Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Onebrokelady

Another one here waiting for the C Tax and water bills to arrive. I also have a yearly rent increase to look forward to. It's don't inline with inflation as I think so I dread to think how much that's going to be 

foxgloves

@Onebrokelady - A rent increase on top of all the other increases in bills is going to be extremely unwelcome for very many people & I can understand that you are worried. It just all seems deeply unfair at the moment. Another big oil & gas company on the News this morning with eye-watering profits. The current energy market model seems utterly dysfunctional, with ordinary people as per usual bearing the brunt of blatant profiteering. 
F

2Scratters

*** rant warning***
Had a discussion this morning with DH about the costs to the consumers of utilities.
 In particular the electric companies and house builders.
We remembered 14 years ago when our son was looking at a house purchase there was a small newbuild site locally to us at the time and those houses were built with solar panels already installed on them. Yet all the new builds around us, when we moved here over 7 years ago, not one property who were supposedly "affordable homes" have any solar attachments. Properties that cost a quarter of a million pounds and above.
 This to us is political and scr**ing it's nation. No ethics here then. Also why are large manufacturing/storage businesses - those with massive warehouses not using solar panels? As a small island we should be capable of reducing the demand for fossil supplied power stations making inappropriate business choice purchases from around the world.

I would love to retire early (2 years to do now) but the cost of heating the house has put paid to that. I now need to save much more than I had planned as we will be poor pensioners when that time comes. Even though we both have private/work pensions too it will be taken up by the utilitities. It's a shame the UK never matched the pensions with the rest of the EU when it had many years to do just that. 

2 Scratters xx

QueenJess

Well the answer is always money isn't it?  I bought my house new, which was built by a small local builder and is super insulated, air tight and has an air source heat pump.  The only thing it doesn't have is solar panels and then it would be top rated.

The builder told us he did it because he thought he should be doing it, but it comes out of his own pocket because no one will pay extra for such things, so it's a direct profit reduction.  This was 6-7 years ago now.

I complained to the local council when they came round at election time for all the shoddy houses they are building round us at the moment and why are they making the problem worse by not building energy efficient ones now.  They just wanted to run away from that conversation

2Scratters

Well done @QueenJess buying ethically and locally. How hard is it for them to do the right thing. We are all aware it does cost more initially but it has benefits all round. If small businesses can do this - then the rest need to get their act together.

Baileys_Babe

I can not understand why it is not a planning requirement that all newly built buildings have to have solar fitted at the time of construction and the roofs must be orientated to be as efficient as possible. IMO the builds should also have to be highly insolated.

I will get down off the soap box before I rant all afternoon.

Pollie

foxgloves said:

I could do, but it worked pretty well on the hob & took 25 mins simmering on the smallest gas ring instead of 1.5 hrs in the oven.
Your suggestions have reminded me that somewhere I have a little trivet for standing inside my slow cooker to facilitate cooking different things, & stuff in different dishes. I have no idea where I put it. I must try to find it.
F

You could use an upturned saucer if you cannot find the trivet.

foxgloves

Thanks, @Pollie......I could, although I am determined to find the trivet. I will have put it somewhere which I thought highly sensible at the time, I just need to think......
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kayannie

 We recently moved into a small 90 year old bungalow & had solar panels installed last week. They were fully paid for by the Welsh government & although we only have 8 panels & the weather has been quite overcast most days, we are seeing the benefits already. When I had a bathroom heater on this morning & had 2 cakes baking in my smaller top oven, the smart meter showed that we were paying nothing for our electricity just then. That soon changed when I put another heater on, so that soon got switched off!
As a couple of oldies with only the state pension to live on, we are very grateful for this help, but I only found out about this scheme by chance & don't think it is advertised enough.
KA

foxgloves

Hi diary readers,
I agree with your comments about housebuilding. I have served 4 years on a local council planning committee & it always wound me up that the definition of "affordable" is, if I remember correctly, 80% of the current value. So the 'rules' (which I think the government may be trying to water down), may state that for new developments of a certain size, there must be a certain % of affordable housing, but the reality is that if local people absolutely can't afford to buy at the market price, then 80% of a completely unaffordable property still isn't much help. The big house building companies are powerful lobbyists (I'm sure you can remember the news story about the housing minister of the time 'being seated' next to the boss of one of the big companies at a government function, who then 'just happened' to get his development waved through before some or other financial changes were implemented. That story had a fair amount of coverage here, as it was a local MP. Another thing which happens (I can recall a clear example of this from when I was on the council) is when the developer gets planning permission, appears to be complying with the legal requirement for the % which have to be 'affordable', but then asks to build the affordable ones somewhere else so as not to affect the greater profits they can make by putting all the top dollar ones in the best area without the dilution of affordable stock or social housing. 
I agree entirely about the lack of solar panels/rainwater harvesting, top insulation, etc, as standard in new homes. I would have to fact check myself on this, but I think this was to have been a new regulation but it has been abandoned because of cost. Certainly, I'm sure I remember reading about a local development on the outskirts of our town, which was a project to replace old outdated, unfit-for-purpose council housing with new fully insulated, green properties to rehouse the existing community of social housing tenants. I'm pretty sure that all the helpful green stuff was abandoned due to cost. I think it's a double problem - one, as previously mentioned, is that the housebuilders are a powerful lobby & have the ear of government (it would be interesting to see how many of them are donors) & the other is that the UK is simply not a very progressive country. I sometimes think people here actually prefer things to be cr*p as it feels nicely familiar - even the constant moaning about it can become a sort of security blanket. On so many issues, as a country, I really do feel we need to be dragged kicking & screaming into the 21st century. Why do we mostly come together to celebrate only royalty & wartime anniversaries - never anything progressive for us all to get behind. 
Oh dear, I'll be making a placard in a minute!
F