"Men" in court over alleged rape of 12-year-old girl
Ahmad Mulakhil faces two rape charges, while Mohammad Kabir is accused of kidnap, strangulation and aiding and abetting the rape of a girl aged under 13.
Warwickshire County Council leader George Finch has alleged the two men were asylum seekers, which the BBC has been unable to verify independently, and accused Warwickshire Police and the Home Office of covering up their immigration status.
Police refused to disclose further details, saying: "Once someone is charged with an offence, we follow national guidance. This guidance does not include sharing ethnicity or immigration status."
It couldn't possibly be that the race of the victim (and potentially the arrested man) is wrong? No, surely not.
Interestingly, they are being very clear and upfront about the victim and the arrested man. No worry about "community relations". Which is the way it should be. Not covering things up, be upfront, give all the relevant information.
What do you mean? They haven't announced the race or resident status of the accused, have they? Just his name, age and address.
"Chas Corrigan, 21, of Holbrook Road, Cambridge"
Other case, you aren't allowed to know address or housing status, its nowhere in the BBC articles. Nobody will mention it or confirm it. Normally it is reported as above or "as no fixed adobe" if they are homeless.
Councillor told don't say anything to anybody about this crime because....
Tinfoil hats are very easy to make, aren't they?
In the case above, they gave name, age, and *approximate* address. People in other cases have complained about them not giving the settled status, religion, and probably even shoe size of the suspect.
Its not tinfoil hat. The council have said they were told not to talk about the case. It not like we haven't had a whole laundry list of cases that we aren't allowed to talk about where the same things have gone on.
Come on, you know the head of the council wrote to the home secretary about this.
You also know we can't talk about a massive list of cover-ups by the authorities.
Which was incredibly smart because it meant he didn't spark off a riot BUT could point to him doing something about it. He's avoided being part of the "cover up" (even though he didn't make it public either, the hypocrite) .
Farage should promote him (or perhaps he was behind that approach in the first place).
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
I don't know in domestic or office etc situations. That's why global bans, especially on say BSI compliant batteries, are so loopy.
But it's partly media panic and differential coverage as ever.
Wheels for Wellbeing have some stats on reported fires around e-mobility vehicles, and it was difficult to find even that much. They asked us all. Obvs they are making a point.
From government guidance and published ONS data: Owner-modified e-devices and those with visibly damaged, bulging, smelly or leaky batteries are a fire risk, particularly while batteries are charging. Most of these fires are residential. “Gig economy” riders using owner-modified e-cycles (very often illegal e-motorcycles) have been identified by London Fire Brigade as a high-risk user group.
Total attended e-mobility fires were around 338 in 2023, compared to 178,737 total attended fires April 2022 to March 2023.
E-cycle and e-scooter fires make up under 0.2% of all attended fires.
Smokers’ materials, cooking appliances, electrical distribution, candles and space heating appliances were the leading causes of fatal building fires, with “other electrical appliances” (potentially including e-devices) the sixth listed cause of fatal building fires (Home Office detailed analysis of fires 2022-23 figure 5.1).
There were 18,665 attended road vehicle fires in 2023-24 (ONS fire statistics data table fire0302).
Road vehicles cause 5500% more attended fires than e-cycles and e-scooters.
Only one e-scooter fire has ever been reported in a public transport vehicle. No e-cycle fires have been reported in public transport vehicles.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
It just needs European/UK product standards. They/we should probably talk to China about this. It's not as though they would lose out by their imposition, and we might end up with something not-stupid.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Taylor Swift supported Harris, didn't she?
No she memorably didn't even after many requests from the Harris camp for an endorsement and an appearance. Either way Sydney Sweeney is levels above Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is the English teacher you fancied in sixth form, Sydney Sweeney is the girl in the magazine you daydreamed about.
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
She's just a Plain Jane, nothing special at all :shrug:
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Taylor Swift supported Harris, didn't she?
No she memorably didn't even after many requests from the Harris camp for an endorsement and an appearance. Either way Sydney Sweeney is levels above Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is the English teacher you fancied in sixth form, Sydney Sweeney is the girl in the magazine you daydreamed about.
They're both meh.
Each to their own.
"Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president moments after the end of Tuesday night's presidential debate against Donald Trump. ... Her post, breaking her silence on the 2024 vote, explained: "I'm voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them."
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
TBF in 2012-2017 e-bikes definitely were a thing, but myriads of cheap Chinese imports were not - even though there were plenty of home-brew going on. They were not routinely stocked at Halfords.
My Scrapheap Challenge Expert friend had one he built himself which he could zoom up to 30mph. I had my first e-assist from 2015.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Taylor Swift supported Harris, didn't she?
No she memorably didn't even after many requests from the Harris camp for an endorsement and an appearance. Either way Sydney Sweeney is levels above Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is the English teacher you fancied in sixth form, Sydney Sweeney is the girl in the magazine you daydreamed about.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Tucker Carlson asks if Israel can hit a suspect from 30,000 feet how can they not see a church with a huge cross on the front? Tucker has had a damacene conversion somewhere along the line. I can see why he gets the big bucks
Another answer, of course, is that he's a paid Russian shill. As Russia doesn't like what happened to its ally Iran by Israel, then Carlson is suddenly against the murder of civilians by Israel. The murder of Ukrainian civilians is, of course, still a-okay in his book.
(Yes, I do realise you were very much tongue in cheek, but I couldn't miss an opportunity to call Carlson a grade A shit.)
More likely this is a standard MAGA line from Tucker Carlson. You can imagine President Trump saying something like it. They condemn all war, especially where America is involved. Hmm. Trump, Carlson, Jeremy Corbyn – what an unholy trio, yet somehow on the side of the angels.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Proof, if proof were needed, that Trump is not the only complete idiot in the world.
No, there is still a lively-ish academic debate on whether Britain should have entered the Great War. The empire would be ended by ww2 anyway, so I'm not sure what that has to do with the price of fish, and I can't be bothered to read what Hitchens says about it.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
Someone was saying recently that Windows licences were down by a third as consumers move to phones and businesses move to the cloud, where Microsoft is now a significant player.
I completely agree that the Tories need to recover their UasP which historically was a clear commitment to sound finances.
Of course that was often more honoured in word than deed, but nonetheless always went down well.
It involves telling some hard truths, not least that tax cuts come after rather than before the economy stabilises. Most of all it means an end to things like the Triple Lock and indexing of things like benefits. There will be increases, but only when the national finances can take it.
It may well not win the next election, but may well win the one after.
I think you can keep the triple lock, and all the rest, if you just say things like "AI Powerhouse" enough.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
IBM created Microsoft.
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopoly of the market I suppose.
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
IBM created Microsoft.
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopoly of the market I suppose.
IBM survived by realising its mistakes and moving into news markets. They still do lots of profitable work in mainframes.
Microsoft survived because its OS and applications are a defacto basic standard for office work and similar stuff at home.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
IBM created Microsoft.
