#cause half of my family is from Australia/England/Africa

[greyrain23]

Ryusei Shidou scares me 😅

[riddlegecko]

Hmm...

I think it would be interesting to flesh out Emma going to visit Jane (and see Tim, maybe for the first time if we’re staying in canon here) and learning that she’s gone. Maybe not terribly fluffy though, but fun dynamics with Tim and it could explain how she ended up staying with Tom and Tim for the borrowers AU?

In terms of fluff, sorry my brain doesn’t like fluff without some tinge of sadness, for HOHF, Emma and Paul fight [villain of your choice] and someone gets hurt and the aftermath of that. Alternatively, I’d love to know if Tim has the Nitro Gene and if so, if he joins his Aunt Emma and Uncle Paul in the field. That could be so cute! (Although, he could also join mission control or maybe make friends with another super if Hannah has powers as well? But that’s not Paulkins...) If you feel like picking up a family fluff piece, which is personally my favorite genre, lol, I’d love to see Paul and Emma as parents and if their child shows their powers early (since it’s not nitro gene specific from Paul, if it can be inherited, of course, and now I’m imaging Jack Jack from the incredible, lol) or for Harriet and Tex to come back and see their baby (oh that would be adorable because grandparent plants and you can imagine how proud they would be of Emma!) or to see how Slacky interacted with the baby. (I’m imagining a how a Golden Retriever interacts with babies now... 😂) Or, if you’d prefer to ignore children all together, Emma going back home and taking Paul to meet Harriet and Tex (meet the parents essentially). Well, I’m not sure if any of those ideas seem interesting, but if not, I hope they’re able to help get some fun ideas flowing. Have a lovely weekend! 😊

Okay, so... A lot of these are stuff that I want to explore in longer stories eventually, both the Borrowers AND the HoHF prompts. But you DID give me an idea for some HoHF family fluff between Emma and Tim!

"Here's that big project I was telling you about!"

Emma had been back in Hatchetfield for what, six, seven months now? And she'd long since made a name for herself as Wild Flower. She was respected, loved even, by the town that had once cast her aside. And what's more, she'd managed to connect with her nephew, who seemed to think she was cool despite her absence for most of his life! If it wasn't for the fact that Tim didn't know she was Wild Flower yet, she would've chalked it up to that.

After all, Tim loved superheroes. Understandable, considering his mother was one of the most revered supers in the country before she died. Being raised by someone like that was bound to give someone a deep respect for the career. And right now, Tim was showing Emma his most recent token of appreciation. A social studies project he'd done for school about superheroes around the world.

It was a large cardboard diagram, with a map of the world taped to it. Coming from a line pointing to each continent (barring Antarctica, because duh), was a photograph of a super that was native to said continent, accompanied by a short paragraph with information about them.

"Wooooow, you really know your supers, bud!" Emma mused as she scanned over the diagram, impressed.

Tim looked up at her with a bashful smile. "Thanks," he said, blushing. "Wanna hear more about each one?"

"Educate me!"

"Okay, so," Tim began excitedly, pointing to the super whose picture corresponded to Australia. A woman with long, blonde hair and a bright blue superhero getup. "That right there is Tidal Crash, she's an Australian super with the power to control water."

"Can she talk to sea creatures?" Emma asked, encouraging her nephew to continue.

"Yeah, telepathically," Tim replied. "She's like the cool version of Aquaman."

Emma snickered at Tim's snark. God, he was such a Perkins. He continued on, pointing to the picture next to Africa. A dark-skinned man with long dreadlocks and an award-winning smile, half his face covered by a deep purple mask.

"That's Radi ya Umeme," Tim continued to explain. "He's from Kenya, and his name is Swahili for 'Lightning Strike'. He can control the weather, but he's really good with lightning, hence the name. He's kinda like Madbolt in a way, only y'know, not evil."

Emma chuckled, remembering her most recent encounter with that old nutjob. Madbolt was a fascinating case, he'd been causing trouble for Hatchetfield since around the time Emma was born. Not even Jane had managed to land him behind bars. Tim continued, his finger landing on the South American picture. A man with dark, curly hair and deep brown eyes, clad in a black leather costume.

"That guy is Espalda con Púas, his name is Spanish for 'Spiked Back'," Tim said, talking as though he was still presenting the project to his teacher and classmates. "He's from Chile, and as his name would imply, he can grow spikes out of his back and sharpen his teeth and nails into fangs and claws!"

Emma nodded, urging him to continue. With an excited smile, Tim moved on to Asia, where a picture of a short-haired woman with a shining mask lay.

"That's Dá Quy, she's from South Vietnam," he continued. "Her name means 'Gemstone', and she can control different ores and minerals and stuff."

Tim moved on to Europe, where a picture of a woman with short brown hair and an elegant, but still practical costume lay.

"That's Lady Nighthawk, she's from England," he explained as Emma continued to listen intently. "She can talk to animals and harness their abilities to fight. She visits Hatchetfield once a year, too!"

"Right! I think I remember your mother telling me about meeting a 'Lady Nighthawk' before!" Emma exclaimed in recollection.

"Yeah, mom worked with a lot of supers," Tim mused fondly before moving on to the final picture, the one corresponding to North America. A grizzled man with long dirty-blonde hair and a decked-out suit. "And finally, there's Eagle Eye! He's an ex-military general who can shapeshift into a bald eagle! And he's got this awesome combat suit that he uses in human form! He's from Washington D.C., but just like Lady Nighthawk, he visits Hatchetfield sometimes!"

Emma smiled at the sight of the super who'd been acting as a mentor to her for the past week. During a rescue mission she'd nearly bungled, Eagle Eye- or John MacNamara as she'd learned his real name was, swooped in to lend a hand. He'd taken a shine to her, and offered to help coach her in the ways of being a superhero. Emma had been learning lots of valuable information off of John. But of course, there was no way Emma could tell Tim about-

"Speaking of, did you hear that he's been working with Wild Flower lately?"

Okay, nevermind! Emma froze, surprised by her nephew's casual mention of her alias. Was this a good time to tell him? Better test the waters to be sure...

"Oh yeah, Wild Flower!" she exclaimed, trying to play it cool. "I've, uh... been hearing lots about her lately!"

"Yeah, it's so weird!" Tim chuckled. "It's like she just came out of nowhere!"

Emma nervously drummed her fingers on the headboard of Tim's bed, where they'd been sitting for the past couple of minutes. Did he mean that in a good way or a bad way?

"She's awesome, though!" Tim continued, an excited sparkle in his eyes. Emma's heart began to race. "Her powers are so cool! I mean, she can summon that big flytrap thing! What was it's name again?"

