On 19/12/2017 16:31, S Viemeister wrote:
On 12/19/2017 10:55 AM, Java Jive wrote:

on my walks around the area's roads, I see Tesco vans almost every
day, including even Saturdays & Sundays, which will pass within
half-a-mile of my house, but won't deliver to it, so I have to make a
100 mile round trip to get my weekly or fortnightly shop from
Dingwall.* I've rung them, complained, and explained that I would be
quite happy to pay them a bit extra to come a bit further, but they
won't do it, and instead suggested that I corrupt their system by
giving a postcode in Lairg of a friend, and putting my postcode on the
delivery instructions!

Interesting - does that actually work?

Still being relatively new to the area, I don't really know anybody in
Lairg, and certainly not well enough to be able to impose on them by
asking to use their postcode. However, one of the local crofters has
told me that this is precisely what his wife does, and, at the time of
our conversation a year or two back, it was working. It's important to
understand, though, that we are actually quite close to Lairg, about 6
miles north of it, and the vans already serve postcodes close by. It
seems the drivers are quite happy to bend the rules, obey the delivery
instructions, and come that bit further.

It's a ridiculous situation, actually, devised by someone, or more
likely some*thing* in the form of a computer programme, who hasn't
looked at a map of the area. Shinness is community of 60 houses
(counting only those actually currently inhabited, there are others that
are being constructed, others that are mobile homes/static caravans or
even cottages which are let on a holiday basis, and a few lying empty
and awaiting buyers) strung out over about five miles of the A838 along
the lower part of the north-eastern shore of Lock Shin, which is a long
glacial gash dividing central Sutherland roughly SE to NW, the houses
nearest Lairg being only about four miles from it. Beyond Shinness
there is nothing much until you reach other small villages many miles
beyond. Anyone who actually looked at a map and decided to serve the
Lairg area would naturally include Shinness as one of it's outlier
centres of population (Shinness phone subscribers are about 10% of all
Lairg), but because, as I suppose, these things are all calculated by
computers, there's an arbitrary cut-off point between us and Lairg, thus
disenfranchising us from receiving the same service as neighbours quite
close by - in short, a postcode lottery.

Java Jive wrote:

You always come up with this "I'm alright Jack" style of posting, and I
always shoot it down in flames
Though presumably you had some awareness of what speeds would be like
before you moved to Scotland?

On 19/12/2017 17:23, Andy Burns wrote:
Java Jive wrote:

You always come up with this "I'm alright Jack" style of posting, and I
always shoot it down in flames
Though presumably you had some awareness of what speeds would be like
before you moved to Scotland?

Speeds were about a third of what I'd got previously via ADSL in a big
city, which, considering I'm so far out, I thought reasonable at the
time. The problem is that the world is constantly moving on, but the
service that we get doesn't move on with it, so in real terms we are
always falling behind.

"Java Jive" wrote:
[...]
As I've posted before, average page weight increases by tens of percent
every year, which means that a low broadband speed that could just about
cope a decade or so ago now provides a dismal and frustrating
experience. This is not because of anything a rural householder has
done, but because the incompetent jerks who write the pages only ever
test them on their own system with high-speed access - if it works on
their manager's PC, it's good to go.

Not only that, but more processing is done client-side rather than
server-side these days. In other words, javascript running on your PC.
I generally surf with it disabled and it's no surprise that many sites
only partially render or just show blank pages. Obviously they'd rather
offload the cost of generating their DHTML onto us. Anyway, they are
still "incompetent jerks", as you say because they'll be using script
libraries from which they may only use a portion of the functionality
but the whole package will still have to be downloaded by the browser.

It may seem strange to those of us brought up in a time before the era
of mass electronic communication that it should now be thought a
necessity of life, but the practical reality of modern life is that it
is so.

Unfortunately, it does seem to be the case.

On 19/12/2017 15:55, Java Jive wrote:
On 18/12/2017 23:57, MB wrote:
On 18/12/2017 16:18, Java Jive wrote:
The problem is that most of the money spent upgrading the system
nationwide is spent on improving speeds for those who already get
workable speeds.

