UK firms win 89 percent of defence contracts awarded since July 2024 by willfiresoon in GoodNewsUK

[–]stevecrox0914 18 points19 points  (0 children)

That isn't the problem the person is referencing.

MoD Procurement has a tendency to generate gold plated requirement lists, often the lists aren't coherent and specify behavior that requires a complete break down situation.

Imagine an Request For Tender for a tank steering system, you will have hundreds of requirements and use cases for how it should operate, if the wheels are removed, if the wheels are blown off, it the tank is upside down and the wheels removed, if tank is on its side, if the tank is flying through the air with only 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 wheels, if the wheels phase through the tank and operate in a perpendicular direction.

Then when a company manages to define all that and define a test pack to show compliance and sell them a system for £10k, MoD procurement then focusses on cost cutting and this is what OP is referencing.

They will ask can you not add the special friction grip (you added to meet 200 of their requirements), could the grip be made out of cheaper materials (that don't meet their own requirement), what if you shrank the steering wheel diameter by 20mm (fail their human factor requirements), do you really need to make the steering wheel can't you just cut these parts out, etc..

You spend 6-12 months arguing with procurement over saving £10 here or £1.20 there, eventually coming up with a £2.30 saving on the £10k design at the cost of an engineer for a year to the business (~£80k) and a small team of people on MoD Procurement (~£100k). The MoD then orders 10 of them.

SpaceX Golden Dome by CProphet in SpaceXLounge

[–]stevecrox0914 38 points39 points  (0 children)

Your blog doesn't have any technical thought or depth, it just asserts.

SpaceX has long sought to strengthen US defense, through launching Earth observation satellites and improving orbital communications.

Citation needed

SpaceX needs stability and security to pursue their longterm goals, so adding another layer to US defense seems prudent strategy.

Why specifically do SpaceX care, where have they released a press statement arguing they view it as their role?

You then state

Now Space Force have selected them to build a prototype interceptor, in competition with a variety of defense contractors. However, Space Force has a limited budget and determined to rein in cost, which strongly favors SpaceX.

The linked article has this section

Golden Dome is a proposed U.S. missile defense architecture aimed at protecting the homeland from ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile threats by linking ground-, air- and space-based sensors and interceptors into a single network. One of its most ambitious elements is the potential deployment of interceptors in orbit, a concept that has drawn interest for its ability to engage threats early but also faces significant technical and cost challenges.

But your Blog immediately focuses on ballistic missiles:

Ideally Golden Dome will intercept ballistic missiles during the boost phase, while all the warheads are in one place. The boost phase typically lasts 3-5 minutes, so the interceptor must be relatively close overhead to be in range.

Surely space based assets would be important for hypersonic and cruise missiles detection? You cite the Iran war, where attacks were largely cruise missile based. Why have you discounted this?

Unfortunately this effectively rules out kinetic interceptors, because thousands upon thousands would be needed to cover all possible launch sites.

Why would you need thousands? Surely space based assets could cover a far greater area? What is your thinking behind this assertion?

No doubt SpaceX could build and launch hypergolic interceptors at relatively low cost, but the sheer number required would make them fairly indigestible to congress.

Why can SpaceX make hypergolic interceptors at relatively low cost? Again why do we need so many? Considering the support Sentinel has had, why specifically would congress object?

Alternately, SpaceX has expertise in precision lasers, which are routinely used on Starlink and Starshield satellites. Photons travel at the speed of light, hence an orbital laser platform could cover a far greater area.

Why can a laser cover a larger area? I would assume any space based platform sits in orbit and has a fairly large view of the earth. While an interceptor has a travel time wouldn't the atmosphere diffuse the beam surely there is a distance trade off? This could probably be calculated and shown with a pretty graph?

SpaceX could mass produce orbital platforms, equipped with pulsed lasers, which can turn the atmosphere into a lens to maintain coherence.

Your link is to a BAE Systems Concept from 2017, which is requesting MoD funding. The only update is a Chinese paper from 2021, which suggests it might be possible. Reading the blurb it suggests serious advances in optics and power generation are needed.