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also Famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopolistic of the market I suppose.
It is even crazier than that. Microsoft sold MS-DOS to IBM, but they had neither written it nor bought it. There was no MS-DOS when they signed the deal, and the OS they did buy was their second choice because the first guy was out flying his plane. And the second part is that Microsoft did not sell MS-DOS to IBM, they licensed it, and then surprised IBM by licensing it to anyone else who asked. Microsoft and IBM then cooperated on a new operating system, OS/2, but again Microsoft stiffed IBM by secretly developing Windows in parallel, and pivoting at the last minute.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
IBM created Microsoft.
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopoly of the market I suppose.
It's actually a lot more complex than that. IBM had had two previous attempts at making a desktop computer for small businesses, but both had failed, in part because of IBM's labyrinthine business practices. So an executive decided to take it on, and demanded he do it *outside* the IBM culture. And the IBM PC was the result. They bought in the OS and other items because they only had a year to do it in, which was too short a time for the small group to create one in.
Sadly, when it was a success, the corporate goliath wanted to take it back over, and the executive died in a plane crash, along with his family. If Don Estridge had not died on that plane, then the 'home' computer market might have looked very different in the late 80s and 90s.
(There's a great book about it; from memory, called 'Big Blue')
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Also, still, the most-read article on The Spectator
My stalker should ask for a payrise, he keeps hitting that number 1 slot, with his ludicrous, trolling, alt-right articles
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
Wtf has happened to Google? It seems to have become brain damaged and capable of only answering in the most literal and stupidly selective way to prompts. It’s been getting worse gradually but seems to have flipped in the last couple of weeks (for me anyway).
Wtf has happened to Google? It seems to have become brain damaged and capable of only answering in the most literal and stupidly selective way to prompts. It’s been getting worse gradually but seems to have flipped in the last couple of weeks (for me anyway).
It’s got some AI search attaches to it too. Not very good, I’m using Grok more and more.
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Also, still, the most-read article on The Spectator
My stalker should ask for a payrise, he keeps hitting that number 1 slot, with his ludicrous, trolling, alt-right articles
If he wasn’t so raddled he might have a chance with Sydney Sweeney.
Incidentally, when Acorn developed the ARM chip 40 years ago, they also designed a computer to use it in, along with a video, memory and IO chip. They set up a division ?in the US? to develop an Operating System for the new computer.
That division had not delivered anything worthwhile when the hardware was nearly ready to ship. So a handful of engineers, led by Paul Fellows, made a basic operating system in just five months.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Proof, if proof were needed, that Trump is not the only complete idiot in the world.
No, there is still a lively-ish academic debate on whether Britain should have entered the Great War. The empire would be ended by ww2 anyway, so I'm not sure what that has to do with the price of fish, and I can't be bothered to read what Hitchens says about it.
Britain not fighting in the great war might have meant no WW2. Or at least a very different war. We can never know. I think it's a bit simplistic to believe that Britain could have realistically sat it out, with the potential rise of a German superpower in Europe. Balance of power and all that. And besides - Belgium, like Poland 25 years later - we had made a commitment.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Is part of the issue to do with the number of suppliers in the market, and also where people source them from?
When my fridge dies, I'm going to want a new one ASAP. So it's going to have been imported into the UK before I purchase it. I won't be buying it off AliBaba or Temu shipped direct from China to turn up in a month's time to knock £50 off the price.
Also, I suspect that there are only half a dozen serious players in the CE/UKCA marked fridge supply world. They will be keen to avoid reputational risk all by themselves, as well as fairly easy for the regulators to coral.
On the other hand, I'd hazard a guess that cheap Chinese e-bikes and accessories are often supplied under "here today, gone tomorrow" brand names (even if the underlying supplier is going to be around for the long term), and is often drop shiped direct from China via small sellers on eBay/Amazon. Unfortunately, this all adds up to an enforcement nightmare, even if we write a decent set of standards.
Also, as a final note, if you're a council with responsibilities for social housing, there is literally nothing you can do to improve the safety of the various e-bikes which are on the market, however you can solve the problem of e-bikes setting your council houses on fire by banning the people in them from having e-bikes. And thus that's exactly what's happening.
Full disclosure - I've a friend who works at a lab specialising in fire rating Lithium batteries. Based on what he's told me, I would never ever leave a Li battery of any size charging unattended overnight, and I'm not completely comfortable about having my phone on charge on the bedside table.
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
OK boomer
lol. You're pretty outdated yourself.
That was the gag
Incidentally, today I got the train from Gatwick to St Pancras, Thameslink (I only realised this existed a year ago, making Gatwick vastly easier). On the way it stopped at Blackfriars, OVER the Thames, where you get this stupendous view of the City, and Borough, and the Shard, with Canary Wharf behind it. Endless towers and Wren churches, ancient cathedrals and skyscrapers, then forests of more towers, and 2000 years of history, Roman walls to shimmering cyberprisms
It is gob-smacking. If you don't know London, it must be overwhelming. It's not lyrically, harmoniously beautiful like Paris, nor is it bracingly and excitingly lofty like New York City, but it is arguably MORE epic than both: the collision of history and modernity, beauty and squalor, power and fragility, empire and melancholy, slums and wealth, all under a sternly black and stormy summer sky. If Britain really is about to fall apart and die, let us note that we made quite the town, with our unexampled capital city, on this humble green archipelago
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Wtf has happened to Google? It seems to have become brain damaged and capable of only answering in the most literal and stupidly selective way to prompts. It’s been getting worse gradually but seems to have flipped in the last couple of weeks (for me anyway).
Why the F are you still using Google?
I use Google about once every three weeks, these days, and then briskly realise why I don't use it any more
Wtf has happened to Google? It seems to have become brain damaged and capable of only answering in the most literal and stupidly selective way to prompts. It’s been getting worse gradually but seems to have flipped in the last couple of weeks (for me anyway).
Isn't it their business model for the search engine?
If (as it once seemed) it came up with the best result instantly and correctly, then it grows until it has an effective monopoly. To Google it is now a verb.
But there is more money to be made by making you take time, so you see more adverts, and click through more links promoted by its algorithm before you reach the correct one.
So earnings are better with a crap product than a good one, at least until a replacement comes along. Even then it is likely to survive like IBM and Microsoft, not because they are good, but because they are the industry standard.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Is part of the issue to do with the number of suppliers in the market, and also where people source them from?
When my fridge dies, I'm going to want a new one ASAP. So it's going to have been imported into the UK before I purchase it. I won't be buying it off AliBaba or Temu shipped direct from China to turn up in a month's time to knock £50 off the price.
Also, I suspect that there are only half a dozen serious players in the CE/UKCA marked fridge supply world. They will be keen to avoid reputational risk all by themselves, as well as fairly easy for the regulators to coral.
