My local shop in Bideford is apparently pretty good at all that bike fit stuff:

North Devon Bike Fitting[/url]

Lovely people and with bags of experience.

I live almost right next door to a private school. It seems that the parents feel that delivering their off spring right to the door of the school on time no matter what the risk to other road users is the only thing that matters. The driving and parking is appalling; its as if driving within a hundred metres of a school causes them to loose all common sense and courtesy.

I’ve found that since swapping from a car to a battered old white van for work the Audi and Mercedes driving elite of North Devon move out of my way far more readily.

Surely anyone who is tooled up to break in to a van and defeat a ground anchor/chain/lock is able to get through a cage or the lock on it

I’ve got a mate who is an auto locksmith. He once told me the sorry tale of somebody in the same profession who upgraded all of his key encoding and cutting equipment. This stuff all costs thousands and the nature of the job means it all has to be stored in the van. Being a locksmith this chap fitted the best locks he knew of to the van. He was understandably upset when a well informed thief targeted his van and nicked all of his gear. He did it by cutting through the side panels of the van. The locks were untouched.

Take your bikes out of the van Ton, never leave them there overnight.

Oh I dunno. If it is the Oregon one that I’ve seen, it’d be hard to miss it, it’s **** huge!

Yep, its the Oregon one and yes it is ****ing huge. The picture quality is actually very good on it though.

Not a criticism, I can’t really see that most people are so eagle eyed that they will pick out a helmet cam.

Trust me the camera really is that damn large. Short of mounting a old VHS camcorder on my cycle helmet with gaffer tape I would really struggle to make it more obvious. Even the camera mount is massive. Plus, as I found out a while ago whilst descending Holme Moss at speed in bad weather, it really catches the wind :D

Not trying to be a PITA, but how is a cam going to keep you alive if you’re hit?

A lot of motorists seem to realise that it is a helmet camera and give me a wide berth as a result (it films front and back at the same time). Plus I’m a big guy who rides assertively. If one of the buggers does drive over me I would hope that the footage would send them straight to prison. Frankly its a sad state of affairs when you think about our roads and the muppets that think they have a god given right to use them.

quite – what’s the point of the whisky?

Teetotal killjoys the lot of you :-).

I’m with those who are looking forward to driverless cars being on our roads. In fact it would be great if they could start with driverless vans, that way I could sort out my paperwork between appointments rather than at the end of the day.

I reckon every new car should be fitted with a jamming device that stops mobile phones picking up a signal which activates every time the engine starts. That would at least stop the phone obsessed drivers from doing as much damage.

Other than that the law needs to be changed so that causing death or serious injury by dangerous driving is dealt with by stronger sentences. I’ve long felt that if you don’t like somebody in this country and want to get away with murder just down half a bottle of whisky and run then over. You’d loose your licence and maybe at worst spend a couple of years in prison. The current legal system doesn’t place enough value on human lives; that’s what has to change to make a real difference.

Personally I don’t go out on my bike without a helmet camera these days. I’m sure I look a right pillock as it is quite bulky but better to be an alive pillock than a dead one.

It’s human nature to have two sleeps. Folk used to get up, have a meal, read a book, have sex etc (not necessarily all on the same night) and go back to sleep.

I did look into that a little while ago and it does make sense. I sometimes read for a bit and then get back off to bed. It never seems to affect me the following day. I think I’m more of a night person as early mornings are just painful and I could quite happily stay up all night even after a long day at work.

I wake up at 2.30am every morning without fail. Have done for years. I think its linked to somebody trying to break into my house at about the same time in the morning many years ago. I’ve found the best way to deal with it is to not get stressed about being awake but to focus on the fact that I’m in a nice warm bed with hours to go until I have to be up properly. If you don’t get worked up about being awake earlier than you need to be you tend to drift off back to sleep. Lie there wondering why you’re awake and getting worked up about it and the last thing you’ll be able to do is get back to sleep.

I’ve been known to prowl around the house, make sure all is well, get back into bed and be asleep again within half an hour.

My little Fiat Qubo was my works ‘van’ for the first six months after I started working for myself. It was amazing just what I could fit in it but the fuel economy was awful. Now I’ve bought a cheap van at auction the Fiat can enjoy a quieter life as a runabout and occasional long distance bike carrier. Running two vehicles can be expensive but its nice not having to fit the weekly shopping in around buckets of rat bait and a ladder.

Don’t know what it is about Froomey that turns me off, but it does……so for that reason, I’m out!

I kinda like Froome. He isn’t one to shy away from a fight when the racing gets to the big mountain climbs. Gotta like a fighter.

Plus he makes me look graceful on a bike!

Isn’t it illegal to release them? That’s the case with squirrels

It is indeed illegal to release squirrels but not technically illegal to release trapped mice and rats. However, if the release of the rodent into a different area could be seen to be having an impact on its welfare (i.e. to an area where there is no food, a recognisably harsh environment etc) then it could be seen as inhumane.

