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Had MBC on site again today. Having finished the MVHR pipe work they wanted to install the membrane and battens inside We now have 2 very angry swallows who need to find a new roost. At least they didn't get chance to build a nest

+1 to other replies. 1) You cannot reclaim VAT that you pay on labour (in error). 2) You cannot reclaim VAT on materials that anyone else has purchased. The VAT invoice must be in your name. They MUST zero rate labor to you. They must also zero rate the materials because in the case of multiple supply (eg labor and materials) everything must be rated at the lowest rate. Labour is zero rated so they must zero rate the materials as well. They can reclaim the VAT they paid on materials. It might help to give them a certificate. It's all in VAT 708.. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction If you can't find the relevant sections let me know and I'll dig them out on Monday. PS: If the contractor isn't VAT registered but still puts VAT on the bill that's illegal. In such cases they can't reclaim the VAT they paid on materials which might be why they are reluctant to zero rate. Moral - Check all contractors are VAT registered.

A final update. I faffed around for hours trying to get TOR to run on the Pi Zero W, as an Onion router, to no avail. I can still use the Pi Zero W as an access point for the IP camera subnet, and it works well doing that, and doing this reduces the amount of wireless traffic on the main wireless router, which is running on a different subnet. I'll probably get around to writing up how I've used some cheap Chinese outdoor IP cameras, to connect to this subnet, and then to a Raspberry Pi 3 CCTV server, running MotioneyeOS, at some point. Suffice to say that it works well in this role, and significantly extends the outdoor WiFi range. To resolve the desire to run TOR on a router, I discovered that the OpenWrt team had ported a version that runs on a very cheap and small, mini-router, the WT3020 series. I bought a WT3020F, which has both a LAN and WAN Ethernet port, plus WiFi and a USB storage port, for less than £15 delivered, from Banggood: https://www.banggood.com/NEXX-WT3020F-300Mbps-Portable-Mini-Wireless-WIFI-NAS-Router-AP-Reapeater-Support-USB-Flash-Drive-p-1108743.html The mini-router arrived this morning (took around two weeks to get here) and I set about connecting to it (it has a firmware coded back door that you can Telnet into) and installing first OpenWrt, then installing OnionWRT. After around 10 minutes or so I had a working TOR router, that I can connect to via a separate wireless subnet, and that routes all traffic via the TOR network. It's pretty secure, but is only as private as you make it, as unless used with care your identity can still be leaked. Having said that, TOR can be pretty private if used carefully, and it's certainly a heck of a lot more secure than normal web use. The WT3020 is believed to be free from any hard-coded backdoors, and a quick look that I did with a packet sniffer (Wireshark) shows there's no obvious unusual traffic, so I think it's probably safe enough. I'm sure that if there was an issue with these then some of those that have been hacking them would have spotted it by now. I've written up some instructions as a text file (so the commands should be easy to cut and paste into a Telnet terminal), that illustrate, step by step what I did to get this working. Nothing I've done was my own work; all I've done is filter some of the out of date information on hacking these mini-routers and use some up to date links (there are a lot of dead links and out of date information around for these things, I found) . WT3020F TOR mini router.txt

I have used them, they were supplied from a place near Inverness. I don't think I had any other choice, though.

I just heard the Beeb report. The thing that struck me about it was that they mentioned that around Noon it was producing more than our 8 nuclear installations. Hopefully that should being the message home. It is much easier to get few large consumers to use power than 30 million domestic consumers. I don't have a problem with that. A quick chart I have just knocked up.