THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

GreyQueen

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

That's was a bit risky.

What if you'd had your boiler, or washing machine, on?

Who knows about the washers. My block has a communal boiler house, we don't have individual boilers.

SuperGran said they caused several minor leaks from individual flats when doing this (our meters are in unlocked external cupboards by our doors). Not mine, or it'd had time to dry up before I came home, or I would have been looking inside the cupboard. I mean, who comes home and says to themselves; I'll just check in my meter cupboard to see if the meter I had at 08.30 am is the same one here at 15.15?

The sheer high-handedness of it is disgusting. Most of the block is on water meters, as we're one-bed flats and save shedloads by not being on rateable value via the rent, but there are some people who don't have them and SG thought that they'd been compulsarily switched to meters yesterday ( I don't know if that's true or not).

I'm ticked because I get billed in July and January, and the Jan bill was an estimate. I had this out with them last night on the phone, among many others aspects of my complaint, and they assured me that they record the reading of the meter they took out - the new one is set at 0.

I pointed out that I would have wanted to record the meter reading, had I known that it was about to be taken, otherwise how can I be sure that it was saying what they say it was saying?

They're supposed to be coming back to me today or tomorrow, which will probably be at a time when I'm incommunicado because I'm at my workplace.

mardatha

Maybe take a reading weekly from now on GQ just in case they try that one again. Sods. I don't know why English people pay for water and prescriptions and nobody else does. You should have stopped that from day one!! Only way to stop a govt doing anything is create hell. How can ordinary people afford gas/elect and water bills - with no pay rises for years and benefits frozen.

GreyQueen

mardatha wrote: »

Maybe take a reading weekly from now on GQ just in case they try that one again. Sods. I don't know why English people pay for water and prescriptions and nobody else does. You should have stopped that from day one!! Only way to stop a govt doing anything is create hell. How can ordinary people afford gas/elect and water bills - with no pay rises for years and benefits frozen.

Already decided to do that, hun. Many people are exempt from paying for prescriptions due to pensioner-dom, low income benefits, tax credits or are like me and have medical exemption certificates for life-saving drugs.

For other people it's very hard. I was once caught on contribution based JSA as opposed to income based JSA (the same to the penny). The former got me free prescriptions, dental, eye test etc, and the latter didn't yet I had not one penny more income to pay for them. Ridiculous.

[Deleted User]

The water I don't mind paying for quite so much, we opted years ago to have a water meter fitted and it has actually saved us as a 2 person household quite a lot of money. We've just opted (about 3 months ago) to have a smart meter with a monitor to be ahead of the rush before they make it compulsory and I can see by looking to the right exactly how much gas and electricity we've used to this second and the comparison between that and what we've used in the past which is also saving us money. Prescriptions? I'd rather pay(if we were still young enough to have to) a prescription charge and keep the drugs supplied by the NHS than have to pay for them privately which I'm fairly sure would in most cases cost much more.

It's all about choices and being sensible to make your income go as far as you can make it, some of those choices are by necessity harsh ones and life is and has been changing with standards of living dropping. It's still doable for most people although some families are really struggling to keep body and soul together and keeping their roof overhead and keeping themselves fed is a struggle.

mardatha

I've spoken to a lot of people on FB who have to do without prescriptions because their kids need things. Third world country!
God - somebody give me a barricade and a placard lol

thriftwizard

The trouble is, MrsLW, that more and more people are falling into that bracket, almost imperceptibly. And because of our collective need to keep up with the Joneses & not lose "face" they'll do anything rather than let anyone see that. I see little signs all around me, of people trying like mad to keep the aspidistras flying; people who had good jobs & steady incomes, who have just reached retirement age or had to leave a couple of years early thanks to redundancy or poor health, who may well still be supporting adult children (as we are) and are literally hiding behind trees rather than be spotted in the jumble sale queue or pouncing on the YS "bargains" at 5pm. They have no idea how to cope, and no idea that it isn't somehow their own fault. Those of us who've always had to watch the pennies have a huge advantage over them, in a sense. But until they can admit what's happening to them, their kids (who are laden with student debts as big as our mortgage ever was and totally unable to afford even to rent around here) and more and more people like them, they'll actively collude in the PTB's plans to make us pay through the nose for absolutely everything, probably even including the air that we breathe.

