(Thread IKs:
OwlFancier)
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All this talk of earnings, maybe goons can give me some thoughts. So I used to earn pretty decent money, but then I had 2.5 years out work due to severe anxiety and Covid. Now I have an undiagnosed disability - some kind of chronic fatigue syndrome / severe brain fog that means I can only typically manage about 4 hours of work per day on average - though I am lucky enough to currently have a job that accommodates that. Anyway, main thing is, we're living mostly off my wife's earnings now but I do have some extra cash. Thing is though, I'm nearing 40 and I still don't have any real pension to speak of - few £k in the mandatory workplace pension thing that got set up a year or two before I left the UK, and that's it. Now, I'm thinking that I should start putting some serious cash into a pension... but at the same time, I'm also looking around at... *gestures vaguely at everything* and thinking that we may be due for a major financial collapse or a full-on civilisation collapse before I hit retirement age. What are you lot doing? Should I pay into a pension? Or spaff it all up the wall and lie a decent life while I still can?
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Dec 6, 2023 07:29
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Hey! The UK is number 1 in something! Up 19.6% since 2014 is... *checks notes*... Child Poverty! The largest increase across all EU/OECD countries.  From UNICEF: https://www.unicef.org/globalinsight/media/3301/file/UNICEF-Innocenti-Report-Card-18-Child-Poverty-Amidst-Wealth-Exec-Summary-2023.pdf
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Dec 6, 2023 18:15
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Mourning Due posted:Any advice on escalating complaints etc with UPS? And anybody else having particularly poo poo delivery service across the board this year? No but I just shipped a parcel from Spain to Canada with UPS. It did arrive but all the while I was marvelling at how such a humongous company ($138 BILLION USD market capitalization) can have such a poo poo website that doesn't work, and seemingly how disorganised they are. Originally I booked the pickup for the next day, they said "Yep, GUARANTEED pickup between 10am and 2pm on Tuesday"... which didn't happen. Then the next 3 days of the week were a public holiday in Spain so they had to pick up the next Monday instead. I had it booked to be delivered to and held at a UPS store so I could pick it up, and I kept getting messages saying they couldn't deliver it to the store and they were going to divert it to my house... fine, whatever. Then more messages saying they couldn't deliver to my house and it was going to be delivered to the store. Then it was going to be delivered on Thursday GUARANTEED but didn't get there til Friday. I called the store on Thursday to find out if it was there and the guy at the store said "Can I call you back, I'm busy at the moment"... never called back. And just generally their website was a huge pain to deal with. I had to go through some big rigmarole about how to actually book the delivery because apparently if you're booking something to be picked up somewhere else and delivered to you, rather than picked up from you and delivered elsewhere, you have to book it as a "return" otherwise the website won't let you book it. Then when it was telling me the package was being diverted it said I could change that but I had to enroll my online account into "UPS your choice" or some bullshit, and then when I tried to do that the website sent me into some login loop or something that just flat out didn't work. So I just said "gently caress it" and waited and eventually they said "Oh, no, actually we can deliver it where you originally asked us to" and it turned up, I got an email saying it was there for collection, and it was all basically fine. So yes I did get it eventually and honestly the price wasn't bad (about €100 for a fairly large, 4.5kg package from Spain to Canada), but I'm not at all surprised that they have poo poo just go completely missing. This was my first time using them. I don't think I'd use them for anything that had to be at a place by a particular date but for this package it didn't matter. Somebody up-thread mentioned FedEx being better but the main thing I know about FedEx is that they are absolute robbing bastards. I've had stuff imported to me via FedEx and their "handling" charges for dealing with customs stuff are just a loving joke. With UPS I just paid some sales tax on an imported item (something like $70CAD) and then their "handling charge" for dealing with the taxes were like, $18 - still too much but not all that bad really. With Fedex, I remember having something imported into the UK and the taxes were like £18 but the FedEx "handling charge" and possibly some other bullshit charge I can't remember on there added up to like £50. And it's not like you have a choice but to pay it. Pricks. WhatEvil fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 18:24
