And the £200-per-head cost is part of that marketing plan to keep it aspirational.

I’m sure I read somewhere that due to the ridiculously complex preparation methods, he doesn’t turn a profit at the fat duck, or at least isn’t making much out of it. But it means he can get all the other work off the back of it (tv and promotional stuff), so he does well in the end. Dunno if it’s true, but it is plausible if you look at the stuff they do.

Why should you be shocked and suprised? Why have you been so conditioned to accept state monitoring and control of everything?

I think it surprised me that in these days of everything being on a database somewhere, that someone using an always on, network connected, and incredibly technically easy to trace form of communication, which the police clearly have access to the detailed records of, can still evade the combined police forces of two countries.

Not that the new database would have helped, it’s never going to help catching any completely non-sophisticated, technology phobic pensioners, same as it won’t help them catch people with any sophisticated technical knowledge.

Indeed. Unless there’s an well-founded suspicion that you are involved in any criminal activity, then why the hell should the authorities have any right at all to monitor you in any way?

Her phone number was thought to belong to the suspect in a murder enquiry (she didn’t do it by the way!). I think I’m cool with them pulling phone records from an area when trying to solve murders. I don’t think they need these new laws though, given the existing data retention laws etc. I was just making the point that they aren’t as powerful at doing technological investigation as you might think.

Juggling.

Seriously, when I went from 3 to 5 balls I developed noticeable shoulder and arm muscles suddenly as I was doing a lot of juggling. You get up a real sweat by doing it. It feels like it gives you muscles in a functional way, rather than in the brute force weight training way, which usually seems to aim to get particular silly muscles big so you look like Arnie.

Assuming you’re not already pretty good, you might not be able to do 5, as that is jolly hard sitting down, but learning to do 3 sitting down, and then 3 lying down on your back is a good challenge.

You need a large number of medium sized balls or beanbags. If you’re not very mobile, I’d recommend beanbags that are shaped so they don’t roll too far (eg.pyramids), as you’re going to be crawling around trying to catch them. If you get good at it, you can use heavier things, which gives you more arm strength, you can get massive beanbags that are something like 750g – juggling with those for any length of time is like a serious weight session.

Oddballs can sort you out with toys (either on the net or in Camden / Brighton):
http://www.oddballs.co.uk

we can’t figure out who blew up XYZ/sold them the drugs/was a nonce because it was all done on a PAYG mobile phone and an internet cafe in Hoxton

It’s shocking how easy it is to be a bit hard to trace – I recently found out that my mum’s mobile is unregistered, and the police don’t know who’s it is, because they phoned me up and asked me who I’d been calling on X number, because it was a completely unregistered phone (they had a pretty good reason). If she’d only used it to call other unregistered phones bought from Tesco, they’d have had no chance of catching her. I’m guessing, this being my mum, that she doesn’t have a credit card registered on the account to top up, but even so, it surprised me that they had no connection to the number.

Life is far too short for anyone to have a “drop out period”.

My opinion on this is that life is too short for anyone to waste their time on a treadmill of default options, doing A levels they’re not interested in, following it by a pointless degree that their parents thought was a good idea*. A lot of people would be better off getting a realistic idea of what they are capable of and what they want to do, and then working out how to achieve it. If it is a degree, then at least do one that you are interested in.

Although possibly bumming around at your parents is not the best place to find out what you want to do in the long term, and it might be better to get a job while you do that rather than sponge off your parents. But I think it is better to acknowledge that you don’t know what to do, than to rush into doing stuff just because you should.

Joe

*like people who are sent to do law, medicine etc. because it’s a solid career degree and they think there’s a guaranteed job in it – there probably is if you get a 1st from a good university, but if you’re uninterested and get a 3rd or go to a poor university, you aren’t much better off than when you started.

For me personally, it’d be things that weren’t just extensions of previous ones – which would rule out Doom or counter-strike – Doom was very similar in mechanic to Wolfenstein, just had a much much better graphical engine, counter-strike was just another multiplayer fps, that happened to be jolly good.

Spacewar, I played a DOS port of it a lot, but it was one of the original games, and I’m so has to be up there.

