@jayceedee
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Interestingly enough the link mentions Samsung TV’s. They were the one that had voice control warnings back in 2015!! Link. I presume the two could be combined for an excellent spy mike!!
I was waiting for Bobby “Boris” Pickett to burst into a chorus of ? “I was working in the lab, late one night………………………..”?
The biggest problem is you just never know who to believe.
The wife took out a private pension after seeing her Aunt – second mother in reality – dying of cancer and her family not being able to get her the things she needed, let alone wanted. She quietly helped out to get her those things. She vowed her kids wouldn’t be faced with those choices so she set about getting a private pension. This was in the late 80’s. In the mid 90’s when Maggie told the population at large not to expect the State to look after you in your old age, she thought she was ahead of the game and on the right path. The scenarios expressed by the bank she went through, proffered £350k minimum in 2014 ( age 60 ) or a more likely £500k. She thought she was well covered. They said for her pension to fail, money had to fail. Well yes, it did to a certain extent, but successive governments of the day did more damage, and in the case of Equitable Life, so did the industry.
While the business was doing well, she ploughed money into the pension, upping it by 10% each year to allow for inflation. She started off at £100pm and capped it at £300pm. 25 years later in 2014 , after several pension débacles by the industry and Gordon Brown, it was worth just over £100k. In hindsight, she would have done better putting that money into paying off our own mortgage earlier perhaps or into a second mortgage and buying and letting out a property. In retirement we have chosen the latter route, but even this has become more difficult with targeted increases in Stamp Duty and cuts in Tax Relief on income from rented properties.
You follow best advice and still you get screwed.Then you go onto cars. The general advice in the late 90’s/early 00’s was go diesel. At that time diesel was about 5p/litre cheaper than petrol so to a lot of people it made a lot of sense. Now, when many people have bought diesel cars and vans, the tax is the same on both, but the cost of diesel now exceeds that of petrol and the cost difference has been reversed. How did it become more expensive to produce than petrol as opposed to 5 – 10 years previously, or did the industry just join the gravy train??!! Very soon now, diesel owners are going to get more and more penalised, either in cost or charge. The value of diesel cars will fall, the cost of using them will go up, be that directly in fuel surcharges, or disproportionate Congestion Charge inreases for diesels, or increased differing rates for diesel over petrol or electric. My next car will likely be petrol. I might have liked to go electric, but there’s still a premium to pay for the privelege.
With everybody going electric you wonder what the approach will be to get money from them??!! A charging levy?? ie you get charged to charge!!
You wonder why we are surprised. You follow best advice and you get screwed.
So you work all your life and manage to own your own house by the time you retire. You can’t sit back on your laurels, because, perish the thought, should you get ill and need to go into care, you end up having to sell your home to pay for your care. We both of us say, that if/when we can’t look after ourselves, can’t wipe our own a*ses or don’t know what’s going on, do for us what you’d do for a loved dog. Put us out of our miseries. Mind you the govenment will probably issue an assisted suicide levy, or just up the inheritance tax to cover any shortfall.
I sometimes think the ( deliberate ) Benefit Brigade have got it right. The system of benefits was designed to cope with the sort of poverty prevalent in the 50’s. Nowadays you see people on benefits with better cars/TV’s/holidays than most working people. There will always be people amongst us that rely on Benefits to survive, and who still struggle to manage. These are the folks that the system was designed for. These are the folks the system is letting down. They should be better resourced.
I’m not even going to go there about the economic migrants that are sitting in the wings. How will we justify the extended families that will come in on the backs of legitimate refugees and children when we can’t properly look after our indigenous poor and elderly, I’ll never be able to work out.I don’t know what the solution is, but I surely recognise the problem!!
Dam Google and them scrapping the project! Lol
They didn’t scrap it – it was probably confiscated by NSA/GCHQ!! :yahoo:
I’m glad to see that the G4 is much loved and appreciated for its’ reliability.
I’m changing over to Sky Mobile in June – I thought the contract was up in April, but it’s June. I’ve been 90% happy with the Z3Compact, but it is still on May’16’s security patch. I still don’t know – after much chasing of both – whether that’s Sony or EE, but I’ll be ditching them both. If I have a problem with the Z3 after I’ve unlocked it, my current fave to replace it is the G5 or the G5Plus. Both come with Nougat from the get go.
My current 4.6″ screen is fine – it seemed a little bit large after the Nokia N8, but I soon got used to it. The 5″ screen on the G5 or the 5.2″ on the Plus should be easy to acclimatise to.
I like the Sky plan because you can use up to 5 sims off the same plan, which for me being already on Sky TV, will cost £10 for u/l calls, u/l texts plus 1Gig data ( unused data rolls over for three years ) so the wife’s PAYG ( ~£20 per quarter ) can do just that – Go. I’ll get her a newer feature phone ( not Smart ) and her old one ( or the N8 ) will get a sim and go into the car as an emergency phone.
Sky do seem to have done a lot of work looking to see what customers actually wanted, as opposed to designing a system they all had to conform to. They’ve gone for many options rather than multiple restricted plans. A pleasant change for the better.
Calls we don’t need – everything is either done via the mobiles or via FaceTime. We’re only required to have a landline for the broadband ?
That’s what our son thought, until recently, when he had to call BT to sort out a problem with the hosting for our website. He spent 6 hours in total with them trying to resolve the issue. Unfortunately as he discovered today when he got his bill, that was on an 0845 number that has cost him over £100. Landlines ( and a package ) do still have their uses.
When I had a small role in anti-terrorist planning our main objective was to persuade any attacker not to hit our important areas, and try to persuade them to look for apparently softer targets elsewhere (preferably ones that were actually well defended, low value or belonged to our competitors).