Far better to shoot captured rats or whack ’em with something lethal (my favoured tool is a mallet). Besides, as said above, they will more than likely find their way back home if not released far enough away.

What you really need is one of these:

I’m trying to justify the cost of buying one at the moment…

Congratulations, you have a live rat!

Now what?

Whenever any of my customers proudly show me a live capture trap I always ask them the same thing. Many of them can’t come up with an answer; and no, it isn’t legal to drown them in the cage.

To the OP my advice would be to consider a mix of poison bait and maybe a couple of break back traps. If there is a decent sized hole try getting hold of some pasta based bait and placing it directly into the hole. Rats absolutely love it in my experience and you should top it up as soon as it gets eaten. When the bait stops being eaten the rats will be dead.And don’t go messing about and buying the smallest tub you can find. Get yourself to a farm suppliers and buy a decent sized tub as you most likely have a burrow near to/ under your shed and you will have many rats to kill.

Any traps you use should be placed against the regular runs along the edge of walls. You can always cover them over with piece of wood or slate to stop the dog taking an interest.

I recently purchased a van at auction. My advice would be to do a bit of research on the sort of prices the vehicles you are interested in tend to attract at auctions and to stick rigidly to your budget. Lots of auction sites will produce lists of past vehicles sold and the prices they fetched.

As said above you are buying with a greater level of risk so be prepared to be a little ruthless and discount anything that you aren’t sure about. I got to the auction early to take a good look at a number of vans I was interested in and crossed a lot of them off my list before bidding even began.

Also be prepared for the speed of some of the bidding. If there are some stock hungry traders in the bidding hall the prices will go up very quickly; something to be wary of when you make your own bids.

I’m happy with the price I paid for my van although I went with low expectations and an even lower budget!

I was called out to a job yesterday where a rat had set up home in a less than year old Mitsubishi Outlander and eaten through most of the wiring loom whilst peeing everywhere. The smell and the mess was astonishing. The damn thing had even left droppings between the headlining and the roof. Composts heaps are fairly common places for rats to make a nest at this time of year, cars thankfully less so.

I wouldn’t be using that compost for food now that you’ve been flinging poison in. Truth be told it probably wouldn’t be very good for much mixed with that stuff.

The active ingredients in rat bait are never present in a concentration of more that 0.005% in most cases and only have an active life of a few weeks inside bodily tissues and vital organs. The presence of a decomposing rat in the compost would be more of a concern.

Please don’t let the other fox anywhere near it. From what you described the dead fox may have been killed by some ****knuckle farmer using anticoagulant rat bait without the proper controls. The risk of secondary poisoning if any of the local wildlife start nibbling on it so soon after death is actually quite high.

If you are willing to make the effort I would recommend bagging it and getting it tested by the RSPCA. As a professional pest controller farmers poisoning stuff makes my pee boil.

Self employed here and as I’ve just taken two bookings from new customers this afternoon it looks like I’ll be working right up to Christmas Eve which is how I want it to be. May even work on Boxing day if I get an emergency call through as its all money in the bank.

esselgruntfuttock there are some fairly powerful deodorising products available to counter that sort of smell. If you’ve used a pest control company to do the baiting they will be able to provide them. I use them from time to time and they do work well.

‘rats chew cables in attic so owner puts poison in attic, 3 weeks later bad smell stinks house out

That has been known to happen but not as often as you would think. It is however a smell you don’t forget in a hurry. But then again so is the smell of burning house. Almost as bad is the smell of a damp house after the damn things have chewed through a water pipe; seen that a few times this year.

The key to dealing with rats is to find out where they are coming from in the first place. There will be some access hole somewhere and excluding them is always the best long term option. In the short term some form of trapping or poisoned bait will be necessary to put a stop to the rats that have decided that your attic is a nice place to go.

Traps are generally more effective for mice than they are for rats as rats are far more cautious about anything new in their environment. If its a serious problem you want to sort out quickly my advice would be to use a mixture of bait and traps, take out the trouble makers and then try to proof the area against any others gaining access. Oh yes, make sure you wear gloves when doing any work in the affected area, rats are filthy creatures.

You could always try the Sofa Project. They have a showroom near St Pauls I think. They refurb returned damaged stock so most of what the white goods they sell work OK but look a little battered.

On a similar line of enquiry has anyone had any experience of using Merthyr Motor Auctions for buying a van? I’ve decided my Fiat Qubo has reached its limits as a joint private car/ work van and I need to replace it with a van. MMA seem to have a lot of attractive vans up for auction on a regular basis. Might be one for the OP to consider if they are near enough as well.

