We’ve just moved into a new build. Contacted OEN Next and they need to change the account from business to domestic. Takes a week or so, so I hope that the first estimation isn’t based on the usage by the builders during the build. We have £260 credit from Bulb but we just got that back and will use it towards the winter. Trying to find out what their tariff, almost impossible!

I reckon by a rough thought or two, I’ve only received pay rises in about half the years I’ve been working. So, I’ve certainly been losing out for years. Who knows what we will get this year. German company, their economy is probably worse than ours and they are known for tightening the belts early. My job is likely at risk next year.

Exactly, only a 13kw. Plus with both of us working at home even with a proper EV it would be tight on usage during the day. Who knows, we might see a reduction in pricing by the time it arrives. Lease company says 6 months, I think they are being very optimistic.

Just ordered my new company car, an Octavia Estate iV plug-in hybrid. Having done the numbers, staying on the current tariff it will cost me pretty much the same to charge the battery at home as it would do per mile, to use petrol. However, with a £100 saving per month on the tax it was a no brainer really. This is will be my first test of an EV.

The IBIS fanbois have been losing their minds over this and the new badge. A few heads have exploded on the FB groups. Interesting design, always wondered what the flex/stiffness is like in rear swingarms like that. Still, 11000 fat ones for a mountain bike will always be madness to me.

Colin – I’m being much more picky about my traveling to ride too. We might even have to lift-share, eh? 😀

Yip, that will work. Shame I’m a bit further away from Rivi now. But I’m hoping to scout the new local spots soon enough.

Zwift got the elbow a few months ago, so I’m left with Spotify and Adobe for myself. I have Strava but pay for that outright at renewal. Girlfriend and I share Netflix and Amazon Prime so thankfully not much.

Nice to see Perez pulling 7+ seconds out of the Ferrari towards the end

RB are just trolling the rest of the field now tbh. Max probably knows that yesterday didn’t matter. It will happen in the next couple of races easily. I’m also tired of the hype about Merc finally being in with a chance of winning. They’re nowhere near it.

With all my bikes bought and paid for, it’s the travelling that will really take the hit over the winter and probably beyond. There’s a reason I didn’t go the Lakes much, it would cost me around £35/40 in fuel alone for a trip to Grizedale and back for example.

Tbf I think we’ve had a decent run. Tech almost peaked, more stuff at our disposal than we could wish for. You mention leaving it up to the clever people to worry about what comes next. Well if people were that clever we wouldn’t be here in the first place. I used to see a mural on a wall often at home. It read: Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. It was a reference to The Troubles. We never learn.

Back to the fear levels I had back in March/April over this now. The pessimist in me (surprise surprise) thinks that Putin just is not going to stop no matter what, and the West will buckle.

And surely that would then warrant a response again from Putin? I doubt anyone believes that the RF are going to retreat back to Moscow. This is just another move from Putin to get what he wants. He will try and take Ukraine bit by bit.

Enjoy. Do like the MT range. I’d have recommended a Triumph Street Triple of some flavour. Don’t let the next couple of months weather wise put you off. If you have the right gear it’ll be fine.

We’ve now got a new house with an extra room and maybe 4/5 extra rads. Plus we’ve lost the 1kw solar array we had at the old house. We had been paying around £100 per month and we have a few hundred in credit with Bulb. I’m guessing we will easily double our bills now. I’ll know more next month when we get the first bill.

Ibis and Ragley owner here. I must be honest, I’m not a big fan of the ‘old’ Ibis badge design. I like the fact it is a metal badge though. I also have my old NP Mega metal badge after it came off day after a vigorous wash. The Ibis fan club has been losing its mind over the new branding. I don’t think it’s that bad.

Given that Putin doesn’t give a sh1t about his people, I’d say they are losing the least. They have the gas, they have huge reserves of money and we have an economy on brink along with most others in the west. His war on the west is doing pretty much what he wants it to be doing.

Remind me who is winning again?

I think it probably will, just to add to the stress of it all. I have a work colleague who like me just got it done in time. I know the affordability test is gone, but the stress test for many will probably look to see if you can afford your mortgage at well over 10%! Our was 9% or there about on the mortgage offer.

But I genuinely spent the first six months waiting for a phone call or a knock on the door telling me there’d been a terrible mistake and I was back at the old house tomorrow.

I already have imposter syndrome. Feel like a bit of a fraud, after renting all these years and at almost 40 getting a mortgage. I feel way more responsible now, even though not much has changed. I’m hoping that passes over time.

Good morning. Sorry for the lack of posting, it’s been a very manic few days. Thankfully back at work this morning and a return to normality.

Thanks again for all the messages. So happy we got there in the end. I did get a couple of drinks on the Saturday night to help build a new TV unit, but I crawled off to bed after that was done. Good bit of unpacking done, but there’s a lot of work to do. Including going back to IKEA to change an incorrectly ordered wardrobe that won’t fit.

I genuinely feel for anyone going through the process. We only actually found out on Wednesday that we would actually be completing on Friday, and then we exchanged on the same day too. It was so stressful packing a truck and not even knowing if it would happen. We were in the middle of the new house tour with the site manager and sales person when we got the call to say we’d completed. After that my mind went blank and I switched off. We were very lucky though, it was about 8 weeks from putting our house up for sale to completing. Must be a record these days! And it was nice to get a bit of money back with the stamp duty announcement.