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Diet Crack posted:This is just international freight/shipping in general, it's all loving garbage There are degrees though. I was originally quoted €450 from the seller to ship my package and I said "No, gently caress off, I'll arrange it myself". Could have literally gotten a return flight from Canada to Spain for less and picked up the package myself. It's just that you would think that a $140bn company would have its poo poo together... if you had no experience of the world under capitalism.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:37
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Z the IVth posted:There's an amazing selection of Chinese vegetarian cuisine with various types of tofu which is amazing and really sad that you can't get it here. There's Japanese version but they don't lean so much into the "mock meat" angle but just cook tofu in a million different ways. Can highly recommend this place which was within easy driving distance of where I used to live: https://www.veggie-world.com If you happen to live in the area (Bletchley/Milton Keynes), they do *excellent* vegan Chinese takeaway with fake-meat stuff. I used to go there with my wife now and then and she said the Vegan duck was fairly convincing. I've never had real duck but I can tell you it was very tasty. Anyway, of more relevance to the thread is that they also have an online shop where you can order a really wide variety of vegan frozen meat substitutes - including the duck I mentioned, and have it delivered anywhere in the UK. WhatEvil fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 23:12
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I've got a Dyson v8 and I've generally been happy with it. The accessories are good, and the motorised carpet brush thingy is very well designed. It does a really good job of getting cat hair out of the carpets etc. Only thing I don't really like about it is that it complains a bit often that the filter is clogged and says it needs washing but like I say, it does deal with an insane amount of cat hair so I think overall it does quite a good job. I will never go back to a corded vacuum now. IDK if I'll get another Dyson if/when this one dies - not really because I'm disappointed with the performance of it, just because they're pretty expensive. I guess I'll have a look at what's available at the time.
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Dec 24, 2023 07:28
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It's just occurred to me that I bought a battery-powered snowblower last year (big self-driven thing with an augur at the front that chews up snow and ice and then chucks it like 30 feet, for clearing driveways) which is very much needed in Ottawa. It came with 4x 40v, 6Ah Ryobi batteries. Now if only I could get a portable vacuum cleaner which did the same. Sadly, doesn't seem to exist. Ryobi do an 18v one which might be alright.
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Dec 24, 2023 18:16
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Maugrim posted:My wife and I have attempted to get into the Expanse twice so far and we can only conclude that it is a slow starter as we've rapidly lost interest both times. What makes it good? The first 3 episodes were a bit poo poo and I was basically giving it "one last go" on episode 4, but episode 4 is where things really kick off and I was hooked after that. I think part of it was that (episode 3/4 spoilers:) Miller's sidekick, and Miller's relationship with said sidekick, started off being very cheesy and trope-y and I was thinking that this was gonna be like some cheesy buddy-cop-in-space thing... but then the partner dies and also poo poo gets real in other parts of the story right around the same time and I was like "Ohhhh, this is good now". I agree with everything Jakabite says about it. It's just very well-written and acted, they do suspense and action very well, there are a number of characters who are just excellent - both long-term members and those who only show up for a short while.