On the other hand, I'd hazard a guess that cheap Chinese e-bikes and accessories are often supplied under "here today, gone tomorrow" brand names (even if the underlying supplier is going to be around for the long term), and is often drop shiped direct from China via small sellers on eBay/Amazon. Unfortunately, this all adds up to an enforcement nightmare, even if we write a decent set of standards.
Also, as a final note, if you're a council with responsibilities for social housing, there is literally nothing you can do to improve the safety of the various e-bikes which are on the market, however you can solve the problem of e-bikes setting your council houses on fire by banning the people in them from having e-bikes. And thus that's exactly what's happening.
Full disclosure - I've a friend who works at a lab specialising in fire rating Lithium batteries. Based on what he's told me, I would never ever leave a Li battery of any size charging unattended overnight, and I'm not completely comfortable about having my phone on charge on the bedside table.
The EU are currently going for TEMU wrt product safety. I've not tracked in detail.
You are correct that are certainly big brands supplying underlying systems eg batteries, motors etc. Bosch is one.
I think the Swytch bike batteries are Bosch, for example.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
IBM created Microsoft.
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopoly of the market I suppose.
It's actually a lot more complex than that. IBM had had two previous attempts at making a desktop computer for small businesses, but both had failed, in part because of IBM's labyrinthine business practices. So an executive decided to take it on, and demanded he do it *outside* the IBM culture. And the IBM PC was the result. They bought in the OS and other items because they only had a year to do it in, which was too short a time for the small group to create one in.
Sadly, when it was a success, the corporate goliath wanted to take it back over, and the executive died in a plane crash, along with his family. If Don Estridge had not died on that plane, then the 'home' computer market might have looked very different in the late 80s and 90s.
(There's a great book about it; from memory, called 'Big Blue')
I’m glad you mentioned this. IBM fully understood that the microcomputer was coming, but they failed to anticipate how large the market would be and how cost sensitive it was. It was buying in hardware and software that worked, no trying to build a cheaper minicomputer. IBM had similar issues with PS/2, MCA and OS/2. PowerPC again made some of the same mistakes. Almost all minicomputer companies also failed to deal with the microcomputer revolution. The workstation guys got clobbered too.
In computing it’s often said that you have to pick two choices from cheap, good, and fast. And if history tells us anything one of those two choices should almost always be cheap.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
IBM created Microsoft.
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopoly of the market I suppose.
IBM survived by realising its mistakes and moving into news markets. They still do lots of profitable work in mainframes.
Microsoft survived because its OS and applications are a defacto basic standard for office work and similar stuff at home.
I watched a pretty good film called 'Blackberry'. I imagined most PBers would be far more interested in that than a girl on a jeans ad
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
OK boomer
lol. You're pretty outdated yourself.
That was the gag
Incidentally, today I got the train from Gatwick to St Pancras, Thameslink (I only realised this existed a year ago, making Gatwick vastly easier). On the way it stopped at Blackfriars, OVER the Thames, where you get this stupendous view of the City, and Borough, and the Shard, with Canary Wharf behind it. Endless towers and Wren churches, ancient cathedrals and skyscrapers, then forests of more towers, and 2000 years of history, Roman walls to shimmering cyberprisms
It is gob-smacking. If you don't know London, it must be overwhelming. It's not lyrically, harmoniously beautiful like Paris, nor is it bracingly and excitingly lofty like New York City, but it is arguably MORE epic than both: the collision of history and modernity, beauty and squalor, power and fragility, empire and melancholy, slums and wealth, all under a sternly black and stormy summer sky. If Britain really is about to fall apart and die, let us note that we made quite the town, with our unexampled capital city, on this humble green archipelago
The view from the southbound platform at Blackfriars, where you're effectively above the middle of the Thames, east down river is magical and, I'd venture, at its best on a crisp winter's morning with the Sun rising around 7.30 or 8am bathing the whole of the east of the City and beyond in the early dawn light...
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
OK boomer
lol. You're pretty outdated yourself.
That was the gag
Incidentally, today I got the train from Gatwick to St Pancras, Thameslink (I only realised this existed a year ago, making Gatwick vastly easier). On the way it stopped at Blackfriars, OVER the Thames, where you get this stupendous view of the City, and Borough, and the Shard, with Canary Wharf behind it. Endless towers and Wren churches, ancient cathedrals and skyscrapers, then forests of more towers, and 2000 years of history, Roman walls to shimmering cyberprisms
It is gob-smacking. If you don't know London, it must be overwhelming. It's not lyrically, harmoniously beautiful like Paris, nor is it bracingly and excitingly lofty like New York City, but it is arguably MORE epic than both: the collision of history and modernity, beauty and squalor, power and fragility, empire and melancholy, slums and wealth, all under a sternly black and stormy summer sky. If Britain really is about to fall apart and die, let us note that we made quite the town, with our unexampled capital city, on this humble green archipelago
The view from the southbound platform at Blackfriars, where you're effectively above the middle of the Thames, east down river is magical and, I'd venture, at its best on a crisp winter's morning with the Sun rising around 7.30 or 8am bathing the whole of the east of the City and beyond in the early dawn light...
+++++
Yes. Absolutely. I've never really appreciated it before until today, when the train came to a halt, and everyone - mostly London-bound tourists from Gatwick - turned and looked and said, voicelessly, "OMFG"
It is one of THE great urban views in the world. Up there with Manhattan from the Brooklyn side of the Bridge, or Hong Kong from Tsim Tsa Shui
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
OK boomer
lol. You're pretty outdated yourself.
That was the gag
Incidentally, today I got the train from Gatwick to St Pancras, Thameslink (I only realised this existed a year ago, making Gatwick vastly easier). On the way it stopped at Blackfriars, OVER the Thames, where you get this stupendous view of the City, and Borough, and the Shard, with Canary Wharf behind it. Endless towers and Wren churches, ancient cathedrals and skyscrapers, then forests of more towers, and 2000 years of history, Roman walls to shimmering cyberprisms
It is gob-smacking. If you don't know London, it must be overwhelming. It's not lyrically, harmoniously beautiful like Paris, nor is it bracingly and excitingly lofty like New York City, but it is arguably MORE epic than both: the collision of history and modernity, beauty and squalor, power and fragility, empire and melancholy, slums and wealth, all under a sternly black and stormy summer sky. If Britain really is about to fall apart and die, let us note that we made quite the town, with our unexampled capital city, on this humble green archipelago
From where did I take this picture?
Ooh, that;s quite a test, because it looks like you are significantly ABOVE the top of the Shard, which is impossible in a London building
So you could be in a helicopter or a plane?
If not then it must be a really high tower in the City, so I'll go with maybe 22 Bishopsgate, or the Walkie Talkie, and a hint of optical illusion
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
IBM created Microsoft.
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopoly of the market I suppose.
