Recently come off them after taking them for 4 months or so.
For me, huge weight gain astonishingly quickly – carb cravings, coupled with sedative effects and loss of energy. Also gave me extreme panic attacks/anxiety.
Was going through a job change at the time though, so may have been exacerbated by that, however in even quite benign situations I was shocked at my anxiety levels.

Turns out changing jobs was the answer anyway, and for the first time in years I’m happy and symptom free.

As above – standard advice is use meds to get a bit of breathing space, then find and fix the underlying issues.

don’t you need a licence for just having a tv capable of receiving normal broadcast tv?
I may be being thick, but we could also live quite happily with on demand content, but need to retain the big tv to watch it on, and hence need a licence anyway. (I think).

giving you the benefit of the doubt in respect of motives for a claim, what puzzles me is you are blaming the steps entirely.

IANAL but I should imagine any claim will be defended probably on the basis of whether there is a history of accidents occurring on those steps. With a view to shifting a degree of responsibility on the person using the steps if there isn’t, which is quite right and something you don’t seem to have considered.

The way you should think of it is have you been a victim of a previously identified hazard with a reasonably frequent history of causing accidents? The car wash above being a good example.
So if you are serious about it I would be looking to find other examples, and if you find a case where it was raised with Tesco AND they committed to repairing/improving the steps, you would likely have a case.

Personal responsibility cannot be ignored (which you seem to be doing), can you prove your partner wasn’t distracted? Using a phone for example, talking, messing about? These are the questions that will be asked.

Just because your partner had an accident on those steps, does not make them dangerous steps.

g from the rear wheel, a buyer asked me a few questions and then bought the bike at a buy it now price. The bike has been collected in person. Now I’ve had an email saying their is deep scratches etc. well yes it’s a used bike! And I stayed bike was well used.

I am extremely new to eBay and unsure what to new next, he has paid through the correct buy it now procedure, what protection do I have, or is PayPal just gonna give the buyer their money back if they open up a dispute?

You don’t really deny the scratches actually exist, so a refund is in order and accept the lesson. Don’t see how that is ebay or the buyers fault to be honest. Saying ‘well used’ isn’t enough, especially with bikes. You just have to be honest and manage expectations.
Obviously don’t refund until you have the bike back.
I sell loads, never really have any issues, key for me is communication, do it early and do it a LOT.

it’s not just the dispensing of instant justice, it’s everything and getting worse.
“Computer says no”

There was a fascinating article about all of this on radio 4 I heard a while ago, someone had written a book about it, but I sadly can’t remember the details.

Essentially decision making, judgement, reason, is increasingly handed over to technology or at best a human following a strict process (led by a machine), and as a result making society less empathetic, less….human.

off work with tinnitus?! Blimey, I’m missing a trick here.

Had mine 20ish years, from a previous life in the Army. I know it sounds daft but my advice is ‘don’t listen to it’. Works for me. If I ‘listen’ to it, it seriously upsets me, so I don’t.
It’s massively worse when I’m tired, so good sleep discipline helps.

She is an awful presenter.

Agreed, but a F1, Moto GP and Gadget Show experience makes her an almost perfect candidate as they’re all vaguely the same audiences as Top Gear. Plus she’s a she.

Suzi Perry and Jason Plato for the others, possibly, maybe, reading between the TFI lines.
There will definitely be a woman in the line-up, and Perry has the credentials.

virtually confirmed it on tfi, not really a surprise.
May work, depends who the others are.

aldi has been a revelation for us this year, we started beginning of year, going from a ‘full’ shop at sainsburys, to aldi primarily, and sainsburys for the bits we can’t get.
It’s just msotly all good, only thing we’re buying from Sainsburys now is dog food (fussy hound), and Tomato sauce!

Not mentioned here is frozen fish is excellent, salmon and tuna especially.

What was totally unexpected was I just love the no nonsense shopping experience. Saved me about 30 mins on a weekly shop, £50 a week (family of 4 incl alcohol), and we seem to get better quality goods.

presumably teh DM has paid for rights to the story, which probably had a factor.

Agree about the strange wording and apparent bias, though I suspect there’s more to it. She may well have a history of emotional/mental instability, negative media coverage whipping up the public would be extremely damaging.

“A social worker reported that Ethan was not “emotionally safe” with his mother, and Ethan had been staying with his father four nights a week since February.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-33120424

personally, see no difference between this death penalty and beheadings by isil.

At some point someone needs to have the strength to accept all killing is wrong.
Or we just go on killing each other.

Costs of locking someone up for life is entirely moot, those are the costs a decent society must carry. It is what makes us better than them.

been in this situation, the cruel thing about depression/anxiety is it robs you of the strength to get the underlying issues sorted, whether that’s dealing with HR or changing a job, it’s a spiral of misery.
I was also in a very large company, 16 years, on my third lengthy absence through stress, depression etc. In the end I quit, and although it hasn’t been easy looking back one big lesson for me was if you stay with an employer too long it warps your entire world view of work-life, you just seep into the very workings of the company and it is very very hard to jump out of that. Truth is just a change in employer can do you the world of good, for many reasons you won’t now be aware of.

