Preparedness for when

Frugalsod

VJsmum wrote: »

I don't watch much telly, but was at my dad's yesterday when an advert came on for an insurance company. The basic gist is that if you get burgled they will help to make a replica of stolen jewellery.

I got me thinking that they can only do this if they have a photo of it. So I am going to photo the few precious bits I have (mainly inherited stuff) and hold it on photobucket and a memory stick to ensure this can be done.

Sorry if this is something that everyone knows, but as I didn't, I thought it might help someone.

Actually photos are very handy to prove that you actually owned the items before they were stolen. Having a decent up to date asset register of things in your home is very useful.

GreyQueen

mardatha wrote: »

Thriftwizard a lot of councils will be waiting for the new financial year starting and then will get some money to fix the roads.

Exactly what I was going to day. We're only weeks away from the end of the financial year and LaLa Land is running on fumes until the new budget as well as a hive of activity inside with rolling over and updating computer programmes for the new figures, printing the council tax bills etc etc.

My team are losing our computer programmes. It always takes 3 days to update this one and then that one, so they're taken away in succession from Thurs close of biz until first thing Monday morning. Makes working that Friday a little fraught but that's as fast as they can do it, with the IT people working day and night all weekend (single time, too, I know some of the contractors).

I breathe a big sigh of relief when we've got past the 6 weeks up until the end of March.

Oh, for anyone who might be affected, or could pass the word on, it seems the grubbyment have given some extra funding to top up the discretionary housing fund, so if people in dire straits such as bedroom tax afflicted people might be able to get some more help before the new financial year starts. Go for it.

But pls don't phone on a Monday. You really would feel sorry for me and mine if you shadowed our workdays on a Monday. Brutal. So's Tues and Weds, Thurs and Fridays we sometimes get a moment to bless ourselves with.

Time to get some brekkie.

thriftwizard

mardatha wrote: »

Thriftwizard a lot of councils will be waiting for the new financial year starting and then will get some money to fix the roads.

Of course. And I suppose anything they do have left is better used repairing people's homes & trying to rebuild flood defences, than shoring up roads. But it does look rather like one of the seams that everything's coming apart at.

GreyQueen

Flood defenses are typically Environment Agency and people's homes will be repaired by private contractors paid for by insurance. The only homes councils will be repairing will be council houses.

These additional flood-related damages will hit the relevent local authorities hard as they will be far over and above what the budgets are expected to cover.

But those road signs may be local authority if within the urban or suburban areas or may well be Highways Agency.

There's a lot of confusion about who does what. My call centre gets calls from people living 50 miles away who can't believe we don't look after their potholes and streetlights. We can rattle off the phone numbers off all the adjacent local authorities from memory, we give them out so often.......

[Deleted User]

ALIBOBSY wrote: »

If you have one of the new style keys with chips in them-usually at least one key has a remote locking device, then it is almost impossible to get a new key without an old key to sync the new chip too.

With my car, you programme the key yourself, using the car's ignition lock.

The key shop physically cuts the key, and programmes the transponder which disables the immobiliser, but the fob that turns the alarm on/off, and remote locks/unlocks the car and boot, is programmed by yourself, from the car itself.

ALIBOBSY

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

With my car, you programme the key yourself, using the car's ignition lock.

The key shop physically cuts the key, and programmes the transponder which disables the immobiliser, but the fob that turns the alarm on/off, and remote locks/unlocks the car and boot, is programmed by yourself, from the car itself.

I thin it depends on how old and what make the vehicle is. Basically OH looked into how they work-he is an IT tech and likes to now how these things work lol, he sat with the guy and his laptop logged into our car to watch how they were programmed in.

Basically for some cars-our galaxy included, going to a key cutter and getting a new blade cut and a straight copy of the transponder in the old key would work the first time you put the key in the lock, but the first time you put the original blade it was copied from in the car it will fail to disable the immobiliser. The car keeps track of the keys so for a copy to work you need someone coming out to the car and plugging in to ensure all the keys (in our case 3 keys) are programmed separately to the car. But yes our remote can be re-sync to the car after a battery change.

The mobile guy we had out said he did a bit of a roaring trade going out to sort out cars where the spare key was cut in a key cutting/shoe repair type place with a straight copy of the original and then the car was stuck once a different key was inserted and the immobiliser stayed on. Just something to look at if anyone needs a new key, for some cars a simple copy will work, for others not.

Several places told us if you have no keys you are looking at a complete new set of locks and keys, so not cheap.

Ali x

TBH this is typical of vehicle tech, they seem to get more and more complex and less and less easy to fix yourself. OH likes tinkering with the car, but had to get hold of the diagnostic software to be able to do alot of stuff, but couldn't get hold of the key programming equipment without alot of costs, not worth it unless you are setting up in business yourself lol.

Perplexed_Pineapple

You can get key insurance as part of AA membership, I've been an AA member for a long time (and had to use them too) so I now get key insurance "free" as a loyalty bonus type thing. Not that my car has any so sophisticated as an immobiliser :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

Interestingly there was a short feature on the Beeb Breakfast programme this morning on the possibility that there would be not enough electricity generating capacity in this country to cover demand. The suggestion was to find ways to use less, WHAT A GOOD IDEA!!!! I wonder no one has come up with it before this??? or have they????? Smug, smug,smug xxx.

jk0

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Interestingly there was a short feature on the Beeb Breakfast programme this morning on the possibility that there would be not enough electricity generating capacity in this country to cover demand. The suggestion was to find ways to use less, WHAT A GOOD IDEA!!!! I wonder no one has come up with it before this??? or have they????? Smug, smug,smug xxx.

Yesterday I received an email from Energenie suggesting that I buy some LED bulbs from them. They do have a fantastic range including, would you believe, LED fluorescent tubes.

However, if you want to use a LED tube, you have to short circuit the internal ballast. Then it won't work if you happen to need to revert to a normal tube.

I know the LED tubes last for years, but would anyone really want to do that? In a repeat of WW2, I think tubes of any sort might not be available new, but at least you might be able to acquire second hand ones from damaged buildings.

Karmacat

Just a thought on candles - I had to use a freebie voucher from Homebase, because of a mess they'd made with a previous order, and they have 48 hour pillar candles for £2, 72 hours for £2.49.

HTH