It's actually a lot more complex than that. IBM had had two previous attempts at making a desktop computer for small businesses, but both had failed, in part because of IBM's labyrinthine business practices. So an executive decided to take it on, and demanded he do it *outside* the IBM culture. And the IBM PC was the result. They bought in the OS and other items because they only had a year to do it in, which was too short a time for the small group to create one in.
Sadly, when it was a success, the corporate goliath wanted to take it back over, and the executive died in a plane crash, along with his family. If Don Estridge had not died on that plane, then the 'home' computer market might have looked very different in the late 80s and 90s.
(There's a great book about it; from memory, called 'Big Blue')
I’m glad you mentioned this. IBM fully understood that the microcomputer was coming, but they failed to anticipate how large the market would be and how cost sensitive it was. It was buying in hardware and software that worked, no trying to build a cheaper minicomputer. IBM had similar issues with PS/2, MCA and OS/2. PowerPC again made some of the same mistakes. Almost all minicomputer companies also failed to deal with the microcomputer revolution. The workstation guys got clobbered too.
In computing it’s often said that you have to pick two choices from cheap, good, and fast. And if history tells us anything one of those two choices should almost always be cheap.
The Innovator's Dilemma is still one of the best texts on the difficulties for established players.
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Taylor Swift supported Harris, didn't she?
No she memorably didn't even after many requests from the Harris camp for an endorsement and an appearance. Either way Sydney Sweeney is levels above Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is the English teacher you fancied in sixth form, Sydney Sweeney is the girl in the magazine you daydreamed about.
On the other hand, Ms Swift is also a self made billionaire.
Personally, I think Ms Robbie would be my favorite. I have no idea of her politics. And don't really care.
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Taylor Swift supported Harris, didn't she?
No she memorably didn't even after many requests from the Harris camp for an endorsement and an appearance. Either way Sydney Sweeney is levels above Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is the English teacher you fancied in sixth form, Sydney Sweeney is the girl in the magazine you daydreamed about.
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
OK boomer
lol. You're pretty outdated yourself.
That was the gag
Incidentally, today I got the train from Gatwick to St Pancras, Thameslink (I only realised this existed a year ago, making Gatwick vastly easier). On the way it stopped at Blackfriars, OVER the Thames, where you get this stupendous view of the City, and Borough, and the Shard, with Canary Wharf behind it. Endless towers and Wren churches, ancient cathedrals and skyscrapers, then forests of more towers, and 2000 years of history, Roman walls to shimmering cyberprisms
It is gob-smacking. If you don't know London, it must be overwhelming. It's not lyrically, harmoniously beautiful like Paris, nor is it bracingly and excitingly lofty like New York City, but it is arguably MORE epic than both: the collision of history and modernity, beauty and squalor, power and fragility, empire and melancholy, slums and wealth, all under a sternly black and stormy summer sky. If Britain really is about to fall apart and die, let us note that we made quite the town, with our unexampled capital city, on this humble green archipelago
From where did I take this picture?
Ooh, that;s quite a test, because it looks like you are significantly ABOVE the top of the Shard, which is impossible in a London building
So you could be in a helicopter or a plane?
If not then it must be a really high tower in the City, so I'll go with maybe 22 Bishopsgate, or the Walkie Talkie, and a hint of optical illusion
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
OK boomer
lol. You're pretty outdated yourself.
That was the gag
Incidentally, today I got the train from Gatwick to St Pancras, Thameslink (I only realised this existed a year ago, making Gatwick vastly easier). On the way it stopped at Blackfriars, OVER the Thames, where you get this stupendous view of the City, and Borough, and the Shard, with Canary Wharf behind it. Endless towers and Wren churches, ancient cathedrals and skyscrapers, then forests of more towers, and 2000 years of history, Roman walls to shimmering cyberprisms
It is gob-smacking. If you don't know London, it must be overwhelming. It's not lyrically, harmoniously beautiful like Paris, nor is it bracingly and excitingly lofty like New York City, but it is arguably MORE epic than both: the collision of history and modernity, beauty and squalor, power and fragility, empire and melancholy, slums and wealth, all under a sternly black and stormy summer sky. If Britain really is about to fall apart and die, let us note that we made quite the town, with our unexampled capital city, on this humble green archipelago
From where did I take this picture?
Ooh, that;s quite a test, because it looks like you are significantly ABOVE the top of the Shard, which is impossible in a London building
So you could be in a helicopter or a plane?
If not then it must be a really high tower in the City, so I'll go with maybe 22 Bishopsgate, or the Walkie Talkie, and a hint of optical illusion
Well done, you mentioned the answer above, but it can't be the other tower you mentioned, because it's way too puny!
22 Bishopsgate, or more precisely the 58th floor, known as Horizon 22 and it's STILL FREE TO ENTER a year after opening.
Kemi is right, she is proposing big spending cuts in order to be able to reverse Labour's tax rises.
Truss' problem was she proposed big tax cuts without the spending cuts to fund them
The spending cuts were always part of the plan and key to the underlying ideology - Truss and Kwarteng just made a conscious decision to do the tax cutting bit first on the basis that it /should/ lead to short-term popularity and *might* result in really impressive stimulus and growth. An 'events offset' is how I might describe it, were I trying to pitch the idea.
The problem was that they didn't get sufficient buy-in from the institutions that matter and who had the power to scupper their every move. They were caught out by the ruthless lack of hesitancy and clearly lacked salesmanship and spin doctory
I still maintain that if the Truss administration had been given a couple of years to do their thing, the country would likely be in a far, far better place now.
In Liz we failed to Truss. That was the problem. I'd expect the British 'sense of fair play' to kick in at some point, but it never did. Not only is Liz now unreasonably castigated and villified for something she literally didn't (get to) do, but she's become a convenient scapegoat for all manner of other irrelevant St Judean lost causes.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
IBM created Microsoft.
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopoly of the market I suppose.
It's actually a lot more complex than that. IBM had had two previous attempts at making a desktop computer for small businesses, but both had failed, in part because of IBM's labyrinthine business practices. So an executive decided to take it on, and demanded he do it *outside* the IBM culture. And the IBM PC was the result. They bought in the OS and other items because they only had a year to do it in, which was too short a time for the small group to create one in.
Sadly, when it was a success, the corporate goliath wanted to take it back over, and the executive died in a plane crash, along with his family. If Don Estridge had not died on that plane, then the 'home' computer market might have looked very different in the late 80s and 90s.
(There's a great book about it; from memory, called 'Big Blue')
I’m glad you mentioned this. IBM fully understood that the microcomputer was coming, but they failed to anticipate how large the market would be and how cost sensitive it was. It was buying in hardware and software that worked, no trying to build a cheaper minicomputer. IBM had similar issues with PS/2, MCA and OS/2. PowerPC again made some of the same mistakes. Almost all minicomputer companies also failed to deal with the microcomputer revolution. The workstation guys got clobbered too.
In computing it’s often said that you have to pick two choices from cheap, good, and fast. And if history tells us anything one of those two choices should almost always be cheap.
