Robertwood Avenue

With spring time just about to start I am getting ready for spring to start in the garden.  This will be the first year that I have really had a garden to make nice.  Last year we spent the whole time getting it ready, putting down a new lawn, getting rid of all the rubble/sand and building a few raised beds.  Now it is time to reap the rewards, we are planning to grow loads of different vegetables and fruit.

Not knowing much about gardening I have just discovered summer bulbs.  I thought bulbs were just for giving colour in the spring time with all the daffodils.  Now in the shops there are loads of different bulbs to give your garden colour in the summer.  I have been good so far and have only brought 4 packs of them, but I want to pack my garden full.  I am just waiting to plant them now, it seems to snow nearly every week at the moment so I don’t think its the right time yet.

We still have quite a big shopping list for the garden (30 metres of fencing, a shed and green house) and on a limited budget we are not going to get very far.  Hopefully we are going to get a small cheap green house from B&M.  It only costs £15 and stand just over waist height but should be good for tomatoes and chillies.

I think this year should be good, we learnt a lot from last year (you learn a lot from failure) so hopefully this year we will be able to have courgettes, peppers, pea, beans, carrots, pumpkins and even watermelons.  We will be using the book from Carol Klein from Gardeners world so hopefully everything will turn out OK.

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I couldn’t believe the latest news about Barclays bank giving nearly 2 billion pounds in bonuses this year, incredible! I actually do think the bank in question does deserve a pat on the back for being so stable and making so much profit.  I bank with Barclays and feel secure that my money isn’t going to disappear any time soon, so that something. However, just giving it away to employees (already on a high wage) isn’t there something better they can be doing with all that money, more for charity or to its customers which have get them to their powerful position?

I used to have a number of different accounts with Lloyds TSB including a cash ISA savings account, and a current account, but I was a victim of identity fraud which cleared my current account out completely. Rather than noticing this unusual activity my bank proceeded to charge me £35 every time a direct debit was refused.  Appalled at how they handled it I closed my accounts; the cherry on the awful cake was how rude they were about that.

Before I brought my house I also had Nationwide Savings & Investments, child bonus bonds, which my parents had made when I was little.  The return on these was spectacular and I will defiantly be investing in some myself if or when I have children of my own.  The major benefit is that all returns on Children’s Bonus Bonds are completely tax-free for both child and parent.

The best thing to do if you are looking for any kind of account is do your research.  Check out money supermarket websites and keep up to date with savings news and probably more importantly ask your friends and family for your good local banks, customer service is worth a lot.

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Sadly my grandmother dies a while ago.  She was very old and had had a long and active life but of course it was a sad time for everyone.  A few months on and my parents are sorting out what to do with her property and belongings.  All her possessions were split equally between her two children (my mum and her brother) so either they sell her house or one of them buys the other out. 

My mum has decided she would quite like the property, because she is nearing retiring age and my grans house was a bungalow, which my granddad had built.  I think it is a great idea, as it is a low maintenance and well built, but my mum doesn’t particularly want to sell the house she lives in now and I don’t know if they would find mortgage lending a problem at their age. I have told her to do some research on the mortgage forums as there are some good ones out there.

They have looked into getting their house remortgaged from nationwide their bank which is probably the best option if they want to keep both houses, but I really think once they are settled in their new home they should sell up or rent their current one. 

What I don’t want them to do is sell their property quickly for cash, like many websites and adverts suggest.  There are obvious reasons why someone would want to do that, for example if they are in real financial trouble, but I don’t think it’s a good idea unless absolutely necessary.

Before all that though, both houses need to be thoroughly cleared of all the excess clutter that has accumulated over the decades. It’s amazing how many old magazines and books two houses can hold, EBay, car boots and charity shops here we come!

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Finally, it’s getting warmer.  It has been a chilly winter, lots of ice and snow.  It seems like the snow isn’t quite over yet, it keeps surprising me opening the window to find a beautiful white blanket.  But now it seems even more special with the blue skies that we haven’t seen for a few months.

