Stability increases with noseweight, as long as you are within the limit of the towbar and hitch. The only caveat is that increasing noseweight by asymmetrically loading the trailer doesn’t work very well…

120 sounds just right – it gives you a little margin just in case the scale is out. It is illegal (C&U violation I think) to exceed the nose weight rating of either car or trailer.

To be fair, I think it’s pretty admirable that he sold all his investments, so as not to have any conflicts of interest, prior to becoming PM.

+1

Well the PFI company is now in the news saying all the right things about taking the financial hit (and possibly penalties/consequential losses too).

So we seem to be in a situation where the missing wall ties could have been left out of publicly funded schools too as the issue was with the private builder (as big_n_daft says, HM govt doesn’t employ any brickies). The PFI contract seems to be doing what it should and shifting the financial risk off the taxpayer and onto the PFI company.

The SNP now want to terminate the contract that is doing its job and put the schools in public ownership (which would have no effect on the construction issue). But who will they get to build new facilities if private companies can’t be trusted? PFI is about financing and operation, not about construction.

Having seen a few of these go up, they basically build and snag a whole school in the summer holidays so it seems entirely possible that a few corners were cut (consciously or not) in order to meet a tight deadline. That there were latent defects as a consequence isn’t really that surprising.

Costs of this should fall on the contractor – risk transfer is a key part of the PFI concept.

I am simply sceptical as to whether the council have a robust enough contract in place to make sure that happens and happens quickly.

It’s OK, the council can sort out the repairs like they already do when necessary for private properties

http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/crime/repairs-scandal-corrupt-council-staff-took-bribes-1-3770768

Bunch of f****** muppets (both council and PPP company) but you can bet that the council are as bad as any other public body and will have negotiated a truly weak contract.

Lord Clyde’s approach died in law with the GAAR.

That doesn’t sound terribly water tight (which you need to be these days). If you haven’t been through your written disciplinary process then you could be up the creek. You better have a lot of proof of all of that (not circumstantial) if you want to fire him for it.

Alternatively, with 11 months service, you would be well advised to dismiss for no reason. You are entitled to dismiss for any reason that is not automatically unfair within the first 2 years of employment and you are only required to provide a reason after 1 year employment.

Give ACAS a call. They quite possibly have two routes to get this in place:

1 – you agree
2 – they make your old role redundant

Don’t let them push you over…

From their point of view, the holidays alone could screw them if they do it right (which they will probably not do).

Especially given than one senior manager has expressed the opinion that people must attend but has himself found child care issues that mean he’ll have to dial in from home.

Holy leadership batman!

Surely now the rest of you can dial in from home too while actually doing something useful.

Might be worth getting the odd massage as well – really helps promote recovery and lets you maintain intensity without building up too much muscle fatigue.

If that’s an annuity from your pension provider then it is probably bad value. The open market option almost always gets you a better income. Right now gilt yields are really low so annuities are really tough. Fortunately, you don’t need to buy an annuity and can get your income by other means (drawdown or UFPLS).

An annuity offers you a guaranteed income even if you live to 200. That guarantee is expensive, particularly at the moment.

From their point of view, the goodwill and (potential) customer loyalty generated by the gesture is worth far more than the cost of the meal. It’s customer service done right.

Only good customers will ever see good customer service though! (see rule one)

Private delivery seems to work for other EU countries, the US isn’t the only other comparator. It can be publicly funded but privately delivered.

Don’t forget the GP who is doing your referral is a private practice (funded by the NHS but usually operating as private partnerships).

Perhaps the biggest issue is that demand for the NHS is effectively unlimited but funding is quite constrained.

the privatisation model favours decions based on competitive tendering ahead of experts/what’s best for the service users.

Successful businesses manage to subcontract services and infrastructure to provide a good service at a fair price. If the public sector is incompetent, that isn’t really a good argument against privatisation. That’s not to say there aren’t good arguments against privatisation but incompetent tendering shouldn’t be one of them.

FWIW I agree with reducing council control over schools but disagree with the extent of the independence academies get and the involvement of sponsors. You don’t want an accountant running the school, but neither do you want a politician or a union doing it…

It’s how agents make mucho profit – they charge fees for anything and everything (even where illegal sometimes). If they think they can get away with it, they will charge both LL and T.

