[muscle750]

Just had my latest leccy bill now wanting £114 a month 2 years ago i was paying £48 a month. I dont owe them any money aprt from £20 now they want this unearthly sum.
This whole country is heading for meltdown with fuel prices, The average man in the street is now nothing more than the most heavily taxed in the western world. Quite a few of my friends have gone to live in Aus and NZ and not one has come back..............................cant think why!!!

[fionaB]

well when i moved into this house 3 years ago i moved from a 3 bedroom flat which was huge to a 2 bed bungalow which is tiny, all electric in both........ and i went from paying £60 a month in the flat to £110 a month in this house, over the last three years it has gone down to £49 and now creeps up to £63

Fi

[muscle750]

Plus its colder where u are I went to St Andrews a few years ago...............good god!! It was freezing and could hardly stand up due to the wind Still a lovely part of the world thou

[silkstone]

Privatisation of the utilities has achieved very little apart from to confuse everyone and give their directors huge salaries. It's not as if you can have several sets of pipes or cables to your house, so it's not like choosing to buy from Tesco or Sainsbury's.

You can look at sites such as usave.com which can save you a lot of money for a while, but the supplier that was the cheapest six months ago is not necessarily the cheapest now. It's likely that gas prices will rise by a further 40% in the next two years, and (off topic) £2 a litre for petrol and diesel is not long away.

We are heading for interesting times.

[Steve]

And if your happy pills are super strength and you want to take the risk, you could always think back to what you were paying in council tax a couple of years ago and compare that to what it costs you today

[silkstone]

Yes indeed. £1700 this year and they can't even empty the bins on the right day.

[Steve]

Are they still doing bin collections weekly where you are or have they gone to fortnightly yet?

Pay more and get a reduced service...something's not quite right is it?

[silkstone]

We have a multicoloured set of bins. There's a grey one for non-recyclable waste, and that is emptied fortnightly. There are also green, brown and blue bins which are also emptied fortnightly, in the weeks when the grey one isn't.

Fortnightly emptying of the grey bins can be a problem in warm weather!

Unfortunately, Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, bless 'em, often doesn't manage to empty the bins on the correct day, so they're left out on the footpath for an extra day to get in the way. This is all part of the management competence for which they are renowned. Some local authorities have threatened to fine people for leaving their bins out after they've been emptied, and I think that's a great idea provided it works the other way too, and they have to pay us if they don't empty them when they should.

[Steve]

We still have the weekly collections here in Germany, they empty our two bins, one that contain biodegradable stuff (food waste etc) and another with the standard household waste.

You are expected not to place anything that shouldn't be in there or indeed the wrong items in the wrong bins though. It is also expected of us to recycle glass (bottles, jars etc), paper, aluminium and plastics by taking them yourself to the many recycling centers in the town. We have 3 different ones within a five minute walk and because they are so easily accessible (and clean) it is totally unknown for anyone to break these rules. For a Brit, it took me a short while to adjust to this but now its second nature and I find it works really well.

Our costs for the equivalent of Council Tax is also much less than in the UK and has only increased (as far as I am aware) in line with inflation.

[simpbow]

Its past a joke for what ever it is, next there gonna charge you for using footpaths, its bad enough being held to ransom with the oil, makes you think about clearing off to another country somewhere where your not going to be ripped off.

[AQ]

I really wish you had not mentioned a footpath chatge - some council may pick up on that.

I also hear from a local source that they are thinking about reintroducing the WindowTax which was repealed in 1851. They will of course charge twice the standard rate for all double glazed windows.

[fionaB]

hmmmmm reading all this makes me wonder if im living ina different country 9 well of course i am but u know what i mean).......... my council tax is £60 a month........ my buckets get emptied before 7 am on the day they are supposed to.... ( green one week- general household waste-, blue the next week recycleable stuff, and brown- garden waste- once a month)
my street lights work and if i have a repair needs done, for the most part it gets fixed within days of reporting it...........

[muscle750]

Im on me way.................