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Which is the Most Popular Carpool Karaoke?

Automotive, Entertainment, Fun Stuff, Internet, Music, Social Networks & Online Communities

When James Corden took over the Late Late Show he was openly scared that the show would fail and he would have to return to the UK with his tail between his legs.

It seems that nothing could be further from the truth and one of the most popular segments on the show is the carpool karaoke where he takes a ride with some very famous celebrities and sings along with them to their own hits.

The videos are very popular and James Corden is also actually quite good at singing along with the passenger!

The most popular carpool karaoke videos have been shared not just millions of times but tens of millions via YouTube – so which do you think are the most popular carpool karaoke videos?

We checked out the videos and how many views each of them had and these were the ones that had been viewed the most times…

Number 1

OK at the top of the list with over 110 million views is the Adele carpool karaoke, so this one is top of the list. Obviously one reason this was very popular was that it was done at the time of her big hit ‘Hello’ that had just been released:

Number 2

Next on the carpool karaoke most popular list if the Justin Bieber carpool karaoke with over 80 million views. Everything to do with Justin Bieber is usually incredibly popular as he has a huge fan base so this is no surprise really!

Number 3

At number 3 on the most popular carpool karaoke videos is Iggy Azalea carpool karaoke with over 37 million views to date. So this is a big jump down on the top 2 videos which look like they will take a lot of catching up:

Number 4

At the number 4 spot is the Mariah Carey carpool karaoke with over 25 million views:

Number 5

At 5th place on the list is the Stevie Wonder carpool karaoke with over 22 million views. With the video starting with James Corden saying ‘are you sure you are safe to drive?’ this was always destined to be a hit and was a very funny one:

Obviously as the carpool karaoke continues on the Late Late show there is a chance for future videos to overtake this top 5.

In fact the Selena Gomez carpool karaoke has at the time of writing only been released for a day and already has 9 million views, so that could well be a future contender:

With 5 million subscribers these videos are always going to be really popular and will likely always get millions of views so it will be interesting to see which one ends up on top when they finally end.

Which one is your favorite carpool karaoke video? Is it one that is not in the top 5 list? Feel free to comment below.

How to Remove the Ikea Maximera Drawer

DIY, Home & Garden,

So I recently had an Ikea kitchen fitted as I really liked the configuration in particular of the drawers – they have a range of drawers in different sizes including some really useful 10cm deep drawers.

In fact you can choose whatever configuration of drawers that you want to fit into your units using the Metod bases and Maximera drawer carcasses.

Ikea Drawers
Ikea Drawers

In fact there are so many configurations in the Ikea kitchen that I changed my mind about what size drawers that I wanted in both of my drawer units! However, once I had installed the drawers I had trouble figuring out how to remove the maximera drawer from the rails and tried to Google to find that information but what I found fell short of helping me.

So for that reason I decided to inspect the one maximera drawer that I hadn’t put together to figure out how to get the drawer out. Doing this made me realise how to take the Maximera drawer out and I made a short video for anyone else who is trying to do this and is struggling:

In case you can’t see the video then what you need to do is find the two little clips that are quite near to the drawer front – they look like this:

Maximera Drawer
Maximera Drawer

There is one clip on either side of the maximera drawer and you need to push them both to get the drawer to release from the rails. You can then reposition the drawers where you want.

Bona Vacantia – Unclaimed Estates in England

General, Lifestyles, Money, Property, Society, ,

Bona Vacantia

Many people die intestate and leave assets that can be worth a lot of money. But if no relatives can be found then these assets can go to the Crown. A list of estates that remain unclaimed is held and is called the Bona Vacantia list.

Whenever someone dies in England, if they do not leave a will advising who they wish to leave their assets to, and if no-one comes forward to claim that inheritance within 12 years of their death, their entire estate goes to the Treasury – i.e. the UK Government gets it all.

Because the government say that they would rather have the money go to the rightful heirs than themselves, the government have set up a list which can be accessed by anyone online, which shows all of the names of the estates that they have registered where no-one can be found to claim the inheritance. That list is called the Bona Vacantia list which means ‘vacant goods’. Anyone can search through this list to see if any of their deceased relatives are on the list and liable to leave an estate that could be valuable.

Only certain people are allowed to claim against an estate and that is close relatives, further details are given below.

Who Can Claim a Bona Vacantia Estate?

Only certain relatives are able to claim against a Bona Vacantia Estate. The simple explanation is that the person must be a blood relative of the deceased and be one of the following:

  • Parent
  • Grandparents
  • Parents
  • Aunt (by blood not marriage)
  • Uncle (by blood not marriage)
  • Sister (including half-sister)
  • Brother (including half-brother)
  • Children
  • Cousins (only first cousins, i.e. the children of the deceased’s uncle or aunt)

Obviously it can get a bit more complex than this but this is the essential list of beneficiaries. If any of the beneficiaries have themselves died and left children then they will then become entitled to that share.

A diagram of the main relatives that can claim on a Bona Vacantia estate.
A diagram of the main relatives that can claim on a Bona Vacantia estate.

