kerry davies

HSE themselves do not PAT test their own office kit on a set time schedule. As long as things are visually checked, for which no expertise or qualifications are required, then it is down to what you determine, as David writes. TRY THIS  which is the latest I can find.

PAT testing is not a legal requirement per se, the law simply requires employers to ensure electrical equipment is maintained in order to prevent danger – it doesn't state what needs to be done or how often, and I personally can't think of many lower risk environments than fixed 30 feet in the air, can you?

46 minutes ago, Tomo said:

That document reads as absolute desperation to find anything at all.

Agreed. Yesterday they leaked to the Financial Times that "Brexit checks on fresh farm produce coming to the UK from the EU have been delayed for the fifth time."  First in 2020, then twice in 2021 and once in 2022.

Since the EU complied with the deal and the TCA ages ago, UK food businesses are at a significant disadvantage which looks like continuing because there are still no signs of facilities to conduct SPS checks.  This taking back control isn't going too well.

What now? As predicted the UK government announced somewhat quietly at midnight last night that "the UK will retain the EU's CE product safety mark indefinitely."

The obvious caveats apply. The press have got it wrong and this applies to Great Britain and not the UK, HMG insist that British companies are free to use either CE or UKCA but haven't got around to working out if they can use both and they are totally silent on the UKNI mark. (I think that has already died a lingering natural death.)

I have given up trying to navigate the REUL dashboard but in June the HSE announced that 38 H&S laws would automatically revoke on December 31st coming. They conveniently did not list them but told people to go find them on REUL under the DWP department. 

We had a topic about this a while back and there were people there that used them for pencil cases and others who provided links to ebay items of pencil cases at £4 for 10 for transparent ones. 

I said back then that we used stackable, lidded plastic crates from Allibert for all our storage except radio mics which had a shiny metal attache case. 

No expert on tracks but would it not run better with the correct sized tab hooks/clips? Those plainly aren't big enough to fit on the runners though they may be suited to the slimmer Doughty runners. The tabs would hang far better if the hooks were loose on the runners as well.

I know zilch about controls but as family members run several premier wedding venues I can say with confidence that if you give them an iPad it will go walkies and a control is very likely to last a week longer before being put "somewhere safe" by a cleaner. They need it as simple as possible and it won't get changed between events because they simply have no time. 

It is a special occasion for the bride's mother and guests but for the crews it is a production line of cleaning, prepping and serving and the more repeatable and "automatic man" it can be the better. Keep it ultra simple.

My two pennorth would be to wait until it comes to you. Your pension will be at least one third more than mine, you won't be paying my £420 a month rent and to be perfectly frank I simply can't spend my income. The first thing I discovered when I gave away what work I had was the insane amount it costs to go to work. I reckon I went to work for two days a week to pay for going to work, what with diesel, food, insurances, tools and clothing. All for one VW Up rather than a Turbo Golf and a Sprinter. 

Take your time and discover life with less pressure. Take some holidays, reconnect with friends and family and invest your time in you rather than other people. You can make decisions at leisure now. Do that.

Just like everyone else I suggest getting the sound sources closer together. Also this may be egg-sucking but make sure you are playing recorded stuff in mono. I used to DJ in a large pub and the difference between mono and stereo was incredible.

Well done on getting there, now stay alive for long enough to get your contributions back. I certainly wouldn't go volunteering time to anyone just yet, I constantly wonder how I ever found time to go to work. Work finds those who don't hide from it.

Yours in hiding,

Kerry. 

Micing amateurs is always hit and miss but being creative helps. I used to take the overheads out of the drum mic kit and hang them off the marquee stage cover and a folk club we ran used PZM's glued to glass plates very effectively hung off the ceiling and walls (You think you are restricted, the folk club was in a medieval hall draped in tapestries.

You say you have a bar just inside the proscenium so why not stick a few boundaries up there as a trial? They would be hard pressed to tap dance up there.

Following Brexit, the pandemic and a shortage of experienced crews the only surprise is that there are not a lot more of these incidents in a lot more branches of the events industry. This looks like the result of a combination of causes boiling down to people taking shortcuts.  

I would have looked at canvas and marquee companies if the theatricals like Camstage were not suitable. Been out of it for too long to be more specific. Specialised Canvas over at Chesterfield sew up torn bell tents if that is of use.

Just remembered that you could try Andy Breward at Kingsmead Marquees in Frolesworth who at least used to have marquee canvas sewing machines. That's about 10 miles from you.

Nine whole hours and still nobody has replied; "Allen and Heath" 

Andrew is correct but also missing out on "how much money" and loads of other bits and pieces, the main one being; "have you searched BR for topics on mixers, Dynacord or Soundcraft" which might suggest more productive ways of framing your query.