The Innovator's Dilemma is still one of the best texts on the difficulties for established players.
Most of the microcomputer companies went the same way. Apple is still standing and making hardware - because they avoid the commodity hardware trap.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Sure re the ebike crap, LI batteries shite. Nem con from this end.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
Just when you think Miss Sweeney can't get any more attractive it turns out she's a conservative. Hot girls for Trump vs blue haired blobs for Harris indeed.
Taylor Swift supported Harris, didn't she?
No she memorably didn't even after many requests from the Harris camp for an endorsement and an appearance. Either way Sydney Sweeney is levels above Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is the English teacher you fancied in sixth form, Sydney Sweeney is the girl in the magazine you daydreamed about.
Kemi is right, she is proposing big spending cuts in order to be able to reverse Labour's tax rises.
Truss' problem was she proposed big tax cuts without the spending cuts to fund them
The spending cuts were always part of the plan and key to the underlying ideology - Truss and Kwarteng just made a conscious decision to do the tax cutting bit first on the basis that it /should/ lead to short-term popularity and *might* result in really impressive stimulus and growth. An 'events offset' is how I might describe it, were I trying to pitch the idea.
The problem was that they didn't get sufficient buy-in from the institutions that matter and who had the power to scupper their every move. They were caught out by the ruthless lack of hesitancy and clearly lacked salesmanship and spin doctory
I still maintain that if the Truss administration had been given a couple of years to do their thing, the country would likely be in a far, far better place now.
In Liz we failed to Truss. That was the problem. I'd expect the British 'sense of fair play' to kick in at some point, but it never did. Not only is Liz now unreasonably castigated and villified for something she literally didn't (get to) do, but she's become a convenient scapegoat for all manner of other irrelevant St Judean lost causes.
Well said !
I know you think differently, but I suspect that the United Kingdom would be in exactly the same place if Truss had remained in post. I just can't see her plans for moving the whole country off the coast of South Carolina as being economically viable.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Sure re the ebike crap, LI batteries shite. Nem con from this end.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
Cheap shit white goods are showing up in shops in poorer areas. Quality and safety as you might expect.
Further to the PB discussion about WWI the other day:
Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah · 2h Today is the 111th anniversary of the suicide of the British Empire, which needlessly joined in the Russo-German war of 1914, losing huge numbers of lives, naval supremacy and solvency, defaulting on its US debts(still unpaid today) in 1934.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't the British Empire reach its maximum territorial peak after the post-WW1 settlement?
And the reason the Empire went away wasn’t WWI.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product. 2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
The interesting companies are those that survive through both evolution and revolution. IBM is an example; from old mechanical tabulating machines, through mainframes, to software, the cloud, and services. I would not be surprised if their work in quantum pays off. Microsoft has also pivoted, from basic OS and software, to cloud / online services and gaming. Both IBM and MS do still do their older businesses, but they have evolved into other profitable areas.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
IBM created Microsoft.
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopoly of the market I suppose.
It's actually a lot more complex than that. IBM had had two previous attempts at making a desktop computer for small businesses, but both had failed, in part because of IBM's labyrinthine business practices. So an executive decided to take it on, and demanded he do it *outside* the IBM culture. And the IBM PC was the result. They bought in the OS and other items because they only had a year to do it in, which was too short a time for the small group to create one in.
Sadly, when it was a success, the corporate goliath wanted to take it back over, and the executive died in a plane crash, along with his family. If Don Estridge had not died on that plane, then the 'home' computer market might have looked very different in the late 80s and 90s.
(There's a great book about it; from memory, called 'Big Blue')
I’m glad you mentioned this. IBM fully understood that the microcomputer was coming, but they failed to anticipate how large the market would be and how cost sensitive it was. It was buying in hardware and software that worked, no trying to build a cheaper minicomputer. IBM had similar issues with PS/2, MCA and OS/2. PowerPC again made some of the same mistakes. Almost all minicomputer companies also failed to deal with the microcomputer revolution. The workstation guys got clobbered too.
In computing it’s often said that you have to pick two choices from cheap, good, and fast. And if history tells us anything one of those two choices should almost always be cheap.
The Innovator's Dilemma is still one of the best texts on the difficulties for established players.
Most of the microcomputer companies went the same way. Apple is still standing and making hardware - because they avoid the commodity hardware trap.
My FiL was an engineer in the disk drive industry, so Christensen's book hits quite close to home.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Sure re the ebike crap, LI batteries shite. Nem con from this end.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
Cheap shit white goods are showing up in shops in poorer areas. Quality and safety as you might expect.
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
OK boomer
lol. You're pretty outdated yourself.
That was the gag
Incidentally, today I got the train from Gatwick to St Pancras, Thameslink (I only realised this existed a year ago, making Gatwick vastly easier). On the way it stopped at Blackfriars, OVER the Thames, where you get this stupendous view of the City, and Borough, and the Shard, with Canary Wharf behind it. Endless towers and Wren churches, ancient cathedrals and skyscrapers, then forests of more towers, and 2000 years of history, Roman walls to shimmering cyberprisms
It is gob-smacking. If you don't know London, it must be overwhelming. It's not lyrically, harmoniously beautiful like Paris, nor is it bracingly and excitingly lofty like New York City, but it is arguably MORE epic than both: the collision of history and modernity, beauty and squalor, power and fragility, empire and melancholy, slums and wealth, all under a sternly black and stormy summer sky. If Britain really is about to fall apart and die, let us note that we made quite the town, with our unexampled capital city, on this humble green archipelago
From where did I take this picture?
Ooh, that;s quite a test, because it looks like you are significantly ABOVE the top of the Shard, which is impossible in a London building
So you could be in a helicopter or a plane?
If not then it must be a really high tower in the City, so I'll go with maybe 22 Bishopsgate, or the Walkie Talkie, and a hint of optical illusion
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Sure re the ebike crap, LI batteries shite. Nem con from this end.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
Cheap shit white goods are showing up in shops in poorer areas. Quality and safety as you might expect.
GB News have 80,000 viewers on average and that's the most watched news service?
I met a girl yesterday who's an influencer who models and sells lingerie online and she has 220,000 followers.
I'm surprised GB News on those figures can keep running
They've been bleeding money since launch, but have deep-pocketed backers. A broadcast news channel is mostly a vanity project now.
In the same reports that talked about viewership said they are now break even.
However, from the get go it was obviously there is no massive pot of gold like in the US for tv news, it has never got massive viewership outside those 30 mins primetime slots on BBC / ITV. We aren't like the US were Fox can get 3 million viewers for a late night satire show.
The big loser in all this is Sky News, they are getting absolutely hammered.
Gutfeld’s show is aimed straight at the Colberts and Fallons, and beats them all in the ratings.
There’s only two American late-night shows really worth watching these days, Gutfeld and Bill Maher, who understand that the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny, and aren’t afraid to go after their own side when justified. The rest are all totally one-sided propagandists, working a time slot when most people want to have a laugh and disconnect from the world.
