Fulham 1 Brentford 4. By the end this looked the only way to stop Brentford scoring more goals.
As 6,151 Brentford fans were there today and witnessed a fantastic game when frankly Brentford were not at their best and often caught out by long balls from Fulham, yet scored four fantastic goals, world class at least two of them. Fulham is always a decent day out. You have to go by train as there is no parking, and the ground gives decent views from all stands. A nice walk through the park to get there and the only negative is the excessive and unnecessary numbers of stewards present in and out of the ground and the police presence was absurd. This is Brentford not Leeds.
So a few photos to remind us of this incredible day out.
Last sunday The Sunday Times ran an article in their money section that purported to inform us that smart meters were not only unreliable but potentially overcharged many customers and created havoc with energy bills. The biased and opinionated headline ” Scandal of the £11bn smart meter rollout plan” gave clear identity to the content of what then followed. Having had a smart meter installed a few weeks ago I was somewhat curious to know these hidden pitfalls that neither British Gas nor anyone else had told me.
The evidence to support this ” scandal” derived from a few cases where clearly errors had happened, mistakes made and where old meters ( from 2010) had been installed in error. The opening paragraph designed to get us running for either deep caves or our lawyers told a case that clearly cannot be the norm of an installation where monthly electricity bills had increased 1906%. We were then informed that these meters sometimes go wrong ( well yes, anyone care to put forward any electrical item that is faultless), and then a single suppliers meter may not be compatible with any new supplier should we change. To the latter point I actually agree that there should be uniform meters but as the meter took around 1 hour to install then any new suppliers can fit a new one without to the customer any great fuss free of charge. This then brings us to the next issue that these meters are free to consumers, and that they are designed to help reduce fuel bills or at a minimum make us aware what we are spending. The poor guy with clearly an errant meter whose bills had rocketed overnight would not need to be a degree level mathematician to be aware that spending £4.50 each time to boil a single kettle would be less than fiscally optimum.
This plan to have smart meters in all our homes was announced over a decade ago and every home would have one by 2020. Many homes have them. According to the Department of Energy and Climate change 764,800 have already been installed and although Sunday Times makes the mathematical point that the number of complaints has trebled last year ( without telling us that no doubt the numbers of meters have also trebled) the numbers are minimal increasing from 16 complaints in 2013 to 50 in 2014.
Some customers will not like the fact they can visually see how expensive the fuel is and no doubt some will ” want their meters checked”, this will be done free if faults are found, but cannot be free if this purely on the whim of a customer. This ” pay if nothing is wrong” concept is also not new and providers of Cable and Digital providers have been doing this for years on items such as Tevo boxes.
Clearly these meters do and will go wrong and over time will be improved and modified, anyone who is not comfortable with this approach, should just wait then, as many companies including Apple also find new items come with faults and these get modified early one. EDF as an example find fault with only 0.5% of their meters. This is not a wonderful ratio but certainly an understandable one and one that will decrease over time.
So what are the stated benefits? Easy. The government reckons that the £11bn cost to install these smart meters will be offset of savings of £17.1 bn by 2030 according to the Sunday Times. This may or may not happen, however my own experience so far is very positive. I have found by judicious use of the various numbers I can easily access on the meter, that I have reduced daily energy consumption from around £5/day to around £3/day. Actually seeing the cost for example of how much it costs to heat the house in the morning led to a simple change, turning heating off maybe 20 minutes before leaving the house.
These smart meters are not perfect but they will do a good job to educate and help reduce fuel bills, they are free, and yes, sometimes they will go wrong. Lets live with that awful scandal. The meters themselves look just like any other but have wifi potential and the actual smart meter reading tool is quite smart too, tells us the time, the costs and a whole host of other useful information.
This is a new annual competition I am running. Here is the first entry from Barcelo Raval Hotel Foyer in Barcelona. A life size horse, with the lamp coming out of its head. This one gets 7/10 for nonsense factor. 
