Smaller venues are great and still very good value for a night out, but when is too much too much for big gigs!?

I’m old enough to be re-visiting bands I saw back in the 80s and 90s and booked Def Leppard and the Crue for Wembley in July. £125 per ticket (cheapest option – some went up to £2k), £14 per ticket “charges” and then a £3 “service fee”. Add the £100 train and £135 hotel and I’m done for this type of event!

I get the cost of putting on a tour and the venue etc but, as I found out afterwards, same bands playing Lytham festival the day after and its £70 per day ticket!

Add the cost to the shameful Ticketmaster practices of trying to flog the worst seats first (seem no longer to be able to select tickets – just randomly assigned) and I’m voting with my feet. Anyone else priced out of these ‘big’ shows?

I’m in Humira (brand) injections every two weeks – that is what allowed me to get back to relative normality. At the onset I couldn’t even shake hands with people due to the level of pain in hands. Hips were also bad. None of that now.

I’m also shrinking however!! Maybe 2cm in ten years.

Relief here, not to the level of some others on here but as high as she could get and enough to get her 6th form place! I had to collect her results and it was more nerve racking than when I got my own years ago!

Does anybody understand what the Mark Equivalent number is all about?

Ugly Kid Joe – went with a mate, all I was thinking was 90s pop rock. Actually really good and starting with Ace of Spades as Lemmy had recently fermented.

Wolfsbane – back in the day! Radio sounded like Butlins karaoke, live were something else!

Also gets me thinking about variation in effort from certain bands. Maiden at Donnington in 88 and the Queen Mary College warm up the week before were incredible. Saw them again afterwards in Oxford and they were garbage, couldn’t give a toss about being there it seemed.

Manchester turned out OK last Friday – Easyjet bag drop was 20 minutes, through Fast Track security in another 20.

I have a ticket number (from the hire company rather than a physical thing left on the car) but no indication of what the offence might have been. I drive like a pensioner in a Yaris when I’m abroad but maybe I missed a local camera or something. Or I’m being scammed as seems to be the suggestions above!

Easyjet now telling us to turn up no sooner than two hours before the flight!!

That’s to drop bags and clear security!

Makes me suspicious that they almost know that some people will not make the flights that they are booked on! Maybe they’ve modelled queueing times for a 7.45 flight and getting there 3.5 hours before, as planned, would just result in longer queues?

Anyone else having issues checking in bags at Manc? We’re headed out on a 7.45am Easyjet flight on Friday. We could still switch to carry on bags only but I was fearful that this introduces more chance of delay by then being searched at security? Reports earlier were of loads of bags being routed for manual searches.

Saalbach Feb half term with the family. Hopefully a week somewhere else with mates but doesn’t get decided until much later on. Guessing resorts will be much busier than last year!

@matt – how many soft furnishings are we talking here – I don’t want to save 300 quid on the webcam then to spend 400 on cushions! Its a very non-soft furnishings space at the moment!

Missing the location bit Molgrips

crazy – by all means ping me an email!

Add the mileage to come and collect you to the claim

Why not charge storage costs to the estate. Will focus the mind of your sister. Anything you make, split with your bro

Eldest left Manc Airport on Wednesday at what should have been a quick and easy time in the day – through security between 10am and 11am. Took them over 2.5 hours just for the security bit. Then again, Manc is a shambles at the best of times…

Thanks all, must of mis-remembered about Salford, thought there was always love for pubs that way on Manc drinking threads.

Marble Arch is a given, justifies the walk. Angel will get a visit on the way and the way back, even though it smells of death these days.

Intrigued by Atlas, has that always been a decent bar or was there a distinctly less good outlet there before Atlas? Remember going in from the photos but it was years ago and never inclined to go back!

Thanks all

Just curious why not? …Old parents who fear this type of thing, no matter what I say! I’m too far away to help

For instant ink – does the printer have to be ‘online’ all of the time? Not sure that would suit in this case

How big is this company? Above a certain power threshold then things like continuous monitoring is now required. Edge banding is unlikely to be PVC these days, unless he’s burning end of life stuff.

Even if he has the appropriate permit, he’s causing a nuisance. Might be more the environmental health people at the council rather than the EA.

I used to be involved in this stuff but its years now so no longer on top of the regs. There’s every chance what he is doing is legal but the nuisance aspect will override that.

Thanks – its for folks so first outlay is a barrier I think with laser. Get the cheaper over time thing but they can’t splash >£200 to start with.

My name is cb and I play golf!

There, admitted it. Love the game and the challenge of it, more love the walk in the countryside.

No time for check trousers or cocks, they both exist at every golf club, those things are not infectious – its a choice!

Re the LIV series, if I were one of those golfers – say Westwood at 50 years old being offered 50M just to tune up and a guarenteed 640k to play 8 events, I’d be all over it.

If anyone can point to a guilt free country I might change my opinion. UK – we haven’t been angels have we – slavery, India, took our time giving women the vote, locking non bombers up for decades, Bloody Sunday, kids still in poverty even now…

USA – just double everything above.

The Saudis need t ochange but that ain’t going to happen by boycotting them.

Bloody hell, what a bunch of cynics! Teenager automatically a thief and store ‘security’ assumed to be right 100% of the time!! There’s more DM readers here than I thought!

Why is it so hard to believe that the shop got it wrong and that the items were in the teenagers hands?! Not all teenagers steal and not all shop security staff are that good!

