manualoverride

In 2017 my employer gave me £1150 to buy my own iPhone X for work. I knew I would not be working there forever and decided to start saving £10 per month in monthly saver accounts, 2 years later I left the company and they didn’t want the phone back as it was too old. Yay!

I continued saving every month in accounts ranging from ~4-8% interest and my most recent monthly saver just matured and my fund has reached £1121.64

I’ve also been really savvy with my mobile plans over the last 5 years, my current monthly charge is £6 but has been as low as £3, and has absolutely been less than £5 on average. So my mobile phone costs have been on average £15pm.

The iPhoneX is not getting software/security updates anymore, but there is nothing really worth having in this years upgrade:

• 120hz vs. 120hz with ProMotion
• MagSafe - meh!
• 12MP vs. 48MP camera with better low light
• 4G vs. 5G - but HD video streaming works perfectly on 4G.

Do I keep saving and ignore the upgrade again? Or am I silly for running a phone with no security updates because I’m not that interested in a better camera?

Either way I thought my little-by-little saving to get something nice and a little extravagant was worth sharing. The number of people with £50-£60 phone contracts is crazy.

Just look at her, you know she was planning something.

This is honestly just a bit of a rant as my Dyson V10 has broken again…. This is what has broken in the last year:

• trigger guard snapped
• battery died
• head pivot broken
• empty-mechanism snapped
• filter showing clogged after cleaning, needed a new filter.

Every replacement is exorbitantly expensive, and requires as complicated replacement procedure as possible. A battery that consists of seven 18650 cells which should cost ~£20 to replace is £90! You can’t replace the cells as the unit is plastic welded together.

You know what isn’t broken and has never broken; my 40 year old Sebo which is now been promoted from ‘upstairs vacuum’ to ‘primary vacuum’

I was under the assumption that Raspberry Pi was a US based company, but I just found out they are European and almost all made in Wales.

It’s probably the most European computer you can buy, with a massive following of enthusiastic developers creating alternatives for all the cloud services we are trying to stop using.

This has confirmed my choice to try and replace the US based cloud services my family and I are currently using.

My one vice is diet caffeine free coke, I’m so rock and roll. Trying to find a UK/EU alternative I keep finding almost all drink brands are owned by Coke or Pepsi. These companies which originated in the USA have entities in the EU, which complicates the decision. Can anyone recommend a wholly UK(ideally) or EU alternative that’s reasonably priced?

While many people may have had Tesla orders with non-refundable deposits before the salute incident, there is no excuse for buying a Tesla now and supporting an actual Nazi.

I’m hoping I don’t see any Teslas with the new ‘25’ plate, but if I do I may have to mention something to the driver about what it now symbolises.

This is just a rant… maybe a discussion starter

Margins on 2nd hand and new electric cars are thin, gone are the days where you could get 25% off a new car, and thin margins mean lower commission.

Servicing costs are minimal so no kickbacks for selling the servicing plans.

People are wise to paint protection and alloy wheel cover that cost more than a refurb.

EV buyers tend to make better decisions and are more likely to be cash buyers or finance elsewhere, so no kickback for selling a finance plan.

Manufacturers still selling higher margin hybrid and ICE vehicles mean they are the real target for salespeople.

Manufacturers also want to shift their ICE inventories and new products so they are still pushing the FUD on electric, and myths like “EVs will be obsolete once Hydrogen cars come out, you may as well get an ICE car in the meantime.”

I’ve had a really bad customer experiences at Toyota, Honda and now Kia dealerships.

I know people will suggest the Tesla online sales model, but Musk is just ruining the brand to the point where I can’t buy or recommend one.

So now I’m going to do all my own research, find the exact car I want, and contact the dealer/seller directly while avoiding as much interaction as possible.

Anyone else so used to being gaslit by the government they started to read this thinking ‘Great! Let’s find out how I’m a “failed citizen”, who had rubbish plans during the pandemic’

I’m finding this transition a little difficult, I’m hopeful but I’m still half expecting the Home Secretary to announce concrete shoes at low tide for all immigrants or something.

As a Thames Water “customer” (given the complete lack of competition maybe “hostage” is a better term) who will have a £20 rise per year, and as someone with no money I’m fine with paying an extra £1.65 a month for water, but not to Thames Water who will inevitably use that money to pay shareholders dividends.

If it stops us from dumping raw sewage into the rivers and oceans I’ll happily pay ten times as much, but it’s clear that Thames Water is just corrupt, and cannot be trusted with any extra money.

James Dyson who famously championed Brexit then moved his company’s head office to Singapore, and finally lost a libel case when papers pointed he was a massive hypocrite, has now announced he is cutting 1/4 of the UK workforce.

All this while parliament is busy swearing in all the new members.

In case you needed another reason to avoid his crap vacuum cleaners other than the horrible repairability and quality of failure prone components.

Is YouTube actively trying to make their platform as unusable as possible?

In case you can’t zoom the YouTube definition of ‘latest’, is any time in the last few years.

My video suggestions are also 50% text posts now for some reason.

I need some help finding the simplest but safe small EV for my parents in their 80s. They currently drive a massive old Mercedes E and S-class, but they don’t need such big cars, as sight and reaction times dwindle having such big powerful cars might get them into trouble. I’m looking for a small simple EV with the ability to lock things down and start every drive with consistent user selectable settings. Maybe limit the power, ensure the air conditioning is set appropriately every time and that the radio turns on to their station and with the volume at a good level. Basically so they just have to get in and press the go pedal, without worrying about messing anything up because the next drive will be back to normal again. For size I really like the Honda-E but I have taken them to two garages and both have been terrible experiences, where the salesperson tried to convince my parents that EVs were a dead technology and that they should buy a Hybrid until the Hydrogen cars come out. The longest journey they ever do is 100miles but mostly journeys are <50miles round trip. Anything with 130miles + would be perfect and give some cold weather/degradation buffer.