I haven’t taken it travelling yet, but in a scientific beta test on my dining room table, it can charge two laptops, my battery bank and my watch, Kindle and phone. So it should be just the ticket for a one stop solution for the travel kit. Nicely built, not too heavy, and the metal case disperses heat quite well.

Personally, as my default mode of transport is my trusty bicycle, I welcome efforts to cut congestion in Oxford and make public transport the attractive choice: for all those people saying “soon nobody will drive into Oxford” er, yeah, that’s the point!

However.

My mood was not improved upon coming home at the end of a difficult week to find a Penalty Charge Notice:

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, 27 September was the last day of the old Congestion Charge, and on that day, I still had 22 of my 25 Oxfordshire resident’s permits left:

… and yet the system didn’t apply them, and I got a penalty. And lest you think I must have made a mistake somewhere, Reddit is awash with people in the same boat.

I’m still a supporter of fewer cars in Oxford but the Council really needs to sack someone for this. Or at least proactively find and cancel all such PCNs without making everyone appeal them individually.

You might be surprised to see a geek like me caring about the fate of TalkTalk - aren’t I more of an Andrews and Arnold sort of bloke?

Well, up to a point. I’m sure A&A themselves would be the first to admit that the existence of TalkTalk as a meaningful alternative at the wholesale level allowed them to provide a better range of services and negotiate better pricing from BT Wholesale.

As for me, as domestic broadband became more reliable and A&A’s legendary customer service slid back towards bang average, I gave up paying the premium and went for cheep and cheerful, which for most of the past few years has been a white-labelled TalkTalk service, until I was sold off to Utility Warehouse.

Heck, when I was 17, I even had a job offer to do a year in industry with one of TT’s predecessor companies. I didn’t take it up in the end but somewhere in a parallel universe, I could be working for them today.

Virgin Media’s anger is understandable, but one suspects that at this stage of the game, there really was no other way to avoid the customers losing service - not really acceptable when everything from granny’s panic button to schools and hospitals might be among those affected.

If you consume domestic internet in the UK, take a moment to pour one out tonight and give thanks for the fact that the competition TT provided over the years likely means you have a better internet link than BT would have got round to building you without competition.

Let’s hope the politicians and the CMA come up with something to ensure meaningful competition rides again in this market, and let’s also hope that private equity can keep its tentacles off in the meantime.

Not enough sockets.

OK, so maybe not everyone travels with two laptops, a battery bank, a modern smartphone, a smart watch, a kindle and a set of wireless headphones.

Even so, the fact that recently refurbished hotel rooms in 2026 lack sockets, especially sockets with USB ports, is pisspoor. If Premier Inn can get this right, so can everyone else.

I’ve ordered an Anker charging station with 200W to split across its four USB-C and two USB-A ports - let’s hope it is the answer; I will report back.

Meanwhile, the cockpit of a French rental car has better charging options than many a hotel room these days.

So it’s rather sad that for the best part of four years now, arriving in Oxford by train has felt like arriving in the middle of a building site run by contractors who don’t give a crap about appearances.

It was all supposed to finally be over in August, then some genius spotted that a gas main had lots of cracks in it. However, this time, they really seem to mean it when they say this coming Sunday is the day it all goes back to normal (see footnote).

I’m quite tempted to get up early and film myself driving/cycling/walking under there for the first time since ‘23, but I’m concerned there will be a traffic jam of influencers wanting to do the same thing.

Now all we need is a western entrance to the station.

Footnote

Some might say it isn’t going back to normal because the “traffic filters” are in place. I might say that ours is a medieval city with medieval roads and that it’s not fair on the one in three households without access to a vehicle that the busses move slower than, er, Network Rail’s Botley Bridge Project. So bring on the reduction in traffic and pollution.

For example, imagine you couldn’t face the packed mass of humanity wedged into standard class on the inevitably-too-short CrossCountry train from Southampton to Oxford and decided to spring for a first class upgrade.

Now imagine the terminal is telling the staff that this costs about £130, also known as more than 3x the standard fare.

But to her credit, the person in question worked out that the upgrade from Bournemouth to Birmingham - same train, same route, over double the length - was only £30, so she sold me that.

Well done, and I’m glad I didn’t get separately checked by someone else who would have doubtless claimed this wasn’t valid with my original ticket.

It’s hard to imagine anything more “Devon” but as a fan of both red meat and cider it was a great day out. Being driven round town in a traction engine at 10mph watching the motorists behind us either wave cheerfully or struggle not to burst something was fun too.