Now im looking forward to full blown summer, it’s always been my favourite season, mainly because there is so much to do.  In winter many attractions and theme parks close down for the season, people are more likely to stay in; there are fewer parties (minus Christmas of course) and no weddings. 

In summer everything is bustling and alive.  There are festivals, town shows and fairs, lots of things to do in the garden (we are going to try and grow our own vegetables again this year), and sometimes it’s just great to laze about in the sun with a barbeque

This year we have the added excitement of the Merlin annual pass.  My wife and I made a deal to buy the passes ready for summer and try and go to every attraction on the list in a year.  This includes Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington, Legoland, London eye, Dungeons, Warwick castle, Madame Tussauds and the sea life centres. 

We did a similar thing with a zoo pass a few years ago and it was brilliant, we calculated the ticket paid for itself about 4 times over with the amount we went.  We went to loads of different zoos when we were in the area. Sometimes we just went for an hour or two, to have a picnic, but it never got boring. 

Summer for the twentysomething, as I am, also means weddings as our school friends settle down.  I really looking forward to a stag party coming up soon where we are going zorbing, which I have always wanted to do and quad biking which I always enjoy. 

Bring on the summer sun!

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I love Fridays, because I always get to leave half an hour earlier on a Friday.  It’s not much but it always seems to get the weekend off to a good start. I was therefore seriously irritated that my workplace had scheduled a meeting for Friday afternoon (I mean who does that!).  This meant that I was late leaving and hit major traffic on my way home.  I reached my destination (the pub over two hours later than I would do on a normal Friday and my mood was not exactly rosy.

While I was ranting about my stupid job and my rubbish day, I realised my companions were looking a little uncomfortable and I guessed I had put my foot in it somewhere.  It transpired that one of my friends was drowning his sorrows after unexpectedly losing his job that very day. I have heard plenty on the news about companies closing and people losing their jobs but it luckily hadn’t effected me personally until that moment. 

At the point where property prices were falling my friend bought his first house, this was about two years ago when it was a buyer’s market.  He thought his job was stable and found it very easy to get some good mortgages deals.   Now he knows he will not be able to keep up his repayments and will face repossession problems if his situation does not improve.  

The rest of the evening consisted of us drunkenly suggesting ways in which he could avoid repossession, simply sell his house before it happened, starting his own business or invent something and go on the dragons den!

In the end he decided that it was time to get off the housing ladder with his head held high and ride out the economic crisis back with his parents.  This is happening more and more, I am surprised that at the age of 26, I am the only one of my school friends who has moved out of my parent’s home.  With repossessions forecast to rise according to the news, this is likely to be a very popular option.

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With Christmas and the New Year over it’s a bit of a low time of year, especially as this is the time of year when you have to come to terms with the amount you spent over Christmas.  I am feeling the pinch and I had a relatively cheap Christmas. 

January is of course the month for the day dubbed Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year.  On that Monday the radio was full of how it was scientifically proven to be the most depressing day.  It sounds strange that scientists would want to prove something like that but then they always seems to be proving something strange. Well it turns out to be a load of rubbish made up by a PR company for a holiday company who paid a scientist to put his name to it.

It is understandable why people may be depressed, during Christmas there is a lot of pressure to spend a lot of money and many people end up with a lot of debt on their credit card with no chance to clear it any time soon.  I can imagine companies offering debt advice being run off their feet at the moment.

I think at the moment there is a lot of people needing advice about their money.  We seem to live in a generation that does not know how to manage money as if we want something there is always a company that is willing to give out personal loans to anyone who asks.  In fact the companies actively look for customers, I used to get automated phone calls from a loan company who were very concerned about my debt problems and were going to give my another loan to solve them.

