Our machine’s all washed up ... after 21 years!
We’re told that most of the gadgets we use these days are designed to go wrong and that washing machines last between three and six years. Well, our Indesit washing machine finally ended its life three days ago — after 21 years.
In that time it has washed clothes faithfully for our family of five children and two adults. So we’ve ordered a new one of the same make and similar basic specification.
When we bought our machine, we were offered a warranty deal. I’ve worked out that we could have purchased seven new machines for what the warranty would have cost us over 21 years. Thankfully we declined the offer. PAUL and PASCALE SOFFE,
Ewloe, Flintshire.
Appliance science
HavIng been a repair engineer for more than 40 years since my early teens, I’m aware that there has always been designed-in obsolescence in consumer goods.
If you want your customers to upgrade continually or buy new, you’d be stupid to make your products last more than about two years.
I understand the ‘burn-in’ and ‘wear-out’ factor is actually 14 months — if you have anything older, it should be in the bin as far as the manufacturer is concerned.
Several things make the situation worse for the consumer: first is lead-free solder in electronic circuits. The same circuit would probably last ten times longer with leaded solder, and there’s no health and safety issue as the soldering is all done by robots.
Then there’s design. Why, when you know that heat rises, would you put heat-sensitive components above hot components, or as close as possible to the hottest parts of the circuit? Because you know that the life of your average Tv will be shortened by doing it.
as an engineer, I’m expected simply to swap circuit boards. When there are no more spare boards, the item becomes scrap. The manufacturers make very few spares as they don’t want things repaired, and they charge so much for the parts that a new unit is often more cost-effective.
DAVE TUTT, Chatham, Kent.
Older and wiser
I MUST agree with John MacLeod (Mail) about the wisdom of age.
We oldies might not have all the answers and we have to accept that times change.
But we still have a lot to offer in terms of advice, even if we can’t manage much of what we achieved physically in years gone by.
There’s not much new under the sun. If you’ve got a problem today, chances are your grandparents came through something similar before now.
We may be old – but we’re still worth listening to.
nAnCy AnDErSOn, Glasgow I See certain politicians are after votes, pledging to do all they can for us poor pensioners. We’re not so addled that we’ve forgotten it was alex Salmond who blamed us oldies for losing him his precious independence referendum and the cheeky SnP pup who suggested during the general election campaign that old people were nothing but old fools. He didn’t get to join the nationalist rabble sent off to Westminster.
nAmE AnD ADDrESS SUPPLiED
Bitter pill for NHS
THe SnP manifesto commits the party to throwing more money at the nHS, making up for the shortfall, compared to england, they presided over these last few years.
But without reform – and I don’t mean Finnish-style baby boxes and tinkering with IvF allocation – the money will be swallowed with little improvement for patients.
FrAnK COLqUhOUn, Dumbarton
Pointless pontificating
YOUr correspondent unhappy at wall-to-wall football on BBC radio Scotland on Saturdays is right on the money.
The BBC has lots of niche stations available through digital radio and the internet.
Isn’t it time the dreadful in-jokes and pointless pontificating about Scottish football – struggling to fill its grounds – was, pardon the pun, relegated to one of them?
j. SEmPLE, Aberdeen
Mind the ‘tech’ gap
STUdIeS have shown little relationship between the rise in CeOs’ salaries and improved performance.
In fact, CeOs are often rewarded for failure, and the claim that top people might move abroad is laughable: of the world’s top 500 biggest firms, only about five poached their chief executive from an international company in 2014. The remuneration committees which award these huge salary rises are made up of executives who are themselves out of touch with the workers on whose shoulders their pay depends.
The system is dominated by the neo-liberal doctrine of free market, deregulation and privatisation, a doctrine which is liable to plunge the world into another financial crisis.
Without change, the increasing gap between rich and poor will be exacerbated by increasing levels of ‘technological unemployment’.
Unless we find a way of fairly cascading the wealth created by technological innovation among those fortunate to be in work and those unfortunate to have lost their jobs because of technological developments, the current capitalist system will lead to social, political and economic upheaval and destroy belief in neo-liberalism as a means of achieving very necessary social justice.
