Big J

Indeed. For reference (because I have to track these things now I have a house there) in Sweden, the electricity price spiked in December but has come down almost 50% in January. I wonder if we'll get a similar reduction here?

And perhaps a memory of things that existed more than ten years ago! 😆

Muppets like Nadine Dorries really serve to undermine the case for career politicians being in technically demanding positions. What's wrong with having a technocrat? Someone who is expert in their field? It's like bloody Dominic Raab (always a reliable source for car crash interviews) referring to misogyny against women and men. There will be a list as long as my arm of politicians putting their feet in their mouths....

Doesn't seem to match up with a government with a supposedly green agenda. Much like the US, the UK has a fossil fuel addiction. It's hard to win elections when you're telling the vast majority of the electorate that they need to completely change their heating (source) as well as properly insulate their homes.

Thanks Marcus - it means a lot ☺️

Haha! 😆 You have been to Sweden, right? If I was going to organise some sort of group sex thing, I'm not going to import some ugly bastard from Scotland! The Scandis must come to the UK and think we're a country of trolls, truly. Tall, tanned, slim and usually blonde, I've already teased the missus that I'll be looking to take on a couple of extra Swedish wives

Actually, we've never owned a house here. The capital is built up from 10 plus years of business ownership. It's a very modest amount, to be honest. I suppose I ought to rephrase it insofar that I want to live in Scandinavian capitalist society. Socially responsible entrepreneurism, which is very much the mode de rigueur in Sweden. As for communal living - tried that 15 years ago and not again, thanks! I'm far, far too antisocial.

Oh don't do yourself down. I'm sure that there are some penal establishments in the Deep South where you'd be a nice catch 😄 You'd not catch me in parts of Malmö, Göteborg or Stockholm any more than some of the shittier places in the UK. Cities are more of problem than individual countries.

It's not a wish to own a home without a mortgage in a socialist country. As of Friday, we now own our own home in a socialist country without a mortgage. That's not strictly true. It's down to the way that it's reported. For instance, in the case of rape within marriage or relationship, each individual rape is recorded, whereas in most other countries it's only counted once. Regardless, crime exists everywhere. Any one of us could point to any number of abhorent crimes to bolster our individual agendas. People are shit, certainly. It's why I'd rather live somewhere with a lower population.

You're assuming I have a sense of home. I don't. Really the only place I feel any affinity or nostaglia for is my mum's birth city Osnabrück, and that's because I spent large amounts of time there as a kid. (and again, apologies for the derail) I look at a place to live objectively: I want somewhere I can buy a large family house without a mortgage. Check. I want seasons. Check. I want my children to have unencumbered access to free education and equal opportunity. Check. I want to live in a socialist country. Check. I want to live in a country with the right to roam. Check. I want to live in a country with ample available work. Check. I don't want to be on the other side of the world for friends and family to visit. Check. I want to become properly trilingual, and for my children to do the same. Check. I'm not bothered about pubs, I don't care about football or rugby. I can't stand traffic, British weather or mud. I hate the increasing inequality in UK society. The fuel poverty situation here even made Swedish news. I have friends and family, but they are all outward looking and international and will visit us happily. Most of our friends are in Scotland and it's as quick to get back to Scotland from Sweden as it is from Devon. I'll happily take your bet, but I'm curious what you think will bring us back? I am unlikely to even visit more than once a year. Probably mosquitos and bad pop music! 😄

Ever the optimist, eh?! 😆 I think you underestimate me a little. We've been debating moving to Europe since 2014. Through the pull of family, we moved to Devon to try out England. Really didn't like it. So back to plan A, which is what we ought to have done all along, but at least this way we know that England isn't viable for us. I don't want to derail the thread, but what exactly do you think we'll miss from the UK? I can hardly be accused of being England's greatest cheerleader.....

