GCHQ have some pretty cool jobs in this field and they have a Maths and Cryptography Internship if she wants to explore this a bit more

San Fran has seen a dramatic downturn in the last few years. My daughter has been travelling around the states for a few months and she reckoned San Fran was the sketchiest place she visited. A real shame as it was amazing when I went 20 years ago.

the dynamic pricing thing is not on. I don’t mind paying for tickets but driving prices up after queuing for ages is a crap approach

does anyone know anyone who actually got tickets and paid standard price? I don’t.

Does anyone honestly believe this reunion is about anything other than the money?

so what if it is? Most of us work to earn money. It’s normal.

We were early in queue, waited, selected tickets, waited, got to payment screen and it had changed tickets to super expensive ones. Tried to change them then got bumped to back of queue. Not impressed

I went back a to do a Graduate Apprenticeship about three years ago, it was a day release thing through my work. A few weeks after starting, the uni discovered my HND (in an unrelated subject) from 23 years ago was not properly validated and was, in fact, only a HNC. The silly thing was that I didn’t need any qualification to join the course. SQA were not able to help, neither could the college I did the HND at.  Despite this qualification not being needed for the course, the uni accused me of being a fraud, chucked me off the course and blacklisted me from applying to them ever again!

So I went to uni as a mature student and came out of it with a lower qualification than I had when I started.

This approach has worked for me throughout my entire education and working life

^ why, why would anyone shoot an osprey? Fisher folk worried it’s eating the fish?

I was chatting to a local Ghillie a few years ago and he was blaming Osprey for poor salmon numbers on the Tweed.

I wonder though if it is more of a shooting mindset, just blast anything out of the sky more from habit than anything else.

Custodians of the countryside at it again.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czxlpwwx0deo

“BUT WE SAVE THE COUNTRYSIDE!”

I can’t wait until the field sports industry is history.

I am not a Dr but my wife is a GP so I showed her your post. She said it is a very unusual thing and one not easily explained given the time that has lapsed since getting cold. Her advice is A&E as, whilst it is extremely unlikely, what you describe could be symptomatic of spinal or neurological problem. Apparently it’s the bilateral aspect that is unusual. She stressed that it’s not a panic situation, but defiantly worth getting it checked to dismiss anything more serious.

I working corporate stuff all day in Kelso. If you are visiting Melrose is a good spot. x2 sprints through the town and a big screen to watch the race the rest of the time.

I’ve been on Keto since May, although been a bit more relaxed during holidays over the past 4 weeks or so. Pretty good from a weight loss point of view, I lost 12 kg quite easily. Its just about routine and, once you are in that routine, its easy enough. I get though a fair bit of cheese and greek yoghurt though!

It can be testing if eating out. Lunch buffets at work meetings is also harsh. The big thing for me though is understanding where carbs are, how many there are and how low carb is generally good. So, even if I am not doing actual ketosis, I am still drastically reducing carbs. I feel much better for it.

I paid for the Keto Diet App. Good for tracking carbs, learning about the diet and getting good recipe suggestions. Its a bit like MyFitnessPal but for Keto.

I’ll not stay on Keto once I get to my weight target, but I will definitely stay on a much lower carb diet.

I’m very rarely seen outside without a hat. May to Oct = Baseball Cap. Oct to May = Wooly hat.

My favourite is a lightweight, foldable Mountain Equipment baseball cap. Brilliant for sticking in pocket when not being worn. Failing that, any sunscreen that we have around for the kids.

Scottish Government has just announced that it is ending its reduced peak time rail fare scheme

Transport Scotland said the project, which saw ticket prices subsidised by the Scottish government and standardised across the day, “did not achieve its aims” of persuading more people to swap car journeys for rail travel.

To persuade people to swap cars for trains, you need the trains to be a viable, reliable and affordable alternative. It is no good reducing fares in isolation, you need to ensure a reliable service, especially for commuters. That should be bloody obvious.

My elderly parents travelled back from Edinburgh to Kings Cross to suburbs last week. Got home 5 hours late. Combination of LNER delay and getting out of London on Underground. Loads of cancellations meaning they had to take four different underground trains. Easy for most of us, not so when you are old, have poor balance and need to use escalators with a heavy suitcase.

