…according to radio playlist people!

Worse than that, for my Sins I like Radio X, especially Johnny Vaughan, but as great as he is at the chatting bit, he clearly has no interest in music. It’s basically the same song at the same time every night (well it seems so anyway) Jamie T Shiela, Libertines Don’t look back, one of each of the Gallagher brothers and of course the twice-hourly Radio X contractual playing of Gerry **** Cinnamon.

The Wannadies

Only song ever played, The You And Me Song, which is a cracking song but they had so much more. 🙁

Whenever they comes on the radio I have to quickly change channel, or I fear I’ll drive into the nearest bridge support to be away from it. It’s ghastly sugary sweet lovely nonsense, and I hate it on a molecular level.

But, you know, each to their own, your opinion is a good as mine etc ;)

Nah, Win11 looks nice, the icons are rounded and softer and the default wallpapers a nicer.

Other than that… differences are noticeable, but minor.

Windows 10 will become ‘obsolete’ in 2025 when it will stop getting security patches and such. MS “reserve the right” to remove the free upgrades to Windows 11, but haven’t made any mention of it. The only risk you run really is MS increasing the min requirements for Win11 but they’re not impossible to circumvent anyway.

I’m with Shell (not through choice, they took over my previous provider) and they asked me to increase my own DD with a suggested value. Their email implied it was my choice but I’d be in debt if I didn’t increase. I can change it any time on the app with a slider and it gives me a projection on where I’ll be in 12 months based on the DD chosen.

I’m not sure if Shell have a different policy but the value of the DD is in my control – I guess if I got mega bucks in debt they may enforce something?

EDF did the same with me, I increased it to make sure we didn’t carry a balance into April.

Martin Lewis has been talking about energy Cos bumping up DDs way over the 54%, he’s believes it ‘may’ be Energy Cos trying to increase cash-flow, although I suppose you can’t blame them, things have been tough for them too with most of the market going bust!

I think the thing I’ve learned from this is that energy is bloody complex and all this talk of ‘average caps’ which worked in normal times, is more misleading now.

I also think how fair it is all boils down to personal circumstances.

My fixed price deal ended in Oct, so back then my payments went from £111 to £144 and I was ‘on the cap’ now because of the raise in cap I’m going to £195, that’s not quite 54%, partly because we reduced our usage and partly because in the year before we were paying too little (EDF only bill twice a year). So, it’s all but doubled over 6 months. So people though who’s deals are ending now, or had to switch because their provider went bust are getting it all at once, so their bills are doubling “overnight”, add a year of underpayments into the mix and it could easily be more.

It must be hard for people who’ve been switched because there’s not enough data for their new providers to honestly estimate usage, and they’re going to be keen to take more, rather than less, there’s likely another big jump coming in Oct!

Oh dear… ordered from CRC via Evri, arrived on-time, was correct and undamaged. So far, so good.

Had to return part of it for a different size, dropped of at the Evri point in a local shop they picked it up within an hour… and then took a full week to return it to CRC via their “two day” service.

it goes against everything Comics believe. Chris Rock feels he should be free to express his comedy as way he wants to, if people laugh then it can’t be wrong?

Ah, yes… the Jimmy Carr defence?

I absolutely agree that you’re entitled to say whatever you like, with the proviso that you then have to be prepared to take the reaction that it provokes. You don’t get to say whatever you like with impunity

You’ve kind of misframed me there, but yes we agree. Chris Rock is entitled to say whatever he likes (incitement to violence etc aside) but, yes he also has to accept the consequences of his actions/words. So Will Smith “slapped the shit” out of him, Rock made a joke about it and life goes on.

There’s no need for the court of public opinion to decide who was right and who was wrong and who should never work again in Entertainment etc.

Firstly, I think it was staged, it just looked like a stage slap, or maybe I just assumed it was? When I first read the headline I assumed it was an act.

Assuming it was real, I doubt, or hope Chris Rock isn’t upset about it. Lots of Comics at the moment are shining a light on ‘woke’ or ‘cancel’ culture. Setting aside anyone’s feelings on how real, or right that it, it goes against everything Comics believe. Chris Rock feels he should be free to express his comedy as way he wants to, if people laugh then it can’t be wrong? Will Smith took personal offence, real offence, we’re not talking about millions of armchair moral arbiters taking offence on their behalf, Will gave him a slap and told him off, Rock has to accept that, and he seemed to.

