The European Union is shooting farmers.
Rubber bullets and water cannons were deployed against hundreds of European farmers protesting outside the EU Parliament building in Brussels on Thursday.
Consequences of dumb decisions live a long time
In the mid-1960s, the United Kingdom realized that their status of being a world-power was slipping away from them.
Realizing that having a robust industrial base and abundant engineering talent was critical to being able to wage war, they subsidized engineering programs at universities and encouraged nearly every student with a technical bent to attend.
Domestic industry was not able to employ the wealth of engineering talent and wages crashed. Engineers made less then the mailman.
In the late-1970s, the US auto industry was playing catch-up to the Japanese. The super-abundance of English-speaking engineers who were willing to relocate and work-cheap seemed like a blessing at the time.
The GM "X" car (1980 Chevy Citation, for example) was a child of this opportunity. There were a few odd things about this step-child. For one thing, the fuel-fill door was on the driver's side...if you were from the UK. If you were a US driver, you were dismayed to find the gas-door on the passenger's side.
From the quality-and-dimensioning side of things, the master gauge-holes were on the right side of the vehicle and all "ugly" was chased to the left side. As a consequence, gaps were ugly between the instrument panel and the door trim-pads on the driver's side and between the IP and the steering-wheel assembly.
The floorpan, fuel-tank and other not-visible but expensive to tool parts for the X-Car were also used in the J-Car (Cavalier), N-Car (Pontiac Grand Am) and the Chevy Malibu.
43 years later, GM is still building vehicles with the fuel-fill door on the "wrong" side of the car.
Good weather for frost-seeding pasture
Also good weather for thinning out the local raccoon population.
The dry, sunny days are rough on trees that have been debarked by rabbits and mice. There is still time to wrap them. It can be as simple as newspaper and masking tape or it can be commercial products. Or, if your kids need to write a report on mummies, they can use toilet-paper for first-hand experience.
The new aristocracy is teaching the prole farmers their place. Bureaucrats and apparatchiks are MUCH more important than people who grow food, and their dictats about reducing methane and CO2 emissions MUST be followed.
ReplyDeleteWhen you want to murder 80 to 90% of your population starvation is a convenient method. So shooting the people that produce the food isn't such a wacky idea.
ReplyDeleteSo that's why the fuel filler is on the wrong side of my Pontiac Sunfire
ReplyDeleteWhy is that the wrong side for a fuel filler cap? I drive a VW Passat, and that has the filler on the right side. I thought the idea was that the modern fuel pump can be approached from both sides and this allows more vehicles at one time to fuel. To be honest that is a deciding factor for me when buying a vehicle - the filler cap should be on the same side as the company cars have it so that I do not have to think so much. I got that wrong with the last car - who would think that Ford would change it over during a series?
ReplyDeleteNow I am back to being mindless unless I have a hire car. That is why there is an arrow on the fuel gauge of most vehicles - to show you which side the filler cap is. If you are driving an 18 wheeler I can agree that is a longer walk to fill it up, but a modern passenger car is not that big.
There is an indicator on the fuel gauge. It used to be which side the hose was on the pump icon but that was not clear enough for most drivers. I think they added an arrow to be more explicit.
DeleteIt is more of an issue when you use a rental car that you picked up after dark and you don't check before driving off the lot. It is also a problem for people who do not own a car or who borrow a friend's vehicle. You COULD drive around to the other side but it is crazy-making at peak times. Also, some people lack the geometry skills to know that they cannot just loop-around, they have to consciously make the choice to approach the island the pumps are on such that the pumps are on the OTHER side of the vehicle. That gets harder for the geometrically challenged when they are rattled.
I was told the right side fuel filler door location was a "safety" feature to prevent someone putting fuel in their vehicle on the side of the road would not be exposed to traffic passing by.
ReplyDeleteSomething possibly derived from European regulations as GM underbody architectures began to be shared across geographies.
Outsource food production, control the means of transport, own the populace through their food supply.
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A friend's first job was as an engineer in the transmission department of GM. After a week, he told his boss how shocked he was at the poor quality of the product. The boss said, "What are you talking about? GM makes the best cars in the world! They all make it out of warranty, don't they?"
ReplyDeleteThe point about the 1st question most people don't seem to think about is that it is all happening on purpose, by design, and at the behest of a handful of individuals.
ReplyDeleteThe popo and the idiots directing them had better rethink the rubber bullets and hoses. Every farm in the world is littered with ad-hoc equipment that can cause devastation is used other than its original purpose. Shooting water at protestors could get the response of Farmers responding by high pressure spraying of liquid manure right back at them
ReplyDeleteEarly in my career I worked with one of those UK engineers who emigrated to the US. I think the Flixborough Disaster may have had something to do with his decision.
ReplyDeleteMy '97 Honda Civic is on the driver side. My 2004 Ford Taurus is on the passenger side. I have to always think about which vehicle I am driving before I pull up to the pumps. I prefer driver side as that's what my old pickup was.
ReplyDeleteOwn two Ford vehicles. My '06 F-150 fuel door is on driver's side. My wife's '07 Explorer fuel door is on passenger side. Since my wife is disabled and no longer drives, we only use her car when I have to take her to a doctor's appointment. Her next appointment is 3 months from now so her car will sit there until then.
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