It again comes down to one fundamental problem with UK housing - that it's treated as an investment, not a home. We don't really place any value on the green credentials of a house and money invested in insulation and sustainable heating isn't recouped at the point of sale. So it's often not done. Couple that with the general inadequacy of housing in the UK, where people have to continually hop up the ladder to get a house that grows with their needs. Moving house is extremely expensive in the UK, which is a whole load more wasted money. The UK average moving cost is £9k - it'll cost us less to move to Sweden, including all fees. Then add in the expectation that new technology adoption, or insulation improvement should be payed for by the state. Improvement only occurs if someone else pays for it, which is an odd mindset. The UK housing market it absolutely and completely f*cked on so, so many levels. It just doesn't function for anyone except the most wealthy. Very few people live in houses that would be considered decent by European standards. New builds in the UK average 103 kwh/square metre. Older houses 294 kwh/square metre. We've bought a 1957 house in Sweden of typical construction and if memory serves, the energy use is around 65 kwh/square metre. Keep in mind that it's much, much colder there in winter too. And then there's planning too. So many developments are pushed through without adequate affordable housing provision. No infrastructure is put in place, roads are barely upgraded. Planners continue to favour large developers, shitting on the self builders. Ecologically barren farmland greenbelt land is sacrosanct (and won't be built on), second home ownership is rife and local people are priced out of so many markets. I'm really, really grateful to be leaving. I wouldn't have the first idea how to buy/build an affordable, sustainable, spacious home for my family now in this part of the UK.

Small scale, local renewable energy production is a good way to address some of the energy shortfall. Solar panels and both ground source and air source heat pumps. Obviously that comes with a massive need to insulate properties. I feel that one of the main issues with renewables in the UK is that we don't look at them as an objectively good idea, rather as something from which we can obtain money from the government through grants or feed in tariffs. Consequently, the public funding hugely overinflates the cost and makes a lot of cowboys who are quick to start installing them very rich. To illustrate the point, I compared the installation costs of like for like systems in the UK and Sweden. A fairly basic air to air heat pump was about £4300 installed in Sweden. Over £8k here. A ground source heat pump running your central heating. £12k in Sweden. £34k here. The only subsidy there is that you get 50% of the labour cost back against your income tax bill (so you have to earn it to get it back) and they've just removed VAT from solar panels too. We're going to put a full sized solar array on our roof as soon as is practical once we get to Sweden as we have a massive SW facing roof. It's very little extra cost to put on a charging box and battery for electric cars (that we don't have yet, nor can afford). The payback period on the solar is 6 years (or less, due to high electricity prices) and after that it's all free. We'll combine it with an air/air heat pump so that we get cooling in summer for free too. My point is (apart from listing what we'll be doing) is that we need to make renewable energy production the default. 80% of the houses I've looked at whilst house hunting in Sweden have had water born, ground source heat pumps. And we've been looking at the budget end of the market too. We're so far behind in the UK. Did you see that 84% of all new cars sold in Norway last month were full electric?

So the Australian government are a bunch of muppets. Djokovic's deportation has nothing to do with 'strong borders' or 'public safety'. They scapegoated him to distract the populace from the fact that they have the second highest infection rate in the world at the moment and that their isolationist policy through covid has been a total failure.

I don't dispute that the tram system works well, only that process of its construction was farcical, horribly delayed and could only have been more expensive if they had gold-plated the tracks.

Perfect. Because the Scottish government has such a great track record with large transport infrastructure projects..... the Edinburgh trams? £71,400 a metre to replace a very good bus service. Or the A9 dialling, which is over budget and somehow taking decades! You can't punish people out of cars. You can only offer more coat effective or convenient alternatives. Personal transport is personal liberty and I suspect public transport is largely useless for almost everyone on this forum.

Your only option in that price class is the Logbullet from Finland. It's a good machine and well designed. The best option is to speak to Pekka in Finland (the owner of the company). He's a lovely guy and will look after you. The only issue is that every machine manufacturer is working on a long delay due to parts issues. Logbullet is no exception.

To by fair to him, it was probably only about 40 thrusts! 😆

It was the slow, methodical nature of it that made is comical. That and the obligatory grunt at the end of each thrust! Gotta give the chap credit though. We went out the carpark so that I can pop out for half an hour to check on a site, and when my daughter and sister in law got back inside 10 or more minutes later, he was still going for it.

Go for a nice family day out they said. Go to the local zoo they suggested. It's nice for the children they assured me. Reality: XXX rated tortoise shows for all to see! 😆 Fortunately my 7 year old was none the wiser and didn't ask any questions that I wasn't mentally prepared to answer! Tortoise at Tropiquaria.mp4

Define compact - commercially in the UK, that could mean anything from an Alstor up to a Komatsu 840tx.