You can get your rates capped.  I investigated on Uswitch.com this afternoon and very nearly took a cheaper offer of a saving of £30 per month if I got both gas and electricity from the same supplier.  I just stopped short to think about it.....and then I read some of the reviews of EDF, who were the cheapest for me.   Not good.  Bad customer service, wrongly estimated bills, not turning up to read meters.  Only 63% said they were satisfied.  I've held off, mainly because I'm considering whether capping them now when they're at the top end will be a disadvantage if fuel prices start to fall for any reason.

I just don't know what on earth to do really.  As Mary says, it's such a waste of time and energy having to shop around.

Does anyone else think that fuel might come down in price?  Petrol has.

The attitude of the man at British Gas was awful.  He very condescendingly told me to get a pen and paper and he would "talk me through it".  He then became very technical.  How on earth would today's poorly educated youngsters, or indeed the elderly and infirm understand it.  He was doing the calculations on-screen of course - but so was I on my on-screen calculator, otherwise I wouldn't have kept up.    I did understand, much to his obvious surprise,  but he was bluddy patronising.  When he finished I said that I would now shop around and see if I could find a cheaper option at which he said "Well that's your prerogative.  Would you like me to tell you the price of other units from other suppliers?"  I replied that I was perfectly capable of finding that out for myself thank you, rang off politely and logged on to Uswitch.com.  All the same, how would the average OAP, or educationally-challenged person cope with someone like that?

Thank goodness I bought us both lots of thermals to go to Lapland.  They'll come in very useful from now on!  The teenager will have to make his own arrangements. 

I think my capped prices from British Gas included a guarantee that if prices went down, they would honour that. I can't see that mentioned in their latest deal.

I get my electricity from ScottishPower for some reason - it used to be called something else. They have offered to cap prices at a charge of £1 a month! I must phone them sometime and see if they have any sort of guarantee about lower prices.

I'm sort of half-listening to the broadcast of the concert Simon Rattle did with the RLPO, and wondering how anyone could think, as at least three critics did, that the Brett Dean piece was like Britten. No resemblance that I can hear except for the habit of repeating words, which was shared by Tippett and Purcell.

I do know that, BBM , but some won't.

And Tchaikovski, Saint-Saens, Lully, Corelli, Barber and Ethel Smyth and a host of others.  But does it matter?

I mentioned Handel because I seem to remember David Greer saying something about how Handel looked at a lot of Purcell's choruses when he was working in London, and that there is a traceable influence in the way that he writes for choruses in the oratorios. Also, since Tippett and Britten were both consciously influenced by Purcell I thought that this was an interesting link... I've just done myself out of a good Musical Connections quiz.

There's a downside to paperless billing, I've just looked at my emails and the only 2 new ones are links to my phone and electicity bills