Portsmouth snippets.

Listening to the TV the other day, I heard the name "Portsmouth" so I dropped what I was doing and watched. Now had the magic word been "Gillingham", I doubt if I would have had the same reaction, although it is rare to hear either of the two on French 3 TV!

It appears those busy little business men in Portsmouth have developed a sort of "fuel additive" which they are now selling in grand style to the local authorities in France.

They are making (apparantly) large economies by using this stuff for everything - heating,emergency generators, garden tools like mowers etc, and generally anything that works from a combustion engine, or burns fuel.

Great stuff, but how come I've never heard of this additive being used elsewhere, like in UK or even in Portsmouth itself? Does it, maybe, make the engines concerned a little bit "ill"? Or is it cancerous? Or is it anyone of the hundreds of other bad reasons for not using it?

According to the report done in the French City of Caen, nothing of all that - quite simple the reason.The mere act of putting this additive in the various applications, and studying (long-term) the performance gained or lost, and therefore the savings made/lost, made the Council engineers so aware of economy, that they actually went around all the buildings, turning off what they considered unnecessary power consumers (here a radiator, there a light etc). They even put almost 100% additive into one of the council lawn-mowers, and showed just how economical it all was - until the lawnmower packed up with a burnt out motor!

I've always said so - these little Portsmouth genies are all over the place, and always have logical explanations - FOR EVERYTHING!

Thank goodness they have other, more agreeable, qualities!