GTA 1 – first really large scale explory game with a real narrative that I was aware of, and absolutely brilliant multiplayer to boot – just building such a big game, without railroading you into a particular story at every point was a brilliant thing. (Elite I guess was larger scale, but then the large scaleness of Elite was largely repetition and automatic generation, and the narrative wasn’t really there in Elite)

Tetris (Gameboy version obviously – way better than the first PC version). The first computer game I can remember ever being a real sensation outside the world of people who played computer games.

Oh, and not really important, but kind of meaningful for me – that skiing game where you had to stay within the lines (that I typed in from somewhere in Basic on a Casio PB-something pocket computer), and that game at the Science museum’s computer gallery where you have to shoot something (or maybe it is golf, can’t remember), using an old vector graphics computer system controlled by a jog wheel. Oh, and Donkey Kong handheld (game + watch). And Arcade Volleyball, what a game!

I’ve known a few people who spent ages in bands in their late teens, and ended up as anything from professional muso types to software developers, academics, or homeless people busking on the tube. It is really hard to predict what will happen to them in the long term.

In some ways, your teenage years are when you’re supposed to waste your life. You have no commitments, no kids, and if you’re lucky you have somewhere to crash. They can always go back and do a levels and university later if they decide they want to. In that respect, with the way university funding works nowadays, it is much better to drop out now, than to have been pushed into doing an unsuitable course and then drop out some point during that course. Yes, bands are a long shot, whatever your genre, but when else in your life are you ever going to get a chance to try for success in the music industry than as a lazy teenager?

On the other hand, I have known people who’s parents have bankrolled a million aspirational things throughout their late teenage years or after university, never charged them rent etc, all of which they never really applied themselves to, so there’s obviously a potential bad side to not learning to be independent and getting out.

If you have a travelcard already that’ll get you to north greenwich, then the cable car across the thames is only 3.20 one way (then dlr back to town). I thought it was worth it – it isn’t like there are all that many major landmarks, but it is a jolly nice cable car.

With a short walk from that, you can indulge in a double bill of civil engineering joy by going to see the Thames Barrier. Then the docklands light railway is a really nice driverless train, I could ride it all day (make sure you get a seat in the front with a view). You can even take it to Woolwich and get the ferry across the river (free for foot passengers I think) and return via the foot tunnel. Wow!

On the other hand, you may be less of a sad engineering and transport nerd than me, so maybe not such a good set of tips, but the cable car is fun.

Can easily do it – various apps that will take video when motion sensed and email it to you / upload it etc.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.mvainformatics.android.motiondetectorpro.activity

I’ve got a wireless shed alarm, which at least means if anyone is in, we get a bing bong if the shed is opened.

If you have an old laptop hanging around, there are probably way more cunning and nuanced things for PC though.

They probably can’t stop anyone moving money around within the EU completely, but they potentially can stop them selling things to other parts of themselves for vastly inflated prices (the coffee and the charges for it, plus the charges for the brand). Cos that is actually naughty stuff for which they probably should get done. If the tax haven companies selling the coffee were selling it at actual market rate, then they’d not be able to stop it, but that would only be the same as anyone buying their coffee from a foreign country, which at some point everyone buying coffee in the EU does (I think – I can’t think of any EU coffee producers).

It is odd that we allow tax havens in the EU mind.

Oh and matt – you are officially a wuss – speedos and a swim hat is the law – ‘channel rules’ as swimmers call it.

Why on earth would you swim in a freezing Loch /Lake ? Is it not a bit dangerous ?

Been swimming outdoors every Thursday since september. I will be in Aviemore on a Thursday. Therefore I will swim somewhere near Aviemore.

Last Thursday, it was -3c and the water was 3 degrees, so I only managed 5 minutes of swimming, and it took a further 5 minutes of swearing to get from toes in to swimming, but I still swam.

It is much less dangerous if you do it regularly – you are much less susceptible to cold shock etc. and better accustomed to getting dressed quickly when on the verge of mild hypothermia. Most deaths in water are still people who either didn’t intend to get in (fell in), or were drunk and not regular outdoor swimmers.

a loch (or a lochan, I’m not fussy), whatever, a body of water enclosed by land. Okay.

