One 7-year-old daughter – but I’m not sure what I know now that I didn’t know before, apart from complete love for a small person who depends on me. That’s both wonderful and scary at times, but most of the time it’s just normal.

No regrets at all.

I’m a Libertarian Socialist, apparently.

Applied for a part-time job at Maplin when I was a student, didn’t get it because I hadn’t memorised resistor colour codes, then got outside to find someone had nicked my lovely Stumpjumper.

Cryptonomicon was meh.

Burn the heretic.

Yeah, that’s it – it’s a theoretical essay hiding in a novel. Some of it is very clever – the launch system for example. But it’s not fun the way his other books (with the possible exception of Anathem) are.

Am I the only person who really didn’t like Seveneves? Love the rest of Stephenson’s work (and if you’re into historical stuff his Baroque Cycle is brilliant) but Seveneves reads like he thought of the concept and clever spaceships first and then tried to fit a plot around them. It seemed contrived and very predictable.

Is it in the axle itself, or where it fits to the trailer? There shouldn’t be any play in the hub bearings, but it’s normal to have a bit of play where the QR axle slides into the frame tube.

So if we have no private schools state system will be under additional pressure, a significant amount

Only 4% of kids in Scotland go to private school, so even if every one closed down it wouldn’t make a massive difference overall.

School fess not spent will be recycled into orher assets most likely BTl property (gifted to the kids) thus increasing house prices

Every single person who has some spare money puts it into BTL property? No-one buys holidays, cars, violin lessons etc?

Property prices in catchment area will go up sharply as some if those saved school fees will be used to ensure kids are in beat””st state school.

That happens a bit with desirable state schools like Hyndland in Glasgow, but it’s more that they get lots of placing requests, not so much that people move there (though people do because it’s a desirable area anyway).

Private school teachers and staff will have to find new jobs and/or claim benefits

Or they can go work in the state schools which will need 4% more teachers to cope when all the private schools close down.

You’ve got a huge amount of whataboutery going on there ;-)

The Scottish private school sector is indeed pretty weird in comparison to England and Wales. Geography plays a big part I guess. If you live in most of Scotland and don’t want to use a boarding school there is no option but to send your kids to the local state school because that is the only school in the area and the population density is such that it can’t support a private day school option.

But most Scots live in the central belt with quite high population density, and that wouldn’t explain the difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

I think it’s just Edinburgh being Edinburgh ;-)

The interesting thing to watch is whether as a result their middle class voters start to look elsewhere.

Most middle class voters don’t send their kids to private school. Only about 4% of Scottish kids go to private school, though oddly in Edinburgh it’s about 25%.

Hasn’t it pretty much always been the case that once you correct for selective nature of private schools that the state system offers a better education that private?

Yup. Many years ago, when I was going to secondary school, my parents looked at a private school in Glasgow. It was a dump – the library was tiny and badly equipped, the sports facilities were not great, but they emphasised the ‘quality’ of people who went there and the connections they had to get kids good careers or into Oxbridge.

I’m very glad I went to the good local secondary instead.

Do you also have an issue with Universities?

University education is free in Scotland, so everyone benefits – unlike with private schools.

It’s a great move – the whining from certain commentators about poor hardworking upper-middle-class families who now won’t be able to afford both a private school and a pony have been hilarious.

Next target: all the tax reliefs for hunting estates.

But email’s basically an electronic letter – you don’t get letters saying “Thanks for your letter, we’ll reply soon.”

If it was a personal email answering a couple of things but leaving a full reply until later, that’d be different. But an automated email response is basically just an acknowledgment of receipt.

Edit: :D

Then have a standard reply ready then.
I use something like “hi, thanks for your enquiry, I’m on a location shoot today but will respond in full later.” Or something similar

Don’t people find those more annoying than not? I do – I think “Oh look, I’ve got a really quick reply.”

I hope im missing that this is a joke….

I kept misreading it as ‘codpiece’.