BryAn D. PrESCOTT, Caerphilly.
Thanks for the warning
SenIOr SnP figures such as the Western Isles MP angus Macneil encouraged us to look to Ireland for what we could become under independence. Meanwhile in dublin, they’re still without a taoiseach after a shambolic election in February – and unemployment is at around 8.6 per cent. Thanks for the warning, angus. A. jACKSOn, Ayr
Gender choice
aS a gP specialising in the care and treatment of transgender patients, I read with great interest the suggestion (Mail) that children as young as four are to be asked to choose what gender they are before they start school. This idea piqued my interest along with, no doubt, the outrage of many. But the letter to parents of those starting primary school in Brighton and Hove seeks to make an important point: we all sit somewhere on the gender spectrum. Perhaps by recognising this fact we will be less inclined to judge those who sit further away from traditional male/female categories.
The council claims it has taken this inclusive approach in response to calls from parents. Its aim might have been better achieved by leaving the gender question off the form altogether.
Dr hELEn WEBBErLEy, GenderGP.co.uk Abergavenny.
Sturgeon’s slogan
JaCK McConnell rightly took stick for his twee ‘the best small country in the world’ slogan.
Much more damaging is nicola Sturgeon’s ‘the dearest small country in the world’.
That’s what we’re destined to become with levies on this, that and the other, higher income tax than the rest of the UK and council tax rises to come.
STEWArT mCDiArmiD, inverness
Prams on parade, Becks
HeLen MIrren’S claim (Weekend) that david Beckham was the first man to show how to push a pram is rubbish. When I joined the army in 1951, there were several fathers in the married quarters who had served throughout World War II.
My quartermaster sergeant-major was one of the original commandos and built like the proverbial brick outhouse. He could be seen any fine summer’s evening pushing his daughter in her pram around the regimental square.
and when my daughter was born in October 1956, we scraped up enough to buy a Silver Cross pram and it gave me great delight to push her about camp.
Beckham seems to be a nice bloke and was pretty average as a footballer, but men were pushing prams and carrying babies before his parents even thought of him.
D. W. hOGG, runcorn, Cheshire.
Fitting tribute
WHaT an amazing picture (Mail) of the ceramic poppies pouring from St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney.
and how sobering to think that the royal navy suffered more than 6,000 fatalities in the Battle of Jutland a century ago.
m GrAhAm, rosyth, Fife
Travelling MEP circus
I’ve written to my MeP about the farce of the european Parliament moving monthly from Brussels to Strasbourg (Letters). The whole Parliament, including MePs and staff, shuttle by train to spend four days a month at Strasbourg.
This costs £150 million a year, but it doesn’t end there: the new building in Strasbourg cost €600 million and has €180 million additional yearly running costs. Yet for 317 days a year the Strasbourg buildings sit empty.
a ‘single seat’ campaign has been set up and is supported by threequarters of MePs and Parliament staff, but despite this, they can’t stop this waste of money. any politician promising major reform of the eU should start here.
DAViD jAmES, Port Talbot, West Glamorgan.
Kiwi jobs lament
Franz Josef and Fox glaciers on new zealand’s South Island are humming with activity, but it’s not just the tourists who are attracted to this part of new zealand.
Working visa holders come to the area in droves as many jobs are advertised on backpacking websites. The glaciers are in Westland, an area hit by the downturn in the coal mining and dairy industries. Unemployment is at 6 per cent of the total workforce.
The irony is that new zealanders travelling overseas have no difficulty at all in finding work in the same type of jobs they’re denied at home. r. A. STEWArT, Greymouth, new Zealand.
Heeding Obama
WHO does Barack Obama think he is, coming over here to lecture us? It’s not like he’s the leader of the free world or anything. Oh, no, hang on a second...
SUE BUChAnAn, via email YeS, air Force One and the Marine Force One helicopter Barack Obama used to get around over here are all very smart. But did the President have his face plastered all over them like First Minister did with her election helicopter? no, he did not. One up to nicola!
ALEx LOGAn, Dundee