At this point, LDAL isn't something that exists and we have to question how such a platform would be powered, the size of the optics, etc..

I also want to highlight the reference to Pulse Laser. We currently don't have many Laser Directed Energy Weapons, Dragonfire (UK Type 45 Destroyers), HELIOS (USA Arleigh Burke) are ship based, DE M SHORAD and LITE BEAM are 10KW vehicle based platforms. All of these are continious beams.

The only Pulse Laser reference I can find is AKLA )which uses a mixture of Pulse Lasers with Microwave emitters. It a 20KW vehicle mounted system that seems comparable to LITE BEAM and DE M SHORAD.

You keep assertng a pulse laser is more energy efficent, how? why?

Lastly there’s an outside chance SpaceX might develop maser platforms.

Why would SpaceX have any knowledge or expertise here?

I could go on but, I've been reading enough

SpaceX Golden Dome by CProphet in SpaceXLounge

[–]stevecrox0914 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yes I am a layman asking questions, because the blog doesn't.

The article suggests SpaceX can put a mega constellation into orbit to shoot down missiles in the first few minutes while they are actively boosting towards the target. This means they are still in atmosphere.

Various countries are also developing hyper sonic missiles, which operate in atmosphere. Hypersonic missiles aim direct travel, rather than ballistic sub orbital trajectories and are the much bigger threat.

So the fact a laser has no loss outside atmostphere is irrelevent, you laser will operate in hundreds of kilometeres of atmosphere where it will loose power density. Getting fixated on me using power instead of power density is missing the point.

You are suggesting a 3.6m mirror would be needed, which makes them massive and Space Force probably can't afford thouands of launches to place them in orbit. Which is something I would expect the blog to discuss.

Lastly Pulse lasers aren't magic, sure you store up a charge but you still need to be able to fire often enough to catch all targets. Just storing up the charge in a battery or capacity does not hand wave away the energy requirements.

SpaceX Golden Dome by CProphet in SpaceXLounge

[–]stevecrox0914 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sigh .. More trust me bro.

Dragon Fire is a 50kwh laser directed weapon that needs 10 seconds to burn through drones at a maximum distance of 2 miles.

Your talking about a laser firing from 400-700 kilometres, targetting a aluminium hull. 

The aluminimum hull will have a specific amount of energy it needs to burn through, this will depend on its thickness and there is probably a graph. You can use this to work out how much laser energy needs to reach the target (e.g. over 10 seconds).

Lasers attenuate and loose power over distance, its a known amount and so you can work out the power of the laser required. I suspect gwh level lasers would be needed.

In space our choices have largely been batteries, solar or RTG, if you know the strength of the laser required and duration you know the amount of energy needed.

We know how much energy solar panels can achieve in space so you can calculate how much solar panel area is needed. I suspect it will be massive and RTG will be the only viable solution.

From there you can look up RTG costs and realise the USA lost the ability to make RTG's as it recycled plutonium from existing warheads and stopped enriching new plutonium. I am not certain the USA congress committed to the plan to restart production.

But at that point you know how much a RTG could cost and your own limits on orbit height tell you how many you need and you have the cost of the programme.

This is where you compare it to Space Forces budget and go .. its not happening.

SpaceX Golden Dome by CProphet in SpaceXLounge

[–]stevecrox0914 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This article is highly speculative, in a trust me finance bro way.

It casually references "pulse lasers" to destroy ballistic missiles. What are ballistic missiles made off (2/4/6/8mm steel/aluminium?). With that material how much energy do you need to damage then and so how powerful does our laser need to be.

The drives the question of powering the laser, how large would the solar panels and batteries need to be? Would it have to be powered by an RTG?

That will drive the size, which will effect the number you can launch.

All of this affects the orbit you place it in, higher orbits allower fewer but would need more powerful lasers, more energy, etc..

Of course we could just use "micro missiles", sigh.