This is true and also rather sad, because Stephen Colbert is genuinely very funny, and used to be hysterical when he was "in character" as a rightwing loon. Plus he wasn't afraid to attack the Democratic left. Now he's a pitiful Woke shadow of what was, and the show has been shuttered
Damn shame
I'm fairly sure he'll shrug off your (some might say pitiful anti-woke obsessed) judgment.
OK boomer
lol. You're pretty outdated yourself.
That was the gag
Incidentally, today I got the train from Gatwick to St Pancras, Thameslink (I only realised this existed a year ago, making Gatwick vastly easier). On the way it stopped at Blackfriars, OVER the Thames, where you get this stupendous view of the City, and Borough, and the Shard, with Canary Wharf behind it. Endless towers and Wren churches, ancient cathedrals and skyscrapers, then forests of more towers, and 2000 years of history, Roman walls to shimmering cyberprisms
It is gob-smacking. If you don't know London, it must be overwhelming. It's not lyrically, harmoniously beautiful like Paris, nor is it bracingly and excitingly lofty like New York City, but it is arguably MORE epic than both: the collision of history and modernity, beauty and squalor, power and fragility, empire and melancholy, slums and wealth, all under a sternly black and stormy summer sky. If Britain really is about to fall apart and die, let us note that we made quite the town, with our unexampled capital city, on this humble green archipelago
From where did I take this picture?
Ooh, that;s quite a test, because it looks like you are significantly ABOVE the top of the Shard, which is impossible in a London building
So you could be in a helicopter or a plane?
If not then it must be a really high tower in the City, so I'll go with maybe 22 Bishopsgate, or the Walkie Talkie, and a hint of optical illusion
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Sure re the ebike crap, LI batteries shite. Nem con from this end.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
Cheap shit white goods are showing up in shops in poorer areas. Quality and safety as you might expect.
There's cheaper than Beko? Blimey.
The shit that’s sold to really really poor around the world is showing up here now.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Sure re the ebike crap, LI batteries shite. Nem con from this end.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
Cheap shit white goods are showing up in shops in poorer areas. Quality and safety as you might expect.
There's cheaper than Beko? Blimey.
The shit that’s sold to really really poor around the world is showing up here now.
Globalisation works both ways
We're meeting the third world on their upslope, as we do the downslope.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Sure re the ebike crap, LI batteries shite. Nem con from this end.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
Cheap shit white goods are showing up in shops in poorer areas. Quality and safety as you might expect.
Thanks - had no idea.
It’s fascinating to watch it grow from selling super cheap one ring cooker things on the internet.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Sure re the ebike crap, LI batteries shite. Nem con from this end.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
Cheap shit white goods are showing up in shops in poorer areas. Quality and safety as you might expect.
There's cheaper than Beko? Blimey.
The shit that’s sold to really really poor around the world is showing up here now.
Globalisation works both ways
We're meeting the third world on their upslope, as we do the downslope.
Not so much that. But we’ve chosen to import ultra cheap labour from developing countries. You want ultra cheap labour? Then they are going to live ultra cheap lifestyles.
They have to, to work at Deliveroo. So you get the exploding e-bikes (they can’t afford a nice Brompton) and other cheap, shoddy goods.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
At the moment *my* campaign group are looking for case studies as evidence of Disabled people facing mobility difficulties due to unreasonable restriction of Li-ion battery powered devices, or, as they elucidate it:
We know lots of people are facing problems including restricting their own mobility aid choices because of Li-ion battery issues and outdated "invalid carriage" laws, but because people are completely understandably worried about enforcement, or don't realise what the current laws actually are, it's hard to get case studies!
The context is that the DFT are currently consulting directly at Ministerial level, and this is one issue that my group wants to raise.
At present I'm putting together some words to put in more public fora than the Campaign Network itself; I suspect this is like so many other things - it just gets accepted as an inevitable imposition (see "unlawful obstructions on footpaths").
What's your idea for the mitigation of fire risk?
I need to distinguish here between my view, and the organisation's policy position. This is my personal view.
My first target for change would be acceptance of known safe batteries - that is to British (or whatever) Standard, and from known good brands, used by disabled people. We certify mobility scooters and power wheelchairs with Lithium Ion batteries (some are even on Motability) ; so we can do it for mobility aids which are not currently in the "formally recognised" bucket, such as sit-down scooters and clip on e-assist handcycles. That's not really a big change, and you can see how it ties in to the existing .. er .. process, rather than challenging it.
I'd push it further in some directions - eg certified / tested folding or non-folding e-bikes, but I'd call that step 2.
That's not really relevant to the Chinese battery fire risk. My approach to that would be marketplace regulation - which is just the normal way of doing things. We do it with every other product category (eg kettles, furniture) without throwing our hands up in despair, so I don't see that this one is impossible. Trading Standards would need some rebuilding.
Comments, including hostile ones, are welcome of course. One reason for me to put this thinking here is exactly to get a range of considered opinions - which, amongst everything else, is one good feature of PB.
My guess is that you'd hit pushback couched as "Trade barriers".
The real issues would be that this would require wholesale testing and certification of lithium batteries. The problem is that self test works for reputable brands. But there will be a howl from China et al, if you don't allow them the same courtesy as Apple or Brompton.
The quality producers will be upset if nothing is done to stop the shitbags - because the shitbags are cheaper and will take the market.
Let them howl, their substandard products are not only burning houses down and killing people, but are also easily modifiable as to be be dangerous on the roads, killing more people.
Why would China (as opposed to a few of their more dodgy suppliers) howl ? For now, they're the ones most able to meet any such standards at the most competitive price.
Indeed, so China needs to clamp down on suppliers of dodgy batteries and e-bikes, to the satisfaction of Western authorities.
Apple and Brompton almost certainly get their batteries from China, but they are built to Western standards. Then the same factory runs a dodgy night shift making substandard parts that look identical to the originals. That’s before we get to the many factories that pay no attention to Western standards whatsoever.
I’m a free market kinda guy in general, but when it comes to things that kill people when they go wrong there obviously needs to be regulation in place, along with enforcement by customs and trading standards.
Just how many people are dodgy batteries killing? We typically have a lot of pushback on regulations (or speed limits) on PB - interested in the relative benefits and costs of additional rules/enforcement.
Good question.
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
To put that number in some context, in 2012-2017 (ie before e-bikes were a thing) apart from the huge outlier of Grenvile Tower, LFB was attributing between 2 and 13 deaths a year to the cause of "faulty appliance or supply" (which I would assume is what e-bike battery fires are classed as).
Putting it that way certainly makes the case - consider that most of us don't have an e-scooter in the flat (but all of us have a fridge), so the rate is very high.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
That's a very interesting comparison - compare with white goods, which require independent certification.