I still think that to be in debt is quite a foolish thing to do, and can be avoided.  Mortgages are an unavoidable thing, but if you let your self get into unaffordable debt though personal loans then the answer should be to write it off and pay off only what you can afford.  You should be forced to sell all valuables like flat screen TV’s and expensive cards and then pay off what they can afford of what is left.  This month I have lived on very little because I have had to and with websites like This is money around it makes it much easier.

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The snow has finally gone, it was a real surprise looking out of the window to see green on Saturday.  It feeling like ages since there has been any colour in the outside world.  We opened the curtains and were amazed it is like spring has arrived, out bulbs are already emerging and it is actually a nice temperature to be outside.

We have decided to do some spring cleaning early this year to get it done and out of the way.  We already have 3 big boxes of stuff to go to the charity shop, a big pile for Ebay and three big bin liners of rubbish.  There is something very nice about getting rid of all the junk to give us some space.  In our house we are both hoarders of things, we have never thrown much away so over the years we have accumulated an unbelievable about of junk.

We have found loads of  things we never knew we had, a case of unlabelled CD that were full of all our music all ordered in folders, something that we haven’t had since my old computer died.

Next weekend as long as the weather stays ok we are going to tackle the garden and get it all neat and tidy for when we start growing out veg.  Growing veg is our new thing for the year (we had a go last year, but I am ignoring that because of the major failure it was).  We still have leaves from last year in the beds and now everything has died down its our chance to clean behind the fence in our garden where people throw junk.

With all the fresh veg and living on a budget very heading towards the Good Life.

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With only one income (and a low one at that) coming into my house we have had to be quite good at living on a shoe string as it were.  The one thing that we have done differently that we has made the most difference is not going shopping.  It is amazing what you pick up when you just pop out to the shops for something you need.  With all the offers in supermarkets you soon end up spending over £20 and all you went out for was a couple of courgettes to bulk out a Bolognaise.

I think that the most important thing with keeping your money in check is good financial planning.  Making sure you know how much your bills are going to come to every month.  I love my online banking for this, I pay all my bills by direct debit so by just logging on to my account I can see all my monthly outgoings in one simple list. From that I know how much I have to spend on other things like food and petrol.

The problem I have at the moment is that I am breaking even every month, giving me no extra to save for other expenses such as car insurance or paying more than the interest on the money I borrowed for the house.  I know it is an extra expense but I am considering some form of financial protection just in case the unforeseen happens.  I have looked at critical illness cover and mortgage life insurance cover but I haven’t decided yet.  I think it is important to make sure that you get the right cover, not just the right price, which is why I look at reviews for things like home insurance.

When I do actually have to go shopping or I am looking for a new financial product I always look at Money Supermarket.  I get the email update and it is always packed full of good ideas and the latest offers.

What ever happens I know that there is always ways to save money, you just have to want to do it.

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It’s that time of year again where it snows and causes havoc. I personally love snow and always have, but what I don’t enjoy is the slushy, icy aftermath of a lot of snow and the inevitable horror stories of people stranded and cold. 

I don’t know how many times people need to be told but there are always reports about people falling through thin ice.  A local school had to get all the emergency services out to two boys who had made it to an island in the centre of a nearby lake and couldn’t get back, this obviously put everyone who came to help in danger. 

I work in a school and there is always the possibility that the school will be closed to pupils.  This is usually followed by various complaints about ‘a little snow brings everything to a holt’ and how it has disrupted their parents work.  I understand that it must be hard to change plans etc, but the only reason that schools close is due to them being sued by parents for things like children breaking bones on ice in the playground. The schools really are just watching their backs, quite rightly.

The good things about the snow is it makes you feel like a kid again.  There is something about it that makes you want to have snow ball fights and go sledging.  The night before I was supposed to go back to work it snowed and we had at least 10cm of snow on the floor.  I should have gone to bed ready for the next day, instead we took a tray from the kitchen down to the local field and went sledging.

Unfortunately now the snow seems to be melting so the chances of having another day off work are decreasing.  I just hope it snows heavily over night.

