Be Excellent To Each Other

I guess today's announcement from British Gas explains why the company hasn't offered a 'lock down your charges' for a while now. 35% on gas, with immediate effect. Still, good to see the company continually patronising its customers. We got sent four lightbulbs last week, and when I took its online 'improve your energy efficiency' test, British Gas suggested we insulate our loft (the already insulated one) and fit double-glazing (on our fully double-glazed house), so THAT'S ALL RIGHT, THEN!

Excellent.









not

Ban request: British Gas.

How are they not just expecting a mass exodus of customers?

Some twatbucket came to my door the other day asking me to change energy supplies. I told him I knew for a fact that I was with the cheapest and he tried to sell me a fixed-rate deal. Then I mentioned that if he had any deals worth having I'd just check them on moneysavingexpert.com for viability. For some reason as soon as I mentioned that he gave up and left immediately.

The solution is dead simple, never use gas!

Fuck. We only use leccy at my place, but you can bet your arse that's going to go up, too.

I'm surprised they have the nerve to do this after posting their 500% profit-increase earlier in the year.

9%

That's both the amount electric's going up and my score for British Gas.

I'm with EDF (not the Earth Defence Force, sadly) and they put up their prices for gas and electricity a little while ago. Can't remember the exact figure but it was something like 23 and 17% (respectively). I did go in for the last fixed-price arrangement thing they did a while ago but that may have expired by now, I don't know without looking at the paperwork at home.

I imagine everyone will be putting prices up

I'm with Ecotricity, all wind powered, apparently. Whoop-de-fucking-do. I'm off to hunt for the cheapest one.

It occurs to me that Bottom is merely a docusoap where CUS and CG live together.

Try again, and try and make it more banana related this time.

Half a banana.

Time to switch to coal.

It strikes me that our meters haven't been read for quite some time. We're with BG for both. Oh dear.

They're round here like clockwork, every three months, without fail. Half the time the fuckers walk mud into the house, too.

Blimey, that's lower than most games by Tynesoft.

Is how read it at least.

Sadly though, price hikes like these are the only think that is going to improve investment in renewable/energy efficient technologies.

Whilst people will often extol the virtues of going green, they tend not to give a fuck until it hits their pocket.

I think they should whack a windfall tax on utilities to raise money to soften the blow of these price hikes on the poor, and everyone else should take the hit in the short term for the long term benefit of not being so reliant on fossil fuels.

True. I notice B&Q were selling home wind turbines. They would pay for themselves in 7 years.

The warranty is for 5.

I've had a letter from sky today saying that my subscription is going up by a quid.

AND I've had a fucking letter from the gym saying my subscription is going up from september.

Fuck off with your subscription increases, cunts. I'll cancel everything at this rate.

If prices keep going up, which seems likely, it would probably pay for itself quicker.

Aside from which, the warranty period is not really a reflection of a product's life span.

Plus you might be able to repair it anyway, or get someone in to do so without much cost.

I'm going to be fixing my funsquare tomorrow for more or less free, for instance, where microsoft would have charged £60. Even if I screw up, I can get it done by someone else for £20. Nobs.

Those particular wind turbines do appear to be useless rubbish though. I mean I haven't tested one but that's because you'd be a bit silly to put a wind turbine on the roof of your house in the first place. Buy shares in a local wind farm instead. Or a solar water heater which will actually pay for itself in two years and last a lot longer.

Turns out the price hike may have been in part due to falling profits. That said, although a 20 per cent profit is a big drop, the fuckers at Centrica still make £992m in the first six months of this year.

Gah!

Thats all I can add really.

Gah!

It's especially bad news as my GF is cold all the time (bad circulation or something) and we've really leaky single glasing so come winter are heating bill will be massive{r}.

Big jumpers, Lave, big jumpers.

If you want someone to proof read your thesis, I can do it for a very reasonable fee.

*double checks own post for typos*

Phew.

I'm going to spend the winter wrapped in jumpers, I reckon. It's at times like this that I wish I had a wood burner, as those are generally excellent for warming the crap out of the room its in, and the heat often rises nicely to warm the upstairs of the house too. A game chap should be able to find burnable wood for free pretty much anywhere, but failing that logs aren't terribly expensive either.

Both our living room and dining room have open fireplaces. I will be cutting down a few tress on our hill for firewood for this winter, that's for sure.

Block them up and put in stoves. Seriously, having an open fireplace is worse than leaving a window open, and if you actually burn stuff in the open fireplace you're wasting 90% of it.

Best upgrade I've done on my rented house was welding up a box stove to fit the 70s fireplace.

Also, you needed to cut those trees down last year if you were wanting to burn them this winter.

In turn is that worse than putting a rug on a polished floor?

WE NEED TO GET A SCALE ON THIS!

They have flue doors on them, so can be shut up when not in use. And putting in stoves would (a) be fugly and (b) likely not be permitted as it's a listed building. Which also means we can't get double glazing. :rollseyes:



Not so much, no. We have always been able to happily burn entirely unseasoned wood without trouble. A couple of months drying out will be more than enough.

The GF will be spending most of winter in a jumper and a coat whilst inside. She's either nuts or medically close to death. I can't decide.



The spelling and content of my posts has plunged dramatically at the moment. AND I'M GOING TO DO NOTHING ABOUT IT TILL OCT/NOV!!!

^ points and laughs



I'm sure you can burn it happily, but you're getting vastly less heat out that way.

Let's burn Lave's thesis to stay warm.

Exceptionally pretty house >>>>> fuel bills.



Indeed, but it's *free*, so I don't really care. Having said that, I'll be cutting down more than I need, in order to season some over next summer.



Is it long enough, yet? Work harder, Lave!

It would keep you warm (if burnt) for approximately 3 seconds.

Can you really not put a stove in? Even if it's some sort of 'period' model? Swines!

How well does crappy scrap wood burn? I reckon you could fish a load of old stuff out of skips and so on, but it's probably coated in paint and glue and all sorts.

Indeed. Still, the house is proper 1500s Tudor, so a stove wouldn't really go anyway, like.


Pretty well, actually. Unpainted pallets are solid gold.

Painted stuff is usually okay, but some of it can be a bit foul smelling. I try to avoid if possible.

But what use is a palette without paint?

E.on have taken their fixed price tariff off their website... it was there earlier today.

Oh well, just switched to Southern Electric, who still have theirs on.

Wow they're brave.

They've just started a barrage of TV ads saying "Doesn't it seem everything is going up in price? Fix your energy bills till 2011".

Coming straight after a 35% hike, that takes balls.

Looks to me like they've been done by a media story on a quiet news day;

http://www.fool.co.uk/news/money-saving-tips/household-bills/2008/07/31/british-gas-has-not-raised-prices.aspx

I was about to say the same thing, as I just saw that ad.

Not really brave because if they sign up customers and tie them into a contract this enables them to buy their energy well in advance, i.e. now so the predicted increases won't really affect their profits. I wouldn't be surprised if the price-fixing actually furthers the increases in the wholesale price.

I don't mean brave in a lose money sense.

I mean a brave in a "Don't have people who just had their bills hiked storm their office and kill everyone for their astounding, amazing, impossibly hypocritical cuntery in even running the ad, let alone the specific phrasing of it." sense.