The Swear Box

Since when did it become acceptable to swear loudly and explicitly in public places?

I recently tweeted that I didn't want my kids to ride on buses in Stevenage any more. Not that they did very much anyway, but I made the decision. I am lucky enough to work from home most of the time, which works well because I can spend more time with my family. However, on some days I have to go into the office, and because I'm too lazy to ride my bike, I get the bus.

The journey in, before 8am, is usually OK. However, I have found that if you catch a bus after 4pm you are bound to get some morons in the back seat talking loudly and usually every other word they use is the f-bomb. I am usually appalled, but too scared to confront anyone about it. I might if I had my kids with me, because I don't want them exposed to such idiocy just yet.

I assume the other people on the packed bus don't like it. They just look forward and dare not turn around I imagine. We all grin and bare it. But why? Nobody wants to hear that.

It could be something to do with my upbringing, or their upbringing. When growing up, the f-word was the forbidden word, nobody would dare say it or my Mum would flip. Even my Dad wouldn't. As for the c-word, I don't think my Mum even knew it existed. I think because of this we would get a bit of a kick out of it when we saw it on films (as it was rarely on TV in the 80s, at least the TV we watched) - memorably when the word is subtitled in the film Critters.

Anyway, as a result, I am a bit sensitive to swearing. I am sure people who swear in public, above the age of 16, were brought up with their parents swearing casually either at them or around them house. So I suppose it is a case of what you know, and they know no different, just like me. But it doesn't make it very nice.

It could be that society has changed and the thugs rule the street? Yobs do what they want because they know no-one will challenge them? Or could it be a Stevenage thing - a rough place, full of rough people, jointly with Broxbourne the most deprived area in Hertfordshire? Or it could be that I am overly sensitive.

One thing is for sure - over the weekend I will make sure my bike is fully working - no more bus for me, its bad for my health.

Moneysaving Idiot

2011 is set to be a hard year financially, as if 2010 wasn't. With more cuts in the public sector, and the VAT increase, most of us don't have much money to waste.

With that in mind, I have compiled a list of the best money-saving techniques, ways to make money with little effort and some interesting freebies. Some of these are common knowledge, and maybe a bit patronising, but here they are anyway! These are the ones I use anyway.

1. Cashback websites


These are easy to use, require very little effort and mean you basically get money for nothing. The concept is simple - you set up your account, say with Quidco. Then say you are buying a DVD from Play.com - you simply link to Play.com from Quidco, and complete the purchase as normal. The cashback site will claim from Play a percentage, in this case 5% of the purchase price and pay it back to you. Admittedly, if you are buying DVDs, video games and that kind of thing, you probably won't make more than a quid on any purchase. If you are buying ink cartridges, you may make some more. You really make money on insurance policies, new mobile phone contracts (I made about £60) and broadband services (I made £40 on a £5 Orange Mobile contract, Virgin Media are very generous as well).

Quidco does take an annual £5 fee from your earnings, which is how the site is funded, and different retailers take varying amounts of time to pay up. Topcashback is a very similar site with similar rates.

You may have read all of this before, but I would say this really works well. The only thing is that no cashback sites link to Amazon, but if you can get over that, you'll be fine!

2. Consumerpulse

This is a online spending diary. Everytime you purchase something like clothes, video games, DVDs, MP3s, perfumes, or go the cinema, you log it with Consumerpulse. For each item logged, you get 500 points. Each week you get 500 points. On your birthday you get extra points. Each month you completed a Telecom questionnaire and you get extra points for that. If you complete 13 in a row you get even more points. So what good are points?

Well, once you have at least 10,000 points you can convert them to vouchers from a number of retailers like Next, Argos, Pizza Hut, Monsoon and more. Or you can donate your earnings to charity. Now, there is a cap on how many points you can earn in a month, I think around 6,000 for purchases. And you will need to validate most purchases with things like barcodes, so you can't really make stuff up.

I saved my vouchers up for Christmas, and had about £120 to spend. As for getting signed up, I received an invite through the post. At one point I received 10 invites to give out. But aside from that, I have no idea how to get chosen to take part! Good luck though.

3. HotUKDeals.com

This is one website I check daily. Keen moneysavers post offers/deals/freebies they have seen, and then you can vote on whether the deal is hot or cold. There are some great deals out there. The site also has a Twitter feed, an RSS feed, an Ipod/Iphone app, as well as an app for Android amongst others.

Basically good deals on everything from supermarket essentials, to DVDs, computer games, hardware and everything in between.