I obviously know that the Scottish word for Lake is loch. If I was referring to a lake in Scotland, I’d call it Loch whatever, like I did above. That does not mean that it isn’t a lake too.

When I go to France, I don’t say ‘I’m going to France to swim in a lac’? If I go to China, I wouldn’t say I’m going to China to swim in a ?. It would be pretentious. Why get so het up that I don’t switch languages mid sentence in this particular case?

Also, sort of relating to this, in Aviemore last time, I had terrible trouble describing where I’d been to a bunch of elderly locals, as I only knew the Scottish name of mountains off the map, whereas they seemed to mainly use the English translated name for the smaller hills, and didn’t have any clue of the Scottish name. You can’t win!

Brilliant.

The river in Aviemore – is it not going to be very fast flowing at the moment? Last time I swum it, I seem to remember it flowing okay, and that was in August. I guess I can probably find an eddy to swim around in, but a lake would be brilliant, if it isn’t frozen. Hmm. Will see.

Anyone have any recommendations of where to go sledging? We’re up week before christmas with the 2 year old, staying in Aviemore. Happy to drive somewhere to get to suitable height if the snow is only high up, or walk a mile or so off the road (that inconvenient stage where she wonwt be carried, but can’t walk far)but not sure where is likely to be good?

Also, which lakes can you park right near – Morlich obviously, can you park near Loch an Eilein? Considering a swim, but want the heated car very close by for obvious reasons.

Before you do anything, check that it is actually on a domain. Some companies I’ve worked on don’t use domains for laptops. if not on a domain, you just need an admin password reset disk or usb key – dead easy to do (google it).

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2057937/Your-rights-mobile-phone-breaks-contract.html

worth a try.

Depends what kind of phone you currently have as to where your contacts are. If it is android, they’ll probably all be on gmail, assuming you synced it with a gmail account. iPhone it’ll be in iTunes.

When you say dead due to an app, have you tried just doing a reset to factory settings of it? Unlikely that an app actually kills a phone. There are often ways to force a reset without being able to start up the phone – google it for your phone.

It seems to me that this plan, whilst it is drastic, is only a pragmatic acknowledgement of the fact that poor people are in practice ghettoised, and that the real victims of anti social & criminal behaviour are other poor people.

In practice, in most cities and towns, there are places where they ship off all the problem people – places like Elephant & Castle/Peckham in London, St Anns in Nottingham. In Paris they have massive sink estates all round the Banlieue area where all the poor people are made to live. I presume there are similar areas in Amsterdam.

So if you start with the depressing assumption that this geographical ghettoisation is going to happen whatever, it seems in some ways quite progressive to try and focus on protecting those poor people from the effects of crime and anti social behaviour and letting people try and live worthwhile lives, and intensively supporting those responsible for the bad behaviour to get their act together and give a damn about everyone else. Presumably the fact they only seem to be planning small numbers of these implies they are hoping people will only stay there temporarily, hence they are expecting people to reform to some extent.

that sudden braking gets you brucey penalties not bonuses. As a policeman on the radio said, this is clearly absurd. If you have to brake, you have to brake!

Sudden braking means you’ve failed to anticipate what is occuring on the road. It may be because someone is stupid, and not your fault, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have anticipated it. At least that was how I was taught. Having to use the brake pedal on the motorway except in complete stop start traffic similarly usually means poor anticipation.

There are probably some emergency brake situations where it really is impossible to anticipate, but realistically, every time I’ve ever emergency braked it was a failure of anticipating, even when it was someone else’s stupid manouver.

So if you’re having to use the brake absolutely loads, do tons of emergency stops, chances are you’re a really bad driver.

None of the press articles have really highlighted the multi-country issue here – as I understand it, whilst this is a bit of a minor political issue here, back where they originally came from the dealings between UK social services and the Roma community is a really big front page news thing, and that means that it is also a really big thing for the local Roma immigrants and causing real problems locally due to mistrust.

