by Phillip Vaughan

Now that winter is creeping in, ready to send a chill up your spine and turn the tip of your nose to ice as you lie in bed at night, those of us without proper insulation could really be feeling the heat. Or not…

With new government schemes in place to encourage householders to save energy for the sake of the planet, now is a better time than any to ensure that you are not wasting energy or money. With the oncoming recession and the panic over global warming, restricting the amount of gas and electric you use is a good way to ensure that you save money and do your bit to cut down on your carbon footprint with one stone’s throw.

In the winter it is usually the elderly who suffer. The need to heat their homes sufficiently enough to avoid health problems and discomfort is essential. Viruses such as the flu can be very dangerous for older people and it is much more common to catch in the colder months. Unfortunately if you are retired and do not have a substantial and steady income, the cost of central heating can be a burden.

One way of cutting down heating costs is to ensure that your home is properly insulated. The government have put in place new schemes to help the elderly pay for proper insulation in their homes, providing all or some of the cost of the materials and installation. These are schemes designed to help reduce the UK’s carbon footprint yet they also ensure that thousands of people who are less well off can afford a standard level of protection for their homes.

Having the proper insulation in your house can make a huge difference to the size of your monthly bills. There are government approved fitters who will take care to make sure that there are no signs of harmful materials such as asbestos and if there is, they will be able to take the relevant precautions to remove it and avoid contamination.

Asbestos was once widely used to insulate properties before it was discovered that particles could become trapped in the body when inhaled and be the cause of serious illness or related cancer.  Therefore it is essential that you ensure that professionals do any insulation fittings.

With Christmas languishing at the end of December, it is an expensive time of year for most of us. Saving on bills and other household outgoings should be the first port of call as this is where we can lose money without realising. Comparing gas and electric companies online is another way to see how you can save money. It is often easier to stick with the companies that you have been with for years but all too often loyal customers can be taken to the dry cleaners by companies taking advantage of their complacency. Don’t let one of those loyal customers be you.

via kwout

Forget house fires caused by cats being sick over television leads or freak electricity storms. Some of the most common causes of house fires include electrical appliances being left on, hobs not being switched off properly or smoking in bed. (fireandfloodrepair.com)

We have all seen the ‘pull your finger out’ and check your smoke alarm adverts fronted by Julie Walters. The government started the campaign to try and cut down the amount of fatal and non-fatal house fires in the UK that happen every year. In the adverts a serious Julie Walters urges residents to check their smoke alarms regularly to avoid the kind of devastation that house fires can cause families and communities.

It is true that many of us do not think to check our smoke alarms as often as we should do, a ‘to do’ that goes to the bottom of the list but never gets done. This is despite the fact that checking is a simple task that merely requires the pushing of a button once every now and again. If the lives of your family are at stake then it is not a ‘chore’ that should be overlooked.

Even if you manage to get out alive and safe and the home insurance covers the material worth of your home, a house fire can still be devastating. Many irreplaceable items like photographs, jewellery, artwork and similar possessions with great sentimental value will be lost forever, never to be replaced.

The idea of all your worldly possessions going up in smoke is terrifying for most people. Unfortunately for most of us, the possibility of this happening seems a long way off. We always think that it will never happen to us. But it can, all too easily.

If you don’t even have a smoke alarm then you can call your local fire station or the Fire Rescue Service and get them to come to your house and fit a smoke alarm for free. Testing your smoke alarm weekly, planning an escape route and checking that all electrical appliances are correctly switched off in your kitchen are some of the things you could do to make your house safer from the threat of accidental fire. Smoke alarms can save lives but only if they work!

Smoke alarms should be fitted on each floor of the property to ensure as much early warning as possible. Alarms that are battery operated should be changed once every ten years to avoid deterioration due to age and natural wearing. You could also choose to fit a mains powered alarm however these may cease to work during power cuts – a time where you may be likely to use candles.

If you want more advice on how to protect your home from fire then visit http://www.fireservice.co.uk/safety/ where various leaflets on fire safety can be downloaded straight onto your computer.

A new houseplant via kwout

Bit of a light-hearted post this one. Just something I found scrawled on some paper that was down the back of the sofa.