4. Matched Betting

This is a bit more risky, but if you follow the rules to the letter and key a log of your incomings and outgoings, you will be fine. The basic premise is that you take advantage of an online betting site's free bet offer in conjunction with a betting exchange, like Betfair. In many cases you put a bet on a team to win on the gambling site and the same team to lose (lay bet) on the betting exchange. This means you can't really lose. Then if you qualify for a free bet, you do the same again, and usually make a profit, a good one being about £30.

You can only do this once with each company, so this is a case of getting in, getting your money and getting out. You can also use this in conjunction with Quidco, which means you get extra cashback - so for example, you can get £10 cashback for signing up Betfair, £25 for signing up with Jaxx etc.

The site I used is http://www.freebets4all.com/matcher.aspx - however, as a word of warning, read of all of the information, and be careful not to try it on websites where you have to wager your free bet winnings numerous times before you can withdraw it, because you'll never get it all back.

The only other thing with this is that you will need some cash to put down in the first place - you have to speculate to accumulate!

5. Like Eating Out? Get a Taste Card


There are some similar cards to this out there, but this is one we have. It gives you a discount off your food in restaurants nationwide, usually 50%. The main ones in Stevenage are Prezzo and Pizza Express. We went to Prezzo quite a lot, and by drinking mineral water, we were about to get a meal for a family for four, with starters, down to about £20.

The card costs £69.95 - http://www.tastecard.co.uk/ - although there are always deals out there, sometimes they give them out for free for a limited period, or they heavily discount them. But definitely worth looking out for.

6. Get Your Shopping Delivered


I swear by this. OK, so you have to a few quid to get a delivery, but the amount you save in not making impulse purchases more than makes up for it. If you plan your meals as much as you can, and only order what you need you can potentially save £100s each year. If you live near Baldock you can collect your shopping rather than have it delivered.

The best part of this is that you don't have to battle your way through the supermarket each week which is good for the stress levels.

7. Get Free Cinema Tickets From Sky


This is a new one to me, thanks to HotUKDeals. If you are Sky Customer, they put on regular free preview screenings. We went to watch Tangled 3D well before it was released generally, and didn't pay a penny for the tickets (although the popcorn was expensive). So worth it if you are Sky Customer: http://movies.sky.com/my-sky-extras-cinema-previews

Well, that's all I have for now! Hope this is useful to someone out there! Would love to hear about any others.....

Noisy Neighbours: Our battles

For many people, noisy or inconsiderate neighbours are source of immense anxiety and unease. For many years we had very quiet neighbours but that changed in December 2009. This is a quick tale of our experiences of dealing with our problems neighbours and hopefully, a indication that there is hope.

Before I start, I need to say that if you Google noisy neighbours, you get a wealth of information and, also details of many horror stories. Reading those, I'd say we never had it that bad. But here is how our noisy neighbours affected me:

1) It takes over your life. Noises, which you would have considered innocuous in the past become a source of endless uneasy and discomfort. You become obsessed with little sounds. You may even find yourself with your ear to the wall!
2) You dread going home. We never knew if they were going to be noisy or not, but we knew it would be a stressful night finding out.
3) The anticipation is often worse than the noise. Once the noise is started, at least you know you can take an action, whether it ends up being inaction. The worst part is often worrying about whether they will be noisy or not, the not knowing.
4) You can't do much about it when it is going on. You could of course, knock on the door and ask them to be quiet. You can't always do that, and it may be safe to do that at 3am when your neighbours are drunk. You also cannot call the police, because they don't deal with noise. All you can do is dwell, keep a record and try to get some sleep
5) You want to move house. Ironically, the previous tenants of the problem house did just that due to another noisy neighbour. During the whole time we were actively looking at moving.
6) You despair about humanity. A little strong maybe, but you start thinking, how can anyone be that bloody inconsiderate? Who would dream of playing their music at full volume without considering the feelings of others?

Our story started with a new next door neighbour. A young girl and her very young daughter. It was let by a private landlord but to a council tenant. On News Years Eve night, we had a taste of things to come, awoken by loud music and shouting at 5am.


One year on, we had a knock on the door on NYE evening - the same neighbours said they were having some friends over but would try and be as quiet as possible. So what happened in a year?


The Noisy Beginnings


We started to notice the noise with a bang. Loud music at 7pm and would only stop when we knocked. Then the noise would be very late at night, playing very loud music. The worst nights woke us all up, two adults and two young children. Rather than feeling helpless, the next morning we would be angry.

The worst night had the police called by a neighbour on the other side. This was because they had a disturbance where one of the guests in the problem house threatened violence. The police came out and checked out what happened with the female neighbour. Weirdly, after the police left the loud music continued.

