Speaking of energy, having just discovered that I'm paying more than twice what I did for electricity a couple of years ago, I looked into other possibilities. Apparently, one can now change electricity suppliers with just a few clicks on a web page, and I stand to save 20%. Is it really that simple? Has anyone here done it? I'm looking at Powergen vs. Atlantic, and I wonder how Powergen can now stay in business except by relying on the inertia of their customers. (Yes, I know it's evil to heat a house with electricity, but I doubt if it's adaptable to gas.)

Funny thing, electricity pricing - I was involved in the new trading arrangements which came into force in 1998. One of the effects of them is that it's cheaper to buy small quantities of electricity than large most of the time, so the big players like Powergen are somewhat handicapped. The difference is nothing like 20% though. Of course, lots of suppliers have short term or 'new customer only' promotions, hoping to get people in and then rely on inertia. The cheapest thing to do is therefore change often.

Do you have people going door-to-door trying to get people to change their gas/electricity company? For a few months here I was plagued by 'em. Started fantasizing about electricifying the doorbell to give them a shock... rude words were thought, but not said.

[flerdle] I did get a few a while back, very strange. The first one opened by saying "How would you like to save money on your electricity bill?", and wanted me to sign up there and then, without even saying what company he was representing. Then a few months later, two young women doing "a survey" asked if I had switched suppliers, "like most of your neighbours have". Nul points. Probably from the same company, whoever they were, and if I did, I'd make a point of never doing business wth them, ever. Then the first chap came back again and I just said "Not interested" and closed the door.
[INJ] Odd, I'm going by the companies' own published tariffs for an Economy 7 dual meter. All the companies seem to claim to be at least "part of one of the biggest suppliers", although that's rather an elastic expression.

It has been my experience that deregulating state-owned utility services results in a welter of paperwork for the consumer who is bombarded by junk mail exhorting this or that 'cheaper' version of whatever it is. They invariably aren't cheaper in the long run, largely because of the increased costs associated with legislation, litigation and advertising. Service call-outs become a nightmare of humanless voice-mail mazes and all one really gets is a warm feeling when one thinks about the 'good old days'. My gas service was recently split from the monopolistic energy carrier from my area. Costs increased overnight by 10-15% and there are now three phone numbers to report a gas leak with no 24-hour call-out. The joke? that the billing departments, although ostensibly now separate for gas and electricity, still use the same style account numbers and go to the same building. Indeed, I can pay my electricity bill at a window in a gas-company cashier's office. I suspect the bills are made up on the same computer. It's all a game.

I've argued on the doorstep with an electricity account swapper guy before too. I told him I didn't want to discuss it there and then, and he kept asking me 'why not?'. so I shut the door on him. It was quite scary, to be honest, he was becoming vehement. Lord knows what it's like for little old ladies.

This is one of the benefits of having an entryphone system - with a bit of skill (and luck in having the topmost buzzer) you can generally fend these people off before they gain access to the stair.

Also, how do they tell whose electricity it is? It's all the same wires, and the electrons aren't labelled.

[Raak] You could spin 'em up with a particular bias though. That way you could discriminate yours from the rest by having a filter installed at the customer's service entrance that let through electrons with a penchant for drinking only gravity fed beer or that preferred a lawn mowed in alternating stripes and kept the others out for example.

Don't you realise you're all geing ripped off. It's AC electricity - that means you're getting the same electrons going in and out of your meter day in day out, yet you get charged as if they were all brand spanking new...bloody nerve these leccy suppliers have got, I reckon.

(SM) Quite so. Competition in itself costs money and furthermore there has to be rake-off for the private company or they wouldn't be interested in the first place. So naturally it costs more, or the service is poorer. Another example is Directory Enquiries, privatised for no good reason whatever except to satisfy the current political dogma. Don't get me going about the railways, about which I know a bit. Truly the country is run by idiots.

(Phil) A very good point. The less fastidious among us would settle for AC/DC but that's up to them, naturally.

I'm glad someone mentioned Directory Enquiries... I remember that once upon a time it was operated by BT for free; then they charged about 10p which could be circumvented by using a phone box; looking at last month's phone bill, I notice that fierce competition has delivered the fantastic bargain of 60p per enquiry. Victory!

Since they started charging, I've not used directory enquiries once. I find 192.com to be very good.
Slightly tangentially, at work, I have had no end of incorrect reservations, e.g. someone books at this Bull's Head, then turns up for dinner at another, because 118118 or whoever has given them the wrong number. One night we had two bookings that didn't show, so I called them the next day saying "Hello, this is the Bull's Head at Ratby; you had a reservation with us last night..." Both people failed to notice the "Ratby" bit, even when I said it so clearly, and said "yes we were there". Then when asked where exactly, one said "Well, we booked at the Bull's Head in Newtown Linford, but when we got there we couldn't find it (I was able to tell them that it changed name 8 years ago), so we went to the Bull's Head at Woodhouse Eaves." The other said "You know, on the A47", which is about 6 miles away in Leicester Forest West. Unfortunately, I think there are 11 Bull's Heads in Leicestershire, and half of them are within a 12 mile radius

[Phil] Well, with a bit of creative yet inexpensive sign alterage you could easily become the Bull Shed. That should stop the problem. Alternatively, add a sauna at the back and call your place The Bull's Head of Steam.

[rab] Unfortunately, we were not internet enabled when our water was leaking into the flat below and we didn't know the number for a plumber that had been suggested to us...

