The young unemployed (2)

A great tragedy of our time is the failure to recognise that education is more than book-learning. Boys in particular need to DO things. Engaging them is crucial. Not everyone is academic, and giving them hand/eye skills while they are enjoying themselves has probably more value in turning them into useful citizens than compelling them to stay at school while switched off from learning: The sad current state of affairs for many.

We shouldn't underestimate the ability of our children, but we must fire them up.  My father (or your grandfather) probably left school at fourteen, possibly knowing more arithmetic and better able to read and write than some of those we see coming out of too many of our schools today.
  In Lithuania, one specialist aviation school teaches nine-year-olds to fly gliders - using the highly adventurous solo method. The kids lap it up, and most go on to become proper engineers. 

Day-release from work to go to college worked for my generation. Why not day release to go to work for fourteen-year olds? Working hands-on as, say, an apprentice joiner soon shows the lad (or ladess) the utility of geometry when they help set out their first circular bay window, or wreathed and scrolled handrail: An aspiring mechanic (fitter, more like) needs to appreciate the difference between a force-fit, a running fit, and slop, in a mechanism.

We need to see a return to vocational training at school as another route into industry, as a stepping stone to better things. That's the REAL advantage of an apprenticeship.

Youth unemployment

My younger readers won't perhaps be aware that we've been here before: the present situation is a repeat of the early eighties (heard of the YOP scheme) and again of the late eighties.

I was building a joinery business through those years, and while skilled labour was increasingly hard to find, the growing pool of unemployed youth was becoming increasingly hard to employ. Why was that?

1. Bad attitude was all too common. Resentful and truculent is never good, especially when you want a job. Attacking your employer (physically or verbally) does not go far in securing your employment.
2. Lack of ambition. All too often the ONLY thing in these lads minds was "football".
3. Too high in expectations.
It was so sad to see these young men, the flower of our nation, desperate for jobs, but virtually unskilled despite years of useless government courses one after the other, expecting the wages of a skilled man. The competitive demands of the business made it impossible to accede to their demands.

Perhaps one in twenty, when asked "where do you want to be in five years time" would point to one of the skilled machinists and say "I want his job". Needless to say, these were the ones who got the job, and invariable made a success of it.
Those days were HARD for anyone in industry, as our government was intent on exporting jobs. We said so at the time, but no one was listening. Now, everyone recognises the folly. 
Guess what! We told 'em so.

I have to do some work now, but I have more to write on this subject.

Demolish or rebuild

There are many hundreds of thousands of old sub-standard terrace houses across the UK in many of the big cities, all waiting demolition thanks to the the policies espoused by the last Labour government.  Earlier this week, Charles Clover wrote a great piece in the Sunday Times suggesting that rather than "demolish and grass-over", the councils should give these blighted properties to individuals to refurbish at their own expense.
This proposal immediately rang a bell with me, as it echoed a similar policy espoused by speakers at the Building Research Establishment three years ago. One company was doing a deal with local authorities and renovating, not one house at a time, but whole streets. The effect was brilliant: Marooned owners suddenly found themselves with new neighbours instead of boarded up wrecks: First-time buyers found themselves with affordable homes in perfect condition with all mod-cons and insulated to a high standard. The LA saw its income restored and shared the profit on values with the company.
What happened? There's no sign of this happening now. It's likely the collapse in property values and the drying up of mortgages killed it in the intervening period. Whatever, this idea needs reviving, and Charles Clover puts a new spin on it.
Read Charles Clover's full article at www.supasash.com ("Affordable homes" link on the left). It deserves shouting about.

What I HATE about my i-Phone

The way the text prompts are automatic instead of optional drives me MAD!
I know I can turn it off, but that's NOT what I mean. it's the assumption that I want the alternative word offered, and have to say "no" if not. I seem to have a wider technical vocabulary than Apple. That means, if I'm writing fast I'm constantly having to go back and correct the "corrections". 
Maddening. Grrrrr!

It's not the spelling function I'm concerned with. That works well. The thing that drives me mad is the feature that offers an alternative word and asks me to say "no" if it's not what I want. It means that most of the time I get it whether I want it or not.
The obvious solution, of course, is to offer a choice of protocol from "auto replacement" to "optional replacement".
If it thinks it knows better than me, it should have the courtesy to let me ignore it. That's what I call "product development".
Simples.

It's the assumptions wot get you.