"Slack-Jaw?" Emma replied, a barely-contained smile on her face.

"Right, Slack-Jaw!" Tim recalled. "And did you see her new costume? The green jacket with the cool logo on it?"

"Mhm!" Emma hummed in response, happily recalling the day she was presented that jacket at Town Hall. The mayor had recognized her feats of heroism, and had the jacket tailor-made for her to replace that ratty old, ill-fitting red leather jacket she'd bought from a Goodwill in a scrambled effort to make a good costume. It still needed some tweaks now, but the new jacket was an excellent start.

"And now that she's getting lessons from Eagle Eye, she's only gonna get better!" Tim gushed. "She's just so- Aunt Emma? What're you smiling so hard for?"

God, Emma couldn't keep this secret any longer. She had to tell him.

"I have a question for you, bud," she began, resisting the urge to just tell him outright. "Did your mom ever say anything about both her and me having the Nitro Gene?"

Tim's eyebrows shot up. "Oh yeah!" he exclaimed. "But she said that you didn't like talking about your powers, so she never told me what they were. I figured you still wouldn't wanna talk about them, so I never asked."

Emma's heart fluttered. What had she done to deserve such a considerate nephew? "You wanna take a guess?"

"O-okay, but why n-" Tim cut himself off, the gears clearly turning in his head. After a few moments, he turned to Emma with a look of awed realization on his face. "W-wait, Aunt Emma... Are you saying that you're...?"

"Wild Flower?" Emma finished, eyeing him cheekily. "You bet!"

A smile slowly blossomed onto Tim's face. "No way!" he exclaimed. "B-but mom always said you didn't wanna be a superhero!"

"Well, people change their minds sometimes!" Emma retorted. "And I decided to finally put my powers to good use once I came back home."

"Wow..." Tim gaped breathlessly.

"But I'm still your Aunt Emma, first and foremost!" Emma quickly clarified. "I'm still the same person, just y'know... with plant powers."

"O-of course!" Tim stammered, his mind looking certifiably blown. His face grew serious. "And don't worry, I won't tell anybody about your secret identity!"

Emma snickered, tousling her nephew's hair. "I appreciate it, bud," she said, pulling him into a hug. "...Want me to introduce you to Slack-Jaw?"

"...Maybe."

[stevetervet]

How do I love thee? England, let me count the ways.

There are moments in everyone’s life which you can look back on and remember exactly where you were and what you were doing. It only takes one sound, one image or even the mere thought and you are transported back in an instant.

For me, this happens every two years. It is called supporting England in a major international football tournament.

In 1996, I was only allowed to stay up for the first half of the semi-final against Germany. I went to bed having seen Stefan Kuntz cancel out Alan Shearer’s early goal but only found out the result on the following morning’s news bulletin.

Two years later, Richard Pugh and I were the lucky students in our Year 8 Art class to be sat near enough the radio so as to be able to follow the commentary of the group game against Tunisia. When Paul Scholes curled in the clincher, we passed messages down the line to our class-mates with silent fist pumps and the international sign language for ‘2-0.’

Michael Owen’s historic goal against Argentina and David Beckham’s subsequent dismissal, which preceded the dreaded penalties, had me listening through headphones on the bottom bunk - the full game this time. We deserved to go through and there were tears when David Batty became the latest to suffer infamy from 12 yards.

Fast forward to the World Cup in 2006 and I was stood in a giant fan park in Gelsenkirchen among 50,000 sunburnt Englishmen (seriously, Rachel would have been in a minority of less than 1% females). Many fans were so drunk they had passed out and didn’t witness any of the quarter-final against Portugal. The party atmosphere turned ugly the second Cristiano Ronaldo fired in the winning penalty and we realised the dream was over. Bus windows were smashed and we were lucky to make it back to the train station. Rooney’s stamp on Carvalho, Ronaldo’s wink as he was sent off... it was like red rag to a bull in that sun-baked German field.

By the time 2010 came around, we were married and had moved to Kent. An appalling performance against Algeria in the group saw England booed off by the many thousands who had paid good money to fly to South Africa. This time, Rooney criticised the fans live on air as he walked off the field. It was a new low under Fabio Capello and Germany easily sorted us out in the knockout stages.

Following Euro 2012 during our (first) year in Australia was almost impossible due to the time difference between Ukraine and Melbourne - but more of this later. Still, we sat through yet more penalty pain as the two Ashleys - Young and Cole - came up short against the Italians in another quarter-final which proved one step too far.

Heartbreak turned to anger in the following years as we were knocked out before even completing the group stage in Brazil 2014 and then somehow managed to plunge even more miserable depths by going out to Iceland - Iceland! - in the next Euros. By now we had stumbled upon the combination of watching the TV coverage but immediately switching to Radio 5 Live on the final whistle. Not only was the analysis more honest and insightful but you were kept abreast of developments in the stadium after the final whistle, for instance the terrifying scenes caused by charging Russian hooligans after we’d draw with them in Marseille. Mark Chapman’s anchorage and Chris Waddle’s rants would go on to become our regular soundtrack, especially on the nights England went out.

Ivy was three when Gareth Southgate led us to the World Cup semi-finals in 2018. Rachel was away the night we played Colombia and finally managed to win a penalty shootout. The match kicked off at 6pm, from memory, so most of my day was spent working to a strict schedule that had Ivy in bed and virtually asleep by 5.45 - much earlier than normal - so I could be in position downstairs from the national anthems. I managed to stifle my yells of delight when the shootout went our way but did remove my shirt, such was the shock. Ivy watched the highlights of Jordan Pickford’s heroics over breakfast the next morning and declared that was wanted to be a ‘lady goalkeeper’ when she grew up.

But, if truth be told, she didn’t really enjoy the experience of watching games in my company. My tendancy to leap around and shout at the key moments scared her - it’s pretty out of character, in fairness - and I had not even spoken to her about Euro 2020 in the build-up to the tournament which, once again, found us battling the time zones from Australia, now our permanent residence.

However, the last few weeks have been a shared experience unlike any other, and I’m sure millions up and down the UK - and many more ex-pats around the world, for a variety of reasons - could say the same.

The majority of England’s games kicked off at 5am (2000 BST); I set an early alarm, Rachel got up too and there was Ivy alongside us, wrapped in a dressing-gown, blanket or whatever she had dragged from her room at that hour of the night. She knew none of the players at the start of the tournament but was soon querying why Phil Foden had been left on the bench against Scotland. She was asking for Three Lions to be played after the Germany game, decided Harry Kane was her favourite player after his brace against Ukraine in Rome and chastised Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips at times during the semi-final triumph over Denmark back at Wembley. All the time in her pyjamas with the sun still some way from rising over New South Wales.