Monday: Get rid of brown leaves and water all houseplants. Buy more houseplants because normal people like them and they suggest maturity. Buy other things she’ll like. Sophisticated things. Learn Latin names of above. Buy a new tie for Saturday. It should preferably be visually interesting enough to stimulate conversation should an awkward silence occur. It should preferably not be a pastel colour.

Tuesday: Try to like and be interested in new houseplants. Tell friends and colleagues that Saturday is off because true love waits for nobody, and that the weekly retro-game sessions are getting tiresome besides. Buy a diverse range of coffee and learn strengths and backgrounds. Send spam-text apology to friends and colleagues about retro-game comment. Schedule Frogger tournament for following week.

Wednesday: Clean fish tank. Update fish names in reference to a current popular culture phenomenon – but not the scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider. Also, take down periodic table of elements poster from bedroom wall. Actually don’t, but plan a humorous justification for your reasoning. Conduct series of DIY experiments, i.e. new shelves in the living room or adding draught excluders to some of the doors; because it’s good to be bad at DIY.

Thursday: Book restaurant. Remember to use surname and specify the importance of romance to the maǐtre d’. Water houseplants again. Eliminate next doors cat. Well…at least stop petting it. Drive to Harry’s to return his DVDs. Don’t take blame for scratches. Ignore his bitter jealousy and get home before Ramsey’s new show. Turn off the lights to make Ramsey look more frightening. Turn them on again.

Friday: Take gas and electricity bills down from the fridge and pay them off. Turn off central heating. Assure yourself of how hot you are. Bleach all bleachable utilities and leave windows open. Spend night in. Relax. Read a bit more Jonathan Safran Foer. Make up reason for understanding why it’s good. Phone someone for advice and if that fails Google it. Trim fingernails, toenails, those weird nomadic chest hairs that come and go at indeterminate times. Learn to laugh about these.

Saturday: (In order of importance) Lie-in. Realise why that is a stupid thing to write on a To Do List. De-alphabetise records. Polish metallic things only. Shave. Practice scales then hide guitar. Tidy everything. Buy her flowers and learn Latin names. Wait. Pace room. Arrive early but act normal. Compliment the maǐtre d’ on most things. Compliment her on everything. Don’t bring up your new tie.

Sunday: Write new To Do List.

I rent out a couple of properties to tenants and have done for the past five years. I have recently been thinking of selling due to the amount of time it can suck up, but obviously at this current time its not an easy time to do such

I have taken a back seat to wait for the outcome of the Treasury and its potential changes to Stamp Duty.

Arguably many BTL properties fall below the £125,000 threshold, so would not be impacted, but the sale of some of these properties may be held up as buyers moving up the property ladder await any reduction in Stamp Duty on higher value properties.

There are good reasons to believe that the house sector is weathering the storm:

* Tenant Demand

Evidence of good rental growth across the UK can be found not only in the latest RICS Lettings Survey with a headline of “Lettings market shines bright in housing gloom” but also in Paragon’s Buy To Let Index for July where yields across the UK are 6.4% with average growth in the last year of 9.3%. Additional demand is being driven by the reduced availability of mortgages at 100% or above for first time buyers who will need to rent until they can save up the necessary deposit and with higher interest rates being charged on borrowing at thee 95% level , it may be more expensive to pay a mortgage than rent for the time being.

* Mortgage Availability

One year on from the credit crunch, the BTL sector has fewer lenders with tighter credit criteria and risk based pricing encouraging landlords to invest more capital in return for better interest rates. Pricing as low as 5.09% for a 2 year fix at 60% loan to value with higher pricing is applied by those lenders still willing to lend to 85% but with increasing dependency on retail deposits to fund new lending the cost is reflected with rates more in the range 6.5% to 7.5%.

* Mortgage Funding

Current funding is based on the known performance of the existing Buy To Let mortgage book and the recently released CML figures look relatively benign with only 1.1% of loans in arrears over 90 days compared to the broader market figure of 1.33% but still up from 0.73% at the end of 2007. Any significant deterioration would cause lenders to re-trench further at a time when BTL landlords are probably the best hope for the property market absorbing the CML predicted 28,000 repossessions in the second half of the year.