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We had a surprise today when we looked out my window at my brother in laws new house.  The old sold sign had been removed and a new sign with a new company had taken its place.  If the owners had decided to try and find a new buyer I wouldn’t blame them the process seems to be dragging on forever.  To start with my brother in law was told he would be moved into his new house by Christmas.  Then his solicitor told him that they hadn’t bothered to read the papers for the sale yet.  Right now no money has been exchanged and there is still no end in sight.

I was surprised to read that property prices there was an increase of 6%  during 2009 over the whole year.  After what seemed a terrible time for the economy one area is recovering.  I don’t think anyone knows will happen with regards to property prices in 2010 none of the experts seem to agree.  Some seem to think that we are going to see the improvement continue whiles others say we could see a decrease in house prices over the year.

It is expected that interest rates could be kept at the low rate of 0.5% for 2010.  You would have thought that because interest rates are low, then the rates for mortgages would be low.  But the greedy banks are just using the low interest rates as a way of making more money.  The high interest rates could put home buyers and property buyers off during the year.  During 2009 property prices were driven up by the lack of supply, but with the prices higher more people could decide to sell.  If this happens prices may dip during 2010, I think the best thing to do is watch the people work investing in property as it is their livelihood to know what is going on.

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I was hoping my car insurance would be very cheap this year, I have never claimed in the 6 years I have been driving and I will be 26.  But it looks like it will go up, insurance companies are losing money because of all the injury claims (something they encouraged and is now biting them in the bum).  I thought that possibly I had lost my no claims bonus when it snowed the other day and skidded out of control.

I had been to my parents to as my uncle had been to visit and it was the only change to see him over the holidays.  I set off home at half 11 and everything was ice, it was like driving on an ice skating rink.  I was very careful but obviously not careful enough as I managed to hit a car.  It was parked and I had skidded for about 20 meters before hitting it.  I just completely lost all control.  My brakes were on fully and I tried to turn but nothing happened I just went into a straight line.  I got off lightly as there was no damage to either car but I did tell the owners about what had happened.

At the time I wasn’t worried, but now thinking about it, will anything happen about it?  I know there was no damage, I only tapped the other car, but not everyone is honest.  I could end up having to pay my excess if they claim for anything which I will not be happy about.

It is sad that we live in a time where people are ready to claim for anything and if you are honest to admit to a slight knock you end up worried about people claiming against the insurance on your car.  A quick search on the internet and you can find companies with calculators that tell you how much you can claim for different injuries.  Personal injury claims are easy to do as there are Lawyers for it everywhere are everywhere, its big business with many specialists in legal profession.  At least there was no one in the car to claim for injury, my main worry is even though I have protected my no claims bonus.

You would have thought that the councils would have learnt from last year when they ran out of salt from the road.  But it seems that they are still relying on last minute deliveries of salt, but when the roads are snowed in no lorries can get though.

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Those astute readers will notice I haven’t posted anything for quite a while, that is because due to the constraints of my job and the run up to Christmas I have been super busy.  I can start to relax now as I only have a week left until I break up for festivities and most of my presents are brought or finished. 

I say finished because we have made a few of the bits and pieces ourselves this year.  Big jars filled with sweets, chutneys and cakes.  It is a good way to save a bit of money (especially the sweets: all you need is a big jar, any clean food jar will be fine, then a bag of sweets, fill up with sweets, then cover the lid with a scrap of cloth and a label, so simple and check out the saving, you could spend up to £15. 

Buying Christmas presents for the kids is always a favourite, mainly because it gives you a perfect excuse to play in a toy shop for the afternoon.  This year we went to toys r us for all of the kids gifts, we could have brought toys online, but where’s the fun in that. 

When it comes to gifts for women, we visit the same store every year, Boots has a brilliant range of presents, so much choice and its not all makeup and bath stuff, every year they have a new range of national trust, foodie and home gifts too.  Its still buy 2 get one free as well which is perfect if you have a lot of gifts to buy.  When it comes to my wife, sister or mum I try to be a little more thoughtful and luckily there are websites that do that for me. 