This may be a hang up from Virgin records in Oxford Street when I was grabbed by a thicko security staff member and dragged (even at that age I didn’t go quietly!) into the manager’s office. Had to empty pockets and bags and show receipts for stuff I’d just paid for!! Manager just told me to get out rather than apologising. Only dragging my parents back into the shop got any resolution (£25 to spend in store seemed like Christmas back in those days). Security excuse…”he was picking games (tapes back in those days) off the shelf and reading the labels” – that was his reason for grabbing me!

We’re a micro company and as such, not particularly appealing to students on placements. That said, we approached one university with whom we had an existing relationship (to the extent that we had commissioned work from their engineering department) and managed to secure a year in industry student (its optional at this university). The placement teams were on the ball and very helpful and we had around 6-7 applicants – all of whom I would have been happy to employ i.e. tailored letters and CVs and excellent qualifications.

The placement teams had a very good handle on the attitudes of individual students and knew exactly which ones to approach directly on our behalf (in addition to the generic ‘posting on notice boards’). Obvioulsy the majority of students look to obtain placements at the multi-nationals but it our intention to ensure that our student gets to experience working ‘across the business’ and not solely on engineering issues. We are paying a reasonable salary and expenses.

I’d advise your son to try and contact smaller businesses in your area as ‘we’re’ often over-looked!

Yes, the 5G mode is switched on

Thanks all

As far as the new phone goes, its an iphone 13 pro, so certainly 5G ‘capable’.

I tried Vodafone and was told no need for a new SIM, I do not have good coverage where I am at home but central London, by that I mean bang in the middle, didn’t give me 5G at all either.

So its either VF were full of it as usual and just told me the wrong thing (I will ask again) about needing the SIM – or its contract related and they’re just trying to get me to pay them more every month.

Now I know that the contract that I took out over 4 years ago will not have included 5G for obvious reasons but that implies that there is a switch somewhere at their end to facilitate 5G? I’d really prefer not to change contracts because the deal that I have is useful for the type of calls that I make i.e. 500 mins a month of international calls for a fiver.

I’ll pop into the VF shop in town and see what they say! Surprised to hear that 5G is not particularly common – I was under the impression that I was about the only one not having access to it!

I inject stuff called Humira fortnightly. It allowed me to get a ‘normal’ life back. It was expensive at the time so plenty of hoops to jump (hobble) through but got there in end. Off patent now so bio similars available.

There’s a marker that a blood test can identify that aids confidence in the diagnosis.

Sea kayaking? Anglesey perhaps but other places available should that be too far. Something I always had my eye on for a solo trip. Haven’t made it yet!!

Have you had AS ruled out? Mine started in the SI joints.

Cougar – I have the standard vodafone router (I have a better (I assume) branded model somewhere but unsure if I can just unplug the VF model and plug in the branded one?) and a set of these (that are not yet plugged in since I got the new fibre service).

TP-Link Deco P9 Whole Home Powerline Mesh Wi-Fi System, Up to 6000 Sq ft Coverage, Dual-Band AC1200+HomePlug AV1000, Gigabit Ports, Compatible with Amazon Echo/Alexa, limited walls impact, Pack of 3

I’m hoping that plugging these back in close to the ‘quiet spots’ will up the wifi speed in those areas. The guy at VF did say that once the mesh is up and running that I should press the ‘wifi’ button on top of the router to disable the VF part of the network and just use the Deco network?

Aidy – thanks, that was my thought process. I was hoping that wifi speeds would be proportional. It seems that I am losing 230mbps speed over wifi by being perhaps 4-5m away from the router and behind two walls (modern house so thin and insubstantial). A simialr distance the other way and the kicthen adds another 20-30mbps so not purely a distance thing. I’ll plug the mesh in and see what happens

Ok, 30 in my slobbing chair, 263 next to the router!!

I’ll re-install my mesh Deco things and see what happens

@ Cougar
Wireless
Wi-Fi

802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking
IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac compatible

Its a latest gen macbook pro, which is probably more than my knowledge deserves…

I’ll check the distance thing

I’ve just done another Ookla test and my upload speed is slightly higher than the download! That’s weird right?

I’m not sure what the table above tells me in terms of wifi speed versus hard wirded speed? Seems to address which frequency is likely to be better?

Quite like that Snugpak travelpak 1. Seems to tick most ofthe boxes and a built in mossie net can’t be a bad thing! Very long for her but that seems to be the compromise to make. The Rab one is a bit spendy.

Thanks – nervous about down in a rain forest! I guess some are pretty moisture resistant now? Price is a factor – doesn’t have to match the £35 Decathlon price but we can’t go into the hundreds. She’s also quite limited in stature but I guess there’s no option for shorter bags?

The point about giving and taking punches is true. He took Whyte out last night with a great uppercut. When he gave himself a great uppercut, he took it well! google Fury punches himself…

We’re all seemingly inferring that Rishi hasn’t got any ammunition to fight back with? I think those that voted this party into power won’t even remember this come election time – its all down to how much Johnson wants him gone and how badly Rishi wants Johnson’s job.

I expect Rishi has plenty of dirt on those within in his own party plotting against him – let’s hope he comes out punching – for the entertainment value if nothing else. Its not as we have any kind of international reputation for good governance to protect!!

Thanks – that confirms what I thought!

Def Leppard, time of release of Hysteria can’t remember the exact year. Southampton Mayflower. Tesla supported, not sure I have seen such an energetic support act ever since! Maybe I was swayed being a first timer to a rock gig!