New vacuum regs really suck/All in a spin

Two fantastically daft technology stories for the price of one!

It’s been a great couple of weeks for white goods madness.

I’m not even including Apple having to release a ‘fix’ to allow iPhone6 users to uninstall their free copy of U2’s new album. If this has happened to you, try and remember that you deleted the files, or you might wind up searching for them, only to find yourself saying “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”.

Panic buying gripped consumers recently, as they rushed to their nearest vacuum cleaner-retailing emporium (or it’s virtual equivalent) to buy devices that really suck, before its too late.

Every man-in-the-pub’s favourite baddies, the EU, have decreed that our lovely, British, vacuums (probably made in Korea) can only suck to the tune of 1600 watts, meaning new ones have the potential to be as effective as the wheezy kid at school in the 100 yard dash on sports day.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Brussels Bureaucrats will only allow us 900 paltry watts after 2017. Any remaining stock of super-hoovers can still be purchased, but once they’re all gone, it’ll probably be quicker to pick the dust up individually with tweezers than get the vacuum out of the cupboard.

Gone will be the heady days of accidentally catching the bottom of the curtains with the hose, and tearing half the ceiling down. And how will kids irritate their siblings? An attack with the formerly reverse-tornado business end of a new device will provide as much peril as being a bit close to your hamster when it breathes in sharply.

Of course, the intention is to use less power, and coax manufacturers into more efficient technology to achieve the same results, but I’m not one for letting common sense get in the way of a damn good moan.

What’s next? Kettles that heat up more slowly than if you just left a cup with water in it out in the sun? Light breeze hairdryers?! (Although that last one isn’t an issue for me, unfortunately.)

Then there’s the fantastic story of the spat between Samsung and LG, which has descended to a level of cattiness normally reserved for around 3am on a particularly emotional hen night.

Samsung has accused it’s rival of deliberately vandalising some of their washing machines in a showroom in Germany. LG claim it was an accident, and they had only been examining their rival’s machines, and the hinges were rubbish anyway.

The authorities have been asked to investigate, and we can only hope that they look into this shocking case thoroughly, before telling the two electronic giants to grow up, stop acting like petulant children, and then send them to bed early.

Representatives of the two companies were last seen drunkenly flailing their handbags at each other round the back of the bins outside the nightclub, whilst swearing loudly about how one looked at the other one’s boyfriend in a funny way.

This post should have appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 19th of September 2014. Unfortunately, for the second week in a row, it hasn't made it onto their website. I haven't see the print copy yet (it usually arrives in the post on Monday), so I can't confirm it went in there either. Fingers crossed.

Early ideas for this one involved an entire 500 word piece around the U2/iPhone thing, and a whole column solely on the subject of lower wattage vacuum cleaners, and what might get de-powered in the future. The Samsung vs LG story was also ripe for a full piece, but three tech stories in a row might have been pushing my luck a bit.

I suppose I could have gone for something about the Scottish Referendum, but as I have to submit the column on Wednesday night, it could only have been a "whatever they decided" piece, and I'm wary of taking political sides, even in a humorous way, as there are a lot of very earnest people out there without any sense of humour at all.

And besides, I'm, just too damn lazy to research that kind of story too...

( Music today from a 4CD box set of Mike Oldfield, called "Elements", from 1993.)

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