The UK has, in general, been ahead of the rest of the EU in food standards. Our pig rearing standards are above other EU countries (but they are allowed to sell here); our (not mandatory) red tractor puts higher standards on poultry than the EU does; we were about the first to ban crated veal; etc. No reason to expect that to change.

I’m pretty sure that Trump and May are both keen for a US-UK trade deal. I’m also pretty sure that they have completely different ideas about what one will look like.

Was it the fault of the EU?

Sounds like a good reason to scrap the whole Trident programme. If it isn’t going to work whem we suddenly need it, why spend loads of money on it???

Which is why you carry more than one missile. It isn’t like you actually nuke London by mistake – there are safeguards in the case of missile failures.

Same is true of pretty much everything. Small arms jam or misfire so why use them? Why have a mobile when it might not work when you need it?

Anyway, Trident works everyday – it is a deterrent (and also the cost of our permanent seat at the UN Security Council). I’m all for global nuclear disarmament but our nuclear forces are at a realistic minimum level and I wouldn’t advocate reducing them further until other, more prolific nuclear powers disarm significantly. Unfortunately, Trump.

Because if the weapons aren’t 100% reliable it would be a very poor political outcome even if it is militarily acceptable.

Nothing is 100% reliable.

This is a political drama (rightly so) and not a technical one, despite all the armchair engineers coming out to play.

Missiles are an engineering nightmare because they sit dormant for years, occasionally doing some built-in-test. Then you warm one up and shoot it, expecting it to work first time. If you add in too much redundancy then you end up with something too heavy to fly.

Junkyard – lazarus
Employers can reject an application for any of the following reasons:

The employer here has already accepted changes to the work pattern. That they have a right to reject such changes doesn’t help them now. There is a right to reject flexible working, there is not a right to unilaterally reverse changes that were previously accepted.

meetings are arranged to coincide with her days off or when she is supposed to be picking the kids up from school.

You know what I do when someone arranges a meeting outside my working hours? I generally don’t go. If I think it is important and it is convenient for me, then I might jiggle things around but my starting point is usually that I’m not available.

That the current arrangements aren’t standard is neither here nor there – intruding on days off is breach of contract (by custom and practice, if not written) and possibly breach of the working time directive depending on how many rest days you are left with. If the manager is doing this simply to be difficult, the business is in trouble. If this is proper “needs of the business” stuff (i.e. not calling it that to excuse being a douche) then a grown up discussion is needed. The manager should instigate this.

Talk to HR. Then, if necessary, talk to ACAS.

The microwave kind of killed them off, more recently they have got a bit better and people have realised that microwaves aren’t good for everything. There’s also a resurgence in slow cookers and cheaper/tougher cuts of meat – the pressure cooker gives you the same lovely flavours quicker.

I have a slow cooker, its great. I don’t have a pressure cooker yet but that will probably change quite soon.

You can programme it so it knocks itself on before you get in from work, and when you get in you’ve basically got meals that taste like they’ve been in the slow cooker all day, but have actually taken an hour!

If you are leaving it all day, why not use a slow cooker? The relative time saving only matters if you are cooking while you are at home surely.

The govt should encourage more private non-urgent GPs that only do 25 hours a week (I am talking about non-urgent) and even charging at £40 an hour will give the GP £52K per year.

Almost all GPs are private, we don’t pay to see them.

Given that our population seem to struggle between deciding what needs and A&E visit and what can be dealt with by the GP, I’m not sure adding on a third tier will help.

Assuming we are in the realm of usual teenager boy/girl stuff, you probably need to accept that they will do it whether you support it or not. So you can choose whether to set ground rules and have sensible discussions or adopt a “not under my roof” approach and risk things happening without your guidance.

Teenagers are likely to have sex. Best to provide wisdom and guidance (it may involve confessing to having intercourse with their mother at least once, such news will not go down well).

Of course, my views are likely to change when my girls are teenagers. At which point I will be patrolling the house with various weapons and other instruments of castration.

ernie_lynch – Member
jambalaya – Member
Ernie, agreed the US is not the right model for the UK.

But it is an excellent example of private sector involvement in healthcare provisions

It is an excellent example of private sector exclusivity in healthcare.

There are plenty of good examples of private sector involvement. France and Germany spring to mind. As does our own general practice (by and large, there are areas with problems).

The surveyor isn’t an expert on electrics or gas.

A specialist report doesn’t exactly cost much. Odds are that for a 1990s house the wiring is perfectly fine and you just need a new board. Couple of hundred quid.

But wire fuses? WTF? 1890s maybe.

Yes they can, but you may gain permanent employment rights any way.

https://www.gov.uk/fixed-term-contracts/renewing-or-ending-a-fixedterm-contract

http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4587

There is a forced scottishness about them at times. imo.