As we approached the final, she knew the entire starting XI and wanted to know if Bukayo Saka would retain his place on the right against Italy. News of Foden’s injury did not go down well.

And so it was, in the wee small hours of my 36th birthday, I found myself behind the wheel of the only car on the streets of Albury at a 24-hour McDonald’s drive-through for breakfast supplies and extra strong coffee with 5 Live once again bringing the Wembley build-up to the far side of the world. At times like this, in moments like this, that vast distance back to London is evident more than ever, yet we felt very much connected to the team nurtured by Southgate and which conducts itself in a way which makes me proud to be English. It is the dignity and integrity of the players, as much as their performances, which has been heart-warming this past month.

What a ride it has been. I have looked forward so much to every early start, never wanted the journey to end, always wanted one more game, one more celebration, one more rendition of Sweet Caroline. A staggering 30 million people watched the final on the BBC and ITV combined; there are few sports teams around the globe that have such power to bring a nation together. The All Blacks and India’s cricket team, perhaps. Because, in these moments, as Luke Shaw sent us leaping off the sofa in the second minute, roaring and punching the air, as Leonardo Bonucci bundled in the equaliser which punctured the balloon of optimism, as we shuffled nearer the edge of our seats during extra-time but barely uttered a word to each other, we are not customers, we are not spectators, we are not even fans. We are England. This is us, and what happens in these moments is etched into our identity.

Not penalties, we agonised, not again. Ivy kept smiling and clapping during the final coin toss and stood holding her Euro 2020 colouring sheet as encourgament to the takers, pointing at the trophy. “I want Kane to have this,” she whispered.

But the script which has become so familiar in our lifetime was played out yet again; Rashford, Sancho and Saka the unfortunate three to miss their penalties. Why does it always have to end like this? Ivy cried too. Welcome to the club. This is England.

Because like all those tournaments listed above, we will never forget where we were on 12 July 2021, when England played in their first final for 55 years. It will be the next trip through that Macca’s drive-through, memories of setting Ivy’s ‘Gro Clock’ to wake her at 4.30am, the haunting images of a distraught Saka being comforted by Southgate which bring it flooding back.

Shame on those who racially abused the penalty missers in the hours after the game; so much unifying work done by Southgate and the squad felt like it had been undone. But when Ivy’s prayer at bedtime was for ‘Rashford, Sancho and Saka as they return to their families’ it brought a different sort of tear to the eye: absolute pride in the young men whose tenacity and humility on the biggest stage has inspired my little girl and so many others like her.

Following England is often gut-wrenching, occasionally exhilarating, always utterly unforgettable.

Football’s Coming Home? The feeling never went away.

[austenmarriage]

New Post has been published on Austen Marriage

New Post has been published on http://austenmarriage.com/third-times-the-charm-more-fun-facts-about-austen/

Third Time's the Charm: More Fun Facts about Austen

Though this may not be as exciting as Sheldon’s “Fun With Flags” segments on The Big Bang Theory TV show, today’s episode features the “Third Time’s the Charm Quiz” with questions about Jane Austen’s life and times. (It’ll also be the last quiz, so all those who stress over test-taking can look forward to a quiet future.)

For those who want to revisit the previous torture, here is Quiz #1 and here is Quiz #2. (Hint: Each will help with one question today.)

Like John and Fanny Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility winnowing their contribution little by little to their stepfamily, the number of questions has been reduced in each quiz, but by and large the questions have gotten harder. Today’s quiz may tax your Regency knowledge. It pertains to people and events current during Jane Austen’s time, but not all of them popped up directly in her novels. Let’s call these the graduate-level questions. However, two questions relate to the earlier quizzes, and one is included for extra credit. As before, there’s no rhyme or reason to topics or order. The answers appear below each question to avoid vertigo from excessive scrolling.

Rating scale:

0-5: You’re the bumbling Mr. Collins of Austenia.

6-9: You’re Edward Ferrars/Edmund Bertram: solid but dull.

10-12: You’re Henry Tilney, learned on topics from muslin to crown lands to Udolpho.

13-15: You’re Liz Bennet, fiercely demolishing all comers.

The quiz:

Why were both the French and English slow to let women fly in hot-air balloons?

Both the French and the English hesitated to let women ascend in a balloon for fear of the effects of altitude on their “delicate” bodies.

Beyond the possible biological effect of altitude on women, what was the major fear about women “going into space”?

Just as it was considered improper for an unengaged man and woman to have private carriage rides, society was concerned about the morality of an unchaperoned couple in a hot-air balloon. One can only wonder what Elinor’s reaction would have been in Sense and Sensibility if Marianne and Willoughby had soared alone into the wild blue yonder. (She would not have looked on benignly as she does when Willoughby brings Marianne flowers, in the above photo from the 1995 movie!)

Even before they read the newspapers that came from London, how would ordinary citizens know of a British victory in the wars with France?

To celebrate British victories, the coaches were decorated. At night, candles and lamps were lit, and formal illuminations were held in large towns.

Lord Nelson won the major sea battle at Trafalgar, off the Spanish coast, that ended the threat of a French invasion. How was hero-worship for him expressed?

Egyptian-style ladies’ hats celebrated his earlier victory on the Nile; special needlework stitching was created; and housing developments were named for him. Jane Austen satirizes the commercialization of military victories in her last, unfinished novel, Sanditon. A real-estate developer laments his having named a building Trafalgar House because “Waterloo is more the thing now.” However, he’s keeping Waterloo in reserve for the name of a housing crescent (a semicircle such as in Bath).

What was the major cause of death in the French army during Napoleon’s catastrophic winter retreat from Moscow in 1812?

The French suffered hideous losses from typhus as well as from defeat in battle.

What likely most antagonized the British public over the behavior of His Royal Highness as both Prince Regent and later as King George IV?

Though his philandering and his personal attacks on his wife, Caroline, riled many citizens, his worst fault was extravagant spending at a time when England was heavily in debt from the war. Repayment of his personal debts earned its own line item in England’s budget. When the Prince Regent, now George IV, died, the Times of London remarked that “there never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures.”

What were the political ramifications and the unintended consequences of the tax on hair powder during the Napoleonic wars?

A tax on hair powder in the early 1800s made it possible to tell political affiliation at a glance. Tories wore wigs, paying the hair-powder tax. Whigs, who opposed the war, stopped wearing wigs to avoid the tax. By the time the government reduced the tax, a more natural hairstyle had become fashionable. This marked the start of the Romantic era, when hair could be as wild as the heath.

