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the sex ghost posted:knock knock yes hello im the 'gas man' and i've come to count up all the times you've turned the cooker on and then you have to pay me for it You joke but I just got £40 of electricity for free from British gas because they fitted a new meter that already had a reading then completely hosed up the billing for it and kept trying to charge me £400 for it, then when I complained the complaint handler said "well, we've got no idea what the original value was tbh and no way of figuring it out so I'll just set the initial reading to the first reading and refund the difference"
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Sep 23, 2021 12:32
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Guavanaut posted:The government should be run like a business. Didn't this conversation literally happen on Newsnight or something? Sometime in mid 2019 I want to say. Some Ivory Tower Elite Neo-Marxist suggested that it would make much more financial sense for the state to take out a low-interest loan (effectively from itself, too) and buy up all the houses which are currently owned by landlords but rent is paid/subsidised by housing benefits - the interest on the loan would be less than what is paid out in benefits and the state would have appreciating assets on its account. It was also pointed out that if this was a business the accountants would be screaming that it was crazy to pay this much for external services when borrowing was so cheap and it could be brought in-house. The bow-tie wearing representative of the Institute for Common Sense or whatever's only answer was "no, not like that... somethingsomething free market, blah blah landlords provide an essential service by providing houses to those who can't afford mortgages"
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Sep 23, 2021 12:39
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:one of my neighbours is building a summerhouse and it is an absolute abomination Summer is over in a few days.
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Sep 23, 2021 12:42
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Looks like something kids would put together in the woods from scrap.
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Sep 23, 2021 12:44
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https://twitter.com/UKLabour/status/1440948151788216321?s=19 Absolute loving hypocrisy from the same party that defends Duffield.
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Sep 23, 2021 12:47
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The cheap portable heaters are going out of stock fast £13 high rated in stock October 22nd https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006UJDGB0
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Sep 23, 2021 13:11
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Every time I've done the maths before it would cost more to run a single small electric heater pointed at my desk than it costs to turn on the gas central heating for my entire flat.
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Sep 23, 2021 13:14
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learnincurve posted:The cheap portable heaters are going out of stock fast RIP your country's power grid
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Sep 23, 2021 13:15
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peanut- posted:Every time I've done the maths before it would cost more to run a single small electric heater pointed at my desk than it costs to turn on the gas central heating for my entire flat. The maths on a three bed semi is slightly different lol. I lived in a mouldy death trap without central heating for 10 years. Lo and gather round all ye children. What you have to do is run the portable heaters for 10 mins in the bedrooms before bed and then use lots of blankets overnight. Then during the day use the economical electric fire in the living room and play blackjack to see who runs into the kitchen to make tea. Use portable heater in Kitchen for 10 mins before going in to make food and then the oven should keep the room heated for an hour or so after.
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Sep 23, 2021 13:22
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Bobby Deluxe posted:https://twitter.com/UKLabour/status/1440948151788216321?s=19 Literally everyone is pissed off with them now. Half the replies are saying that they won't vote Labour as long as Duffield is allowed to keep the whip because their "support" of the community is clearly only performative. The other half are saying that they won't vote Labour because they're "not going to vote for a bunch of queer-lovers".
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Sep 23, 2021 13:24
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learnincurve posted:The maths on a three bed semi is slightly different lol. I lived in a mouldy death trap without central heating for 10 years. Lo and gather round all ye children. Strong Britain, Great Conflagration
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Sep 23, 2021 13:25
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peanut- posted:Every time I've done the maths before it would cost more to run a single small electric heater pointed at my desk than it costs to turn on the gas central heating for my entire flat. I've got the exhaust from two computers under the desk directed towards my legs, gaming keeps me warm.  Also bought 700L of oil for £320 last week so unless the electricity in Northern Ireland gets cut off i'll be fine.
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Sep 23, 2021 13:26
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Jedit posted:Literally everyone is pissed off with them now. Half the replies are saying that they won't vote Labour as long as Duffield is allowed to keep the whip because their "support" of the community is clearly only performative. The other half are saying that they won't vote Labour because they're "not going to vote for a bunch of queer-lovers". At last, perfect centrism.
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Sep 23, 2021 13:31
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Just Another Lurker posted:Also bought 700L of oil for £320
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Sep 23, 2021 13:31
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ro5s posted:At last, perfect centrism. Like the Oberman types who bang on about trolls destroying discourse and how they should all be neutered and fired into the sun, but also smarm and wink about how clever they are for making those corbyn outriders so angry, sweetie.
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Sep 23, 2021 13:49
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I think that is because they are just right wingers who for a variety of reasons do not brand themselves as such, and winding up people you detest is always a joy.
