This doesn’t adjust for weight, but check here:
https://www.blf.org.uk/support-for-you/breathing-tests/peak-flow

Burned!

I also paid for it. 2.5 months to go, I’m a bit pissed off.

Yup, diagnoses age 22 but looking back the first symptoms were over a year prior. I can easily show a change in peak flow when I exercise without an inhaler.

I just take two puffs salbutamol before exercise and all is good (I all have corticosteriods morning and night).

They might have recently changed guidance, or our practice’s new asthma nurse isn’t as good, but last time I had a check up I was getting pushed towards more aggressive medication to lower the number of times I use salbutamol. If I cycle to work twice a week and do something at the weekend, that’s 5 doses a week which is “badly managed”. Yet when I do spirometry at work (I’m subject to health surveillance because of my asthma). I’m hitting above expected values and have the lungs of someone over 10 years younger.

I also use a powerbreathe, which I find helps reduce symptoms. When I’m fit (and using the powerbreathe most days) I can manage fine without my inhaler for light to moderate exercise.

Like the 3.5 million testing kits the government bought which they now admit don’t work?

You mean the ones where the order was conditional on proof that they work, and because they didn’t work it cost us nothing?

I took this to mean don’t drive to somewhere to go mountain biking. I live just under the Pentland Hills and until they closed the car parks, they were heaving with eejits . Even now, cars are hiding/parking on some of the wee back roads near the reservoirs.

I can be in the middle of the hills 20 minutes ride from my front door. I’ve been spending more time on the road bike, but I don’t see an issue if I took my mountain bike out for an hour. Packing up the car to go somewhere for a ride, that’s wrong.

No Car, No Gnar, Not Far and don’t be a dick

Seems like a good set of rules.

Where do I mention skin colour? That you link brown people and immigration exhibits a particular kind of racism. Most migrants into Scotland are from England and Wales. Or would you prefer blood and soil Scots only?

The low net immigration figures for Scotland come from the Scottish govt. Scotland simply isn’t attracting people in spite of freedom of movement within the EU and UK. That tends not to include many countries with a majority “brown” populace, but skin colour isn’t something that particularly bothers me.

Approx 1 in 10 Scottish residents are “foreign born” compared to 1 in 6 for England (the English figures have a strong bias towards the south and midlands). That probably changes the cultural impact of migration. Scotland still seems to be more popular than Wales which is around 1 in 15.

No it isn’t, Scotland takes hardly any net immigrantion, Scotland’s population is near static.

That isn’t a reflection on attitudes to immigration, it shows that despite free movement Scotland has failed to attract the immigrants that it economically needs.

I think Scotland is more open minded towards immigration, perhaps because it is at a low level. Whether that view would persist if we had the same levels of immigration as the south east is a different question.

Immigration is clearly good economically. Managing it socially (including public perceptions) is harder.

I saw Australia mentioned above – some utterly awesome places there. Also utterly racist, More than I’ve seen anywhere else.

You really think people will do that? Its fantasy, people on £50k+ a year are not bothered about £20 a week from the Govt.They can work an extra hour and get more from their employer.

With three children, the child benefit charge is a marginal tax rate of about 25% (on top of the 43% tax & NI). So yeah, when over two thirds of your extra hour goes to the government you might not work it or you might put in all in a pension to avoid paying tax on it. High marginal tax rates change behaviour.

getting rid of the upper rate tax relief on pension contributions.

I don’t think this can be done fairly. If you apply it only to employee contributions, salary sacrifice and other non-contributory schemes escape scot free. If you apply it to employer contributions too, you have to PROPERLY value defined benefit schemes which is hard and won’t go down well in the public sector. A lot of basic rate taxpayers would suddenly find that they are actually higher rate based on total employer contributions.

Get rid of lethal “smart motorways” or at the very least require automatic detection of stopped vehicles. It takes something like an average of 17 minutes for an operator to spot a stopped vehicle and update the gantries, because we are too stingy to pay for the computers to do it.

Also, make the car test like all the other tests. My BE test was a much better evaluation of my driving than the car one (same test for most “vocational” categories, just different vehicles).

