Preparedness for when

springdreams

mummy2threeboys wrote: »

Greyqueen. Just noticed your a kondo fan?. Just found this method. I have been a fly lady for years. (Having been a bit of a hoarder) But since finding the uk fb group, I have pretty much done the the whole house and redecorated same really made it so much more joyful. I have a carboot to do Sunday. The children have also discovered things they didn't bother looking at. Less is most definitely more.

That said jumble sale to go to (Just to pick up any xmas gifts honest!)
Carboot Sunday. OH broke my laptop charger last night grrr, snapped it clean in half and one of the wires has unsoldered. Gong to see if I can fix it first. Other wise ebay compatible.
NS day yesterday. Made ginger and banana parkin. Famly hated it. More breakfast cake for me then!
Have a great day all x

Please be careful when replacing your laptop chargers. There lots of knock offs out there, and when inspected by Trading Standards they have been found to either be incorrectly or insufficiently wired, and are known to have caused house fires.

In this instance it is far wiser to spend a few pennies more and buy the genuine product. I know they are more expensive than the ones you can buy off of the bay of E, but your life and that of your family is surely worth the extra expense.

And there is no such thing as a no name brand charger - brand owners do not sell unbranded chargers for their products.

I will get off of my soap box now ...

[Deleted User]

One thing to throw into the STAY or LEAVE great debate, I was pootling around on the web this morning and came across an article about farming and agriculture in the UK under the EU and we still produce 60% of our food needs in this country, importing 40% which is more than I originally thought we provided ourselves. To input into the debate consensus in the article was that the EU regulations and system of fining farmers in this country for late delivery, mistakes in or perceived infringements to EU bureaucracy is crippling UK farmers. Apparently there is a fine for even an incorrect answer on paperwork, a larger fine if there are two mistakes or the original one is repeated and the decision to fine is at the behest of EU inspectors and is an individual interpretation by whoever inspects on the day. The case they were describing was a farmer whose wife had done all the admin and paperwork, the wife had cancer and died and he was late with the papers for subsidies and grants and the EU decided just not to pay him anything, no consideration given just NO. I believe one of our government ministers took the decision to pay him anyway and was in lots of trouble for doing so.

The thought came to me that 60% is pretty good, we could possibly produce more if the restrictions of EU rule were no longer in place and that although it IS nice to have all the exotics and out of season imports we fed ourselves adequately if not excitingly right through WW2 and the national health was better than it had ever been in our history. I would miss 'nice things' as would we all but perhaps they are part of the price we pay to be shackled and I wonder if the price is worth the end result???

GreyQueen

Lots of the exotics aren't grown in EU member states anyway, although some of them might bear a passing resemblence to banana republics.

Have now got some stuff listed on freegle (clutter isn't preptastic unless it's preptastic clutter, IYSWIM) and am about to head lottie-wards to attend to matters of raising the next few months' worth of food.

Politics come, and politcs go, but a spud is a spud is a spud.

mrs-moneypenny

Thanks GQ I need to remember to sow some more radishes mine are all about ready to harvest.
Currently enjoying the garden while knitting the 2nd of a pair of socks- first time I've tried dpns, watching the fledglings with their various parents on the bird feeders.

[Deleted User]

When I say exotics I'm also including Dutch flowers, Spanish peppers and tomatoes, French wine etc. perhaps exotics isn't the best way to describe them, maybe I should have said luxuries instead?

nuatha

springdreams wrote: »

Please be careful when replacing your laptop chargers. There lots of knock offs out there, and when inspected by Trading Standards they have been found to either be incorrectly or insufficiently wired, and are known to have caused house fires.

In this instance it is far wiser to spend a few pennies more and buy the genuine product. I know they are more expensive than the ones you can buy off of the bay of E, but your life and that of your family is surely worth the extra expense.

And there is no such thing as a no name brand charger - brand owners do not sell unbranded chargers for their products.

I will get off of my soap box now ...

Having seen a lot of Apple chargers* that crack and fray at the laptop plug (8 in the last quarter, and I'm not an Apple shop) I've also seen a few Dell chargers do similar. I've had one Dell charger catch fire, I've had a Samsung melt and seen several Fujitsus just stop charging (I presume an internal break in the wires.
A brand name is not a guarantee of safety, though some of the cheap and not so cheap ebay "compatibles" are far from safe (and some even output the wrong voltages).

That applies across the board, we tested 80+ USB chargers (wall warts) we only found 10 that matched the standard and found quite a few that were seriously unsafe for long term or mobile use. Price and supplier did not correlate to either safety or standard compliance.

* One guy I know is on his third Macbook charger (the previous two replaced free by Apple) exhibiting the same fault, this time we've covered the jack connector and first two inches of cable with Sugru, in theory that should prevent a re-occurrence.

My laptop chargers are checked every time they come back into the house for any trace of damage (and run off workbench power supplies in the house/office).

[Deleted User]

Here's another couple of things you may not know, about the EU and food production.

1. Under the Common Agricultural Policy, all countries are legally required to import 15% of the milk they consume. This leads to milk being flown back and forward between countries (with the attendant cost, fuel usage and pollution), and to farmers spraying excess milk on their fields, so as not break the rules.

2. Under the Common Fisheries Policy, all incorrectly caught fish (eg. wrong species, too small, etc.), must be returned to the sea. Of course, by the time the catch has been sorted, the fish are dead, so huge quantities of dead fish are being thrown back into the sea, supposedly to protect the fish stocks.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

Politics come, and politcs go, but a spud is a spud is a spud.

To paraphrase William Shakespeare's:-

A spud by any other name, would taste the same.

Karmacat

Mrs LW, the agricultural issues you listened to sound horrendous that poor man.

Chargers sound equally horrendous! I haven't had any problems with any of mine, but I may stop leaving them in a separate room from now on.

I've had enough energy to start cutting the grass, starting to recover from all the wedding stuff I've had to pay attention to. And my sister has a hedge trimmer she can loan me to speed up the pruning etc - which means food plants will have more attention paid to them

ETA - and the issues that Bob is highlighting too

greenbee

Most chargers are made in China. Or possibly Thailand. In one of a very few factories. The branded and non-branded ones are generally made in the same factory, on the same production line either out-of-hours or if legit rather than counterfeit, possibly on a different production run. Sometimes it's the same production run and the factory simply produces the same product (even if patented) for everyone who places an order, even if they are supposed to be slightly different.

One of the reasons that many fake goods are often so convincing is that they are usually made by the same people, on the same machinery, in the same factory, and often from the same materials as the genuine article. But there may be less quality control.

Production for tech products causes all sorts of issues in the supply chain. For instances several years ago I had a problem sourcing 17" TFT monitors. One of the managers told me to 'just buy another brand'. I had to explain that there was supply constraint on ALL 17" monitors as the factory making them had switched production to 19" monitors and the suppliers had underestimated demand. Similarly, when there were floods in Thailand, there were no alternative manufacturers for many goods. Hopefully lessons have been learned from this, but it is worth remembering that there isn't an awful lot of variation in much of this technology when it comes to manufacturing.