours once they’re in)  until they’ve been beaten into submission, then so be it. And the deal is not cheap, neither are Kirby vacuum cleaners, finance is preferable, and they choose area where their victims will need finance to purchase their cleaners at vastly inflated prices - how else would they make their money? They just loved to people to who had no money to sign up for finance, then chase them for payment for years. Then there was the service, or lack of it, as those same folk who were being chased for their payments had no cleaner - once it broke, it was a case of weeks and months for service, if it was ever delivered.

I’m genuinely stunned that anyone standing in front of the Dragons would even admit to being involved with Kirby, worse still, the idiots with the water-from-air machine even described their operation as pyramid selling, and various other reprehensible descriptions too. It’s a wonder the Dragons didn’t call security and have them thrown out on their ears.

I have a special place reserved for people like Mr “super-salesman” - First against the wall when the revolution comes!

I’ve always been amazed to see that a tiny little Kirby shop stays open along the road from me. I only found it by chance some years ago, when I decided to go exploring down streets I don’t usually have a reason to go down. I didn’t even associated it with the Kirby con, and went to have a look in the window, and there were the cleaners, looking as ancient as they ever did. I don’t know if they’ve ever been updated, I haven’t been back for years, but they looked like escapees from the 1940s or thereabouts, as if they just kept churning the same stuff out year after year, until the machinery wears out. While they may be lovely aluminium castings, they have a price tag somewhere in the £800 or more (maybe lots more now since I haven’t come across then for years now) range, for an obsolete machine, to be paid at £10 a week, plus a suitably exorbitant rate of interest. Not a bargain, or even a good deal.

I went into that little shop once, not for anything Kirby of course, but it had a big sign over the window advertising service for a vacuum cleaner I do own - and I was looking for a part after a coin had trashed a blade inside one of its turbine brushes. When I eventually managed to get the less then intelligent girl minding the store to understand I wasn’t in the shop for anything to do with Kirby, but because of the sign, realisation dawned, but I was then informed that “He didn’t do that anymore, but had just left the sign up”.

I’m glad “He” was out that day, or it might have taken me 2 or 3 hours to get back out the door!

Whatever, the chancers were ejected with not a penny, and their plan to fleece their sales staff and customers was more than quickly uncovered.

The participants that won finding in this opening programme weren’t from the usual genres either, so the Dragons may be looking to invest in different areas in the the current economic climate, so it will be interesting to see if this is a one-off, or of the trend continues next week.

On reflection, I think they missed a trick, and should have kept Mr Kirby super-salesman there for another three hours or so, trying to talk his way into the money before they turned him down. He was already sweating buckets just from starting his pitch, and would have melted away to a wee greasy spot, or had a stroke or something if they’d kept him going. He would have deserved it too, for providing a sample machine that hadn’t been properly purged or set up, and was producing cat’s pee for the Dragons to sample.

Turkey F1

Funny how a habit can start, instead of forgetting about Turkey, because it wasn’t all that notable I keep thinking about.

The race was a return to what might be expected form, to me at least, and the front-runners went to the front - and stayed there. What was notable though was the example of how not only the driver, but all the contributions can come together to, perhaps not necessarily win the the race, but to lose it. Without delving into the minutiae of the day, choice of tyre compound usage order, two or three stop strategy, efficiency of pit-stop, traffic on rejoining, weather vs car setup, all are relevent, and can negate the hottest of laps by the driver, combining to put him just a few seconds too far back to make up front and pass the next car. There’s no car and driver combination on the track that pull that trick at the moment, there may be later, but it a trick that Ferrari and Schumacher could pull off in the past, coming from what appeared to nowhere and clinching a win.

Possibly more relevant to the future is the start of the disappearance of the lesser teams, and the looming arrival of the policy whereby teams will not be able to go and buy a car from one of the original manufacturing teams. The decision is being looked and reviewed by the decision makers, and may be reversed or modified, but if not, then it will ramp up the cost of joining the exclusive F1 club further still, even though they are making moves to cut costs by requiring engines and gearboxes to last for more than one race, and imposing performance and stress maximums by such things as limiting engine control systems, revs to 19,000 plus the tyre rules.

It’s still far from cheap, and the drivers are still walking away with far too much of the team’s money. They make millions off track, so should really be paying for the privilege of driving, and maybe even financing the teams, not the other way round.

Oops, and I wasn’t going to waffle much.

Spain F1

Straight off at 150 mph, 26 G, and the result is a bump on the head and maybe concussion - not a lot one can really say about that crash.