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Jan 3, 2024 04:54
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Umbra Dubium posted:Voyager was the worst because they kept finding ways to get back home (Warp Ten!), discovering a problem (it turns you into a horny salamander?), fixing the problem, and then ignoring that they have a way to get home and a bugfix ready to go for the problems it causes. Haha yeah and coming across all these civilizations that had "ultra-warp" technology or whatever but never saying "Hey maybe you could hook us up with that poo poo?". The whole "Warp Ten" episode where they're like "Oh Tom just travelled through the entire universe instantaneously and now the shuttle's logs have 180 bajillion gigaquads of new data", then never being mentioned again, was one of the most egregious and definitely the worst episode of the whole run, and that's even WITHOUT Janeway and Paris turning into salamanders and loving, which I'll stress is a thing that actually happened in Voyager. Another one was "Blink of an eye" where they discovered a planet that was under the influence of extreme gravity from a black hole (I think) and it meant that time for them passed at several years per hour of time for voyager... and so they watched this whole planet go from like, pre-history, oral storytelling tradition, to developing antimatter cannons and tech to rival Voyager's. Presumably if they'd stuck around for another few days they could have waited until that civilization developed trans-warp technology etc., but hey-ho. Overall Voyager was really good though, you just have to be able to ignore a few plot holes like the above and pretend they were some sort of fever dream of one of the crew when they came down with space-dysentery. Star Trek, Voyager included, is at its best when it does the more small-stakes "character study" episodes where it's mainly about one character's particular emotional struggle with some aspect of their situation or broader existence, IMO. WhatEvil fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 18:01
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As somebody who suffers from extreme anxiety I have to say it's a bit disappointing that the thread seems to be going off on one about what an arsehole this guy is, based on not very much. Obviously this is causing some hardship for Sanford and that's not good but I can certainly believe that if the shoe was on the other foot and somebody was in here saying they suffer from anxiety and have been having difficulty at work and they went in and some guy made a snarky comment and laughed at them* then the thread would be telling them they should report that person to the bosses and maybe try to find a way to leave the company and if possible get a nice little payout out of it. *I'm not saying that Sanford did anything wrong here BUT as an anxiety sufferer, if he's having a bad day, it can be difficult to not take things like this personally even if Sanford didn't mean anything by it (which, to be very clear, I do believe). Honestly it's all a bit close to Tory benefit/work assessment bullshit. Particularly like "What he's got anxiety that means he can't work, but he can go straight to the bosses and report this?!" or whatever. Probably just start at a default of believing that people who suffer from mental health problems aren't lying about it.
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Jan 8, 2024 18:52
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I'm sure Sanford didn't mean anything by it, but I also can understand if the guy thought it was worth raising with management. To be clear the "made a snarky comment and laughed at them" part of my post was how it could easily have been seen by the other person, through the lens of anxiety, and not me saying that I thought Sanford had said what they said maliciously or done anything wrong beyond perhaps not being quite guarded enough. I do have sympathy for Sanford and I know from literally everything I've seen them post ITT that they're a good, well-meaning person. My issue was more that some in the thread seemed to be implying the anxiety sufferer was taking the piss in some way by not being able to work or reporting the interaction etc. when it's likely they're just having a really hard time. Anxiety fucks with you. It's difficult to accurately judge the intent of others when you're already panicked and in a work (or other) situation that you're finding stressful, for whatever reason.
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Jan 8, 2024 23:17
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Failed Imagineer posted:Squinting at this trying to figure out how this is different from just "being a prick". Everyone has stressors, if you translate that into the end result of "being a prick" then the middle part isn't really that important to anyone else. It is possible as an adult to take stock of how your actions affect others and take mitigating steps, not limited to; getting treatment for your anxiety, getting a different job that removes those stressors, shutting the gently caress up, apologising for wrongs done, taking responsibility for your own workload. There are many ways to be less of a prick! Have you ever suffered from mental illness? Anxiety is distinct from "being a bit stressed". If you've ever had that awful feeling of dread that comes with either experiencing or anticipating life-changing bad news - like a close loved one being close to death, or going through a really bad breakup, you may know the feeling of being extremely agitated, frustrated, afraid, to the point where you're suffering from physical symptoms like elevated heart rate, nausea etc. At my worst, with anxiety, I felt like that - the very peak of emotional agitation, fear and panic, for three days straight. Without respite. Without a conscious trigger. It's just something that comes on without warning. Sometimes I wake up feeling like it, sometimes it goes away, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it starts in the middle of the day without warning. And like I said, there's usually not a conscious trigger. If you have general anxiety related to work, as I have had, "getting a different job" does not solve that, and "taking responsibility for your own workload", again, this person may be trying, but it's not really possible if you're having panic attacks. Getting treatment for anxiety isn't really a thing in the NHS as I understand it - I mean *theoretically* it is, but in practice, no. I went to the doctor about mine and they immediately just said "We'll put you on beta blockers". Common side effects of beta blockers are: Dizziness, tiredness, blurred vision, cold hands and feet, slow heartbeat, diarrhoea, nausea. I know lots of people do take medication for anxiety but the idea of being on these drugs, plus all of the side effects that come with various ones, has been something I've always wanted to avoid, and I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. You can absolutely "try to be less of a prick" but if the whole concept of interacting with the work/job system gives you panic attacks, many ways which you might think would be straightforward to do so in this context may not really be possible for you.
