December: Reasons to Be Cheerful…?

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Well, a Merry Christmas to you all.

The President is already several Xmas lunches for the better, including the Past Presidents’ Lunch. Apparently it is not until you are a ‘Past’ that the Secret of Eternal Youth is passed on to you.  For this guy the secret couldn’t come sooner!

The Big Xmas Present this month was the Energy Bill. It was just the thing to use to bury good news. Published the same day were the public versions of the reports that Alistair Buchannan used for his scary Annual Lecture on UK energy security. But also published were some real sweeties in consultations from the Energy Efficiency Deployment Office on electricity consumption reduction.  Grief Reduction – the ‘R’ word! Check it out, read out Technical Resources on the CIBSE website, write in! Plug Guide F for all it is worth! There could be £3000/kW on offer in the capacity mechanism if I have my sums right!

The Father Xmas Problem
It was never clear to me as a child why Father Xmas both had to be stout, wear pure white fur trimmings, and slide down every chimney in the land. It was almost as if parents were trying it on on purpose. How could they be held to account for fibbing if I’d swallowed such a stinker in the first place? Personally if it was a train set that was at issue, I’d have swallowed anything. A bit like a Property Developer pocketing a LEED Platinum, you might say.

Outside my office window at Imperial the column of Infant School little darlings wait with their teacher to go into the Science Museum. They are chatting excitedly and I can guess the questions they are asking on this chilly December morning. Did provision for a Santarian visit once a year hold back the roll out of the Rumford Stove? If there are no flues in 2050 will there be no presents? Or does mechanical ventilation with heat recovery just mean that the presents have to be smaller but can now afford to be posher? Do Reindeer pay the Congestion charge or are they exempt under instruction from London’s Supreme Leader?

‘Why does my day job have 7 QS’s working on variations and only 5 engineers working on the engineering?’ queried one of my Systems Masters students this morning..

Children ask all the right questions.

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