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.