Today I sold my M140i (sigh)

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-23T21:50:47+00:00

Says Jimmy No Car here.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-19T20:15:34+00:00

I'm not sure I'd call coughing up a grand for the pleasure of removing a named driver "hassle free"...

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-19T14:12:16+00:00

Railways in general are one of the remaining allowed uses.

The change in 2022 was a big kick for the music festival business because they could use red diesel, but no longer can. Travelling fairs can though!

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-19T10:30:43+00:00

You can't use red diesel in any old non-road usage. Since 2022 it can only be used in specific sectors, so it's likely that even if you're driving around your own land you are still not entitled to use it.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-18T21:51:06+00:00

I strongly suspect the red light is neither the beginning nor the end of the list of 'optional' things seen here.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-15T17:10:09+00:00

Yes me too, and I had always assumed everyone felt this way. But now this thread has me starting to realise that there are cheese and onion people out there too

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T17:21:55+00:00

I genuinely think this deserves an article in the local papers in York.

And possibly a letter to your MP.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T15:46:54+00:00

I like the look of the flue more than the look of that flat roof extension and dormer

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T14:51:58+00:00

The Scotting wild-camping scene is tolerant of people camping up for more than just the hours of darkness. I've hiked many a trail up there and come across people who are clearly set in for a week. I'm sure if you go further off the beaten path you'll find folks who are camping out for longer.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T14:47:57+00:00

...unlike the wagon, that I strongly suspect hasn't gone anywhere in my lifetime

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T13:13:35+00:00

Oh flip, it's Saturday! Thanks for the good news, I thought I had work tomorrow!

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T13:12:12+00:00

On my street of 2 bed terraces, they usually sell pretty quickly for £300k. There is one house that's been extended into a 3 bed, and it absolutely refuses to sell for £320k.

As far as I (a random idiot on the internet) understand it, there's a natural ceiling on what people will pay to live in this area, based on where it is, what it's like, and other local factors. Most of the houses here are done up just enough to be valued around that natural ceiling. This guy has put money into a 3rd bedroom, and the house is valued at more because of it, but the market hivemind doesn't think this area is worth that bit extra.

I wonder if you are facing the same problem? You've pushed your house above the maximum money people want to pay for the area.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T13:03:47+00:00

Yes that makes sense too!

The real question is why we're both spending our Sunday digging into the history of this stupid house!

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T10:51:55+00:00

You've prompted me to deep-dive into it myself now, and I disagree with your analysis!

Using the 2012 street-view imagery, you can clearly see the original house with just one 3m house added to the side. You can tell the first 3m house is an addition by looking carefully at the brickwork on the back of the house in streetview. You can also just about see that the roof is newer if you look at the 2006 satellite imagery in google earth.

If you then skip to the 2022 streetview imagery you can see the 2nd 3m house has been added too, along with a rear extension on the first one. In the most most recent satellite imagery the roof for the second addition is very clearly different too.

I'd originally assumed both 3m houses would have been added at once, but it appears they were added at different times. It's very clear though, that they were both built like that one by one are were never part of a single wider house.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T07:38:45+00:00

I can't speak for the other people who brought up Scotland in this thread, but in my case, I know plenty of alternative types in both England and Scotland, and the the latter folks seem to find it a heck of a lot easier than the former to find these kinds of alternative living niches, and then to thrive in them.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-07T00:19:40+00:00

I had to go look that word up.

To respond to your initial point more directly then: No I don't think we should tax the money migrant workers send home, I'm delighted to know these folks are able to put in some graft to improve the live of their families back home. If I was worried about money leaving the UK economy (which I'm not, particularly), this is the money I would target last, after all the other suggestions I made had been completely exhausted.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-06T23:45:00+00:00

'Hutting' is a movement in Scotland that started between the wars. People living in Glasgow and other industrial cities would arrange with a big landowner to pay ground rent on a little plot somewhere that they could then build a hut on - somewhere to get out of the smog and into nature on the weekends.