I have friends who are on benefits through no fault of their own; one has severe & intractable mental health problems and another only has the use of one arm (and no legs) due to undetected spinal damage. Both have had their much-needed & not exactly munificent benefits slashed, and have to attend "prepare for work" interviews in the near future. If they don't attend the interviews they'll be sanctioned, but if they do - well, they're obviously capable of getting to work!

That lot up there won't be happy until they've drained every last penny out of all of us, IMHO. Keeping our heads down & getting by as best we can is one way of coping, but sooner or later we or our descendants will have to stand up to them.

[Deleted User]

I know what you say is the stark truth THRIFTY and I know in my heart that it's only the top of that steep downward slope for an awful lot of people who deserve much, much better in all stages of their lives. My parents were poorer than the church mice, I grew up with nothing, never had new clothes until I passed the 11 plus and needed school uniform and they could afford 1 set which had (and did) to serve me through even the 6th form, no matter how shabby. There was a time in my teens when I had to stay in at weekends because that was the only clothing I had other than a couple of nighties I'd made from a worn out bedsheet and I had to wait for the uniform to dry before I could go outside! I know poverty from the inside out and being hungry so that my little brother and I had to collect lemonade bottles from waste bins to take them back for the 3d deposit to buy the batter bits from the fish and chip shop to eat that day. I know cold because there was nothing to burn on the one fire we had and the biggest treat we got was tomato ketchup on bread and that was on GOOD days.

I think it sad that so many folks are struggling, I think the real need is to re educate people way before they get to the state of not being able to manage in ways 'to' manage, how can someone who has no knowledge of cooking make sensible and nourishing choices if they don't know how to cook? The energy suppliers need severely curbing and there is no way they should EVER be able to cut people off if they aren't able to keep a home warm and have hot water, that should be a government priority! Food manufacturers and the media are partly responsible for all the hype on 'the latest ' faddy ingredients and the sheer stupidity of all current cookery programmes. Way back when there were no 'basics', taste the difference, truly splendid etc. ranges there was just food. We need to get back to that and then teach children now at school how to run a home, the economics of sensible choice and how to budget. We also need to make it not a social pariah situation to shop at boot fairs, in charity shops and at yard sales and jumble sales. I LOVE a good rummage and the queue for out jumble sales provided by the Sea Scouts 6 times a year goes round the sides and back of the village hall. The sad reality is that this IS 2017 and people need to take on board that these may actually be seen as 'the good old days' in the future if things slide downwards in the way I feel they will!

mardatha

The only thing that can stop things sliding downhill is people power... the problem is that they won't move themselves until they are truly desperate. Then TPTB throw them a dog biscuit and they take it gratefully and go home, leaving all the other injustices still in place. I'm thinking its quite a good time to be old, as I really don't like what's coming.

[Deleted User]

I think it is a very good time to start a reintroduction to the real world for all the population who are not yet old! It's our responsibility to get the information out 'there' before we die and hopefully make the lives of everyone who follows on behind us at least less intolerable than they are today and hopefully a darned site better in the long run. I know that's behind the ethos of all of these Old Style Threads but perhaps it's the time to shout OS from the rooftops instead of keeping it to ourselves???

fuddle

What I have found utterly ridiculous is the ability to get into debt with gas and electric without even using it. When my Mam died I found that although she hadn't had the mental capacity or want to heat her house, for one reason or another, she was in £500 worth of debt because in not topping up her pre-payment meter the supplier couldn't take the standing charge. Even if people can't afford to use the gas or electric they are still accruing debt. To me, that's unacceptable.

Whatever property I've lived has been on a water meter except for the damp house years ago. The water company wanted a 1/3 more than what I knew I used. I got a meter in quick sharpish. My new house though is not metered and the monthly amount required is £10 less a month than I use. Same people using the water supply, just a small house in an area that is predominantly older people I guess. I won't be changing to a meter this time.

It's funny when thriftwizard talks about her locality because I know of the very same people she talks about, given I lived there for a little while. There does seem to be a scramble to keeps head above others' expectations. Where I live now it's different. People just get on with what they need to do, topping up their prepayment meters, buying a bargain if they can find it, dipping in and out of the charity shops to hopefully get something needed for peanuts (as opposed to a label at a cut price)without caring what others' think, just making ends meet. It's hard for folk here but in comparing the whole, in a completely judgemental way of course, I would say that the pressure isn't as apparent here because people grew up with how to cope and have been coping all their lives really. My disclaimer here is that I'm not talking about the whole of the South but a little pocket that is the little town that I used to live in. It's a bit of an enigma down there and I'm sure thriftwizard will get my gist.