The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Merry Christmas All...

ivyleaf

Maggie I love the Christmas Shark

Sue I hope you're recovering xx

PasturesNew

Poor_Leno wrote: »

....

I'd have switched to "rude mode"..... "... stop RIGHT there, so you're desperate to sell these and are waffling; well, to be blunt, you can shove those RIGHT up your ...."

I don't think I'd be on their call list after calling out the Emperor's New Clothes.

As you say though.... there will be people who do get sucked in.

PasturesNew

... a funny thing happens when you go away for Xmas and then fail to be able to connect to their wi-fi and it's too much hassle to mention it (especially as you were banned from setting up your PC there but decided to sneakily put it together in your bedroom anyway). You are entirely offline for a week

I was handed a tablet thing, but that rarely connected ... I did manage to, finally, get connected to my gmail. They have a vast array of options when you can't remember your password, but, unfortunately, most of them were meaningless/irrelevant to me and I was at the point of giving up when up popped the option of having a text sent to my phone. They don't give you a list to choose from, you have to log in, fail, then choose "forgot" and they present you with an option, one you might not be party to...

All I could do really on the tablet was google things and look at newspaper websites. Tres dull.

PasturesNew

zagubov wrote: »

Here's a question. Am I imagining it or do adverts for beds and sofas really get more frequent around now, and if so, why? Nothing to do with Christmas.
Edit: just seen another one based on Aardman animations, for sofas!

I suspect it's more likely to be a time when people are putting people up and realise they don't have a comfy bed, or are embarrassed about the bed they're offering.... so the adverts catch their eye and they're more susceptible to buying one for themselves in the end.

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

I am starting to think that we could manage without a car of our own.

We tend to walk to the local shops. (DW says that carrying shopping is good exercise to ward off osteoporosis.) All the big grocery shopping is delivered, anyway.

There are often pool cars to be hired locally for short runs, and we could do a longer hire for when we go on holidays.

Even though our car is so old that it’s got almost zero depreciation, it costs us around £1200 a year in fixed costs before we drive a single mile, and around 20p a mile in petrol.

This year, we drove 2000 miles, although most years it’s more like 4000, but this year it’s working out that we are paying around 80p per mile driven. And that’s for the privilege of driving ourselves in a thirteen year old car. If a taxi driver turned up in a car as old as ours, I’m not sure I’d get in.

Of course, there’s huge convenience having a car sitting ready on our driveway, but it doesn’t seem to make economic sense. And, if we lived nearer the city centre, I’m not at all sure I’d bother.

Keep a diary of all your journeys in 2020 - and see how expensive alternatives would be.

Just hiring one for a week for a holiday can almost work out more expensive than having one sitting on the drive all year.

Most of my journeys are not possible by bus, being "round robins". Take this morning, I could've gone out to a market/under cover car boot. After that I'd have driven the long way home, popping into The Range, Dunelm and Home Bargains. Then maybe to an Aldi.

That round robin "might as well do 2-3 things as I'm out" would require about £50 of taxis.

Even those hire clubs (most people don't have them) are pricey too.

I'd rather know I have a car outside I could get into, that is costing me about £10/week, than having to phone/wait for a taxi somewhere ... and a taxi back ... which'd probably cost £20-30.

My car is worth <£1000. It probably costs me £250 insurance, £125 tax, £100 service/MoT and £50 for a puncture or something else small per year, which is £525/year. Even at £1k/year it's cheaper to have it sitting there.

I've just gone 175 miles return. If I'd used the train I'd have had to get a taxi to take my stuff to storage, then get dropped off at the station; I'd have not been able to bring back the additional items (2 bowls and a pile of dad's magazines from 1962 we appear to be holding onto); I'd have then needed another taxi 'home' and then a taxi to go to the storage.

The train would take 7 hours each way, car = 3.25. The train is two changes too. Looking at train tickets, it'd have cost £90-140 by train, car fuel was about £40.

It simply couldn't be done.

GDB2222

Our car is definitely costing us at least £1200 a year in standing costs. So, that’s £24 a week. At the moment, there’s loads of competition between Bolt and Uber, so £24 is three half hour taxi journeys.

Or drive yourself with DriveNow, at 30p per minute. So, £24 = 80 minutes. But that’s driving time. So, for your round robin tour of the shops, you don’t pay for the parking time.

We haven’t used our car since last Sunday, anyway.

SingleSue

We don't have Uber, Bolt or DriveNow here....it's just normal (expensive) taxis and public transport. A taxi to work would cost me around £8, so £16 return without visiting anywhere else. A bus is over £5 return but is something I can't do alone (I would need someone to push my wheelchair to the bus stop and at the other end) and the same with a train (although the train is cheaper)

Weirdly though, it is more cost effective (even with more than one person), to take the train to the next big town when you include parking costs and for us if we time it right, about as quick as taking a car and finding somewhere to park.

Even weirder, it costs the same to go to our town centre on the bus return as it does to go to the next big town return, despite one being 3 miles away and the other more than 10 miles away!

The few times I have been without a car in the last almost 30 years since I passed my test, it has been eye watering expensive to have anywhere near to my normal life via other means.

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

....Or drive yourself with DriveNow, at 30p per minute. So, £24 = 80 minutes. But that’s driving time. So, for your round robin tour of the shops, you don’t pay for the parking time.

How are you not charged for time?
If you got the car and drove for 5 minutes to a friend's house, then got in their car and went out for the day, leaving it parked in their drive for 8 hours, before driving 5 minutes home = £3.

There are no Uber et al round this way I'm aware of. But, as the owner of a car, I've never checked what's what.

silvercar

PasturesNew wrote: »

How are you not charged for time?
If you got the car and drove for 5 minutes to a friend's house, then got in their car and went out for the day, leaving it parked in their drive for 8 hours, before driving 5 minutes home = £3.

There are no Uber et al round this way I'm aware of. But, as the owner of a car, I've never checked what's what.

Drive Now is shutting down it's London operation on 29 Feb, so I guess it's business model didn't work. Never used it myself.