Dr. Commuter helps you to save those pennies

A reader's letter to the Guardian asked if it is worth putting reflective foil behind a radiator. Amongst the replies, this one caught my eye.

JustAnotherNum6er 22 Oct 2016 7:16
Fuel poverty groups distribute reflective panels to put behind radiators so guess there is something in it. Don't much care what it looks like if it helps to reflect back some heat, and sends a few pence less to the greedy energy companies.

Dr. Commuter writes ...

Ooo those awful energy companies. How do they get away with charging people for light and heat? Here are some tips for making sure they all become insolvent.

1. Leaving your television running all night so that it is 'warmed up' in the morning when you struggle down to watch breakfast TV? Probably not necessary these days, modern sets do warm up pretty fast. Set your alarm to half an hour earlier, crawl downstairs and switch it on, then enjoy a final lie-in before you have to get up.
2. Is that 500 watt searchlight in your garden really justified? You can keep an eye on the neighbours with a much smaller model.
3. We all enjoy hot baths but setting your boiler to heat the water to just below boiling point then spending ages adding cold water and swirling it around is, frankly, a second-best method. Turn it down a bit.
4. Do you have an illuminated house sign? Is your house number more than a single digit? If so, why not move to an address with fewer digits and save, save, save. Or switch it off altogether and sod the postman.
5. Don't make toast in a toaster, hold the bread above an old candle (you can find loads of these in some churches, just lying about waiting to removed).

Those greedy energy companies won't know what's hit them. And that's not all.

• Fed up with greedy water companies charging you to provide clean water and sewage disposal? Dig two big holes in the garden. Take your fresh water from one as often you like (after it rains) and use the other as a loo. Don't get them mixed up! You don't want the greedy doctors getting their claws in you.
• Had it up to here with greedy airlines and the ludicrous cost of foreign travel? Get a job as an air steward, enjoy your first free time abroad, come home and resign. 
• You don't have to put up with those greedy supermarkets and their avaricious suppliers, the so-called "farmers". There's plenty of natural food all around you. You do like earthworms, do you not?

 If you've enjoyed these money-saving tips, you can find many more in Dr. Commuter's Big Book of Money Saving Tips. It's packed chock-full of money saving tips, with loads of helpful tips about how to save money, including pence and even pounds in some cases. Save, save. save all the way with the Big Book of Money Saving Tips. Only £58, plus £25 p&p, and an annual service charge, from Dr. Commuter.
Terms and Conditions apply. Naturally.

What does a gorilla drink? *

Source: BBC

There was the usual crowd in the bar that afternoon. A couple of orang-utans nursed beakers of lemonade as they played cribbage in the corner. A baboon was hitting the Irn Bru hard, but quietly, over by the window. Some chimps were huddled over a very large bowl of peanuts. At the bar the ring-tailed lemur polished a couple of glasses.

The street door swung open and an enormous shadow filled the room. The lemur froze, glass in the air. The chimps fell silent, a few stray peanuts falling to the floor unheeded. Even the orang-utans looked round, scratching nervously.

The gorilla just stood there, filling the doorway, sizing up the joint. 30 stone of raw muscle and bulk, swaying lightly from foot to foot. His eyes fixed on the bar and he ambled over. Nobody got in his way. You figured that nobody ever would get in his way, not if they didn't want to be flattened.

"Yus Mr Kumbuka, sir, what will it be?" croaked the lemur, never taking his eyes from those huge hands swinging easily on either side of him. The place held its breath. If he was in one his nasty moods...

"Blackcurrant. As much as you've got. The real stuff, no water. Got it?"
"Yes sir, got it".

As the lemur began hoiking the huge bottles onto the bar we all began to breathe again. If the gorilla was going to go on a blackcurrant bender, he was in a placid mood. Maybe none of us would have our arms torn off today. The chimps nibbled peanuts. The baboon took a swig of his orange-coloured poison. It was going to be all right, just another hard day's drinking at the Zoo.


*Anything he wants.

Plan B fails

I ceased real commuting some years ago but I regularly take the train from beautiful Ruislip to Finchley Road. Today I was nice and early for the departure from the Manor. We stopped short on the approach to Harrow, with another train on the fast line also stopped. Potentially a bad sign, suggesting congestion ahead. We eased into the platform and the driver told us the other train was going first. So almost the entire trainload crossed the platform. So far no problem. Except he did mention something about a track problem...

No sooner had we pulled out of Harrow than we were told our train was now stopping at Wembley Park. We arrived, about three hundred people piled out and we all played the same guessing game - was it worth taking a Jubilee? The Met driver announced that it was possible the train behind would be running normally but he didn't sound very confident.  A Jubbly arrived and almost everyone got on. This is my normal fallback in the event of a problem on the Met and it usually works.

Except today it did not. We reached Dollis Hill (and if a station in London could be described as the middle of nowhere this surely must be a good candidate), stopped and were informed that there was a suspect package at North Greenwich and all Jubbly's were being held. Oh Joy. Naturally the Mets began running again but from this station all one can do is watch as they thunder by on the fast track. I decided to return to Wembley Park. Good plan.  A minute after I took my seat in a Stanmore-bound train, almost everyone from the inert southbound joined me, the driver no doubt having advised it. Presumably they could maintain a reasonable northbound service?

No. We sat at Dollis Hill for a long time due to "the trains ahead". Eventually we moved off, we all crossed over at Wembley Park and got back on the now normally running Met and back again past Dollis Hill (southbound still stuck there) and so on to my destination a mere 35 minutes late.

The only laugh was when the driver of the northbound Jubbly at Dollis Hill made his third announcement about the ongoing delays and suggested we all take local buses instead. Yes. Good plan. When I got home I checked if such a journey were possible. It is. London Underground  TFL's website allots 54 minutes to a trip that takes 7 minutes on the Jubbly and about 4 on the Met. We won't be bothering, thanks.

Dr. Commuter Helps Out ... Andy Murray

Source: BBC Website

Dr. Commuter writes:

This is a hard one. I suggest he plays in ranking tournaments and does his level best to win some of them and if he works jolly hard and hits the ball accurately and hard into the court (and not into the net, you'd be surprised how many players fall for that one) then he should manage to score more ranking points than any other player and he will be rated world number one.

If you have any questions for Dr. Commuter,  do contact us at the usual address.

Brexit and Parliamentary Democracy

Funny thing, your Johnny referendum. Supposed to be the ultimate expression of the people's will. Overrides parliament. And yet in the vexed case of Brexit, the total lack of detail about what is to replace our membership of the EU demands the utmost involvement of parliament. The government grudgingly suggests that maybe there will a debate at the end of the negotiating process. The government, voted into power in 2015 on a platform of supporting British membership, not of leaving, now claims to have some sort of direct mandate. So a handful of MPs, nearly all of whom stood behind our membership of the EU, are now going to decide how we exit and parliament will get a chance to rubber-stamp it. And it really is a rubber stamp for the government has made it clear that parliament may not change anything that is negotiated.

Oh, and we are not allowed to know what it is that is being negotiated because that would jeopardise our bargaining position. Umm, we've already done that, fellers. We've given unconditional notice that we are out. We don't really have a negotiating position.

Maybe Mr Johnson, our make-it-up-on-the-spot Foreign Secretary can sort it all out. Or should we all invest in Irish citizenship while the going is good?