although there’s rumours that the tax relief may be capped at 20% in the upcoming budget.

There have been rumours about this every budget for the last lots of years. Hasn’t happened, quite possibly because it is far from straightforward to come up with a sensible implementation (how do you deal with salary sacrifice, employer contributions and DB schemes?). Tories also aren’t likely to want to hit their voters that hard.

I should/could pay everything over £46,350 into the pension scheme as an AVC

You say you don’t have a final salary scheme, but the term AVC is almost exclusively used to mean money purchase contributions that run alongside a DB scheme. Either way, paying the excess into a pension is a pretty good idea. 40% tax relief on the way in, only 20% tax paid on the way out (plus the 25% tax free cash) means an instant return that is hard to beat as long as you are prepared to wait.

Cycle to work benefits also increase as a higher rate taxpayer. :-)

Daughter is right between age groups of activities so I think we’ll try Europe next summer…a far longer drive from Scotland but should be good.

Eh? Drive to North Shields, eat, drink, sleep, wake up outside Amsterdam. Plenty of center parcs within a 2 hour drive or so on the other side.

until someone experiences these life changing circumstances they cannot fully understand or offer any words of wisdom

Here be a wise thing.

You, sir, are a good bloke. Chapeau.

I hope this becomes a positive friendship for both of you.

I have Nokian Weatherproof, my wife swaps between winter and summer tyres. Weatherproofs are awesome, will be sticking with them and doing both cars once she needs new tyres (or a new car).

Cross Climates are summer tyres so no problem mixing them with other summers. Fitting to the back is the best way to go for new tyres in any case as it reduces the risk of oversteer.

With that much better grip than a summer tyre in cold or wintry conditions, that might not be a brilliant idea. The problem won’t be as extreme as mixed winter/summer but I wouldn’t want to mix them. New summers on back, older cross climates on front has a fair chance of leading to a bit of winter weather ballet.

Apprenticeship, enlist with the military or college are the ones that come to mind. Food college, outdoor college (like https://www.whc.uhi.ac.uk/courses/outdoor-leadership/), there are plenty of less academic study routes.

Yeah, no men as nurses and women shouldn’t be senior management, lawyers, accounts, etc either because clients/customers/shareholders/peers will expect a man in the role. I really think some of you guys have no idea what these professional roles involve.  A woman simply will not be able to do the job properly.

Or we can not be driven by outdated prejudices, instead promoting equality and deal with individual prejudice as it happens.

My understanding is that the complainants are not part of the Scottish government but part of the UK administration that oversees Holyrood, ie the UK Civil Service, and thus were not part of the Scottish Govt.

Although there is only one civil service in the UK (it is Her Majesty’s Civil Service, not the UK Civil Service), the Scottish part of that works at the direction of the Scottish Government. <span style=”font-size: 12.8px;”>In both Scotland and Wales, the civil service serves and is directed by the devolved administration. </span><span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>You think St Andrew’s House sit there working for the UK Toaries and wonder why nobody in Holyrood has ever bothered to complain about that?</span>

The Scottish Goverment certainly seems to think that the civil service is part of government, but what would they know? https://beta.gov.scot/about/how-government-is-run/civil-service/   Sturgeon has defended the work of the civil service, yet Salmond supporters still try to pretend it was something foisted upon the SNP and nothing to do with any SNP politician.

I realise that there may be some people in the civil service that didn’t vote SNP, but this argument is a pretty poor one (because it is bollocks).

I’ve had several pairs, starting with £25-£30 ones and ending up with QC20. The cheaper ones were pretty good for the money, but more help reduce the noise than get rid of it altogether. With the QC20s, a flight is peaceful and silent. Whether they are worth the money is a personal opinion – for some they never would be. For me, they make business travel tolerable and I sometimes even manage to catch a snooze.

He did seem to be part of a dying breed of politicians who could communicate with and even be friends with people who he disagreed with, which has to be admired

That is what made him different and that is the main reason his death is mourned IMHO. He saw the need for bipartisanship and respected his opponents. Nowadays, there is little respect for anyone.

As for his policies, you have to remember that, as an American politician, his views are anyway going to be to the right of where we are in the UK and as a republican even more so. That’s a reflection of US culture as much as anything. Politician in policies-aligned-with-desires-of-electorate shocker.

Don’t lock them out – they will have a right of access presumably which isn’t dependent on their obligation to pay. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Check deeds of their house and whoever owns the road to be sure of the situation.

Letter before action, then small claims court would be standard approach. If they are leasehold, mortgaged and in breach of the lease, threats to the lender can work quite well. Lenders don’t like the risk of forfeiture.

Tories have never had many members, compared to other parties.

But members don’t win elections. Seats do.

2 episodes in, good so far.

Needs more James Earl Jones, though.

What is written in the contract

Likely to be irrelevant. Working the same hours for 10 years plus, “custom and practice” probably gives her a 5 day contract. If that’s the case, this is either a dismissal or redundancy.

More likely that they added up her redundancy entitlement, went “oh crap” and have decided to get her to resign.

