Be Excellent To Each Other

The worst live there.

So, it’s Rishi or Liz for our next PM. I’m assuming the Thatcher cosplay will be decisive in the members vote.

Truss. Oh dear.

Giving up one buffoon for another

Oh well.

Truss.

The Everything-Must-Go United Kingdom Closing Down Sale continues.

It feels cruel to mock someone living their best life, but FFS! Truss!

She's a fucking Gavin and Stacey character. Can you imagine her dealing with Putin?

Tonight's "Debate" was abandoned after the host fainted, presumably in shock at some of the replies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62313261

Good news everybody!

Winter brownouts might be on the cards!

And even better the extreme heat almost caused blackouts but we got around that by paying the highest we've ever paid for extra energy from those nasty foreigners :

https://news.sky.com/story/record-power ... e-12658982

Rioting before or after Christmas then?

Why not both?

So, we've got 10% interest rates, everyone's on strike, energy cost crisis, energy supply crisis, food bills crisis, covid is still about, crime is up, a disinterested government more concerned with shoes, and now a drought.

Chaos with Ed Milliband indeed.

Strong AND stable

Don't forget Monkey Pox!

"Fuck the lot of you" this sounds like.

There's absolutely an element of that, as he's a petty arse, but equally it's was just after he announced he would go that people were saying that it would be inappropriate for him to be making any large policy decisions.

The most sensible course of action would be for him to direct people to do a really good hand over with some possible courses of action that they could go with on day 1. But that's work, and he can go on holiday and cock about in fighter jets instead, so he won't.

Woke up to hear the FBI have raided one of Mr Trump's mansions. A great start to the day!

If he got re elected, would he be 45 and 47?

Yes. Grover Cleveland was 22 and 24.

But Trump himself would be nearing 80.

Re energy: If direct debit remains the same, and Bulb's forecasts are correct, we should get to April with £200 in credit (three week's energy!). However I suspect they haven't built in the October uplift. I've turned the bit water temperature down, and might turn it down further. See what difference that makes.

Bulb have consistently raised our direct debit way above our usage and in advance of wholesale changes. They've been taking £130 a month for at least the last 5, but our monthly is still under £110.

They are either scamming or building up credit to try and offset the next crippling lift in the cap.

I have an opinion which I will not share, but I really wish we'd been able to get a smart meter and switch to octopus at any point over the last 2+ years of trying.

Apparently, we can't get a smart meter as the electric box and the gas box are more than 10m apart.

Last year an engineer came to my house and spent an hour or so installing smart meters for gas and electricity, then spent an hour removing them as they weren't connecting to the mothership. Good old British productivity!

That is a bit rubbish.

The energy companies want the treasury to fund social energy tariffs. Yet the energy suppliers are making billions in profit.

Also where is the fucking government…

We've had smart meters for years. I'm not sure where the monitor is, it went in 'that kitchen drawer' after about two days, as I couldn't see any way in which it would help us to save energy, it just showed that consumption went up when anything was switched on.

The gas meter read-out screen failed some time ago, but as we never look at it we didn't know until an engineer came out to do the annual service. He was only a sub-contractor, so didn't know what to do about it, other than report the problem to British Gas. Nothing happened until a BG meter reader came to read both meters and said that the display wasn't working because the battery needed replacing. That was about three months ago and they still haven't done anything about it.

Re. direct debits and billing, we've paid by DD for as long as I can remember, but in the 90s we were always building up hundreds of quid in credit, so I used to phone them and get a refund. This went on for a few years until we moved house in 2000. Since then we've been in credit or debit by no more than a couple of hundred quid from time to time, and the DD has been adjusted s necessary, so it has tended to balance out over each year.

On smart meters we got ours installed a few years ago , they removed the existing payment / card meters and put in smart meters for Gas and Electricity , the meters are literally directly above each other in the same box at the front of the house the Electricity one worked a few hours later , it took a good 6 months before the Gas one did

@KovacsC or we could do exactly what the French government did and take one of the energy companies back into government ownership :

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... nalise-edf

The big big problem with all of the cost of living crisis stuff just now is the eye watering profits being made at the cost of people who cant afford to do anything

If the issue was just that 'sorry fuel costs have gone up and we're not making money so we need to put up the bills to cover that' would be at least understandable its 'fuel costs have gone up so we'd not make a zillion dollars profit so we need to bleed everyone dry

Similar with the cost of Petrol / Diesel at the pump :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62494404



So the fuel costs went up due to fluctuations in the market , the cost at the pump went up , the fuel market went back down and the price at the pumps went down a little but not back to the equivalent amount so those selling the fuel make even more of a profit

I would not trust the Tories to manage a nationalised energy company.

I'd bloody love it if the Tories started nationalising everything to make it work better. I don't think I would ever stop laughing.

I mean, yeah, right. The deal should, though, be that it's run independently, and overseen by some bit of the civil service. If you have a government that doesn't ignore the lessons of the last however many years, that doesn't make it that different to the private sector, in that the latter needs decent regulation to, for instance, stop them spunking profits into executives hands by not investing in water and sewerage systems. Oversight by some government means is needed in both cases. And in public or private ownership, leaving them alone produces bad outcomes.

They weren't shy in buying up Northern Rock, or the train franchise

Oh shit, Northern Rock was 2008, so Labour government.

I'm old

That £350million per week. Must kick in anytime soon

It's being diverted to Boris' leaving party fund.

I note "heat or eat" is now "starve, or freeze to death".

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/ ... ap-to-3549

Last month we paid £4 a day to heat water using gas. Crikey.

Huh, we have a combi boiler and averaged about 30p a day last month in gas. Electric shower, though.

Same, but only until April 2023

Combi boiler, and a very long, uninsulated run through the pipes to the shower. I might switch to the electric one in the office to see if it makes a difference.

It should definitely be cheaper, by my reckoning even when electricity is 52p per kWh after October a ten minute 5kW shower will cost 43p.

You have 10 minute showers?

Mine are probably 5 minutes at most and the water is only running while I get wet and when I'm rinsing off soap and shampoo. No point in having the water on while applying soap and shampoo as it just washes most of it off straight away.

I don't but I was averaging based on our daughter sometimes standing there for twenty minutes whilst I quietly fume about MONEY LITERALLY GOING DOWN THE DRAIN.

6 minutes 18 seconds, water always on, body then hair then face.

I will time myself, next shower time.

I have long hair so I get in the shower, wash my hair, rinse, then put conditioner on, then I leave the conditioner in whilst I wash my face and body, then rinse my hair.

Problem is, we have a gas boiler that heats up a little half-sized water tank, so the hot water sometimes runs out, or, worse, the cold water stops/loses pressure/don’t know, and gets too hot and you can’t turn it down. It’s usually ok, but sometimes just plays up. In some ways it’s good as it keeps you on your toes so you rush your shower and use less water.

Our combined gas and electricity has been between £100-120 the last few months so £4 a day does seem very steep. Is there no help you can get with pipe insulation?

I just step forward out of the water jet.

I could turn it off, but our electric shower always turns on again super-cold if it's been on recently, and takes a few minutes to actually start heating again.

My solution is the office shower as it is a small electric heated tank so I use the Warhead method, then sit in a towel to work.