Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

Surely if the GP doesn't actually know what the problem is, they should be referring my niece for scans. The GP has said it's likely to be a trapped nerve, in other words guessing to get her back out of the surgery. My niece had severe hip problems as a baby/toddler so I would have thought that might raise a flag of some sort.

 

Some gas and electricity tariffs are only available if you have a smart meter so it’s worth checking what’s available on a comparison website.

 

Apparently Princess Anne, Princess Royal declined titles for her children because she wanted them to have a far more 'normal' life than she had. It seems to have worked.

 

When my fixed price tariff was ending I had an e-mail to inform me how much I would save by going to a new deal. In both cases of electricity and gas, the calculated savings were less than £10 per year. I declined.

 

I wonder if Rachel from Accounts let on that the house was rented out. Maybe she continued to claim the 2nd home allowance. Wouldn't it be fun if that was true.

 

Did you shop around? Even without a smart meter I’m projected to save over £300 compared with the best fix currently offered by Octopus, a recent British Gas exclusive through Money Saving Expert, no longer available.

 

It lets you see in cash terms what it is costing you, so if you have a one bar fire and switch it to two bars you can watch as it charges you now twice as much
Back in the day we knew that the more bars we turn on then the cost would increase
The same with your gas cooker, if you have one ring on it is cheaper than all four rings on
:-) Some people need this information to live their lives

 

Some people seriously don't understand that modern LED lighting is cheap. So you hear stories of them not turning the lights on, or burning candles which must work out more expensive not to mention the danger of naked flames.

I was at a car boot sale a year or two ago and a couple of elderly ladies were eagerly buying up old incandescent light bulbs. Cheerfully committing themselves to paying about 10 times as much as they needed for lighting!

 

I prefer the type of light that the old incandescent bulbs give off. The LED ones are very fierce and blue, to my eye.

 

Yes lighting is cheap these days, I have a floodlight out back that I replaced with LED years ago, the old one was 500 watts, I think the newer one is 50 watts.

All energy talk from government and others revolves around electricity, I just wish they would get their arses in gear and accept the fact most people still use far more gas than electric.

After all these years its still cheaper to heat your house with gas than electric.

 

You can buy different light "warmths" and brightnesses in LED bulbs. I'm also a fan of softer light so mine are warm tones for general lightning and I even go for a "traditional" bulb shape in lights where I can see the bulb.

My jigsaw puzzle making light though is bright enough to do some DIY X-rays if I wish

And indeed, the energy consumption is negligible and the LED bulbs last for years, wich can only be a good thing from both environmental and economical perspectives.

 

Many of our LED bulbs can be adjusted to change the warmth of the light. One end of the spectrum is very like daylight. Very effective on those dark winter days as it just makes the room brighter without looking as if we have had to put the lights on in the middle of the day.

 

That's not a floodlight, that's a search light!

Most of my lighting is now LED and I prefer the ones that give off the "warm" yellowy light much better than the fluorescent blue.

I have had a smart meter for years now. I don't use anything that produces heat - dryer, stove, oven, etc during the high time of use rate hours. In fact, I shifted more than 75% of my use to the lower rate and my bill just keeps going up and up and up.

My greenhouses are powered by solar panels/battery array. I quite often use a sun oven. And I hang clothes to dry as often as possible and it still does not make a difference.

As @pete says. Gas is cheaper. Thank goodness my central heating and hot water heater are gas fueled.

I pity the people who switched to heat pumps. They must pay dearly plus, most homes here also require a furnace because the pumps cannot supply enough heat in the winter.