Obvs being 2022, the whole virtual world will have to decide which of them is best suited to them morally, well once they decide which camp their chosen celebrity have jumped into.

They keep it pretty low-key that it’s ‘Android powered’, I suppose they don’t want too many customers making the perfectly reasonable conclusion it’s a 5″ Android with fancy materials for £1300.

How long as Android OS supported for? You’d expect a bit of old-school decade long longevity for that kind of money.

Our local NHS Trust are urgently reviewing mileage rates for Community Staff in light of new fuel costs, but I doubt many in the Private Sector are doing the same.

For what it’s worth, I get 25p a mile, and a car allowance. I’m reasonably sure I need to hit 32mpg to make it 25p a mile. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes it’s not, but I’ve decided that unless I actually have to take something, or I need to touch something when I’m there, I’m doing it via Teams or Telephone now.

That said, my rate isn’t terrible – HMRC have some ‘Advisory Fuel Rates’ for Company Cars, and I assume those of us with an allowance would fall under this.

They advise 13p to 22p a mile for petrol cars and 11p to 16p for diesel cars, depending on engine size. To make 11p a mile ‘work’ I think you’d need to be getting 75mpg?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/advisory-fuel-rates

The two garages near me were 178.9 a litre yesterday morning. They are 178.9 a litre this morning.

Shell garage I passed was at 182.9 yesterday, and is 189.9 this morning!

Yeah, Garages aren’t bound to pass on the savings, in effect they’ve raised their prices 5p overnight.

From what I’ve read, it’s ASDA and Morrisons (I don’t know why it’s them and not Tesco / Sainburys et al) that set prices, they drop and everyone else has to follow suit to stay competitive. ASDA announced a 6p drop yesterday, not sure about Morrisons.

Frankly the fuel Cos are taking the absolute piss with this, we should have seen a drop after the UAE increased supply to pick up the slack from Russia, but they held firm waiting for the mini-budget. Something seems to be broken in the competition ‘system’ I guess they can all hold firm knowing as long as Ukraine is being invaded, they can get away with it.

Well… it seems us at home will lose for 3 months, and then be back where we were from July… well apart from the £100 increase in utilities.

I think recession is coming to be honest. It was almost there in early 2020 and now we’ve had these supply shocks post pandemic that create inflationary ripples – we will be heading back there, unless big spending is correctly targeted.

I’d say it’s inevitable. The pandemic may keep the GDP figure positive and ‘technically’ not in recession, but the economy is delicate. There’s can’t be many people in the UK who are going to be able to maintain their usual spending habits in face of rising taxes and bills when the energy cap rises again in Oct, we’ll take a much bigger hit, that £200 levy will hardly make a dent.

I’m sure I’m going to regret only fixing my mortgage for 2 years last month, I wish I’d swallowed the 10 year rate.

No, I don’t get it either.

As an armchair economist, I confidently, and wrongly declared that the BOE wouldn’t raise rates because inflation is being driven by global events (and yes, Brexit) and not overconfident consumers. Raises rates now seems like kicking us when we’re down.

On the face of it, the BOE are doing just that, in an almost insultingly simplistic way, they’re targeted with keeping inflation at 2% and they’ll act to achieve that as best they can, however painful or even sensible that is. You can read it yourself here:

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/why-are-interest-rates-in-the-uk-going-up#:~:text=We’ve%20put%20up%20interest,help%20bring%20inflation%20back%20down.

It will reduce inflation, but not in a good way, economically anyway. Consumers will have to reduce digressionary spending to focus on essentials, but prices of those are rising quickly would only makes the situation worse. When retailers all start selling on price, you know there’s a recession coming.

Then, here we have Sunak rushing in to save us all! The best thing, in my eyes at least would be to either scrap the NI rise for 12 months, or forever, or the duty on home energy. I think those would be the fairest and best ways to help. Reducing the duty on vehicle fuel… yeah it helps business, but there’s a million better ways to do that. Vehicle fuel is a vote winner, very, very few people drive just when they need to, or drive in the most economically way possible. I think everyone’s got a bit of flex they can use to try to mitigate that, and with crude prices falling, it would be easier to threaten the oil co’s with a windfall tax to get them to pass the savings on.

To me, it’s Sunak beating us with one hand, and then wiping away our tears with the other. We’re being pimped really.