No one doubts the mathematics underlying subjects such as engineering or particle physics, but the assumptions on which they are based sometimes turn out to be flawed, and thereby wreck the consensus of the standard theory. The historic belief in the existence of phlogiston - a mysterious substance or property of elements that enabled combustion - was sunk without trace once modern chemistry explained the true state of affairs.

So, what lies behind the shocking discovery that neutrinos can travel faster than light (if true). Does the assertion underpinning all of modern physics - that nothing can travel faster than light - fall? If so everything changes.  Genius Fred Hoyle was ridiculed for standing by his Steady State theory, but what if the red-shift explained by receding galaxies has another explanation: Some 80% of the mass in the universe can't be found: the so-called Dark Matter. Light travels more slowly through dense material than through a vacuum. If this dark matter is spread uniformly throughout 'empty' space, however thinly, could the red-shifted light from distant galaxies show not that they are receding, but that the light from them has travelled through something less than a perfect vacuum. Dark matter perhaps?
Will someone explain why not, please.

Quad glazing: the next big thing? Or not.

There's a new kid on the block: Quadruple glazing. It's been around for years in curtain-walling systems, but is now being presented as the next development for the domestic market.

However, efficient though it is in preventing heat-loss, quad glazing is not without an environmental cost: Glass manufacture (melting sand at very high temperature) takes a great deal of energy. A member of the West Midlands Manufacturing Advisory Group once described premature sealed-unit failure as "an environmental disaster". Quad glazing will, at a stroke, double the environmental cost.
Somewhere, there is a point of diminishing returns, and my gut feeling is that that quad glazing is over the top. I tend to prefer the Heat Mirror approach which achieves much the same result for a far lower environmental cost. I would be very interested in seeing the embodied energy cost of the two systems set against notional energy savings.

The best energy-saving measure is still another layer of clothing with the thermostat turned down, and there's vast scope for the future in intelligent heat-mapping and distribution inside buildings. 

Would You Believe It? Nos.1 to 3

In a week that has seen the arrival of the seven-billionth inhabitant of our planet, I found myself pondering some of the astonishing coincidences that I have seen in the last thirty years, in a population of mere millions.

No 1
In 1976 our family was dispersed around the world. My parents had been visiting us in Mallorca, and were six hours late leaving for England with their flight delayed by violent storms. My sister was living in Dubai, and made an unscheduled trip back to England on the spur of the moment. In an age without mobile phones, and without any knowledge that the others were travelling, they bumped into each other in a crowded Terminal 4 at Heathrow.

No. 2
In the 1980s I had a woodworking business in the centre of Birmingham, and took on a new member of staff from a Skill Centre. (Remember them?). This chap had been a navigator in the rapidly-shrinking merchant navy, and had re-trained as a carpenter/joiner. He lived in Walsall, some seven or eight miles to the west of the city.
On the way over to his first job in Solihull, some seven or eight miles to the east of the city, I gave him strict instructions to keep his mouth shut: I did not particularly want the client to know that he was new to the business. Not good for confidence, you understand. The job was a timber conservatory roof, round at the back of the property. While I was showing my new man what was required of him, the client - a chap in his early forties, I guess - stepped out of the kitchen door, looked at my new employee and said "What are you doing here? You were in the merchant navy last time I saw you".
Said client was an insurance salesman, and my new chippie had been one of his clients. Would you believe it? There were seven million inhabitants in the West Midlands conurbation, and I picked two that knew each other, despite living fourteen miles apart with England's second-city between them.

No. 3
A few years ago my wife and I were walking the Coleridge Way in Somerset with friends. At one rural B&B we were joined at breakfast by another couple from somewhere down south, and exchanged some polite conversation, during which our home town came up. "Oh!, I lived there once." said the chap. "I used to keep my horse in K**** H*******." (a village just south of the town). "That's a coincidence." says I. "We lived there, too, until a few years ago". He then mentioned the name of the chap from whom we bought our house. To cut a long story short, it turned out that our new acquaintance had kept his horse in the stable of the barnyard of the house we had bought twenty years before.
Coincidence, or what?