Oh, and welcome to Blue Room.

I forgot to mention that an ad in the for sale forum here might get attention.

Try this bunch. #

Every time I open the Curlew website it takes me an hour to get away, so much "stuff" I would love. Be careful.

Why so negative? The English Environment Agency already had a flood alert system that warns people who will never get flooded and doesn't warn others whose homes are under water. Had they fixed that first it might have helped but they used to warn us up  here in Y Bannau Brycheiniog about floods affecting housing estates built by the idiot Saxons on Herefordshire flood plains because we have a HR postcode. 

The solution was to turn off alerts from Welsh mobile masts which, because of our hills, also cover large swathes of affected water meadows across the border. As if that wasn't enough English ineptness the EA have today announced that they are cancelling a £50M flood alleviation project in England so they are likely to  wake you up at 3 am for a non-existent flood but won't do anything to minimise real flood risk. 

Thread necrophilia time again. Very early on Stuart wrote that there was no equivalent for a breathalyser to test for fatigue.

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A blood test to measure whether a driver who has caused an accident was impaired by lack of sleep could be available within two years, making it easier to legislate against drowsy drivers or their employers*.

The article starts off by saying that research shows that driving on less than five hours sleep is as dangerous as drink-driving yet half of UK drivers admitted to doing it. Whether they ever get it to work or whether the UK adopts roadside testing the research they are doing in UK, USA and Australia is telling us a lot more about fatigue and safety issues. If it is as dangerous as drink driving to have fewer than 5 hours sleep, how risky are all the other intrinsically hazardous elements of touring when tired? 

* "Or their employers" is a timely reminder of how Just Some Bloke kicked off this topic. There is a shared responsibility.

I am a follower of the Norman Clegg philosophy; "If at first you don't succeed pack it in." That then allows you to go and fail miserably at something else.

There is no serious answer to the question because, like so much on this forum, "it depends". I am quicker than most in packing it in to go do something different partly because if I didn't with my old crew they would never get a gig on let alone get one on on time. They would be creating away and getting stuff to work till it was time to go home. I was the same with sound checks, you have to draw a line where enough is sufficient and not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Where that line is depends on a raft of things starting with time but including finance, aesthetics, availability of alternatives, my mood etc. 

We all can and do spend totally unjustifiable amounts of time, money and emotional energy on getting some piece of kit to work to feel incredibly empowered when it does and then scrap it the  moment we switch it off. It's called being human.

Oddly enough despite being closely allied with anti-nuke movements, NCCL, CND, Greenham and Molesworth and being of prime 1950's childhood the bomb never actually scared me. Made me more nihilistic and far less obedient toward the established order but never scared. 

This was a hit when I was 11.  

I am well out of touch these days but how do these companies cover the venue for insurance risk if there is no official venue presence? They are perfectly entitled to use their own qualified and competent crew but their eyes might water at the rates I would charge for venue representatives to oversee their work.

Places like Earl's Court used to charge me for their electrician to sit and watch me plug in a Cee-form and it was never basic rate.

... aaaand cut! First alarm, first colonialist screw up by the feudal English who got the Welsh language message so wrong they turned "ddiogel" into "Vogel" with a capital "V" which letter does not exist in the Welsh alphabet.

Ddiogel = safe. 

Vogel appears to be a Swiss herbalist or a German idiot.

I sent that page a link to the newspaper report, Gareth, seems only fair. 

If it is SP Fireworks, Stafford then the case resulted in a ten year jail sentence for corporate manslaughter and all associated companies were dissolved. That was an example of total disregard of licences, the law and an abnegation of responsibility. I believe that trading standards were already trying to shut them down as they were inspecting frequently. 

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... just two weeks before the explosion, the site held around 100kg, well within the 250kg maximum allowed by his licence.

... three days before the fatal blast, the company took stock of 1,141 boxes of fireworks, weighing 20,000kg, and 18 boxes of mortars in a shipment from China.

The Festival Fireworks fiasco is a case in point. The father was charged so the two sons did a phoenix, the elder son then got charged and before you could blink the remaining son had done another phoenix and was running the company while his father and brother were doing time. I can't locate the database since Brexit but the majority of explosives fatalities are related to manufacture rather than usage while the vast majority of "minor" injuries, as is to be expected, involve young people and misuse of fireworks. 

I can no longer find the EIDAS (explosives incidents database advisory service) database but from memory manufacture causes four or five times as many fatalities as any usage including quarrying and demolition. 

3 hours ago, Brian said:

You realise that by screwing the top surface to the bottom you totally undo any effect that the insulating layer has?

And there was me thinking exactly the same and being totally bemused by the OP.

On the keep it simple tack I always found large Persian rugs as effective as anything else.