Though Janeites recall the intelligence, wit, and character of her father and brothers, what medical problems did the males in Jane Austen’s family suffer?

Austen had an uncle and a brother who suffered the same serious mental and physical handicaps, apparently genetic. Both were reportedly “deaf and dumb.” Both lived away from the family. The son of her cousin Eliza died of epilepsy. More distant male family members also suffered serious neurological problems.

Before England ended the slave trade in 1807, how much did slaves cost in the West Indies and other British possessions?

The average selling price for a healthy adult male was about £50; women and children were less. It was usually cheaper to work a slave to death and buy a new one than it was to feed and care properly for a slave.

Several Austen family members, including Jane, were abolitionists, or at least no fans of slavery. Did Britain’s 1807 abolition act end slavery?

No. In the U.S., “abolition” usually meant the end to slavery, which did not begin to occur until 1863. In England, “abolition” meant only the end of the slave trade—the capture and sale of slaves in Africa. The hope was that the end to the slave trade would lead to better treatment of existing slaves. Both sides of the argument thought that the end of the slave trade would eventually end slavery itself. After the legal end to the slave trade in 1807, the British government did little to enforce the ban until 1811, when violation of the act was made a felony.

Two generations of Austen naval officers—her brothers Frank and Charles and their self-named sons—intercepted slave ships.

England did not abolish slavery until six months after the death of the great abolitionist William Wilberforce in July 1833. The end to slavery was phased in over several years, beginning in 1834. Slave owners received twenty million pounds in recompense.

Does Jane Austen ever touch upon the slave trade in her novels?

Yes, a surprising number of times. In Mansfield Park, the Bertram family’s wealth comes from a sugar plantation in Antigua. The heroine, Fanny Price, brings conversation to a halt when she asks about the slave trade. In Emma, both Jane Fairfax and Mrs. Elton make a passing reference to it. Mrs. Elton’s remark is hypocritical. She claims that her family, which has likely been involved in the slave trade, is “rather a friend to the abolition.” In Persuasion, Mrs. Smith’s estate is tied up in the West Indies, meaning a slave-based business. In her barely begun novel Sanditon, Austen introduces a wealthy “half mulatto” teenage girl. The wealth would have come from her white parentage, almost certainly a slave business. It’s unclear whether Miss Lambe would have become a major character.

What were the most dramatic changes to transportation during Jane Austen’s lifetime?

Steamboats and railroads entered service in England in 1812, though railroads did not become commercially feasible until 1825.

What was an obvious marker of the huge disparity of wealth in England during Jane Austen’s lifetime?

The cost of housing. The finest houses in London rented for £750 a year—more than what Jane Austen earned in her lifetime from writing.

Why did Jane Austen’s cousin, Eliza de Feuillide, give up her carriage in 1797?

The major reason was a new tax on carriages to support the war against France. These taxes would have affected all the wealthy in Austen’s novels, not only for carriages but for sporting horses. In December 1797, Eliza, who was soon to marry Jane’s brother Henry, complained: “These new Taxes will drive me out of London, and make me give up my Carriage.”

What Austen relative narrowly escaped hanging or banishment to Australia?

Jane Austen’s Aunt Leigh-Perrot was acquitted of stealing a card of lace from a shop in Bath. Though the theft may have been a setup by the store proprietors, Aunt Leigh-Perrot had a reputation for kleptomania. Her own lawyer questioned her veracity. Another case against her, for stealing a potted plant, was dismissed when a witness conveniently left town.

For extra credit:

Where did “bobbies,” the nickname for London police, originate?

English policemen are known as “bobbies” after Robert Peel, who created the first English police force, in London, in 1829. Early on, they were also called “peelers.” Peel served in Parliament almost nonstop from 1809 until his death in 1850. A protégé of Lord Wellington and a moderate Tory, he nonetheless supported many liberal reforms that kept the country from coming apart. These included Catholic emancipation in 1829, the voting reforms of 1832, the end to slavery in 1833, and child-labor reform in 1833. Because of the Great Famine in Ireland in 1845, he broke with the Tory Party to help end the Corn Laws, which had kept grain prices artificially high for more than thirty years.

—

The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, which traces love from a charming courtship through the richness and complexity of marriage and concludes with a test of the heroine’s courage and moral convictions, is available from Amazon and Jane Austen Books.

[euroman1945-blog]

The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – News From Around The World

Thursday 19th July 2018

Good Morning Gentle Reader….  where ever you are on the planet Earth 4.67 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers) from Pluto which could be seen, as I walked Bella, this early morning in the Capricorn Sagittarius complex in the northern sky, I had to imagine the NASA space craft New Horizons speeding past taking thousands of photographs… The Night is warm and humid with rain promised for the week end, so mustn’t complain… The Colombian Coffee had brewed by the time I got back to the house, so a quick review of the papers and news sites let me give you my perspective of what has happened on this little blue planet….

'SEE YOU IN COURT,' NOVA SCOTIA LOTTO WIN AUNT TELLS NEPHEW…. A Canadian woman's first act upon winning the lottery was to threaten to sue her nephew for his half of the C$1.2m ($912,000; £690,000) win. "See you in court," Barbara Reddick told Tyrone MacInnis as they both posed with the giant novelty cheque in Nova Scotia province. Both their names were on the winning ticket from Wednesday night's "Chase the Ace" draw. But Ms Reddick claims she never promised to split the jackpot with him. "I'm taking him to court," she told those gathered at the winners' ceremony on Thursday in Margaree Forks, a small community of about 3,400 people, according to the CBC. "I'm getting a lawyer tomorrow." She denied the two had had an agreement. But her nephew told reporters: "Yes, we did." Ms Reddick said: "He's lying." She said she just put her nephew's name on the ticket for luck "because he's like a son to me - he was". Ms Reddick told reporters she only promised to share possible winnings from a smaller draw, not the jackpot. "He was lucky, but not for half a million dollars," she said. Bernice Curley, chairwoman of the Margaree Forks Chase the Ace committee, said she was taken aback by the family feud. "I'm a little bit disappointed that happened at the end," she told CBC. Chase the Ace is a lottery game popular all over Canada's east coast, and often raises money for charity, in this instance for the regional fire services.