A call to ACAS might be in order if the union are being useless.

If someone was to accuse me of a crime

“The process” isn’t to deal with crimes. It is more like a workplace complaints/whistleblower procedure. The two cases are quite different.

Salmond has not been found guilty of anything, nor has any sanction been applied to him. All that has happened is that a confidential investigation concluded that the complaints had merit and should be taken further. His opportunity to challenge them comes in the next phase.

What he wanted (and was rightly denied) was to get in a room with the complainants and face them down. Does anyone really think that is an appropriate way to manage complaints from the rank and file against our most senior elected officials?

 ‘Still Yes’,

Well clearly no doesn’t actually mean no.

Just don’t put fuel in a drinks bottle. For the sake of £10-15 get a fuel bottle that everyone one will recognise as being for fuel. No question about whether it can hold it, and no misunderstandings where someone doesn’t realise what you have in it.

What Salmond has done is attacked the making of the complaints public without him even being able to say a word in his defence

No, he is attacking the confidential investigation that had reached the point of deciding whether there was a public interest in making the complaints public as they were passed to police. As we’ve heard numerous times, there is often a public interest to encourage others to come forward. Alex feels that he should have been able to get the complainants in a room and “sort things out”. What he wants is exactly the sort of process that Westminster has rightly been pilloried for. Scotland could have led the way in showing how these matters should be handled and set an example for our other institutions to follow, but because it is King Alex then that’s all wrong.

If it is true that a paper was about to go public with a leaked copy of one complaint then that’s pretty pish and the civil service plus their responsible ministers should be brought to account. But that absolutely isn’t what he is attacking.

 I don’t feel that Nicola Sturgeon has put a foot wrong since this broke

Agreed. I won’t often praise her, but she has handled herself impeccably in this matter. She is in a difficult position, and is managing it well.

#SNPcivilwar

Hadn’t seen that one. Pretty good stuff :-)

This whole thread is about personal politics dude

Well it should be about how a public figure has been accused of sexual misconduct and attacks the confidential process that is meant to allow these complaints to be brought in private. Sir John Elvidge’s comments highlight some of the problems that existed and don’t exactly help Salmond.

Unlike other #metoo complaints, these haven’t been put on instagram, they haven’t made some big speech and they aren’t seeking damages. They appear to have waited until a new process was in place to deal with the many shortcomings of how they were dealt with in the past.

Salmond has tried to circumvent and shortcut that process, he has tried to gain direct access to the complainants and he has failed. He has tried to do thing the old boys way, which has rightly come in for criticism. Perhaps with a female Permanent Secretary and a female FM, the process is getting robust enough to do what it always should have done in both Holyrood and Westminster – protect the (alleged) victims and not the politicians.

STW would look like a forum for intellectuals :-)

Except we’d all be dead without antibiotics, wouldn’t have the wheel, no electricity to run our computers, living in caves or huts

You seem to be very exercised about it for someone who isn’t even a member of the Labour party.

Yeah, it isn’t like a strong opposition is needed for our system of government to work properly is it.

Deat tosspot,

Sorry I was sleeping (and also didn’t check my emails until evening). I hope you found someone to cover.

Loadsa luv,

Mrs Mowgli

we require rota cover for some bullshit which we’ve failed to make contingency for

Depending on what this actually says, it sounds a little like the rota coordinator effed up. “We’ve failed to” do something (is it even a “we”) and now you have to reply instantly or there’ll be trouble.

For a number of roles, I would expect days off to (reasonably) be cancelled at short notice to provide cover. I wouldn’t expect night shifts to be immediately followed by days in order to provide the cover though.

Dealing with these complaints in confidence (aka secret) is the way it should be done. Basic due diligence to investigate whether there is a basis to the complaint doesn’t require the accused to have a chance to answer them. With that due diligence done, it appears the complaint has some merit and so now it moves to a phase where Salmond will get his say. That’s pretty much how these things are meant to work.

Allegations were made and investigated and remained secret until there was a decision to release it to the press when not doing that became untenable.

There was no decision to release it. The government were considering whether there was public interest in releasing the details, at which point Salmond jumped the gun and went public himself. The leak to the Record happened after that. If Salmond had kept his big gob shut, we may have never found out.

A prohibited steps order may be what you need, a call to social services to discuss this is pretty much essential (did you tell them about the booster seat?).

You might need to plan around taking the time off work.

“The party” knows nothing about these allegations more than we do. That’s why he isn’t suspended. If their rules are that the party has to suspend someone, then they can’t be suspended if the party can’t reasonably be briefed on the complaint. Sturgeon knows as FM, but the details are still confidential.

The complaint was made to the civil service (as the authorities that run Holyrood) and they were dealing with it confidentially. There are probably quite a few people that know about it, including the complainants.

The civil service have decided, under their process which Sturgeon approved, that there is enough of a case to answer so the matter is now referred to the police. Salmond thinks he should have had a chance to get involved and stop it going to the police, so he’s taking the Scottish Govt to court over it separately to any police investigation.