Sounds like the pest control bloke is failing to truly identify the source of the infestation and just dealing with the problems in different properties. If there is a serious rat problem in an defined area there will be a burrow or nesting site fairly close by. As somebody who works in pest control I would recommend that your parents find a pest controller who is willing to carry out a proper survey of the whole development and try to track the activity back to the source. If he isn’t prepared to get muddy and crawl through hedges and old sewers he isn’t doing his job properly.

Does the development back onto any older properties or an industrial estate or even a patch of waste ground? Sometimes a pest controller has to venture onto other properties and ask difficult questions of other land owners in order to figure out where a problem is coming from.

Sometimes a longer term management arrangement needs to be entered into in order to reduce the incidence of rodents entering sensitive areas and buildings but the industry is slowly moving away from just constantly placing bait out in the hope of killing rodents. Perhaps your parents and their neighbours could enter into a collective arrangement to fund a comprehensive short term treatment programme to cut the rat numbers right back; if they are calling out the pest controller separately he may not be seeing the bigger picture.

You may find the local council no longer provides free or subsidised pest control services; many don’t these days. The BPCA will be able to recommend a local independent pest controller that they have audited. If they are in North or Mid Devon they can always give me a call :wink:

Happy to give advice if its needed, but not tonight, its late and I’ve got an early morning appointment in a loft trying to catch rats. Its a glamorous life…

Not even given Christmas a thought yet. Its never been my favourite time of year and since my mum died a week before the festive season a few years ago its become something to get out of the way with as little fuss as possible. My dad feels the same way and as he has started to really suffer from some of the more restricting symptoms of congestive heart failure I suspect this winter will throw up a few problems.

Probably order a few presents online come mid November but that will be the extent of any forward planning. I like keeping things simple.

I’ve got a Lumie body clock and as mentioned above the build quality is pretty poor for the money. It is made out of very flimsy plastic with horrible clicky clacky buttons. It also gains time so needs to be adjusted every month or so.

That said, it does seem to help me get up on darker mornings. I do tend to use it in conjunction with a normal alarm, albeit one with a fairly soft sounding alarm, as I’ve been known to sleep through the light getting brighter and it turns itself off after being on at full power for half an hour.

I use down tube shifters on my Cross Check and have never had a problem with them off road. I do however have a leisurely approach when taking the old girl off road. Bar end shifters are fine on flared drops. Used to run some on my Karate Monkey with a Midge bar. Be warned though, bar end shifters on flared drops does create a few width problems on narrow trails and the ability to down shift everytime you whack a branch with the bars.

You could always see if you can get some Pauls Thumbies brackets to fit your bars of choice.

Typical of the attitude that Devon County Council has towards parking enforcement. Overstay in a pay and display car park by a minute however and you’ll find your car surrounded by a crack team of parking fascists.

I always park on the double yellows outside my local bike shop when popping in for a quick purchase as the car park opposite is massively over priced and the parking wombles unbelievably don’t have the authority to fine me for doing so. And before I receive a STW flaming for parking illegally the double yellow lines are actually along the outside edge of the car park and seem to be there solely to make people park in the pay and display bays.

All my bikes currently run on 9 speed. Nowt wrong with it and whilst bits are still available I’ll keep running it. Besides, getting fitter will make me go faster, not an additional cog at the back end of my bike.

Street Spirit/ Fade Out as covered by The Darkness. Bonkers, unexpected and frankly brilliant:

Natwest gave me 2 years free banking when I signed up to them in June. That offer may still be going. They’ve been OK as a bank so far. Got the account up and running in a week from first contact and I found dealing with them very easy.

My advice to the OP is to embrace the situation as somebody above has said. I was made redundant about a year ago after 11 years in an industry where I thought I would be able to find work for a good many years. My redundancy was signposted from quite a way off which allowed me to look at the alternatives and I decided pretty early on to leave the industry I was in, retrain and go self employed.

I didn’t get anywhere near as much much money as the OP (was only in my last position for less than 7 years) but I didn’t experience any dark places. I’m not going to pretend that going self employed in a completely different line of work is easy, and the money isn’t as good, but I’m absolutely ****ing loving it.

Make as much use as the outplacement support you will be offered and start thinking about the world of opportunities that are out there now, before you are out of work. Tackle the impending redundancy with a sense of purpose and before long you’ll find yourself in a much happier place, hopefully with a bit of cash from your payout left over. You may end up in a similar job, working as a contractor or even doing something different. My advice is get stuck in and see what turns up.

Bubba Ho-Tep.

You can also get electric mouse traps which will kill more than one mouse on a single set of batteries. Not had a chance to use one yet but I believe they are quite effective. They would at least remove the risk of having to deal with a half dead mouse dragging a trap around behind it.