On Guarantees

Most window companies and installers look to their glass suppliers for their guarantees. (I am not here thinking of the insurance-backed guarantees that many home-improvement companies offer the householder. According to some industry specialists, they are a mixed bag, and all too often, not what they are cracked up to be). No, I look to MY glass supplier to guarantee ME against having the units he supplies fail on me, 'cos I know that while he may supply replacements at no cost, he is unlikely to reimburse ME for the considerable cost of inspecting, re-ordering, removing, and replacing even one failed unit. I learned this lesson early in my business life when a valued client had nineteen of his twenty-five sealed units fail just three months before the guarantee expired (long, long ago in the 1980s). Thankfully, the SUPAWOOD System saved my bacon, and a complete houseful of new DGUs were delivered Free Of Charge, thanks entirely to the properly drained and vented glazing system I could demonstrate to their surveyor.
However, it was Muggins here who had to send a team of fitters out at his own expense to do the actual replacing. Perhaps I'd do things differently now, and ask my supplier to cover the base labour cost, but thankfully, in the twenty-five years since, it's never happened again. That's why I'm happy to offer my own customers a full ten-year guarantee WITH CONFIDENCE, in the knowledge that we'll do better than twenty-five.

Setting out on your own

Starting out in business can be a daunting prospect. Some folk just slide into it, perhaps part time, working from the back bedroom or kitchen table. For others, perhaps rudely thrown out of a well-paid job and with a family and mortgage to support, it can be quite a scary prospect, even if they have a saleable skill-set (Ugh! Horrible expression).
I started my first business as a single man (albeit with a girl-friend to support). Ignorant of virtually every aspect of running a business after some fifteen years of secure employment, 1974 found us almost penniless in a foreign country (Mallorca) and we simply had to find a way of providing a roof over our heads and putting food on the table. With good DIY skills (and a liking for woodwork picked up from school and my master-cabinet maker-turned vehicle-body-builder father) I swiftly found someone willing to pay for my services as a sub-contractor and very soon moved on to find my own customers. In those very easy-going times, hand-to-mouth it might have been, but we ate very well, and never either starved or made much money.
Later on, after our return to England with a small child, it was rather different. The constant need to pay a never-ending stream of bills meant constant risk-taking as the business simply HAD to grow to produce enough profit. That's where a better grasp of running a business rather than just working to make a living would have come in useful. Nevertheless, we must have done something right 'cos that first business - the ground work, so to speak - lasted twenty-five years, only foundering after a Dash For Growth (always a risky tactic) in an attempt to speed up the climb to the next level.

To get to the point, building a business from scratch can be a hard, slow process. I now know that, unless you have a clear idea at the outset of how to make money with your route to success already mapped out - and a certain amount of good luck to go with it - it's much easier to buy into an existing business and take a short cut to success by building on someone else's efforts, rather than doing it the hard way.
Had it been available all those years back, buying into a Franchise is a route that would have quickly given me the knowledge and support I lacked and which took so long to acquire.
The only issue these days is, with so much choice, which Franchise is the one for YOU?

On Conservation

Having spent much of my working life trying to reconcile the triangle of innovation, traditional craftsmanship and conservation (and trying to make a living within the constraints) it's been clear to me that there are many idiotic aspects to 'Conservation'.

There is an assumption that craftsmanship died sometime in the past. So timber-frame buildings in the custody of such as English Heritage are ugly patchworks of old and new, as if they had never been repaired before EH came along. It seems to me that a piece of oak patched in by a craftsman today is no different to one patched in in, say 1880. So why not blend it and stain it (traditional materials, of course) as any craftsman would do. Craftsmanship is still very much alive if you look for it, and should be celebrated. Personally, as a craftsman working in oak, I would be offended if I were required to leave such unsightly blotches behind for future generations to scoff at.

It's the same with windows. I have spent a working lifetime developing technically efficient and architecturally sympathetic glazing to bring old housing stock into the twenty-first Century while preserving the visual aspect, and find the assumption by many Conservation Officers that the inhabitants of our green and pleasant land are expected to live in museums - expensive ones at that - quite offensive.

Certainly there is a place for true "conservation". In the 1960s I saw the old timber-framed and jettied 14thC Silhill Hall pulled over and burned (by an idiot contractor who could have dismantled it and sold it for re-erection on a new site if he'd had any brains) to make room for three detached modern boxes. On the other hand, once the fire-officer had won the battle over fire-doors in a private Cotswold hotel I was working on, why was the CO insisting on choosing the style of doors? There was nothing left to conserve, and I was astonished the owner didn't tell her to get lost. It's as if the rest of us have no good taste and historical perspective of our own.