Im sure im not the only one who finds gifts for men the hardest to get right.  I know I would be happy with most gadgets and electronic type gifts, but they can be very expensive. The same goes for experience days, there are many of the experience day activities I would love to do, but they don’t come cheep.  Since I seem to spend the majority of my life at work, I do quite like the distraction of some of the USB gifts & gadgets you can get; I got brought a mini greenhouse and people are always commenting (beats chat about the weather). This year I have been buying the boys presents from Amazon, it’s pretty much a one stop shop for just about anything.

Well that’s the gifts sorted, now I have got to wrap them all, mince pies and mulled wine at the ready I think!

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Christmas time, one of my favourite times of year.  It seems such a special time of years because everyone makes more effort.  Everyone decorates their houses, the shops have special displays and all the cities have their Christmas markets.  This year I have been to two Christmas markets, Lincoln and Birmingham.  I would say that Lincoln Christmas market was definitely the best.  Birmingham market could have been very good but it was not organised very well.  It is massive, running up the main street but unfortunately there was no guide for where people should go.  The streets were packed with people pushing and trying to squeeze through until it was grid locked and no one moved.  It took us over an hour to get from one side of the market to the other, and we didn’t get to see much of the stalls. Lincoln market on the other hand was more controlled.  Like normal they had the one way system in place to guide people through, it was packed but still ran smoothly.  Hey both had the mulled wine and Bratwurst on sale so I would go to both again.

Apart from the Christmas markets there is the songs that reappear every year, Fairy Talk of New York, Sleeps till Santa (from Trent FM) and Mince pies coming out of my ears song (I think this was made up by my primary school teacher but I still sing as much as I can remember every year.

 Talking about Mince pies, they are fantastic.  So far I have had at least 1 a day, my boss has brought one in for me everyday so far.  I am going to make my own (well if you can call store brought pastry and mince meat making my own) when ever I get around to it.

Now I live in a little village it has become even more sweet.  We have had Santa coming around tonight to visit all the children.  It was the perfect day for it because it is the first day of real snow.

Altogether Christmas is a lovely time of year made for families and will always be my favourite time of the year.

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We are getting to the end of another year, and I feel most will say it hasn’t been the best year so far. With every depressed about the recession and jobs cuts, we have had one piece of good news; Big Brother on Channel 4 is ending next year. One more year and we will never have to hear about the bunch we weirdoes locking themselves in a house to try and grab a bit of fame. I don’t know about you but hearing that really cheered me up.

I think Big Brothers days were numbered anyway, why do we want to see a load of people living under constant surveillance when that is what everyday life is anyway. I live in Nottingham, the 7th most watched place in the UK with 5 cameras per every 1000 people. That is over 3000 cameras in the city!

I don’t really mind CCTV cameras but if you delve a little bit deeper into surveillance of society then it gets a little bit more intrusive. Manchester Airport has introduced a new x ray scanner that lets them see you naked. This is supposed to be instead of the old patting down they used to do to people.

I have always been suspicious of GPS vehicle tracking. It is good because it will let you know where you are and tell you where to go, but I always thought it could be used the other way around, to track you. It is a good idea for commercial companies to monitor their fleet, but could it be used to track individuals to see if they are speeding?

Worst of all I think is RFID tracking something that is completely new to me. It is a form of tracking that uses microchips to track packages. Companies are now wanting to put them into products to allow them to see where they end up and who has brought them. I think this is against common decency, I don’t not want a company to know if I have brought their produce. All they will use it for is to bombard you with targeting junk mail.

No wonder (and thank God) Big Brother is ending, reading the news makes it feel like we are living in that house ourselves.