Went through occ health, three times, it was useless, for me it was a box ticking exercise of more use for covering the collective arses of the company and its managers. Sad but true but you will eventually be known as a liability, suggestions of ‘not being cut out for the job’ is nonsense, nobody knows you like you do.

I spent my last absence sorting a CV, I had an interview within a week of sending it out to agents, and an offer within two, and I accepted.
Whilst the shock of change has been more of a challenge than I expected, work related stress is gone, and I realise now that it isn’t something you just have to put up with as part of the job. Work related stress is caused by the culture of a company as much as the job itself.

Tl;dr move jobs.

Good luck.

far too many conflicts of interest for anything to be done about the affordable housing ‘problem’. Shortage of houses, although true, is also a massive red herring. Annoys the shit out of me that the media repeat that message over and over and never challenge it. Why? Because probably most of them own houses.
Likewise politicians.

Ship has sailed, will take generations to turn it around.

Everything in here added, where possible.

Spotify Link

Spotify web link

What is wrong with shelf stacking? It’s that kind of employment snobbery at the low end of the jobs market which results in kids with inflated expectations on ridiculously pointless degree courses left with nothing but massive debt and wondering why nobody is falling over themselves to pay them £25k+ on day one.

The message is get out and get stuck in, doesn’t matter what it is and what it pays. Work hard have the right attitude and you will get noticed, the rewards will come, and these kinds of apprenticeships provide those opportunities.

They’re not allowed to give a bad reference.

Think that’s a bit of a myth. References can be bad, but they must be truthful.
I think general practice these days is to simply confirm facts – length of service, salary, absences. Anything else is veering into subjective territory and can leave employers open to litigation.

But, if you were disciplined as part of the established company procedures, it can be stated in a reference, as it can be backed by facts. Hence – ‘bad’ reference quite possible.

I loathe this kind of ‘news’. Grief-porn, it is not news, it is people in shock. The BBC were at that school well within 24 hours, waiting for people to arrive.

Malvern Rider has it right.

You need passion and purpose, do what you love and something you genuinely believe in, the money then becomes just an added bonus, however much it is.

We’re not given this message early in life as it typically isn’t good for business, we need rats in the race to keep the wheels of our consumerism based economy turning.

I think the point is, live for today.
Happiness isn’t something you buy.

I don’t really get the op to be honest. What were you expecting? Shifty eyes?

Reading people is your intuition neatly sorting people into preconceived compartments, it’s how the brain works with everything. ‘He looks dodgy’, or ‘he looks ok’. etc.
But it’s influenced by prejudice and all kinds of other things, and very easily fooled. See also Catholic Priests with a penchant for small boys.
You don’t ‘know’ someone by ‘reading’ them.

automatic headlights, seems to result in people driving around in fog/rain with no lights. Me included when I don’t remember. Surely a bad idea?

keyless entry that randomly doesn’t work. Automatic locking that works a little too much.

stop giving them an audience would be a start.
Remember when we wouldn’t even allow the voice of any of Sinn Féin representatives to be broadcast? How things have changed.
Fear is a useful tool that suits the current agenda.

I had very similar issues, and eventually quit the job, due almost entirely to this;

” everything HR-related on my side is now self-service & off-shored to some cheap procedural-lookup artists in Bratislava so we have no actual named point of contact. Everything on the self-service site says – “Why not talk to the EAP” who, again, are outsourced to some (actually quite helpful) people in Bangalore, but they don’t know internal procedures or policies.”

This kind of a thing is just a ‘tick in the box’ in looking after the employee, it’s cheap, ineffective, but it’s there, which is all that matters to the employer.

Two weeks away won’t remove the issues, but it allows space to get rest and get things into perspective. That’s what I found. I went back with an entirely different outlook and attitude, not that far removed from ‘not giving a fig’. For me personally that was learning to say no, and speak up when things are going awry.
I set some boundaries, which kept my head above water until a new job was found.

Stress should be taken very seriously, it’s your mind/body trying to tell you something :)
Good luck, best wishes.

agree with op, terrible film.

Also watched Fury last night, equally awful for similar reasons.

I think generally I’m more frightened of Americans/America, than Islamists.

IT PM – Been working from home for years now, but that’s about to change (new job).
I actually think it has done me some harm mentally. Lone working with massive workloads and pressure isn’t good for me personally, I prefer to get out and speak to actual real life faces.
I can visit office once a week currently, but frequently it’s prevented due to cost, similarly meeting clients.

On reflection it has had its good and bad sides, time will tell if I miss it, but very much looking forward to a change.
I would go back to it, if I worked for myself.

tab the book (you have got one right?), especially bits you don’t really want/need to commit to memory.

I did the course/exam with QA, and the instructor put up a ‘schedule’ on the whiteboard for the exam of where you need to be at what time, it proved to be invaluable as the time can be tight. So ‘know’ the exam format and time allowed, it’s so easy to get bogged down on one question.