Well, since F1 is often quoted as the source of innovation for the cars that you and I drive on the road, perhaps one might ask when we can have some F1 safety features please. Cars may be much improved on the simple tin boxes they were (not too many years ago, unless you were buying top end luxury marques), but they’re still a life-lottery if you’re accident doesn’t happen to match one of the few particular impact types that they are designed to pass for official testing purposes and certification. While these are not to be sneezed at, and are both valuable and worthwhile, the average person doesn’t realise that accidents that happen outwith those conditions might gain no benefit from these safety features, and might even be made worse by them. I’m not knocking them, just observing that there’s still plenty to be done, and to beware complacency.

As for the race, well, all I can think of is noting that the last one shook up what might have been termed as the ‘expected’ results, while this one has seem something of a return something that might be regarded as ‘expectations’.

Coming races will become more interesting as the various embarrassingly silly aerodynamic aids are discarded, and the more sensible developments start to appear.

Bahrain F1

I can’t be bothered with the silliness that is floating around the edges of F1 and members of its governing bodies. Trial by the media and the intrusion of the press/media on people’s private lives has become a cancer on what was once the valuable “Freedom of The Press”, now used as something to allow papers and adverts to be sold, nothing else. The moguls in charge should have video cameras super-glued to their heads, and connected live to the internet 24/7, and let us see how squeaky-clean and virgin-white they are.

The race was more interesting that most probably give it credit for. Although there were a few notable incidents (one particular ‘brake test’ comes to mind), and we are very early in the season, the progress and end result were interesting, in so far as they were so vastly different from what we have seen so far.

Far from being a procession, or predictable, things were all over the place, and (neglecting some consistency from Ferrari) there was no clear pattern in the outcome.

The next outing will be intriguing. Will it be the same again, a odd mixture of final placings? Or will it return to what we saw as the season opened?

I have no idea, and wouldn’t even try to predict anything at this stage, but I will be watching closely to see if any pattern emerges in the result.

Malaysia F1

Arriving only a week after Melbourne, Malaysia left little time for playing with the cars based on their first outing, and I think the race result confirmed this, with a rather different result from from last week, on a quite different track.

The race itself, and the result, were fairly mundane, which is not actually a criticism, but a compliment to the drivers, who managed to make it around the track from the lights to the flag without careering into one another at any point. Interest came with the sudden exit from the track of a Ferrari in unexpected circumstances, and the media interest was satisfied with the arrival of a ‘Bad Day’ for Lewis Hamilton, so they’ll be able to fill lots of space speculating about the imminent arrival of the end if his career… as if.

Hamilton actually provides meat to my assertion last week that qualifying is now a farce, determined more by sponsors and advertisers demanding that cars and drivers are seen, rather by actual qualifying. Like last year, this year saw qualifying revised to a ridiculous and unnecessarily complicated three-session affair, supposedly better than the one-shot qualifying hour that used for years before. Apparently deemed boring, as the drivers played ‘chicken’ with one another, and waited until the last minute before setting a time, meaning no-one moved until the last ten minutes, when they all tumbled on to the track to beat the clock.

With the dopey new system in place, some drivers (including Hamilton) set a time, then coasted back to the pits to save fuel/tyres/engine/gearbox. While this was good tactically, and a result of the new qualifying system, it meant they were crawling back to the pits while other drivers were still running at qualifying speed. So while the slow cars were running to the rules for qualifying, they fell foul of the rules by not travelling at a speed in keeping with the other cars still on track, and ended by receiving a five place penalty down the grid.

Sponsorship and advertising may be necessary evils, but they shouldn’t be granted the power to ruin the spectacle, and this daft qualifying system, with three sessions supposedly making it more interesting (it doesn’t) by forcing the cars and drivers out for longer, should be thrown in the nearest skip. If the hour was too long because the drivers tried to psyche one another out for most of it, then all that was needed was to shorten it, which would have made the remaining time more valuable, and more drivers would have gone out as those that wanted to use it just for some track time or final testing would have to have gone out sooner, and the faster cars would have to have gone out earlier too, in case they suffered a problem. With say, half an hour track time instead of an hour, there would have been less time to discover a problem in qualifying, fix it, and get back out to set a time, meaning that they would not have been able to play the ‘chicken’ factor quite so close to the line.

Coincidentally II

Coincidentally, events transpired to write about coincidences only a few posts back, and they still seem to be doing so.

For a few weeks now, I’ve been haunted by a silver Nissan Skyline GT-R. Nothing too odd about that, other than it being fairly rare, and seeing it often, even on streets near me, was interesting. I’ve always lusted after one, but get put off by the uncertainty over their history, being imports, and of not being really sure about the modifications and tuning that may be claimed on a given car, as against what is really installed. There are also dire warning about thrashed and trashed version cleverly tarted up for resale. Add to that the insurance penalty - I recently got quoted more to insure an early Subaru Impreza than I paid for a car I bought to use as a runabout!