* Preferred Property Sectors

The new homes sector had always been popular with investors in a rising market – where there was no property chain and the opportunity to buy off plan with completion up to eighteen months away held out the prospect of capital appreciation for little risk in the early years of the new millennium. By early 2007 some developers were creating artificial incentives to lure in investors leading to concerns over the true value of developments where upwards of 40% of the units were sold to investors. This has led to rental problems and geographical concentration risk and lenders have placed a 75% LTV restriction and full transparency on the component parts of the transaction. This is bound to impact the house building sector and the results of Taylor Wimpey on 27 August announcing a 96% fall in pre-tax profits and exceptional items of a further £1.5Bn must reflect some of these issues. Effectively the development of sites has mostly ceased as builders concentrate on selling existing stock before developing subsequent phases. Whilst house prices have eased there are not sufficiently large volumes of properties being sold to suggest a collapse of the broader market.

* Market Confidence

Paragon’s July Trends Review reveals that investor sentiment towards acquiring further property remains strong with twice as many landlords looking to add properties than intending to sell. This is driven by a belief that they can secure a lower price as well as being high tenant demand being a key factor for 39.3% of them.

* Feel good Factor

There is one additional confidence element that impacts the whole country and that is the somewhat unexpected “feel good factor” that has been created by the well deserved success of Team GB in Bejing. Not only has it dominated the headlines and pushed away the doom and gloom headlines on the property market and economy at large but has created a genuine interest in London 2012. When France won the Football World Cup in 2006 the GDP growth in the next quarter was 0.5% above the predicted rate. The benefit to the UK may last sufficiently long enough for other potential positive measures to show through such as a Base Rate reduction of 0.25% in early November or, heaven forbid, the Government untangling the Stamp Duty fiasco with a stepped aligned on price bands and a raising of the “zero” band to £250,000 – is that too much to hope for ?

lop_rabbit_easter.jpg (JPEG Image, 370×369 pixels) via kwout

A rabbit might save your life but it won’t compensate you when your house burns down.

Anyone else hear about the Australian house bunny that saved a couple from burning to death in their own home?(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4390578.ece). Some people have pointed out that Rabbit was probably just trying to save himself rather than altruistically trying to rescue his sleeping owners. This is probably right however there have been various claims to suggest that our bouncy fluffy friends have more carrot than we credit them for. There have even been accounts of bunnies helping other species, by alerting their owners to floundering fish that have propelled themselves out of their bowl.

Amazing I know but still, I would rather rely on a fire alarm than a giant house bunny to wake me if there was (god forbid) a blaze at my house. You would have thought that what with all the expensive renovations the hapless couple might have thought that installing one was probably a good idea-considering. If you have the money to improve living standards then why not improve safety standards while you’re at it?

Let’s just hope that the unfortunate couple had home insurance eh? They don’t sound like the brightest nails in the hutch and you could say they might be a carrot short of a picnic (I could do this all day but I won’t torture you with it) but I certainly think that a few lessons could be learned here.

Lesson 1) Smoke alarm step ONE, renovations step TWO
Lesson 2) Home insurance is a GOOD idea
Lesson 3) Rabbits save fish

There have been other cases of pets saving their owners as I am sure you know. Acts that make Rabbit’s act of self preservation look piffly in comparison but I expect that the main reason everyone is so surprised is because it is rarely assumed that rabbits are that intelligent.

I had always been a huge fan of the film Watership Down when I was a kid. Even now, whenever I hear Simon and Garfunkel singing ‘Bright Eyes’ I get a little sniffly. Who could fail to be similarly warmed by the Velveteen Rabbit escaping the bonfire and becoming real? I hope I didn’t ruin the ending for anyone there.

Long live the rabbit I say, and in this case long live its lucky owners too!

According to the Association of British Insurers, every day in the UK 200 homes suffer a fire, and one person dies and 40 are injured as a result of fires in the home. Regrettably, many of us will be involved with a house fire in some way in our lives, and it’s not likely to be much fun. But there are preventative steps that we can take to avoid this undesirable situation, and also steps we can take to limit the damage if we’re unfortunate enough to have a house fire.