Still doesn’t answer the questions, why were the kids placed where they were,

Emergency foster placement, so presumably first available people.

why was the removal initiated after the political party membership revealed

Well, supposedly it wasn’t – it was because they were worried that a)the birth family would be able to find the kids or knew where they were.
b)the kids needed carers who could speak their language (which seems fair enough if you have suitable carers – which I guess is more likely in Rotherham)

are the now separated siblings in a care setting that meets the language/ cultural needs,

Hard to know as for pretty obvious reasons they can’t tell you where the kids are now.

why can a social worker on the case be a member of UKIP but not the carers?

Well, it kind of turns out that they can, and maybe that the UKIP membership isn’t really that relevant generally.

Having said that, whilst it seems like the main thing was a desire to find a culturally suitable placement (ie. one where the carers would know the same language as the children), and to avoid the children being found by their birth parents, you could argue that due to the local situation – large population of migrants, massive publicity in their home countries of how British social services are ‘stealing their children’ and taking them away from their culture, having Roma kids fostered by members of an anti-immigrant British party would actually be a bad thing, as it would further fuel all that publicity, and could have a real negative effect on the relations of council + social services with other members of the Roma community. It is perhaps more believable that people stealing children and taking them away from their home culture would include people who are members of a party that is explicitly anti multiculturalism, anti-immigration etc. And it is obviously in the interests of all Roma children, including those in this case that good relations with the social services are maintained.

Swimming outdoors in speedos in a very high and fast river last Thursday is my current top thing that people thing is a bit silly. Frost on the ground and all the puddles were frozen. Haven’t done my first snow swim yet, but I dunno how long it can be now. Brrrr.

use/adjust water stop-tap recently

You did turn it back full on, absolutely full on (maybe a little bit of a turn back off just so it doesn’t stick, but basically fully open) didn’t you?

I had this, and it turned out I’d not opened the stopcock the full amount.

If so, go and do that, and it should fix it. There’s no reason to have a stopcock not fully open, doesn’t change the water pressure in the house, and leaving it like that makes pipes go bang (and can be bad for pipes and for the stopcock so I’m told).

I’ve got a digi eco et-4.

It works fine, was dirt cheap and easy to fit (£30 or so I think) but is a slight pain to set. According to our boiler guy, the Honeywell ones have a much more intuitive interface, so probably worth the extra money.

It always baffled me that the organisers of the Kielder 100 insisted in competitors carrying a near useless space blanket as a condition of participation. Why not insist, as the Three Peaks people do, that you carry a survival bag that might actually be useful to you.

Isn’t it because with survival bags etc, people are tempted to get in them and lie down and hope for people to get them, whereas with a space blanket, you’re more likely to bung it over your shoulders and try to walk out, which is usually the best option?

Ages back when I last did survival stuff, we were told that if we carried orange survival bags to cut a couple of foot holes in the bottom so you could wear it and walk, as it was almost always better to attempt a walk out than to stop and get cold. That was also why they said don’t take a fancy bivvy bag as your survival bag – unless you’re in conditions where stopping is sensible (extreme snow conditions, up big mountains etc.), having a cheap orange bag that you can cut foot holes in without worrying about the cost makes you more likely to keep moving and get out safely, whereas cutting up your £100 bivvy bag so you can walk in it is more of a thing to do.

Do things you’re interested in. Don’t do things because of career opportunities or money that you’re not interested in, as you won’t be very good at them.

As a computer specialist at a university, i’d say don’t do a level IT subjects, one of the few subjects really no one is in favour of – if you’re interested in computers, do maths. A Level IT is no use for further academic study, and won’t teach you anything you need for any interesting job either.

If you have any idea of subjects that might interest you at uni, research the requirements and make sure you don’t miss them – eg. If you are science-curious, you need science and maths.

I always knew I wanted to program computers, but didn’t necessarily need a computer science degree for it. When I started my a levels, I was torn between uni in maths, french or music, so I did double maths, french and music. Turned out I was rubbish at music, and in the long term more interested in numbers than in linguistics or history, so that made the choice for me, but I’m glad I had the subject range to be able to make the choice.

Be aware that like people say above, you don’t necessarily have to come to uni after a levels, and if you don’t know what you want to do by then, waiting a bit doesn’t have to put you at a disadvantage, and you obviously don’t have to go at all if you don’t want to.