That there is a limited number of people now coming out with Gaelic around here (to distinguish themselves as Scottish) is very forced. This was a Scots region, not Gaelic speaking…

My wife’s car (Seat people carrier) has DSG. It’s great. Usually, we stick it in drive and forget about it.

I only use the paddles when overtaking and wanting to drop a gear in preparation (not often) and also in snow when I want to force a higher gear to avoid wheel spin.

That’s pretty much it.

Read title. Put my lenses in. Then read thread. Balls.

Within the EU, the fix removes code that never got used and didn’t affect any EU regulatory figures.

The US, where the fix was required to make the cars pass the emissions tests, it’s a different story.

It annoys me that the Tesco in Aviemore sells New Zealand venison when the local hills are being ravaged by the antlered vermin! I might calm down a bit if there are sound reasons

The UK has never really taken to venison so farming is out and hunting is bad because that’s a rich people’s sport. We are a bit too American and like beef and bacon.

Never mind that some of our European neighbours do quite well by combining professional deer stalking with tourism and so get pest control and yummy meat that is almost self-financing.

You’d think with the damage that they do, somebody could shoot the buggers and put them in my freezer, but no…

Tax aircraft fuel

Problem with that is that other countries don’t. If you start doing it, all your short haul flights will arrive in the UK with half full tanks and not take any on. And aircraft routings will be adjusted to limit the amount of UK fuel used.

Changing taxes mostly changes behaviours and only sometimes raises money.

Also, drop in the ocean compared to NHS funding.

As I posted before we in the UK pay far less in terms of personal / private health cover than the rest of Europe.

Any party which stands on a platform of “you need to pay more” isn’t going to do very well.

Such is the nature of the British voter (same for most other countries).

It’s easy to say we can spend more money, finding it is a bit harder. Even here, someone said earlier you could cut MP’s expenses but I don’t think that even amounts to a drop in the ocean compared to NHS costs. The scale of most things passes by your average voter.

Afaik, the NHS is very efficient, just underfunded.

Efficiency depends very much on the chosen measure. By some measures the NHS is very efficient, by others it looks pretty poor. There are high excess (i.e. avoidable) deaths for one thing. And efficiency doesn’t equal overall capability.

There’s almost certainly a mix of inefficiency and underfunding. Pick one depending which side of the political spectrum you are on (which is why it will never get fixed, because only one ever gets looked at at a time).

Do you have a legal right to view a reference that was given?

Data Protection, innit.

References can’t be hidden from the employee.

I’ve got the Nokians, primarily because the Michelin’s aren’t available in the size I need.

Both tyres get really good test reviews and are different to all season tyres. The manufacturers call the all weather tyres instead.

Pretty happy with them, although they haven’t had a proper winter test yet and we’ll see how they feel in summer. Feel very secure when it is a bit icy and they are brill in the wet.

Nokian Weatherproof. Year round.

Lets assume that the car park is a dedicated one (or closely shared by the business) and not a public one that people just happen to use.

Health and Safety at Work Act applies:

It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety.

There is a specific duty to make the premises and means of entry/exit safe (a car park, if owned by the business) would form part of this.

It shall be the duty of each person who has, to any extent, control of premises to which this section applies or of the means of access thereto or egress therefrom or of any plant or substance in such premises to take such measures as it is reasonable for a person in his position to take to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the premises, all means of access thereto or egress therefrom available for use by persons using the premises, and any plant or substance in the premises or, as the case may be, provided for use there, is or are safe and without risks to health.

Legally, the business has a responsibility to safeguard visitors such as your OH from harm. Ice is a risk that would be forseen in a risk assessment and they are required to take reasonable steps to prevent injury.

“Reasonable” is where it all becomes a bit subjective. Signage, gritting or closing off the car park are all quite reasonable steps to take.

HSE generally takes the view that members of the public are completely idiots (because some of them are) and need additional care over, for example, an employee. It is forseeable that some utter tit will arrive with poor footwear and not paying attention. A business has a legal obligation to
safeguard that person, whereas joe public has no obligation not to be a tit.

I could quite believe that she has a winnable claim.

I also believe that (assuming this was normal ice that happens on cold days) she slipped on ice in a public place and that just sucks. If it was a pavement, you probably wouldn’t claim so why claim because you walked off the pavement into a private car park?

If they could repair the fault properly, you’d have a unit with no warranty on it.

So the replacement puts you in a better place than a repair. No brainer?

Henckels here.

Great knives, although Japanese are more in fashion than German style just now. Between the decent brands, a lot comes down to personal taste and handling.

Bluetooth is a lot better than it used to be, but it is still fairly heavily compressed and prone to interference.

Lossless is intended for when you are streaming to a DAC in your hifi and looking for CD quality (it is only lossless compared to CD, even CDs have limited dynamic range).

The 320 kbps most streaming services use has become somewhat standard because it’s a point at which most people can’t tell the difference from CD quality. I’m quite happy to believe that some people, on some equipment, can genuinely perceive a difference but mostly (as with much in the audio universe) it is primarily snobbery. A more grounded snobbery than unidirectional snake-oil cables because there is a physical difference, but still mostly snobbery.