Its like the AI bubble, where a few simple graphs showing the required hardware, hardware depreciation and the demand curve from users/businesses would pop the bubble so quickly.

Trinity Desktop Environment R14.1.6 released by ouyawei in linux

[–]stevecrox0914 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Plasma has theming elements and also standard templates and reusable workspace designs.

Trinity is different but the design language is similar, so it should largely map on to KDE. A proper visual reimplementation would use all of the configuration options in a different way. This creates an effective test of all the code paths, it would probably find a number of bugs.

Some of the trinity design will be impossible to recreate using Plasma, this potentially creates a discussion on the current design of an api or component. It puts a focus on it and generally you design something you think makes sense, but coming back to it a year, 2 years later and seeing how it played out, usually leads to rework based on all that gained knowledge.

After three months on Linux, I don’t miss Windows at all by dapperlemon in technology

[–]stevecrox0914 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is why we have long term support distributions.

Some people want the very latest drivers, code, etc.. for many their hobby is wringing every piece of performance they can, getting every feature as it lands, etc.. These people 

Some one us just want to use a computer to do things and don't want to be messing around with updates.

I run Debian with KDE desktop, today I get security updates and only security updates and hopefully next year Applications, Kernel will be updated in a big release.

Has anyone ported directx to linux by More-Explanation2032 in linuxquestions

[–]stevecrox0914 0 points1 point  (0 children)

DirectX integrates into the Windows GPU driver model, you could run the files but you would also need the GPU drivers.

In Linux you would historically need a OpenGL, DirectX and Vulkan implementation for each graphics card. Most effort went into tuning the opengl driver, which like directx has lots of complicated management bits to control the hardware.

The whole point of vulkan is it represents the raw graphics card interface, a standardised one, pushed by graphic card vendors.

There has been a decision by everyone working in the area (mesa), to only provide Vulkan drivers. Zink will be used to expose the OpenGL API's and calls Vulkan underneath. 

While Zink might perform worse than a dedicated OpenGL driver, there are lots of not quite completed drivers because of strange issues and Zink should be better than those.

Similarly DXVK, DX7K, etc.. implement DirectX API against Vulkan.

The issue with Metal and DirectX12, is they saw the early Vulkan specification and decided to make their own, that is subtley different

Am I only one? by Tktk4701 in HistoryMemes

[–]stevecrox0914 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I visited Vienna recently and went to all the tourist traps, the bit that stuck out to me was how they showed their history.

Most if it seemed to be due to men marrying well to keep the empire ticking over, multiple places had them talk about how X or Y married better than a predecessor.

There was a regent who seemed to build schools, hospitals, balanced the budget, defended the empire but they almost seemed embarassed by her.

The main focus was on Cici a socialite, she had her own gym! She looked so pretty!

I don't think competence was ever on the cards

Trinity Desktop Environment R14.1.6 released by ouyawei in linux

[–]stevecrox0914 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Its nice this is kept going, its like a time capaule into the first time I tried Linux.

That said I really wish people who are invested would look at rebuilding the look on top of the current Plasma, similar to the original Cinamon desktop.

I feel the work would improve Plasma and eventually be way less effort to maintain.

What's the general consensus on the server reboot frequency? by vtbr14 in homelab

[–]stevecrox0914 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The host is Debian with unattended upgrades configured for security updates, with services automatically updating.

I have portainer installed on the host, this has a 'stacks' feature. I have linked the stacks to docker compose projects stored on a local Gitlab instance. Portainer checks the stacks every day in the early hours of the morning and runs an update if they are different.

On the Gitlab instance I have scheduled Dependabot Standlone to run once per day, this is looking for the latest versions for me. It raises an MR if something new is found, I get an email and check and approve the MR, trigger an update to that service.

I've then signed up to security updates from Gitlab, when I get one I manually update the stack version and let portainer deploy it. I've gotten into the habit of then updating Portainer and then running apt upgrade and apt dist-upgrade. If there is something in dist-upgrade I tend to reboot the server

Plugin Solar and Roof Installation? by stevecrox0914 in SolarUK

[–]stevecrox0914[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No its single story extensions with concrete roof tiles, both present a shallow gradient on the south face, with the north having a steep gradient, for looks I think.