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Jan 9, 2024 16:18
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Surely it would be better if they'd just die, and decrease the surplus population?
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Jan 9, 2024 16:38
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Yeah I am not on meds. I have had improvements from self-treating with psychedelics which I've spoken about previously ITT. I'm no longer having 3-day panic attacks. I'm lucky also that I can afford talking therapy, which I am not currently using but am going to go back to soon.
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Jan 9, 2024 17:13
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Yeah sorry you're going through that fuct, but glad that you're getting somewhere with it.
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Jan 9, 2024 17:48
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Failed Imagineer posted:I don't really buy any arguments to the contrary as anything more than an abdication of personal responsibility. Like it or not we're all down here in the gutter with our broken brains and bodies trying to get by, so actively making life worse for others is the point where I simply say "your problems are a reason, but not an excuse". You may disagree, I don't really mind, there's no need for us to have consensus here and I doubt it makes much practical difference to how either of us inhabit the world. Yeah fair enough on most of that but I guess I can't really reconcile you saying "Like it or not we're all down here in the gutter with our broken brains and bodies trying to get by" with the "just stop being a prick and get a different job" stuff from your post I quoted, which is mainly what I'm objecting to. Yeah we're all struggling to exist and survive under capitalism to varying degrees and work and the precarity surrounding it is a great source of stress for many, and it's not necessarily a case of *which* work you're doing because it's not (necessarily) actually the nature of work itself that causes the stress and anxiety.
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Jan 9, 2024 21:39
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There are lots of things which contribute to cognitive decline. One I learned of recently which I was quite surprised about is uncorrected hearing problems. Apparently the theory is something like: if you have hearing issues and don't wear hearing aids consistently, then your brain is constantly struggling/stressing to process muffled auditory signals which is very taxing. Another possibly surprising one is social isolation.
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Jan 10, 2024 18:39
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Yeah I just looked it up and apparently one in three adults over age *50* die within the 12 months following a broken hip, and even if they don't, they have an increased risk of death for ~10 years after. Apparently immobility can lead to pneumonia which can be a very direct correlation, but yeah there must be tons of factors including the change in living circumstances (going into care etc.) that often comes with such a big traumatic break, plus complications from surgery and medical procedures, plus just the direct physical and mental stress and inflammation that comes with healing from such an injury.
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Jan 10, 2024 19:14
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Looks like the gloves are off for keef then. Been saying this was inevitable (call me Nostradamus). Now watch Labour's 250 seat poll majority or whatever evaporate completely.
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Jan 10, 2024 22:51
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Guavanaut posted:Shocked and appalled to find out that the sort of people who go on fox hunts are also half cut on brandy all day long, lol. Possibly also that the bloke looks like he's not in great shape and blowing through the horn made him lightheaded. Anyway yeah, good poo poo, shame the oval office didn't land on his head.
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Jan 11, 2024 20:28
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Bobby Deluxe posted:drat, saw hellmarch in that font and was expecting this: It is, sort of. C&C Red Alert 1 had Hell March (the one you posted, Bobby). Red Alert 2 had Hell March 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k59sSd9bsxk And Red Alert 3 had Hell March 3, which is the music used in the vid Brendan Rodgers posted above. All are by Frank Klepacki.
