Nice people thread part 5 - nicely does it

CKhalvashi

PasturesNew wrote: »

It's also very London-centric. And buses in towns are town-centric. So you can only ever go into/out of a town. You can't go round.

London's transport would be better if they stuck a major train hub and airport on the edge of the M25 somewhere.... most traffic/people probably don't want to go into London at all.... but the transport system makes them.

Same for buses in towns - you can't work in the next village as you have to go into the town, change buses and go out again.

So, generally, it's cheaper to run a car and you also gain by having more access to more services/goods and jobs by having one. Even in a straight line cars are faster than trains. Years ago I had to go to London. The earliest I could arrive was a train scheduled to arrive at 10am - to do this I had to get up at 4:20 or so and drive 20 miles. My alternative was to stay in bed at least an extra hour and drive 90 miles and pick up the same train.

The other thing that’s been mentioned today is that taxi travel is cheaper than train, assuming single journeys and 3 or more people, as this is something I’m relying on for marketing.

Heathrow is around £100 for us (see post on business forum) and about £130 by train/bus for 4 people (again, assuming single), and it’s by far a more luxurious way to travel!

PN, I have a job for you; sitting on the phones answering them, as I’ve got better things to do with my Friday night

In at the deep end, eh :eek:

vivatifosi

lemonjelly wrote: »

Hoping for decent weather tomorrow. Thinking of a day in the garden.
Probably won't do anything, just sit there & read.
Might plant some more peas. Peas are my favourite-est veg in the world, so I want to make sure whatever I do grow is at least enough for one meal. I don't seem to have too much stuff that will be planted out, so am going to have loads of spare space in the garden. May as well fill it with peas I suppose...

This post may well be a bit old hat considering I'm quoting a post from when I went to bed last night and you busy lot did a whole 3 pages of posts after I retired, but peas are my favouritest veggie too. I can't remember where you were on the mushroomometer, but I wonder if the people who don't like mushrooms like peas...

vivatifosi

zagubov wrote: »

Me too. In fact whern I googled how much petrol is left when my car's warning light comes on I was shocked to find there's 10litres/2 gallons left. I used to panic when the light comes on (DW and the Zagettes still do) but now I carry on blissfully untilI find a cheap petrol station about 50 miles after the light's on.

I have an Audi which used to be my company car where I used to work. As it was a fleet car and we all had the same, it soon became apparent to my coworkers who had a competition to find out the answer, that you can drive our type of Audi down to where it says range 0 miles and still do another 30 without running out (the light comes on when there is a 30 mile range). So I will regularly go down to 0-5 miles before refilling. Not at the moment though. I have about 1/8th tank and am starting to get tetchy that fuel has run out in all my local petrol stations.

vivatifosi

zagubov wrote: »

if you liked Freakonomics, have any NOs read this: The Undercover Economist?
Thought it was better. Describes why corrupt countries fall behind and is a very sobering read at some points. :cool:

No, but I've had it on my to read list for some time. I read a lot of economics books as I did Economics/Politics for my first degree, not that it was called that at the time because I studied with the OU before they introduced named degrees.

I've recently reserved this book, which may appeal to people who like Freakonomics:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/0141040017/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333086983&sr=1-1
It's particularly interesting because the government has developed a Nudging unit. It's testing things such as letters which instead of saying something along the lines of "your car tax has expired and you have blah blah days to renew or show it is off the road or we will blah blah", write to you with a picture of your car, say "this is your car and we will crush it if you don't pay your car tax" (there was an article in the Economist about this book and the concepts being looked at last week).

vivatifosi

zagubov wrote: »

Couldn't help but wonder how travel in this county's so awful.
There's the obvious point that our country's linear so there are big distances between the conurbations.

The motorway system's mad.

There's a continuous motorway between London and Cambridge but not between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Sorry to cut your brilliant post zag, but I've selected this bit because it is dear to my heart.

