Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

Absolutely no rose tinted spectacles here. One grandfather grew up in a slum. Illiterate. Both parents, “hawkers” dead before they were 40. He got sent to work for a fishmonger who beat him senseless. Ran away, far away. Got into an argument with a policeman. Stabbed the policeman. Got sent to a high security type jail for a long time. Found religion. Learned to read and write. Returned to his slum origin to rescue the next generation. Wrote a book about it. Fought in WWI and got a lot of medals. Met the king. Wrote in his diary for that day “Met king. Went to Sunday school.” My brother has his medals and commendations and diary and book.

His childhood home, still standing in the 1960s, though no longer inhabited by then.

 

Yeah, would you want to go back to all that?

 

No, of course not all of it. But there has been a lot lost that would be good to recover. Such as neighbours taking care of their neighbours. When I lived in London, my neighbours once went out and I saw a potential burglar arrive over their back fence. I phoned the police to tell them to come round and catch/stop him. The first question the police asked me was “do you know your neighbours’ names?” Er, yes.

 

The faster the roll out, the more expensive it becomes to be more energy efficient. In the past all the main builders merchants used to have deals on loft insulation, not anymore.

There is a link below showing how these builders merchants used to offer deals and half price on loft insulation, it's probably gone up in cost by 300% plus since the energy crisis. As demand out strips supply, unfortunately it makes it more costly for those who would like to insulate there homes a bit more. On the link, all prices would of included vat, where as from the 1st April 2022, all energy efficient materials are either reduced or zero rated.

https://www.hotukdeals.com/search?q=loft insulation&time_frame=0

 

There has been grants for loft insulation, I wouldn't have thought many people wouldn't have taken up the deal.

 

Lordy, @pete, all I'm suggesting is fewer doughnut choices, half the number of products in the biscuit aisle, and a rethink of what constitutes a "breakfast cereal". (Crushed chocolate chip cookies with a side order of mini marshmallow flavoured globs does not, IMV, however healthy the milk applied.) I'm not asking you to survive on raw buckwheat and roadkill!

 

"Nutritionally dense products" just kind of put me off.

 

OK. How about "food"? As opposed to non-food. Take out all the ingredients that the human body is not designed to eat, eg artificial sweeteners, waste products from petroleum refining marketed as butter alternatives, etc. Biscuits only need flour, butter and sugar, not an impenetrable list of 96 ingredients made in labs.

 

Well they took out sugar and replaced it with chemicals, which seems to be the ideal.

Lots of additives are preservatives without which the sell by/use by dates wouls be much shorter and therefore more waste.

 

We had our loft insulated for 1€ - a token payment for a french government subsidised initiative. We got a home improvement grant towards the cost of our solar panels and a couple of heat exchangers to heat the new hot water tank. We still have oil fired CH but it's only used for heating the rooms in use.

As for food, what we eat is delicious and, apart form baked beans, bacon, tomato ketchup and mayonnaise, is cooked from fresh and not processed with hidden fats, sugars, assorted chemicals and other nasties.

 

The problem with monocultures is you inevitably create a massive food supply for something. In this case populations of flea beetles, cabbage white butterflies, and woodpigeons have soared, and all those feed on oilseed rape and can be a pest just because they are sustained by a rich food supply. I've also seen a lot of Silver Y moths, that also love to feed on brassicas. I can't be sure oilseed rape has an effect on their numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me.

That isn't to say there aren't advantages, we need to try and produce more of our own food and rapeseed oil is a good way of doing that, especially as sunflower oil and olive oil from abroad are becoming more expensive and less reliable.

 

National tyres is now owned by Halfords.
I went there around January because a tyre kept losing pressure.
I got the old spiel that the tyre was old and cracked in the tread and should be replaced, I knew it was a few years old as it was on the back so its done nothing for years.

I bought a new one, its still losing pressure. £140 down the drain.

 

What's wrong with the this site? It takes an eternity to move from page to another, making the site unusable at the moment. This is a problem only for this site, I can get on all the other forums I use with no problems.