That sounds very similar, in style and substance and intent, to what I was told regarding home security, by a Home Beat Officer. The most important aspect is the F*ck-it Factor. If they look at your property and think, “F*ck it, there’s an easier target somewhere else.” and leave, you’ve accomplished your goal.
Dave has recently ( still in the process – activation date 28/3 ) moved off sky and has chosen TalkTalk. See page 4 of Tesco Mobile topic for full details and logic.
They have found a simple move that doesn’t require planning, weapons smuggling, bomb making or any of the “usual suspects” of a terror attack and strikes at the heart of the General Public they are attempting to terrorise. It can be scaled up or down with simplicity. If all you have is untrained amateurs that have been radicalised, then simplicity is their best friend. It can be instantly organised and executed. Therein lies the heart of these tragedies. Nice and Berlin and now London.
When you have “Amateur Hour” ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, instant amateur radicals become their public face and willing resource, and they can be anybody. Literally.
Having lived through the IRA bombing campaign in London, giving blood for the victims of the Old Bailey attack, shutting the business down for hours on end with bomb scares and explosions in Kensington, Steve’s right. Get on with life, feel sorrow for the victims, but move on. If we let them disrupt our lives, they are half way to their goal because we let them.
If any of this post seems at all blasé, it isn’t meant to be.
Sure, but bear in mind it’s indoors only. £15 inc postage would do it.
That’s a bummer – both options are outdoors:(. Shame. Thanks for the offer Dave, but maybe another forumite could use it. I have zero need indoors.
@ricedg – Hi Dave – wouldn’t mind that at all, please. What do you want for it?? It would either go outside as a door monitor/security for the car on the front, or out back with the dogs!!:)
Amen to that (M11) – I drive up to Cambridge once a month and that 2 lane section after Stansted is a nightmare. I remember they trialled a single lane for lorries (at certain times) years ago then dropped it. If they are bringing it back an making it permanent than praise be. Normal practice as you say is they overtake each other at a snail’s pace, and then often – after several miles and minutes of trying – give up when they get to a hill and pull back in.
They are – see HERE . It was trialled in April 2010 through to September 2011 – it seems to have taken 5 1/2 years to confirm the theory and implement it!! My commonly used stretches of motorway, the M2, M20, M26 all have 2 lane sections that get screwed by lorries playing this game. It is a real nuisance and an impediment to flow, even on the flat sections, but as you say, made worse on the slightest incline.
They’re a bit like Marmite John, they are either irrelevant or of passing interest only, or they matter a lot. It depends on your style of driving, the amount of miles you do each year, be that for business or your own use. If you don’t do many miles and are a naturally cautious driver they are just a part of the scenery. If you have a heavy right foot or do a lot of miles for work, they are the Devil’s Spawn.
A clean license is worth its’ weight in gold, as I found out when I got a 37 in a 30 ticket from a camera van. I sped up too early for the 40mph dual carriageway!! My insurance went up from £300ish to just over £500.
The main roads weren’t too bad – roundabouts were too many to count, but they succeeded in keeping the weekend traffic ( + MK Dons were playing ) flowing nicely. Where it falls down is in the smaller roads off the main “grid”. Too many no through roads, and spurs off within a no through road, if that makes sense. My 4 years out of date Sat Nav coped with only a minor hiccup that was more down to losing signal and re-calibrating me temporarily “Off road” than anything else.
We nearly moved there 35 years ago, ( well one of the outlying villages ) but having seen how it turned out, glad we didn’t.
Edit – I found the TomTom Smartphone App was excellent at showing your Average Speed on the camera sections ( and flagging them as such ) and when traffic got bogged down, accurately predicted time/length of queue. It is however very heavy on the battery and I keep forgetting to plug the charger in on long journeys. 🙁 Short ones are rarely a problem.
85 is fine on a motorway, as your speedo will be off by 10-15% unless you have on larger wheels than factory fitted , your likely only doing 77, a camera will get you, but a passing police car won’t bother. Over 80 and your pushing it, at 90 will be a telling off and a fine, 100 is suppose to land you with a total ban, and potentially prison, but more and more I’m hearing people get a slap on the wrists for it.
A Police Officer that I knew through Dog Training, used to say that Speed Limit + 10% + 10% was the limit for a lecture. ie 37, 48, 60, 85. However, if you do Speed Limit + 50%, that automatically qualifies as dangerous driving, eg 105 in a 70 limit, 45/30, 60/40, 75/50,90/60, which is where the ban came from.
I’ve just come back from a trip to Milton Keynes and back for the BiL’s 60th. Like you, Bob, I set the CC to speed limit + 5 – 10%. The only problem there is every time you have to brake, like for lorries limited to 60, trying to overtake a lorry doing 58!! Then you have to get back up to speed and I found myself inadvertently close to 85. The point at which a warning becomes a nicking.:( Your style of driving sounds very familiar!!
@ admin – Couldn’t add this as an Edit to my last post.
The other side of the Dartford Crossing from J5 ( M26 ) to J7 ( M23 ) the cameras also work. I use that stretch on my Marsden runs. Between the bridge and J5 I couldn’t be certain about.
If you’re going to be using the M25, be aware of THESE. Now, when there is a speed limit showing on the overhead gantries, they are in force. The M25 is a Smart Motorway between J23 (A1M) and J24 Potters Bar, – you’ll miss this section if you come down the M11 – also between J27 ( M11) and J30, heading towards the Dartford Crossing.
I’ve used Plastikote successfully a couple of times before.
Interesting exercise – cheers Dave.?
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