All posts tagged: flat

British Gas sent me a £571 bill for a flat I’ve never owned or lived in | Consumer affairs

British Gas sent me a £571 bill for a flat I’ve never owned or lived in | Consumer affairs

Published by Sam Flores

British Gas opened an account in my name for an address that I have never occupied, and sent me a £571 bill. It declined to open a complaint because I “refused” to provide a tenancy agreement or mortgage statement which, since I’ve long since paid off my mortgage, I don’t have. It is now threatening me with a debt collection agency. IW, Northampton Your house is supplied by Octopus and you have no connection with the flat along the road that British Gas has conjured you into. British Gas’s stance was that if you can’t prove you don’t live there, then you surely do. It ignored the bank statements you sent as evidence, and it never thought to question the competence of the tracing agent it uses to locate debtors. Because your address is similar to the indebted flat, the tracing agents plumped for you when there was no response to bills sent to the supply address. British Gas only investigated when I got involved. It has now belatedly apologised and removed you from its …

‘I bought a flat in Florence’s mini-Kings Cross factory conversion — here’s what it’s like’

‘I bought a flat in Florence’s mini-Kings Cross factory conversion — here’s what it’s like’

Published by Sam Flores

Mike Stiff is an architect with a passion for industrial design. His London home in Kew is in a factory that once made Christmas decorations, the London architectural practice he co-founded, Stiff + Trevillion, occupies part of a converted wallpaper factory in W9 and around 80 per cent of his professional work has been focused on repurposing industrial and commercial buildings into homes or offices. Industrial space and how to adapt it for modern day use, is, he says, very much in his DNA. Stiff was so impressed that despite not planning to buy a property abroad, he quickly decided to make an offer and in 2024, bought a two-bedroom apartment. Savills “Manifattura Tabacchi is a proper mixed-use development, a mini Kings Cross,” he says. “Polimoda, an acclaimed fashion school, is an anchor tenant with its young international students bringing vitality, energy and life to the site and providing a real sense of campus and community in the development which really appealed to me. “As well as the homes, there are good and well used …

Christina Haack embraces her ‘flat booty’ in lycra-clad workout video

Christina Haack embraces her ‘flat booty’ in lycra-clad workout video

Published by Daniella Wilson

Christina Haack proves that size doesn’t matter. The 42-year-old HGTV star embraced her ‘flat booty’ during a workout on Monday, March 23 while wearing a sporty workout set. Christina, who is a mom-of-three, shared a video to her 1.9 million Instagram followers of her working out with her trainer, Andrew Taylor, who goes by “The Glute Master.” To the video, the interior designer wrote: “Sorry @atf_personaltraining I still love my flat booty Alo leggings.” © InstagramChristina showing off her physique Christina wore a black sports bra, matching leggings, and white sneakers to her workout, with her long blonde hair pulled back into a low ponytail. In another video, the reality TV star proved that she was still working on her fitness as she did more squats. Christina showing off her body In the past few months, Christina has really embraced her beauty. Last week, the real estate agent shared a picture online of herself lounging around in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, while staying cool with a pair of black shades and a black cap.  Christina …

Einstein showed space can curve, but data reveals a flat Universe

Einstein showed space can curve, but data reveals a flat Universe

Published by Jenni Sidey

What is the shape of the Universe? If you were born into this world anytime before the 1800s, it likely never would have occurred to you that the Universe itself was even permitted to have a shape. Like everyone else, you would have learned geometry starting from the rules of Euclid, where space can be no more complicated than a three-dimensional grid. After starting with that notion of absolute space, you would have applied Newton’s laws of physics, presuming (like everyone else) that the forces between any two objects would act along the one and only straight line connecting them. But we’ve come a long way in our understanding since then, and not only can space itself be curved by the presence of matter and energy, but we can witness and measure those effects directly. It didn’t have to be the case that the Universe, as a whole, would have a spatial curvature to it that’s indistinguishable from flat. But that does seem to be the Universe we live in, despite the fact that our …

Adam Scott, Danielle Deadwyler in Flat Thriller

Adam Scott, Danielle Deadwyler in Flat Thriller

Published by Daniella Wilson

If there is one thing Sean (Adam Scott) would like to make perfectly clear, it’s that he’s only ever had the best intentions. He’s no bigot. He doesn’t buy into far-right propaganda like his parents (Ron Perlman and Colleen Camp) do. And he’s been nothing but hospitable to his new Airbnb guests, Jahan (Nazanin Boniadi) and Amir (Theo Rossi). If it happens that he finds them suspicious, it’s certainly not because they’re Middle Eastern. It’s only because there’s just something off about them, somehow. As Sean eventually learns the hard way, though, good intentions can only ever count for so much. His movie, too, is proof of that. The premise of The Saviors, a genre-defying thriller written (with Travis Betz) and directed by Kevin Hamedani, is undeniably timely, exploring the way faulty assumptions about some unknown Other might have disastrous, even apocalyptic consequences. But an emphasis on broad ideas over nuanced detail yields a film that’s more interesting in theory than in practice. The Saviors The Bottom Line A worthwhile message, flatly conveyed. Venue: SXSW …

