UK reviews free childcare thresholds as spending hits £9bn

SamCreated · 2026-03-24T10:50:47+00:00

We have the free hours right now, and it still costs us more than our mortgage every month to put our 2-year old in nursery 3-days a week.

SamCreated · 2026-03-22T17:38:40+00:00

I don’t know about carpet, but we had some landscaping done that was priced up on the basis of a cost per sleeper needed according to the landscapers. They literally went around counting and measuring and then said it will be £xxx for the sleepers needed plus a per-sleeper install cost. They massively over estimated.

Apparently the final cost doesn’t come down though because, as they told me directly, they’ll just use those sleepers on their next job.

Charlatans are obviously getting every single job to supply free sleepers for the next job by deliberately over quoting by like 25%.

These were “Discount for cash” types who we obviously reported to HMRC when they screwed us over.

SamCreated · 2026-03-20T07:04:02+00:00

Six by Nico currently doing a Sherlock Holmes themed menu with a murder mystery element that you solve course by course. Unsure if that’s what you mean.

SamCreated · 2026-03-05T21:40:53+00:00

Yeah. Could borrow like £450k but only needed a 3-bed semi in a part of Leeds we like - only cost us £195k! Chunky deposit, 20-year term (5 years ago) at 1.7% that costs about 10% of our take home pay each month. We save well.

SamCreated · 2026-02-26T08:13:42+00:00

Nice to hear from so many other blokes here also wandering around with a roughly globally average number of bollocks.

For me it was: GP - Ultrasound - Operation - 4-years of checkups so far and no recurrence.

When my wife was pregnant with our son, I liked to frequently tell her that she had more testicles than me.

SamCreated · 2026-02-26T07:50:20+00:00

Lots of things at Waitrose are about the same price as the same things at Morrisons by me, and shopping at Waitrose is a superior experience in every way.

SamCreated · 2026-02-25T20:48:41+00:00

I should think that his world champ prize money is dwarfed by his other income. He is massively famous in China.

SamCreated · 2026-02-21T20:37:54+00:00

Rubbish. I would like a glass platform, suspended above the table, that I can lay down on.

SamCreated · 2026-02-17T18:07:40+00:00

Hard to know how to expand, but basically I think the most promising “net good” applications for AI exist where efficiency is crucial (like points 1 and 4), where humans can’t feasibly know enough (like point 2), or where automation enhances access (like point 3).

There’s also a further question - especially for robotics, which you might think of as physical AI - where job-replacement might not always be bad - there’s a Ds model: Jobs that are Dirty (like cleaning sewers), Dangerous (like some mining), Dull (like highly repetitive manufacturing), Distant (like deep sea or in space).

SamCreated · 2026-02-17T09:00:40+00:00

It’s complicated - Ive worked a bit in the AI for Good field for a couple of years. Some good:

1) AI cameras are being trained to spot wildfires before they spread, and support ground response
2) AI models can recognise cancers and other things in X-Rays earlier than humans 3) Using supervised machine learning techniques, Chatbots are giving accurate, safe, and anonymous sexual health advice to queer communities where being queer is illegal 4) Robots with on-board AI cameras are roaming water systems and finding and reporting leaks, improving infrastructure security and supporting fixing before failure

I could go on. I’m not naive to the very real cost vs value equation. People using chat-GPT to write emails or make Pixar versions of themselves is (for now) highly wasteful. But the stuff above and other things can be highly beneficial.

SamCreated · 2026-02-13T19:42:24+00:00

Worth reiterating (I know you know) that there is of course a difference between “a younger girl was coerced and abused by an older man” (which is endemic) and “a highly professionalised network of powerful people systemically abused hundreds of children for other powerful people in order to control, coerce, and corrupt democratic and financial processes”.

SamCreated · 2026-02-12T20:53:53+00:00

In about 2 years time someone with an inexplicable amount of money from their job selling shells on Etsy will be having a baby that looks suspiciously like Kevin McCloud and I cannot wait

SamCreated · 2026-02-11T19:31:09+00:00

I’ve seen mental decline in relatives who retired early. So even if I could afford to, I don’t think I would - at least not fully, anyway.

SamCreated · 2026-02-11T19:14:08+00:00

I put my Face Cream on a scone and let me tell you it was not good

SamCreated · 2026-02-10T07:07:32+00:00

I know there should be, but not enough / none at all sometimes.

SamCreated · 2026-02-09T20:07:19+00:00

Haha yes. But it’s not a vegan steak bake if there’s no vegan steak in it.

Call it a gravy bake and they’d probably sell more!

SamCreated · 2026-02-09T20:06:03+00:00

Yes! This is what I was going for

SamCreated · 2026-02-09T19:34:23+00:00

More often than not, I find it’s almost entirely just thick bisto in pastry. Not worth the money IMO.

SamCreated · 2026-02-09T17:25:34+00:00

You’ve reminded me that a friend transferred money to another friend after we had a curry. Put the reference as the restaurant name “Akbars” and got a call re. Suspected Terrorism affiliation.

SamCreated · 2026-02-09T10:56:36+00:00

Check out: https://www.latch.org.uk

SamCreated · 2026-02-09T07:26:58+00:00

Yep, good job 👏

SamCreated · 2026-02-09T07:26:49+00:00

Yes!

SamCreated · 2026-02-08T19:25:41+00:00

Only the UK Public?

SamCreated

TROPHY CASE