My problem isn’t answering quick queries, it’s the long complex emails with numbered lists that need half an hour and quite a bit of research to answer that can’t be answered in a spare minute during the day.

It’s not just tradesmen – getting bits machined, I’ve just given a £2000 order to the one company who responded promptly with a quote, I got tired of chasing another company for over a month.

The forks are long, but the lower pivot is where it is on a conventional frame, so no more leverage.

Pedersens are great – very comfy and dignified.

Yes, you won’t get an account unless you’re a shop. Maybe have a word with a local shop and see if they want to do you a discount, maybe?

Very puzzled by people saying their company doesn’t pay VAT – are you maybe confusing it with paying VAT but then reclaiming it?

Nylon or aluminium don’t stand up long to a cutting disc – they do melt and clog a bit, but not enough.

When I was a kid, my dad did a rip-off Great Egg Race for his students – I don’t know if it was approved or not, but I’ve still got a Great Egg Raise ceremonial spatula somehwere…

Plumbers tell you that so they can later sell you a special heating wire thing to stop the drain freezing.

DT Alpine III.

I’m putting an order in with Paragon this week – happy to add order for you.

I’m happy to donate, but I don’t need another Brompton. Is there a way to do this?

It’s dead easy on the MSF website: https://secure.msf.org.uk/Donate/

Though I’d argue you can never have too many Bromptons ;-)

Thanks – the colour came out better than I though it would!

HMS Eléphant Blanc takes to the waves until it breaks down next week.

Have they checked if it works in warm water yet?

money laundering

That’s what the curtain twitchers of Bearsden used to think I was up to ;-)

Is it acually conceivable that German citizens will be force ably removed from this country?
If they resist will they be cuffed and dragged onto a plane?

Oh no, the plan is much more subtle. Make it hard or impossible for them to work, rent somewhere to live or open a bank account. Send them threatening letters telling them to get out. Get xenophobes to shout at them in the street. Tell them if they’re really good and behave themselves and give us lots of money, we might let them stay – but make sure they know they’ll never be really welcome.

Do that, and they’ll leave by themselves. It’s working perfectly.

I used one as a work machine for a long time – very, very good, it handled everything from CAD to Lightroom to web development stuff with no problems. The only reason I now use a MacBook is that my accounts package only runs on Mac.

As above, a few legacy things don’t scale to the high-res screen very well.

The current EU proposal gives more rights to EU citizens than to UK ones

The UK proposals are about stripping rights from all of us, UK and EU citizens. The EU are rightly not happy about that.

Manufactured faux outrage from the remainders as usual in presenting something that they already knew as some sort of devastating revelation

Since we’ve known for ages that the Tories are incompetent lying fools, we shouldn’t be surprised when they act like incompetent lying fools?

What about all those EU citizens in the UK? There will be a reciprocal deal – it’ll already have been agreed. It’s an easy no-brainer.

One of the three big sticking points is an easy no-brainer that’s already been agreed? Are you David Davis?

The theory of multiple intelligences has always seemed entirely trivial to me. I read quite a bit about it and it never offered any insight deeper than ‘different people are good at different stuff’.

It’s also a bit “Everyone’s a unique and special snowflake”.

I don’t think calling lots of different talents and abilities “intelligence” really helps – why not just say someone’s good with their hands or really thoughtful and caring?

Isn’t this one of those things where it’s very hard to separate out nature vs. nurture? The brain, especially the young brain, is very plastic – so parental behaviour will influence the child and affect how their brain grows.

The analogy with a computer is a really bad one – the human brain is nothing like a computer.

Hull?

There’s a couple of paired hydraulic systems, the best is the Tektro Auriga Twin, I use it a lot on recumbent trikes.

I’m still getting redirects, on both Mac and iPad.

Didn’t someone just get 5 years for having one?

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/driver-who-stun-gun-disguised-13809123

You can’t go far wrong with Sif 101.