If you want to know if you can tell the difference, you will find ABX tests you can do with a quick google. I mostly top out at 192 kbps depending on what I am listening with.

https://aftershokz.co.uk/ if you really want to listen to music and environment at the same time.

I (and many others) just wear headphones normally and we know to draw attention to ourselves (knock on the desk) or whatever if we need to talk to someone.

You could also put a rear view mirror on your monitor.

How can 40 people in the same room make so little sound?
Any conversation is whispered and perfunctory.

See that’s just weird. We have large open plan offices but we just talk normally. You probably need to get new colleagues.

Depends on the trade – you can expect someone who says “Mil” to mean millimetres. But if they write it as ‘Mil’ they might actually mean a thousandth of an inch.

This does my nut in. We work in mm and microns, but a lot of our CAD tools (an materials) are from the USA with mil (what I would call thou) as the default setting. So we say mil and that’s fine for mm but when the merkins say mil they mean thou and we all get in a tizzy.

Change of use can be very hard to get, especially for agricultural land. I think you will end up having to show that agricultural use isn’t feasible and so a change of use must be granted.

If planning was easy, the vendor would have done it.

If planning was likely, the vendor will probably want an uplift clause when they sell.

Most likely, the agent has put that little innocuous clause in to make amateurs think they are on to a bargain and get some mug to pay over the odds.

I used to use Spotify free, never really liked it. Nothing specific, I just didn’t like the interface and apps.

Currently trialling Tidal (premium, not hifi) and getting on with it pretty well. I’ll probably keep on going when the trial ends.

I agree with Northwind, if its purpose was only to fool the test then why remove it ? Something doesn’t add up.

Because in the EU it passes the test even without the defeat code running.

In the USA (where the code was required to pass their tests) they have a different problem, but a lot fewer cars. At one point they were talking about just replacing all USA diesel VWs.

In theory you should look after yourself (whether you know or not another story) and keep out of harm’s way and if everyone does the same then you have a “collective process” of doing the right thing

There was a story about that. It’s called the tragedy of the commons.

The university will have support services that can help him through this. They may be more effective than parents.

It must be hard, but rather than force him to go cold turkey can you push him to seek help?

Why didn’t the England football team visit Santa at the North Pole?

They couldn’t get past Iceland.

If you tell your insurer, your premium will be loaded (10% for 3 years isn’t unusual). That loading is part of your losses incurred in the incident and you can claim it from the third party…

If you don’t tell your insurer, you are in breach of your contract and it may come back to bite you. You don’t have to claim through them, but you do have to inform.

I’d have thought the locations of the damage should help establish who hit who and the supermarket will have CCTV.

Scotland would be in a better position if the Scottish Resistance threatened to blow some things up?

Yes, lets trivialise sectarian violence and also ignore the differences between the various freedoms that apply differently to different areas of the (current) EU.

Great advert for the SNP approach there…

Nicola says that the border between NI & Ireland can be treated the same as the border between Scotland and England. I suggest that it is rather different both in politics and in application of the acquis as they apply to the CTA both before and after Brexit.

Plenty of good houses at non stupid prices. JObs are available if in short supply.

Neither of which seem to be attracting people to Scotland. I have never seen anybody from the SNP address what they think actually needs done. It’s easy to say “we need control of X, Y and Z to fix this” but there have never been any suggestions as to policy decisions that might be made. Which makes it all an easy, but empty, argument.

I find their Brexit paper to be rather unsurprising and uninspiring (reading just the summary details), but at least they have published some discussion on the matter. The paper is rather undermined by a number of their panel criticising some of the key options. So we know all the favoured options aren’t practical, which makes it seem like a bit of a vanity exercise to ensure that the SNP can claim that Westminster is ignoring Scotland.

The whole issue around Northern Ireland (and why Scotland is in a different position) has been completely missed in trying to score points against the UK government.

I don’t see why the UK govt can’t present openly something similar. An analysis of the options facing the UK, even if their eventual decision making and strategy is kept quiet.

My fear is that, at some point, my income details will be used against my wife/me, as in “we’re not paying you this benefit any more – your husband can support you.”

They need some info from you to stop them doing exactly that. As you are married then, absent proof of separation, she wouldn’t be entitled to income-based JSA if you earn enough. Your income would bar her claim because you are married.

Our benefits system has a principle that a spouse supports you before the state does and claims made by married couples are joint. They want to make sure who you are and that you are not living with her.

Also: get a divorce.

Damp is the landlords problem.

Mould is usually caused by condensation, not damp, and that is more usually the result of tenant behaviour. Drying clothes indoors, not ventilating, etc. A side effect of energy efficiency is that modern properties don’t “breathe” and moisture is retained as well as heat.