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Credit cards and store cards: an official translation

26 October 2009 //
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Simply Understand started nearly a year ago with the not-so-simple idea of making a small corner of the UK’s demo­cracy more, well, democratic!

Everyone know how much of a struggle it can be to get your story heard by govern­ment institutions. Consultations are supposed to be one way for us to get through, but so often they’re so complic­ated and over­whelming. Sure, some­times they deal with complic­ated subjects, but no matter how complic­ated they are, don’t we all have a right to under­stand and contribute to them?

With that in mind, today Simply Understand’s been given it’s first chance at a 100% genuine, offi­cial consulta­tion makeover! The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are consulting on Credit cards and store cards. Their 100 page original consulta­tion has been reduced to just 10. You can:

The first step?

Is this the first step on the road to making all govern­ment consulta­tions easier to under­stand? It could be, but only if it actu­ally works. And that means more people replying, more people down­loading and more people listening and understanding. And if you read it through, and there are bits you don’t under­stand — well, I think that’s helpful too, and you should tell them that. Because if you can’t under­stand it now, how’s it going to help anyone?

Pass it on!

Email, Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, heck even Myspace it, or just print it out and give it to people (double sided to save paper). The more people see this, the more chance we’ve got to encourage more easy to under­stand consultations!

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Want to go green?

30 August 2010 //
0

No, not the polit­ical party, though you can if you want to… some of my best friends are green!

This is a bit of a first for this site so please bear with me. A lot of people are aware of the poten­tial that we’re doing some serious ecolo­gical damage to this little blue planet of ours. I’m mostly preaching to the converted here, I’m sure, but between your recyc­ling bins, bicycles and canvas bags, you might be wondering if there’s more you can do. I’m a big old hypo­crite too, sitting in my draughty house with the heating on. In August.

And if climate change isn’t your cup of tea, if you knew you could poten­tially save quite a bit of money over the years, and just as a coin­cid­ence bolster the human race’s chances for survival, maybe you’d be interested?

Confusing, conflicting and some­times imprac­tical advice is quite easy to find, so I was happy to read some really prac­tical tips in a book called Carbon Detox by George Marshall. But this being a site about keeping things simple, I wanted to make some of the info in that book even easier to digest.

So here’s 14 small ways, 5 bigger ways and 3 really big ways you can save your­self money, and just by acci­dent, a little bit of the planet to.

14 small things 

 Change all your light­bulbs to low energy or LED bulbs. Yes, all of them. Even your halogen spot­lights and your bedside lamp.
Draught-proof your doors, windows and attic with draught-proofing strips and brushes from your local DIY store.
Wrap old duvets, blankets and bubble­wrap around your hot water tank with duct tape.
Defrost your freezer and dust behind it.
Tweak your heat — take it down a little every day. Work out which radi­ators you can turn off or down. Keep fiddling until it works! Set your ther­mo­stat at 18 degrees.
Rearrange your exten­sion cables so it’s easier to switch things off — and use that switch when you leave the house. I don’t suggest taking the drawing liter­ally though, things might explode! Be careful.
Take the bus, or the train, for as many of your regular jour­neys as you can. Save the car for special occasions.
Insulate your loft and walls as much as possible (it can cost only £150 if you can get subsidies). Call your nearest energy advice centre for advice. You can prob­ably do the loft your­self but get a profes­sional in for the walls.
Switch to renew­able energy gas and elec­tri­city company.
Get a gadget for your radi­ators called a TRV (£15 each). Phone a plumber and make sure you know how to use them by the time they’re gone.
Replace your oldest freezers, fridges, dish­washers, washing machines.
Get reflective foil from a DIY store and put it behind radi­ators on outside walls.
Lag all the hot water pipes you can see, but make sure you measure them before you go to the shop for materials.
Fill the holes on your ground floor with insu­la­tion and mastic.

5 bigger things 

 Get gas central heating if you don’t have it already. Costs about £2,000, paid back in savings over 10 years. Call a plumber.

Get a wood burner (£3–5,000 and can get govern­ment help). Visit Lower Carbon Buildings.
Get a lodger or house­mate, this gener­ally earns you money. Ask your council for advice.
Fit really good heating controls — cost about £200. Call an elec­tri­cian, and make sure you learn how to use it for the full benefit.
Replace your boiler with a solar panel water heater (£3,000), find a member of Solar Trade Association and get it done properly.

3 really big things 

 This is the biggie: don’t fly. Make plans that don’t involve flying, wherever possible. It can be tough, but with a little bit of creativity? No trouble.
For when you abso­lutely, posit­ively, have to drive — switch to diesel. 
Move closer to work and you’ll save a fortune on commuting and lunch, as well as redu­cing your stress levels.

That’s it! Obviously not everything here is feas­ible for everyone, but now you’ve got some options.

For more detailed info read Carbon Detox, which will tell you exactly how much money and carbon you save, and you can also down­load this whole thing as a delightful poster so you can cross off all the things you’ve done, or send it to your landlord.

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Your credit card is changing

15 March 2010 //
0

If you want some­thing to change in govern­ment, replying to consulta­tions is one of the best ways to do it. But consulta­tions aren’t the end of the line. When everything’s over and the dust has settled, the govern­ment has to come up with a response docu­ment.

Usually this tells you what feed­back they’ve had from you, the industry and experts, and what they’ve decided to go ahead and do, based on that feedback.

So Simply Understand has done it’s first ever response docu­ment, after the credit card consulta­tion me and my friend Matt helped out on in October.

Find out how UK credit cards will be chan­ging from next year! There’s a plain English version, and a podcast too. Enjoy!

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