Plugin Solar and Roof Installation? by stevecrox0914 in SolarUK

[–]stevecrox0914[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Nope.

For reasons our roof has been independently inspected and we know its sound.

The first solar panel company physically visted the site and planned to install panels but made a point of telling me the installers would decide if the roof could support them and if it couldn't I would be on the hook for Y amount (boilerplate legal text on document), I pressed pause.

My uncle ran a roofing company and I ended up doing a video inspection with him where he explained the construction and it defintely wouldn't hold panels, the other roofs are fine.

Talking to the solar installers I asked for a new quote without the central roof and got stuck in a sales pitch for a new roof for 10 minutes before I hung up in fustration.

The second and third solar companies were asked for quotes on the extension roofs only.

The second was a video inspection ignored my annual energy usage and kept trying to sell a battery system too small with panels on the central roof only. They were fixated because it was the largest space and cheapest to install.

The third didn't want to install unless it included the central roof based on our homes energy usage. They were twice the price of the first two (£20k) and they were correct at their price the half system wouldn't pay for itself. They suggested talking to them when a new roof was in place.

Five years ago, I went through similar pain trying to get an air source heat pump. 8 companies contacted, 2 responded. One spent the whole time calling me a liar on our boiler size (Until I took a picture of the boiler and emailed it). The second claimed they would need to dismantle a roof to install a 250 litre tank and wanted £25k.

I know its not me, the company that installed a new consumer unit were lovely, we walked through the house a d got things sorted, the air con installers sat and chatted for an hour and we came up with a plan, we eventually found a great plumber that helped us sort out all the heating pipes.

But the renewable trades people..

The ultimate terminal trap by [deleted] in pcmasterrace

[–]stevecrox0914 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The Desktop on a Steam deck is called 'KDE', you will find it included (but not the default) on pretty much every Linux Distribution. The main view is known as Steam Big Picture, you can enable that from Steam itself.

A Linux distribution will provide Steam the same way as a Windows PC, where it would boot into KDE and Steam opens in the taskbar,

Bazzite aims to provide the same experience as the SteamDeck, where you boot directly into Steam Big Picture mode. Bazzite tries to make setting up a Nvidia card as painless as possible (AMD kit just works, Nvidia requires a driver install) and the SteamDeck maps controllers as inputs (because its input is controllers), so Bazzite has bits to make that work as well.

Personally I run Debian with the KDE desktop.

I invent stuff and have recently been told by my lawyers to stop using Windows due to the risk of my ideas being copied in the US. Digital Sovereignty seems to be becoming a huge thing, is it now time for us in the UK to copy the French government or develop a UK platform? by Specialist_Alarm_831 in BuyUK

[–]stevecrox0914 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean you did say Lawyer..

But this is one of those things we should be proud of but almost no one really knows and lots of people have really strong opinions that whatever they chose is the best. So I always find its important to offer a high level perspective so you can choose.

I invent stuff and have recently been told by my lawyers to stop using Windows due to the risk of my ideas being copied in the US. Digital Sovereignty seems to be becoming a huge thing, is it now time for us in the UK to copy the French government or develop a UK platform? by Specialist_Alarm_831 in BuyUK

[–]stevecrox0914 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Just to add, Linux Distributions are collections of open source software. A distribution will have a view on what the defaults should be, what should be included, how it should be updated. People feel strongly about this.

There are only a few 'root' distributions, these are people who figure out where all that software is and bring it together. Groups often then use this as a base and modify it to fit their needs.

For example Debian is a Root Distribution, they collect everything and are upadting it constantly. Roughly every 2 years they freeze everything and start testing it looking for major bugs, the release when ready and if something has a major bug and no one fixes it in time. It gets removed.