Absent family support, they went from children’s home to rented flat. This is how they managed

Absent family support, they went from children’s home to rented flat. This is how they managed

Published by Sam Flores

Deciding how to spend their money can feel like one of the few choices that is truly theirs after growing up with little control over their lives. “Of course, it’s not easy when we see them make bad decisions,” Soh said, adding that sometimes these lessons must be learnt “the hard way”. She stressed, however, that expecting 19- to 21-year-olds without family backing to shoulder the full expense of open market rents is “not realistic” — and that Thrive21+ is meant to give them support and space to practise independent living. When the participants’ two-year lease ended last July, there was another lesson for them. Paint was peeling in some parts of the flat, and they were required to pay for a full repaint. While some of the defects were not their fault, said Edward, he acknowledged that the contract stated that tenants were responsible for repairs. The episode highlighted how landlords and tenants may interpret certain clauses differently. “Lesson learnt,” he said. “If we were ever to rent again, … (we’ll know) what to …

On’s new LightSpray CloudMonster 3 Hyper running shoe is built by robots in 3 minutes flat

On’s new LightSpray CloudMonster 3 Hyper running shoe is built by robots in 3 minutes flat

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sign Up For Goods 🛍️ Product news, reviews, and must-have deals. Building a running shoe is, by any reasonable measure, an absurdly complicated process. A conventional pair involves somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 individual manufacturing steps — cutting fabric panels, stitching seams, gluing layers, trimming edges — typically spread across multiple factories and dozens of human hands. It’s a supply chain assembled over decades, optimized for scale rather than speed or precision. On wants to collapse all of that into about three minutes. The Swiss running brand, known for its clever, chunkyu sole geometry and a devoted following among runners, has been quietly building toward a manufacturing upheaval. The technology is called LightSpray™, and the newly announced LightSpray CloudMonster 3 Hyper is its most accessible expression yet. A Robot Arm, 1.5 Kilometers of Filament, and No Stitches Instead of cutting and stitching multiple fabric panels together to create this shoe, a robotic arm sprays a continuous polymer filament directly onto a shoe last — the foot-shaped form that gives shoes their shape. The arm …

Teenage boy dies after blaze in flat next to Old Kent Road Fire Station in London | UK News

Teenage boy dies after blaze in flat next to Old Kent Road Fire Station in London | UK News

Published by Sam Flores

A teenage boy has died in a flat fire that broke out next to Old Kent Road fire station in south London. Crews from other areas were called in as one of the engines from Old Kent Road was at another incident at the time. Four fire engines and around 25 personnel tackled the blaze on the first floor of a six-storey building in Cooper’s Road, Southwark, on Wednesday. One teenage boy made it out before firefighters arrived and was taken to hospital, while another died at the scene, London Fire Brigade (LFB) said. The first emergency call was received shortly before 3pm. Crews from Dockhead, Dowgate, Shadwell and Whitechapel went to the scene and the blaze was under control just after 4.30pm. A 64-metre turntable ladder appliance from Old Kent Road Fire Station was on the scene within six minutes of the call, an LFB spokesperson said. The spokesperson added: “Another appliance from Old Kent Road was out at a different incident but did return to the scene of the incident later.” The cause …

New research suggests the “lying flat” lifestyle actively decreases long-term happiness

New research suggests the “lying flat” lifestyle actively decreases long-term happiness

Published by José Betancourt

A study in China found that young people who adopted the “Lying Flat” lifestyle—a passive attitude characterized by giving up efforts and goals in order to relieve competitive pressure—tend to report lower satisfaction with their lives. Interestingly, this passive attitude predicted lower life satisfaction later, but life satisfaction did not predict future adoption of this lifestyle, indicating that it is the “lying flat” attitude that leads to diminished life satisfaction. The paper was published in Behavioral Sciences. The “Lying Flat” phenomenon, known in Chinese as tang ping, is a social trend that emerged in China as a quiet form of resistance to intense work and social pressures. It refers to the decision of some young people to withdraw from competitive career striving and material ambition. Instead of pursuing promotions, property ownership, or marriage at all costs, individuals adopting this stance aim to meet only minimal living needs. It describes a personal rejection of societal pressures to overwork and over-achieve. Literally, tang ping refers to a person lying flat on their back, with the whole body …