Ask UK

I'm thinking of buying a new laptop from a business in Spain (Slimbook fwiw), but it's not clear to me from what I've read online whether or what kind of additional charges I'd have to pay. Has anyone else been through the process already?

At a table? Desk? Living room in front of the TV?

I was looking at a potential new job until it occurred to me to ask about dealing with "on-call" support.

As I work in tech, there is usually an expectation that some level of support is handled off hours in case systems go down. However this position didn't have any compensation for making yourself available and generally only 15 mins from a phone or computer to support the systems. The best they could offer was "time in-lieu" if you get called, which is basically saying they'll let you work your contracted maximum hours despite it being unsociable hours.

Fuck that.

After seeing elsewhere someone commenting that they would refuse to on-call if there was also a "return to office", because if they had to go to the office to work, then how could they possibly support it from home, it made me wonder what other things should I remember to enquire about when interviewing and asking the hiring company?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin_crossing

I thought it would be pretty cool and funny to set this as a power on/off button for a computer but I don't know if normal people are allowed to buy it.

I'm replacing the light at my front door, and I dont seem to be able to find what I want.

My current light is solar powered, light and motion sensitive so it only comes on at night and dims when there is no movement. However during winter there isn't enough light during the day to charge it so that it lasts longer than a couple of hours.

I would like to replace it with a mains powered one, but keeping the only on at night, and dims when there is no movement so that it illuminates the house number. Everything I see appears to only have one or the other (unless they actually have both but the listing details are terrible), does anyone know the terminology I need to use?

The BBC has been on the case yesterday and today, and at least I’m somewhat interested and perhaps even tempted to go see them. But do people care?

What other band, if they got back together, would tempt you?

Edit: the move must be to another location within the UK.

White or brown toast?

Toasted or not?

Anything else I should know about cucumber sandwiches?

We are currently in a silly situation when dealing with refillable products for home, and I was wondering if anyone else had any ideas.

If I wanted shower gel (for example), all the refillable locations require a bottle with the capacity printed on it, and for it to be empty. And basically I don't want to wait until my shower gel is out completely before getting any more, so I would want an intermediate container however I cannot find a 1l bottle that has the capacity embossed on it so that I can take it to the refill station, and bring it home. I really don't want to buy another small plastic bottle with the capacity on a paper label that does one refill of the gel, and would have to be replaced when the label comes off.

Hi folks,

I've been living in London for about 3 years now but didn't own much so never bothered to get contents insurance. As I'm steadily acrruing things I thought it'd be worth getting some sort of cover. I looked around on some price comparison sites and also reviews here and there. I'm getting anywhere from £60 to £500, although LV offering £250 is quite appealing and I've heard lots of good reviews. How much are you folks paying for contents insurance? What has your experience been with your providers and making claims? Any insight would be nice.

Coming from another country, I always wonder why the two utility companies I have here in the UK, Thames Water and Octopus Energy, would calculate an amount that they think I should pay monthly, instead of just charge whatever I used last month. To me, the latter way makes much more sense and is the standard practice in the countries I lived before.

The amount they calculated seems to generate either a huge credit balance, or a huge underestimation. Thames Water changed my monthly bill from £29 to £7, and then to £17 over the course of a year and a half. Octopus Energy built up more than £200 of a credit balance (not sure if it's a result of the UK government energy gift credit last winter), then set a minimal amount of £61 monthly. They say the purpose is to make sure that the credit balance would be always be more than £100. Okay...but why? If I want to save money, I'd go to a bank.

I could see that it might make sense if the measurement is not as easy or accurate, but come on, it's the 21st century and the meter shows me my energy usage by the hour, surely they can calculate the exact amount rather than pull a random number out of nowhere?

If anyone has any good tips on beating the midges, please share them!

I got absolutely devoured this weekend up by Loch Latrine (edit: Katrine) (completely forgot it was midge season, so I was unprepared).

I've recently been really enjoying poached eggs on toast with sriracha sauce drizzled on top, with a decent portion of chipotle baked beans on the side.

It comes up from time to time but I thought I'd make a thread on it.

Lavatory paper, toilet tissue, bog roll, bumwad, arse wipe, shit tickets; we all need it but I can't find a good one for a reasonable price.

Obviously I don't want the tracing paper you get in a public toilet, but it seems a waste to pay for the quadruple-velvet perfume-soaked premium nonsense. Supermarket own brand is soft enough but tends to fall apart. Who Gives A Crap is environmentally friendly but their basic stuff disintegrates immediately and their premium stuff is even more expensive than the fancy Andrex.

And no, there's no room for a bidet.

He was my favorite creator in Britain who inspired me as a kid to make art and characters and I mourned his death when he passed away while I was in school…but thankfully his friends and family kept the work alive as of right now.

I’ve been drawing art just like him ever since even though I’m American where he was popular.

My current art blog: kylejudd.wordpress.com

Here’s an unreleased piece of tribute to Edd:

So far I’ve seen Shaun of the Dead and Colin which were pretty good films in my opinion.

I wonder what else Britain has that they made…

The BLT has been crowned the UK’s favourite sandwich for 2024 in a recent poll, with 28% of respondents saying they were a fan.

The combination of bacon, lettuce and tomato between slices of bread can be traced back to an entry in Good Housekeeping Everyday cookbook in 1903.

...

Britain's favourite sandwiches

1. BLT – 28%
2. Chicken salad – 24 %
3. Tuna mayonnaise/Fish finger – 23%
4. Cheese and pickle – 22%
5. Egg and cress – 19%
6. Coronation chicken – 18%
7. Prawn mayonnaise – 14%
8. Smoked salmon and cream cheese – 11%
9. Beef and horseradish – 10%

So what's your favourite sandwich?

We're planning on going away this year and are very likely to be staying in the UK.

I'd love to go abroad and get a little place near the sea and hire a car so we can go off and explore but it's so expensive, and with having two young children I'm not convinced a package holiday would be practical (I'm thinking of the logistics of hauling them around the airports at crazy hours and having to share a room with them).

Have you got any plans to go away this year? If so, where are you off to?

After hearing how poor the IT infrastructure in the British government is, I got wondering if it was time for them to implement a better solution than people running amuk on WhatsApp because there are no better options.

The obvious answer is to run Matrix instances, one for each government department like the French do. They've even made the app they developed open source and the German Ministry of Defence have been inspired by that to create their own app, with the idea being that it could then be rolled out to the rest of the government.

It wouldn't be too difficult for the British government to use existing solutions, perhaps adapted to their own circumstances. Perhaps with message histories getting saved so they can't be conveniently "lost" and/or algorithms to flag up suspicious activity.

It needn't stop there. With recent changes Xitter is no longer a useful platform for putting out official information. The Beeb are now on Mastodon, it is time something like that were used by MPs.

I'd be up for the idea that MPs get issued with a secure phone that contains only the apps vital for conducting political business and it could be made a offence to use your own devices for anything other than personal reasons.

It wouldn't stop all the shenanigans but it'd certainly go a long way to laying the foundations for a better political IT system and one that could largely be done in-house.

Anyway, just a few rambling thoughts brought on by recent events.

For example, switching out the word 'boot' for 'trunk', or ditching the word 'rubbish' for 'garbage'.

This is something I've noticed my 6 year old does pretty regularly. We went through a stage where 'sweets' became 'candy', 'holiday' became 'vacation' and 'courgette' became 'zucchini'.

That last one didn't happen but if you're still reading you've got my respect, or as the Americans might say '...mad props'.