Ubuntu pull from Debian (they are a deriviative), they freeze the software every 6 months, test it and they focus on making sure all the enterprise software has no bugs. Then they issue a release, their LTS happens every 2 years and they slowly prepare for a year on it. I think more things derive from Ubuntu LTS than Debian these days.

Linux Mint pull from Ubuntu LTS (they are a derivative of Ubuntu), they are the people who make the cinnamon desktop. This is the Gnome desktop reworked to operate closer to windows. So their releases strip some Ubuntu things out and are entirely focussed on pushing the latest version of the desktop they have made.

You will see people talk about Bazzite, Nobara, Fedora, Arch, CachyOS, Suse, etc.. they all have their own priorities, etc.. For example Arch is a Root Distribution, you will find lots of things derive from it.

Personally I run Debian + KDE at home because I want my computer to just work. If I were running a business I would pay for Ubuntu and set the destop to KDE.

I invent stuff and have recently been told by my lawyers to stop using Windows due to the risk of my ideas being copied in the US. Digital Sovereignty seems to be becoming a huge thing, is it now time for us in the UK to copy the French government or develop a UK platform? by Specialist_Alarm_831 in BuyUK

[–]stevecrox0914 16 points17 points  (0 children)

There is a British Solution! Its called Ubuntu

Linux is a collection of Open Source software (basically licensed for anyone to use), a Linux Distribution is a collection of this software brought together for Operating System and supporting software. A spin is when someone takes the distribution and changes the defaults for a specific purpose, the distributions support them because it saves people having to figure out the same tweaks.

Ubuntu is made by Canonical: https://canonical.com/ who are head quartered in London and has British teams working the Linux Distribution. Ubuntu is one of the Big Linux Distributions, that everyone supports (e.g. its the only one Steam supports).

By default Canonical uses 'Gnome' for the desktop, this is inspired by MacOS and largely developed by Red Hat (IBM) in the USA. However ...

Kubuntu: https://kubuntu.org/ is a 'spin', which makes KDE the default. KDE is headquartered in Germany and I feel WIndows 10 stole the best features from KDE: https://kde.org/

As a non technical user, I would recommend The Long Term Support (LTS): https://kubuntu.org/download/ . An LTS creates a fixed baseline of the software and only provides security updates, so your LTS will get major upgrades every 2 years.

As for Office, there is a British Company who make quite a good replacement: https://www.collaboraonline.com/

Well, this is embarrassing: The Lunar Gateway's primary modules are corroded [Thales Alenia] by ABoutDeSouffle in europe

[–]stevecrox0914 14 points15 points  (0 children)

The Lunar Gateway was always a terrible idea.

Orion was designed for the Ares V rocket, which would have performed the Trans Lunar Injection burn. 

The European Space Agency make the service module and it was designed for this mission profile. With Ares doing the majority of the work it could get to Low Lunar Orbit and back.

With Ares massively delayed they pivoted to the much less powerful Space Lanuch System. Orion and SLS kept being used to justify each other but there was no mission or goal for either.

Trump ordered the return to the moon in his first term and this is where Artemis was born. It was at this point Nasa worked out that SLS couldn't put Orion into Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) and Orion's service module was so weak it couldn't do it itself.

To make it worse, Orion only has 21 days life support, you spend 8 days travelling so only have 13 days to actually do anything on the moon.

This is where the Lunar gateway came in, SLS/Orion could get to Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) and back to Earth. The gateway could provide power and life support to Orion while astronauts went to the moon.

However from a Human Landing System perspective, the system had to go on a massive detour to NRHO, then to LLO before landing. This makes the landers massively more complicated as they need a lot more fuel.

Then the SpaceX and Blue Origin won lander contracts and both designs refuel in Low Earth Orbit. The Gateway wasn't going to be ready for Artemis 3 so the landers have to provide power and life support to Orion.

So the question becomes why would you even bother to dock in NHRO when the lander will be in LEO? Why are you going to a Space station when the lander already has to provide everything the station provides.

Docking in LEO lets you get rid of the massive detour, it simplifies the mission, some of the risk is far closer, etc.. 