Parents are coming back up at Christmas, I’m booking them flights.

I took the kids up to Edinburgh on Sunday. Usually there would be around 36 trains a day to and from Edinburgh to Tweedbank. On Sunday they scheduled 6 trains. We drove to Edinburgh instead.

People are now actively, routinely just discarding trains as a viable option. Trains are now too complicated, too expensive and too unreliable.

That is basically the same as “do whatever you think is best ”

Proceed with extreme caution

We were driving to Aviemore from the Borders for a long weekend. The (3) kids argued and whinged so much in the car on the journey that I kept threatening to turn around and drive home. We got to about 2 miles south of Aviemore until I realised that I would have to be good to my threat, we drove home.

Achieved nothing though. We all missed out on a break, kids carried on whinging and fighting and we wasted a load of money. Not sure what the moral of the story is.

Option 2 really isn’t a faff. It takes about 2mins to take out excess cover insurance online.

We’ve booked a car through Malagacar.com next week

We’ve used them before. They obviously subscribe to the idea that hire cars should be driven like race cars. So much so that the car came with what looked like racing slicks. Totally bald tyres.

Yep, I use Insurance4CarHire for excess cover, I think I paid £30 for two weeks.  Its standard to be lumped for the excess, but you can drive happy knowing you have self insured against that, you don’t need car hire cover for that

We hired a few weeks ago, for us Alamo / Enterprise was cheapest, about £500 for Berlingo type car for two weeks. No attempt to sell any other cover. Picked up by shuttle, depot was about 400m from the terminal at Malaga, opposite the San Miguel factory. I’ll use them again.

I’ve used Gold Car before but they can have epic queues and have seen lots of bad reports.

Update: Credit where credit is due (literally) E.ON have been ace. One phone call to them, they agreed to investigate. They asked for a photo of the tag left by the engineer which I submitted, then they asked for a further photo, this time of the sticker on the meter where the engineer wrote the readings from the outgoing meter. There were illegible as totally smudged. So, without any further prompting from me, they have credited the full amount back into my account today. So quickly resolved, free gas for me for the previous 6 weeks and one happy customer.

Top work E.ON.

That’s not a patina, thats a heroin spoon.

In the interst of transparency, feel free to rate my cuttlery tray…

I’m aware it needs work, but it’s pretty decent compared to some of the atrocity on here.

I think mines a solid six out of ten.

Its complete filth. Not even close to a 6/10. So many things wrong with it but, most critically, where are your teaspoons.  You animal.

Is she ill, a psychopath, deluded or is it just a bit more simple? She is grifting. Just earning her money and falling down the same right wing pay day rabbit hole as Brand, Hopkins, Fox etc. She has to feed the paying trolls as where else is she going to earn her income?

In the Musk interview Trump was doing that weird slurpy voice thing again. It sounds a little like he has had a stroke but I think it’s actually him sucking his false teeth back in.

He hasn’t been campaigning in public at all. On Newsagents, Matlis was speculating that he might have PTSD from the shooting, or at the very best, be scared of big public rallies. I guess that’s kind of understandable.

Update:

Round 1 went okay, Straight through to E.ON on the phone without being on hold. They agreed usage was silly high, they couldn’t understand why engineer replaced gas meter and asked me me to send photos of the tag he left on the meter so they can contact him to get meter read from the old/new gas meter he removed. Importantly though, they agreed there was a problem that they need to sort out.

I’m still confused what the advantage of smart meters is

Only reason I went with smart is because I want to get an EV and need to access the cheap overnight power tariffs.

@franksinatra this is getting weird. If you now tell me that your wife, despite being a generally tidy person, leaves the inside of the car like Glastonbury-the-day-after I’ll be proper suspicious.

Not the case here, her car is quite tidy, but do we need to have a chat about recycling waste being left in utility room rather than out in the blue lidded wheelie bin outside of the utility room?

My wife is a doctor, very highly qualified, expert in her field(s) and very well respected. She is, undoubtedly, very intelligent. But, she is completely unable to understand how a thermostat works. Despite my best efforts over 20 years, she still thinks turning the thermostat up to max will heat the house / car up quicker. So, every winter, we have an unspoken battle that involves her maxing the thermostat and me opening the heating app on my phone to turn it back down to a cosy 19degrees*

*of course there is another unspoken battle about whether a living room should be at the same temperature as the face of the sun or not.

