I use a wobble board, has done wonders for my balance.

I meant one of these. Not sure if there’s an equivalent that can be ‘charged’ using solar thermal.

We had an offer last year to replace our boiler with an ASHP for free, as we are in a relatively new build (13 years old) and the boiler was woefully under specced for the house we jumped at the opportunity. Surveyor came round and straight away called out the small bore radiator piping, we’d need to run larger diameter pipework through the whole house and while they would do that it, wouldn’t be run through the walls like the existing pipes! Needless to say we had to turn down the offer which is a shame. I believe that there are split ashp which are high-temp, high pressure capable which might be worth looking at.

Was considering solar thermal, or solar battery, anyone know if you can combine these, or would you still need to keep a hot water tank?

I bought some Prime Black Edition 38s, use them for mostly road with gravel tyres on, just fitted an xdr freehub to get a 10t option. Bonus was that I ordered them through bike to work scheme so massive discount.

If you mean b..b…br..brex….it. Then I dont think the two can be compared.

No I mean since the last Scottish independence referendum. Despite the claims of a mandate, the split between pro-union and pro-indy voters doesn’t appear to have changed much and is still split down the middle.

can you link us up to this fabled highlands and islands independence movement? 😆

You may laugh but: Highlands and Islands Alliance

As said.
Will a transition be difficult. Why yes, yes it will.

But Scotland becomes it’s own country once again and thats worth any minor difficulties.
I think everyone will agree it’s better to be yourself than live under the yoke of someone else.

Thats a massive trivialisation of something which could have catastrophic impacts to business, peoples lives and quality of living. Clearly not everyone agrees, there’s still a similar sounding split since the referendum.

Also where do you stop? Surely an independent Highlands and Islands can make better decisions rather than living under the yoke of their Central Belt masters? Part of what makes the union work is the compromise in having to live with decisions that don’t work well, for the benefits in collaboration and sharing. Ireland in particular have seen that, their GDP lagged the UK regions up until the full effects of EU integration kicked in, and then they were bailed out in 2008. Their growth in GDP has come from being in a Union not out of one.

So anyhow, this case for the union is going well eh, might just be me, but I’m no sure attacking independence is a particularly strong case. 😆

I laid out a case in my comment but there seems to have been no response to it other than the bit about federalism.

The case for independence appears to be entirely emotional based on no logic or plan, with the only response from the SNP being that whoever is in government will decide once it happens. Yet they contradict themselves within their own manifesto stating things like “a fairer social security system” and “a free public NHS – guaranteed”.

There is no precedence of independence from a union with such high existing GDP and quality of life standards and therefore no evidence to say that we’d be able to increase social benefits or even maintain the level of social services we have today.

There are so many uncertainties and unknowns in any of what may happen that nobody can promise anything, except for more uncertainty, and that is what will punish us initially. The closest that I can see experience-wise would be the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the break up of Yugoslavia – evidence there suggests struggles with hyper-inflation and drops in living standards. It’s something people would need to sign up to as a real possibility post independence before the long journey to building up its own economy again – and that’s the bit the annoys me about the SNP. They proclaim to be doing this for the benefit of the poorer in society, yet it’ll actually be that core that will struggle hardest through the first possibly 20-30 years. Nobody I’ve heard talk about independence puts that out as something to consider!!

Sure, but what’s the advantage of the current union for England (other than having to rethink the flag)?

Many similar benefits, an extra 5 million people to generate revenue and thus share the costs of government. Access to natural resources, and geographies that extend the borders to enhance defence.

The ability to accommodate a broader range of niche industries and thus diversify income generating potential. Frictionless trade with an additional 5 million consumers.

Continued political stability which protects the ability to sustain debt and borrow cheaply.

Economic stability is key, the presence of large multi-national corporations in Scotland is possible because of the current Union, there is no guarantee that any of those would continue in the short-term post independence (the easy option would be to relocate – see recent experience re. Brexit). The cost optimisations by having single government agencies DVLA, Passport Office, Customs etc.

Huge benefits due to the UK credit rating and our ability to sustain and cheaply refinance debt over long periods of time. The ability of a large economy to average out economic shocks.

A well integrated defence capable of protecting our borders and economic assets.

The ability to influence world politics to our benefit through being a G7,G20,NATO etc. member.

Frictionless trade between members of the UK (generally). The ability to work together, yet still do things differently to an extent.

There is no doubt that Scotland could over time become a successful independent nation, but at what costs in the short to mid-term? Especially when the core of our economy is currently based on luxury commodities (whisky), an aging, volatile and increasingly less relevant oil and gas sector and a financial services sector that’s way to big for it to support.

So inevitable decrease in tax revenue, increased costs of borrowing, plus increased costs of administration of basic government doesn’t match up with the ideological SNP view that we’d be able to make Scotland a scocialist utopia, at least not in the short-medium term. What price are people willing to pay for the ability to make more local decisions, and why couldn’t we do that with a more federal model?

They’re everywhere at the moment taking advantage of the increase in online shopping. Please remember to forward them to 7726 so that we can gradually eliminate them and protect the more vulnerable!