'VAPING' PILOT CAUSED AIR CHINA PLANE TO PLUNGE 6,500M…. A co-pilot smoking an e-cigarette on an Air China flight caused the plane to start a rapid emergency descent, investigators have said. They say he tried to hide the fact that he was smoking but accidentally shut off the air-conditioning, causing oxygen levels to fall. The crew on Tuesday's flight from Hong Kong to the city of Dalian released oxygen masks and brought the plane more than 6,500m (21,000ft) lower. It later returned to cruising altitude. An initial probe by China's Civil Aviation Administration in China has shown that the co-pilot tried to turn off a fan to stop smoke reaching the passenger cabin without telling the captain, but turned off the air-conditioning unit instead. Passengers say they were told to fasten their seat belts as the plane had to descend. The regulator's safety officer Qiao Yibin said the crew had to perform emergency measures, dropping oxygen masks until they could figure out the problem. If a plane loses cabin pressure, the pilot has to bring the aircraft to a lower altitude to keep crew and passengers safe. Once they saw that the air conditioning had been turned off, they reactivated it and brought the flight back to its normal altitude. Authorities are reportedly investigating the cause "in greater detail", examining both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder to determine precisely what caused the incident.

MAN DROVE CAR SITTING ON BUCKET AND STEERING WITH PLIERS….  A motorist was stopped by police for driving while sitting on a bucket and steering with pliers. The battered car, which also had no front wing, bumper, headlights and a flat tyre was pulled over in King's Lynn in Norfolk England. Norfolk's roads policing unit tweeted pictures of "the most un-roadworthy car" and said there were "too many offences to mention". Police said the driver has been reported to court. "Yes this was driven on a road and yes he was sitting on a bucket and steering with a pair of mole grips," officers wrote, as they posted pictures of the vehicle in Saddlebow Road. Dozens of people have commented on the shocking state of the vehicle. One person referred to a television series where contestants compete to build working machines from scrap, saying: "I think too much scrap heap challenge has been watched by that driver."

AUSTRALIA AND NZ RECALL FROZEN VEGETABLES OVER LISTERIA FEARS…. Australia has become caught up in a European food scare, with supermarkets across the country recalling bags of frozen vegetables over fears they may contain a deadly bacteria. It follows similar moves in Britain last week over vegetable products from supplier Greenyard Frozen. Food authorities said the vegetables could carry listeria monocytogenes which can cause listeriosis. Listeria in tainted melon killed seven people in Australia earlier this year. Food Standards Australia and New Zealand have recalled nine products - a mix of corn, carrot, pea and broccoli ranges - that originated from Britain, Belgium and Hungary. They were sold in supermarket chains Woolworths, Aldi and IGA. "The products affected contain a particularly dangerous strain of listeria and are being recalled as a precautionary measure to ensure consumers are protected," chief executive Peter May said. He said cooking the vegetables should kill the bacteria, but warned against eating undefrosted or undercooked frozen vegetables.

LEEDS SCHOOL USES SPOONS TO HELP PREVENT FORCED MARRIAGE…. A school is attempting to tackle forced marriages by handing out spoons to urge students to hide them in underwear to trigger metal detectors at airports. Pupils at the Co-operative Academy in Leeds England, have been told to hide the cutlery there if they fear they are being taken overseas to be married. It will trigger metal detectors at airports, allowing them to raise the alarm with security staff privately. Harinder Kaur, from the school, said the spoons can "save lives". She said that 80% of UK forced marriages happened abroad during the summer holidays. "In the six-weeks holidays we know there is no contact between school and the family and families have that opportunity to go abroad, get their child married and come back," she said. "It's a way of making our children aware there is a safety net there." A law making it a criminal offence to force people into marriage came into effect in June 2014. Parents who force their children to marry can be punished by up to seven years in prison.

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look at the news from around the world this, morning… …

Our Tulips today are on a wall in Greensboro North Carolina and it’s one of Greensboro's new, eye-catching pieces of public art that isn't so easy to spot. Unless you live in CityView Apartments or have traveled by on a train, you might not have seen it..

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Thursday 19th July 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus #Travel #News #Blog #Spain #Bella

[newssplashy]

Opinion: Piece by piece, a factory-made answer for a housing squeeze

VALLEJO, Calif. — California is in the middle of an affordable-housing crisis that cities across the state are struggling to solve.

Here, in a football-field-size warehouse where workers used to make submarines, Holliday recently opened Factory OS, a factory that manufactures homes.

In one end go wood, pipes, tile, sinks and toilets; out another come individual apartments that can be trucked to a construction site and bolted together in months.

“If we don’t build housing differently, then no one can have any housing,” Holliday said during a recent tour as he passed assembly-line workstations and stacks of raw materials like windows, pipes and rolls of pink insulation.

Almost a decade after the recession flattened the housing industry, causing waves of contractors to go bankrupt and laid-off construction workers to leave the business for other jobs, builders have yet to regain their previous form. Today the pace of new apartment and housing construction sits at a little over half the 2006 peak.

The United States needs new housing, but its building industry isn’t big enough to provide it. The number of residential construction workers is 23 percent lower than in 2006, while higher-skill trades like plumbers, carpenters and electricians are down close to 17 percent. With demand for housing high and the supply of workers short, builders are bidding up prices for the limited number of contractors.

Construction prices nationwide have risen about 5 percent a year for the past three years, according to the Turner Building Cost Index. Costs have gone up even faster in big cities and across California, according to RSMeans, a unit of Gordian, which compiles construction data. In the Bay Area, builders say construction prices are up 30 percent over the past three years — so much that even luxury projects are being stalled by rising costs.

“It’s reached the point where you cannot get enough rent or you cannot sell enough units to make it a viable deal,” said Lou Vasquez, a founding partner and managing director of Build, a real estate developer in San Francisco.

The surge in construction prices is coming at the worst possible time for booming cities like New York, Seattle and San Francisco, already dealing with an affordable-housing crunch that has increased the homeless populations and stoked acrimonious debates about growth and gentrification. City and state legislators have tried to tackle their housing problems with proposals to increase subsidized affordable housing, reduce building regulations and make it legal to build taller.

But even if every overpriced city suddenly overcame the thicket of zoning rules and neighborhood opposition that make it difficult to build new housing in the first place — which seems doubtful — today’s diminished building industry would lack the capacity to build at the needed pace. This affects the rich as well as the poor, because it raises the cost of high-end condos and affordable housing alike.

This year, Californians will vote on a proposed $4 billion bond to build more subsidized affordable housing. In San Francisco, where developers say the per-unit construction cost is edging toward $800,000, that would buy about 5,000 units, a relative blip. “Costs have risen so much that it is not possible to build homes where people want to live at the prices and rents they can afford,” said John Burns, founder of John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

All this has prompted developers like Holliday to go scrambling for cheaper and less labor-intensive construction methods — and investors to pour money into startups that promise to do just that. Katerra, a 3-year-old prefabricated building company in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park, has raised $1.1 billion in venture capital. A number of other building startups including Blokable, based in Seattle; Kasita, based in Austin, Texas; and RAD Urban, based in Oakland, California, have all popped up over the past five years.