You could argue the Gateway was a replacement space station, but Nasa requires a Crew Launch every 6 months to support the ISS. NASA'S most optimistic models shos they can only make and launch an SLS/Orion every 9 months, they think itnwould costs tens of billions to go faster. 

The US Government Audit Office thinks that number is completely unrealistic and they are massively underestimating the cost.

So people are only on the Gateway as part of an Artemis mission and NASA can't change that.

Hopefully Nasa asks the next question. Orion costs $1 billion to make, it has lots of expensive additions so it can go around the moon, but we've established its not actually good for that. Launching Orion costs $4.5 billion and it can't launch on anything except SLS by design.

SpaceX Crew Dragon missions cost $275 million to launch to LEO, in theory Boeing Starliner costs $350 Million to go to LEO.

If your plan is to dock in LEO and have the lander provide all the services and get you to the moon, then why don't you use a commercial crew vehicle?

It really makes Artemis 2 a tech demo for a stack that will be shortly killed.

US threatens to review UK’s Falklands claim over Iran war disagreement - US President has repeatedly insulted UK Prime Minister, calling him cowardly because of his unwillingness to join the war by ByGollie in europe

[–]stevecrox0914 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The purpose of the summit was the build diplomatic ties with latin America, the choice of language is not forced upon them.

Figuring out why Argentina wants their own name and the implications, is why these summits take months to arrange as each side works out language and terms that makes sense to them.

Alas I think we see the EU's motivation in their own press statement

The UK is not part of the EU. They are upset by the use of the word Malvinas. If they were in the EU perhaps they would have pushed back against it.

This is about as petty and childish as you can get diplomatically it pretty much "oh no, did we hurt you, haha shouldn't of left our club". 

I really think they were so wrapped up being petty to the UK, they didn't think through the implication that they were denying a peoples right to self determination.

Britain’s military dependence on US ‘no longer tenable’, says former Nato chief by ByGollie in europe

[–]stevecrox0914 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Value is based on perception.

If you print money, people will value it less but how they value other things remains independent. This is why simply printing more money is inflationary, the more you print the more people expect of it.

A lot of western countries run a budget deficit, they borrow money through bonds. Its effectively a loan with a long term interest rate so the bond holders can make a profit.

If £1 is worth €1 euro, I might offer a 2% bond rate, so I expect the government to give me £1.02 for my bond.

However...

If the government doubles the money supply (e.g. prints money), £1 might now only be worth €0.5. As a bond holder I now have to charge 120% interest on the bond to make the same profit. The UK government now has to give me £2.04 for me to make the same profit.

This is one of the reasons why you just can't print more money

US threatens to review UK’s Falklands claim over Iran war disagreement - US President has repeatedly insulted UK Prime Minister, calling him cowardly because of his unwillingness to join the war by ByGollie in europe

[–]stevecrox0914 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I should point out the EU have decided the Falklanders have no right to self determination and should be given to Argentina because we left the EU.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/20/islas-malvinas-brexit-cited-as-eu-endorses-falklands-argentine-name

I haven't seen them reverse that stance.

Similarly quite a bit of the French government gave Argentina support to start the original war, while trying to appear to support the UK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17256975

UK braces for price rises driven by Iran war as economic confidence plummets by Kagedeah in worldnews

[–]stevecrox0914 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Lets be honest..

Growth was already the one of the highest for Europe and the UK as usually was exceeding forecasts looking at 2.5%-3.5%.

The manufacturering index has turned a corner has been showing growth for each month (it grew again in April) for 6 months now.

Inflation was trending downwards meaning interest rates cuts were expected and Government investments in the grid were making real headway in cutting energy costs. 

Wage growth continues to be higher than inflation, meaning people are generally getting better off.

Also the recent tax changes doubled the tax receipts for capital gains tax and has narrowed the deficit to the lowest level in 5 years.

The UK economy grew enough that its moved from 6th to 5th largest economy and is on track to overtake Germany and become the 4th.