As for where on the spectrum you have to be to see a classic steam engine and wonder if the number plate on it is real, well, you’d have to ask a doctor.

In September 2020, I bought a pair of Schwalbe Marathon Plus bike tyres from Halfords for £25 a pop.

Six years later, one of them has its first slow puncture.

Two more of the same should cost £32.81 each according to the inflation numbers, but we seem to be up to £35!

Even so, highly recommended. The roads in Oxford(shire) are not in good shape, and to have clocked 6,000 miles (at a conservative estimate) on the same tires and tubes is very good going.

And less than a tank of petrol to get it swapped.

As it turns out “by the summer” means 27 August, which is a bit of a pity as it means three very sunny months will be in the rear view mirror for Brits by that point.

However, if you’re willing and able to pay an electrician to do the connection (and you’ll still have to do that anyway if you want a battery with your mini solar setup) then you have been free to dip a toe in this eco-friendly water for quite some time.

So, back in June, I ordered an Ecoflow Stream Ultra and a couple of JA Solar 460W panels:

No, having them propped up occupying half of my new patio is not the long term plan, but while I work out whether to pay a roofer to put them on the garage, or to build a pergola to host them, it will do.

Ecoflow have of course been selling the same kit to the European mainland for years, so this is well tested stuff with a few minor software updates for the UK.

The panels are generating just over 4kWh daily for me, which means 88p I don’t have to pay Octopus Energy. Assuming, of course, that I can use or store that juice - which I can thanks to the 2kWh battery in the unit, and my house’s base load.

For a Sunday at home working through a few loads of washing and some stuff on the computer, this is quite the result:

And a 3/4 charged battery to see me through the evening too.

Admittedly, the total set-up so far has cost just under £1,000 which means a 4-5 year payback (and that’s before we talk about mounting those panels properly). But it’s not just about money, it’s about the planet.

If you’ve got some south facing ground (or even a wall/fence) you don’t mind the panels being mounted on permanently, you should definitely take a look at this.

I’ve reproduced the email from CAF Bank in full below, and frankly it reminds me of certain press conferences from the days of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars where the Americans would try to avoid admitting they’d accidentally shot someone on their own side.

Both the charities I sit on the board of will be planning a move to another bank within the next 12 months, and can you blame us?

It’s such a shame this comes on the heels of finally getting Open Banking, but clearly they have put their trust in entirely the wrong “global technology partner”.

Dear customer,

As you may have seen, CAF Bank’s online banking service has been unavailable for several periods over the past week. Unfortunately, the online service will continue to be unavailable until further notice. 

I am very sorry about this. I know this will cause disruption, frustration and concern so I want to explain what has happened and our work to resolve it. 

I wrote to you on Friday (24 July) regarding suspicious activity on a small number of accounts. We caught this within minutes. We have contacted customers whose accounts were affected by this attempted fraudulent activity. 

We immediately launched an investigation alongside external experts. Through that investigation, we identified a previously unknown vulnerability in how some third-party software connects to the online banking portal. The core bank is not affected, which means that money is safe and secure in accounts. However, this does mean we need to make changes to the online service. 

I want to reassure you that there is no ongoing threat to the integrity of the Bank itself and our network is not compromised. 

CAF Bank’s online service is supported by a global technology partner which has deployed specialist teams to fix this issue. Those teams are working around the clock to ensure the online service can be restored. While we are mindful of the impact this has on our customers and want to do this as soon as possible, we cannot restore access to the online service until we are assured the issue is resolved. We have been keeping our regulators informed about the issue and the work we are doing to return to a normal service.

All payments authorised online over the weekend before we took the service down are being paid this morning (27 July). 

Banking while the online service is unavailable 

We know many of you will be trying to do your payroll this week. We will still be able to help on the phone and we are adding extra teams onto our helpline to support. We do expect much higher call volumes than usual so I would ask your Account Contact or an authorised Signatory to please call only if they need to make time-sensitive payments such as payroll.  

I will get back in touch with you to let you know when online banking is available and we will update our Help Centre. We will also contact you directly if you need to take further action relating to your account.  

I hope this explains why we have made the difficult decisions we have. I want to say how sorry I am again and to thank you for your patience while we safely restore the online service.  

If you have any questions or concerns, please ask your Account Contact or an authorised Signatory to get in touch with our customer service team.

Thank you for banking with us.

Alison Taylor
CEO, CAF Bank and CAF Financial Solutions Limited