No, as long as there are safe alternatives.* I have mains water, but
my waste goes into a septic tank.

Are they still allowed, a friend had one but was told it had to be
replaced by what is virtually a small sewage plant under his car park.

Septic tanks are everywhere in Scotland, even in some villages, such a
Kyleakin on the Isle Of Skye.

It was the cost I was thinking of.* Live outside a town and you will
have pay the cost of your own water supply and probably have it tested
every year.

You often see pipes coming down from mountain streams.

You will need also to pay the cost of your own sewage plant.

Nonsense, but you do have to pay occasionally to have a tanker come and
empty a septic tank* -* some do it every year, others like myself every
few years, ISTR it last cost about £250.

But if you make enough noise someone will claim that she should be
provided with high speed broadband at the same cost as someone who had
fibre running near his house.

You always come up with this "I'm alright Jack" style of posting, and I
always shoot it down in flames, yet you never seem to learn ...


A friend moved into a rural house, there was either something wrong with
the septic tank or it was because he was a new resident but he had to
replace it with what is effectively a small sewage plant. You can hear
the motor running, blowing air through the sewage like a big sewage plant.

A recent TV series showed the council man going around rural properties
testing their water system. It is a requirement in Scotland if you rent
the house, take paying guests or are selling the house. I think it is
then an annual check.

Another friend used to get water from a stream but not sure if that
would be allowed now. He checked it every time he went there, a walk up
the hill looking for dead animals.

On 19/12/2017 17:46, Java Jive wrote:
On 19/12/2017 17:23, Andy Burns wrote:
Java Jive wrote:

You always come up with this "I'm alright Jack" style of posting, and I
always shoot it down in flames
Though presumably you had some awareness of what speeds would be like
before you moved to Scotland?

Speeds were about a third of what I'd got previously via ADSL in a big
city, which, considering I'm so far out, I thought reasonable at the
time.* The problem is that the world is constantly moving on, but the
service that we get doesn't move on with it, so in real terms we are
always falling behind.

When I got BT Infinity I sent the figures to a friend in the US. I was
getting three times the speed he gets and he lives in a small town just
outside San Francisco, almost Silicon Valley.

On Tue, 19 Dec 2017 22:38:02 +0000, MB wrote:



A friend moved into a rural house, there was either something wrong with
the septic tank or it was because he was a new resident but he had to
replace it with what is effectively a small sewage plant. You can hear
the motor running, blowing air through the sewage like a big sewage plant.


In England there is no requirement to replace legacy private sewage
systems, unless the system is working so badly that it is causing
pollution to a watercourse. I expect your freind was conned by an
excessively cautious surveyor or sewage treatment plant salesman.

Properly designed, installed and maintained septic tank systems are a
perfectly acceptable way of treating sewage, in fact they are almost
certainly a lot better than package treatment plants,. Of course, you
need a lot of ground for the leach field, so a new build is unlikely
to have enough land for an adequate leach field, so a package
treatment plant has become the norm for most off mains new builds,
aided no doubt by the profitability for the plant makers and the ease
of installation for the installers.

A recent TV series showed the council man going around rural properties
testing their water system. It is a requirement in Scotland if you rent
the house, take paying guests or are selling the house. I think it is
then an annual check.

Another friend used to get water from a stream but not sure if that
would be allowed now. He checked it every time he went there, a walk up
the hill looking for dead animals.


There is almost no control over water supplies to private houses with
single family occupancy. Years ago local councils had a duty to test
private water supplies, which ours woud do about every 5 years. Now
that duty seems to have lapsed and it is up to the house owner to get
the supply checked, if they wish to, but there is no compulsion to do
so.

Of course supplies to commercial premises, or supplies to more than
one household are much more rigorously controlled.

AFAIK there is no restriction (apart from the 20,000l a day
abstraction limit) on taking a water supply from a stream. Ours comes
from a stream, although it's taken about 100M from the spring source.

On 19/12/2017 22:42, MB wrote:

On 19/12/2017 17:46, Java Jive wrote:

Speeds were about a third of what I'd got previously via ADSL in a big
city, which, considering I'm so far out, I thought reasonable at the
time.* The problem is that the world is constantly moving on, but the
service that we get doesn't move on with it, so in real terms we are
always falling behind.