I attended a meeting once about the roads in Hertfordshire with my Mum. It turns out we have brilliant roads running north-south (A41, M1, A1M, A10 and so on), but a really poor network running east-west (M25 which is always congested and the dreadful A414). Therefore if you happen, by chance, to live near one of the up-down routes you're fine for getting into London or Milton Keynes, or Birmingham, or Peterborough; but it is really hard to get to Stevenage or Welwyn Garden City or St Albans or Watford or Hemel (depending on where your start point is). So you have a ridiculous system whereby someone who works in say Watford, will work in somewhere like Heathrow because it is easier to travel to than say Welwyn Garden City, even though the latter is much closer.

What we could really do with is a good east-west road across the county, somewhere further north than the M25, that takes traffic across the county.

misskool

zagubov wrote: »

if you liked Freakonomics, have any NOs read this: The Undercover Economist?
Thought it was better. Describes why corrupt countries fall behind and is a very sobering read at some points. :cool:

Yup, it was good too. Perhaps better content in the undercover economist but freakonomics is written in a slightly more engaging style.

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

Don't you budget .. and therefore have future money you can rob? e.g. if Xmas costs £240, then by now you'd have saved £60 in a pot.

I thought that's how budgetting worked... money in ... divided between the pots .... what's left. And the pots can be robbed.... and then you've made a loan to yourself that needs repaying.

My biggest month is always April. It used to be: council tax, buildings insurance, contents insurance, car tax, car insurance, car MoT. So I needed about £2k every April.... so would put £170 into those pots every month .... which could be robbed on demand, so long as it was back in the pot by April.

Fuel budget is done by week, which is why I put some in on Monday and Friday.

Christmas is bought gradually throughout the year (and I don't spend anywhere near £240!), birthdays are the same (and I am no big spender there either)

Savings for holiday spending money or other things (tax for car, car repairs etc) go into sealed pots so I can't dip into it until it is time for those outlays (I know what I am like, I would dip into it far too often because of a 'bad week' and never catch up again), my boys call me the pot lady as I have so many different pots.

Car insurance, home contents insurance, TV license etc are all paid for weekly/monthly.

The money that comes in weekly is very strictly budgeted, pretty much to the penny with some going into the pots and the rest going into the week by week/monthly direct debits/standing orders for bills.

JonnyBravo

SingleSue wrote: »

Fuel budget is done by week, which is why I put some in on Monday and Friday.

Christmas is bought gradually throughout the year (and I don't spend anywhere near £240!), birthdays are the same (and I am no big spender there either)

Savings for holiday spending money or other things (tax for car, car repairs etc) go into sealed pots so I can't dip into it until it is time for those outlays (I know what I am like, I would dip into it far too often because of a 'bad week' and never catch up again), my boys call me the pot lady as I have so many different pots.

Car insurance, home contents insurance, TV license etc are all paid for weekly/monthly.

The money that comes in weekly is very strictly budgeted, pretty much to the penny with some going into the pots and the rest going into the week by week/monthly direct debits/standing orders for bills.

I realise we are now in the fortunate position that we don't need to do this but money was tight when "me and 'er" got together.
So we still have savings accounts for all insurances, a "car maintenance account" and christmas to avoid any large one hit bills.
Everything else, phone bill, water, council tax etc is all monthly DD anyway.

silvercar

OH carries a float in his current account to pay for things that aren't on direct debit. I've never really done pots, when things were tight we would raid the savings account or pay late.

silvercar

SingleSue wrote: »

Fuel budget is done by week, which is why I put some in on Monday and Friday.

Christmas is bought gradually throughout the year (and I don't spend anywhere near £240!), birthdays are the same (and I am no big spender there either)

Savings for holiday spending money or other things (tax for car, car repairs etc) go into sealed pots so I can't dip into it until it is time for those outlays (I know what I am like, I would dip into it far too often because of a 'bad week' and never catch up again), my boys call me the pot lady as I have so many different pots.

Car insurance, home contents insurance, TV license etc are all paid for weekly/monthly.

The money that comes in weekly is very strictly budgeted, pretty much to the penny with some going into the pots and the rest going into the week by week/monthly direct debits/standing orders for bills.

I'm humbled by this, and impressed with your organisation.

You could raid the Christmas pot to fill the tank with petrol.