My favourite knife range:

http://www.amefa.co.uk/richardson-sheffield/luxury-ranges/midori.aspx

This is probably the best value knife I own:

http://www.hartsofstur.com/acatalog/Global-30th-Anniversary-GS-89A-13cm-Cooks-Knife-GS_89A.html#SID=2552

Makita! :-)

Why would you stay between Leeds and Bradford? Either stay in the metropolis and restaurant centre that is Leeds and head out to Otley on the road, or stay nearer Rawden/Rodley and be close to some good riding in then thar Dales.

So excited by this!

Taking the money grabbing personality aspect out of the equation and working on a few assumptions I think the sister is entitled to about half the equity.

This assumes that the £40k gift from dad was essentially £20k each. It also assumes that dad did not give any future big generous gifts to sister to set her up in second or subsequent homes.

So assuming the gift was a shared £40k and has not been repeated since then I think of it like this.

Your girlfriend has enjoyed the benefit for 10 years of having her sisters £20k lowering her mortgage payments and has had a nice place to live for this time.

In this situation I think expecting “her” £20k back is not unreasonable. But there isn’t £20k as the loss in equity should be soaked up out of the £40k that dad put in.

Legally the sister is probably entitled to half the equity, so you have to ask is this worth a big family bust up.

If it were me I would give her the £18k or so and just be happy that I had the full benefit of “borrowing” her £20k for 10 years.

At 150mph on a bike you might as well wear a mankini. Anything goes wrong and you are pate.

Never greased saddle rails despite that fact that I will add oil/grease/silicone etc to virtually everything that gives me an excuse to! If it’s the saddle rather than the post or the frame/post then playing about with the saddle tension should change the nature of the creak. It can be infuriating tracking down a mystery creak, so just eliminating one cause at a time is the way to go.

Hostas are pretty and low hassle.

curto80: possibly the most sensible post of 2018! (mind you it is only early Feb).

Personally I am a passionate remainer. Sure the EU means that we sign up to some collective rules (that set the gold standard globally) where we pay in but also have a big seat at the table setting said rules. But the two alternatives increasingly look like A: Pay 90% of the money, take 90% of the rule but have 0% in setting said rules. or B: a slightly edgy maverick state on the edge of the EU. Doing the bare mimumum to get some two way trade, but then becoming the low cost, low regulation pariah on the edge of the EU.

Oh…just had a local independent round to quote for our full house doing. Rehau is the window system he fits. For doors he has given a choice of door-stop-doors, Distinctiondoors, solidor or Rockdoor (they are in price order). Seemed a genuine bloke, two man band, local and has been fitting windows for 25 years! Will see what he quotes! Following this thread with interest especially for thoughts on Rehau or the door companies mentioned.

I have a Thule G4 (or is it G5?) rack that I could possibly sell. I also have the 4th bike convertor for it. It tilts, holds the bikes by the top tube with straps for the wheels. It’s in Leeds. Not sure of £££ was half thinking of checking Ebay for reference come the spring.

Double post

Should also add. Go Outdoors do a fantastic price beat offer. I have two pairs of walking trousers due to this and wish I knew about the offer when I bought my Meindl’s as I could have saved £20 or so.]

I did the three peak about 4 times last year (twice as continuous and then about twice as single/twin walks). Meindl are the boots that me, my wife and daughter all love. BUT they take about 100km of walking to truly break in. At first I thought the insole was too hard (killed my big toe), but like fine shoes from Northampton, after a while they feel like second skin. I bought mine from Go Outdoors and it was a toss up between Meindle and the Scarpa equivalent. Scarpa felt wider and nicer to me. In the end I went a size up in Meindle and they were really good. 200km+ of walking later and I am glad I bought and persevered with these boots. They will be doing the three peaks many times again this spring and summer!

I had this last year. Dropped my sons MS Surface onto a tiled floor while getting stuff out of a safe on holiday. M&S paid out zero fuss (less excess) and they didn’t want the surface back.

Good tools, but I think Bahco when on offer at Amazon is better. I have lots of sockets from Halfords, Bahco and Facom and Bahco is best for the money.

Links? (or is that lings?)

Thanks for the advice. Looks like a varied mix of stuff our there. I mistakenly thought that with the profusion of LEX leases in the country there would be a standard answer. The saddest bit is that my car HAS to be a Vauxhall. Really wanted a hybrid but hey ho! Fully inclusive is everything EXCEPT fuel. So tax, tyres service lease etc but not dino juice.

Oh and before anyone says, the BIK is much less than £500 plus VAT.

Makita LXT everything, fab stuff for powertools.
For hand tools Facom is my favourite for sockets and allen keys.
Bahco sockets are good too (better than the Halfords stuff I also have).
I have some Stanley professional screwdrivers that are a joy to use.

The main thing I have found over the years is that there is a right tool for every job, and the difference between having the right tool and botching with the wrong tool is profound. That’s my excuse for having more tools than many garages and I am sticking to it!

I have a few watches, including the Christopher Ward watch shown by the OP. I really like Christopher ward. The movements are in many cases the same as in the “big” brands and I have 6 of their watches! Their titanium trident is every bit as nice as a Tudor but less than 1/4 of the price in the sale. Casio Oceanus also do (did?) some great watches, but recent offerings from Casio have not appealed to me. I think what this thread shows is that we all have different taste in what makes a nice watch, some of the ones above really don’t appeal to me.