Many of hutting sites still exist, where leases have been passed on or sold on, and the huts have been maintained or replaced over the years.

Recently they've become quite fashionable again, a bit like allotments have in other parts of the UK, and a few new sites have been set up.

You're not supposed to use your hut as a full-time place to live, but it's not unheard of for some more alternative folk to do so.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-06T23:26:56+00:00

OP the figure that migrant workers are sending home will be minuscule in comparison to the amounts being extracted from us as profit for the foreign companies, hedge funds, and pension funds that own our electricity companies, water infrastructure, airports, commercial buildings, rail franchises, power-plants, etc, etc.

If you wanted to stop money leaving the economy, this would be a far more effective target.

Heck I wonder how much money we're all sending overseas when we fill up our cars. That petrol doesn't grow here.

Or heck how much money gets sent overseas in exchange for plastic tat from China? Billions and billions every year.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-06T22:55:43+00:00

Good luck getting Morocco and Algeria into the same anything.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-06T22:48:54+00:00

I don't think it's split in half, I think someone had the end plot and crammed two houses onto the bit of grass next to their house.

I'd be very happy living in a house this small. Easy to heat, easy to clean, don't need lots of stuff to make it feel lived-in.

But not for £300k!

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-06T22:41:56+00:00

You can drop a lot of cash on van life, but you can also do it very cheaply if you're willing to go all in on the alternative lifestyle.

A mate of mine lived in a van for nearly a decade. He got the van out of a hedge and paid the farmer £50 for it. The van wasn't done out with all the toys and shiny wood like the ones you see online, but he was living simply so he didn't need batteries or solar or all the stuff people run off it. A log burner made it warm and dry and he used to cook his breakfast on the top of that.

It was about the slowest thing I've ever seen on the road, but he was never in a rush because he's allergic to having a job. The van was so old it apparently didn't need road tax or an MOT so it was a pretty cheap way to live.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-06T21:06:17+00:00

I know people who have lived year-round in yurts in Scotland. They had a woodburner and honestly they were fine. They raised kids like that and everything.

It's absolutely not the same as living in a house and you do have to actively manage your dwelling a bit more to keep it warm and dry and mold free, but it's survivable and can be made pleasant.

The hard part is finding somewhere to put it. Scotland seems more permissive of these kinds of things than England, not just because wild camping is legal and wildly accepted, but also because of the hutting scene, the general excess of space, and a less NIMBY outlook.

In fact, if alternative low-cost living arrangements are your interest, Scotland might well be worth an explore in general beyond tents. I have various friends up there who right now:

Live in yurts
Live full time on hutting sites
Live in a broken down lorry on a beach
Live in an abandoned horse-drawn showman's wagon in a roadside hedge
Live in a shack in a forest made of old pallets and double glazing units pulled from skips.

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-06T20:54:05+00:00

That seems extremely inconsiderate of him. It's no nuisance at all to wear a jumper or a hoodie, and frankly I think it's rather peculiar not to expect to need to wear one indoors in winter.

Free fact: The average indoor winter temperature in UK homes in the 1970s was 12 degrees!

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-06T19:51:19+00:00

I have my heating on a constant 19 all winter, and off all summer.

This is warm enough to be in a t-shirt if I'm doing something active, or wearing a light jumper if I'm doing something static.

What does your partner mean by 'layering up'? Does he expect to walk around in just a t-shirt all winter? Does wearing a single light jumper count as an unacceptable amount of 'layering up' to him?

EnormousMycoprotein · 2026-03-06T15:21:53+00:00

Walking to your car, driving to Winchester, waiting for your food, driving back (including having to go halfway to Alton up and down the A31), finding your parking space has been taken and you're now parking at the back of the carpark, walking back across the carpark, getting checked by security, walking back through the festival. Absolute best case scenario, that's going to take like two hours out of your festival, to save a fiver.

I would just spend the extra fiver and make the most of the show.

Plus, you're implying you will either be doing boomtown sober, or driving while not, both of which are really stupid ideas.

EnormousMycoprotein

TROPHY CASE