“The current system can’t meet demand and that’s resulting in a lack of opportunity for some folks and a major hit to the economy,” said Stonly Baptiste, a co-founder of Urban Us, a Brooklyn-based venture capital firm that invested in Blokable. “These aren’t small problems, and they aren’t small markets.”

The technologies vary but generally involve simplifying construction through prefabricated panels that can be assembled like Ikea furniture and modular apartments that can be stacked together like Lego bricks. A recent survey by FMI, a management-consulting and investment banking company focused on the engineering and construction industry, found a third of respondents said they were looking at some form of off-site construction, a steep rise from 2010. The interest extends from housing to hotels to medical facilities, industrial companies and even fast-food restaurants.

“It’s one of those things that looks like an overnight success but it’s taken 10 years and hundreds of people toiling,” said Chris Giattina, chief executive of BLOX, a Birmingham, Alabama, company that builds hospitals with modular components.

Brokers of Risk

The global construction industry is a $10 trillion behemoth whose structures determine where people live, how they get to work and what cities look like. It is also one of the world’s least efficient businesses. The construction productivity rate — how much building workers do for each hour of labor they put in — has been flat since 1945, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Over that period, sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and retail saw their productivity rates surge by as much as 1,500 percent. In other words, while the rest of the economy has been supercharged by machines, computers and robots, construction companies are about as efficient as they were in World War II.

To understand this, consider how buildings are actually built. It all starts with the developer, who doesn’t actually build anything but instead secures a piece of land and a loan, and gets the project approved by the government. At that point the money is passed to the general contractor that made a successful bid to build the project, who passes it to subcontractors that won the bidding for things like plumbing and sheet metal work, which often pass it to even more subcontractors.

Contractors describe this handoff as “brokering risk.” What they mean is that while everyone in the chain has agreed to build a certain piece of the project for a set amount of money and in a given amount of time, none of them are sure they can do so as cheaply or quickly as they’ve promised. They broker that risk by paying someone else to do it for them, minus a small fee.

“Say you’re a general contractor and your subcontractor agrees to do a job. Once we have a contract I don’t care how many man hours you put into it because that’s your problem now,” said Randy Miller, chief executive of RAD Urban, describing the thinking behind the process.

The goal of prefabricated building companies is to turn this model on its head. Instead of offloading risk, the contractor assumes all of it. Instead of sending jobs to subcontractors, they hire their own factory workers. “The general contractor says, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me broker all that risk,'” Miller said. “I’m saying, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me plan and control it.”

The basic concept isn’t new. In 1624, Massachusetts settlers built homes out of prefabricated materials shipped from England. The pattern was repeated in Australia, Africa and India as the British Empire shipped colonists and structures wide across the globe, according to “Prefab Architecture,” by Ryan E. Smith, a professor at the University of Utah.

Over the next few centuries, new versions of the idea seemed to pop up anywhere people needed to build lots of homes in a hurry — during the California Gold Rush, after the Chicago fire, and through America’s westward expansion. In the early part of the 20th century, Sears sold tens of thousands of kits for Sears Modern Homes, which consisted of prefabricated parts and panels that buyers assembled.

Along the way, the construction industry absorbed manufacturing concepts such as the assembly-line techniques that were utilized by Levitt & Sons, the pioneer of mass-built subdivisions. But the idea of factory-built housing was never adopted long enough or widely enough to make an impact, at least in the United States.

One reason the United States has lagged behind Europe, Australia and Asia — which all have well-established companies doing modular and prefabricated building — is that it is a predominantly suburban nation, and the vast supply of open land has kept the cost of single-family-home building relatively low. Another is that the construction industry has slim profit margins and invests little in research and development.

The chances of being burned are high, and each high-profile failure leads to a furlough of the concept. In the mid-2000s housing boom, Pulte Homes, one of the country’s largest builders, opened a prefabrication plant that aimed to revolutionize how homes were built. The company closed it with the onset of the housing bust in 2007.

Now, instead of single-family homes, companies doing prefab building are focusing on higher-density condominiums and apartments. That’s because, while single-family home construction remains well below its level before the recession, multifamily condominium and apartment buildings have rebounded strongly. “Our goal is to be able to do a 40-story tower in 12 months, at half the cost of traditional construction,” said Randy Miller of RAD Urban.

Still, even if builders are able to reduce construction costs, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be successful. Behind each of these companies is a bet that they can build far more efficiently than current methods. That bet has yet to be proven, at least on a large scale.

Efficiency vs. Workers

Holliday of Factory OS started thinking about modular housing about four years ago, when he was struggling to build a project in Truckee, California. The idea was to build 800 to 1,000 high-density apartments and condominiums, but “the numbers wouldn’t work,” he said. “You couldn’t get the construction costs down enough.”

Holliday floated the idea of modular building to his longtime contractor, Larry Pace, from Cannon Constructors, who over the past four decades has built various projects from one-off homes to office towers. “I said ‘modular jobs have been a fiasco — we don’t need that in our lives,'” Pace recalled, adding an expletive for emphasis.

But Holliday persisted, and he and Pace used modular technology from two manufacturers to build four projects in the Bay Area. They are planning to do the same with the original Truckee development. Pace became so comfortable with modular that he suggested that they find some investors and build their own factory.

On a recent afternoon, Pace laid out the factory’s process. At the first station, just past the door, four workers toiled above and below a raised platform to build what would eventually become the floor. The two men up top laid down flooring while a man and woman stood below simultaneously installing pipes.

From there the unit would move steadily down the line, and, over 21 additional stations, would acquire toilets, indoor walls, outdoor walls, a roof, electric outlets, windows, sinks, countertops and tiling. It takes about a week to finish a unit, Pace said. The goal is to churn out about 2,000 apartments a year, which would be turned into four- and five-story buildings with 80 to 150 units each.

For workers, factory building seems to mean lower wages but steadier work. Factory OS pays about $30 an hour with medical insurance and two weeks of vacation. That’s about half what workers can make on a construction site, but the work is more regular and, for many, requires less commuting.

Tony Vandewark, a 51-year-old foreman at Factory OS, is OK with the trade-off. He lives a few minutes from the factory in Vallejo, where homes cost less than half what they do closer to San Francisco. Contrast that with a job he once had in the Silicon Valley city of Sunnyvale. He drove two hours to work and three hours home before deciding to rent a room so he could stay closer to work on weekdays.

“On a job site, you can go do piece work and make really big money, but then the job is gone,” he said.