And then you could remove the grandfather rights for those who are roughly 40+ to tow caravans and drive LGVs based on a quick spin in a car over 20 years ago.

No.

High currents mean magnetic fields and pacemakers don’t like those. A very quick (i.e. don’t rely on it) google suggests safe distances of several feet. The machine seems to be worse than the tool.

Shielding against magnetic fields is pretty awkward, it’s not like xrays where you can wear a lead apron.

I hadn’t heard of this (books or show) until I saw the ad for season 4. Watched all four seasons over the christmas period – it’s awesome.

Dammit. I infused water with currants instead of volts and made a fruity mess.

I think this ones even worse. I remeber watching it on 4 and feeling sick when he takes one hand off

Oh jeez. I’m going to have nightmares now.

3rd party insurance cannot be invalidated by the actions or inactions of the policy holder.

The insurer has to reimburse the 3rd party if liable under the Road Traffic Act, but if the terms of the policy are materially breached then as a contractual matter they can reclaim their losses from the policy holder.

where you stationary at the time?

With no witnesses, the question that matters is “can you prove you were stationary at the time?”

Might sound cold, but when you hear ‘Janice in accounts has had her account hacked, again’ you start hiting your head against the wall

The problem is Janice in accounts has to open 100 invoices a day and they all look different. She has no idea who the companies are, she opens them looks at the PO number and then loads them onto the system for payment. Brain is only required if there’s an issue tying in the PO.

Is she really going to be able to spot the once every so often that a scam comes through? Probably more effective to isolate her somewhat.

If I receive an invoice, that’s unusual and I immediately think phishing unless I’m expecting it. But I’m not the juicy target, Janice in accounts is.

Not as risky as a Louise?

When I first saw this I thought it was interesting but ultimately not too useful and, to be honest, I still think that but the emergency services using it does bump it up a bit.

OS Locate does exactly the same thing and is more open. I guess maybe three words is more accessible than a grid reference but if one works then so should the other.

I keep both apps on my phone and have done for a while.

SARLoc is quite clearly the best when the situation suits it.

I remember when I first noticed Tom Watson early in the Corbyn days, he did some stuff that I can’t remember but gave me a fairly quick dislike of the man.

More recently, I find him to be the voice of sense, unity and moderation within the Labour party. It seems to me that he might actually be capable of bringing the party together and putting the boot into the current govt.

So I’m stuck between him having a bad history but looking like a good politician right now.

Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham, David Milliband, probably even Keir Starmer would all be eminently electable types in my view and might enourage me to vote labour.

Cover your hands and speckle your face with fake blood then go round to the house and say “happy now”

Don’t forget to give them a nice homemade curry at the same time, to smooth things over.

If something is prohibited because of health and safety, it probably isn’t health and safety.

If it is beacuse of health and safety, ladders would be banned because the ground isn’t safe to stand a ladder on or the wall can’t take it or there are steam pipes in the way, etc. Not “because of health and safety”.

Hearing “because of health and safety” is a highly reliable indicator of ignorant BS.

So it was properly into summer when we did it, but my pregnant wife and I took the train up once and near the top were admiring a family with shorts and flips flops carrying small evian bottles who were walking up the trail.

The government is having difficulties finding someone in office who can count above 10 without moving their lips.

I hear Dianne Abbot is free. She’s already counted 150 million votes in her region.

If they’ve been there years, is there work needs doing before getting new tenants in? Let them leave and then get on with it.

Strictly, it is one rental month’s notice. Contract hasn’t lapsed, it just became statutory periodic at the end of the fixed term (probably).

If the deposit isn’t protected, they get the whole lot back no questions.

I think Bran does have an interesting story that wasn’t told. His character clearly was built for something and when it wasn’t a Night King storyline it had to be the Iron Throne.

I’m the three eyed raven goes to being bait for the Night King goes to Bran the broken wasn’t very well explained. But then in the books he has only just met the three eyed crow.

Also, Bran can’t change the past he can only observe it. I’m not sure how the Hodor thing will play out in the books, maybe a special case.

So if you’re a 21 year old female working next to a 40 year old male doing the same job, you should be paid the same.