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
Yep - plus enforcement issue. If someone was selling dodgy fridges that burst into flames every now and again we'd have cracked into them hard.
Pushing it a bit further:
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
Indeed. The reason fridges weren’t banned is that there is fairly robust standards in place. Which reduce fridge fire incidence to a very, very low level.
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
You mean, the EU used to do that for us?
Ha. The same shit is happening in Germany, France and the rest of the EU.
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
Sure re the ebike crap, LI batteries shite. Nem con from this end.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
Cheap shit white goods are showing up in shops in poorer areas. Quality and safety as you might expect.
There's cheaper than Beko? Blimey.
The shit that’s sold to really really poor around the world is showing up here now.
Globalisation works both ways
We're meeting the third world on their upslope, as we do the downslope.
Not so much that. But we’ve chosen to import ultra cheap labour from developing countries. You want ultra cheap labour? Then they are going to live ultra cheap lifestyles.
They have to, to work at Deliveroo. So you get the exploding e-bikes (they can’t afford a nice Brompton) and other cheap, shoddy goods.
Miele is slightly out of their price bracket.
Slave wages means goods made for the serfs.
It's the Sam Vimes "Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness," theory. People in poverty buy cheaper, lower-quality items that wear out quickly, ultimately costing them more in the long run than if they could afford to buy higher-quality, longer-lasting goods.
Comments
Farage should promote him (or perhaps he was behind that approach in the first place).
Here’s a press release last year from the London Fire Brigade:
https://www.london-fire.gov.uk/safety/lithium-batteries/the-dangers-of-electric-scooter-and-electric-bicycle-batteries/
On average there was a fire every two days in 2023 in London. London Fire Brigade attended 143 e-bike fires along with 36 blazes involving e-scooters. Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires.
Many of these fires are caused by incompatible chargers, modifications to e-bikes, or faulty or counterfeit products which are purchased online. This includes chargers, lithium batteries and conversion kits for e-bikes.
But it's partly media panic and differential coverage as ever.
Wheels for Wellbeing have some stats on reported fires around e-mobility vehicles, and it was difficult to find even that much. They asked us all. Obvs they are making a point.
From government guidance and published ONS data:
Owner-modified e-devices and those with visibly damaged, bulging, smelly or leaky batteries are a fire risk, particularly while batteries are charging. Most of these fires are residential. “Gig economy” riders using owner-modified e-cycles (very often illegal e-motorcycles) have been identified by London Fire Brigade as a high-risk user group.
Total attended e-mobility fires were around 338 in 2023, compared to 178,737 total attended fires April 2022 to March 2023.
E-cycle and e-scooter fires make up under 0.2% of all attended fires.
Smokers’ materials, cooking appliances, electrical distribution, candles and space heating appliances were the leading causes of fatal building fires, with “other electrical appliances” (potentially including e-devices) the sixth listed cause of fatal building fires (Home Office detailed analysis of fires 2022-23 figure 5.1).
There were 18,665 attended road vehicle fires in 2023-24 (ONS fire statistics data table fire0302).
Road vehicles cause 5500% more attended fires than e-cycles and e-scooters.
Only one e-scooter fire has ever been reported in a public transport vehicle. No e-cycle fires have been reported in public transport vehicles.
https://wheelsforwellbeing.org.uk/e-cycles-fire-safety-and-disabled-peoples-mobility/
https://x.com/lbc/status/1952440042909061576?s=61
They/we should probably talk to China about this. It's not as though they would lose out by their imposition, and we might end up with something not-stupid.
Almost certainly not, because the Tories would then fall to about 5%.
https://youtu.be/9GdJ0UROfhk?si=nOcizLov0rjikPk4
Columbia or Costa Rica ?
We have another Leon on our hands.
No idea who organised it, or who is pushing it.
But twitter people like Inevitable West (who is an Indian crypto grifter aiui) are bandwagon jumping.
Because of how they are stored (which is a huge hurdle for all forms of micro-transport, including conventional cycling), they need to be treated like a white good.
I must have been 11 or 12.
Each to their own.
"Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president moments after the end of Tuesday night's presidential debate against Donald Trump.
...
Her post, breaking her silence on the 2024 vote, explained: "I'm voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89w4110n89o
Unlawful micro mobility of various sorts have a high rate of fires. Certified ones, such as power wheelchairs and mobility scooters and e-cycles which are BSI compliant have a very low rate. We can get that much from the stats, at least indicatively.
And if we can certify 28 million washers and 28 million fridges (estimated), why can't we apply the same process to micro mobility devices?
I'll make the suggestion - it is a good counter to the response of the previous government which was something between "unnecessary because of freedom", "can't be arsed" and "too difficult".
TBF in 2012-2017 e-bikes definitely were a thing, but myriads of cheap Chinese imports were not - even though there were plenty of home-brew going on. They were not routinely stocked at Halfords.
My Scrapheap Challenge Expert friend had one he built himself which he could zoom up to 30mph. I had my first e-assist from 2015.
It went away because rising nationalism meant either have to go General Dyer once a week, or give up ruling other countries.
The vast bulk of modern wealth in the U.K. was accumulated post empire
Arguably the mercantilist approaches of the Imperial period held us back from the next step.
The failures of Big Industry, which also gets bought into this, are and were self inflicted. Pre WWI, Armstrongs and others refused to switch from wire wound guns to built up, when requested by the Navy.
Yes, they collectively refused to build a superior product because it would have meant investing in new machinery. Plus the workforce would have been upset.
If you have a great product, this is the truth
1) it will be superseded by a better product.
2) the better product can be your next product. Or someone else’s.
I was chatting to a greybeard on Saturday who was positing that Intel is screwed precisely because it had not pivoted into radical new business areas.
I won't go as far as some do, and say they saved some rail routes. But they certainly helped the economics of some routes.
Edit: then again, I didn't have to regularly travel on them...
Takes me back to being a school kid.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cJjz_K2hfj8
Sleek and serious, and it means business.
Grenfell Tower fire started because of an Electrical Fault in A Fridge, yet we have not banned fridges. In fact it is unthinkable.
Why not, and why are e-mobility transport appliances - especially for disabled people for whom they are their legs - different, in terms of making them safe and permitting their use?
We could actually push it to the model used elsewhere where certification is by independent industry bodies - for example FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association). The e-bike industry could be required to have a similar structure.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/04/demis-hassabis-ai-future-10-times-bigger-than-industrial-revolution-and-10-times-faster
British tech sold off to America and the only reason there is still a British presence is that:-
From his office window, we can see the vast beige bulk of Google’s just-about-finished new office, where DeepMind will be moving next year. It’s fair to say the reason the tech giant is putting so much into Britain is because of Hassabis, who insisted on staying in London.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/04/demis-hassabis-ai-future-10-times-bigger-than-industrial-revolution-and-10-times-faster
IBM believed the money was in the hardware not the software, and incidentally that the money was in mainframes and office systems not home computers. So rather than write their own software they bought in MS Dos. The rest is history.
