One good thing about being on your own for a weekend when there is a job to be done in the house (a DIY type job) is that you get to do it yourself and you get to use the power tools yourself. Women’s lib is the freedom to use a drill. Even though women are perfectly capable in using power tools, in the dynamic of my household, put a man (SK) in the equation and it is “Uggg. Man’s work!”.

This weekend I installed many things using power tools. I drilled a total of ten holes and did no harm to myself or the walls. Most importantly, I tidied up aforementioned power tools and put everything back where I found it. The only time SK gets bothered about anything in the house is if the tools have not been put back in their place. Which is sort of ironic, because when he doesn’t put things back in their place in the kitchen (he does most of the time, there are just a few small things that he has not figured out) he doesn’t understand why I get my knickers in a twist and say “But they don’t live there, they live here! How can you live here and NOT know that!”.

The test of the the man being comfortable with the woman’s power tool handiwork will be if anyone ever admires it and says to SK, “That is a good job!”. Will he be man enough to sheepishly admit, “Laura did that!” ?.

choco cake, laura canon digitial slr

there are a couple of types of chocolate cake in this world. the first main type is the sugary, made with un-chocolatey chocolate that you wish you hadn’t bitten into. often, you’ll even spit this kind out, if no one is looking.

then there is the dense, dark, no flour, no artificial ingredients of any sort, 85% cocoa solids, some ground almonds, some sugar, some eggs, some butter, some espresso, some liqueur type that you wish you hadn’t made because it is so so good, you’ll eat it all (albeit it slowly, it is rich) because there is NO ONE else to eat it with you.

the photo doesn’t really do this cake justice.

So, it will sit, in the fridge, tempting you every time you open it.

What’s worse is that it has whimsical roasted whole hazlenuts scattered through it.

The Irish Times (sub required) has an article reporting that residential car parking permits may be based on length of cars rather than on engine size as initially proposed.

The Dublin City Council had proposed charging owners of vehicles with an engine size of 2,000cc double for residential parking permits.

The logic behind changing to length rather than engine size seems to be about co2 emissions. Apparently, the Saab 95 was put forward as an argument against this. Because it has an ethanol based engine. Saab 95s have the misfortune of being long cars too, so, they may have to pay the higher charges, should they come into force anyway.

AA public affairs manager Conor Faughnan told the meeting that models including the Saab 95, which runs on a petrol-ethanol mix, had engines bigger than two litres, as did many lean-burning diesel engine cars, but their carbon emissions were a fraction of that of some cars with an engine size less than two litres.

I think that Conor Faughnan may be missing the fact that there aren’t a whole lot of petrol stations selling ethanol. So, the Saab’s consistent environmental friendliness in not much ethanol Ireland may be questionable. I have yet to see ethanol for sale in a petrol station. That may be because I never go to any of these Maxol stations. (Although, anyone who knows of other ethanol selling petrol stations please leave a comment). Conor Faughnan is also ignoring the fact that purchasers of ethanol engined cars get a rebate of 50% on their VRT, which would more than pay for a parking permit for every year of the life of a car.

I think however, that this is all far too simplistic in any case. Car length is so arbitrary, take the Volkswagen Passat (Estate or Saloon), a fairly long car. A Passat can come in anything from a 1.6 litre engine up to a 2.0 litre engine. Diesel or Petrol. So, going by length, the 1.6 litre passat owner will have to pay the same as the 2.0 litre passat owner. They take up the same space. But the CO2 emissions range from 182 to 202 g/km. That is a bit of a difference. The 1.6 is a cleaner car.

Why can’t Dublin City Council come up with a table of factors which determine parking permit prices? I think they need a model for this. Length, C02 emissions, Purchase Price. You can’t determine the environmental friendliness or lack thereof of a car on either length or engine size. It shouldn’t be that difficult to build up models. If car buyers guide and other such websites can build a database of all sorts of different car models, engine sizes etc, why can’t Dublin City Council? This length factor is just sheer laziness. Cars of the same length can range in engine size (and pollution) vastly (take the VW Taureg, 2.5 to 5.0 litre engines).

The amended proposals will be put before a meeting of Dublin City Council on February 5th and then will go out to public consultation. If passed, the proposals are expected to be implemented in June.

If Dublin City Council were really clever, they would also factor in number of vehicles per household. A broad model incorporating all the car factors relevant as well as a household factor. Now that would be a proposal worth watching.