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Sep 23, 2021 13:57
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peanut- posted:Every time I've done the maths before it would cost more to run a single small electric heater pointed at my desk than it costs to turn on the gas central heating for my entire flat. My place doesn't have any 'internal' heating. Instead the landlord has electric heaters attached to the walls in each room. Been here nearly 10 years now, and I have only ever used one of them, my bedroom one. That only gets turned on mid winter, when the feet are still cold even with two pairs of socks on.
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Sep 23, 2021 13:57
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I just blocked a chimney today for a friend, weird loving chimney though, at one point it was retrofitted with a hilariously unsafe gas fire and presumably at the same time it was partially filled in, with only what looks like a hollowed out tin of beans in the middle as the actual escape. Anyway it's got a bunch of plastic bags stuffed up it now so hopefully that stops the draft. Imagine I posted the stonks guy but going "imsulation" because that is how I felt about it. I also remembered how much I hate soot because jesus christ it sticks to everything. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Sep 23, 2021 |
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Sep 23, 2021 14:00
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I did vague Google maths, right now it’s about 91p per hour to run my central heating (heats up and switches off so not constant) and a 2kw heater is 28p per hour. So central heating is cheaper right now, but if the prices go up and we have a bad winter careful use of the electric heaters will be much cheaper. (Don’t run a cheap heater for longer than half an hour btw)
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Sep 23, 2021 14:06
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learnincurve posted:The cheap portable heaters are going out of stock fast isn't electricity also ridiculously expensive right now though
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Sep 23, 2021 14:06
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Gort posted:isn't electricity also ridiculously expensive right now though Oh yes, average gas prices are going to go up by £400 a year though.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:09
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https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1441025634440990726?s=19 Lmao please let that creepy little doughnut do a leadership challenge.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:10
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OwlFancier posted:I just blocked a chimney today for a friend, weird loving chimney though, at one point it was retrofitted with a hilariously unsafe gas fire and presumably at the same time it was partially filled in, with only what looks like a hollowed out tin of beans in the middle as the actual escape. I remember going into a hardware store once to get fireplace cleaning equipment for when I was living in an apartment in the city. They sold special balloons which were designed to inflate and stick in your chimney to reduce the draft when you are not using it, and be easy to remove if you decide to light a fire.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:10
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learnincurve posted:91p per hour to run my central heating
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Sep 23, 2021 14:11
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Yes that was what she had bought to block it, and which would presumably have been appropriate had not someone blasted a bean tin up the brickwork and left a gap no larger than my fist. So I just stuffed the bag up there, the fireplace isn't in use so frankly a novelty sized cork would have been fine.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:12
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I googled and it’s because central heating also uses electricity.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:13
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Guavanaut posted:The government should be run like a business. This is one of the lines that pisses me off more than anything else because it's so emblematic of complete ideological victory of neoliberalism. Mainstream society is completely incapable of viewing anything without filtering it through the lens of market logic and simplistic household finance metaphors - everything needs to be 'paid for', this is by definition a zero sum game, if you spend money on a thing that money is gone and you can't spend it on the other thing. Of course many people do care, but within the mainstream population even they can't see past the neoliberal frame most of the time, and in my experience will talk about how x (people starving/rich nonces/mass homelessness/predatory business/whatever) is terrible and something should be done, but the second you start poking at the core base of the ideology will respond with a dismissive shrug or get seriously defensive. It's tiring. There was a guy on Newsnight years ago, classic gammon character, who smugly yelled at I think Yanis Varoufakis that budgets were 'simple', because 'if he's got a tenner in his wallet and he spends a fiver, he's only got a fiver in his wallet.' Varoufakis did in this case give him a good telling off, but you could see his rebuttal was just instantly rejected because 'common sense', and it seemed to go over the heads of a lot of the audience. This is how you get into the whole toxic 'national credit card' line of thinking, which of course everyone with any power and money knows is loving asinine, but it suits them just fine to have people repeat it. It goes beyond that too, and the whole idea of individual freedom of trade and laissez-faire economics becomes a self-evident moral good, which is how you get this kind of thing: BalloonFish posted:Didn't this conversation literally happen on Newsnight or something? Sometime in mid 2019 I want to say. What really sometimes makes me miserable is that this dominant ideology shouldn't be as completely ingrained as it is. Yeah, the simplified 'common sense' economic arguments seem superficially compelling to those who don't really think about the nature of money and the role of government etc, but they are completely full of holes and would be so, so easy to discredit for an aggressive, co-ordinated left-wing campaign that refused to pull its punches or apologise - Starmer-esque flipflopping around deeply neoliberal ideas of financial responsibility the like just reinforces that there is no alternative, and what's the point in triangulating your way into office if by the time you get there you're saying the same thing as the other guy, just looking a bit sad about it? The pandemic could have been a golden opportunity for a mass socialist organisation and propaganda campaign, but no. We have a shitlib Labour boosting the government and the good people who jumped ship after Corbyn (who tbh I don't think would have seized the moment particularly well either) are now either completely