Bear Necessities

Well, this is fun!

My goodness, that is a horrific year for you. I hope things get better for you in 2024 and beyond.

They republish that article every time it's rates day.

Haha I was going to ask who the crazy person was!

This year was way better than the previous one for me financially, as I found out that people who say "money can't buy you happiness" were lying to a certain extent (perhaps to make those without money feel better about not having any?) Or rather, perhaps, that Spike was right in that "Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery." Plus time has passed between where I am standing now, and the awful things that happened in the last five years (job loss, deaths in the family, probate, partner's ovarian cancer) (she's now cancer free btw, which is a huge weight off our shoulders, and it all played out around the time that there were high profile Ovarian cancer cases in the news, so we are very aware of how badly it could have turned out) Am basically playing life on easy mode from here on out. Which makes things a bit surreal, as my personal experience of 2023 is probably the inverse of a lot of people's.

Yes, the new one that has just opened here in Chester (to replace the fleapit that closed down more than a decade ago) is one of those Picturehouse ones where it's all about the experience - comfy seats, food and a bar and all that jazz. Making it an "experience" rather than just a film. So yes, more of a theatre style "event" with a price tag to match. I think that chain is owned by Cineworld so there was worry over whether it would ever actually open, as Cineworld regular cinemas were/are in some serious financial difficulties. But I think perhaps the Picturehouse-style ones are the future and the regular Cineworlds are the past.

Ha yes, I agree that Bananagrams et al are no replacement for cinema Marvel, but at 14 I'm just grateful he still (occasionally) wants to play games with us and his younger brother! I think Disney have shot themselves in the foot a bit with Disney+ (releasing on there when the cinemas were closed due to the pandemic didn't help matters) For the price of one cinema ticket a month, over the last couple of years I've sat with him and watched every Marvel film since Iron Man (apart from Eternals because that's awful), as a family we've watched every Pixar film and introduced the younger kid to all the Alladin/Lion King era Disney stuff. Insanely good value and I'm not even a Disneyland holiday kind of a guy. We've also watched all the New Who stuff (not on Disney). There's a whole wealth of incredibly cheap content out there, it's staggering. A lot of it in 4K too which on a big TV is something I couldn't have dreamed of at his age! He's now moved on to starting watching all the classic era Doctor Who episodes (on iPlayer) which shows dedication as there is a hell of a lot of dross to wade through to find the gems.

We do have board games (ticket to ride and some short fun games like throw throw burrito, cat goat cheese pizza, bananagrams etc) which they enjoy when they aren't on the switch or watching nextflix, but as far as the Marvel films go - the last few films that came out - my (14-yesterday-year-old) son has just said "well we could just wait until they are on Disney plus" which is usually only 4 to 6 months these days, and even to rent them (at about £3.50) is only a few weeks after they are out at the cinema. That's become a vast gap now. It was one thing when cinema tickets were super cheap (still are if you get deals etc) and to rent the latest film at Blockbuster meant waiting the best part of a year and then suffering VHS quality on a pokey little telly at home. But now the at home experience is so much better and not many months after the cinema, there is very little any of us will bother to make the trip to the multiplex for. (I'm happy to pay for them to go, so it's not a money thing, but there's just no interest) I'm not sure about the future of cinema if my eldest son is typical - he told me that he doesn't think the bigger screen is worth not having the sofa, the microwave popcorn and a cupboard full of snacks on hand just to see something a few months earlier, on a "big" screen (given that most TVs these days are vastly bigger than the 21 inch "big" telly we had to suffer as kids. He also says "the cinema is full of people who don't even want to watch the film properly and are on their phones or talking. So I think cinema etiquette is a lost art too. We did see Mario on the big screen as a family activity, but I don't think it gained all that much from being 50ft high. and before the last thing my wife and I saw there was the Matrix reboot, but definitely came away thinking that would have been fine as a Friday night movie on the sofa, but wasn't worth the price of admission! John Wick 4 was good as a cinema experience though so I think it still has its place, but I can't see how they will survive like they did in previous decades.

-10% because I think they should have fallen more this year, when compared to interest rates but i think that 2 year fixes etc have stored up a lot of that pain for 2024 when people come off their fixes. Also I think it take a couple of years for a chunk of sellers to face reality that this isnt a blip and prices aren't going to recover if they just hold off selling for another few months.

"TalkTalk has warned there are doubts over its future survival" Well that's some good news! We are with TalkTalk. They ballsed up our switch from BT so majorly that it took months for our fibre to be reconnected, and almost daily phone calls. We ended up getting paid so much statutory compensation from them for lack of service that we had free 500Mb fibre for over a year. I would have left them by now were it not for my fear of the next switch going as badly.

cheers

I do exactly the same with mine and it has helped a couple of times when a company has gone out of business and I've claimed back via the card. Who is your card with if you dont mind me asking? Is it the Amazon one, or do other baenks offer similar perks? I signed up with Tesco Credit Card a long long time ago as you used to get a reasonable level of "cashback" in the form of clubcard points (on everything, but 4 times as many on instore purchases, which then converted into even more restaurant vouchers etc) but I think since they have severely watered down both the card scheme and the voucher scheme, so I could do with finding one that has better incentives.