Microsoft also famously was late to the Internet. They couldn't see the point.
Its amazing how both companies are still going. The power of capitalist momentum and monopoly of the market I suppose.
Damn shame
Microsoft survived because its OS and applications are a defacto basic standard for office work and similar stuff at home.
Sadly, when it was a success, the corporate goliath wanted to take it back over, and the executive died in a plane crash, along with his family. If Don Estridge had not died on that plane, then the 'home' computer market might have looked very different in the late 80s and 90s.
(There's a great book about it; from memory, called 'Big Blue')
Edit: an article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-the-ibm-pc-won-then-lost-the-personal-computer-market
Fridge fires and leaks of toxic coolant used to be a big problem. As did other white goods. Hence the robust standards.
Incidentally, shitty no-name white goods are becoming a problem. Guess what they cause?
Enforcement of standards on swathes of dangerous stuff doesn’t happen on many imports, it seems.
My stalker should ask for a payrise, he keeps hitting that number 1 slot, with his ludicrous, trolling, alt-right articles
You're pretty outdated yourself.
That division had not delivered anything worthwhile when the hardware was nearly ready to ship. So a handful of engineers, led by Paul Fellows, made a basic operating system in just five months.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARX_(operating_system)
I think it's a bit simplistic to believe that Britain could have realistically sat it out, with the potential rise of a German superpower in Europe. Balance of power and all that. And besides - Belgium, like Poland 25 years later - we had made a commitment.
When my fridge dies, I'm going to want a new one ASAP. So it's going to have been imported into the UK before I purchase it. I won't be buying it off AliBaba or Temu shipped direct from China to turn up in a month's time to knock £50 off the price.
Also, I suspect that there are only half a dozen serious players in the CE/UKCA marked fridge supply world. They will be keen to avoid reputational risk all by themselves, as well as fairly easy for the regulators to coral.
On the other hand, I'd hazard a guess that cheap Chinese e-bikes and accessories are often supplied under "here today, gone tomorrow" brand names (even if the underlying supplier is going to be around for the long term), and is often drop shiped direct from China via small sellers on eBay/Amazon. Unfortunately, this all adds up to an enforcement nightmare, even if we write a decent set of standards.
Also, as a final note, if you're a council with responsibilities for social housing, there is literally nothing you can do to improve the safety of the various e-bikes which are on the market, however you can solve the problem of e-bikes setting your council houses on fire by banning the people in them from having e-bikes. And thus that's exactly what's happening.
Full disclosure - I've a friend who works at a lab specialising in fire rating Lithium batteries. Based on what he's told me, I would never ever leave a Li battery of any size charging unattended overnight, and I'm not completely comfortable about having my phone on charge on the bedside table.
Incidentally, today I got the train from Gatwick to St Pancras, Thameslink (I only realised this existed a year ago, making Gatwick vastly easier). On the way it stopped at Blackfriars, OVER the Thames, where you get this stupendous view of the City, and Borough, and the Shard, with Canary Wharf behind it. Endless towers and Wren churches, ancient cathedrals and skyscrapers, then forests of more towers, and 2000 years of history, Roman walls to shimmering cyberprisms
It is gob-smacking. If you don't know London, it must be overwhelming. It's not lyrically, harmoniously beautiful like Paris, nor is it bracingly and excitingly lofty like New York City, but it is arguably MORE epic than both: the collision of history and modernity, beauty and squalor, power and fragility, empire and melancholy, slums and wealth, all under a sternly black and stormy summer sky. If Britain really is about to fall apart and die, let us note that we made quite the town, with our unexampled capital city, on this humble green archipelago
They don’t have a magic fence that keeps out dangerous stuff.
The problem is that regulation was predicated on responsible, on shore manufacturers. So Brompton make sure they use quality batteries - inspect the factories etc. Same for all the big, known, names.
What to do when people are direct ordering from a website in another country and having their goods delivered by post? The names and brands change monthly. Instead of dealing with a few companies, it now looks like we will need the kind of customs inspections that haven’t been a thing for many decades.
I use Google about once every three weeks, these days, and then briskly realise why I don't use it any more
If (as it once seemed) it came up with the best result instantly and correctly, then it grows until it has an effective monopoly. To Google it is now a verb.
But there is more money to be made by making you take time, so you see more adverts, and click through more links promoted by its algorithm before you reach the correct one.
So earnings are better with a crap product than a good one, at least until a replacement comes along. Even then it is likely to survive like IBM and Microsoft, not because they are good, but because they are the industry standard.
You are correct that are certainly big brands supplying underlying systems eg batteries, motors etc. Bosch is one.
I think the Swytch bike batteries are Bosch, for example.
In computing it’s often said that you have to pick two choices from cheap, good, and fast. And if history tells us anything one of those two choices should almost always be cheap.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=blackberry+movie
Actor Song Young-kyu of 'Extreme Job' found dead
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/films/20250804/actor-song-young-kyu-of-extreme-job-found-dead
A societal problem.
The view from the southbound platform at Blackfriars, where you're effectively above the middle of the Thames, east down river is magical and, I'd venture, at its best on a crisp winter's morning with the Sun rising around 7.30 or 8am bathing the whole of the east of the City and beyond in the early dawn light...
+++++
Yes. Absolutely. I've never really appreciated it before until today, when the train came to a halt, and everyone - mostly London-bound tourists from Gatwick - turned and looked and said, voicelessly, "OMFG"
It is one of THE great urban views in the world. Up there with Manhattan from the Brooklyn side of the Bridge, or Hong Kong from Tsim Tsa Shui
NB: Vanilla please fix your block quoting
So you could be in a helicopter or a plane?
If not then it must be a really high tower in the City, so I'll go with maybe 22 Bishopsgate, or the Walkie Talkie, and a hint of optical illusion
I'll try harder tomorrow.
Personally, I think Ms Robbie would be my favorite. I have no idea of her politics. And don't really care.
22 Bishopsgate, or more precisely the 58th floor, known as Horizon 22 and it's STILL FREE TO ENTER a year after opening.
Republicans against Trump
@RpsAgainstTrump
·
35m
BREAKING: Texas Democrats have blocked a redistricting vote by breaking quorum.
The Texas House has voted to issue arrest warrants for the Dem
lawmakers who fled to Illinois to prevent the vote.
But your post did refer - apparently - specifically to white goods, which caught my attention and puzzled me.
ISTR, by the way, reading a memoir by a NYC pathologist who helped to bring the problem of CO poisoning by water heaters, gas powered fridges, etc. to light back in the, what was it. 1920s and 1930s?
*ducks*
Globalisation works both ways
They have to, to work at Deliveroo. So you get the exploding e-bikes (they can’t afford a nice Brompton) and other cheap, shoddy goods.
Miele is slightly out of their price bracket.
Slave wages means goods made for the serfs.