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Jan 12, 2024 06:47
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If the Post Office does go bankrupt you can expect to see it sold off to Hermes or some mad poo poo.
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Jan 14, 2024 07:48
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Dead Goon posted:I'm glad "where countries are" never came up in my Geography GCSE exam, because I was surprised to see where Saudi Arabia actually is on a map! In the mid 2000s me and some friends in our early 20s started doing pub quizzes at one of our locals. They weren't that popular so there were only ever a few teams, but we won it like 3 times in a row. We got a bit cocky and went to a different one in a village which was known locally to be "the hard pub quiz" and one of the rounds was "I've printed out the outlines of 20 countries and islands, you get one point for telling me the name of each of them". They were outlines without any further context, without a consistent or indicated scale, in a random orientation (without North marked etc.), and none of them were easy ones - not like, Italy etc. It was *loving impossible* to us. And we had about 8 people on our team or something ridiculous. I think there were teams of olds there with like 2-3 people in who got nearly all of them. I think we got maybe one or two. I can't remember what the rest of the quiz was but I know we did very, very badly. I think we got something ridiculous like 7 points the whole night when the winning team were on like 30 or 40-something points. We did not go back.
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Jan 14, 2024 19:50
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Yeah I'm poo poo at that too.
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Jan 14, 2024 20:26
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https://x.com/breadandposes/status/1746678483332329945?s=20 This is just some random guy I follow on Twitter but it's a valid point. Reform UK will do some deal with the Tories in exchange for, I dunno, some racist shite like what they're already doing, only worse.
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Jan 15, 2024 00:47
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I honestly think once an election campaign starts, and the papers start going in hard and consistently against Starmer, and he starts coming up against other media scrutiny in TV interviews etc., that massive majority will evaporate. It looks also like a lot of Tory losses aren't down to a surge in Labour support, but Tory votes going to Reform UK... but I don't think Reform UK are actually expected to win any seats, so they'll do some sort of deal with the Tories, that sees them withdraw from the (otherwise) safest Tory seats. I reckon Labour will win by 25 seats at best. More likely to be a hung parliament. In '97 (ignorant) people could look at Tony Blair and say "There's a nice man! He says he's going to sort out education and be tough on crime and ooh isn't he good in interviews!". Now, people can look at Starmer and see that he loving crumbles to dust under even the mildest of pressure in interviews, he's a nasty grey boring oval office who openly says that things are going to continue to get worse under him. I just don't see Labour winning a massive majority under him, even if 90% of the public wanted to see the Tories hung, drawn and quartered.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:59
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If Starmer does get in, on the back of the Tory vote collapsing, rather than a surge in Labour support, he'll probably have fewer votes than Corbz in '17. If he does get in like that, then even with a humongous seat majority, it will be a matter of months before the public are utterly loving sick of him. He can't stay out of the limelight and rely on other people loving up for his own success when he's in the big chair, and he doesn't know another way to operate.
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Jan 16, 2024 04:38
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Tesseraction posted:Well at least goons like WhatEvil can also try and dilute the bastard vote by voting for *checks list of parties* ah gently caress Yeah if I can get a ballot in time. Didn't arrive in time for the last election. Not that my vote in a general election has ever mattered or will ever matter.
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Jan 17, 2024 02:19
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Failed Imagineer posted:I'm going to be brave and state that I'll be able to lol at pretty much any outcome from this election I'm no Irishman but, yeah, I think actually any result will be hilarious. Starmer gets a massive majority? Hilarious because gently caress the Tories. Starmer does not get a massive majority? Hilarious because of all of these mental predictions, and also gently caress Starmer. I think the funniest result might be a hung parliament in some configuration, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.