You don't even agree with yourself. Up until now it's been all "rate cuts are coming this year" and now it's all "well, they *should* be cutting rates"

Yes, We've had a second hand (Sunderland built) Nissan Leaf since 2018 and all it has needed in that time is a couple of new tyres and the tracking sorting (and one of the tyres was because I ran over a nail, rather than anything specific to EVs) Of the half dozen or so cars I've had it is by far the lowest maintenance. It weights 1500kg roughly, not sure how that compares with ICE cars but certainly lower weight than all these unnecessarily huge things I see on the school run (the cars, not the mums). Has never needed new brake pads or anything more than a wiper blade thus far. So currently it's done us for 5 years at just the cost of an MOTx5, tyres x2 and a wiper blade. Still £0 a year on the vehicle tax at the moment (not sure if that is changing soon) and the insurance was a whopping £330 this year. I've heard numbers such as around 30,000 parts in a regular petrol car and about half that number in an EV. That's a hell of a lot less to go wrong when you think that a lot of those extra parts are moving ones. Which I guess is good news for the end user, but less good news for the garage.

Given that we are only a year from the last possible time for an election and all the rumours say Autumn, is there anything to stop Sunak from calling one in the Spring (or at least threatening to) if they try to oust him? Because if its a choice between another leadership race and a general election, wouldn't they just opt for the GE at this late stage? Does he get to choose? Can he just say "f**k you all I'm going nuclear". I'm guessing the opposition would all vote in favour if there has to be a vote, and I could imagine a fair few Tories would (the ones that have already got something lined up for after the defeat)

^this

I'm with the NIMBYs on this one. I assume that an AONB would have stringent rules so "Mr Phillips said he did not believe the buildings needed planning permission" makes him sound like a right chancer. If I was going to sink a load of money into something like this I think I'd spend the 10 minutes it would take to make the call to the planning office to see if I needed permission. No harm in asking, unless you already knew you were likely to need permission and thought you would get away with it. So he's either negligent in not checking first, or chancing his arm by deliberately doing something he knows isn't ok. Either way he took his chance and paid the price.

I don't think many people were using typewriters by 2003, but if they were. If they needed a new ribbon, and couldn't afford to pay the money for a new one, then their typewriter would stop working. If you consider buying ribbons (or for printers ink cartridges) in a shop every time they run out, is essentially not dissimilar from a subscription for the same. The car heated seat thing - (was it BMW?) was short-lived. so today it isn't a reality because you are right it was laughable and they had to scrap the idea.

It's a good job that it takes all of 10 seconds to save out a CV as a .docx format in the free online software Google Docs then (or the free version of Word online). And it looks identical 99% of the time and nobody is any the wiser. And if you aren't certain it looks the same you can open your saved file in a free microsoft word viewer provided by microsoft themselves to check it looks the same. But sure you could also make up reasons why you can't print it because of subscriptons. (nobody has sent a CV in the post to anyone in the last 15 years, because it would make you look like a luddite who can't use email, hell why not fax it over?)

The doorbell thing is bullsh*t. We have a Blink doorbell which is similar to ring. It came with a free subscription, but when that ran out you can still use the doorbell locally. Losing the subscription doesn't mean you can't hear someone at the door, that's just nonsense. In the case of blink the doorbell still rings on all the devices without the subscription and it also stores video locally on the hub memory card. Also if I choose I can get a regular doorbell with batteries or that wires into the house that has no fancy features but just needs new batteries occasionally. Nobody has removed that option from me. The subscription gives you premium features like cloud storage and remote access, but they aren't as basic features as "being able to use it as a doorbell like the doorbells people have had for decades." same for spotify, if you have to lose the sub because you can't afford it each month then you can drop down to the free tier where you listen to it with adverts on. You don't lose access to the music, you just lose the extra premium features (so it ends up more like the radio than your own personal jukebox). and then I could listen to the radio instead if I didnt want to use spotify at all. If they lose their Peloton subscription, the bike doesnt stop working. You can still exercise on it. It doesn't lock the wheels. you just lose the premium features like having a motovational tw*t telling you to pedal faster.

"House prices to rise £30k next year as mortgage rates fall" chinny reckon...

It'll probably tick down to 425, 400, 375... whereas if they'd just ripped the band-aid off in one go and gone from £500 to £425 they might have sold it by now.

They've already killed off the frailest ones.

Teslas are bad I believe compared to other EV makers (although I don't have the stats to back that up) more recently other manufacturers are keen to show that their vehicles pass the nail test which is smashing the batteries with a nail repeatedly at high speed - nothing happens, it doesn't explode. Not sure if that is an improvement on the Tesla architecture or not, but it's certainly not an insurmountable problem (I'm guessing even though petrol vehicles set on fire a lot more, it's probably still a lot less than it was in the 1910s and 1920s) (although probably not as many in London as in Paris!)

Uh, you mean the Luton airport fire that was caused by a diesel vehicle and not an EV (despite what losers on twitter and facebook would have us all think) chief fire officer Andy Hopkinson as saying the blaze appeared to have been accidental and "we don't believe it was an electric vehicle." The Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, which tackled the blaze, said in a statement online (archived here) it "can confirm the initial vehicle involved in the fire was a diesel car." Rebecca Croft, communications manager for Bedfordshire county police, told the same to AFP in an October 12 email: "We can confirm the initial vehicle involved in the fire was a diesel car."