Swindlers

Just had the electricity bill in.

We pay by direct debit, and had overpaid, so having told me that the “owe” us money, they very kindly stated they’d carry that over to the next statement.

If that’s not bad enough, they went on to state that they had “reviewed your account and the good news is your monthly payments do not need to change.” THE HELL THEY DON’T!!! We’ve just come through the heaviest period of electricity usage and had overpaid by a significant amout – I’d say they needed to change quite a lot.

I prepared myself for a call centre onslaught (tea, bickies, comfy chair and rubber mallet [to hit the phone with – sledge hammers tend to break phones]) and gave them a call.

After a short wait, I was connected to a very bubbly “operative” who was happy to refund my overspend, and, without prompting, offered to check if she could reduce my monthly payment. Funnily enough, she found she could – by nearly 24%.

So how come, when the bill was sent the same company thought the payments didn’t need to change I wonder?

Bittersweet irony

I’m not usually one to hit the sales – having a pathological loathing of crowds, walking at snail’s pace, rummaging and a health scepticism about “was” prices doesn’t usually add up to it being a pleasant experience. However, I’ve recently lost some weight which has meant I’ve dropped a dress size for the first time ever (i.e. since I went from an age size to a dress size) and decided to see if I could treat myself to a couple of things that actually fit.

To my surprise I found a number of tops which I really liked, but there was one snag – none of them were in my new size, but ironically I could have had any of them in my old size.

Oh well, never mind. I’ve put that much weight on over Christmas (owing to it being spent with Mother and not Fell walking as I’d have preferred) I might soon be able to find something in my size!

Buying in bulk

For a while now, we’ve been buying quite a lot of our food shopping in bulk. By this I mean the storable stuff – tins, milk (to freeze), flour, oats, dried fruit and nuts, tea etc. This has been partly to reduce the number of shopping trips we have to make and partly to save money.

Having been doing this for a while, I have noticed a number of pros and cons.

Pros:
It’s usually cheaper to buy in bulk than in smaller quantities
Can’t be tempted to buy additional things if you’re not in the supermarket
Can be a good social thing if you have a local co-operative (like the one at http://www.neeps.co.uk)
If you do have a local co-operative, you don’t have to have the full bulk quantity if someone else wants some too.
Cons:
There’s often more packaging (4 packets of tea come in their usual boxes, in a cardboard tray wrapped in celophane and that particular tea doesn’t come in larger quantity single boxes)
You need additional st0rage space
You need to be sure you can use that quantity before it goes out of date.
Not supporting the local shops (though you might actually be supporting them more, as if you only want a couple of bits/some veg you might be more inclined to get that from a local shop/farm shop/farmers market than travel to a supermarket)
Ironically, it can cost more in petrol if where you get your bulk from is a long way, or not on your way somewhere else.

Rather more cons there – not what I’d hoped for when we started doing this, but what I’d expected when I started this post.

I still intend to continue to buy in bulk, but I’d like to try and reduce that cons list. The last one doesn’t apply for me. One place we by bulk from we only go to if we’re passing anyway. While the other is out of the way, it’s always part of a social event and I usually car share (or my car share partner collects for me, or me for her).

The cons that really bother me are the packaging and the local issues. Well with the latter, I should practice what I preach more often. The former I need to think about. I could change the things I buy, but that’s the only solution I can think of just now. As with most packaging issues, I can’t change the way the manufacturers do things.

The Green Cone

Last weekend, the OH and I (with not a little help from the cats – well, holes are there to be jumped into right?) installed our Green Cone (food waste digester system).

Amid much excitement (it’s been a long time coming), we took it in turns to dig the hole to the requisite 32″ diameter and 24″ deep (we like to “share”), screwed it all together, popped it in the hole, filled in around the sides (making sure we’d covered the base completely) and stood back (with hands on hips and a rather smug smile) to admire our handywork.

There’s a mix of things that can be put into the Green Cone – fish, red meat and poultry (including the bones of all 3), bread, fruit (inc peelings), veg (inc peelings), dairy produce, cooked food scraps, crushed egg shells, teabags and animal excrement – the majority of which can’t be added to the compost heap (hence the reason we got the cone).

According to the instructions, 0.75-1kg of food waste can be put in the cone EVERY DAY! Apparently, this amount is TYPICAL of that produced by a family of 4. Good-o, less in the bin.

That was Saturday morning. I sit here on Thursday evening, and all that’s in the white caddy (that comes with the cone to keep the bits in, because you obviously can’t be expected to find something to put the scraps in and carry them to the cone!) is one small piece of bacon fat.

The raw fruit and veg scraps, crushed egg shells and teabags go on the compost heap. The bread crusts (that’s the ends of the loaf, not the edges) gets fed to the birds (if the OH doesn’t get there first and turn them into midnight toast!). When I cook, I cook the right amount of food, or enough to freeze down for another day, or enough to have cold the next day for my lunch, so we don’t have cooked food scraps very often (only fatty bits and the very rare “I don’t feel too well and can’t quite finish this”). The bones from chicken will go in there the next time we have one (as will fish bones). It’s very rare that I buy food and it doesn’t get used. At the moment all that’s in the cone is (sorry to be blunt) cat and dog poo.

I don’t mind that, that’s why we got the cone really. We knew we didn’t have much in the way of non-compostable food scraps, but we do have a dog and 2 cats. But it got me thinking – don’t people know how much food they’re likely to eat, and therefore how much to buy and cook?

I can think of one family (who don’t even know about this blog, so if you’re reading it, it’s not you) for whom it’s a regular occurrence to buy food, pop it in the fridge and then chuck it in the bin – funnily enough, they don’t compost and are a 4 car family! But is that normal? How can people live like that?

How NOT to start the day

While eating my porridge this morning I had an idle surf through some news websites. I nearly choked at this!

Are they completely bloody stupid? More competition will create price wars at the expense of the growers/suppliers and the local economy.

Can they not see from their own (beautifully designed) pie charts that the supermarket onslaught is squeezing out the almost everyone except the “big four”? They’re loosing all the independants. How is that good? If they’re looking to create competition why are they looking to squash all the diverse competition in order to create some sanitised super-power-four?

How is that good?