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Jan 18, 2024 07:03
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Beefeater1980 posted:I had a very educational conversation with a taxi driver today. I learned: I mean they're not wrong about this. Uber and other service industries absolutely do take advantage of immigrants who are willing to accept lower pay... but that's not the immigrants' fault. quote:It was amazing, just this pure stream of id for 40 minutes or so, and I thought, 60 million people in this country, and probably 59.9 million are like this guy and maybe 100k are within even squinting distance of this thread. And that 100k includes all the MPs and Lords and business leaders and everyone we think is awful, and the actual population of the country are this dude x 59.9 million. I dunno I mean, what, 12m people or so voted for Corbyn?
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Jan 18, 2024 19:16
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Failed Imagineer posted:I definitely empathise with that feeling though, where you have a nasty run-in with a racist and you're left thinking "Ah right so everyone is just a racist oval office then". It can be hard to shake that sour taste it leaves in your mouth, and it's destabilizing when you have a worldview predicated on the flourishing of basic human goodness and empathy. Oh yeah absolutely. Honestly I think it's one of the reasons I left the UK. Just everywhere you go there's groupthink mildly racist/sexist/xenophobic/"weeeeyyyy lads" culture, that all often tie into each other. There is of course no shortage of racists/cunts in Canada, but you *generally* don't get the unprompted "So the problem with immigrants, right, is..." poo poo from strangers, that you get in the UK. It's not completely gone - we did have one B&B owner telling us about how all the Filipinos were coming to Banff and getting free housing and Ikea furniture and that her daughter who was a single mother couldn't get housing because of it. Funny how it's the same poo poo everywhere. WhatEvil fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 19:37
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BalloonFish posted:Yeah. They must be out there. Isn't 2017 the high water mark for Labour votes in England? Corbs got more votes that year than Blair did in 1997. Nah Corbs got 12.9m in '17 and Blair got 13.5m in '97. And of course the UK population has gone from 58 to 67m in that time. So Blair was more popular in '97. But Corbyn got a higher number of votes than Blair got in any other election.
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Jan 18, 2024 19:51
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Failed Imagineer posted:I've had several good taxi encounters where they start on "the thing about these immigrants is -" and my American wife cuts across them with "WELL IM AN IMMIGRANT". It's pretty fun, you either get immediate backpedaling, or else some desperate attempt to categorise her as "one of the good ones" and get back on track, or sometimes insanely funny frosty silence. Yeah I went to buy some power converters (at Tosche Station) when we first moved here and the guy I bought them from was going on about immigrants and I said "Well I'm an immigrant" which was already obvious from my accent and the fact I was buying 120-240v converters from Canadian to British plugs, and he went on with the "but I'm fine with people who come here legally because my wife is Chinese and blah blah blah" but it was still some xenophobic poo poo. E: Also the guy owned a loving business where the main product was converters for plugs/power systems not from Canada so like, surely 95+% of his customers are probably immigrants? Seems a weird field to go into. Oh *and* I just remembered the guy was clearly from some kind of middle-eastern background so even more bizarre but just goes to show that many people are *extremely* unaware of/have skewed views of class interests. Double Edit: And it's even worse because unless you're a native/First Nations person in Canada then you're all fundamentally immigrants going back far enough. WhatEvil fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 19:54
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Yeah if there's something to make you hopeful it's that (at least, I reckon) 95+% of these people don't actually have strong beliefs in this poo poo that they've thought deeply about and decided that it must be true. It's all just a function of never having stopped to think about poo poo. It's cargo-cult racism, basically. And it's kind of understandable. It's a very easy to see that "there are more foreign-looking/sounding people around here than there used to be", and "things are getting harder for working people". Both of those things are undeniably true. And it's a really simple, easy narrative and an "obvious" explanation that one is the fault of the other. All it takes are for a few people to buy it and repeat it enough and if you're not the sort of person to stop and think and say "hang on a minute, immigrants have a hard time of things too, maybe the problem is systemic" then it's much easier to integrate that into your own "beliefs", even if you don't really *believe* it. But yes. Still cunty.