We had a One S for years, it’s great. Have a Series S now, it loads quicker and yeah visually it’s a bit nicer, but it’s not as otherworldly as they make out and the lack of disc drive and storage is a pain. Neither a problem with the One S.

THREE MONTHS AFTER PROPER BREAKING MY WRIST I TOOK THE BIKE TO ASPLEY HEATH AND HAD A ROLL AROUND AND IT WERE MINT!

Nice, I remember the first ride after a big bang a long time ago. It was great!

Fair point with regards the irony monkfinger.
But at least it is a life not imposed on them by us.
Nature is not necessarily kind but it’s more kind than human beings.
The wolf has to live too and with regards mating, it’s survival of the fittest. Not great for the individual but good for the species. Human beings could learn something there.

Part of me agrees with you, but few people like the idea in reality.

Consider Covid for example, and please this is just idle thoughts, not a plan. about 18 months ago, there was a thread about Covid (there’s a surprise) considering the positives and not in a rose tinted wasn’t lockdown 1 lovely because the roads were quiet and it was sunny kind of way, but more fundamental that that.

I suggested that we humans have massively out populated the earth and we’re simply incapable, thanks to our nature to a) stop reproducing b) meaningfully reduce our consumption of well everything to fix that. More specifically the Population in the West had grown old, kept alive longer and longer due to our comfortable lives and medical science.

I suggested that a plague was the only real way ‘Mother Nature’ could correct that and perhaps lockdowns and such were against nature trying to correct. I was called a Monster for it, and it was only a thought! If we lived like Animals and by a code of ‘survival of the fittest’ Covid would have killed multiples of the terrible number of people it did kill, and continues to kill, mostly it would have killed older people and the sick, reducing our population to more manageable numbers and improving the average health of the remaining population.

Nope, never. Can I spin it for you – do you mourn the non lives of wild living beings that would/could live in rewilded areas if the land was not being used for intensive farming?

Not mourn no, but I do think about not only intensive farming, but Human population growth a lot.

I suppose the thing is that, Humans are animals, we’re just the cleverest ones on this planet, we share a spectrum of morality that is unique to Humans. At least the Veggies and Vegans who have answered me, believe the best thing to do for the animals we’ve domesticated for food, is to deny them the chance to reproduce, one of the most basic and powerful emotions animals have and assuming Farmers could be persuaded, forced or paid to keep the existing ones fed and looked after, within 15-20 years, there would be around 50 billion fewer animals on Earth which would bring some serious environmental benefits.

As we’ve seen in the past with China for example, denying People the right to reproduce is considered a grave infringement of their human rights and caused all sorts of pain in many terrible way.

So, is it really fair to deny animals something we consider a fundamental human right?
Or, due to their lessor intelligence, morality and comprehension of their world, do we say that denying them that right is the best thing for them on their behalf? and If so, are we really making a moral decision not to kill them, if they don’t and can’t share that morality themselves?

It seems to me, it’s incredibly likely that if that if they had the choice, as all other animals do in the wild, rather than deciding to stop reproducing to save their unborn children the chance of life and an early death, they’d evolve to reproduce as quickly as possible to out-pace the predators.

Would perhaps the most moral thing to do is remove our care and allow them the chance to be wild again? They’d die in their billions, but eventually they find an equilibrium with their environment.

I admit, I’ve gone down a rabbit hole now.

That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. It’s not an inconvenient truth, it’s a simple truth that all veggies/vegans motivated by animal rights/welfare accept. If no one eats them, they won’t exist. That’s exactly what we want!

fair enough, perhaps a bit harsh but I can handle it, you’re probably a big hangry (that really is a joke, please don’t hate me).

But can I ask a really honest question, I’m not baiting I promise. Do you ever question the idea that denying a life of an animal raised in the very best hypothetical welfare standards is in some ways the same as killing them, only they never get to experience life at all?

Not that inconvenient. Preventing an animal being born isn’t a hardship, if we just let the ones we have get eaten up without breeding, or even if it took a decade to reduce meat production I don’t see that many animal rights motivated vegans would complain.

Not to us, but that’s kind of the point. Some people are so concerned that animals are being killed for food, they’d rather they’d never been born at all, or are deny them the right to reproduce.

I think a valid question to ask is, is a shorter life, free from hunger or becoming prey etc, really worse than no life at all?