No one would suggest that a beautiful crown-glazed window in the Crescents of Bath or Tunbridge Wells should be torn out and thrown away, but there are millions of windows in less sensitive areas where substituting modern, technically superior versions - virtually indistingishable from the originals - shouldn't be used to upgrade what is substandard accomodation by the standards of today. I would like to think that in 100 years time, others will look at my work and approve. Who knows, it might even get listed.

There's a new thread on the subject started on Philip Rougier's site. Why not join in the fun.
Here's the link: http://forum.expertexpert.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=55

More on the history of the rising sash window

Sliders of one sort or another have been with us since the dawn of time. Unglazed openings were shuttered with wood boards, and a sliding version survives to the present day as the horizontal Yorkshire Slider. As glass became available, solid boards were simply replaced with frames, and further improved over time. Simple, economical, and uncomplicated.
The invention of the rising sash will almost certainly have been prompted by the fashion among the wealthy for Palladian-style buildings where window openings are taller than they are wide. This style was introduced in the late sixteenth century but was not widely adopted. It became fashionable in the late seventeenth century, during Robert Hooke's lifetime. But whether he, or some unknown but enterprising joiner conceived the idea of counter-balancing the sashes with weights concealed in cased boxes, we may never know. The story is further confused by the fashion, from time to time, to give houses complete make-overs, throwing out the old and replacing with new. (So what's changed?)

There are clues, though, when dating a particular window, as styles and construction techniques changed over the years. This is not an exact science, however, as alterations, copies and even the possibility of downright fakes all have to be taken into consideration.

In general terms, the early sash windows were constructed with solid, plain glazing bars, perhaps relieved by a slight bevel, glazed with hand-made 'cylinder' glass. It is these imperfect panes, with their inevitable undulations, pits, and reams, that give old windows a sparkle when seen from afar, as the light is caught and scattered.

Initially the window frames were generally inserted directly into the structural opening to leave the cased box completely visible from outside. This feature on its own is not a sure sign of antiquity, as an old-ish window may be inserted in a new-ish building in just the same way. However, the cased box hiding the weights is a bulky item and it must have soon occurred to a builder that concealing the box in a rebate built into inside face of the (solid) brick or stone wall would greatly increase the amount of light for a given structural opening (and, also, solar gain on a sunny winter's day in an era without central heating).

Over the years, architects and their joiners competed to improve their designs over those of the neighbours. Frames became lighter, and glazing bars became elegantly moulded and ever slimmer, culminating in the slender lambs-tongue profile which is the ultimate development of the ovolo mould. (Many modern replacements, of course, can be instantly spotted from the far side of the room by the rounded moulding at the junctions, where the ovolo was applied by a power-router after the frame was assembled. Ugh!)

As technology produced ever-larger panes of glass, glazing bars became fewer in number, (except where they were used for purely decorative purposes) shown by the proliferation of Victorian houses with but a single vertical glazing bar. By the turn of the century glass was available in large rolled or drawn sheets, and many elegant sash windows of the early 1900s have no glazing bars at all, relying on delightful proportion for their merit, and decoration, if any, being provided by arches and
curves in the main structural components. The chief driver of this process being, as always, first-cost, bringing a fine product to the mass market.

The aim of the designer is generally to achieve the most pleasing balance of proportion and economy. Ostentatious display may be recognised in the inappropriate proliferation of glazing-bars and arched rails used simply to demonstrate the wealth of the client. Wherever you look, you should be able to recognise these features. In general, the rising sash window forms a major part of our British architectural heritage, and deserves every effort to preserve and improve it for the benefit of future generations.

Useful links:
www.supasash.com
www.rugbysash.co.uk
http://forum.expertexpert.com
www.roberthooke.org.uk

The History of the Rising Sash Window

The origins of the rising sash window are obscure. Most commentators place its origin in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but there is good evidence to place it rather earlier. Carol Davidson Cragoe, in "How to Read Buildings" (Herbert Press, London) suggests the invention might be attributed to Robert Hooke (1635-1703). There is certainly a good case to be made (of which, more anon) and he was certainly an inventive and creative mechanic, engineer, designer, and architect with the capability of doing so. As curator of the Royal Society and, simultaneously, laboratory technician to the eminent physicist Robert Boyle, he demonstrated a prodigious ability to design and build mechanical and scientific apparatus of all sorts. He later became an assistant to the great architect Christopher Wren, and, as Chief Surveyor to the City of London, was responsible for overseeing more than 50% of the rebuilding of London following the Great Fire of 1666.

