Metr0Land

Thanks Michael Hodgson for a comprehensive reply. As an aside I think most political parties have recognised/postulated the triple lock is probably unsustainable financially but now it's here any party getting rid of it will be labelled as Scrooge so it'll prob happen early in a Parliamentary term.

For the last 2 years my state pension has risen by more than the stated 'national' percentage. I'm not complaining but DWP are known to come after people for immediate payment in full of overpayments that are their mistake. I'm 75 if that makes any difference. It mostly seems to revolve around pre 1997 additional state pension, and contracted out amounts. Thus my statement always reads something like: Basic state pension £x Plus pre 97 addnl state pension +£y MINUS contracted out deduction -£z Plus Graduated retirement benenfit +£a So from Apr24 my increases are: Basic state pension +8.5% Pre 97 addnl state benefit +6.7% on this portion MINUS contracted out deduction +1.6% on this portion Plus Grad benefit +6.7% on this portion Overall +10.5% (The jiggery pokery of adding pre 97 and taking off contracted out actually adds +16.4% to that portion of the total which is about a quarter of the grand total). So the fact that they're not penalising me as much each year pro-rata on the contracted out portion has had quite a benefit with regards to the 2023 increase and the upcoming Apr24 increase. Can anyone explain this in simple terms?

Just had latest bill from Octopus £57 for 10Jan-09Feb. As per my post 01Feb above solar for month of Jan was 123kWh - doubt I'll get much more than 100kWh in Feb as there are less days and it's so far been less sunny. The £57 for the month breaks down to: £16 standing charge £19 car charging £22 rest of house usage. This was prob some £4 above what it might have been. When I was fiddling with the detail in the myenergi app I managed to put the daytime rate in as 7.5p and didn't notice it for a while - the app thought it was doing me a favour filling up the Tesla powerwall. Also storm Isha and friends triggered storm warning alerts. When this happens the powerwall fills up there and then at the prevailing price, but I guess this a price worth paying to have several hours backup supply (power lines are mostly on 'telegraph poles' here) Recently worked out I'm paying ~£100pcm throughout the year for heating oil as I don't stint on heating so I'm looking at £122pcm to budget for 'energy'

I always thought methylated spirit had to be coloured (in UK). in this week's episode of Inside The Factory episode they were at Axminster carpets. One of the sections featured ways to get stubborn stains out of carpets. For butter stains the Good Housekeeping institute were recommending dabbing with clear meths. Trouble is you can never find anything on Google or Amazon these days without being proffered things you weren't looking for and searching for clear meths brings up offers of white spirit as well as coloured meths, with clear meths generally being in quite large quantities. So my question is: are these one and the same thing?

Not sure if everyone responding has actually watched the video? It's actually a very clever one (IMHO) taking the pi55 out of content creators by actually using a lot of trade names in her speech eg "my subscriber who lives in LIMA Peru, my friend Tommy who I call TOMY" etc etc

Just caught up with this thread. I find if I click on the link and then click union flag and try to go further I get the mess (in Firefox) thar Ruston posted on Jan11. However, if I just accept it as German and then go into eg pages for trees and a number of products appear, there's still an option to click on the union flag, and it displays fine in English taking that route.

In the past I've played the system by signing up for Prime for a month and then cancelling before month is up, waited a bit and then re-signed and so on, as I believe others on here have done. I cancelled late Dec as I wasn't likely to buy much for a while. I just had a bit of shopping to do, and the current deal is to get Prime for 1 week @ 99p then full price. No thank you.

I have 3 complete months of solar now, all winter-ish Nov23 130kWh Dec23 67kWh Jan24 123kWh ....hopefully none of the next 9 months to complete the cycle will be as bad as Dec!

Is it ok to give a cat camembert cheese? The larger of my two is always pestering for whatever I'm preparing for myself. Often I tell her "you don't eat <foodstuff>" and usually I'm right. Tonight she asked for camembert and I told her she wouldn't like it and she ate a few small pieces. It was fairly ripe so had an attractive smell and I felt sure she'd spit it out, but she asked for more.

Eco-zealots and vegans?

No, GWR is RHD, but moving to GWR is the right choice Plenty of help available on here.

As a passenger I loved it as it was ordinary and uneventful for flights up to 90 mins. Reminded me of 'bus stop jets' like DC-9-30 in early 70's before they started ramming in seats too tightly.

The panels were here when I bought the house. However, even after 3 months winter usage am thinking that in summer (if we ever get one) I might need to go off grid and eg plug the car in first thing in morning rather than overnight to maximise solar use.

10.9kWh today! Frustratingly had to dump 5kWh to the grid and I'm not on an export tariff. Overnight I'd topped up the car (PHEV) and the Tesla powerwall had decided to fill up to 94pct, and the sun came up early. I put the dishwasher on, and then a load of washing before I went out, but as I was out for sunniest part of day the system filled up and dumped excess... on Octopus Intelligent Go that's only 38p I lost but it's always frustrating to see it going out.... As I've only had the powerwal since mid-Oct I've not had a chance to get consistent sun, otherwise I'd leave plugging the car into morning, use power from the powerwall and backfill with solar.

On Jan 16th my cumulative solar for Jan exceeded the whole of Dec. The Tesla s/w cut in yesterday evening and this morning dur to storm Isha, filling the powerwall twice at full price instead of night rate. Prob cost ~£2.50 extra given the price diff but of course that's insurance. A couple of friends locally had power cuts due to trees bringing down power lines and several 'dimouts' here looking like it was going off but just hung on. Edit: just discovered a friend ~2 miles away as crow flies, was off most of night. The benefits of rural living, but also not so unhappy at paying extra £2.50 for the insurance provided by powerwall

Never fails to amuse. AIUI it was based on an earlier vaudeville skit about Chinese laundry. A poor quality recording of the legendary Vin Scully in 2007(?) when the Dodgers had Hu on first base Also a quite good modern pastiche (if you can close your ears to the audience whooping)

Schroedinger's ants?

Ah yes the good old days. Amazingly managed this beauty(?) hand-holding camera to window for 3-4 secs back in 1973. Additional problem of course you had to wait some time until you've finished the film and sent away for processing.

On the actual chat on YT about that clip others made the same remark eg 'Finland very cold - no trouble there' only to be challenged by others quickly retorting that in fact they drive a lot of hybrids rather than BEV's so don't get caught cold.

I'd click the funny icon but it's becoming beyond parody!

Fortunately there's no risk of shade until much later in the day with my setup. I did have a minor shock on a couple of mornings in Dec when the sun went AWOL. A couple of mornings I woke thinking I've actually got solar today but nothing was registering until later in the morning. It was only on the second occasion I realised the sun was so low it was only reaching the guttering on my bungalow and couldn't 'see' the solar panels. Edit: curr getting 2.2kW streaming in, as I write - not seen that level for a few weeks

I only had the powerwall mid Oct and changed to Octopus Intelligent Go 23Dec, so there's little direct comparison month on month especially with dire solar in December. The latest bill which is most of Dec plus first week of Jan is 60p more than previous month on Octopus Go, just shy of £57* (approx 1/3rd of month was at new rates). However it's's all down to solar. For the calendar month of Dec I got a meagre 67kWh of solar and drew 518kWh from grid. In calendar month November I had 130kWh of solar and drew 421kWh from grid. Yesterday, 16Jan I reached the same figure as the whole of Dec for solar. *approx £15/standing charge, £22/house, £20/Car (which is a PHEV max 11kWh per charge)

Currently using Army Painter matt varnish spray, It's ok, would like something more matt but it has sufficed for last 3-4 yrs as I can't find anything better