Take advice from careers service at school, but be aware sometimes they don’t have a clue – I knew I wanted to go to a top university, they did at one point suggest a btec in it, which wouldn’t be recognised by any good uni unfortunately.

Oh yeah, vocational qualifications. While the courses may be fine, whatever they say about being a level equivalent is rubbish in terms of both employment and university, so be careful of them. They may be good for you, but they limit future routes a lot.

Try audacity (free) and use the noise reduction filter trained on a big bit where no one is talking.

If that doesn’t work, you might be able to use band pass filter manually to isolate it, is a pain to do though.

If it’s because you want to hear what it says, then noise reduction might help, but is often no use. If you want to use it in a recording and make it sound less rubbish, then it is often good.

Nothing physical as such usually, is a software thing.

The problem is that you usually can’t rewrite the low level firmware of your phone, so it might as well be physical (it might even be on some chipset that isn’t upgradeable).

Sometimes the maximum published is just the maximum they’ve tested with, and it’ll work fine with bigger, other times it will not see a bigger card at all.

Most bike seat type carriers suggest 1 year old.

Bike trailers with baby sling from something between 3 and 6 months for proper rides – we’d done 40 milers before she was one. Really recommend them if you have space to keep it.

Whatever you use, use it regularly and they are more likely to like it.

Balance bike 18 months is realistic, although most don’t learn till a bit later (20-21 months here).

All day except when asleep,

Bonus is that she still has 2 hour naps and usually sleeps for 11+ hours a night at 2 and a half.

Today since breakfast, she’s done playgroup, picnic plus running in the park, now about to wake her up for a big swim, then we’ll probably do some playing with balls and the hockey sticks at home (I hit em, she fetches em), then dinner, then bathtime carnage (whoever had the idea of kids having a ‘relaxing bath’ never met Rose), then pajamas on probably while she climbs up my back and over my shoulders, then two stories, three songs and bed.

18 months. Although she only really got into it a couple of months later.

I’m currently trying to enforce a judgement, but not sure which way to go- as the debtor seems to know what he’s doing and is claiming to have no money (despite owning 3 properties and running a business).

Would high court enforcement bailiffs have any extra powers over the county court bailiffs?
Is it true that if they refuse to open the door the bailiffs can’t do anything, and they aren’t allowed to take possession of a car if they say it is needed to get to work?

Does he have business premises? If so, they can break in there. Homes they can get in if no one is there and a door is locked. Also if you refuse to open the door and talk to them, then you can’t rely deny possession of your car.

Debtors have a right to keep tools of their trade. Which might include work vans or whatever, not sure. But having said that, I understand the definition is not very broad at all – for example one thing that some enforcement people do is take computers, which they argue are only tools of the trade if the person is in IT or similar, but in practice for many small businesses losing their computers would shut them down.

They have more power than county court bailiffs, don’t have to notify the debtor in advance, and are paid by results, so are more keen.

It depends how much money you’re owed, but in the worst case that they are unable to find the debtor and unable to get any money off them, it is £120 down the drain. If you use county court bailiffs, they have a bad reputation for getting money back, and if they fail it is £100 down the drain. For me the extra twenty quid was a no brainer.

Some stuff about them here.

http://www.hceoa.org.uk/faq/do-you-need-the-services-of-a-high-court-enforcement-officer.html

Obviously you have to look at whether the person is actually likely to have the money – if they don’t actually have the money, or goods worth that money, then you won’t get it back, their 3 properties could be mortgaged up to the hilt, car could be a lease car. But if you think they have the money, it is very very easy to get enforcement done. Once I had the judgement it took me about 30 minutes work filling in forms and chatting on the phone to the person from the enforcement agency, and two weeks later Derby Car Centre had paid me back my money.

If it’s like anywhere I’ve ever worked, you have to let people take holiday, but you can tell them when they are allowed to take it within reason.

So if it’s the busiest time of the year, can’t you tell them that you’re okay about the holiday (you have to anyway, what with it being the law), but that they can’t take it right now and to take the holiday over the next couple of months when it is quieter and you can cope with being short-handed for a bit?