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Jan 18, 2024 20:03
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Honestly half of them lack the object permenance to figure the full amount. They see x hundred a month and figure they can make room for that. My wife's parents got divorced, sold the house and each went out and bought a brand new Ford Fiesta on finance, because apparently buying new is "the cheapest way to do it". Neither of them are exactly what I would call "flush with cash" but yeah, there's a particular kind of collective madness when it comes to dealing with money, and also with cars, and when the two combine, you get extra double madness.
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Jan 19, 2024 00:30
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stev posted:I cannot get my head around paying more than like £10k for a car. Even that seems absurdly unaffordable to me. Yeah I just added it up and I think I've spent a total of just under £14k buying cars over the almost 20 years I've been driving, £6k of which on the one I currently own, which is by far the most. It was 10 years old when I bought it, my wife and I share it, and we've now had for 5 years without having to do basically any repairs beyond just regular maintenance stuff. That's 8 cars I've had, all but 2 of which ended up in scrapyards when I was done with them, and only one of which blew up after a week. Mostly they've been under a grand to buy, with 80-135,000 miles on the clock and from about 6 to 12 years old when I bought them. They've mostly lasted 2-3 years. Oh and I got about £1300 back when I sold my last one to those robbing bastards at webuyanycar.com. Pretty good going overall, really, compared to having bought a new car at any point. Of course I've probably spent another £15k on insurance (though about half of that is since moving to Canada, since it's bloody expensive here), another £4k on repairs, MOTs and maintenance, £1400 on a used car warranty which I'll never do again, and god knows how much on fuel, I'd guess around £1k/year on average when I was in the UK but a bit less since I moved to Canada, so probably another £17k or something for fuel? So what's that? About £50k or something like £2.6k/year averaged out. When you put it like that it doesn't seem *too* bad, but on the other hand, I'm thinking what I could do if someone handed me £50k now. Also my average earnings per year over that time period would be significantly less than that, before tax, so in essence I've probably worked something like a year and a half to two years of my life just to pay for cars and getting around the place. Sickening really. It could have been a bit less had I not spent as much on my last 2 cars, but I have also spent a considerable amount of time loving about with old cars previously which has thankfully been lessened a bit since spending a little more. WhatEvil fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 02:59
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At the joinery shop where I used to work in the UK, we had a bloke who'd worked there for like 10 years. He used to come in super early (like 4-5am) and run our CNC machine, which was good for the business because it meant we could get more stuff machined in a day by having somebody else work til 5 or 6pm. He claimed to like it because it meant he could pick the kids up from school when he was done. Anyway one day the boss happened to come in super early, and saw his car there, with a trailer attached... loaded up with about £500-1k worth of hardwood. Turns out he'd been stealing it and reselling it for god knows how long. We didn't have an actual inventory system for materials because it was hard to exactly gauge how much wood you'd use on a given job because there were varying amounts of waste etc. Thought that took the piss, a little.
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Jan 20, 2024 00:38
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Nenonen posted:should have bought noclippers OK that's quite good. Anyway, a couple of pages back there was "when is a car old" chat and also "what can I buy that's not new but is good". Here's my tuppence on the matter: A car is "old" when it is 8-9 years old OR has like 70k+ miles on it. This doesn't mean that it's knackered, but that just seems to be around the time that a lot of people who are the type to buy new cars want to get rid of them. Cars that are older with low mileage still can hold their value reasonably OK. Cars that are newer with higher mileages can sometimes be found for a decent price, and *can* be a great bargain. The main reason doing lots of miles is bad for a car is because it's hard on the engine, BUT the main thing that's bad for the engine is actually when the engine is cold. When the car has just started, the oil isn't hot yet, and the parts haven't expanded from the heat so they don't fit together as well. If a car isn't that old but has done a lot of miles then probably a lot of those are "motorway miles" where the car is already warmed up, which are relatively much less "wearing" on the engine. The opposite would be if a car has been used as a taxi or for pizza delivery or uber-eats or something where it's constantly stopping and starting. The main thing to look for an a higher mileage car is that it has had regular oil changes done, as this protects the engine. At a certain interval of miles (50-70kish I think usually?), cars also need the timing belt changed, if they have one - lots of cars have chains instead these days which don't need replacement. The timing belt can cost like £500 or more, so check to see if this has already been done or factor it into the price. If the car is like, 5 or 6 years old, people will have encountered all of the problems they have, so you can just google or look on forums etc. for common problems with a particular year/model of car. For example I've seen for a certain model on forums "Oh yeah the 2011-15 model has problems with the engine burning oil so stay away from those but the 2016+ models fixed it". Always handy to know. Myself and my Dad have had good experiences with German cars. He's always bought old Audis with 100+k miles on, and run them until he scrapped them. He had one that he took up to more than a quarter of a million miles. Part of why he does this is because he qualified as a mechanic when he was younger (though he eventually went into a different field), so he does all the maintenance himself. I've mostly had VWs and audis again with 80-100k miles at the time of buying them. Audis share most of their parts with VWs so the parts aren't crazily expensive, and I just take them to generic garages rather than the dealers. Japanese cars are also supposed to be extremely reliable - Toyotas in particular are I think supposed to last a long time. The best car I ever had was an 8-year old VW polo that had 130k miles on it when I bought it. It was £800. The owner said he was a salesman and did a lot of motorway driving. Totally solid car and lasted me I think 4 years until a number of small annoyances built up and then I think it failed an MoT on something minor, but was gonna cost £250 to fix or something, so I scrapped it. Once cars get to about 10-12 years old, that's when you start to get issues with "bigger" things. Like you might see rust on the bodywork creeping in - sometimes to the point where it's structural and you either have to get it welded up (which can be pricey) or scrap it. Other things like wheel bearings, CV joints, shocks/suspension may crop up which are each typically not *too* expensive but you're probably looking at from £200-500 for each of these. So my sweet spot for value would be a car that's about 6-7 years old, with ~80-110k miles on it, with receipts for regular maintenance (oil changes mainly). Ideally it'd only have 1 or 2 previous owners. You can typically find something like this for £4k or less if you have a bit of flexibility on make/model and are willing to travel a bit to look at it. You'll usually pay less from a private seller than you will from a garage, but you should know what to look for when checking out a car (tons of vids on youtube on what to check - almost certainly specific ones for a make and model of car too). Used to be that you could find cars that fit this description for like, £1-2k but it seems like Covid has doubled the price of second hand cars.
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Jan 20, 2024 21:48
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Azza Bamboo posted:The old used car market is rolling the dice but I've personally found that mildly bad luck can still compete with newer finance. Yeah I can see the argument either way. Finding a decent used car IS a pain in the arse, and breaking down is a pain in the arse (though it doesn't actually happen super often).
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Jan 20, 2024 22:36
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Azza Bamboo posted:With some of the jobs I've had, I'd absolutely take "£200 but at some random point in the next year you'll have to sit on the roadside for an hour looking at your phone" Yeah that's the choice I've always made. Actually I just remembered, on I think my 3rd date with my now wife, and the first where she'd come round my house and were then gonna go out somewhere, my car broke down when we were on our way to a National Trust place. I had a ~10 year old Ford and one of the parts of the engine cooling / interior heating system (the manifold where the hot engine water goes into a radiator inside the cabin), which was made of plastic, just decided to spontaneously snap off, so I lost all of the coolant out of my engine. We were stranded, and it was a bit embarrassing... but I was on top of things. We'd just passed through a little village that had a repair garage, so I just said "right, we'll leave the car here, I'll ring a taxi, and we'll carry on where we were going, then get a taxi home, and I'll sort my car out tomorrow". It was a Sunday so the garage wasn't open but I knew I could leave my car there and go back the next day and get them to look at it. Cost me like £30 in taxi fare, then about £50 the next day to get the car patched up... but my wife said later that she found it endearing that I basically just said "right, sod it, carry on! Sorry about that!".
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Jan 20, 2024 22:50
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