Another one is – do people really care about the lives of animals, the ones they’d rather never lived at all, or do they just find the idea of killing them unpleasant? We seem to be pretty unique in that, the other animals on Earth aren’t bound by our moralities, predators will tear apart their prey with ruthless efficiency and whilst it’s very rare, Cows will kill humans and go about their normal day afterwards.

I’m not looking for an argument, or upset anyone, but it’s been on my mind a lot. I can’t eat dairy and we’re having a few ‘veggie days’ a week at home, which by default makes them Vegan days for me, but I wonder why I’m driven to stop eating something I enjoy. Is it health reasons, environmental, financial or moral?

I’ve asked the same question a few times, the real answer is “it depends”. But I think that if Humans all decided to stop eating meat and products produced by animals (milk, honey etc) now, as in today. Tomorrow, the vast majority of the 70 billion farm animals on earth would be dead unless farmers were compensated for keeping them as ‘pets’. Farmers do really seem to care about their livestock, but it doesn’t extend to keeping them alive and fed for a moment longer than they have to, if they’re born the wrong gender or stop producing etc.

I’ve always considered it an inconvenient truth for Vegetarians and Vegans that decide to stop consuming animal products on behalf of those animals, that they’re only alive in the first place because of human consumption.

No – apparently fired all staff with immediate effect and had replacement agency staff waiting on the dock. Suspect that is more legal in shipping than normal land based jobs but I’d be amazed if the MCGA and port authorities were OK with it – how do you prove the agency staff are competent on that particular ferry? how do you find people with the right pilot certificates who are up-to-date etc? and all synchronised so they are waiting to walk on as the old staff walk off.

I’ve read, Twitter again that P&O are going to ‘Fire and Rehire’ all their staff. How true I don’t know, but no one ever saved money by using agency staff.

I really don’t understand how ‘Fire and Rehire’ works, or indeed how it’s legal! If you fire a single employee without reason, you end up in a tribunal, if you need to let a lot of staff go, you have to pay them redundancy, or you end up in a tribunal, but it seems you can fire your entire workforce without penalty, as long as you offer them the same job back on worse terms. It’s bullshit really.

or a desire to whitewash their reputation,

They’ve been pretty clear thats the case. They’ve supposedly upped their game and want to put the past behind them. We’ll see. .

a bit slower than breaking bad

To say the least.

I love the series, as frustrating as it is some times. I’ve gotten over the fact I really wanted a Saul Goodman comedy series, but it does look as if the last series will be as much about flash-forward Saul’s redemption than ‘young’ Saul catching up to the start of Breaking Bad.

That all doesn’t surprise me, or seem unreasonable.

The Ganol is owned by the Woodland Trust, and supposedly there are types of plants that are unique to that wood, how unique I don’t know. Fawr is NRW and they’re pretty chill about riding, I preferred that side until the NRW tore the arse out of it harvesting, but if we can legitimately repair it, that’s great.

The Ganol has always been the contentious one and until the last few years there was a top line and a bottom line. The section at the top that had a couple of runs through and over a big bomb hole now looks like a bike park and the sections crossing the main walking path are way to obvious and way to easy to upset people, you just can’t build gaps over walking paths or massive rollers than end on them, it just upsets people.

I think I’ll go too. I took part in that survey they put out last year and the results didn’t paint us in a great light – although Horse Riders took the brunt of it.

As others have said, there was some pretty obvious additions built in lockdown, it went from being a very subtle network of trails that looked ‘natural’ to most people to a bit obnoxious with jumps over walking paths and trail features that would cause the average H&S / NRW ranger to have kittens.

hey were paying £140 a month. Then this arrived on Thursday.

something gone wrong there I reckon, unless they have just come off a very long term (and hence very cheap) fixed deal at the same time as the new energy cap has come into play.

Yeah, that’s more than just a unit price hike. Even if they’re leaving the best fixed rate that was available 2 years ago, just as the cap rises, that’s over a 500% increase – either they were badly in arrears because no one had been taking readings or its an admin issue.

* What has changed for you?

Like so many others, we’re missing a relative, my FIL in my case. Work (IT Security and consulting) has changed a lot, not radically, but the pace of change upped hugely.

Mostly though. Its our relationship, the details are too hard to share even here, I had a breakdown back in Autumn, and we came incredibly close to separating in December, our ‘happy’ marriage has been anything but for the last year and Covid and my FIL passing was a huge part of it. The good news is that after a lot of counselling for each of us and together, things are on the mend. I haven’t been this happy for a while.