Which has very little to do with socialism. Collectivism, protectionism yes but policies on discrimination (or lack thereof) doesn’t link into most political schools of thought.

Favourite meme so far is on Robyn Arryn. Getting on quite well, since his anti-vax mom got thrown through the moon door.

I actually quite liked the plot of the ending, but it was so rushed. Last episode was back up as good as the earlier episodes this season, episodes 4&5 let it down most IMO.

Ending was rather LOTR like – down at the dock, meeting the ships.

There is a story arc for Bran, covering the “it’s why I’ve come so far” that got missed. There’s Dany’s descent into madness, the whole everyone going to Kings Landing with armies and stuff. Jon killed Dany, oh look a big gathering was a bit of a jump.

If they had taken episodes 4-6 and made twice as many to keep the epicness from earlier seasons, it would have been much much better.

Now we just need GRRM to finish the two books so we can see all the backstory that is missing. I won’t hold my breath…

On a side note I will be allowed a “decompression beer or two” over the weekend won’t I?

Green card applies:
https://members.scouts.org.uk/supportresources/1862/alcohol-and-scouting?cat=419,299,303

TLDR: Probably not.

I wish I could help him/them more, but I only tow trailers, fix camping kit, lend outdoor stuff and try to be generally supportive even though mini-me left a few years ago.

Which all needs doing and is just another way of contributing. It’s hard to camp without working equipment…

Uniformed leaders are what everyone sees and we do put in a lot of effort for meetings and camps, but there are plenty of adults involved that most people don’t see and that we couldn’t run without.

Scouts only works because someone does what you do. Same as for any volunteer.

If you take 25% tax free, then the remaining 75% is taxed on withdrawal including growth. It also counts to the lifetime allowance if that may be an issue (which is one way to manage the allownace). Effectively, you ringfence that pot.

Provided you only take the 25% PCLS and don’t touch the rest, your annual allowance doesn’t change so you can continue to make normal contributions.

If you don’t know what you are doing, talk to an expert.

I could cycle along a tow path for a good chunk of my commute and it is a very pleasant pootle. But it is slow, so I ride on the road instead.

Well that was a bit pants. Hope they pull it back for the final episode.

I came from the books, thought the early seasons did a pretty good job. This season was OK up to the Battle of Winterfell which was OK with a few good bits but the last two episodes have just been a bit meh.

If you work in a clinical area then the first priority is and must be safe staffing levels to ensure the safety of the patients.

No, the first priority is legal compliance by the employer (whoever they are) in terms of employment rights, health and safety etc. Once those are protected, contractual rights can be weighed against patient safety.

Yeah, I’m forever knocking cars over when I get to lights.

My favourite argument against cycling was “do you realise how much those bikes cost?”

When our work was setting up the cycle to work scheme, someone in senior HR suggested that nobody needs a £500 bike to commute on. The riposte was that she doesn’t need a Q7…

Popping into neutral causes more wear, as above. My (torque converter) auto specifically covered this in the manual. My wife’s car has DSG which effectively goes into neutral by itself.

Just don’t be the prat who goes into park, giving everyone behind a flash of reversing light as you stop and then again as you move off…

This is one of the unusual cases where GDPR requires to an opt-out of marketing rather than the usual consent to opt-in.

Unless you have told them that you do not consent, they haven’t done any thing wrong.

We had a cub leader help us this weekend and he couldn’t believe how easy it was to get our kids to do stuff like putting up tents, making fires etc without (too much) supervison

But that starts in beavers! Scouts don’t just magically know this stuff, the self-sufficiency is the end of a long road.

That’s why I like beavers. It may take ages to get teeth brushed and dressed for bed, but we are laying the foundations for the later sections. We are full of firsts which I find really rewarding.

Just spent the evening mucking around with ropes in the wood. Not a proper knot in sight – but great fun!

Lock on the gate?

I assume these are both mid terraces, with access provided for bins and so on? So they will have access through the end terrace and are perhaps just going the wrong way around.

Section Assistants get to wear the proper shirt and necker don’t they?

Optional. In our group they don’t but it is allowed.