Yes it is obscene, no there isn’t much you can do about it other than look elsewhere.

If something covers the lights at all, a board is needed (being able to see thorugh a wheel isn’t enough).

Towbar electrics are now covered by the MOT, although if you have a 7 pin socket it’s just a visual (and maybe give it a wiggle) check. 13 pin ones are subject to a complete check with a light board. The rules changed a few years ago https://www.ukcampsite.co.uk/articles/view.asp?id=539

Sounds to me like you are due a (taxable) contractual termination payment AND (tax-free within limits) statutory redundancy pay.

Just because the employer says you aren’t being made redundant, doesn’t mean that’s actually true. There is a lot of misunderstanding about fixed term contracts.

I’d have thought carrying a knife to school then using it in a minor fight was significantly reckless – but don’t know the legal definition.

Carrying a knife would be aggravating, but the recklessness required is more like indifference to the consequences of your actions. Carrying a knife in your bag isn’t directly going to get someone killed but, (random example) ignoring H&S regs might.

This guy is a twunt and deserves what he gets but, from what has been reported, it does appear he got convicted of the correct offence. Whether significant action should have been taken against him earlier is a different question.

Scots Law requires either intent or significant recklessness for it to be murder.

Culpable homicide is where the death was through wrongful conduct, but without intent to kill or sufficient recklessness.

He can beat people up all he wants, if he doesn’t intend to actually kill them then it isn’t murder. As posters above have highlighted, the fact that he was attacked may have mitigated against murder some.

He said that there is a much higher instance of asthma in ‘athletes’ than there is in the normal population. This is due to the higher volume of air that is constantly passing into the lungs which irritates the tubes and causes them to become inflamed.

My asthma is entirely exercise induced which is annoying. It came on as an adult (diagnosed age 21) and would fit with the description above.

<cynic> For high level athletes being diagnosed as asthmatic lets them use bronchodilators legally. WADA clearly think there is a problem because the ATUE requirements have been tightened several times in the last 10 years, now requiring a reversible methacholine challenge whereas it once required only a GP’s opinion.

Powerbreathe was mentioned above which is another good call. Using it regularly and for warm up really helps me. I still need my steroid and reliever, but between the powerbreathe and the buff my drug doses are much lower than they would otherwise need to be.

Cold air is fairly well known for making asthma worse. Hayfever gets me too :-( While it has been settled for a few years, there were a couple of times my steroid dose was higher in winter and spring to help.

The buff trick mentioned above is the one I use.

We have an 11 reg Alhambra, 3 kids and we sometimes go on holiday with my parents or in laws.

It is awesome. The boot swallows whatever we need to carry and when we have a set of grandparents with us, there are two decent sized seats to use.

Sliding doors make life oh so much easier with small kids.

It’s OK to drive, we considered something a bit more “cool” but the Alhambra just makes life with the kids easier that it is well worth it.

It takes up to 48 hours to replace the lost blood volume. Replacing the lost red cells takes longer. Although I didn’t feel different, I used to be able to see it in my scores for about a week. It can take 4-6 weeks to get back to your pre-donation state, but it depends on your body.

If you are just training and not competing, I’d take it easy for a day or two and then forget about it.

Atera or Witter is where it’s at.

I got a flange mount Witter 4 bike carrier and it’s awesome.

If the CCJ is settled before it becomes due, it leaves no trace so your record is in no better or worse position.

That doesn’t mean that a complaint isn’t warranted though… Getting a judgement against someone who has already settled just isn’t cricket.

Debt collectors are regulated by the FSA. That means that:

1 – the Financial Ombudsman service is available to you and they can award compo
2 – if they misbehave then the FCA can revoke their authorisation and the debt collectors can no longer do business until it is back in place

Also bear in mind that, even on the small claims track, your legal costs can be recovered if the other party has behaved unreasonably. Normally costs would not be recoverable, but that doesn’t apply if there has been unreasonably conduct…

So write to them giving them 7 days to remove the CCJ before you seek to have the judgement set aside. If they don’t, then boom. As they have behaved unreasonably, you will pursue them for all of your legal costs as per CPR 27(2)(g). You will also make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman to seek further redress. Finally, you will report their behaviour to the FCA with a view to having their authorisation revoked for their breach of regulatory requirements.