My Wife on the other hand has been off-sick since December, on top of everything else, she just couldn’t keep on Nursing whilst dealing with mourning her Dad, our problems and the stress she was under being redeployed and ‘failing’ her patients because there were so few resources left that weren’t given to dealing with the pandemic. She’s going back to work in a few weeks, very slowly and carefully, she’ll be back to 100% hours a month later.

* What hasn’t changed?

Between the Pandemic and associated supply issues (which bleed into the situation in Ukraine) it’s hard to think of much that’s the same now as it was in Feb 2020, I suppose bringing it back into the STW sphere it’s the riding, I’m still hanging out with my mates riding bikes, in fact thanks to a desire to socialise more post lockdown, I’ve got some new mates via Twitter.

* Do you miss anything from the lockdowns?

The nice weather of the first lockdown? The sense of community from the early days (not the clapping shit) not much is the honest answer, it’s easy to forget the bad stuff – but as nice as the first lockdown was weather wise. Like so many others I was stressed to **** about losing my loved ones and also financial collapse etc.

* Is there anything you’ve learned from all of this and will take forward with you?

A better understanding of the difference between the individual and ‘mob mentality’. How different people react to inconvenient facts and the willingness of some to use those fears to make a quid.

On a more positive note, things I hope never to take for granted again. Friendship and Family, the ‘little things’, freedom of movement, the world away from the TV & sofa, local riding spots, the joy of a beer in the sunshine. Being ‘nice’ and saying hello to strangers and a reminder that life is finite and precious.

No diversions that I know of, trails are fine, if there’s mud it’ll be a couple of patches, nothing to worry about.

It’s getting pricy isn’t it?

On the plus side, R&D seems to have completely stopped in the non-E bike world so my 2019 bike is, as far as I can tell, still up to date with all the current standards and fashions, other than I went with a 275, I’ve been window shopping and aside from some shiny paint I don’t think I’d gain much from a new bike at the moment… well unless I want a motor or bigger wheels.

I’ll be happier when consumables are more available, and hopefully we’ll go back to a time when RRPs were sort of a guide and not set in stone.

Got the dreaded letter from EDF at the weekend, £133 a month to £195 in April.

Not sure if it’s been covered up-thread but I find the frequency at which energy companies bill absolutely preposterous! I logged into the Octopus app at the weekend and noted I had £370 credit, champion. But when I looked at the billing/usage breakdown they hadn’t billed any gas or leccy since 7th and 9th of Jan. So thick end of 2 months gas hit the breakdown at the start of the week so it’s down to £140 and still no sign of leccy coming off but with two EVs it’ll be straight into the red when it does

EDF Bill twice a year, once in April and again in Oct. What makes it worse with a smart meter in places the data is all there, but you have to collate it all yourself. Even if you haven’t got a SM, you can log a meter reading whenever you like, they have everything they need to give you up to date billing, but they choose not too. Okay, usually I don’t care, but different times.

Going 60-62ish would get almost all the economy benefits without the stress of lorries ahead and behind.

Adaptive cruise helps.

Still UAE have upped production now so Crude is back below $100 (was Friday at least) and unusually forecourts have reacted, locally Diesel have dropped from 174 back to to 164. It’s still expensive, but at least moving the right way.

@Dickyboy

I wouldn’t worry about the settlement figure, the finance industry is incredibly well regulated and no finance co will risk the sort of fines and penalties that they can face to chip their customers a couple of hundred quid.

Try using this calculator, it’s as good as any and as long as you’re within a few quid, it’ll be fine.

Settlement Calculator

BACS payments are typically only used Business to Business, they were designed to replace cheques, I’m surprised they will only accept BACS, I agree with the above that it’s probally out-of-date info and what they mean is “we don’t take cash because it’s a NIGHTMARE these days and we don’t take card payments because it costs us” but check by calling them.

A former RBS Account Manager.

I’m not one to prejudge something that hasn’t even been aired yet, but I really can’t see Christianson as Darth Vader. Unless they just use him for Hero shots and the rest of the time it’s a stunt double. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong.

I was surprised how easy it is to tell when different actors are in the suit. Christianson just looked wrong, like they’d put 6″ shoulder pads on him and he was looking out of Vaders neck. The guy who played him in Rogue One was better, but a lot bulkier than David Prowse.