First thing you need to do is establish if it is just one or two mice you are dealing with or more. Check all of the cupboards. It is most likely that there are some nice gaps around the pipework where it comes into the base of the cupboards which are providing nice access points. Wire wool and/ or expanding foam can sort them out. Also check the loft, the little buggers can climb well and you never know if they have had a chance to migrate upwards. Check for chinks of daylight around the roof edge from inside the loft. Also check things like air bricks and drain covers around the outside of the property. If the airbricks have biggish holes in them use fine steel mesh to cover the front of them.

Traps can work, peanut butter is as good as any as a bait. Chocolate spread works well too. You are best to use multiple traps for mice. Little nippers work well, in fact most of the mouse ones do. If you decide to get a pest control bod in he will most likely want to use mutiple bait points. A sound approach that takes advantage of the mouses feeding patterns. Expect to pay between £80 – £100 for up to three visits. Any more than that and any fewer visits and you are getting ripped off.

You asked the question why is 60mph safer than 90mph, and i gave you a number of scenarios and your response is, yeah, but its not that likely heh? Still likely, so it has answered your question. 60mph is safer than 90mph. There is no argument about that.

When I was younger I used to drive like a total bell end. I believed that as long as the conditions were clear and I knew what I was doing then I could drive at whatever speed I felt comfortable with, even if that speed was in excess of the limit.

Over the years I’ve slowed down a lot. I find the pursuit of higher MPG more interesting than MPH and you know what? I’ve found that by travelling at the speed limit I’m less stressed, I have more time to observe what is going on around me, changing road and weather conditions are easier to compensate for and, crucially, I have more time to take avoiding action when faced with people driving like idiots. So yes, 60 is safer than 90.

Sadly some people haven’t heeded the warning of that terrible and haunting road safety video:

BBC Story

I will say it again….it’s not about you.

This is about Scotland and how it is governed. This has no bearing on or reflection on you.

Oh but it is about the rest of us. The whole of the UK will be impacted on by this vote. In fact the Pound has fallen massively this morning because of the uncertainty.

Not even people from Essex?

Oi! I was born there and it is a very pretty county once you get away from the towns where the orange people live.

So, you’ve completely missed the point of the referendum then?

No, but I am rather surprised by the level of ignorance being displayed by some of the yes campaign supporters. I have family in Scotland and my relatives who have never left Scotland and traveled around the UK are the ones who hate the English (despite not really knowing any) and will undoubtedly be voting yes. They have also, perhaps unsurprisingly, never traveled around their own beautiful country.

The referendum seems to be a vote that was demanded by the ignorant and will only benefit the ignorant. God help them all.

If Scotland votes yes in the referendum there will no doubt be a lot of economic pain in the short term for the whole of the UK which I suspect will leave the Scottish with very few friends South of the border for a very long time. It is rather depressing that so many in Scotland seem happy to treat many years of shared history and achievement with such contempt and walk away from what has been a very productive relationship without a second thought.

Long term I reckon it could be good for the UK as a whole, providing the Government is clever in how it handles things (unlikely I know); money which is now spent in Scotland could be used to make some meaningful infrastructure investments in many Northern cities and the South West where industry leaders have been asking for help for years. Scotland has sucked up a lot of time and resources in recent years so I see no reason why the remaining parts of the UK shouldn’t use the freeing up of resources and cash to bolster the industries that remain in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I suspect a break from Scotland may also be one of the first steps towards the UK leaving Europe as those political parties who lean to the right will end up with a greater majority over Labour and the Lib Dems.

I used Itseeze[/url] for my company website. The basic package was only £200 to build it and £20 odd a month hosting. There will likely be a rep local to you who can give you a quote etc. Quite happy with how my site turned out.

Poison takes bloody ages to work on mice

Not the stuff I use, a single feed is usually enough but then I’m a trade user and can get hold of the ‘good stuff’. Saying that Screwfix will sell you some mouse bait boxes loaded up with Brodifacoum which is usually strong enough to kill mice with a single feed. Place one approximately every 2 square metres.

To the OP, if the snickers based bait approach doesn’t work you could always try peanut butter or chocolate spread. Make sure you check the traps every 24 hrs for humaneness.

they dont rot – the poison dries them out

They all rot, trust me. A single dead mouse in a loft is usually enough to stink out the room below and if you don’t clean your van out regularly they soon stink that out as well :oops:

Many years ago I did a lot of volunteer work on a local nature reserve at the weekends. One Sunday morning, whilst walking alone through part of the reserve my excessive beer consumption of the night before caught up with me and I needed to take a pee. As I was surrounded by waist high sedge I took a leak and carried on walking. I was a bit surprised when a nearby bush said ‘good morning’ to me 10 seconds later. Turned out there was a very well disguised hide that I hadn’t noticed. The blokes inside thought it was hilarious. I very nearly chose that particular bush to pee up; doubt they’d have seen the funny side if I had.