An architect in his own right, few of his buildings survive today, but a drawing in 1858 of his Royal College of Physicians (completed 1678) shows rising sashes in every visible elevation.

A diary entry dated Feb 2nd 1680 refers to sash windows in Montagu House.
This is the earliest known reference to sash windows.

Copyright KJN 2011
www.supasash.com

Fire safety at home

Twenty years ago we bought a Victorian attic-farmhouse, and within minutes of visiting it for the first time, our young daughter had 'bagged' the large attic bedroom for herself. This gave me a real headache: With no fire doors anywhere in the house, the two-storey stairwell would become a 'chimney' in the event of a fire, and escape for someone on the attic floor would be impossible. The answer proved to be a Davey Descender - a braked reel that allows a body of any weight to descend from a high place at a steady speed. It sits tidily and unobtrusively on the wall above the window until it's needed. In that sad event, you slip the harness over your shoulders and under the armpits, throw the other end out of the window, then follow it down yourself. As you go down, the other end comes back up, ready for the next escapee. A brilliant answer to allay my fears.
The main concern was whether it might become the main attraction at some wild party, one day - a sort of drunken bungey-jumping. (If it ever did, I never found out about it).
I found it here - http://www.lymore.com
Highly recommended.

Theo's second bite

For his second bite of the cherry on You and Yours (see previous post) Theo Paphitis talked about running a small business. As usual, full of great common sense. He reminded us that the great majority of new businesses fail within two years. (My first business lasted twenty five years, failing after an abortive dash-for-growth. My current business is now in its fourth year, with great prospects for a franchised future. (The pilot is doing just fine, thanks).
Theo didn't suggest it, but, surely, unless you have a great idea and the confidence to follow it up, buying a franchise - joining a successful business with a track record and support - has to be a good route into business for the novice. I did it the hard (slow) way, making mistakes and learning from them. Probably not the best route, but thirty years ago there was not much choice.

For a while, back in the early eighties, I gave woodwork instruction at night school. One of the class told me he had just bought a busy post office (for £60k, a vast sum at that time). "Crikey!" says I. "That's a lot of money. I'm building my business up for myself." "Maybe," came the reply, "but I'm making money NOW!". Hmmm! That shut me up.

If I were setting out today, joining a franchise would quite possibly be my preferred option..

Theo P on Radio 4

"You and Yours" Radio 4, Monday 11th April 11. Theo Paphitis was given two bites of the cherry, both worth a listen if you missed it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0105vtw)

Either he's been reading my blog, or Great Minds Think Alike :-) The reality is, the obvious stares you in the face when you are in business, but our Lords and Masters can't see the truth even when you stick it under their noses.

Theo's first point was that Government has done almost nothing worthwhile to encourage businesses to employ more. See MY letter to my MP in my blog below (22nd October 2010, item 2). Theo suggests Tax incentives. For me, they would have to be generous.

Onward and upward

New Twitter for i-Phone solved the clogging-up, but I still have to work out how to update this blog from the phone. More investigation required, I guess. Its quite likely that my website platform (BlueVoda) has a blog facility. Must check it out today. Any suggestions?

Catching up.

I've just been reminded that my I-phone won't allow me to post in this blog. It only allows me to enter the title. If anyone can explain this, please explain. # It does explain why I got out of the habit of blogging, as I have become addicted to my i-Phone. It does have a few down-sides, tho', such as this. It's become a real pain to have to boot up the computer just to blog. To make things worse, from a Social Media Management view, my i-Phone has become very slow on Twitter. I have tried re-booting, but I suspect that the i-Phone might be clogged up with photographs and old mail. I shall have to go and plug in to I-Tunes (another pain) and sort it out. I read that Android is now outselling Apple. Maybe time to trade in and move on. Any advice is welcome. Otherwise, busy, busy. Two new patents filed; lots of new business for my new partner (Keith James at Rugby Sash - kj@rugbysash.co.uk ) who's picked up the business and is running with it. Promising business prospects in several other directions, also. (Something must be wrong: It all seems to be going right!) Starting to brush up properly on Social Media. Determined to get to the bottom of it and do it right. Suspect that finding a better platform than this will be crucial as part of the over-all plan. Nuff for now.