Jon Hewitson

Professional Electricity Trader, amateur engineer, pilot & motorcyclist, sometime IPA enthusiast. Occasional flaneur, dandy & gentleman.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@bluebirdk7 Ekranoplans are pretty good at this, so something that works as a WIG, but only just, by a fag paper qualifies as a boat is probably ideal.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@Geeb944 @greghove Perhaps a workable measure of greatness is, that after all this time, she still lives rent free in so many people's heads?

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Your phone charger can electrocute a toddler who pokes a fork into the socket. The British plug cannot. That difference comes from a 1947 engineering project that refused every shortcut and turned a household plug into one of the most deliberately safe objects ever mass-produced.

Britain published BS 1363 in 1947, built for the post-war housing boom. The country was wiring millions of new homes at once and needed one standard that would work safely for everyone. They picked the most paranoid option available.

The earth pin (the large top prong) is longer than the other two. When you push a British plug in, the earth pin goes in first. Inside the socket, it presses a lever that opens two metal shutters covering the live and neutral slots. A fork pushed into an empty British socket hits only shutters. The shutters block it.

The two conducting pins are also coated in plastic for their lower half. A plug halfway out of the wall is still safe to touch. You would have to pull it completely clear before any live metal is exposed.

Inside every plug is its own fuse. UK homes wire their sockets in a loop called a ring circuit, which runs at 32 amps, enough to melt a lamp's cord if the cord fails. So each plug carries a fuse matched to the appliance: 3 amps for a lamp, 13 for a kettle. When something goes wrong in your appliance's wiring, only that plug's fuse blows.

The standard US plug (flat two-pin or three-pin) has none of the pin coating and no individual fuse. American building codes began requiring shuttered outlets in new construction in 2008, decades after Britain made shutters standard. Even those newer shuttered versions lack pin coating and plug-level fuses.

Britain's plug is bulky because a fuse, a shutter mechanism, insulated pins, and three contact prongs all need room. The plug looks the way it does because safety engineers refused to sacrifice any of those features to make it smaller, and that decision is now 79 years old.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@CalumDouglas1 Looks to be just the thing I'd like. Bookmarked.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@matoxley Time to call for mandatory hugger type guards.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@jamiesont Obviously a movie directed bu Ken Loach.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@Geeb944 @SeffSaid Nice pedantry.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

Energy professional here. I will have to ask you to show your working.

[Dr Paul Dorfman @dorfman_p]

University of Oxford : maximising oil and gas extraction here would only save UK households up to £82 (€95) per year. A UK fully powered by renewable energy, would save households up to £441 (€510) a year on energy bills.
https://t.co/B50EZdDrJJ

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

This is a pretty good summary of why the country is where it is, and some good suggestions about how to turn it around.

[Academy of Ideas @acadofideas]

"The 6th biggest economy in the world is run by infantile fantasists with no understanding of financial markets.... There's nothing progressive about driving the economy of a cliff"📉⛰️

@LiamHalligan @ #BattleFest 2025 "From steel to railways: can the state revitalise British industry?"👨‍🏭🚆

👇

[Simon French @Frencheconomics]

UK electricity generation has fallen 25% from its peak in 2004. Per capita electricity consumption is a third the level of the United States. The UK has the most costly electricity in the world. Half the gas we consume comes from the Norwegian side of the North Sea basin. The residual imported LNG has 4x the carbon footprint of supplying our own. And most depressingly of all the result is a deteriorating UK Balance of Payments, a weaker pound, and a bigger hit to the cost of living. And still the useful idiots want to further constrain UK energy production through high taxes, banning new licences, and gold-plating new energy infrastructure. Their luxury beliefs are behind the awful household disposable income growth of recent years. 🤡.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@emilyhewertson @jeremycorbyn @zarahsultana Thoughts and prayers are with both them, and George Galloway at what must be a difficult time.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@CalumDouglas1 Cylinder heads always bow in the middle?

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@goodwoodrevival @chrisma01200346 One for you.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@GoodwoodRRC It would be totally amazing if this autogyro variant could do a lap! Its in the Piaggio museum. And I'm not a scooter type of guy.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@HPG_Farmer @WeHaveWaysPod There was't a bomb called Fat Boy.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@CalumDouglas1 @TheCinesthetic @GarryLavin I'm still smarting from the time I went to the cinema to watch The Aviator. The overuse of CGI ruined it. Maybe I was over critical I thought, all these years later when I re watched it last week? No, still awful.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@richardbrunning Has that got something to do with the fundamental interconnectedness of all things?

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@bluebirdk7 I think someone in the Youtube comments fits the discription. Go have a look.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@nee_massey At Bowlie2, a group of girls smoking ciggies below my balcony mistookme for you. I heard hushed voices saying "Ooh, there's Stuart!" Followed by "Woo hoo! Stuart!!!" Couldn't impersonate you, didn't want to disappoint them either, so just waved, and went back inside.

[Jon Hewitson @JonDHewitson]

@MJHibbett Ah, was it John Peel who coined the term 'Shambling'? If so, he could have invented it specifically for B&S. I remember seeing them between Sinister and BWTAS, when they played ONLY B sides and stuff off BWTAS which was only out 3 months later.