The sound of summer birdsong on the cut opposite Mercia marina at Willington is punctuated by the clatter of chainsaws as boaters hack down the copse by the tow path. I think it's all depleted now and there has been a bit of respite for the last 2 years! Land lubbers are now being forced to think about the implications of switching on a light or turning a tap. Recycling hot water bottle water as well, my goodness . When you live off 12v and charging systems, have to fill a water tank from an independent supply and deal with poo tanks twice a week it all becomes a bit more mindful. I'm not coming at this from a smug perspective, simply that I'm thankful our life choice over the last 11 years has enabled us to become aware of our surroundings and to cut our cloth accordingly. I'm still raging over these increases though because it's all proportional.
We've burned a lot of old jetty planks this year, thankfully it appears that nobody else CBA to cut them up... this year. I'm with you, one life choice accidentally leading to another just in the nick of time. I feel for the house owners, not being smug but some of the monthly increases quoted on this thread would have covered our entire winter heating bill. That's a shocker, last time I filled up my tank I paid 70p/l - it was a year ago though.
I'm glad we decided to use the savings for a newer van to convert to pay the mortgage off in 2020 - we now have some savings, for now!!!!
The canal is lovely in Birmingham centre. Always a enjoyable visit for us, mooring opposite the NIA...except the time I had a druggie rummaging around in the cratch. I jumped off and had him round the throat, then thought better of it and *****ed him off! The next day he knocked on the boat and apologised...a better class of drug user in Brum obvs..
I live one road back from the Stratford Canal (nice easy access to escape on walks and cycles)- I have always been tempted to try six months on a boat but Heather isn't too keen.
There is always tyres ...if you can take out your flue to clean it ..plenty heat but plenty complaints , unless of coarse you are all doing it . I bet the water authority's don't have to do any cutting of timber on the tow path . The one at Willington is whistle clean .
Of course the back story to the government allowing this pain of energy and fuel is to ensure we/they meet the carbon neutral, net zero - or whatever its called this week. They can't quantify log burners and open fires installed before the HETAS registration was brought in, so they can make a nice low estimate instead....... My youngest is learning to drive in a cheap n cheerful VW Fox 1.2. I did a 270mile round trip last weekend on £30 of unleaded. Steady 70 all the way, all motorway. When he heads to university in the autumn, that's going to be my run around. The new mini we run gets nowhere near that. The listed mpg figures are way out.
There is perhaps another effect starting here .. of forcing people out of big houses where they have many spare rooms into smaller easier to heat spaces - the economics of moving become more attractive if you arent having to heat all those old walls. Governments have wanted this for a while- it reduces the pressure on needing to build say 3 bed houses for families, while single people sit in a 3 bed house.
Seeing as we only use 5 rooms out of the 19 , so we decided to sack the staff and move into the out building Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The flipside of that Mike is the end of the empty-nesters, because there's no chance of my three being able to put down a huge deposit on an overpriced starter home, with energy bills sky rocketing, as well as trying to feed themselves and run a vehicle. Our children will inherit our houses and live in them together with partners, children etc. A bit like the extended family used to - put nana in the front room when she lost her marbles.......
Another one has gone pop - Northumbria Energy They were supposed to have taken our energy supply on from British Gas - the Supplier of Last Resort that we were assigned to when Bristol Energy went pop last year. So from February this year, they didn't even manage to get us enrolled with them - British Gas has since confirmed that they didn't even request to start the process - but they did send us a Welcome Pack for another customer down in Surrey - oh and they did miraculously manage to set up our Direct Debit and take the first payment of £221. Fast forward five months and after numerous calls, emails, threats to report them to OFGEM, we had to reclaim our money through the Direct Debit Recovery process - got the money back yesterday, the day before we get an email from Northumbria saying have effectively ceased trading, so our complaint has been closed and no further refunds are being issued. Apparently privatisation is good, it encourages free market competition and we will all pay less for energy if we shop around.............
We all apparently will have an even bigger bump in the bills - so far estimated £94 from everybody else's "cheapo" supplier going bust went onto bills. Bulb Energy finally failing will result in a few billions extra being split up and extracted from everybody - so those going from "cheap" suppliers will find themselves paying even more over the odds in the near future for even having the affrontery to choose a "too good to be true" supplier, and then be picked up by one of the bigger expensive suppliers, all as encouraged by the government.
I can’t help thinking that a lot of the energy companies are chancing their arm here as well. I was paying £140 a month. I was told I needed to up it. So it’s gone up to £207 a month. My energy company have very gracefully offered me the option of fixing for the next year at £414 a month. Funnily enough I’ve declined their generous offer. Whilst the cost of energy has gone up. They all took it upon themselves to whack up the standing charges. They didn’t have to. But obviously they couldn’t help themselves.