You’ll get plenty of “oh, oops, don’t know what happened” crap from anyone you talk to if you do a normal complaint. You need to force them to take notice.

so… when you have the snip, erm, do you actually fire anything or, like, do you just ‘hunnnnhah’ and nothing.

It all gets stored up. If you get jiggy too much, your sack will swell up like a football before exploding in a bit spermy mess.

Or, alternatively, you still ejaculate semen it just contains no sperm.

N+1?

Agreeing a more sensible approach to transfer pricing would help. Even if just within Europe – the EU doesn’t seem too bothered that the acquis is being manipulated for tax avoidance.

I’m going to kill the next person to get that wrong!

That isn’t much of a deterrent unless we know you will actually follow through. I mean, if it’s only for show then the ongoing threat of retaliation is a bit of a mute point.

Labour needs to change radically. It needs to win votes and for that you have to drop the idological policies for ones people will vote for.

Which (from my perspective, YMMV) is what Blair did and it worked well for him.

If we had PR, both Labour and the Tories could split and you would end up with two broadly centrist parties from the moderates, then the Corbyn left and kipper Tory’s. Most people would probably vote for the centre-right or centre-left parties but there are probably enough on the further left and further right to carry some sway. It could work quite well, but will never happen under FPTP.

Rather higher frequencies than that – when I was looking at the RF interference, which was also about 20 years ago, they were using ~3MHz modulation (hence an issue with the HF comms band which is what I was involved with)

Oh they must be using something faster and going up in frequency a bit but I don’t know what comes after 1 MHz ADSL. I suppose I should have gone to wiki to find out what they do today.

I get 150 Mbps FTTC so fitting Shannon-Hartley down some dodgy copper doesn’t really bother me. And my day job is at rather higher frequencies.

If the cable to your house is overhead and the mast is nearby, it will induce a current on your cable at the RF frequency….

It will induce a current on the ground shield, if it gets to the signal conductor then someone has a problem with their cable. That’s why you shield cables…

You will also usually find that the frequencies are quite different. A copper phone cable (which can carry ADSL up to ~1 MHz) isn’t going to do too well with the GHz frequencies of GSM, HSDPA, UMTS, etc so even if you did get some pickup it is going to attenuate pretty quickly.

The biggest problem with conventional ICBMs and SLBMs is that you cannot tell what sort of warhead is fitted without waiting for the boom. You fire one of those at somebody and they will have to assume they are being nuked. Cruise missiles are more cost effective and generally less prone to “misinterpretation”

Most of the cost associated with the programme is down to the subs and missiles, not the warheads so it still costs lots, just not quite as much.

This is just Corbyn realising that one of his policies will cost lots of jobs (not what Labour should be doing) and he’s trying to cover that up rather than grow a spine and stick to his beliefs. As time goes on, he’s becoming less the honest man (even if you think he is misguided) and more the slippery politician.

I certainly like his wife

Get rid of Dave and Mike, shack up with his wife. Happily ever after.

Or 1.

Give ACAS a call to get some proper advice.

Trailers must have lights if parked on the road at night. Cars only require them if the speed limit is more than 30 mph, trailers require them anywhere.

See para 3 – http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1989/1796/regulation/24/made

Trident is so autonomous that everything needed to launch it is on the sub. We don’t have PAL on the nukes like the US does.

EVEL can only apply if a bill is within Holyrood’s legislative competence. So it is strictly for things that Westminster cannot pass for Scotland and which Holyrood could.

Hired one from HSS when we wanted to clear a lot of the overgrown shrubs that the previous owners had left. Awesome bit of kit. I’d be worried that the cheaper ones might be a bit too lightweight for some of the bigger bits.

Burn the office to the ground. Then nuke it from orbit, just to be sure.

Then when you find the smoldering scrap of paper showing a mis-typed digit or an incorrect addition you can take it to your boss and ask if there was an issue with your expenses or a mistake somewhere in the claim processing. It will turn out to be something minor, at which point you can turn the discussion to the large radioactive crater where your desks used to be.