Here’s the full breakdown (in pence per pound) of where my money goes.

I’ve bolded the money which goes to one government department or another.

• 26.01p Income Tax: yes, I’m a “higher rate” tax payer, but I am working in Central London so costs are higher: see rent!. Don’t forget, that to pay me my employer needs to collect money from their customers which they have to pay VAT on to the government along with business rates etc
• 20.83p rent: don’t forget that the people I’m renting this house from will need to then pay income tax on this
• 14.17p savings
• 6.22p National Insurance
• 4.17p food shopping
• 3.69p takeouts/evening meals/other hot meals
• 3.33p Personal pension contributions (as the pension I’m supposedly paying for through National Insurance will be minimal)
• 3.15p lunches (ouch – I’ll have to reduce this!)
• 2.54p Council Tax
• 2.50p web hosting server rental
• 2.40p Oyster (London Underground) Card
• 2.06p Gas and electricity (the property we are living in is currently poorly insulated, but we are moving soon)
• 1.77p on VAT including:
• 0.72p (17.5%) on my mobile phone bill
• 0.65p (17.5%) on takeouts/evening meals/other hot meals
• 0.10p (5% VAT) on gas and electricity
• 0.09p (17.5%) on Internet access
• 0.06p (17.5%) on Sky television subscription
• 0.06p (17.5%) on £20 worth of VATable shopping each month (mainly cat food)
• 0.05p (17.5%) on clothing
• 0.02p (5% VAT) on Insurance Premium on Car insurance
• 0.01p (17.5%) on Car MOT
• 0.01p (5% VAT) on Insurance Premium on Life Insurance
• 0.60p Mobile phone bill
• 0.50p Internet access
• 0.43p Fuel tax and VAT on Fuel
• 0.40p car insurance
• 0.33p Sky TV subscription
• 0.28p domain name registrations
• 0.28p clothing
• 0.27p Water bill
• 0.24p Petrol costs (excludes fuel tax and VAT – see 0.43p above: yep, we pay nearly double the amount of the fuel in taxes here in the UK!)
• 0.24p life insurance
• 0.20p TV Licence
• 0.17p Car Tax
• 0.06p MOT
• 0.04p Car breakdown cover

Yes, I’ve included the following as “government contributions” – but that’s because the money goes either directly to a government department (such as TfL) or goes to a subsidiary wholly owned by the government. It’s up to you if you want to include these figures in your own “breakdown”:
* 0.20p per pound TV Licence: Should go towards funding the BBC – but £1.01 of that goes towards “Digital Switchover” costs and that 5.2% of it goes towards collecting the licence fee – and the current Labour government has made mention that they want to use the money to fund other causes. I actually think the BBC does a quite good job (and an excellent job for news), but I do disagree with the way the licence fee is managed by the government (who sets amount the licence fee is charged at and then routes the money to the BBC which is wholly owned by the government…).
* 6.22p per pound National Insurance contributions: These are not, technically, a tax (you can recognise the taxes by the word “Tax”)- but you can’t get away from not paying it and the money goes into the general government pot – I’m actually ignoring the fact here that my employer, to employ me, has to pay the same again in Employers National Insurance contributions.
* 2.40p per pound Oyster Card: This money goes towards me travelling on the “good to really bad depending on the day/time” London Underground system. This money actually goes to Transport For London – which is a government department controlling transport across the London area. Yes, I know it falls under the remit of the Mayor of London – but note the .gov.uk part of TfL’s web address: .gov.uk domain names are only available for the government to register…

Assumptions made:
* Out of the 260 Monday-Friday days, we have 13 bank holidays and I take 20 days holiday – leaving 227 working days that I’ve got to travel each way on the ‘Tube and have lunch.
* I travel 4,500 miles per year (currently not possible due to a broken car – but it’s roughly what we managed last year) and petrol costs at the pump 114.9p per litre and I get 49mpg – giving me 417.87 litres of fuel used per year.

So, we decided to see if it was economical to replace it with another car (2nd hand or brand new) or whether to use hire cars/car clubs: we make around 14 trips a year (6 trips to Yorkshire @ 200miles each way, 6 trips to Leicester @ 100 miles each way, 4 trips to see friends @ 40miles each year = 3920 miles total: say 4,000miles for “spare”) and we live close to London so it might be worth it…. Here’s our figures:

Ouch! But how much would it cost for a hire car for the same sort of period?

Well, the journeys to Yorkshire and Leicestershire are typically weekend ones, so we’ll need to hire a car on Saturday morning and returning it Monday morning (as car hire places usually close at 5pm on Sundays – if they are open at all – and that’ll be too early). Avis has cars at £75.47 per weekend. The friends trips are same day, during the week, and that’s £110.00 from Avis – although I found another local company offering car hire for a single day at £40.00 and Streetcar offers £49.50 – so we’ll say £50 for a day).

So that’s

Even without adding petrol on top (most hire car places want you to pay for the petrol as well) – it’s already more expensive then owning a car (even taking into account repair costs!).