So let’s get this straight: you’re not allowed children if you have certain politicial beliefs?

Is what the people involved would like you to think (and UKIP press office who are using this story as a promotional tool in their byelection campaign).

In practice, like all these things, you are hearing only one side of the story. Here, we have two sides, the aggrieved foster carers + UKIP press people who obviously are talking to the press about it, and the social workers and the council who made the decision, who are bound by a zillion forms of confidentiality not to spout out about the reasons for a delicate decision that they make about the welfare of the child.

So really, none of us know whether this is a good decision or not.

I would suspect that given it is an expensive and complicated process finding foster carers, it is extremely unlikely that anyone would ever take kids away from them purely for the reason of them being a member of a political party, so it must be something more complicated. After all, how likely is it that some random whistle blower would call up the council fostering team just to say that person x is a member of UKIP?

The hard bit is enforcing the judgement. The court process just decides in law that the landlord owes you the money. You then have to force them to reveal bank details, get bailiffs round or take out a CCJ against them with further visits to court. Its all quite time consuming and could easily cost 200 quid or so, though all these costs are added to what the landlord owes you which you get back IF they pay up.

I used high court enforcement which is cheaper, and more effective than the various county court things.

Like you say, court is dead easy and not very expensive. Make sure that the total cost including court fees is more than £600 – if you are just under the boundary, then use the paper based process rather than the online one, as it is a tenner or so more expensive. This means you can use high court enforcement. Just said this on a different thread, but I would really recommend high court enforcement – they are unlike the court bailiffs and other county court ways of getting money in that they are paid by results (as a percentage of money that they fetch), so they are much more keen to get money back. They also have pretty extensive powers to take things away from the debtor, enter business properties by force, tow away cars etc. I used these guys – http://thesheriffsoffice.com/services/high_court_enforcement and they were jolly efficient. I went from judgement to having the money back in two weeks.

Things I’ve learnt from the process:
1)Do everything in writing starting from now – don’t take any offers by phone, just tell them to put it in writing to you.
2)Do everything at the shortest possible time – write a letter of intent today, saying what they owe you, and that you’re going to take them to court if they don’t pay within 7 days (which is reasonable given they’ve been months not paying it already).
3)Make sure you mention in the court papers that you have tried to do alternate resolution through the DPS but that they have refused to take part.
4)In 7 days with no payment, put in the court papers.
5)If they offer payment after the court papers are in, only accept it if they include the court costs also, and only call off the court process if you actually have the payment in your bank account.
6)Once you have a judgement, the very day you get it, call up high court enforcement to get them started with transferring it up to high court and enforcing the judgement. If you have to actually go to court for a hearing relating to the judgement, there is a form (N293a) that you can get stamped in person at the court which saves a week or so in the process – ask the high court enforcement people (like the people I linked above) about how to do this.

Basically, don’t piss around, they’ve already demonstrated that they are dishonest and don’t want to pay, and part of their strategy is to waste time in the hope that you’ll give up and intimidate you into paying. If you get stuff going now, you could have your money back in a couple of months in a pretty bad case, or this week if they realise you’re not giving up and give in. If you’re even vaguely organised and literate, the whole thing is just a couple of hours work writing letters and filling in forms. Any time you waste giving them a chance is just time where they have your money and you don’t.

I doubt the OP is going to get far on this through the courts unfortunately, not much he can …

Have you actually ever taken anyone to court for a small claim? If it’s such a clear misrepresentation (photos taken way before the actual sale, condition completely different from the condition they claimed), then it doesn’t matter that it’s a private sale – it wasn’t like he had a chance to pick it up and inspect it – he was given photos of it.

Just that I’ve done a small claims track case, and it is an absolute piece of piss, plus very cheap to do. People who say that you shouldn’t bother standing up for yourself when you’ve been ripped off, are a big part of the problem – scumbags who rip people off will only stop ripping people off if they get made to pay them back.

The moment time is up on the letter, put the case in to the small claims track. Once the case is in, he can pay you (including the costs), or he can mess around trying to fight it, and then almost certainly lose assuming the stuff about photos being from the wrong date etc is true.

