Probably is true. I know a couple of people around here who make a decent living doing basic jobs for people. Things like hanging pictures, putting up shelves etc, etc, etc.

I think Halfords is repeating something first raised at least a couple of years ago, but the original might be more obscure. The photograph suggests in America, with that screw-in fitting.

Having in my time completely rebuilt engines I’m in the embarrassing position of being unable to change a sidelight bulb. I know how to do it, access is not too bad, but it simply won’t budge. I’m afraid to get too enthusiastic as damaging the headlight assembly would be expensive. As I never park on street in unlit areas I’m leaving it to the next MOT when I’ll ask the garage chap to do it.

The increase of ES lamps in the UK has more to do with europe then the USA. It started with IKEA. For a lot of people in the UK an IKEA lamp was their first exposure to an ES lamp. A typical USA light fitting is not rated for 240V and most things like table and floor lamps there still use single insulated figurw of 8 “zip” cable which is not acceptable here.

On incapable youth how about MIT engineering graduates who can’t light a bulb with a battery and bit of wire:

I help at a number of Repair Cafes where we not only repair things but teach the owners how to do do many things themselves. Often its more about giving them confidence to try more than actual skills.

Robert.

It was ever thus.

Pretty much since Ug the caveman lost this temper with Tharg who couldn’t nap a flint into a sharp edge or char harden a wooden spear point to save his life there have been numerous folk unable to do what others consider simple tasks.

A boringly recurrent cheap shot by journalists and similar wanting to make themselves look clever at others expense. Usually to cover up their own intellectual inabilities but making lots of noise. Mostly about a very small number of folk in the wrong place for the skills they have learned. My attitude is if they can’t do it show them. Properly working out why they have never learned would be instructive too. But way too complex a concept for the shouters.

Like Duncan I’m occasionally (OK,OK often) reminded how hard it can be to remember the flaming obvious. Like last week I spent almost three hours faffing about getting a failed rear airspring out of a P38 Range Rover. Including internet research breaks. Eventually the penny dropped. Prybar in, straight end first curve down, heave up and “pop” out it came. Took me just as long last time I did one 12 years ago. I ought to have remembered, or at least been able to work it of tout-de-suit. Manual says “pull out”. Yeah, right. Working through a 5/8″ slot doesn’t help visibility.

Clive

Mikes last statement is a point I have been making to people for a while. A degree is fine BUT there are only so many theorist we need, at some point somebody has to put things into practice.

As for 240V ES bulbs I view them as suspect in design if not dangerous. If the polarity on the lighting circuit is reversed the cap can be still live as it is being unscrewed, whereas a bayonet cap is never live.

Ah well, the world we live in !  Noel.

I have said it before, that there was a massive shift that happened sometime around the 90’s. Schools stopped promoting manual skills and started pushing students hard into the college/university route. Presumably to indoctrinate them into becoming social justice warriors.

I remember it well. I hated school and I was never any good at anything other than “technology” (woodwork for the old). I clearly remember career advisors scoffing at my plans to do something manual rather than go to college.

Alongside this, everyone suddenly went politically correct and health and safety mad. Again I remember schools cancelling things like day trips and science experiments because of “health and safety”. Talking to older generations they got to do all kinds of things we were never aloud.

I am part of the last generation that experienced life before and after. I am old enough to remember life before the internet and mobile phones but young enough to have grown up with access to both.

I imagine things have only gotten worse since. I for one am not surprised the youth of today have minimal practical skills.

Hi Nigel Graham 2, your point about rescuing someone in a dangling harness is a valid one, whenever a job requires the use of a harness and lanyard, whether its the unfolding type or a steel wire retracting fall limiter lanyard, it must be included into the risk assessment of the whole of the job, and a suitable and safe method for retrieving someone who has the pleasure of dangling in a harness, and in the minimum amount of time, as if someone is dangling for too long, it can lead to the serious injury or even death of that person, I can’t remember the exact amount of time, but i’s not very long and will differ from one person to others due to their weight and build, so first of all you need to have a lanyard that is not too long or too short. If a suitable and safe method can not be achieved, then a different way of working should be used, i.e. Scaffolding, or a mobile elevating work platform, often referred to as a Cherry Picker, but mobile elevating work platforms should not be used as a people lift, as they are for working from, and no one should step out of or into one, when in a raised position, so that should not be a method for rescue written into the risk assessment. Everyone on the job should be aware of the risks involved, and know what action is to be taken in the a event that something goes wrong.