BEFORE: Precautions you can take

Document your possessions

For the purposes of potentially claiming on your home insurance, it’s by no means a terrible idea to keep receipts, or take digital photos of individual items around the house that you may have to claim for. Don’t forget that many mobile phones can double-up for this purpose. Obviously, this precaution isn’t fire-specific – you may well thank yourself for having done so if you get burgled, for example.

Forewarned is forearmed

Fitting smoke detectors to each floor of your house is a good way to raise the alarm in the early stages of a fire. If you do this, be sure to regularly check that they work and the batteries are functioning – there is little point in a purely decorative smoke alarm.

Take care in the kitchen

Fires in the home most commonly begin in the kitchen, usually from the heat given off in cooking. To this end, one should never leave things cooking on a flame unattended. It is now becoming more commonplace for households to have a fire extinguisher and fire blanket located in the kitchen, and it’s understandable why.

No smoke without fire

If you do smoke in the house, it will accordingly increase the risk of being involved in a house fire at some point. So be sure that anything you smoke is properly stubbed out when finished. Plus it’s best to avoid smoking when very tired, as it is commonplace for fires to begin when people fall asleep whilst still smoking. Certainly avoid smoking in bed.

Do a bedtime check

Fire presents a greater risk when you’re asleep – so check every room in the house for appliances left on, candles left lit and suchlike before going to bed.

DURING: Get out!

Have a plan, and stick to it

When the fire alarm sounds, workplaces insist that you get straight out without stopping to salvage anything, get you to a safe organized place and take a roll call – and with good reason. If the smoke alarm sounds in your house, then you should gather everyone in the house together, exit via the quickest escape route, and call 999. The biggest mistake you can make in the event of a fire is to go and find out what’s triggered the alarm. It is possible for people in these situations to open the door to a burning room, which may then cause the fire to spread quicker, or trap them from the rest of their family.

Don’t go back!

Too often, people return to the house to try and save pets or possessions. Unless pets cannot escape due to being in a cage or suchlike, then they almost always do without human assistance. And possessions can be covered by your home insurance. None of these things are worth endangering your life for by returning to a blaze.

AFTER: Damage limitation

Safety first

If you suffer from respiratory problems or feel unwell after a fire, go straight to see your GP or the nearest hospital A&E.

Returning to the scene

It is advisable not to re-enter your home after a house fire until you are told by trained professionals that it is safe to do so. Remember even when it has been declared safe, there may still be broken glass and sharp objects exposed.

Who to call

After a fire, it is best not to assume that anybody else is going to contact your home insurance provider. It’s best to do so as soon as you can in order to get the ball rolling in terms of recovery, and ideally do so before you incur any expense. You should also call close family or friends to inform them of what’s happened, but also reassure them that you’re ok.

The clean-up

Do not try to clean up any items until a qualified restoration service has a chance to evaluate the fire damage. If the incorrect equipment is used, then you may end up causing further damage. Your home insurance company are likely to come in handy here, as they will probably be able to put you in touch with specialist cleaners.

For more information concerning fire safety in the home, visit the Directgov website at http://campaigns.direct.gov.uk/firekills/

Tags: firesafety, home

Bring back Dolly and Dick, or even Nasty Nick! Is it just me, or are this years Big Brother contestants the most boring ever? There seem to be no ‘real’ characters, no one to even vaguely inspire a sense of viewing loyalty.

As a longstanding BB fan, I’ve defended it countless times to people who claim to hate it, but I’m forced to admit that the appeal has gone. The entertainment value in watching people speaking from inside cardboard boxes, taking part in ludicrous tasks or pinning hopes on a vote to ‘Get Grace Out’ seem long gone. I’m not claiming any sort of intellectual or cultural merit for the show, quite simply just that, until this year, it has always been entertaining, surreal and sometimes downright funny.

This year is different. I’m neither aware, nor care about any of the inmates. I watch it when I’ve nothing better to do, just to see if there is any action in the Elstree studio worth feigning interest in. None. Perhaps the nations obsession with reality TV is drawing to an end. Perhaps we’ve exhausted the bizarre pool of ‘real’ people who might be interesting to watch in an artificial environment?