I had assumed the Skyline was just ‘passing through’ whenever I saw it, but amazed to discover it sitting in a driveway less than 100 m from my own home. I only saw it because I decided to walk the opposite direction, having got fed up heading out by the quickest route to ‘civilisation’, and feeling like a bit of variation. That find was only the first coincidence.

Next coincidence was the owner’s house it was parked beside, although I don’t really know them, and haven’t seen them for years, I did employ one of them many years ago. More coincidences to come…

At that time, I developed a desire to own a Toyota Supra Turbo, and had been on the lookout for a clean one for a while. I hadn’t mentioned this at work, so got a surprise when one arrived at the door, and one of my employees rolled out of it, the same one that lved nearby. No danger of me stealing it though, it was the non-turbo version, and manual. Despite what the pub-experts that never drive these cars tell you in their infinite wisdom, while the manual version do offer some fun moments, living with and driving cars like this full time is a lot, lot more enjoyable when they are autos. Then there’s the financial advantage of not having costly clutches to keep destroying with the engine power - autos really are the smart, if not the boastful, choice.

Unlike the GT-R, the Turbo Supra did arrive after a decent version turned up for sale within walking distance… another coincidence?

Quality Telly 2

When I noted the ending of Secret Army’s recent complete rerun on UKTVHistory, I recalled that Tenko had recently precede it, but that I hadn’t watched it, and could only remember it vaguely. At that point, my recollection was that although it was in a similar vein, it didn’t have the same feeling of reality that former series seemed to enjoy.

At the time, I suspected this was because Secret Army had the easier job in so far as it was easier to recreate the setting of wartime Belgium, and have the cast made up with appropriate fashions and make-up to look as if they were of the period, adding to the atmosphere of the series. Tenko, on the other hand, was tasked with recreating Japanese internment camps, and internees that were maltreated, exhausted, undernourished, starving, and lacking medical attention, where the action was set in soaring temperatures and extreme humidity (but was filmed on a set in ’sunny’ England).

Now that Tenko’s complete run has concluded, I think my original thought that it didn’t succeed in the reality stakes in the same way that Secret Army did was valid, but irrelevant. I don’t know if I watched the original series through to their conclusion, but did so on this occasion, and believe that short of starving the cast, it did as well as Secret Army, especially with its conclusion, and even the later two part ‘Reunion’ episodes.

Once again, I’m left with the belief that the 1970s saw a rise in the quality of television material, which was followed by a its demise during the 1980s.

It’s almost as if those two decades saw all the good ideas being discovered, and produced when real imagination and creativity were at their peak, and ever since then, as we passed into the 1990s and beyond, the explosion in the number of television channels demanding quick content, and technology that makes it increasingly easy to produce ’standardised’ Special Effects’ in increasing numbers, has resulted in little more than repackaging of the most popular material in ‘New Clothes’, and its dispersal to the masses as fodder to attract sponsors that want a ‘Sure Thing’ to guarantee a return on their investment. Very few will deviate from safe programme formats, and take a chance on losing their money.

And that’s a shame.

Melbourne F1

 An interesting start to the season, as the absence of traction control and engine braking took its toll of the less than skilful or prepared.

While I’m not a fully paid up member of the Lewis Hamilton Fan Club, I do think his Pole/Lights to Flag victory bodes well for his revenge on last year’s fiasco, in which he was Rookie to World Champion in everything but name, as the Dirty Tricks brigade did their worst around him in order to cheat him of the title, and got a hand from a good helping of Bad Luck just to hammer home their power.

I’m so disinterested in him, that I didn’t even know who was actually awarded the title of World Champion last year, and had to read up to find that I should also be watching Kimi Raikkonen, to see how he fares.

The new rules look as if they are improving the spectacle of F1, although they still (in terms of Qualifying) still seems to be written by someone more interested in gathering advertising revenue than in creating interesting qualifying - and proving that leaving money men in positions of influence is a bad idea as they can’t grasp the connection between the two, and only seem to be able to pick whatever has the biggest sponsor value attached.

Frankly, I can’t be bothered with this multi-section qualifying pantomime, and suggest that if they didn’t like the old way of the one-hour straight shootout for pole - because the driver’s waited until the last few minutes to get their best run in and leave the other drivers with not time to reply, then all they had to do was cut the time from one hour to 30 minutes or so. But that would be far too simple, and not let them do complex presentations promising increased numbers to the sponsors.

At least the track action looks set to be interesting, provided it can be squeezed in between the adverts, sponsor tags, plugs for Sony, driver worship, and pathetic shots of Martin Brundle running around the pre-race grid trying to catch celebrities. Since it was Melbourne, it was inevitable we’d be reminded of the old Minogue joke (as he managed to bag both Kylie and Dannii) What’s a Minogue?: An irritating wee thing that makes squeaky noises. (And I did’t invent that, in case you’re thinking of complaining). At least those two are pleasant, unlike the dreadful Kelly Osborne that Brundle dredged up next. I’m told she sings, but I’ve never seen/heard it myself.