Sorry, that should have been directed at [Phil]

[penelope] We need a new game where the object is to supply a witty, brief and above all final response to "Why not [discuss my proposal now]?"

[Sierra Mike] Perhaps with each person giving an answer to the previous person's salesman's line, then supplying a new salesman's line of their own?

[Raak] That would work too, though I was just thinking about supplying alternatives for penelope to use after the Why not? was delivered. Sort of along the lines of Mad Magazine's old Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions feature. One question, many one-liner responses.

[rab] Commiserations - it's a shame that necessity forces one to be ripped off :-(

To make way for the new game I think it is time for Cancel Mansell to move along, ready for Why Not? or something new.

I dread to use the 'C' word in September but the school sent out the Christmas catalogue yesterday, and the milkman dropped off this morning a leaflet for spring and Christmas flowering bulbs.

Is it proper or just morbid bad taste omn my part for wanting to see how the hamster from Top Gear had a near fatal crash. Hopefully he will recover soon and take his revenge out on a few more caravans.

[Inkers] I have already planted bulbs in pots for next spring and bought xmas cards (from the V&A, online, before they run out, which is what happened last year).

[pen] Very impressed and also quite jealous.

Can I also just say about the two people that heckled John Reid, it was a set up. A member of the cabinet going to an invited audience of muslims, security would have been tight. But two well known radicals simply walk in unnoticed!! pah!! It's a government conspiracy I tell you.

Today I saw a pub advertising Christmas meals today. That is, you could go in today and have a Christmas meal. WIth free bottle of champagne (which I think must mean a one-glass quarter bottle of white fizz).

I'm so happy to be moving to a pub that does not do food. Christmas will not be a word that makes me shake with fear this year :-)

[Phil] As I recall, you didn't do food when I came in anyway! :-)

[phil] A pub that has no food? Not even chicken in the basket! But I presume you will still be working on Christmas Day.

I stopped in at a pub at Kinlochleven that had two entrances; one for walkers and one for... I don't know, everyone else, I suppose. I arrived by car but I as was I scruffy and dressed for walking I went in the former as a courtesy to what I supposed was their intent. Inside I discovered that not only were the two parts of the pub completely separate, with the walker section gulag-spare, but they even served different food! I ordered some manner of pie and got some hideous little prepackaged thing that had been semithawed in the microwave, which I would have regarded as inedible even had it been warmed up properly. The thing is, it appeared to be quite a different thing from what they were serving in what I could see in the remainder of the place. I concluded that they absolutely despised walkers but couldn't exclude them, so they decided to quarantine them and make them miserable in the hopes of developing a reputation that would repel as many of them as possible.

[Inkspot] To take that suggestion perhaps more seriously than it was intended, if it was a setup, it seems to me a quite benign one. After all, it appears the two hecklers were real radical Islamists, not stooges, and if the authorities troubled themselves no further than making sure no bombs got in, well, freedom of speech and all that. It's hardly a dirty trick to let them condemn themselves out of their own mouths in front of the press. What are they going to do, complain that they weren't suppressed?

Come and see the tolerance inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm not bein' repressed!

In letting them in they were certain to go off at anytime, for the speaker it did not matter, he needed a headline otherwise it would have been just another day at the office. Suddenly a small paragraph inside became front page news. It was manipulation by of events for a desired outcome.

[Uncle K] That's just saturday lunchtime :-)
[Inky] Indeed, that is the current status of the place. No children permitted either, and the place is packed! If there is no tradition of that pub opening on Christmas Day, then this year I will have the day off. Next year wil be different. If it does currently open, I'll do it for 2 hours.
[Dan] Is that the pub that overlooks the water, with the Atlas brewery behind it? If so, I was there 2 and a bit years ago, and although we had to leave our packs in the lobby, or outside, they were perfectly welcoming, and had some wonderful beer from the aforementioned brewery. The toasties were smashing !

[Inkspot] I am, perhaps wrongly, getting the impression that you find something wrong with that. But everything people do is "manipulation of events for a desired outcome". Or in less tendentious language, acting to achieve their goals. Nothing dishonest happened: the hecklers hanged themselves with their own rope (I hope -- but I haven't followed subsequent reports to see what mainstream Muslim reaction has been). If indeed there was a nod and a wink to the security services to flagrantly let the opposition be heard, I don't have a problem with that.

[Phil] I dinna think so. They didn't have a lobby for one thing, and for another, like I said, walkers were shunted into a room that felt like a holding pen for undesirables (which on reflection is what it was), and there was no brewery attached. It was some time ago. In fairness it was one of only two less than delightful pub experiences I had in Scotland, and as for the other, well, I'll frame it in the form of retrospectively self-evident advice: If you're at the Fringe and you find a pub that miraculously isn't jammed with people, it is safe to assume that there's a good reason for it. My own fault in both cases, of course, as it's really not difficult to simply leave places that don't feel right.

[Dan] I have a wonderful memory of walking into Kinlochleven from Glencoe. It was not long after midday and there was only one "PH" marked on the map. As we rounded the corner, the pub hove into view. I believe it was called The Anchor, and a dingier, drabber looking place it would be hard to imagine in such a picturesque location. A youngish bloke (20 or thereabouts) was walking the other way, obviously a local (due to lack or rucksack etc), so I shouted across the street "Is that the only pub in town?". The look of horror on his face will stay with me for many years as he replied "Hell, no! No unless ye like trippin over pushchairs and shit! Carry on to the river, you'll be fine there."

In the phamaceutical product naming stakes I thought it was difficult for anusol to be trumped (so to speak), but it appears to have been done.