The next morning, very early I knocked on their door. Some pleb answered the door. The tenant was apparently too ill (hungover) to come to the door. I said I want to talk about the noise. The pleb said yes, there were some rowdy people here but the police were called. I said I don't care about your problems, I was talking about playing music all night and then put my head through the door to shout through to the tenant not to be so bloody inconsiderate. She said sorry, it won't happen again.

It did of course. A while later, my wife was riled and she did an early morning knock. Some other pleb answered, and she asked to speak to the tenant. The pleb said that she didn't know what tenant meant. That hit home at the level of intellect we were dealing with. We had taken some action by then....

What we did


We had assumed that knocking and shouting was not getting through to our neighbours. There was another house on the other side of the problem neighbour, and those neighbours were equally annoyed as us, but did very little about it. However, knowing that they were not happy (they were also thinking of moving) gave us the impetus to press on.

We first contacted the council and they sent us a diary to complete for two weeks. We had anticipated that and had already kept a diary, so we completed the council form and sent it by return. The problem neighbours apparently got a letter saying there was a complaint against them and to turn the music down. Three days later, the music was as loud as ever in the early evening. Fortunately, the council had a phone number to call where an officer would come out to witness the noise, and so we called them and they did witness it. After the person left, we knocked and asked our neighbours to turn the music down.

As a result, a few days later the tenant got a letter saying that the complaint had escalated and that by continuing the noise they were at risk of prosecution. This stopped the music.  But.....

The aftermath


Our lovely neighbours no longer played loud music, but continued to be noisy. They would sit out in the garden until the early hours, shouting and swearing at each other in a way that only very thick people can. This was the height of the summer, so it meant we couldn't leave our bedroom window open otherwise we would be kept up all night.

We did some investigating and discovered they were private tenants with a landlord liaison officer at the council. After a few weeks of putting up with idiots shouting, we sent a strong, detailed email to the officer. We saw an official looking person enter the house very soon after, and the noise stopped overnight. It turns out that landlords are equally responsible for any problems, and these actions are a direct breach of a standard tenancy agreement.


Complications


The actions of another neighbour, on the other side of the problem house in the terrace, demonstrated how not to handle the situation. They regularly threatened our hard work by playing very loud music in retaliation. This approach never works and just makes it harder to complain about your neighbours, as you have no credibility.

Ironically, now our problem neighbours have been largely silenced, these other neighbours are still periodically noisy. We are still considering whether to pursue them as well......

The End?

That's our story. I didn't publish it straight away, just in case the noise came back. I am taking a risk, but I hope this blog gives hope to those in a similar situation. There is hope, but it can take a while and takes persistence, but it can be done.

Adventures in Recycling

Have you had a recycling epiphany?

I believe I had mine when I found myself filling a bin up with empty plastic lemonade bottles and empty plastic bags from Tesco and thinking "this is crazy". It all started then. For a while I was militant about what we recycled in the house - much to my wife's displeasure, who still would much rather just throw everything in the bin and forget about it.

So I was would wash out yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, keep all plastic bags, shred all paper, in addition to the usual collections of plastic bottles and all cardboard. I bought a composter, and began to put foodstufs in that (and my wife never even pretended to go along with that). I was really pleased with myself (although I never got much gratitude from anyone for doing it, other that a few grunts from the staff at the Household Recycling Centre).

This arrangement worked well, as we reduced our weekly number of bin bags (for a household of two adults and two young children) from 3+ bags per week to around one and half bags per week, one on a good week. Then one week I took my usual load of assorted plastics to the Recycling Centre, only to be told they weren't recycling that stuff any more. It was brutally thrown into the general rubbish.

This had an effect on me. I no longer collected much of anything except for plastic bottles and cardboard. Plastic bottles are a pain to keep, as they accumulate very quickly and often get blown around the garden if I don't stay on top of them. But I kept collecting them, even though I had acquired the opinion that nobody else cared much.

Earlier this year, Stevenage Borough Council extended their green waste scheme to include food and cardboard along with the usual garden trimmings. This has been great as far as I'm concerned. It certainly saves me taking the cardboard down the recycling centre myself. This waste is all turned into compost. And I certainly don't mind using the kitchen caddy, even sometimes rifling through the bin to find scraps that have been casually thrown out by the wife (or mother-in-law).

However, I wondered about cardboard. I always thought the cardboard I took the Recycling Centre was recycled into new cardboard, which is the best thing for it, right? However, when I put it in the brown bin it becomes compost (and how much compost does the world need?). I wondered which was more benefitical for the environment (bearing in mind the motives of the council is to hit a waste reduction target and hence reduce inflated landfill charges). So I emailed the mystical waste wizard with my query but unfortunately he hasn't magiked a response yet.