In addition to not being rained on, one of the key differences between a construction site and Factory OS is that any worker can be trained to do any job. And for old-school trade unions, that is a declaration of war. “The business model is ‘Hooray for me,'” without regard for anyone else, said Larry Mazzola Jr., business manager of UA Local 38, a San Francisco plumbers union with about 2,500 members across Northern California.

Factory OS is not anti-union: It has a contract with the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, which has organized other modular factories and is banking on the technology’s continued growth. The issue is that builders are laid out like a Detroit auto factory, where one union represents all of the workers, and workers can be trained to do any job within the company walls.

That is a huge departure from construction sites, where unions representing plumbers, electricians, carpenters and various other trades each control their piece of the building process. Last year Mazzola wrote a letter to San Francisco’s mayor, Ed Lee, a month before he died, urging him to deny any city business — such as contracts for subsidized housing — to Factory OS.

“Any decision to use Factory OS shows a blatant disregard for the other craft unions,” he wrote. He asked the mayor to refrain from contracting with the company unless it allowed craft unions to do their pieces of the work. “We realize modular is coming and we want to be part of it, but not at the expense of our workers, which is what’s happening right now,” Mazzola said.

Jay Bradshaw, director of organizing for the carpenters council representing Factory OS workers, said that would be impractical. Think back to that first station, where four people worked above and below the floor. In Mazzola’s world, a plumbers union would represent the workers installing pipes, while other unions would represent the workers up top.

“It would never work to have upward of 10 or 15 labor organizations at a single employer in a factory setting,” Bradshaw said.

For Bradshaw, the real fight isn’t defending job titles but making sure construction workers remain part of a union at all. A short drive from Factory OS, at a carpenters training center, the union is developing a program to train housing-factory workers — something that, it hopes, will prepare more people for an industry that it has come to see as inevitable.

“It sure blows the hell out of building in China,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

CONOR DOUGHERTY © 2018 The New York Times

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/06/opinion-piece-by-piece-factory-made.html

[newssplashy]

VALLEJO, Calif. — California is in the middle of an affordable-housing crisis that cities across the state are struggling to solve.

Here, in a football-field-size warehouse where workers used to make submarines, Holliday recently opened Factory OS, a factory that manufactures homes.

In one end go wood, pipes, tile, sinks and toilets; out another come individual apartments that can be trucked to a construction site and bolted together in months.

“If we don’t build housing differently, then no one can have any housing,” Holliday said during a recent tour as he passed assembly-line workstations and stacks of raw materials like windows, pipes and rolls of pink insulation.

Almost a decade after the recession flattened the housing industry, causing waves of contractors to go bankrupt and laid-off construction workers to leave the business for other jobs, builders have yet to regain their previous form. Today the pace of new apartment and housing construction sits at a little over half the 2006 peak.

The United States needs new housing, but its building industry isn’t big enough to provide it. The number of residential construction workers is 23 percent lower than in 2006, while higher-skill trades like plumbers, carpenters and electricians are down close to 17 percent. With demand for housing high and the supply of workers short, builders are bidding up prices for the limited number of contractors.

Construction prices nationwide have risen about 5 percent a year for the past three years, according to the Turner Building Cost Index. Costs have gone up even faster in big cities and across California, according to RSMeans, a unit of Gordian, which compiles construction data. In the Bay Area, builders say construction prices are up 30 percent over the past three years — so much that even luxury projects are being stalled by rising costs.

“It’s reached the point where you cannot get enough rent or you cannot sell enough units to make it a viable deal,” said Lou Vasquez, a founding partner and managing director of Build, a real estate developer in San Francisco.

The surge in construction prices is coming at the worst possible time for booming cities like New York, Seattle and San Francisco, already dealing with an affordable-housing crunch that has increased the homeless populations and stoked acrimonious debates about growth and gentrification. City and state legislators have tried to tackle their housing problems with proposals to increase subsidized affordable housing, reduce building regulations and make it legal to build taller.

But even if every overpriced city suddenly overcame the thicket of zoning rules and neighborhood opposition that make it difficult to build new housing in the first place — which seems doubtful — today’s diminished building industry would lack the capacity to build at the needed pace. This affects the rich as well as the poor, because it raises the cost of high-end condos and affordable housing alike.

This year, Californians will vote on a proposed $4 billion bond to build more subsidized affordable housing. In San Francisco, where developers say the per-unit construction cost is edging toward $800,000, that would buy about 5,000 units, a relative blip. “Costs have risen so much that it is not possible to build homes where people want to live at the prices and rents they can afford,” said John Burns, founder of John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

All this has prompted developers like Holliday to go scrambling for cheaper and less labor-intensive construction methods — and investors to pour money into startups that promise to do just that. Katerra, a 3-year-old prefabricated building company in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park, has raised $1.1 billion in venture capital. A number of other building startups including Blokable, based in Seattle; Kasita, based in Austin, Texas; and RAD Urban, based in Oakland, California, have all popped up over the past five years.

“The current system can’t meet demand and that’s resulting in a lack of opportunity for some folks and a major hit to the economy,” said Stonly Baptiste, a co-founder of Urban Us, a Brooklyn-based venture capital firm that invested in Blokable. “These aren’t small problems, and they aren’t small markets.”

The technologies vary but generally involve simplifying construction through prefabricated panels that can be assembled like Ikea furniture and modular apartments that can be stacked together like Lego bricks. A recent survey by FMI, a management-consulting and investment banking company focused on the engineering and construction industry, found a third of respondents said they were looking at some form of off-site construction, a steep rise from 2010. The interest extends from housing to hotels to medical facilities, industrial companies and even fast-food restaurants.

“It’s one of those things that looks like an overnight success but it’s taken 10 years and hundreds of people toiling,” said Chris Giattina, chief executive of BLOX, a Birmingham, Alabama, company that builds hospitals with modular components.

Brokers of Risk

The global construction industry is a $10 trillion behemoth whose structures determine where people live, how they get to work and what cities look like. It is also one of the world’s least efficient businesses. The construction productivity rate — how much building workers do for each hour of labor they put in — has been flat since 1945, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Over that period, sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and retail saw their productivity rates surge by as much as 1,500 percent. In other words, while the rest of the economy has been supercharged by machines, computers and robots, construction companies are about as efficient as they were in World War II.

To understand this, consider how buildings are actually built. It all starts with the developer, who doesn’t actually build anything but instead secures a piece of land and a loan, and gets the project approved by the government. At that point the money is passed to the general contractor that made a successful bid to build the project, who passes it to subcontractors that won the bidding for things like plumbing and sheet metal work, which often pass it to even more subcontractors.