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I spent the day with my Brother in law today, we are both fans of technology quite quickly the talk turned to the Internet.  He is currently living in a flat (looking for his first house at the moment) and does not have a phone line installed.  This means that for his Internet he is relying on a USB dongle from the 3 Network and it also means that he spends most of his time complaining about his Internet connection.

His main usage is to talk to friends in Japan, he lived there for a while with his wife and is still learning the language from his friends with a weekly lesson.  As he doesn’t have a LAN line he doesn’t have any fixed telephones in his apartment.  Using his mobile it would cost a fortune which is why he relies on the VOIP phone system to talk to them.  I think it is amazing the way the Internet has advanced; why I was young no one I knew had DSL Internet now it is standard for most people.

What will be the next step up from DSL.  Apparently one of my brother in laws friend currently has a business Internet connection to his house, but with the current availability of business sdsl connections it will be a few more years until connection like that become available wide spread.  I don’t doubt that it will happen though, with the ever increasing demand put on the Internet and the need for people to share experiences over the net ever increasing soon we will need a faster up load connection.

What will the future internet look like.  We from searching on the internet people are predicting virtual reality where we can set up ultra realistic environments to share with friends from all over the world.  I for one can not wait to see what is going to happen next.

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I finally got around to starting to build my raised beds.    I had read up about raised beds and how treated wood can be bad for the plants but in the end I don’t care about organically grown veg in the super market so I am not bothered at home either.  So I decided to buy treated wood from B&Q.  I headed off with the measurements I wanted to go price it up.  In the end for what I wanted it would of cost over £150, which was too much.  I needed a new plan.

After a bit of searching I found a timber yard close buy which would give me all the timber I needed for only £80 which was mush better and it even included delivery.  So I had my wood sitting in the back garden waiting to be cut and put together.  My original plan was to hammer in my posts (I used arris board from B&Q cut to 40cm lengths and sharpened one end to a point) and then attach the boards to the posts.  It didn’t take to long to discover that it wasn’t going to work.  I couldn’t get the posts in perfectly vertical and in the exact place I wanted them.  So my wife came to the rescue with her plan to butt the planks up against each other in the correct place and screw them together.  After that attach the posts to each plank so everything is in the correct position.

I have made one this way so far and it looks really good.  They are 25cm high (2 X 12.5cm planks) and 1.5 meters long, 1 meters wide.  Now all I have to do is find a place to get some top soil from, it can be very expensive to buy it from gardening centres.

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It seems like for weeks we have been hearing about how it is looking good for the economy.  We have heard about how there are signs of recovery for many area, but now we are told that the economy has actually shrunk again.

I was hoping for something a bit more positive, something to us think that possibly there will be a lot more jobs being made for people soon instead we find that unemployment has increased again.  With things continuing to worsen we are to be hit again financially, but this time by our cars.  I have just renewed my road tax for my car and I was shocked when I got the letter.  I remembered last year being about £120 so expected something a little higher, maybe £125 to 130, but it was £150!!

Not only that but it is expected that car insurance premiums are expected to rise by 14% this year.  My car insurance premium is around £350 which I don’t think that is too bad but that is with shopping around a lot and I have 5 years no claims bonus.  The news is bad for the number of people driving on the road with no insurance, earlier on the year I talked about how there were more people on the road that were uninsured, it is only going to increase.

Why is our insurance increasing, I think it is probably due to the increase in the amount of insurance fraud going on.  With people getting more desperate for money there have been cases of people pay for their car to be crashed so that they can make fake injury claims.  The problem with injury claims are that it is very easy to claim for whiplash when nothing is actually wrong as it is very difficult to medically prove.  I do not agree with it but I do know some people who have been in legitimate crashes but claimed for whiplash compensation when nothing was wrong, but to pay someone to crash your car is a little bit extreme.

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My Brother is still looking for his first house.  He has tried some very dodgy areas and come up with nothing now he is looking just around the corner from where I live.  It’s an OK area and means to see him we won’t have to do the 45 minute drive, just a 2 minute walk.

