A frugal life is an easy life!

I was listening to the radio in the car today, hearing Martin Lewis (self promoter extraordinare) declaring that he is putting his foot down over people spending too much at Christmas.
A person he has "helped" with their finances (pushing extra internet traffic through his website no doubt) spends £600 on presents for their children's classmates!
I do not believe that there are people out there that do this, to this extent.

Our Christmas' are always frugal.
Presents:
For three adults in our home, we place a £10 limit on gift buying.
A compulsary rule is that we all go out together on Christmas Eve and see how many presents we can get for this £10.
We make the most of the last minute afternoon quick sales and we knock every shop/store down in price, or we simply leave it and buy somewhere else.

Food and drink:
This plays a huge part in our family Christmas. Money is paid each week, to our local butchers and every year, at around 7am on Christmas Eve, we head on down to them and stock up on various top quality joints of meat.
A large chicken is a must (we do not eat turkey in our house)
Fillet steaks
Large pork roll joint (that cuts in to two, one for freezing)
Slices of fresh, fat-free, braising steak
Chicken breast fillets
Large topside joint (with hardly a trace of fat running through it)
Maybe some lamb shanks or lamb cutlet chops.
We have enough meat to last two weeks, for around £50. If we were stuck at home for whatever reason, we could easily survive for about a month, as none of this meat is thrown away, we make curries, plate pies, etc.

Fruit and vegetables:
Fresh is the name of the game and we hit our regular market stall and stock up.
Vegetables a plenty and a huge variety of fruits, all fresh (as they have to sell everything or it will go off!) bartering with them of course, normally costs about £20 for enough fruit and veg to last well over a week. Don't forget the dates!

Fish:
We don't really do salmon, etc, in our house.
What we do is visit our local small fishmonger (small as in he has a small market stall, not one of the bulk sellers) for a big piece of fresh cod (enough for three meals) and some fresh plaice fillets (leave the skins on them and shallow fry mmmmmm)
Maybe pick up some kippers or finny haddock as well.

Supermarket shopping:
Supermarkets lose out to us as customers. Using the outdoor market traders and a local butchers who slaughter their own meat, we not only save pounds each week and at Christmas, but we save huge amounts of money when we go to our nearest supermarket.
As we have already purchased our meat, fruit, vegetables and fish by the time we land there, we walk straight past a third of the store, so we are not affected by any marketing.

During these frugal times, when everyone is cutting back and watching their pocket money, it always astounds me that the public do not spot that the only businesses employing more people and making increased profits are the supermarkets.
The supermarkets release statements everytime their profits are released to the public, just this month we have seen Sainsburys making hundreds of millions in profits in the first six months of the year, alongside other reports that halloween sales were up and there is a "toys sales war between supermarkets and competition is fierce!"
Utter rubbish this is, a smokescreen.

The first six months of the year didn't include halloween!
The toy wars they speak of, are made up to hide the monopolies the big four supermarkets have in the market place.
The "big savings" they offer, are very little savings at all.
EXAMPLE: Fairy conditioner only £1 - all seems ok, but look at the bottle size!
Instead of the 1 litre size that is normally on sale, this "offer" the bottle is only 750ml!
So to buy the equivelent of 5 litres of the same fabric softner would be approx £6.50!
Even though I have access to a cash and carry, they are still quite expensive on the fabric softners, after VAT is added I'd be looking to pay between £3.80 - £4.20 for a five litre tub.

The only reason why supermarkets are making huge profits when the economy is tight, is because they are increasing their prices on our weekly shopping items, an appalling way to treat their customers!

Anyways, back to our frugal Christmas...

Once inside the supermarket and walking past a third of the store and avoiding all their marketing, we head for the branded bread (cheaper at our local garage by 10p per loaf) but as we are picking up some tinned goods and cat food, then it is no trouble to get three loaves and some teacakes (baps, buns, etc.)
Maybe some salted peanuts etc, then we are all done.

Total cost including presents (£10 spending limit each) is around £130 for enough top quality, branded, fresh food and presents.
The only thing we insist upon is a nice card, even better if the card is home made.
We save on these as well, we only use our friends on the local market, they charge around 99p for an individual card, whereas card shops and supermarkets charge around £1.50- £2 for the same card.
When it comes to our Christmas cards, then we buy lots and in advance and we can negotiate the prices we pay.

