Simon Arlott

I don't usually carry any cash with me (my wallet has nowhere to keep coins). People are reluctant to give out their bank account details to receive money. If the recipient needs to be sure that they've been paid then they'd have to login to online banking - not very convenient.

I keep getting told that sending money using PayPal is free. It's only free if you allow them to take money by Direct Debit from your bank account, at which point all payments then default to using this payment method (instead of a Debit/Credit Card). So for the ability to make ad-hoc free payments I then have to be careful to change the payment method on every other transaction - not very convenient.

Paym appears to solve both of these problems. As long as the recipient has registered to use Paym, anyone can send money to the mobile number of the recipient. The bank account details of both sides remain private. For confirmation that money has been paid, a text message is sent to the recipient at the time the transaction occurs stating the sender, reference and amount.

In my testing (which requires two mobile numbers) the Faster Payment transaction took 7 seconds to complete and the text message arrived 1 second later:

The minimum transaction amount is £1 and the limit per day is £250.

Photos of today's 93% Solar Eclipse:

From tomorrow, The Single Use Carrier Bags Charge (Scotland) Regulations 2014 will automatically assume that everyone in Scotland who requires a new carrier bag to take goods away is either intending to commit a littering offence or contribute it to landfill immediately.

The law isn't simply concerned with waste plastic as it covers paper bags too, and explicitly "multiple use" bags require more plastic. The intent appears to be to reduce the number and change the type of bags in circulation. A total ban would be more effective.

It's unlikely to help reduce littering, that would defeat the point of having a bag to carry goods away. The majority of visible litter appears to be in the form of used food and drink containers. People who litter don't care about the effect it has, don't consider their actions to be wrong, and won't be impacted financially by an extra 5p charge per bag. A ban on smoking would eliminate a lot more litter than the tiny percentage caused by carrier bags.

Only "single use" bags are affected under the regulations. Any bag labelled for "multiple reuse" and infinitely replaced by the manufacturer when worn out does not attract a charge, even if the purchaser throws the bag out the car window when they leave the store. Bags as thick as 50 micrometers or more also do not attract a charge, so don't forget your digital callipers when shopping.

The current "single use" bags can already be reused dozens of times. For the consumer a 5p charge still makes them the best value option. To encourage use of more efficient bags, the "multiple use" bags would have to be free.

Nothing in the regulations requires charging for "multiple use" bags, and these bags must be replaced free of charge forever. Driven by the need to maintain a supply of replacement free bags supermarkets may eventually stop providing "single use" bags (which they will make no profit from) and only provide "multiple reuse" bags that are priced to cover all the replacements.

Thicker bags have to be used 4-5 times as much as the thinner bags they replace to offset the extra environmental impact.

This rhubarb has grown quite large after only a month:

The garage electricity supply had been unusable for a while; there appeared to be a fault somewhere on the supply cable (which was only protected by some discontinuous piping) causing it to frequently short out and trip the circuit breaker.

A new armoured cable has now been laid and I've replaced the customer unit. I now have working lights in the garage and the garden with plenty of scope for future electricity use up to 63A... there are now extra sockets, including some outside for the lawn mower.

One of the raspberry plants in my garden had some raspberries on it:

The tree in my garden has lots of delicious ripe plums on it:

I've moved house (still in Dalgety Bay).
There are now cables running everywhere - in the loft,
under the floor,
and extra sockets in the wall.
A new satellite dish provides Freesat service.
There are three bedrooms (so I now have a guest room as well as computer room) and a separate dining room.

When my local ASDA stopped selling their "Smart Price" soap I had to buy it from other ASDAs or get other people to buy it for me. This worked ok for a while but then they changed to poor quality soap that falls apart. Based on the list of ingredients, when they make soap with Sodium Palmate it stays together but when they make it from Sodium Tallowate it falls apart.

Comparison of all three soaps

	Original soap	New soap	Better soap
Ingredients
Used example