It will be nice to have them living so close, at the moment seeing them requires a lot of planning to fit around everyone’s work commitments.  The house they have been to seen looks hopeful as well, it needs a bit of doing up as it is very old fashioned, but it is no where as bad as the house I have just done up.  Every this is in good condition it is just as the advert for it put it’s “in need of modernisation”.  Also is has the advantage of a big back garden, perfect for the vegetable patch they want to start.

The problem they have come across so far is the lack of good quality housing up for sale meaning that anything they do like is very competitive to buy.   I thought that there would be a lot of house for sale at the moment with the reports of all the repossession happening.  I know a lot of people avoid repossession by going with those companies that advertise to sell my property to avoid repossession.  But once they have brought it from you they must have to sell it again, so surely they will have to start selling the houses again.

With the latest news on mortgage I just hope they have their mortgage sorted out before the Financial Services Authority gets it new reforms out which could make it more difficult to get a mortgage.  You have to wonder will any reforms work, the banks seem determined to mess everything up and go against every bit of advice given to them, I was shocked to read the royal bank of scotland is giving out ridiculous bonuses to its bankers.  They seemed to have forgotten that they messed up and the tax payer had to bail them out, what are they getting the bonuses for? Being incompetent?

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It’s been a year since I started most of the contracts for the house and this month it is my Sky subscription that has ended.  It means that it would be a good idea for me to look around for a better offer to see if I can save myself a bit of money.  I am going to using the comparison sites to see what would be the best.

I have been caught out once by changing companies’ part way though the contract and BT charged my £145 for doing it.  BT is one company that I will never go back to; their packages seem ridiculously expensive for not a lot.  Plus I found their customer services very rude when I rang up to see why they had charged me so much.  The one thing I like about BT is the home phone system with the home hub.  I think it looks very sleek and is supposed to have a very good signal range, I would really like a good telephone system.

In this day and age you have to have a pretty good telecoms package with phone and broadband as the bare minimum.  I currently am on the 8mbps package from sky but the actual speed is around 2mbps.  I know that there are packages for up to 50mbps from virgin media if there is fibre optic cables installed in the area, but I know we don’t have that and it is very very expensive.  The most demanding thing I ask my internet connection to do it upgrade my Xbox 360 every so often, I don’t play games over the Internet as I don’t want to pay for a subscription to let me do it.  My 2mbps is fine for what I use it for, it’s not like I am a big business that needs fast SDSL Internet to cope with the demands.

The one thing I would say after looking at all the options is it needs to be made simpler.  With each company offering a multitude of different packages with nothing really made clear about what you are getting.  I think thing seems to be set up to trick people into buying more expensive things or something that they don’t actually want.

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I want to encourage wildlife in my garden and I have wanted a hedgehog house for some time to go under my elder tree.  I have had a look in pet shops like pets at home for a house but they cost around £40 and everyone I have seen has been damaged from sitting on the shelf.

With that in mind we decided that we would make one, because how hard can it be.  With a quick visit to B&Q we had a large sheet of plywood suitable for outside use than all we had to do was make it.  The Internet was very useful for plans there are loads of designs to make, including some that are designed to go underground.  In the end we went for an above ground one as hopefully it would last longer not being constantly damp.

We drew the design on the board before cutting it up.  The top of the front and back were sloped so water would run off the roof.  We made it 33/27cm high, which is a bit to big, I think around 20cm would of been fine.  One thing that everyone suggests is to put a partition in between the door and the sleeping compartment to stop predators getting to them.  With a 10×10cm door it works really well, our very inquisitive cat has tested it out for us, he could only get into the entrance.

To finish it off we stapled shed roofing to the roof and varnished the whole of the outside with exterior varnish to make it water proof.  It has been drying in our kitchen over night so it ready to go outside now all we have to do is staple lots of layers of newspaper to the inside for insulation then fill it full of hay to make it nice and cosy.  Then hopefully soon we will get some hedgehogs moving in.

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