Poor old Brundle, wasted so much time trying to earn appearance money from celebs he almost failed to talk to any drivers on the grid, and was so late nearly ever one of them waved him away.

TV without colour

It was interesting to read an article referring to number of monochrome, or black and white, television licences being issued now.

Mar 2000: 212,000

Mar 2001: 155,000

Mar 2002: 117,000

Mar 2003: 93,000

Mar 2004: 74,000

Mar 2005: 58,000

Mar 2006: 49,000

Mar 2007: 40,500

Jan 2008: 34,700

I was intrigued by the number of viewers who were still watching on period receivers, with some even using 405 converters. I would have lost a bet (if I did that sort of thing) about that. None of the black and white sets we had survived, and that goes all the from the oldest valve jobs to the latest solid-state jobs that graced the corner of the room. One was even dual-standard, and had all the kit for both 405 and 625 line reception in the one box.

The one I miss the most, which was broken up for the parts, was a huge Philips projection TV, which came in two parts, the projector itself, the size of a washing machine, and a separate screen/speaker. These went at each end of the room, and the result was a 4 foot x 3 foot TV picture- from a set manufactured in the 1960s. Sadly it died - all valves, and extremely high voltage to get the required brightness from the display tube, only about 2 inches in diameter. This even had a form of remote control, in the form of a wooden box that could be lifted off the rear of the projector and carried all the controls for sound and picture. I’m guessing this actually has some huge voltages inside it, as the cable (no wireless stuff in those days) was at least 1 inch in diameter, and very heavily insulated. We still have the collapsible screen, which is a fully professional item, with a self-supporting, almost invisible, spring cantilever system hidden behind it to hold it open (none of the daft, flimsy retractable stuff you get today), and a highly reflective surface coated with glass beads. Still in use today when we want to look at photographic slides full size.

Of the black and white license:

• Costs £47 (compare to £139 for colour)
• Detector vans cannot distinguish colour/monochrome sets
• Black and white licence holders may be visited at home

As an electronic engineer, I’m finding the second item a bit hard to swallow, and suspect the the statement should more accurately read that the detector vans do not have equipment capable of distinguishing between the two as it has all been designed with colour sets only in mind.

There are still black and white sets to be bought, and they are on sale at local indoor markets and cheap electrical ‘box shifters’. Invariably they’re small, low quality items though, but can be operated from 12 V, which can be useful.

While the steady march of, and development of, colour television over the years has resulted in considerable improvements to the colour displayed (the early ones were generally terrible, and we didn’t part with the cost of a colour set for many years, preferring to buy a larger mono set with the cash), and not seen off all of the old black and white boxes, the figures show that their days are numbered, and that by the end of the digital switchover, there’s a fair chance that someone may deem the monochrome licence uneconomic to administer, and it will disappear as well.

Mercedes pips Toyota Prius

I’ve always considered the Toyota Prius little more than a marketing con. Not that that’s Toyota’s fault, more the idiot greenies that do little more than whine endlessly and generate hot air. In the the face of their griping, it’s little wonder that the car industry will promote any development that might shut them up. That said, the Prius is so bad as a ‘green solution’ that a quick hunt around the web shows a number of analyses of its real world performance that show it to be less than green in reality, when driven ‘normally’.

Note however, that I’m not knocking the Prius, I’m kicking the hype that has been attached to it, the technology it pioneered will get better as the supporting hardware develops, but I don’t think the poor car will ever recover from having been adopted by every overpaid American film star that wants to be photographed in one, to prove that they have ‘green credentials’, and will forget that they spew tonnes of CO2 as they jet around the world needlessly in their private planes.

As luxury car manufacturers, and therefore deadly enemy of the greenies, Mercedes may be spared the film star credibility treatment, however they have advanced the hybrid car concept by upgrading the technology to provide measurable improvement over the same car in their range when powered by a conventional engine.

The S 400 BlueHYBRID is powered by a 299 horsepower engine that enables it to sprint from 0 to 100 km per hour in 7.3 seconds.

It would consume on average 7.9 litres of gasoline per 100 km and emit 190 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, compared with 10.3 litre of gasoline and 247 grams of CO2 in a comparable conventional S-Class.

The car will be the world’s most economical luxury sedan, the company said, and the technology used is the result of 25 patents held by Daimler. Daimler said the main advantages of the newly developed lithium-ion battery were its very compact dimensions and far superior performance relative to conventional nickel-metal hybrid batteries such as those powering the Toyota Prius.

Expect to see the greenies rubbishing the technology, and playing the same old record of “WALK”.