With all the UK nonsense about Jeremy Clarkson and his appalling behaviour, whether we describe it as bullying or not remains to be seen as they alleged crimes from Clarkson get investigated. It may of course come to nothing, but the media portray him as guilty as charged. Over in New Zealand some ddeadful antics from their X-factor judges have led not only to a public outcry but to them being uncermoniously sacked. And from what we read this is the correct outcome.
This is the source of my information.
Husband-and-wife duo Natalia Kills and Willy Moon sacked by MediaWorks for ‘destructive tirade’ against Joe Irvine, 25 is the headline, so what did they do?
Kills criticised a 25-year-old contestant, Joe Irvine, on Sunday’s show for allegedly stealing her husband’s look “from the hair to the suit”. She called him “disgusting” and “creepy” and asked: “Do you not have any value or respect for originality?”
Despite the obvious discomfort of their fellow judges and booing from the audience, Moon joined in, likening Irvine to “Norman Bates dressing up in his mother’s clothing” before suggesting he might murder the crowd.
The conclusion in the media is that this unacceptable, also to the other judges and was bullying.Kills – real name Natalia Noemi Cappuccini-Sinclair – is an English singer best known for her 2013 single Saturday Night. New Zealand musician Moon came to prominence when his song Yeah Yeah appeared on an iPod commercial. The pair married in 2014.Natalia Noemi Cappuccini-Sinclair, better known by her stage name Natalia Kills, is an English singer, actress, record producer, fashion designer and director. She was born, and raised for part of her early life, in Bradford
Even more curiously, Duncan Greive added: “From a pure entertainment perspective we lost something beautiful in Natalia Kills and Willy Moon. They were deeply strange and often unpleasant, but never less than dynamite television. I feel like that’s extremely unlikely to be true of whoever they rope in to replace them.”
Is this acceptable? Showbiz news also reported that these behaviours were not unique.
Natalia Kills lost her temper during an audition taping of The X Factor New Zealand.
The reality show judge started screaming and swearing at the audience, as they were pressuring her to let through a “mouthy” contestant.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a614143/natalia-kills-swears-at-audience-during-x-factor-new-zealand-recording.html#ixzz3UZ1aKNXd
Comments on Nataliia Kills facebook page are less than impressed by her behaviours . One of the more mildly toned comments went something like this ” have no friends to take pictures of you???? not surprised” and “U are doing it wrong.. Meant to have looped it over your neck and jumped”, in a photo of her swinging from a rope. There is clear anger aganist the pair here. Other comments liken her to Willy Wonka.
Either way it seems fairly settled that the NZ public and their keyboard warriors are no longer in love with this pair.
One of the advantages of having a daughter in the Cayman Islands diving is that I get to see some amazing photos. This one was taken yesterday on the beach in Grand Cayman and the story goes that this eel was spotted in the sea and someone dragged it out. It chose a bad meal choice and I have done that before, but this beats even a Brentford burger….her blog is http://www.seniorbushe.wordpress.com
Those clever at this hour will notice the similarity in our blog titles………there is a story. She was called SeniorBushe by friends of her younger brother………..so hence her blog title………..I just added a little bit on as her father…………
The Cayman Islands have to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. Seven mile beach is just that. The downside is the cost. As I understand how things work here, no tax is paid so the government claim their money on all items sold. Hence a litany of taxes and charges are added to each and every bill. An hour in the Kirk supermarket, a lovely clean supermarket that I wish we had in UK, is sadly enough to depress one when looking at the cost of food items. Think of a UK price and then increase it between 2-4 fold.
The Island itself is full of lovely coves and beaches and snorkelling reveals hundreds of fish and other underwater paraphernalia. The hateful sea urchins live surprisingly close to the shore, maybe less than 10 yards in places. Even 20 yards from shore there are moray eel…
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Going to weddings is not my usual form of entertainment but when they take place publicly on the beach when on holiday then maybe its ok to have a peek. This is how you do it:
Marriott Grand Cayman
chris1957
Arcticterntalk.org 