Old ways may be best after all.

[Cato]

I'm not sure it's down to the old ways are the best, one of the biggest factors is people lead completely different lives now.

In times where a massive portion of the population did manual work in unheated places coming home to a house with just a coal fire felt pretty warm. If you spend plenty of time outside in winter then a house obvisously feels warmer.

Nowadays people leave their heated homes in their puffa jacket, get in the car wearing the jacket, heated seat,seated steering wheel, heating flat out then go to work in a heated environment. That way you feel no differentiation.

I totally understand the totalled sealed house from a heating effeciency point of view but as far as I'm concerned that only works properly if you have a proper ventilation system.

I'm sure if you live in a cold damp environment and you have financial constraints then your health will suffer but I have to say most of the people I know who are always ill seem to live in houses that are way too warm.

I always chuckle when people believe that going outside and getting cold and wet means you'll wake up with a cold, it's just nonsense. When I was at school in snowy periods we used to spend the entire week soaking wet

I think people are also less inclined to 'put up with' in general. We've gone from cars being a luxury for the well heeled to people living in social housing with a £50k car outside. Heating has gone from one warm-ish room in Winter to the whole house being at Summer evening temps. Sunday best clothes to designer wardrobe for the day to day. Boiler suits over normal clothes to dedicated work trousers at £50 a pair. Tin bath in front of the fire through immersion tank on twice a week to hot water on demand. A week camping to two or more foreign holidays a year.

The list goes on. People see others with a better lifestyle and more 'stuff' and think "I'll have some of that." which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Unless of course they're living beyond their means which many seem to do now. Just in conversation here and there the level of personal debt people have is terrifying, more so when it's not actually for anything. Many seem to have jumped on that merry-go-round with no thought to being able to get off.

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

Just been out chopping up kindling for 20 mins at -6deg, came into the house at 17deg and it felt like getting off the plane on a Spanish summer holiday.

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

I think people are also less inclined to 'put up with' in general. We've gone from cars being a luxury for the well heeled to people living in social housing with a £50k car outside. Heating has gone from one warm-ish room in Winter to the whole house being at Summer evening temps. Sunday best clothes to designer wardrobe for the day to day. Boiler suits over normal clothes to dedicated work trousers at £50 a pair. Tin bath in front of the fire through immersion tank on twice a week to hot water on demand. A week camping to two or more foreign holidays a year.

The list goes on. People see others with a better lifestyle and more 'stuff' and think "I'll have some of that." which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Unless of course they're living beyond their means which many seem to do now. Just in conversation here and there the level of personal debt people have is terrifying, more so when it's not actually for anything. Many seem to have jumped on that merry-go-round with no thought to being able to get off.

....and somehow we have more "poverty" than ever?

 

[DAPPH]

@AVI_8 have you tried blocking up the 3 chimneys? I wonder if all your heat is just shooting up them into the sky!
At those costs it's got to be worth a go.

I stuffed a bin bag full of crumpled newspaper, then having folded the top over stuffed the bag up the chimney .
It worked well & there was still enough air movement trickling up the chimney to prevent it sweating .

The chimney is now capped with mortared down & a mastic sealed joint using two 2x2 foot paving slabs with four right angle downwards facing bends in 8 mm copper tube under the slabs and free of the mortar so about 8 inches hangs down the outside of the chimney . One on each face so the wind will always draw a bit of air up out the chimney. This time round its got a small car litter paper sack stuffed with some crinkled chopped corrugated cardboard packing material in it to make the bung I pushed it a few inches up the chimney to be out of sight . So far so good .

 

[bricol]

Just been out chopping up kindling for 20 mins at -6deg, came into the house at 17deg and it felt like getting off the plane on a Spanish summer holiday.

Always amuses me - getting back from work trips in Spain in British winter/early spring - all the long stay Brit OAPs returning to LBA in tee-shirts and flip flops . . . and only remembering its winter at the top of the steps . . .

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

....and somehow we have more "poverty" than ever?

I think we have more "relative poverty"...the word "relative" is always carefully inserted when talking about the UK level of poverty by the various think tanks. If you google "relative poverty" it's an interesting definition I think.

....I picked a bad week for sorting out the loft I think....bloomin freezing!

 

[Cato]

....and somehow we have more "poverty" than ever?

It's debt poverty. i.e. people owe so much money (at a level they can never pay back) that the payments mean they have none left for themselves and their day to day. Some of the responsibility obviously lies with the person in debt, but IMHO the greater responsibility is with those lending them the money in full knowledge that they'll never be out of debt. Banks and big finance companies are more ruthless than drug dealers and loan sharks.

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

I think we have more "relative poverty"...the word "relative" is always carefully inserted when talking about the UK level of poverty by the various think tanks. If you google "relative poverty" it's an interesting definition I think.

....I picked a bad week for sorting out the loft I think....bloomin freezing!

I think the word "relative" is always deliberately missed out when discussing UK relative poverty.

 

[DAPPH]

I think we have more "relative poverty"...the word "relative" is always carefully inserted when talking about the UK level of poverty by the various think tanks. If you google "relative poverty" it's an interesting definition I think.

....I picked a bad week for sorting out the loft I think....bloomin freezing!

Relative poverty thinking .

You'd have soon got warm and started saving wasted heat & money .

 

[DAPPH]

It's debt poverty. i.e. people owe so much money (at a level they can never pay back) that the payments mean they have none left for themselves and their day to day. Some of the responsibility obviously lies with the person in debt, but IMHO the greater responsibility is with those lending them the money in full knowledge that they'll never be out of debt. Banks and big finance companies are more ruthless than drug dealers and loan sharks.

Due to the mindsets and poor financial management as well as not being able to effectively run their lives those who are in debt to the big institutions would simply go to the loan sharks if a regulated system of credit was not available to them . That would be far more disasterous for the borrowers .

Un known to me at the time I married her, my first wife's family was trying to swim in a loan shark infested area of Carlisle .
They basically handed over any money they got on Friday payday then by Friday evening they borrowed money to " see them through the week" which included drinking Saturday & Sunday away as well as all members of the family each smoking at least 20 cigs a day .

I turned up at the FIL's place in Carlisle one Friday afternoon about 16.45 hrs. just before Guy Fawkes night having flown in from West Germany to get back to Carlisle and collect my new wife of two months the fly back to Germany with her to go into our first home .

The curtains were open, no light showing, no fire in the grate , ostensibly nobody home as no one answered the door .
Puzzled I checked with some of their friends further down the street & found the seven of them at that house hiding from the Friday night Tallyman and were dreading a visit from Saturday night visitors who were threatening to do them over .
Like a bloody fool on the Saturday morning I emptied my post office savings account and gave them the £38 in it. All they did was say thanks & go out on the pop in Carlisle city on the Saturday afternoon instead of waiting for the local Catholic social club to open that evening .

 

[slim_boy_fat]

....and somehow we have more "poverty" than ever?

The definition has changed with the passage of time. Folk are considered 'deprived' now if they don't have a smartphone and a big telly.