When I got BT Infinity I sent the figures to a friend in the US.* I was
getting three times the speed he gets and he lives in a small town just
outside San Francisco, almost Silicon Valley.

But I bet he gets a much better speed than the 1.4Mbps I get, which is
about the norm around here, though one person get 2Mbps (I was getting
that for a while), while others can't get ADSL at all.

On 20/12/2017 09:26, Bill Taylor wrote:
On Tue, 19 Dec 2017 22:38:02 +0000, MB wrote:



A friend moved into a rural house, there was either something wrong with
the septic tank or it was because he was a new resident but he had to
replace it with what is effectively a small sewage plant. You can hear
the motor running, blowing air through the sewage like a big sewage plant.


In England there is no requirement to replace legacy private sewage
systems, unless the system is working so badly that it is causing
pollution to a watercourse. I expect your freind was conned by an
excessively cautious surveyor or sewage treatment plant salesman.

Properly designed, installed and maintained septic tank systems are a
perfectly acceptable way of treating sewage, in fact they are almost
certainly a lot better than package treatment plants,. Of course, you
need a lot of ground for the leach field, so a new build is unlikely
to have enough land for an adequate leach field, so a package
treatment plant has become the norm for most off mains new builds,
aided no doubt by the profitability for the plant makers and the ease
of installation for the installers.

A recent TV series showed the council man going around rural properties
testing their water system. It is a requirement in Scotland if you rent
the house, take paying guests or are selling the house. I think it is
then an annual check.

Another friend used to get water from a stream but not sure if that
would be allowed now. He checked it every time he went there, a walk up
the hill looking for dead animals.


There is almost no control over water supplies to private houses with
single family occupancy. Years ago local councils had a duty to test
private water supplies, which ours woud do about every 5 years. Now
that duty seems to have lapsed and it is up to the house owner to get
the supply checked, if they wish to, but there is no compulsion to do
so.

Of course supplies to commercial premises, or supplies to more than
one household are much more rigorously controlled.

AFAIK there is no restriction (apart from the 20,000l a day
abstraction limit) on taking a water supply from a stream. Ours comes
from a stream, although it's taken about 100M from the spring source.





My friend is not the type to be too easily conned! There is a stream
runs down past the house so might have been concern about leaks into that.

The water people could not find where his house gets its supply from!
It has mains water but the rooute of the pipe is a mystery (forgot to
ask if he had tried dowsing).

My other friend lived a couple miles up a track from the main road. He
got his water from a stream that ran down past his house. He often had
walkers asking if they could fill their water bottle up before heading
into the hills. He had great difficulty in getting them to understand
that the water out of his tap was exactly the same as the water in the
stream!

We had roof water at a lot of sites at work at one time, the big problem
was dead birds though we were not supposed to drink it. One site had
the water running off the rood into a trough around the building then
down into an underground tank. One major design flaw in that method!

On 20/12/2017 16:28, Java Jive wrote:
On 19/12/2017 22:42, MB wrote:

On 19/12/2017 17:46, Java Jive wrote:

Speeds were about a third of what I'd got previously via ADSL in a
big city, which, considering I'm so far out, I thought reasonable at
the time.* The problem is that the world is constantly moving on, but
the service that we get doesn't move on with it, so in real terms we
are always falling behind.

When I got BT Infinity I sent the figures to a friend in the US.* I
was getting three times the speed he gets and he lives in a small town
just outside San Francisco, almost Silicon Valley.

US ISPs are pretty dire outside the big cities.

But I bet he gets a much better speed than the 1.4Mbps I get, which is
about the norm around here, though one person get 2Mbps (I was getting
that for a while), while others can't get ADSL at all.

Do you have any mobile phone coverage at all?

3/4G networks can work OK as can the various microwave local
initiatives. We now have a repeater node in our village hall which will
eventually be made available to the entire village that wants it.

Hell will freeze over before BT installs any new cable here - they have
already cherry picked the marginally profitable populous bits.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown