Ask UK

Coming from another country, I always wonder why the two utility companies I have here in the UK, Thames Water and Octopus Energy, would calculate an amount that they think I should pay monthly, instead of just charge whatever I used last month. To me, the latter way makes much more sense and is the standard practice in the countries I lived before.

The amount they calculated seems to generate either a huge credit balance, or a huge underestimation. Thames Water changed my monthly bill from £29 to £7, and then to £17 over the course of a year and a half. Octopus Energy built up more than £200 of a credit balance (not sure if it's a result of the UK government energy gift credit last winter), then set a minimal amount of £61 monthly. They say the purpose is to make sure that the credit balance would be always be more than £100. Okay...but why? If I want to save money, I'd go to a bank.

I could see that it might make sense if the measurement is not as easy or accurate, but come on, it's the 21st century and the meter shows me my energy usage by the hour, surely they can calculate the exact amount rather than pull a random number out of nowhere?

If anyone has any good tips on beating the midges, please share them!

I got absolutely devoured this weekend up by Loch Latrine (edit: Katrine) (completely forgot it was midge season, so I was unprepared).

I've recently been really enjoying poached eggs on toast with sriracha sauce drizzled on top, with a decent portion of chipotle baked beans on the side.

It comes up from time to time but I thought I'd make a thread on it.

He was my favorite creator in Britain who inspired me as a kid to make art and characters and I mourned his death when he passed away while I was in school…but thankfully his friends and family kept the work alive as of right now.

I’ve been drawing art just like him ever since even though I’m American where he was popular.

My current art blog: kylejudd.wordpress.com

Here’s an unreleased piece of tribute to Edd:

So far I’ve seen Shaun of the Dead and Colin which were pretty good films in my opinion.

I wonder what else Britain has that they made…

The BLT has been crowned the UK’s favourite sandwich for 2024 in a recent poll, with 28% of respondents saying they were a fan.

The combination of bacon, lettuce and tomato between slices of bread can be traced back to an entry in Good Housekeeping Everyday cookbook in 1903.

...

Britain's favourite sandwiches

1. BLT – 28%
2. Chicken salad – 24 %
3. Tuna mayonnaise/Fish finger – 23%
4. Cheese and pickle – 22%
5. Egg and cress – 19%
6. Coronation chicken – 18%
7. Prawn mayonnaise – 14%
8. Smoked salmon and cream cheese – 11%
9. Beef and horseradish – 10%

So what's your favourite sandwich?

We're planning on going away this year and are very likely to be staying in the UK.

I'd love to go abroad and get a little place near the sea and hire a car so we can go off and explore but it's so expensive, and with having two young children I'm not convinced a package holiday would be practical (I'm thinking of the logistics of hauling them around the airports at crazy hours and having to share a room with them).

Have you got any plans to go away this year? If so, where are you off to?

Let's address the absolute travesty of the imperial system and the outrageous misnomer of calling cookies 'biscuits' – care to justify this colossal error?

Ok ok ok ok, if you've gotten this far, I am totally just teasing yall. So don't get mad lol stuffs different everywhere I know, and I know America is like, the only country that uses metric.

I just like to mess with y'all about it. Cause biscuits here, is a little circular bread ppl eat with dinner type foods. Cookies a desert.

Then the centimeters shit 🤣 MAN, I mean fuck lol you can't blame me okay, every time I'm shopping online especially when I'm buying a fucking bra or something else specific like that,

I'll find like a super, super, well made cute one. And it'll be a super unique and cute ass fucking bra. Eactly what I'm looking for that I can't find in the states. So the pressure is on at now at that point.

And then right when I go to order it, itll show me some fucking sizing chart with Algebraic geometry and the theoretical framework in physics that attempts to unify all of the fundamental forces and particles of nature into one cohesive framework.

And there's only like two of them left in stock, so I gotta hurry up and guess .

Like dammit lol like why ?

After hearing how poor the IT infrastructure in the British government is, I got wondering if it was time for them to implement a better solution than people running amuk on WhatsApp because there are no better options.

The obvious answer is to run Matrix instances, one for each government department like the French do. They've even made the app they developed open source and the German Ministry of Defence have been inspired by that to create their own app, with the idea being that it could then be rolled out to the rest of the government.

It wouldn't be too difficult for the British government to use existing solutions, perhaps adapted to their own circumstances. Perhaps with message histories getting saved so they can't be conveniently "lost" and/or algorithms to flag up suspicious activity.

It needn't stop there. With recent changes Xitter is no longer a useful platform for putting out official information. The Beeb are now on Mastodon, it is time something like that were used by MPs.

I'd be up for the idea that MPs get issued with a secure phone that contains only the apps vital for conducting political business and it could be made a offence to use your own devices for anything other than personal reasons.

It wouldn't stop all the shenanigans but it'd certainly go a long way to laying the foundations for a better political IT system and one that could largely be done in-house.

Anyway, just a few rambling thoughts brought on by recent events.

For example, switching out the word 'boot' for 'trunk', or ditching the word 'rubbish' for 'garbage'.

This is something I've noticed my 6 year old does pretty regularly. We went through a stage where 'sweets' became 'candy', 'holiday' became 'vacation' and 'courgette' became 'zucchini'.

That last one didn't happen but if you're still reading you've got my respect, or as the Americans might say '...mad props'.

Jurassic Park for me. I had an amazing JP jumper when I was like...maybe 6. It was far too big for me but I loved dinosaurs. Naturally this meant I wanted to watch the film because...well I'm 6 and it's got dinosaurs.

Ultimately I ended up watching it with my Mum and Dad. We got as far as the iconic T-Rex chase scene and I told them to turn it off. Didn't go near the film for another few years.

I've now got my own 6 year old. There's no scenario I could envisage where I even consider letting her watch a film as gory, tense and frightening as JP.

As a small child I was absolutely convinced that people in the olden days lived their day to day lives in black and white, and that they walked slightly faster than we did today (assuming a frame rate thing?).

I'm gonna put this one down to my understanding of how TV worked as a ten year old. Everything before colour TV was black and white... therefore everything was black and white. Makes perfect sense.

What about you?

So some idiot crashed into my car on Monday night (whilst it was parked). The best part? It's happened twice in two years. Fun right?

Anyway. I'm viewing some cars tomorrow. I've got a budget. 4k at an absolute maximum (primarily because I'm convinced it's going to get wrecked again).

I'm going on my own and I know next to nothing about cars so I'd really appreciate any tips or clues as to what to look out for.

Update

Looking at some more cars tomorrow with my step Dad. Fingers crossed. Your advice has been very helpful. Cheers.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13644411

With the discussion of whether assisted dying should be allowed in Scotland befing brought up again, I was wondering what other people thought of the topic.

Do you think people should be allowed to choose when to end their own life?

What laws need to be put into place to prevent abuses in the system?

How do we account for people changing their mind or mental decline causing people to no longer be able to consent to a procedure they previously requested?

Over the past few years, I've noticed an increase in the number of smelly people out and about. In particular, it seems like there's been a sharp increase in the number of people unable to clean themselves properly after going to the toilet.

This increase has been since at least lockdowns ended. It used to be that maybe once in a while there'd be the odd person you'd turn away from or maybe one regular grumpy post office customer who always stank but now it seems like every time I go out there's a minimum of one random person who is utterly offensive and either doesn't realise or doesn't care.

It makes sense to me that people who live alone would become more lax in their personal hygiene during lockdown. Perhaps it was always this way and I'm being retro-romantic about pre-lockdown times. Perhaps it's because I shop at Asda, I don't know.

Has anyone else noticed an increase in smelly people in the past few years?

Edit: bewildered by the downvotes.

What's the worst job you've ever had? What made it bad and how long did you last?

So as with all things, I'm watching the episode of Bluey where they dress up as the Queen. It got me wandering.

What happens if you refuse to use the right title when talking to the King, Queen and other prominent Royals?

In my head you're arrested, imprisoned in the ToL, given a faux-trial and then find your head quickly removed from your body. I'm wrong right?

I'll kick us off with an absolute banger...

Boyzone - Love Me For A Reason

I was like 6. I wanted it desperately. Listening back to it now, as a 36 year old man I can admit that it's an absolutely horrible bit of music....but it still takes me back to being a young kid.

I’ve been watching the Rugby Cup Final this evening and fuming. They have this fancy new traveling side camera and they can’t help but use it. STOP IT!!! You are making everybody seasick. Which made me think, might you good people have examples of when somebody badly overplayed their new toy? On a completely unrelated note, do we already have a community for rants?