Gone are the days when Friday at work always guaranteed a speculative conversation about who might go out in the eviction. This year, no one else really seems to care either. In fact the only conversations I’ve heard recently relate to previous years of glory: mostly trivia, or personal anecdotes about former housemates.

A friend once sat in a van with Pete Bennet, and said he whistled constantly. I have it on authority that the actual sound of his whistling is astonishingly similar to real birdsong… Someone else claimed to have left a club with Nikki Graham, but chose not to go any further than the bus stop with her because she didn’t stop talking or complaining…

The best story I heard was of somebody using a price comparison website to work out how much home insurance for the Big Brother house would be. Apparently it’s surprisingly low. This is due largely to the fact that security is excellent. With 24-hour security and constant CCTV coverage, the chances of a break in are minimal!

Reality TV is a bit like Marmite: you either love it or hate it. This years BB has got me to thinking that perhaps the genre has finally had it’s day. Every second programme seems to involve ‘real life’ characters in one capacity or another. Perhaps, the current lack lustre Big Brother reflects the fact that we’ve reached saturation point. The majority of wannabe contestants now do little to hide their aspirations to seal a lucrative magazine deal when they leave the show. Is there really any more space in the world – not to mention the magazine shelves – for more E and F list ‘celebrities’?

This does pose other questions though. If the appeal of reality TV is dwindling, what might replace it? Is that really something we want to think about?

Tags: tv, shows, big brother

I don’t have a working television. Not one which works properly and actually shows live TV. It used to pick up a signal when I lived in London, but doesn’t have any means to be tuned into the signal now I live in Cornwall. It used to work on certain channels with a Freeview box, but now doesn’t even pick up QVC. I’m not entirely sure whether this is down to the television itself, or whether it’s down to the seaside problem of seagulls interfering with the aerial.

It’s not like I’m a television purist. I’m not one of those people who doesn’t want a television in her home. However, with the advent of the Iplayer and Four on Demand, I don’t have a huge need for a television.

My television has a built in video player. However, I learnt several years ago not to use this function as it has the impressive ability of screwing up tapes. Besides, videos are rapidly becoming an alien and decrepit technology, and whilst I still own some, I never feel the urge to watch them.

No, the television is kept for its lazy parent option of the DVD player. If I’m having a bad day, or I have a deadline to meet, the DVD comes out, and my son is amassing quite a collection. I used to hire them for him, but by being possibly the worst person in existence at taking them back the shop, it ended up cheaper to buy the ones on special offer.

Unfortunately, even its function as a DVD player is beginning to wan. I have to adjust the scart lead every time I use it – something I’ve had to do for a while. But now, every time I fiddle, it takes longer to find the picture, and I’m beginning to think the socket may finally be broken

Visiting my parents today, my son stared in awe at the large LCD TV my Dad has just brought. I made the mistake of telling him how dodgy my television is, and spent the next five minutes listening to his search for the best price for a television. Having embraced the technological age far better than his daughter, he started telling me which price comparison sites offered what discounts on online shopping sites.

I glazed over. I know eventually I will have to replace the television. I know when I do, I should browse through the various online shopping options. But, at the moment, I have neither the money nor the motivation.

I am attached to my old broken television. It was donated to a squat whilst I was pregnant. When the squat was evicted, no one claimed the television, so I took it. In some way, it’s part of my old life – a life I’m perhaps not quite ready to give up.

Besides, I can’t wait for the day when the television licensing people come knocking. I shall invite them in, cordially show then the lack of picture, and smugly ask them to leave.

Tags: TV, furniture, DVD

I’m going to buy a shed outright. No mortgage, no loan, no stamp duty, no worries. It’s going to be my shed and my space and I’m going to defend it with the dexterity of NATO. Because I need space. A shed kind of space.

Don’t ask me what I’m going to put in it. Maybe nothing but a table and chair. Maybe stock pile it with dehydrated ‘value’ food and ‘value’ tins of food from the supermarket and stay in it for about 5 years like some existential Robinson Crusoe.

Our garden is large enough for a shed to not really get in the way. Unlike our house which is large but not enough for me not to be in the way. So I’m going to buy a shed for my garden online.