Contractors describe this handoff as “brokering risk.” What they mean is that while everyone in the chain has agreed to build a certain piece of the project for a set amount of money and in a given amount of time, none of them are sure they can do so as cheaply or quickly as they’ve promised. They broker that risk by paying someone else to do it for them, minus a small fee.

“Say you’re a general contractor and your subcontractor agrees to do a job. Once we have a contract I don’t care how many man hours you put into it because that’s your problem now,” said Randy Miller, chief executive of RAD Urban, describing the thinking behind the process.

The goal of prefabricated building companies is to turn this model on its head. Instead of offloading risk, the contractor assumes all of it. Instead of sending jobs to subcontractors, they hire their own factory workers. “The general contractor says, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me broker all that risk,'” Miller said. “I’m saying, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me plan and control it.”

The basic concept isn’t new. In 1624, Massachusetts settlers built homes out of prefabricated materials shipped from England. The pattern was repeated in Australia, Africa and India as the British Empire shipped colonists and structures wide across the globe, according to “Prefab Architecture,” by Ryan E. Smith, a professor at the University of Utah.

Over the next few centuries, new versions of the idea seemed to pop up anywhere people needed to build lots of homes in a hurry — during the California Gold Rush, after the Chicago fire, and through America’s westward expansion. In the early part of the 20th century, Sears sold tens of thousands of kits for Sears Modern Homes, which consisted of prefabricated parts and panels that buyers assembled.

Along the way, the construction industry absorbed manufacturing concepts such as the assembly-line techniques that were utilized by Levitt & Sons, the pioneer of mass-built subdivisions. But the idea of factory-built housing was never adopted long enough or widely enough to make an impact, at least in the United States.

One reason the United States has lagged behind Europe, Australia and Asia — which all have well-established companies doing modular and prefabricated building — is that it is a predominantly suburban nation, and the vast supply of open land has kept the cost of single-family-home building relatively low. Another is that the construction industry has slim profit margins and invests little in research and development.

The chances of being burned are high, and each high-profile failure leads to a furlough of the concept. In the mid-2000s housing boom, Pulte Homes, one of the country’s largest builders, opened a prefabrication plant that aimed to revolutionize how homes were built. The company closed it with the onset of the housing bust in 2007.

Now, instead of single-family homes, companies doing prefab building are focusing on higher-density condominiums and apartments. That’s because, while single-family home construction remains well below its level before the recession, multifamily condominium and apartment buildings have rebounded strongly. “Our goal is to be able to do a 40-story tower in 12 months, at half the cost of traditional construction,” said Randy Miller of RAD Urban.

Still, even if builders are able to reduce construction costs, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be successful. Behind each of these companies is a bet that they can build far more efficiently than current methods. That bet has yet to be proven, at least on a large scale.

Efficiency vs. Workers

Holliday of Factory OS started thinking about modular housing about four years ago, when he was struggling to build a project in Truckee, California. The idea was to build 800 to 1,000 high-density apartments and condominiums, but “the numbers wouldn’t work,” he said. “You couldn’t get the construction costs down enough.”

Holliday floated the idea of modular building to his longtime contractor, Larry Pace, from Cannon Constructors, who over the past four decades has built various projects from one-off homes to office towers. “I said ‘modular jobs have been a fiasco — we don’t need that in our lives,'” Pace recalled, adding an expletive for emphasis.

But Holliday persisted, and he and Pace used modular technology from two manufacturers to build four projects in the Bay Area. They are planning to do the same with the original Truckee development. Pace became so comfortable with modular that he suggested that they find some investors and build their own factory.

On a recent afternoon, Pace laid out the factory’s process. At the first station, just past the door, four workers toiled above and below a raised platform to build what would eventually become the floor. The two men up top laid down flooring while a man and woman stood below simultaneously installing pipes.

From there the unit would move steadily down the line, and, over 21 additional stations, would acquire toilets, indoor walls, outdoor walls, a roof, electric outlets, windows, sinks, countertops and tiling. It takes about a week to finish a unit, Pace said. The goal is to churn out about 2,000 apartments a year, which would be turned into four- and five-story buildings with 80 to 150 units each.

For workers, factory building seems to mean lower wages but steadier work. Factory OS pays about $30 an hour with medical insurance and two weeks of vacation. That’s about half what workers can make on a construction site, but the work is more regular and, for many, requires less commuting.

Tony Vandewark, a 51-year-old foreman at Factory OS, is OK with the trade-off. He lives a few minutes from the factory in Vallejo, where homes cost less than half what they do closer to San Francisco. Contrast that with a job he once had in the Silicon Valley city of Sunnyvale. He drove two hours to work and three hours home before deciding to rent a room so he could stay closer to work on weekdays.

“On a job site, you can go do piece work and make really big money, but then the job is gone,” he said.

In addition to not being rained on, one of the key differences between a construction site and Factory OS is that any worker can be trained to do any job. And for old-school trade unions, that is a declaration of war. “The business model is ‘Hooray for me,'” without regard for anyone else, said Larry Mazzola Jr., business manager of UA Local 38, a San Francisco plumbers union with about 2,500 members across Northern California.

Factory OS is not anti-union: It has a contract with the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, which has organized other modular factories and is banking on the technology’s continued growth. The issue is that builders are laid out like a Detroit auto factory, where one union represents all of the workers, and workers can be trained to do any job within the company walls.

That is a huge departure from construction sites, where unions representing plumbers, electricians, carpenters and various other trades each control their piece of the building process. Last year Mazzola wrote a letter to San Francisco’s mayor, Ed Lee, a month before he died, urging him to deny any city business — such as contracts for subsidized housing — to Factory OS.

“Any decision to use Factory OS shows a blatant disregard for the other craft unions,” he wrote. He asked the mayor to refrain from contracting with the company unless it allowed craft unions to do their pieces of the work. “We realize modular is coming and we want to be part of it, but not at the expense of our workers, which is what’s happening right now,” Mazzola said.

Jay Bradshaw, director of organizing for the carpenters council representing Factory OS workers, said that would be impractical. Think back to that first station, where four people worked above and below the floor. In Mazzola’s world, a plumbers union would represent the workers installing pipes, while other unions would represent the workers up top.

“It would never work to have upward of 10 or 15 labor organizations at a single employer in a factory setting,” Bradshaw said.

For Bradshaw, the real fight isn’t defending job titles but making sure construction workers remain part of a union at all. A short drive from Factory OS, at a carpenters training center, the union is developing a program to train housing-factory workers — something that, it hopes, will prepare more people for an industry that it has come to see as inevitable.

“It sure blows the hell out of building in China,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

CONOR DOUGHERTY © 2018 The New York Times

via NewsSplashy - Latest Nigerian News Online