Comments on: Lloyds and Carbon Monoxide

By: wayscj

wayscj — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:26:22 +0000

ed hardy ed hardy ed hardy clothing ed hardy clothing ed hardy shop ed hardy shop christian audigier christian audigier ed hardy cheap ed hardy cheap ed hardy outlet ed hardy outlet ed hardy sale ed hardy sale ed hardy store ed hardy store ed hardy mens ed hardy mens ed hardy womens ed hardy womens ed hardy kids ed hardy kids ed hardy kids

By: abdou

abdou — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:04:38 +0000

Excellent stuff Ben, especially getting the phrase ‘Come into my anal world’ into the national press

By: dvavasour

dvavasour — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:26:48 +0000

Just found this article.

The other thing which isn’t considered is how many of the properties have sealed boilers: that is, boilers where both the incoming air and outgoing combustion products go via a concentric dual direction flue straight to outside, and the boiler is totally sealed to inside the house.

The possibility of such a boiler leaking CO into the inside depends not only on the combustion process being misadjusted (relatively possible), but also on the seal between the boiler and inside the house being compromised (remote possibility).

Putting a CO detector next to a sealed boiler is a waste of money.

By: peningda

peningda — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:12:18 +0000

I think they picked council tennants as their highlighted group because they are the group least able to act to get their furnaces serviced in response to the fear campaign, or even to be able to find out when the furnace was last serviced, and so most likely to be persuaded to buy Carbon Monoxide detectors.

By: RexT

RexT — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:50:22 +0000

The turn of phrase is apposite in view of the proported “low penetration rate”
achieved by councils. We are all supposed to be in favour of high pentration rates…especially by Lloyds.

By: essjaydee88

essjaydee88 — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:56:21 +0000

Sorry to be puerile, but look at the third line from the third-from-bottom paragraph. Really quite a hilarious turn of phrase. I’ve never been asked to do that by a blog before.

By: elspeth2009

elspeth2009 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:11:01 +0000

Oh, and I’ve never been under the care of a community mental health team but I have seen a few psychaiatrists (for anyone that hasn’t the procedure is, they flick through your notes, say, “tell me about your last episode of terrifying psychosis”, listen, ask “did you find you were eating less than usual at this time”, wonder whether this merits/ the NHS can afford a follow-up appointment)I’m amazed it’s only 5%.

By: elspeth2009

elspeth2009 — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:42:57 +0000

Hi,

I also saw you at the Babbage laboratory, I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated what you said about risk assessment and psychaiatric patients. I think as many people as possible should say this as often as possible as loudly as possible.

They probably all went mental from carbon monoxide poisoning from private landlords anyway.

By: Robert Carnegie

Robert Carnegie — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:51:34 +0000

Poundstretcher/Instore has a relatively cheap carbon monoxide alarm, probably equivalent to Lloyds if it’s any good, which I don’t know. It’s electronic and supposedly bleeps if CO exceeds a certain level and also bleeps in a different way when the battery is running out. My own CO spot is overdue for a change anyway, but it crosses my mind that arranging not to have a poison gas generating machine in your home in the first place is yet another approach.

If you heat by electricity, do you have a boiler?

By: Plato-says

Plato-says — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:27:21 +0000

I’m sure I read this HERE – a few months back.

Can it have self-destructed?

By: dizzydi

dizzydi — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:24:00 +0000

I temped in a council office that managed all the testing of boilers for Brighton & Hove’s council properties. Apart from the usual problems of using outside contractors, basically we did a pretty good job and it was a ‘Key Perfomance Indicator’ so very well monitored. The main reason we couldn’t get to 100% each year was that a small proportion of council tenants wouldn’t let our engineers into their home (and were often pretty abusive about it!).

By: marcusavgreen

marcusavgreen — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:19:22 +0000

I used this article as a teaching aid to illustrate how important it is to question statistics and the motivation of the people who produce them.

By: mikewhit

mikewhit — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:30:32 +0000

Adequate numeracy is a pretty moveable feast – what, like Easter ?

By: lasker

lasker — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:04:42 +0000

Its easy to get statistics wrong but surely 99/4,500,000 =0.000022 so to get 99 as a percentage of the number of council tenants you would have to multiply by 100, giving 0.0022%.

OK Nitpicking, but hey scientific accuracy and all that…

By: Synchronium

Synchronium — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:07:30 +0000

WigglePig: It’s English for “woman”.

By: WigglePig

WigglePig — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:55:52 +0000

What’s a boiler?

By: mch

mch — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:47:08 +0000

Boilers need servicing?!

By: Pete Beaudro

Pete Beaudro — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:55:56 +0000

Hey, Toenex

Given that we’re constantly being reminded (often by scientists) that sciences are much harder than other subjects, I’d suggest that ‘being crap at maths’ is not uncommon

As Kate48 points out, it is a fact frequently exploited by those people who are good at maths, but who use their skills to make maths ‘tell fibs’.

Adequate numeracy is a pretty moveable feast: I’m pretty numerate to a basic (GCSE) level, I’m happy to say (and my sky-pointing is outstanding), but it would take me a heck of a long time to do certain proportionate comparisons (ie practical statistics) these days.

The basic functionally numerate are the most succulent fodder for these dodgy PR sorts – they understand percentages, fractions etc. to a degree in certan contexts, but struggle to spot the flaws when the context changes.

Having said that, I don’t feel people should take pride in poor numeracy (and I don’t think you did, Kate48), particularly when they accompany this pride with snide remarks about other people’s use of the apostrophe. I’ve been that man – I am no longer!

By: johnrs

johnrs — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:09:13 +0000

@Godliness – only if you feed them.

By: Godliness

Godliness — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:15:24 +0000

My boiler is located next to my kitchen sink. Whenever the small child that I keep tethered to the sink expires, I get the boiler serviced. Does this count as a carbon monoxide detector?