I’ve discovered that garden furniture and tools can be expensive, especially sheds, as I thought seeing they were made of just some planks of wood and tarpaulin they’d be pretty cheap. Then again, for something I could potentially live in, without the hassle of paying council tax and water bills for, a shed seems like a good deal.

For now I’ve decided to create a fantasy shed, listing in order of preference the things I’d like to put in it. Firstly a chair, then a table, then an electric extension lead so I can run a kettle, stereo music system and recharge my mobile telephone. I don’t think I’d need a television because that would be too much of the outside world in my little shed free state.

To make it easier on the rest of the household I might involve them more in the purchase of garden products, but that would be to smokescreen them from the confines of my wonderful shed. It wouldn’t be a case of disallowing them entry to the garden shed that I bought on the web, but more distracting them so they wouldn’t really be bothered about going in the shed.

Perhaps a nice new hose coil for easier watering of plants, some garden decking or even a new set of garden chairs with a parasol that I could easily buy online.

I would also be cautious about allowing any acquaintances inside my shed. My friends could get jealous of my wonderful private space and launch some kind of attack, perhaps a subtle manoeuvre like leaving their wallet behind so as to come back by nightfall under the guise of getting it back but really to infiltrate the harmonic atmosphere of the shed and just sort of hang around there and make it like their own garden shed that they actually bought online.

So far I’ve compared prices on a range of garden equipment online and as for sheds, there’s a range so huge that the top end more resemble split level luxury alpine chalets. The bottom end are quite frankly little wooden boxes; so I’m going for a middle sized shed, a couple of windows, maybe a modest porch, then I shall commence rebuilding my life, disturbed by no one, in beautiful isolation.

Tags: garden, diy, shopping

Finally, after months of hiding under jumpers, arms are out because the sun’s come back. How long for – who’s to say? Perhaps, if there’s no Number One about ‘my umb-er-ella’ this year, we might be in for fewer floods and a brighter time. But for now, sunny days are here and they’ve sparked a new love affair, with my garden.

Gardening’s always felt rather daunting. I don’t like worms, would rather do anything than weed and, garden centers (without any knowledge about soil type or garden design) have never appealed. There’s something about garden centers; they’re like a secret club, for people who know about garden things. All I know about gardening is that I like pretty things, and don’t have the time, or inclination, to learn how to use a hoe or thin out seedlings. Is that such a crime?

However, this year has brought about a gardening revolution. Since discovering the joys of shopping online and container gardening, I’ve created a perfect garden paradise.

Finally, my garden resembles the cross between an English country garden and a Mediterranean paradise that I’ve always yearned for. Not such a peculiar combination as it might sound, you see when everything is planted in containers, garden design, in my opinion, can go out of the window. Herbs, geraniums, roses, tomatoes – all neatly potted. And the great thing is that at any point I can rearrange the pots and create a new look; perfect for someone as impulsive and indecisive as me. Even more satisfying, is that the only maintenance needed is to water the pots everyday. Even I can manage that.

The watering is easier since I named the plants; standing proud in their pots each has a distinct identity. I’d almost swear that the roses (Marilyn, Audrey, Shirley, Angela and Kylie) sigh with joy during their evening soak. Perhaps it’s just me. But any which way you look at it, container gardening wins – no weeding, no worms and you can take them with you if you ever move.

The plan nearly fell apart though. Without a car, I cursed all out of town gardening centers. Even if I managed to reach them on my trusty bicycle, what chance did I ever have of fitting huge glazed pots and 75l bags of compost into my wicker bike basket? Then it occurred to me that since you can buy just about everything online these days, perhaps, just maybe I could get pots, plants and compost there too? Bingo! Not only did I find ‘practical’ things, but also seemingly infinite choices of color for watering cans, seats and parasols. The bigger joy is that it arrives without any effort or lifting required and without any need to deal with those people who know.

The only slight problem is that, now the garden is such a paradise, I don’t really want to go anywhere else. I’ve got round this by ordering a barbecue and groceries online too. So, my garden functions as my kitchen and lounge. Perfect. Unless, of course, it rains…

Tags: garden, barbeque, diy