I watched the TG video of that lunchtime, it looks great. Of course the ‘cheapest’ one is £50k, it’s got a 250 mile range, which will be what, half that on a Welsh motorway – I know the bulk of this thread is 8 months old but yes there are chargers in Cwmcarn, and I think I saw some being constructed at Afan, if not there are a bank of Tesla Superchargers at Sarn Services and didn’t Elon promise to open them up to non-Teslas soon?

Really most people will want a long-range which must be £60k and there’s a California coming too for all you day-van fans with very, very deep pockets, the T6 based one is £70k+ isn’t it? Shitfire if I’m spending that kind of money, I expect whatever I’m buying to have a postcode.

When is it supposed to be set timeline-wise, do we know?

Slap bang between the last prequal and Star Wars. Instead of whiney late teenager Luke or whiney late teenager Anakin we’ll have a 10 year old Luke (probally whiney).

Nice to see Joel Edgerton reprising his role, he wasn’t exactly a household name when he first played ‘Uncle’ Owen, but he’s gone onto some great roles and is pretty famous now.

Vader should be the Vader we know and love, anything else would stink – he’s Vader at the end of Sith and Vader in Rogue One which is set about the same time as this.

So now we’re on the brink of War with Russia it seems like a good idea to reduce dependence on their greatest export? We’re about 20 years behind the times, has no one been reading the non-Covid/Brexit/War news for the last few years?

We’re on a road-map towards the end of the Petrol / Diesel powered car, and a simular one to the end of the gas powered home boiler. There have been grants and tax breaks lower carbon production and reduce fossil fuel use for years, decades even.

The end-game might even be Fusion Power Stations, we might just get our first in 2040.

It’s happening now, it’s been happening for decades, but change takes time.

Depends how it goes I guess. There aren’t many parallels for this. President Zelensky is doing a fantastic job of keeping it in the media spotlight, which puts pressure on other world leaders not to just let Russia win and hope it drive energy prices down and of course they’re doing a far better job of fighting the war of hearts and minds.

As for competition for air time, people seem to have had their fill of Covid now, Partygate has blown over etc.

When Stonehenge and the Pyramids were built. There were still woolly mammoths living in Alaska and Russia.

Speaking of Pyramids.

Whilst Egypt is known for “The Pyramids’, Sudan has nearly twice as many. In fact there are a LOT more Pyramids around than most people think. Thousands of them, big and small have been discovered, lost, destroyed and reclaimed by nature in the last few hundred years.

The oldest Pyramid is from around 2630BC, the ‘newest’ probally around 900AD. The Woolly Mammoths lived from around 1.8 million years ago to about 10000BC, but indeed 2 small groups survived until about 2000BC, so for a ‘short’ 600 year ish period whilst some humans were fitting up early Pyramids, there were a Mammoths roaming the frozen north of Earth.

As someone who’s dine many caravan holidays you’d be surprised how little time is lost doing this. When you sit in the lorry lane you’re doing about 58mph usually (indicated) so that’s 20% slower than indicated 70mph. For me to drive to say Heathrow it used to take around 2hrs, but at 56mph that’s 2h24. Now, you might think that 24 mins extra is a lot, but when you consider that there are 50 limits in the route now anyway the difference is less because I can’t do 70mph all the way anyway. And a two hour trip is a decent drive, an extra 20 mins really isn’t that big of a deal. There are very few people for whom it would actually matter. And it saves loads of fuel.

It feels incredibly slow, but it’s not really that bad.

It goes against every fibre of my being as a red blooded wheelsman who’s used to ‘making progress’ but you’re right. I used to commute Cardiff to Bridgend every day, I worked out that driving at 80mph saved me 4 mins each way, was stressful (the usual throttle / brake of lane 3 in rush hour). I realised pretty quickly that I never arrived to work at 9, more like 08:40 to 08:50 depending on a million factors, so I was stressing myself out to work a bit extra for free. Doing 56 behind a lorry pretty much doubled the MPG and gave me 4 mins more of listening to my music etc and saved me about £40-£50 a month in fuel that my Wife could waste, sorry invest in scented candles and such.

Things are different now, I mostly only drive for work, but I’ve got a lovely car with Carplay, heated seats and adaptive cruise. I don’t really see the point in rushing anymore.