Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

milann

I’m pleased you didn’t get flooded and the waters are subsiding. It must be devastating to see your belongings covered in cr@ppy water.
Its absolutely disgusting that it’s taken a tv series to get the government to sit up and do something urgently instead of letting things tick along slowly…..just before an election 😡😡😡mmmmmm

badmemory

If they get back in it will go back on the back burner.

Suffolk_lass

I also record energy usage, in kwh and £&p, in my spreadsheet. I don't have gas but rely on heat from the electric aga to warm the bedroom and bathroom upstairs (open staircase from the dining room at that end of the house, sees t this). We had the aga engineer out to look at ours on Monday, which meant turning it off on Sunday for 24 hours. It was horrible coming down to a cold house but it is definitely an expensive luxury and why the Bay of E and Faceache M-P are so full of aga's people are trying to sell. Ours runs correctly, and the insulation is not deficient. The suggestion from the engineer was to fit an improved quality fused switch, which we will do in due course. In the meantime, we will continue with our £150 monthly payments

Suffolk_lass

Re Post Office
When I worked for a Prosecuting Authority (not as an investigator) our investigators were diligent, of enquiring mind, and thorough in ensuring all angles were properly researched and covered. This included referring to our forensic computer auditors, for anything IT-technical. As I was responsible for one of the IT systems in one case I had to go to court and give testimony that on particular dates I could provide assurance that the system was working correctly (and conversely, provide exact times for an irrelevant system interruption. And our investigators were required to keep their contemporaneous hand-written notebooks, so that they never had to say "I don't recall". This applied to keeping them in evidence vaults, long after the individual had retired, moved jobs, left or whatever. Our training always emphasised that you give evidence and statements restricted to you, your insight, expertise and what you have found out. There is no way anybody should be giving wider statements without the evidence to support it.

Calling that chap an investigator is an oxymoron in my view. Our people would never write a statement for a witness to sign, they would help them, if needed, but good grief.

Kier Starmer oversaw over 40,000 CPS cases as Director Public Prosecutions 2008-13. I think it is acceptable to say that these handful of PO cases that CPS took did not reach his level of oversight.

Angry? Moi?

foxgloves

Yes, it is truly shocking stuff, @Suffolk_lass. I couldn't believe it when the investigator said he's not "technically minded". Why on earth would somebody without a strong tech background be appointed to look into what was a faulty computer system? The findings on this whole saga seem to get more jaw-dropping every day.
Well, I'm back from the dentist. No bill to pay until later this month when my whole private treatment plan (implants) will be completed. So I guess that's an unexpected 2 extra weeks of interest on the money, anyway.
Today's main financial victory (we hope....) will be the outcome of Mr F versus Big Supermarket, after we received our worst ever online grocery delivery last night & submitted a pretty instant complaint. Haven't heard back from them yet, so will see how it goes, but we are defo intending to hold out for a refund so I must remember I'll need to adjust the grocery budget to take this into account.
Called at fave garden centre on way back from city. Was v restrained with veggie seeds. I started gathering a few packs then put them all back because I haven't yet sorted out my seedbox & couldn't remember what we already have. I know we have 2 varieties of tomato seeds plus the squash & pumpkin seeds I saved & dried, but I need to look at everything else in there & make a proper list. What did surprise us were all the gaps on the seed packet displays. Hope they are awaiting a big delivery, rather than all the local allotmenteers have already been in with their wishlists! Will DEFO sort my seedbox this weekend.
I did peruse all the very much reduced festive stuff, but while some of it was nice enough, there was nothing I wanted to take home with me more than the money with which I arrived. 
Chilly grey old day here. Be cosy,
F x

badmemory

Call me cycnical but I expect he was hired BECAUSE he wan't technically minded.  Far less chance of finding out anything.

PennysIntoPounds

Well done on getting another dental doing done. 
And for the seed and reductions restraint!

milann

Pleased the dentist went well. Not long now and it’ll be finished 😁 
I had a little nosy around my garden today and something - either cats or squirrels have uprooted the rhubarb crown which was planted at the end of last summer. I’m not impressed at all😡

Sun_Addict

Glad you’ve got another dental appointment under your belt. Will be worth it once it’s done. 

Re the travesty with the PO, yesterday heard a journalist on the radio talking about it who I used to be a PA for when he worked at my workplace - small world. 

EssexHebridean

One thought on the energy front if anyone is working on billed amounts - it needs to be noted that the £66/£67 government help was automatically coming off a lot of people’s bills at this time last year - this is the reason that Martin has stated that the costs this winter are likely to be more problematic for struggling households than those of last year. 

We track use too- although with only 4 months in the new house it’s not doing me much good at this stage! I do have access to our predecessors use via one of the third party apps though and that’s giving me a decent amount of smug-points at this stage as we seem to be rather less energy-hungry than they were! In the flat of course we didn’t have smart meters, so I was in the habit of reading the electricity meter weekly with a monthly submission to the supplier - I still do the same now, but add a monthly gas meter reading too, and of course no need to submit anything, just check the readings on the bills against my own records. I’ve stuck with keeping records based on use rather than cost as I’m most interested in seeing how our use varies year on year - the costs can always be worked out from the actual use figures. 

As for the PO scandal - and while that word is often overused, in this case it’s quite apt - possibly the worst thing about it is the sheer number of people who have been pretending that if they ignore it it might go away for so many years. I genuinely hope that e right people go to prison for this - it’s just a shame it hasn’t happened far sooner.