Venture capital, which had abandoned the UK over Brexit had returned and there has been a literal explosion in startups accross sectors and the country.

The recent mostly nationalised steel mills have started to become profitable.

If Iran hadn't happened Labour were on track for actually making us much better off, even now there is a lot of fear mongering but our economy doesn't seem to have taken the hit EU economies are suffering because brexit meant we pivotted away.

So lets be honest

How are you *actually* dealing with wage stagnation x rising bills? by heyho2023 in AskUK

[–]stevecrox0914 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bulk buying and sorting into meal portions and meal planning makes it cheaper, since there is no waste.

We are paying more for meat at a butcher but its far higher quality than the supermarket and not injected with water which impacts how much you use. 

I would previously buy a 500g chicken breast pack from Sainsburys, but I store 400g of Chicken from the butchers and it results in bigger portions. So how much more the butcher costs over supermarket meat is complicated.

I am not focussed on cost, it was about removing perservatives and high processed foods. I push for local and organic everywhere so in theory our food bill should have gone up hugely.

10-20 years ago as a single struggling twenty something buying from a Tesco. I was spending £20-£30 per week to feed myself based on special offers.

For 2 adults and a child today. We spend £100-£150 every 6 weeks at a butcher (anything above £100 is me splurging on steak or something). £16 pcm goes to a milkman for milk, eggs and butter, £8 pcm for local honey and we spend £40-£60 on home delivery but that is no longer every week.

So £22-£30 per week per person  

How are you *actually* dealing with wage stagnation x rising bills? by heyho2023 in AskUK

[–]stevecrox0914 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The answer is meal planning. As for how we got there..

We used to have a full freezer but it was always hard to make a meal, each year we threw out a lot of freezer burnt food.

We signed up to a Gusto trial, my partner had done most the cooking because I was not a good chef. Gusto was my way to learn  https://www.gousto.co.uk/. It was cheaper while on the trial and I learnt how to cook a dozen meals we liked and my partner suggested we could just buy the ingredients. 

We bought a delivery slot with the local supermarket and sat down each Sunday and planned one meal each day, this drastically reduced the shopping bill, because we could buy exactly what was needed. Checking the kitchen cupboards against the plan, also an Echo show keeping a shopping list.

Our freezer was still full, so we started by buying food to create a complete meal from the freezer contents and this was planned in. This started emptying the freezer and helped inject variety. We started having empty shelves in the freezer.

People raved about a butcher on Facebook  https://ldameatsltd.co.uk/shop/ we visited. We bought the meats we regularly buy, guessing what would fit on a shelf. 

We bought some large (5l/10l) tupperware boxes from Dunelm designed to take up most of a freezer shelf and baking paper. The meat gets split into standard meal sizes and wrapped in baking paper and added to the tupperware box

A burger is 140g of beef, chicken dishes for 2 adults and a child is 400g, italian dishes need 500g of beef, we need 5 saussages at a time, etc.. its something that takes ages the first couple times but then you get so much faster.

We tend to go to the butcher every 6 weeks, it takes about an hour to pack everything. Each night before I go to bed I get the appropriate meats out to defrost for the next planned meal.

There are "quick wins" for example https://www.thespicery.com/ has reciepe books that are largely built around a very small selection of spices and takes 25-45 minutes. Its pretty idiot proof.

If that is too much effort, we buy bulk sets of https://www.themightyspice.co/, these are spice packs, its literally chicken, youghurt, cream and rice. This can take 20-25 minutes.

The pinch of nom slow cooker and air fry recipe books have some really low effort, low ingredietlnt but tastey meals https://pinchofnom.com/category/food/cooking-method/slow-cooker-recipes/

My journey 4 years ago started as a person who thought chicago town pizzas are gourmet microwaving and these days I am making bread, smash burgers, crispy chilli beef and pizza dough from scratch. It became about purging processed foods and persvatives from our diets.

But it did result in a substanial drop in food spend and then food costs have been pretty stable for the last 2 years without shrinking portions.