PowerSwitch

We have used a garden spray shower on our showing-its-age boat for years and found it often gives a better shower than those in the on site shower blocks. It helps to get a spray rose fitting to give you the proper shower effect. One kettleful of boiling water will do two good showers mixed in the p...

Journalists always talk about the payback period but I prefer to think of it by comparing it to annuity rates since I am rapidly approaching that age. If I take a lump sum and buy a single life level payment annuity the return after tax is not very good (to put it mildly) at present let alone buying...

I don't mind the robust responses, it's the constant snide remarks about those who are out of step which I find so depressing.

I tend to read most days but rarely post. The tone is much more bad tempered than when I first started reading. It's quite depressing because there was a much stronger sense of purpose a year or so ago. A lot of you say that you look forward to living in more sustainable ways with a 'real' sense of ...

I wonder, did the people of the 1930s refer to thei plight as a depression while it was happening? Or are depressions only (allowed to be) called such once they are over? If the latter, then we may never have a depression :twisted: They mostly called it "the slump" at the time, I believe....

so there doesn't seem to be any reason why we shouldn't have the "bonus" of adequate street lights other than the fact that councils would be charged at a rate which does not reflect the real marginal cost . I have to walk home along a station approach road where the lamps are widely space...

OK the economy 7 comment was being flippant but seriously, looking at the bigger picture, not just from the councils' perspectives, I would like to know what difference it will actually make to overall energy consumption given that there is a base load requirement for electricity generation - power ...

I'm not against this in principle but midnight seems too early especially on Friday and Saturday when young people are coming home after a night out. If it puts girls at greater risk it's bad news. Anyway isn't it mainly base load electricity generation at that time? Maybe they should just get an ec...

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity

You'll find it makes really nice soup with just the right amount of texture. I have also seen moulis with slicing discs so that they can act as a replacement for a food processor. Always useful to have something which is not dependent on electricity

Ho hum

The general principle behind loss carry forward is that if you take a loss making year and a profit making year together you haven't really made any money - you've just got back to where you started before the loss. So far so relatively uncontroversial. It's the size of the losses that make this dis...

re the cat flap, you can get flaps which only open in response to a signal emitted by a small transmitter on the cat's collar (assumes your cat will wear a collar, of course). This cuts down a lot on draughts but probably wouldn't stop it being a cold bridge.

Do a google search for a mouli (they sell them on DODGY TAX AVOIDERS). It makes really nice soup but still with a bit of texture

A lot of the comments about hospitalised childbirth that one reads are frankly out of date. I have 2 children 18 and 12 and had an epidural for both. Yes the exeprience for the first one was that it made it hard to know when to push and I ended up with forceps. But 12 years ago when I had DD2 (at th...