If the judgement is for over £600 and he has already decided to make it hassle by fighting the court case, and you’re willing to risk sixty quid on it, call these people
http://thesheriffsoffice.com/services/high_court_enforcement
they did a brilliant job of enforcing my county court judgement – they turn up unannounced, with a court order and a debit card reader and are very persuasive in terms of encouraging people to pay (and have powers to seize goods if they don’t want to pay). In my case it was a small business called Derby Car Centre who had sold me a car that had been doctored to disguise signs of a serious engine fault, and they paid the judgement on the spot in full. If it even works against second hand car dealers, it should work against pretty much anyone as long as they actually have the money (or goods worth that money, which given how much he talks about his various Apple products on his twitter he almost certainly has).

The bonus of court enforcement is that it costs them serious extra money (they pay all court fees, plus travel costs and charges for the enforcers, plus interest etc.), which teaches them a lesson (Derby Car Centre ending up paying the best part of £3000, for a judgement on a car that they’d sold me for £1800).

There are plenty of reasons not to go in flood water but as a kayaker it is fookin amazing – to paraphase William Nealy – “like riding a run away train”.

Hell yeah. Our Thursday morning swim is so on. Did a mile in under ten minutes last time it was proper going like it is at the moment, and breaking out into eddies is a real buzz. I only do it on rivers that I know like the back of my hand, but as long as I know the get outs (and know that there are some get outs in eddies so I don’t have to hang onto trees to pull myself out!) it is real fun.

Sewage is a really bad problem in some rivers like the Thames in London, where the sewage stuff doesn’t have the capacity, so they dump any time there is a really big lot of rain, yuck. Round here I think it is mostly more extra mud and sticks and whatever comes off the fields, although I will get out before the sewage works outflow on Thursday just to be on the safe side.

He is claiming that you are liable for things like heaters not working in order to scare you.

He then says that if you don’t create any hassle, he won’t charge you for those expensive things, he’ll just charge you for a bunch of stuff that you also don’t owe.

The idea being that you are worried that if you create any hassle you might end up having to pay the whole lot.

Claim for the DPS right away, for the full amount. Then it’s up to him to argue anything else.

Guessing it is only electric what with the heating situation, but just in case, did it have any gas appliances, and if so, did you get a gas safety certificate every year you lived there? If not, you can tell HSE and make his life a pain – worth doing both because it would be satisfying (up to £6000 fine!), but also because you’d be making life safer for any future tenants of his.
http://www.hse.gov.uk/gas/domestic/faqtenant.htm

It is in everyone’s interest except for dodgy landlords, that everyone promptly fights any attempt to unfairly make money out of deposits. That way dodgy landlords lose money, and it makes it less worth being a bad landlord and more worth being a good landlord.

Joe

ps. can’t believe you stayed somewhere where the heating didn’t work for 2.5 years! You should have found somewhere new and done a runner to the new place no matter what your contract with him was. No way anyone could claim that completely non working heating would be fulfilling their side of the contract.

We have Babybans / kids bans – only pain is that they are quite big in the 2 -5 size, took a couple of months after 2 until they were big enough.

Cheap on ebay.

I’ve done it. Unless you have watch screwdrivers already, you need to get a very small crosshead screwdriver and a torx t something (4 or 5), you also need some kind of adhesive to put the digitizer on with – I used special 3m phone screen tape off ebay also (was pretty cheap).

The crosshead really is small – I didn’t have one and couldn’t find anything in the house to bodge it with instead. Got one for a quid of ebay.

There are good picture guides on the net.

Be careful with the teeny tiny connectors for gps aerial at both ends of it when you put it back together – if you don’t get them reconnected right, the gps won’t work. There are also similar connectors under all the tape near the sic card and sd card, which control sim and sd and network. Try not to dislodge them when opening up. If you close it all up and can no longer connect to network, or the sd card doesn’t work, then lift the tape and make sure those connectors are fixed.

Also, the tape holding the screen on takes a couple of days to reach full strength – I put a bit of sellotape over the top right corner of the phone while it was reaching full strength after a screen half falling out incident.

Overall quite easy, but a few things that can go wrong, all of which I managed to do and then fix!