And most importantly, the bikes now have a proper home in a garage 🙂

And…. We’re in. What an unreal couple of days. Thanks for all the messages over the last 24 hours. We ended up exchanging and completing yesterday, and got the keys around 2:30. We’re both so happy with the house and after a trip to IKEA (it’s the law) we finally got into bed around midnight. I’m still exhausted but a huge weight of my shoulders from the stress of it all. Removals guys were great too, they took away the stress of that part of the day.

Good luck to anyone still in the process. I’ve never, ever doing that again by choice.

Oh, and we do qualify for a stump duty saving. We’ll get about 25% back which is great news.

I’m not really sure if I want to talk too much about it. Basically we are exchanging and completing tomorrow.

I’m done. I’m so utterly exhausted and stressed, sat in a house that is pretty much packed up.

Been using the little Cif refil jobbies. There’s more that can be done though. I have used some general purpose cleaner that I use for cleaning the interior of my car which cleans just as well if not better than supermarket stuff.

So, another update. Issue has been resolved, and we are ready to exchange, either this afternoon or tomorrow.

I’m tempted to just take a gamble to make sure it happens on Friday if it can. It would be my luck that I’d cancel and 10 minutes later get a call to say it can go ahead.

Unless my hand is forced, I hope to never move again.

If that’s the case, it definitely wont be happening tomorrow.

Didn’t get that impression from our estate agent. It was my partner who spoke to him and he said the buyer seemed miffed at what it could be as he was assured all was fine. I couldn’t care less about stamp duty, I just want this done.

But what could it be though? Nobody is giving us any idea of what it could be. I’m stressed a lot about the movers too, I need to let them know by 4pm otherwise I’ll lose part of the booking cost.

Thanks everyone.

I’m pretty much reduced to nothing at this stage. Lots has happened since my last post. To cut a long story short, we got an apology from the buyer, everything is in place now. Got emails from the buyers solicitor and ours to say everyone is ready to complete on Friday, but there is an issue with the buyers lender that needs resolved ASAP, although they have stated something about funds requested and approved for release on Friday. They are hoping to get an answer today. And…the buyer doesn’t know what the issue is. So, it’s all up in the air again with about 3 hours to go with nobody knowing what the issue is with the lender.

Sorry to spam this thread now. A completely sleepless night last night. Spoken to the removals company who have given us until 4pm to either cancel or move our completion date. I think I’ve just resigned myself now that it wont happen, even at all. This basically feels like one long panic attack from yesterday. Nobody is giving us any reassurance that this can and will happen by Friday. Our solicitor has zero empathy, even failed to acknowledge that we’d sorted the buildings insurance yesterday.

The house is half packed, we have a dog sitter to organise, a van to book, and time off work for tomorrow and Friday. Yet everyone who is now in control seemingly couldn’t care less. It’s going to be a very long very stressful day.

must shirley be part of the calculation to escalate to WMDs

Well, this is what happens when you back a dangerous dog into a corner. For all of Ukraines heroics, the whole lot could be wiped out.

I just hope this is all dick waving by Putin.

It’s hard to imagine it getting worse, but it feels like it’s about too. How many more troops can he send to Ukraine?

Sorry about that @the-muffin-man!

There’s only us and our buyer in the chain too, so I would have thought things would have been easier. This is obviously going to the wire.

Well, here we are, 3 days before completion and silence. Not exchanged, our buyer ‘forgot’ to send back the signed contracts last week. Everything else we’re told, is done, searches etc. They paid their deposit last week, again, so we have been told. We have chased everyone today, left messages for our solicitor, the EA, and nothing. Utter incompetency. We have removals booked, broadband ordered, and the majority of the packing still to do with 3 days to go.

Loving this thread, lots of great nostalgia in here. I had a few of the parts mentioned, but all gone now unfortunately.

Take a seat. Someone will be along in a minute to accuse you of torturing small furry animals

I don’t get the reference…

If they do become a pariah state, what does that mean for Europe being on the border. Constant ongoing tensions and threats?

I’ve always thought that in the long run, Russia will gain much more than the west from all of this. Putin knows what Russia has, he’s happy to throw his soldiers under the bus when he knows his real might are his countries natural resources. This is all just the beginning of the puppet show. I just hope I’m dead by the time it really does reach these shores.

Reading this thread makes me realise I really don’t understand anything about all this. The Queen is dead and I thought there would be two groups, people who are sad and people who aren’t. I probably should have expected strong opinions, but it has gone full STW.

Humph.

No, we didn’t. We breifly looked at a Persimmon development near Buxton, but the build dates didn’t quite suit and it wasn’t our first choice for location.

So…close…

Almost there now. Final contracts signed, all searches completed. Just waiting to exchange now. Removals company booked, boxes for packing arriving soon. I haven’t had a drink in about a month, I’ll be having a few when this is all done.

We had 3 estate agents come and value ours. Two were similar in price, one was £30k over what we sold for in the end. Obviously they wanted to make as much as possible, and their fees were the highest also. We went with a really competitive price for our area and house, and we sold within two weeks. Perhaps if we held out we could have got more, but I wasn’t interested in potentially having the house on for months just to make an extra few quid and lose out on the house we found.