disillusioned with politics, have gone to well-meaning but ultimately hopeless local organising efforts, or have joined one of the twenty tiny new parties with fifty guys in them apiece. What happened to people actually having ideas? Actually really thinking about things and having these big discussions in at least the semi-mainstream? Where are our generation's Lenins, or Castros, or Luxemburgs? Sure, you get a few standout academics fighting the good fight - Zizek, Parenti etc - but where is the energy for direct political engagement and opposition? Neoliberalism is deeply ingrained, but is it really any more ingrained than British nationalism was at the height of the empire, when Marx was running about London getting into drunken fistfights with right-wingers in pubs, and calling for armed revolution? Outside of a few nobodies there's just nothing to look forward to but an endless, torturous decline until either climate change kills us all. Who knows, maybe the CCP are telling the truth after all. Maybe we'll hit 2030 and they'll announce that China's productive forces are sufficiently developed, hit the big red communism now button, become the global world power, and usher in a golden age of peace and equality. We can hope, lol. tldr: I just want something to get behind and fight for and have even the smallest chance of winning. Here's hoping that Scotland goes independent in the next few years at least. It'd become another boring capitalist liberal democracy with most of the same problems the UK as a whole has but at least it would be funny to watch the Britnats lose their minds.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:13
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OwlFancier posted:Imagine I posted the stonks guy but going "imsulation" because that is how I felt about it.  OwlFancier posted:I also remembered how much I hate soot because jesus christ it sticks to everything.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:17
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Run government like a business by which I mean make random cuts to things for a brief quarterly boost to earnings, pay those at the top a stupid amount while demanding everyone else tighten their belts and then jump out just as the whole thing comes crashing down to do the same thing at the next place.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:18
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OwlFancier posted:Yes that was what she had bought to block it, and which would presumably have been appropriate had not someone blasted a bean tin up the brickwork and left a gap no larger than my fist. So I just stuffed the bag up there, the fireplace isn't in use so frankly a novelty sized cork would have been fine. You should have traveled to large cork world where they make oversized corks for those oversized bottles of booze to use on the chimney. That or traveled to small balloon world and gotten a small balloon for the chimney.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:19
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Wes Streeting? Who are they kidding. I might, just might, have been able to hold my nose and vote for a Starmer-led LP at the next general election given Welsh Labour are doing a half-decent job right now and given that we are in a FPTP situation. But Wes Streeting? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I'm looking more and more at Breakthrough Party (mainly because they regularly pop up on my FB) though not sure they would stand over here. Other than that I might go Plaid Cymru. I won't vote green given that more than a few greens round here default tory if green is not available and are basically NIMBY in disguise.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:20
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I don't think I am allowed to travel to Large Cork World without a passport.Guavanaut posted:That's where I keep a bag full of bags She used to live in a house where basically every room had a fireplace, because it was a very old house, and thanks to the lib dems, bags full of bags are hard to come by these days. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Sep 23, 2021 |
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Sep 23, 2021 14:22
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So I checked the news this morning and saw a headline saying that the clown has told the UN that people need to "grow up" and "listen to scientists"... Am I in loving opposite land?
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Sep 23, 2021 14:25
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Kieth getting couped by Wes Streeting would be very funny
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Sep 23, 2021 14:29
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FiftySeven posted:So I checked the news this morning and saw a headline saying that the clown has told the UN that people need to "grow up" and "listen to scientists"... No, not those scientists, the ones we funded
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Sep 23, 2021 14:30
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Sooo my hunch was correct, my landlord has found a new estate agent to try and sell this place and he has 3 people coming round for viewings on Saturday. May be moving house soon I guess? 
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Sep 23, 2021 14:32
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peanut- posted:Every time I've done the maths before it would cost more to run a single small electric heater pointed at my desk than it costs to turn on the gas central heating for my entire flat. I only have electric, so it actually is cheaper for me to just heat which ever room I'm in at the time 
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Sep 23, 2021 14:33
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Minor heart attack this morning when Octopus emailed me to say my electric was going from 13p/5p to 26p flat rate. Then someone checked the computer and it turns out they had renewed me on my existing rates just before everything went nuts. Purely coincidentally I met with a former employer who is now an agent for air-source heat pumps and home batteries. Have been planning the pump thing for a while but now looks like a good time to investigate both.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:38
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:one of my neighbours is building a summerhouse and it is an absolute abomination Grover's pied-à-terre.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:43
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I didn't really know much about heat pumps until a quick round of Googling a few minutes ago. It looks like: * Heat pumps are more expensive than boilers to buy/install * Heat pumps heat more slowly than boilers * Heat pumps are much more efficient than boilers - 2 times as good as gas, 6 times as good as electric * Heat pumps cost a lot less to run due to said efficiency, and are much better for the environment * Heat pumps and boilers last about as long (10-15 years) Is that about right?
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Sep 23, 2021 14:46
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