In order to claim an entitlement the beneficiaries must have evidence that they are who they say they are and that they are related to the deceased in the way they claim. This can be done by getting appropriate copies of birth, marriage and death certificates from the appropriate Registry Office.

Which Names Are Listed on Bona Vacantia?

You can find a full list of names of those who have died intestate (without a will) and for whom no relatives can be found, on the website in either the form of a list or by searching for a particular name or area where someone may have died. Obviously if the deceased has quite a common surname then it is going to be difficult to find relatives – for example, there are over 100 names on the list with the surname Jones so those are going to be more difficult to solve.

However, there are names on the list that are more distinctive and rare like the following:

Ignat Bladezki
James Anthony Blenkey
Frank Arthur Booton
Gertrude Maud Chitty
George William Flippance
Alan John Hankinson
Edward Lish
Edward Onions
Ellen Deborah Parker-Husband
Jean Albert Recordon
May Kathleen Sackett

These are just a small selection of names from the list, there are many more unusual and common surnames of people who were residents of England when they died. To find out the full list of names or to search through them you can check here.

The Importance of Having a Will

If you do not have a will and you die then there are strict criteria set out by law, as to who will get the value of your estate on your death. Obviously then, if those people are not the beneficiaries that you would actually want to receive all your worldly goods then you need to make sure that you have a will specifying your wishes.

A lot of people do not think about making a will until they feel like they are ‘getting old’! It is put off from year to year because we either do not want to think about it or just think it will not happen to us at any time soon.

However, it can be quite simple to make a will (as long as your affairs are not too complex). Although it is best to get a will drawn up by a solicitor, you can also get a kind of ‘readymade’ will where you just need to fill in the details. Once you have specified your wishes in this document and completed it according to the instructions, it is valid in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

With a will costing less than £20 there is really no need to put off completing one, even if this is a more simple version for the interim until you get a solicitor to draw up a more complex will. You can get legal forms to complete a will online – see the link on the left for one particular example.

Where Can you Get RAL Tester Pots?

DIY, General, Home & Garden, Shopping,

With many more items being offered in colours in the RAL colour range, it can be useful to know where to get RAL tester pots so that you can check the colour before ordering.

RAL colours come in 210 shades for the matt colours and 183 in a gloss finish. They have been around since 1927.

You can actually buy RAL spray paint colours online for around £10 plus postage and you can get some more common colours in spray paint form from Amazon (see example to the left).

For example, many doors and windows come in anthracite grey which is RAL 7016, so if you need a touch up for that you can certainly get hold of something like that on the left.

In another example, a well known kitchen company offers kitchen that can be painted in any colour in the RAL spectrum. But obviously if you want to check out the colour that you are thinking of buying, then you might want to know where you can get RAL tester pots.

One place that you can go to in the UK is to Homebase where they have a Dulux mixing desk. here they can pretty much mix to any colour that you want including colours in the RAL spectrum.

So it is worth buying a couple of tester pots for £3.29 to decide on what colour you want the whole kitchen to be painted before going ahead with a big purchase like that.

Obviously when you get paint from different sources there may be slight differences in the actual result of the colour achieved so complete matching may be tricky.

In fact if you look online at pictures of specific RAL colours (for example google RAL 1013) you will get a massive variety of shades for one actual colour which will make it difficult to decide what it actually looks like!

Why is Everyone Dying?

Arts & Humanities, Health, Lifestyles, News & Current Events, Society,

In 2016 there have been a spate of celebrity deaths that actually kicked off just after Christmas of 2015 with Lemmy of Motorhead.

Obviously the big death that shocked everyone initially was David Bowie on 4th January 2016 but then it seems like a lot of high profile people have followed over the past few months.

So why are so many people dying you may ask? Well one theory is that popular culture really started kicking off in the 1950s and 60s and that is when television became much more widespread. By the beginning of the 1960s around 3/4 of the population had a television in their homes and so you could say that celebrity became much more common and accessible at that stage.

This enabled not only TV celebrities but also musicians to gain much more notoriety and in much larger numbers.

So those people who were becoming well known in the 50s and 60s were likely to be born in the 30s and 40s, which would make a lot of them in their 70s right now.

With life expectancy for men being in the 70s it becomes logical for many of the popular figures in the 60s to now be hitting that kind of milestone.

Obviously there are other factors involved too and in particular it seems that a lot of the deaths in 2016 have been from cancer including Bowie, Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, Johan Cruyff,  Victoria Wood and Billy Paul, but cancer is a big killer. Currently 44% of the population are expected to get cancer in their lifetime (in the UK) and of those 50% will survive for 10 or more years.

So really we have to think that maybe it is not a case of lots of well known people dying in 2016, but maybe more of the case that there are more well known people around so we are likely to hear about more celebrity deaths in the coming years as the generation that became celebrities in the 60s and beyond become part of the older generation.

It does seem that 2016 has started pretty badly, but overall life expectancy is getting higher each year and women in particular can expect to live until they are around 83 years old in the UK and 81 in the US. Men are a little behind with an average life expectancy of 79 in the UK, 76 in the US.

Life expectancy is rising continually so anyone born now could have a life expectancy in their 90s and by 2050-60, anyone born around that time may be expected to live until 100!