I think Tredz take cycle scheme and cycle 2 work, they stock Boardman bikes, although they only show them when they are in stock. I’ve got a CXR 8.9 which I also got a trade-in discount for when cycle republic were open. Brother in-law has recently got an ADV 8.9 which is really nicely specced for price.

I’ll try the magnesium. Although I take multi-vitamins which should have it in.

I’d imagine a multi vitamin has fairly low doses, and not all supplements are absorbed equally – I take Magnesium citrate 100mg.

Good luck!

I used one of these https://www.alivecor.co.uk to capture my PVCs and show the cardiologist. But it’s only useful if you use it when the event happens – easier for me because they went on for a while. Have you asked the GP to refer you for a 24hr ECG, so they can capture the events?

For me aside from avoiding alcohol, caffeine stress etc. what worked was magnesium supplements. I’ve gone from years of PVCs to now only occurring when I’m ill and no issues drinking coffee and alcohol.

Bizarrely my undergraduate thesis was on searching for active magnesium transport in heart cells as there was a suspicion at the time that it was a cause of a number of heart issues and I didn’t think about it until after a period of beta blockers which did hee-haw. Of course it may just be a placebo effect!

More info here: https://openheart.bmj.com/content/5/2/e000775

Disclaimer, I’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical advice!!

I’ve lived in that estate since it was built over ten years ago, I’ve got two kids both born here, attending the local primary school. Before we moved I checked the sepa reports for the burn, mostly as I was concerned about flooding rather than contamination as the burn used to run through a pipe to the side of the plant.

Burntisland used to be red because of the bauxite transported from the docks in lorries and if you dig deep enough down you’ll still get traces of it.

The soil layers are pretty thin as the town is built on volcanic rock and the site was cleared and a thick layer of cheap clay soil dumped on top, so problems are drainage related rather than contamination.

All the remnants of toxic waste are stored up at the back road on the way to kinghorn.

Alcan Burntisland

SEPA regularly monitor it and haven’t found any issues I’m aware off.

There was a migration last weekend from the Lloyds infrastructure onto their new banking platform, which is a customised version of the one used by its Spanish parent company Sabadell.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450431320/CIO-interview-Carlos-Abarca-TSB

I’m guessing IBM will have been brought in to provide some reinforcement to the exhausted support teams, no doubt they’ve got the breadth and depth of resources to resolve this quicker than the in-house team.

Having been in the depths of a similar crisis a number of years ago, I can only sympathise with the poor buggers who are trying to fix it.

Goodnotes[/url]

I use it on my ipad pro with an apple pencil, handwriting recognition is pretty good, so you can convert scrawlings to text later.

Ha, this thread is awesome. I’ve had the whole family norovirus event, where you have a small un’ puking down your back while running to the bathroom to do so yourself, not an experience I want to repeat.

Worst one was trip to the city in the summer and walking back to the car giving our eldest a shoulder high when he managed to poo himself, leaving me with an excrement soaked back. Got a few interesting looks driving home through the traffic topless 😆

Get yourself some Puppet/Chef/Ansible training and be prepared to be headhunted.

So to summarise: people with limited common sense can earn vast sums of cash* by living in London doing jobs of little value to society courtesy of the private school education mummy and daddy bestowed upon them. Now they are worried because they have to sacrifice their lifestyle to give the kiddos the same paid for leg up over the proles.

The crazy vacuous bubble surrounding our capital never ceases to amaze me.

*apparently not vast enough

I was referring to camping out with the official sites. I stayed at Camp 4 on a climbing trip because that’s what you do. It’s a bit of a noisy zoo and having stayed there once I’d go elsewhere if I went back.

Sorry copy and paste error there, was meant to be a response to

Prices of places inside the park – even “camping” in Curry village – are pretty eye-watering. I could buy a bike for that!

Camp 4 is most definitely not back country camping! My earlier response agreed with you, that you needed a permit to camp outside the designated areas, we got round that by wild camping just outside the park for one night.

I don’t think it’s allowed other than if you get a permit for back country camping.

Camp 4 was $6 per person per night, plus the initial park entry fee. Its definitely worth going at least once in your life, its on a whole other scale to anything in the UK!

I don’t think it’s allowed other than if you get a permit for back country camping.

Yip, me and a mate turned up one day with our $9 walmart tent and tried to get into one of the campsites only to find it was full (mid summer) so had to wild camp outside the park, but got a space early next morning. Its busy, but doesn’t take much to get away from the maddening crowds who tend to stick to the valley floor.

We were way underprepared for the terrain, and amused everybody in the hikers bus by getting on wearing just shorts, t-shirts and flip flops for a hike from the Tioga road to the top of Yosemite falls and down to the valley, didn’t see a single person until the top of the falls, which was worrying given our lack of kit and supplies, very fun though as we were within spitting distance of a bear and her cubs at one point.

Second time I went I stayed with the missus in the Curry village tents, this was early October, just as the first snow arrived so pretty cold.

Amazing place, would love to go back!