Packing for holiday. If the airline says bag limit is 23kg, she sees that as a target, not a maximum

I silently object to taking of so much stuff so I then pack as frugally as possible, I could pretty much take hand luggage only.

Wife then notices how little I am taking so starts to fill up my bag with her overflow. Every bloody time.

I always took and submitted regular readings from old meters, including on the day they were removed

Bill is for usage after installation of smart meters

I didn’t take readings on day they were installed as assumed these would all be zero as new meters

when engineer was out yesterday he replaced the new gas meter with a different one. He didn’t tell me he was doing this so I didn’t have a chance to get a reading before it was removed.

 For context, the second new gas meter that was installed yesterday is telling me I’ve used £1.30 of gas since installation, so about 30 hours ago. This seems more realistic

We have a bit of a love thing going on with Andalucía. Holidayed there on and off for 15 years it so, just back from Gaucín last week. Have spent a lot of time in Montecorto. Proper Spain.

Can’t help with this but interested in your lifestyle. Where is Andalusia do you live and what do you do? I’m nosey.

I’ve got Salomon Quest 4 GTX. They should tick your boxes and can be bought at Decathlon for a reasonable price. If you have one though, get along to your local decent outdoor shop and get proper advice.

Chapeau Paris, that was a great Olympics. Amazing venues, great competition, really good stuff.

Sold my wife’s Mercedes on Motorway last year. Really easy process, waay more money that I could get anywhere else and I saw it online a few weeks later for only £600 more than I sold it

I tried doing the same with my car a few months ago and I couldn’t even reach the reserve price. So depends on car and market conditions.

If happily use them again though  it’s a slick platform and process

ScotRail is a farce at the moment, reduced service due to industrial action. Drivers refusing overtime. If they are dependent on overtime to run a normal service, would it not be more economical to employ more staff to avoid need to pay overtime rates?

On Borders line they’ve gone from trains every 30 mins to every hour, or in some cases, every two hours. And despite them running fewer trains, they don’t seem to be able to increase the size of the trains. I’m currently sat on a two carriage train heading up to Edinburgh on the busiest day of the festival. Luckily I got on first so sat down but I think they’ll run out of standing room by the time we get past Stow.

saw the banning of Tour of the Borders by the Council

that’s simply not true. SBC never banned the event. They wanted to consult on alternative routes. They never banned the event.  for balance, the councils detailed statement is contained in this article.

https://road.cc/content/news/tour-o-borders-organiser-slams-disingenuous-council-301947

Back in the mists of time when the mtb-borders forum ran and we met for rides. We had an annual event. Last one was a timed section up corby linn, times down the quarry off 3B, complete an easy soduko at bottom, times through mullets, a memorize these numbers (I had a sharpie, so wrote them on my thigh) time penalties for mistakes. Next section was back up SUW but you had to take a painted rock from the quarry, big ones were obvious pebbles were hidden.  Last was a banzia race down corbie linn Then pub and curry. Think it was “marshalled” by 4 folk and some walkie talkies.

that was the only sporting event that I’ve ever won in my life. I’ve still got the thermal top that Walter blagged from a bike shop for first prize.  I can’t remember if it was for overall win or if I just won the climb up Corby Linn but I’m still proud!

robolaFull Member
Are you sure your 14 year old doesn’t have a CTF? A quick google suggests they stopped on 2nd Jan 2011. Or did you actually have to do something, I can’t quite remember with my kids.

Good point, I think they might have automatically set on up with an initial deposit but I have certainly not been topping it up. I’ll track it down if I can.

This is a Bovril thread. Take your Marmite/vegimite chat elsewhere please.

I see that her final route of appeal looks to be ECHR. I then thought about the Daily Mail reaction if ECHR overrule and she (brown girl with foreign name) comes back to the UK as a result of an ECHR ruling. The Daily Wail readers will absolutely explode. I would imaging a fair few of them would have an actual stroke through sheer anger. It will be brilliant.