If we were to buy a second hand car for £1,500 (we’re actually looking at a third of this) and taking into account this “capital expenditure” the prices per year would be:

* = Second Hand card purchase price estimated at £1,500
* = New Cars do not need an MOT for the first 3 years of their lives. We’re looking at a Toyota Aygo which costs £8,220 “on the road” price, is taxed at “B” rate (which is £20), does not need any tax paying for the first year (this is included in the “on the road price”) and includes 1 year breakdown cover. Repair costs are estimated at £50 for the first year, £100 for the next year and then £250 for each consecutive year.

So as long as the car lasts us more than 1.5 years, it is more economical for us to have a car that sits idle for over 91% of its life than it is just to hire cars “as and when needed”. Even buying a new car is cheaper than hiring over 7 years.

Quite shocking and saddening really….

If you are charging by the room, why does it matter how many people are in it? And if you are including breakfast in the price of a double/twin room and there is only one person staying, doesn’t that actually *save* you money? And what happens if you actually book it for two people, but one person is ill and can’t make it or has to go home half-way through.

I wish this practice would stop – either charge per person or charge per room: don’t do both!

• 2x Mars Mochachino Hazlenut coffees (caffeine value unknown – one already drunk)
• 1x Mana Health Potion (160milligrams of caffeine)
• 1x Bawls G33k B33r (64milligrams of caffeine

1x Cherry Lucozade (46milligrams of caffeine)

• At least 1 cup of tea
• Total: At least 270milligrams

Why? Well, just to try and keep me awake and warm. According to my other half 10grams of caffeine is lethal: so I’ll have less than a twentieth of a lethal dose (just 0.27grams).

Giggity-giggity watch me turn to goo

My second bad idea was leaving the pub for the celebrations when I did (after the glass of wine, I was on orange juice). It was absolutely pouring down with rain for the 5 minutes or so it took me to get to the tube, and 30 minutes later when I got home I was still drenched.

My third, and so far, final bad idea was this morning. I thought I’d save myself a walk from Euston Square tube station to work by changing tube lines and getting off at Goodge Street station. Silly bad idea. I had to change at Kings Cross station, up a flight of steps across and down to the southern-bound Northern Line – where I had to change again at Euston for the southern-bound Northern Line (as it branches at Euston) which involved me going up 2 escalators, across, down, across down another escalator to end up at the opposite end of the same platform. Up 2 escalators again, across and down 2 got me to the correct southern Northern line. I then exited at Goodge Street station and, seeing the lifts were very crowded, decided to walk up the steps. 139 steps later, I was even more out of breath and sweating then I was. Lovely!

Anyway, I am beginning to get a little bit of free time back after work so I should be able to resume blogging and twittering in a few days! Woot!

I have been wondering why so much post goes missing, but the fact that the Post Office denies addresses actually existing when their own website (amongst others) admit they exist may contribute to it…

This is a bit of a rant, but does show a few problems with the way user interfaces, websites and customer services work.

Part 1: Where Richy blocks himself
Beebware Ltd (the company I’m the Managing Director of), is a reseller/partner of Enta.net for reselling ADSL and ADSL+ (on 20cn and 21cn networks) within the UK. Entanet have just announced some changes to their partner control panel and I logged in to have a look.

I notice a few new items in the control panel (of my own account) and a section labelled “Blocked: No (_block_)” so I click on _block_ to find out exactly what it means (as it’s just a link and Entanet have a number of those throughout the site to act as “Information panels”). Click on it, the page reloads and it changes to “Blocked: Yes (_unblock_)”. Crap! I click “_Unblock_” and it’s back to normal – phew!

Everything is fine until about 10 minutes later when I start getting

Error: The requested URL could not be retrieved . Access Denied. Access control configuration prevents your request from being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider if you feel this is incorrect. Generated Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:52:42 GMT by proxy.dsl.enta.net (squid/2.5.STABLE6)

Crap! I think I know what’s happened The block has kicked in anyway. Oh well, not to worry – I can just log in to the control panel and fix that

Part 2 – Where Richy realises the proxy isn’t configured correctly
So I try and go to the secure (https) partner pages of Entanet… Browser sits there, sits there and then times out. Hmm, worrying. I then try various Entanet pages: and all produce errors or timeout depending on if it’s a secure site or not. Drat – it appears Enta.net haven’t been thoughtful enough to include their own sites in their proxy servers white list! Damn.

Oh, well, I’ll try a work around with my Apple iPhone…
Part 3 – Where Safari doesn’t like the wilderness
I pull up my Apple iPhone and start the Safari web browser, I then navigate to the Entanet partner pages. I then have to try and log in using my 17 character email address and my 20 character mixed-case numerical and lettered password on the iPhone’s keyboard: not fun!

I eventually log in and get to the accounts page and pull up my account. Oh – there’s the “Blocked: Yes (_unblock_)” section – I’ll try clicking on “_unblock_”.. Hmm, didn’t seem to work – I’ll zoom in on the iPhone and try again… And again… It appears that their “_unblock_” link doesn’t work on Safari on the iPhone. Dammit!

Oh well, I’ll try and use the 3rd internet connection we have available – this one over the “3″ (Three) mobile network.

