Vacuum cleaners gained the generic name Hoover after its inventor, James Spangler, gave one to his cousin. She was married to William Hoover who, in 1908, bought the patent and so materialized the nattily named Electric Suction Sweeper Company. The inventor received royalties and was employed as a supervisor until his death in 1915, only after which did the company change its name to Hoover. There’s something honorable in that: doing business the right way.

Do you find something of the toy cupboard about Dyson machines? While they are effective, how great is your immutable puzzlement they must all – whatever their function – be so violently noisy?

Deafeningly loud, they destroy mood and harmony in nano-seconds. One’s nature receives a battering from such annihilating volume.

Granted, men love noisy machines. (I’m not going to pretend that makes any sense to me. Mebbie it’s a chromosomal thing?) But women don’t and while fewer men participate fully in house-work, it seems odd to subject women to torturous punishment.

Sir James Dyson, self-confessed-patriot and tax expert, is in the news today. It has emerged he required assurances his people would not be burdened by having to pay extra tax here if they worked on making ventilators in March 2020 which were so desperately needed by the NHS amid the national emergency. Seemingly, he had genuine fears his company would derive no benefit until tax rules were fixed in his favour.

Private text messages between the title-proud First Lord of the Treasury and Noisy Toy man demonstrate the ease with which tax arrangements are settled.

However administered, an axiology or theory of value reflects one’s deepest principles. It’s interesting to us that erupting unnatural noise at the expense of users chimes with notions of mandating self-interest at the expense of national interest.

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