Pyrotequila

See that is odd, I've used the Specsavers at St James retail park the last few times I've needed tests and there's never been any "hard sell" They did the tests and then left me to look around until I had picked out some frames I liked. On the independant opticians side, I'm wary of those now after they tried to rip off my elderly, disabled mother-in-law and charge her a fortune for fames she didn't need or want.

Honestly I've been going to Specsavers for years now and no major issues to speak of

I meant in the sense of a hydrogen fuel station, rather than some at home storage pod 👍 @Andy_terrier that would be a good solution, I assume anyway.

Hydrogen fuel cells do have the potential to replace ICE, but not until the price comes down and there's the infrastructure in place. Unfortunately it's way more hassle to install underground storage tanks than it is to wire up some charging points.

Found this online; To be eligible for the State Pension you must have reached State Pension age and have paid at least 10 years of National Insurance (NI) contributions. To receive the full State Pension you must have paid 35 years of NI contributions. If you have never worked, and therefore never paid NI, you may still be eligible for the State Pension if you have received certain state benefits, for example carer’s allowance or Universal Credit. So yeah, someone could be on benefits their entire life and still get the state pension, presumably for people who cannot work through disability or such. But I'm sure a scrounger could fiddle the system with enough effort.

I was thinking about this the other day, and I was amazed that there weren't more protests about the previous change... the only reason I could think is that the youth of today are more concerned by oil protests, or which pronoun to use today, and they just haven't twigged that the government expects them to work for at least 30 years, for them to then get a pittance and probably pop their clogs 12 years after they retire. By anyones maths that's a poor deal... paying into something for a minimum of 30 years to get back for around 12 years, provided they live that long, it's an average life expectancy... some could live past 100, some might not even make it to retirement age.

Out of a cannon into the sun?

Increasing likelihood of snow next week; https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast/gcqzwtdw7#?date=2024-02-04

Go get yourself a retired Greyhound, despite the assumption, they're actually really lazy. MIL lost her dog last September and we got her a great dog from Sheffield Retired Greyhounds; https://www.sheffieldretiredgreyhounds.org/ They do matchmaking, so you won't get stuck with an unsuitable pooch.

Have they ever not messed around with the X1 and 97?

H - would be Hendersons L - I'm guessing is Leadmill

This does seem to be an issue with newer cars, they're designed for style rather than function or visibility. Worst offenders are reversing lights!

Saw a "homeless" woman sat outside a petrol station yesterday begging, while being spotlessly clean and wearing brand new, still with tags on, pristine white Nike trainers 🤦‍♂️

On pavements; no. https://www.southyorks.police.uk/find-out/crime-prevention-advice/using-e-scooters/

The obvious suggestion would be to get yourself on a comparison site and shop around... there's no reward for staying loyal to a provider these days.

Nice, you're a star! I hope it stays as it is, it was part of the draw for that particular tariff, looking forward to storms coming through so we get super cheap electric 😎

Ah, so still the changing prices each day? How did you find out? I found diddly squat online!

@The_DADDY @HeHasRisen Just had this email from Octopus about the Tracker tariff changing. Bit of it is explained on their website; https://octopus.energy/tracker-faqs/ Hopefully the prices don't go up too much. I can't really work out how it's changing... from reading it, it looks like it'll be a fixed unit cost, rather than variable like it is now?

I had a thought about a solution to all this the other day while watching a BBC news story on Youtube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIb78r6lEVc&t=124s It came to me at the 2 minute mark of the video, when it showed a huge crowd seemingly celebrating this attack. Instead of going small, fending off little speedboats attacking ships... why not wait until the terrorists have a gathering to celebrate, and then just carpet bomb the entire area? The only people in attendance will be current or future terrorist group members, so win-win... less money spent on ships, missiles, sending troops in.

Works well in Scandinavian countries, when I visited Sweden years ago I met up with friends there who had participated and nobody had a bad thing to say. Life skills, training, they can stay in or leave at the end.

Anyone want to bet the same thing happens in Scientology?

It's still fairly entertaining, although I'm sure the gladiators themselves are going easy on the contestants versus the 90s version

She doesn't need anything fancy, just a broadband connection that isn't snail paced. The BT one we've seen is a standard fibre connection estimated at 36Mbps and 700 landline minutes a month, far more than she needs, but better to have too much than not enough 👍

Not at all, she only seems to use it to search for stuff online and then ask us to buy it for her 😂

Still counts as local government though right? 🤔