Took me 4 attempts to get it to complete a logon without hanging, but seems to be running smoothly for now. Applications appear to start faster. Considering its free, its not a bad upgrade.

Apple have done some good stuff, but was pee’d off by the way the failed to handle the ibook G4 logic board failures ( GPU chip was BGA where the solder dried after a while and cracked). Although the fact that OS X is effectively a highly polished UNIX closely integrated to the hardware always outweighed the issues I had and I ended up buying a macbook pro in 2008 which is still going strong.

Sadly, they appear to now be focused more on aiming for the rich consumer rather than the time-pressed professional these days, so my next laptop may be a lenovo or similar running some version of Linux.

Holy crap, sounds like some of you guys have been brutalised!

Worst bit of mine was having fit young nurses chatting to me while lying stark naked in what was a very cold room (honest). Doc did it really quickly while chatting all the way through the procedure, no more than local anaesthetic, couple of nicks on the old sack, tubes out, small section removed, some dissolvable stitches and off home. No more than some mild embarrassment involved and some dull aches relieved by paracetemol.

Since then, worst thing is blue balls, self relief doesn’t appear to ease the pain, and the missus needs to ensure a proper job is done if you know what I mean!

do you get “pea wet” too ? as in getting a scoop of peas and wafting them over the chips so the liquid runs over, but not putting the peas on

what the actual f…….

I asked for scraps with my chips yesterday.

That was your first mistake bottom feeder 😛

Nice 😀

You really can’t. You could hypothesis lots of reasons, but you can’t infer anything, as you have no data.

What data like post election polls you mean?[/url]

So obviously you also think the current government lacks a mandate

Not quite, the current government aren’t proclaiming themselves across the media to be the voice of a nation, merely the majority vote winners.

Anyway, this thread seems to have taken a far more interesting turn, so I’ll shut up now 🙂

You can’t infer anything from none voters other than that they didn’t vote.

That’s patently false, you can infer a lot of things, one of which might be that no party stands for what they believe etc.

If you want to protest or abstain you should spoil your balot.

Ah, sorry, I didn’t realise you made the rules 😀

However you were asking about share of the vote in a single constituent country, and given that criteria >50% was achieved a lot, lot more recently than that, in an election most of us here voted in. Any guesses for year and country?

The mockery that was the AV referendum?

You must be livid with the tories then and their mandate to govern. heck they even get to govern in a country where they got less than 15 % of the vote

What country are they governing where they got less than 15% of the vote? Was it not a UK general election? But yes I am livid with the tories 🙂

I’ve kinda sidetracked the argument here in my anti-SNP rants, I’ll hold my hands up to that, my point is around the wild jubilation of the SNP fans as opposed to the actual election results.

you don’t know that, and can never unless they get up off their arse. Not voting transfers your vote to someone else, gives others vote that wee bit more power.

What a load of balls, you’re clearly not aware of the concept of abstention then.

Anyway, my point was that the SNP keep talking about the mandate of the people, as I’ve stated many times, they’ve still not got that, despite what the SNP voters keep spouting off about.

Its the least disproportionate of all the FPTP winners

I didn’t say it wasn’t, this isn’t a discussion on the pros/cons of FPTP.

The bit where you criticise the party with the greatest percentage of votes cast for being disproportionate and ignore the fact the winners of the election got a much lower % than they did.

Nope, you’ve missed the point, Its a fantastic result for the SNP (albeit in the end pretty meaningless), the percentage of the votes of the SNP vs the Tories is irrelevant to my point.

I dont think you understand the electoral system and it was as close as damn it
When was the last time a party got near 50% in a country in a election in any part of the UK?
Before the war is my guess.

I agree a fantastic achievement, but has to be framed within context. My point still stands though, its hardly a mandate for the Scots, given that >50% of the electorate are still not in agreement with the SNP.

we don’t live under a westminster PR system, so stop talking nonsense..

Which is great for the SNP hence their disproportionate number of seats to votes. What part is nonsense? If I was declaring a “mandate of the people” I’d expect at least 50% of the people to positively confirm they agree with my beliefs.

Talking down the SNP for “only” getting 49% of votes cast is interesting,

Only in Scotland, creating a manifesto for a party with zero chance of having to run the government is a lot easier than creating a manifesto for a party which might actually follow through with their claims.

Are you arguing that if you don’t vote then you somehow do count? What do they count for?

No, I’m arguing that if somebody doesn’t positively confirm they support the SNP views, you cannot assume they do so, and there is 60+ % of the Scottish electorate who have never confirmed that they align to the SNP, yet they seem to be trumpeting about being the voice of Scotland. At least 50% confirm they actively aren’t!

If you’re not voting you’ve given up your option of providing a mandate.

I see, so if you don’t vote, then you don’t count? Lets look at the referendum then, only 37.8% gave their mandate, yet still the SNP fanclub claim 45%, they seem slightly confused.

This is such a stupid point and I bang my head on the table every time someone presents it. When are vote percentages ever discussed in relational to those who couldn’t be arsed to vote? Never, because it’s stupid.

Maybe only when you claim its a “mandate of the people”?