It’s almost as if there was a general election about to be called and they do not want him standing as a candidate…

Quick – fetch the tin foil!

How do you think Stuart Hall was convicted?

Personally, I would make it require an application to a judge to release the name of the accused. Anonymity on both sides, unless there are objective reasons to name someone. Turn “the public interest” into a legal test. In some cases, it does encourage others to come forward. In others, it simply gets the tabloids all excited. Lets have some checks and balances in place.

And Nicola’s statement on this issue, to me, is very responsible and balanced. I don’t agree with her most of the time, but the attitude she expresses here is one that rather a lot of people could learn from when these allegations are made.

I don’t agree with it, but the current method seems to be media first, innocent-until-proven-guilty later. The justification being that it may encourage others to come forward. T<span style=”font-size: 12.8px;”>he irony being that this wouldn’t be in the media if Salmond didn’t put it there (pre-emptive strike?).</span>

His chance to face the complaints will surely come through the police as part of the whole justice and due process gubbins. I’d much rather have a in-house complaints procedure that just passes credible complaints on instead of trying to resolve them behind closed doors.

I don’t see his treatment is any different to anyone else that has been in a similar position, so claims of an anti-Alex conspiracy ring a little hollow. Except, as some of the faithful seem keen to report, he is quite obviously innocent while I’m sure every other alleged perpetrator clearly had it coming.

Include a habanero or two next time (and brief the rest of the team).

Seems a logical extension of “just bantz, innit”

It doesn’t need replastering. Just caulking or a bit of aims and then painting at the most!

If you want a cheap, crappy looking finish which may crack at a later date. It might also be advisable to remove plaster to ensure that the bricks haven’t cracked before putting the new plaster down.

I just spoke to our building control officer (who has seen the cracks in her house) who basically said it was our word against hers and she couldn’t prove it wasn’t there before

And their word means little in this circumsance, I’m pretty sure she could find a RICS surveyor to say that the cracks most probably were caused by your building work. You put in an RSJ, the house moves. Twice really – once putting the arcos in, then again when you take them out. Moving causes cracking.

You can deal with her, or you can deal with her insurer and their solicitors. One will be a lot cheaper than the other…

Does the Party Wall Act apply? If so, did you breach it?

It’s quite possible that what she has is simple settlement that happens when a house is restructured. It is an aesthetic problem (usually) not a structural one. Might also have some doors that need planed or rehanging if the doorway has settled slightly. Your side probably has changes too. But she didn’t do the work, you did, so you are on the hook.

We offered to repair the cracks for her as a good will gesture

It’s not really a good will gesture when you are the one that put the cracks in her house…

You don’t have to necessarily accept her quote, ask her for another. But you should be looking to get the work done.

Except if you turn up to a French pool, all the men will be wearing them because if they aren’t, they don’t get let in. So it’s not at all like having a kick about with your mates and one turns up wearing team kit, shin pads and football boots.

Froome is clearly an exceptional athlete, backed by a great team. I felt sorry for him last night because that must have been when it finally hit home that he didn’t have this one in him. Until that stage, I’m sure he still believed in himself so it must have been shattering to discover that the legs weren’t there when he needed them.

Whoever leaked his AAF needs to be shot. Outrageous breach of confidence.

That said, it has been a great season of riding this year and the uncertainty over the TDF GC only adds to that. I’m really pleased to see G in with a good shot at yellow. Always liked him as a rider and personality – briefly met him at Revolution in Glasgow and seemed a really down to earth nice guy..

Check your shoes. I have flat feet and without proper arch support, I get terrible shin splints.

folding can take a bit of practice to get all of the air out.

Fold it, lie on the folded part to push the air out, fold again, later rinse repeat. Easy.

An inflatable tent thread – we’ve not had one of these before :-)

We have a large polycotton vango. It is awesome.

P&O offer flexible fares on Hull-Rotterdam if that’s an option, DFDS don’t on their North Sea route. It’s a more expensive ticket, obvs, but lets you change without charge.

Either way, it will be subject to space. Easier if you are a standard car and not travelling at peak time.

I think May has just shown that she doesn’t do brinkmanship. So I’m not sure where that leaves us – heading for a hard “no deal” Brexit almost certainly.

Heading for government falling apart. The soft brexit/remain MPs are getting a backbone and starting to rebel. They know that they can’t trust anything the PM says because she won’t stand up to Rees-Mogg and co. That’s twice now she’s agreed something and then done a u-turn.

A 4wd will help you get going but won’t stop or go round corners any better than a 2wd on summer tyres.

Never forget this. Crashes are generally not caused by failure to get going.

We have a Freelander on Nokian Weatherproof and a Alhambra that runs proper winter tyres. Had no issues with either this last winter and didn’t even need to get the snowsocks out.

Being blonde is not the same as being a different sex to the one you present.

Both are physical characteristics that we are born with, dictate by our chromosomes.

Both can be changed to some degree but not completely.

Perhaps it is only social conditioning that leads us to attach more weight to one that the other?