Draw a high level diagram of the end to end lifecycle in your book somewhere (permitted), which can act as a map.

Drinking Pietro Sartori Amarone della Valpolicella (2010), listening to Pandora radio (using a US proxy), eating Sainsburys pizza.

I did several courses of the OU Psychology degree, but then they quadrupled the price virtually over night.
What I did was ok, but they have a heavy focus on social psychology I found (was a few years ago mind). But although I have an interest in the subject, for what it costs now doing it because you’re just interested makes it an extremely expensive hobby.

Courses I was on were dominated by women, the most common motivation seems to be a career in some kind of counselling. It struck me that many consider it a soft option, it is very popular, and the queues for counselling courses are long.

I still read plenty on the subject, but I prefer to keep it as close to ‘science’ as possible, not whimsical subjective theory, which the subject is prone to.

Also as has been said, it will take you closer to 6 years to complete.

hmm sure I read that provided you get it to the uk distribution centre you’re protected from any feedback/refund issues related to the onward dispatch.

I’ve used it, no complaints.

I don’t think an arbitrary figure of calories needed a day can be stated, and actually I think the stated guidelines contribute to the problem.
Calories aren’t like a budget you can spend, it’s a unit of energy, so varies by energy use and the efficiency/type of engine, time of day, temperature, mood, medications etc. SO for everyone it will be different.

One of the downsides for mfp for me was finding out I need to eat only 1700 calories a day to ‘maintain’ weight with some moderate exercise. I put this down to spending almost all day every day sat on my arse. I’d need to fundamentally change my life/get a new job to achieve the kind of weight loss I wanted to.
Subsequently I just maintain a more realistic weight for me, as long as I can still ride bikes/do judo/walk/run at a reasonable level, I am happy.

This is in essence what the problem is, it requires a paradigm shift in understanding at the individual level to properly understand what is going on, and what you need from a diet.

tried it once, came to my senses after about a month.
For me good photography is spontaneous and inspired, never forced.

I did Glossop/Cut Gate loop [/url]on my Longitude in October including Jacobs Ladder etc, after a just a few blasts round Thetford when I first got it, . Bike was superb, never once felt like I needed ‘more bike’ although some attention was needed on Jacobs regards tyre pressures.
The brakes were probably the only niggle, they did lack power at times, and obviously needed adjusting part way round given the new cables had probably stretched an inch!
I was bivvying, so had gear loaded, mostly on the bars.

Over all though it just felt like I could ride over anything, and mostly I did :)

Peak by Mort-England[/url], on Flickr

fear of upsetting mental images surely pales into complete insignificance when compared to what those people are going through, that’s generally the conclusion I come to, and I listen. For all stories like these I feel it’s the absolute minimum I can do is to hear the story, to ‘turn off’ is a bit churlish to put it mildly, and I couldn’t allow myself to do that.
I wish I had half the courage of Dr Nott though, incredible human being.

It really isn’t, it’s a waffling whataboutry piece by a bloke who can probably afford to miss a posh lunch or two. Others, (because of the behaviour of who he works for) aren’t so lucky

Agreed, thought it was whiny drivel, he’s trying very hard, too hard, but great writing it isn’t.

only been pulled over a few times in my life, but every time it’s been this kind of thing, usually late at night, Each case had almost identical features foremost of which is a rude surly police officer blatantly lying.
I guess being human they just get tired/fed up/bored, and given the line of work I should imagine general respect for random strangers evaporates to almost nothing.

Nothing came of any of my cases, I just shrugged and got on with my life and try to stay out of their way.

Yes I’ve had negative feedback removed for almost exactly the same reason. Sold high value item, got extremely suspicious about the buyer for a variety of reasons, decided not to sell and cancelled the transaction.
Got negative feedback, but it was removed eventually after I reported the buyer, buyer was also banned, which kind of confirmed my suspicions.

Biggest giveaway was a very short buying history all of items cost a few pence, a well known way of building a legitimate looking feedback score. I also google street viewed the address, which turned out to be a virtually derelict property.

Because the vapour coming out of them looks more like somthing from a bong/crack pipe, therefore they do their best to look cool and edgy.

A bit like the not quite cool kids at school drinking cans of bass shandy and eating those wierd cigaret sweets.

It’s because they have a small button that you need to press, and that they’re considerably heavier than a normal cigarette.
But don’t let that stop you hating :-)

Some families have a limited budget and the savings on Xmas items make a big difference.

Xmas isn’t like a bill you have to pay. However depressingly that is the way things are now. The spirit of gifting in the truest sense has been lost, it’s about the accumulation of material wealth rather than human kindness.

Have this card I made, it’s all I can afford, I expect nothing in return other than your understanding and continued friendship, which is a greater gift than overpriced tat you cannot afford. :-)

*wonders off to find more overpriced tat for xmas*

was busy being outraged by it all, then the airfix email arrived in my inbox. Seconds later, I have my first ever Black Friday souvenir;

http://www.airfix.com/shop/black-friday-sale/apollo-saturn-v-1-144.html

£27 off, that’s my xmas sorted.