Christmas in our house is a very frugal one, our only expensive item we always get, is our Christmas tree, a six foot real tree which is the centre-piece of our front room for the Christmas season.
I make mince pies on Christmas eve, we have great food and drink for the two weeks or so of our Christmas holiday, we sleep in, we go sledging, we listen to carols and Christmas music, we visit our parents, and have our neighbours round. (This year I am going to try and roast some chestnuts)

It may well be a frugal Christmas, but in our house, it is how Christmas should be, not the useless product buying frenzy that businesses would have us believe.
It is not everyone's choice, for two weeks we eat, drink and be merry like kings and we turn no one away.

On Saturday night I was halfway through posting about some of the things Sting is talking about. I didn't post it mainly because I couldn't really explain myself properly, plus I didn't want to be guilty of exactly what other websites online are doing.
Is the Y factor damaging our music industry?
I think it is and I agree with much of what Sting is saying about the Y factor, mainly because of the huge sums of money involved on the Y factor:

• Money is raised from telephone voting public - the Y factor will not release the results of these votes, how do we know they are accurate and fair? How much money are they making from this? Not much is known or revealed by the people behind the Y factor!
• It is all very well stating that the winner gets "a one million pound record deal" - but how much license do they have to work in the industry without any Y factor staff involvement? What about the millions that are made by the record company and the company behind Y factor, and of course off the back of young people?
• It is clear that Y factor is no more interested in "talent" than it is making money - the "judges" didn't judge at all, they left it up to the "public voting figures" for the bottom two contestants, which did not have anything to do with talent, the contestant with the most votes stayed, regardless of their comparative "talent"

Music is a fantastic medium, as old as time itself, each piece of music differs to each different listener. The self proclaimed judges have no formal qualifications to state what is and what is not "talent" as there is not now, nor will there ever be, any way to judge this, it is all opinions and nothing more.

Normally I would say that this is completely fair and proper, but when there are millions of pounds to be made from shows, votes, advertising, sales, etc, then ethics must play a part.
Are children under 16 of sound enough judgement to be spending their money texting and ringing in, to vote for one of the contestants?
To them it is just a text, dress it up as they like, but a text costs money, it is no different from them handing over 30p (for example) in the street. These children then pester their mums and dads for tickets to go to see the contestants in shows, they buy record releases, etc.
We as adults, can clearly spot money making schemes, but how is a child to judge this?

The most telling thing about the Y factor for me is the performances themselves.
Singing live on stage into a microphone is not as difficult as you would think!
The microphone is tuned into the singer's voice, it is perfectly possible for people with experience in the industry to tune a microphone into anyone's voice to help them with sharpness, key, etc.
With this in mind and the vast amounts of money spent on "professional" sound engineers, how is it that one or two contestants sound out of tune when it comes to their singing on stage?
We all know they rehearse, so why is the tuning of contestants such an issue?
I know why I believe this is the case!

I am questioning the ethics, of not just the Y factor, but on strictly come dancing, big brother, I'm a celebrity, something about maria, etc, all shows where the public vote and the results are kept from public scrutiny, until months down the line and in some cases, permanently!
I have used the term "Y factor" as I do not want to add to the online discussions regarding the show's correct title, which in turn will generate more links to its title, which in turn generates more revenue for the show and independant websites which spring up, proclaiming to be experts on the show and it's latest contestants.

Just had an email from the penalty charges team over at penaltycharges.co.uk informing me that a ruling could be due to be announced on the case of the OFT versus the banks, as regards the OFT having the power to take action against bank charges.

Thursday 19 November 2009 looks like being the day for all the thousands of people waiting to claim, to finally get the green light to proceed.

This ruling has been two years in coming and is long overdue, in the meantime the banks have been changing their terms and conditions to keep their profits high.
Here's hoping it is a good result for the people!

Our new daughter (as opposed to our old one?) is now 8 weeks old... how difficult is it, just to get a picture where she is actually smiling!

Heart warmer it is

Food from animals injected with growth hormones to improve production of milk and fatten meat, etc. are banned from being used in Europe, as regards the food chain.
On health grounds - food products made from animals who have been injected with growth hormones, have (in limited studies) been shown to increase (of up to 70%) the risks of developing serious diseases.

Could someone please explain to me then, why it is that the European Union permit the importing and selling of to the public of Europe, of food products from around the world, which is made from, or produced by, animals which have been injected with growth hormones?

Why ban the food stuff in the first place and then permit it to be imported from outside the EU and used in products that are on our supermarket shelves? What is the point?