Part 4 – Having fun with 3 (Part 1)
We have a “3″ 3G USB Mobile internet dongle for emergency usage or when we are heavily on the move, so I connect it up to my desktop… No drivers found on the device and we can’t find the CD. Not to worry, I’ll use it on my partner’s laptop which is in the other room, except I can’t copy the Enta.net long password from my desktop machine and the laptop has a dead battery which can’t retain a charge… Fair enough – machine number 3 comes in to play for Three and I pull out my 6+year old laptop and hook that up. Success!

Well, nearly – our Three Pay As You Go (PAYG) internet account is out of credit: but luckily it’s got my credit card details in. I tell it to top up the account by £10 and done! But I still can’t access internet pages: I try and then “convert” it to a “1Gb mobile broadband” package – but we can’t find the password needed. I then have to remove the SIM card from the dongle to get the password reset: it says it’ll send the password via a text (SMS) message, but nothing turns up in ten minutes. I try and shut the dongle down to give it a chance and it crashes! Meh!

Part 5 – Let’s try calling tech support
I decide to bit the bullet and call Enta.net’s customer support. Their reseller/partner team is gone for the day (it is 9pm at night), so I try their conventional customer service number hoping they can tweak it -I get through quite quickly to somebody, I tell them the error message making sure I tell them it’s generated by their proxy server and that the page is appearing on all sites. Their advice: Reset the router/modem and the computer and wait 10 minutes. No dice – I’ve already tried resetting the router several times and my main desktop, iPhone, laptop and partner’s Mac and all suffering the problems. I then mention what I did in the partner control panel – “Ah, yes, I see – it is blocked!”, yep (shame I had to point it out as a possibility though!), “You’ll have to speak to customer services”, “Even though I accidentally blocked myself?”, “Yes”, “Ok, can you put me through”, “No – they are only available 9am to 5pm tomorrow”, “So, I’m stuck until then”, “Yes – sorry!”.

Aaargh! Well, let’s see if I can at least get some internet access via the Three dongle.

Part 6 – Having fun with 3 (Part 2)
I reconnect my laptop and try again with the 3 connection. The text message comes straight through and I manage to login! Woopie! I then go to the “Order addon” (as I’ve got to convert the £10 to the 1Gb topup), select the option only to be told “Sorry, this service is currently unavailable.” Dammit again!

I then decide to call 3: so I click on “Help and Support” and I’m given a form which then emails them (hmm, if this was my primary connection and you only allow access to your website when I’m out of credit, how am I meant to read your reply?). No telephone number – bad telecommunications company! I start filling in the form to see that “You can expect a response in about 5 days”. Five what now? 5 whole days! Wow.

I then decide, screw it for tonight, but I’ll just check – and lo and behold, our Entanet internet connection is working again as if by magic!

Summary
Aimed at Enta.net:
* Use buttons and POST forms for “items that change settings” – links should just take you to information pages or other webpages: they shouldn’t change things!
* Try and document or list what each item on your user interface does: manuals, FAQs, documentation, “help question marks” – anything!
* Don’t be inconsistent with your user interface design: if you use hyperlinks next to items to take people to information pages, don’t then use one link to actually perform an action!
* Check your browser compatibility
* If something has an “do” option, make sure the “undo” option (if offered) works as well!
* Give technical support staff the ability to fix issues like this and not have to refer to customer services
* Allow your own sites to be accessed through your own proxy server

Aimed at Three:
* If you can tell which mobile number I’m connecting to your mobile broadband service through (and you’ll display that number to me), you also know I have possession of the SIM card with the 6 digit reset code printed on it. Not much of a security hurdle there – especially since you then send the new password to that same SIM and number.
* 5 days to reply to an email? I personally get complaints if I take 8 hours to reply to an email (and I’ve had customers complain that I’ve taken one hour before!)
* If you provide internet access, don’t assume people have working internet access to read your reply
* If you are a telecommunications company, provide a telephone number for people to contact you on!

Myself:
Don’t blindly click on links when you aren’t 100% certain what they do!

Benefits of selling up: Around £18,000 to £20,000 “cash in the bank” (after mortgage repayments, loan repayments, selling fees, redemption fees, Home Information Packs, Conveyancing fees). Saving of approximately £1,300 per month in mortgage and loan repayments and life insurance [for the next five years] and £66 in Council Tax and £100 in utility bills. Total month savings: £1,466.

Benefits of going back to Leicester: Saving £1,400 per month in rent, £288 in Council tax, at least £93 in utility months. Total monthly savings: £1,781. Family, friends and generally a bit cheaper. Live in house I own.

Disadvantage of going back to Leicester: Commute goes up from 10 minute walk and 24 minute tube journey (34 minutes) to 15 minute taxi/car journey, 1hr 30minute train journey, 3 minutes tube and 5 minute walk (1hr 53 minutes). Price goes up from £148 per month to at least £760.20 (£933.20 including parking). Smaller property. Household maintenance expenses.

Net “gain” in moving back to Leicester: £996.00 per month
Net “gain” in staying where I am: £1,466 per month + interest on savings.

Those figures look pretty damming and conclusive to me. So much for thinking it’ll be a lot cheaper to go back to Leicester.