I often wonder about the motivation of people who recycle. From my experience, it turns out that women generally don't go for it. Men do so more. Environmental concerns are less of a issue or a reason for people to do it - it may even be a turn off.

I don't think of the environment per-se when I recycle - on the basis that I have no real perception of what "landfill" looks like, other than in photos. I tend to do it because it reduces the waste. I think my original motive was that I didn't like trudging 3 or more bags out of my back gate, around the garages, up the road and back to my front door - eg laziness!

One person who does it say she does it because with no food waste in the bin bags she doesn't get cats ripping the bags open. Thats a good motivation. I think people who do recycle have their reasons, and they tend to be practical reasons like that.

I think recycling is the best thing we can do and its not even a new concept. Remember when most people used to get their milk from the milk man? Not a plastic carton in site, and the glass bottles were used again and again and again with no fuss. Old people are the original "green bag" pioneers - how many old folks do you see walking around with one of those usually red-and-white checked bags? They don't need plastic bags thank you!

I think more people can and will recycle, they just need the right motivations. Not the environment. Not even money (eg your council tax will increase if you don't recycle more). Just appeal to our laziness and our drive for cleanliness. If we can do that, then we'll be a nation of militant recyclists in no time!

Why I hate DVDs

Are you proud of your DVD collection?

I can't tell you how much I've spent on DVDs of films and television series I've barely watched since.

One of the first DVDs I ever bought, Blade Runner, still sits unwatched after eight years. Same with Scarface and Reservoir Dogs. When they came out DVDs were great (if expensive) - brilliant picture quality, quite neat looking. Much better than those fat, clunky, chewed up VHS tapes we used to have.

So I guess everyone went out of their way to complete their collections of the "classics" eg films and TV programmes you used to like when you were 12 but haven't seen since. But now I can't understand this need for us to hoard these disks in our living rooms, maybe built on the assumption that one day, somehow, the Shawshank Redemption will not be available to buy anymore, and then what will soceity do!

In a way, in our home, they became a status symbol, so they were carefully arranged in case anyone happened to have a glance at them (even though we have very "new" few visitors to the house, and even less back then!). So my wife would move all of the ones she liked to the front of the shelves (Clueless, Jaws etc) - and basically hid all of my favourites at the back where she hoped I'd forget about them (Back to School, UHF, Don't Look Back, Filth and the Fury, The Future is Unwritten etc). Trouble is, I did forget about them!

Since I've had kids, and since they've been able to operate the DVD player (eg from 6 months old), these old DVDs have really showed their true colours! They jump like crazy - some even on the title screen - and what is more annoying that a jumping DVD! I admit it is due to the finger-prints and scratches on the disk but still! At least videos had a durable case and could be handled without fear of total corruption. They even had a basic lock on them to stop little hands fiddling with the tape!

I resent the fact that I've had to buy at least four copies of Toy Story and three copies of Monsters Inc due to the jumping!

The last DVD I bought myself, King of Kong, cost £4.99 and was pretty great film. But I wish I had rented it because I'll probably never watch it again. So about 10 months ago I decided to stop buying DVDs unless the purchase adhered to a very strict criteria:

• It costs less than £5
• Its a kids film (because they will watch most films ad nauseum - just over the weekend I watched a Nightmare Before Christmas about 8 times)

This worked tremendously, but now christmas is approaching I have to admit I've paid full whack for a couple of new DVDs. I won't say which ones in case either my 3 year old or 5 year old son is reading this (and if you are, boys, I'm buying it on behalf of Father Christmas because he's very busy), but this is the only time I'd justify it. But only for the kids, and I'm making these purchases fully aware that in about 6 weeks the same DVDs will be stacked up in Tesco for £3 a pop!

However, I sometimes have to stop myself in my weaker moments - I nearly purchased the newest Indiana Jones DVD for reasons unclear to even my fragile mind; I was recently tempted by the Dungeons and Dragons complete series for £9 (I resisted) - and I still have a craving for the Mysterious Cities of Gold boxset (still Mysteriously expensive at £30) which I will continue to fight!

Now, as for Blu-Ray, don't get me started.....!

An introduction

I always believed that reading someone else's blog was much like listening to someone else trying to explain a dream they had - totally boring. Unless of course the blog is about something that interests you, like fixing niggling computer crashes or news about your favourite band. Or you know the person writing the blog.

I don't know if anyone will ever read this except for me. Its probably best they don't, only because I'll be really embarrassed.

So my blog will almost certainly be completely boring because it has no context. I imagine it will be like a poorly written diary. It definitely won't be funny. So don't read on unless you like hearing other people talk about their dreams and weird stuff like that.