Regards Nick.

It’s going to get worse. I am seeing an increasing number of LED light fittings where the “bulb” is integral. There is a) probably no way to get it out without destroying the unit, b) no chance in hell of finding a spare if you did.

I worked with an ex Royal Navy engineer with over 22 years service, who told me bulbs get planted in the ground. The correct word is “lamp”…

 

I wasn’t going to argue with him, he was bigger than me…..

I used to know a professional electrician who would repeat his college lecturer’s mantra: “Lamps glow, bulbs grow!”

Examining two random packs of lamps, one of GU10 l.e.d.s, the other a miniature tubular flourescent, both give the lumens as well electrical power and incandescent equivalent in W. Though in the tiny print that satisfies regulations, more important than informing customers. Perhaps the manufacturers think most householders are comfortable with Watts, since we buy thousands of those at a time, but are totally in the dark about lumens, lux or indeed the SI basic unit of light intensity, the candela.

They may be right of course!

Wikipedia tells me …

The candela […] is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the luminous efficacy of monochromatic radiation of frequency 540×1012 Hz,[a] Kcd, to be 683 when expressed in the unit lm W−1, which is equal to cd sr W−1, or cd sr kg−1 m−2 s3, where the kilogram, metre and second are defined in terms of h, c and ΔνCs.[10]

So we’ve no excuse.

It goes on to say 1 candela corresponds to one average wax candle (!) and the wavelength is a green light near the human eye’s maximum sensitivity. So like the  0 decibel re 20µPa base for airborne sound pressure… despite all the high-flown Hard Sums and bramble-thicket arguments by anonymous committee types paid to stay out of labs and drawing-offices, the unit is anthropocentric !

‘Bout as bright as chapel altar candle, then.

Years back one could buy household DIY compendia of advice on simple repairs and the like. Are they still published?

Even “our” magazine, in its & Electrician rather than & Workshop era, sometimes got in on the act: workshop wiring and in one edition, re-seating the scullery tap using the lathe and improvised Keats Angle-plate.

;;;

Nicholas –

I never had to work at heights – just as well as they and I agree to differ, although my work sometimes meant short instances of remembering at least I was being paid to be frightened. I was though trained in using lifting-tackle and operating overhead cranes, which comes in good stead in my home workshop.

However, with some decades of caving, I am well aware of roped access technicques, and the industrial version was indeed started by cavers who spotted the wage-earning potential.

Among these, used industrially as well as for fun, developed the principle that your protect yourself from falling more than about an arm’s-length from the belay.

We do not use fall-arrest harnesses because that risks dangling helplessly in space over a dirty great drop and a long way from the nearest wall. Potentially as disabling or fatal as falling to the floor.

Instead we attach ourselves to belayed ropes by two short lines called “Cows’-tails”, an idea adapted from rock-climbing. Of different lengths for particular moves, the longer is still short enough for you to operate the karabiner on its end. Plus as far as possible, we avoid climbing above the belay-points, to limit any possible fall to cow’s-tail length or less.

(This is different from rock-climbing in which the leader trails the rope behind, so a fall is far as the last belay then the same depth again.)

The industrial version’s regulations demand twin ropes, adding to the complexity. It might reflect the greater risk of abrading the rope on some projection, on a high building.

Suspension-trauma, as you describe, is a serious matter; hence my concern about the man using the crane gangway as an access-platform. It is possible to ward it off by gently moving your legs  – if you are conscious. I do not know what risk-assessment the two glaziers or their managers would have had to write, so I don’t know if all this was covered.

The slinger working on the the shipping-container should have been able to work from a ladder, but he did have to go on the top at times, probably when the hooks were lying there out of reach.

Mobile lifting platforms are de-facto people lifts and movers, even if only to reach the work point itself; though not for scaffolding accces and such-like. Some are terrifyingly high though, as I see in the yard of a tower-rental company next to the camp-site I use when at “The Fosse”. The operators have to raise and lower them fully, presumably in maintainance and testing the machines prior to customers’ use.  They are clipped on.

On 30 January 2026 at 20:31 Speedy Builder5 Said:

One of the primary advantages of ES light bulbs is their energy efficiency Compared to traditional incandescent bulbs, ES bulbs consume significantly less energy while providing the same level of brightness This energy efficiency not only helps reduce electricity bills but also contributes to a greener environment by reducing carbon emissions.

Only if they are LED’s but LED lamps are also available with the more traditional UK bayonet fittings, so no no real advantage at all.