Crikey. I lived in Cork in 1994 and listened to the Cranberries lots. Oddly for the first time in years I randomly was singing one of their songs yesterday. Sad loss of talent and almost the same age as me….eek!

I am a Nikon user and have a D80, D3300 and a full frame D610. If you are actually wanting to learn about photography the extra manual controls of the D80 and the D610 are a massive advantage over the D3300. Cheaper cameras have some amazing sensors, but you often have to dive into menus to change ISO, Apperture and Exposure, which is a pain. I would look at getting something like an old D90 or other older, but higher range DSLR. The sensors have improved a lot in sensitivity in the past few years, but unless your photography is in lots of low light conditions you will still be amazed at the results of a 3-5 year old model.

I had this on my 2005 model year XC90. I also had something like “brake system service”. I was convinced it was likely due to cracked ABS ring. My local friendly Motosave in Hunslet, Leeds did a scan for me. It turned out to be the ABS controller…. eek! these are £500 and need coding to the car.
I removed the controller myself and with judicious use of dremel, a soldering iron, silicone sealant and some contact cleaner I “repaired” the module. The point being that there are a number of things on Volvos that can throw an ABS fault. ABS controllers are a common one, but so are stearing angle sensors and ABS rings! Car is now fixed and it cost me only half a day and £6 for some industrial silicone sealant.
Motosave in Leeds are brilliant. I always keep them well supplied with biscuits every time I visit as they always go above and beyond.

House full of AMD processors here! Would feel smug, but my electicity bill shows that I use AMD as they are hungry wee things!

Live wind map!

The above is a really good wind map. I looks like t’North has two pressure systems with the one over the Atlantic feeding fast air into the one in the North Sea. No wonder it feels like Leeds is about to be blown away!

On the plus side, nearly 25% of UK electricity is wind powered today:

UK Gridwatch[/url]

Probably about £300 total for something tolerable.

Something like this would be OK:

Currys laptop

SSD is a faster drive than normal hard drive and makes more difference than a slightly faster processor.
If you can spend a little more then higher screen resolutions and better battery life and more RAM (memory) become available. My laptop is an i3 processor with 4gb memory and SSD and runs really quickly (its a Microsoft Surface).

I have a Garmin 2597LMT that is spare. Full EU maps (with free lifetime updates) and realtime traffic. £50 delivered if interested.
I am only selling it as I already have the exact same unit, which I thought had been lost/stolen until I found it down the side of the PC I use to update the maps! So this unit is barely used! First refusal to OP.

Oh, it’s one of those computers you got when your parents wouldn’t spend the extra for a Commodore 64. ;-) [to be fair, I thought it was Paperboy too!].

We had a near miss this week when my sons Citizen Red Arrows watch ended up in the washing machine while we were sorting out his post Uni washing! Thankfully it was on a short delicate wool cycle!

I was going to suggest Bahco, pretty happy with mine on trees up to house height. However I can see that the stuff that is being suggested above is more pukka. So I shall shuffle off with in the manner of someone who suggested “Apollo” to a “what is the best bike brand?” Question. Good luck!

True story: I did get Dave Cameron into a media hotspot in 2011. He visited where I worked on one of those touring the regions trips. I asked him on camera about betraying a generation with the hike in student fees. The idiot wen off on some pre prepared script about the BME intake at Oxbridge (and got his facts wrong). Was on the 10 o clock news! Quite proud of that one, but I think my MD was hoping for a more neutral press story out of the visit!

Damn sussed. Post your credit card details (inc CVC) and expiry and I will credit your card with the requisite £5.
In fact as it’s Xmas. Why not £500 (plus VAT!). Don’t forget that CVC number, oh and the name on the card.
(I have a sons mammoth student debt to clear, so embezzlement is ok isn’t it?).

Probably one of the best politicians in recent times. I was VERY angry with the whole coalition over student fees and still am, but if you look at the Tories since 2015 I really wish the LibDems were back in Government moderating their more rabid policies. Danny Alexander and a few others in the 2010-2015 period were pretty good too.

Denby do some good Le Cruset copies. The Sainsburys ones are also pretty good value.

Just done two Xmas related 5 and 5s to 6s upgrades. All went very smoothly by all accounts (I did nothing!). Key thing I suggest is to update the software on the 5 before upgrading and make sure it is backed up to icloud. Then with a CLEAN 6 it will give you the option of setting up as a new phone and should pull all the stuff it needs off the cloud.
On my daughters phone 5s it did some new phone to phone set up that I have not seen before, I am not sure if iPhone 5 supports the OS with this feature.
Good luck!

I have Halfords Pro (red), Industrial (black) and cheapo (blue) chests. The Industrial are nicer with beefy ball bearing runners, but even the cheapest blue one (which I think was about £100 with a cupboard space underneath is pretty good quality for the cash. The Halfords ones are frequently on discount and I would bet will be in the January/boxing day sale so keep a look out.

Prep them (ie base off and then peal a layer or two off, no need for crosses!).
Steam for about 5 mins.
Then allow to cool.
When cool cut them in half.
I then fry some bacon (or pancetta if feeling posh) and throw the cold sprouts in once the bacon is crispy.
a few mins to warm through and get a little brown on the edges and voila… best sprouts ever and minimum fuss

Went to Aldi Wetherby at 7pm last night. Was surprised that it was much less busy than on a normal Saturday morning. We now have everything we need except a turkey, which we always buy an hour before closing on Xmas eve when they are half price…never failed yet!