Thanet can be cheap

There’s a very good reason it’s cheap. Always told it was an attempt to draw in some new blood to the Thanet gene pool to stop people marrying their siblings. Plus it’s a sh**hole.

I’ve moved to just outside Bournemouth a couple of months ago. Job opportunities are fairly good but Portsmouth is better. Living costs are pretty good compared to Kent where we moved from. There is loads to do outdoors with good riding on the various moorland around, New Forest a stones throw away and the Purbecks about 20 min drive. There is loads of climbing nearby too. The way of life down here is much more relaxed compared to the South East.

At the moment it’s like being on holiday every weekend with the beaches, hot weather, cycling, climbing, water sports, etc.

Sounds like a perfect use for some Argos catalogues

Sjs cycles do kmc halflinks in 3/32 & 1/8 sizes for £1.99. These fit perfectly on the kmc chains. Like you I have sliding dropouts but either the chain is too long or too short so I use a halflink as I dont want a tensioner. I always gef them from sjs as they are the cheapest, but dont expect fast delivery.

I had exactly the same thing including starting a thread on here. It is really tough but it goes get better. Our family were a good distance away and every time I saw them trying to pretend everything was great was a real struggle. I ended up waking in the night in tears and going to work at 4am as I couldn’t cope with being at home.

If your feelings get any worse go the doctor as depression (post-natal?) in men is a real issue that very rarely gets addressed properly.

The best coping mechanism I had was to get out climbing for an hour one evening every week. You (and your GF) really need a little (tiny) bit of time to yourself each week to maintain sanity. I cannot stress how important that was for us.

Beyond this I forced myself to take our daughter for a full day on my own one weekend. This gave my wife a break for a day and forced me to deal with the baby properly as I had no one to pass her off to when things got difficult. This made a real difference and as soon as she had the 12 weeks inoculations I made a point of taking her swimming every Saturday. Through this I have built a good bond with her after a really difficult and shaky start.

On the medical side we thought it was trapped wind causing issues but we took her to the doctors and it turned out to be serious acid reflux and she was on baby Gaviscon until she was eating solids. Getting this sorted made the world of difference and things improved dramatically afterwards.

The only thing to remember is that it can be properly lonely for the mother with the loss of adult interaction especially if there is no support structure to rely on.

I can really understand how babies get shaken especially when people find there is little support around by way of friends and family.

Really? well I never knew that.. I thought all the Atomic stuff was done at Aldermaston, with a bit of testing in Shoebury (I worked for AWE at Shoebury for a while)

It was designed by William Penney at the Fort hence one of the roads being called Penney Road. One of the old guys there wrote a book on the history which is very interesting.

I cycle past Fort Halsted all the time and there never appears to be much going on at all.

To be fair a lot has now moved off the site which was slowly being flattened by the time I left but it really does have an important role and interesting history.

The real interesting stuff happened/happens at Fort Halstead like the design of the UK atomic bomb. The history of Porton is boring in comparison.

I used to like a bit of Dimple 15 year old when I used to drink. Single speed and now a whiskey connoisseur; you’re turning into a proper hipster.

Isn’t the trangia gas burner for people who’ve bought into the whole trangia thing and then realised that meths cooking isn’t that good?.

Not really.

I have the gas burner and use it mostly when camping out of the car when weight and volume aren’t really an issue.

I use the meths burner when out in more remote places, bikepacking or where I am not sure camping gas will be available (eg cycle touring in some bits of France.

Different burners for different purposes but all with the awesomeness of using a trangia.

^^ and if you don’t want to carry liquid fuel, the Trangia with gas burner.

As said oxy-propane is easier for home use. Difficult to get hot enough for welding and cutting but perfectly adequate for heating and brazing.

Adams Gas do hobby cylinders of oxy and deliver/have stockists across most the country now. Hobby bottles aren’t filled to full pressure and you will use a lot of oxygen with propane.

If you have the cash now look to get a recon oxygen concentrater. They are around £300 but that is only 8 fills of the oxy bottle (even less if you take the deposit into account)

The oxy propane kit from Weldequip is excellent and well priced. If you do go for oxy-propane make sure you get the specific (red) propane hose as propane will damage an (orange) acetylene hose.

Ours was doing that at 12 months old when excited or frustrated. Another kid bit her at nursery and she realised how sore it was and it stopped almost immediately.

Because he risks losing the place he wants (and he really wants this place) if this falls through. 12 months rent is less than 2% of the price we offered so not a massive loss to him plus he would then have to pay for another set of solicitors and estate agents fees if he relists which would come to more than the cost of what we would be asking. We are not in the SE so prices aren’t rising that fast.

I can only ask and if they say no then so be it.

We definitely won’t (in fact we can’t) buy this place unless the unequivocally waived or removed so no issues with reselling if we do get it.

I am going to talk with the sellers tonight and have been in contact with the estate agent who knew nothing about this until I told them last night.

We offered on the place before it made it onto the market. It went straight onto rightmove as sold. I have been looking for other houses but all the ones in the area that are of the same size completely fill their postage stamp of a plot with barely any garden and no garage/workshop.

One thing I may propose to the seller is that I rent for 12 months to allow them to sort the problem out but I will reduce the offer price by the cost of 12 months rent.

Wrecker, it is a protected nature reserve behind. Another reason we like it so much.

If it becomes entirely untenable or is likely to take months then we will walk away and I have already threatened that if we cannot complete by the end of June. I just want to explore all options first before bailing.

Stern words will be had with my solicitor this afternoon when my (fairly low) expectations of them will be fully and concisely explained. If they cannot convince me they can match those expectations then Option 2 will be suggested to them.

If it falls through or is going to take months it will be option 3.

The lane above is a small electrical substation and access to it. It is a really nice house with an awesome garden, garage and workshop which is why I am really reticent to let it go.

Our solicitors are definitely not a cheap internet one but I am now questioning the extra cost over a cheap one!

Nick, it would appear we can’t until this is cleared up. Unfortunately this only came up after the mortgage was arranged and we were 3 months into the conveyancing and approaching exchange. The Title of Part and plans were some of the last documents we received and are now the only thing holding us up.

I have contacted the developer directly and so far they are being helpful but they have no obligation to speak to me as I don’t own the house. I am also trying to get in touch with the sellers as neither they nor their agents are/were aware of this as his solicitors haven’t told them about the issue.

It seems the only solution is to get the clause removed or a letter stating it will never be exercised.

The land does not provide access to anywhere that could be developed at a later date.

The pink area below is the section in question.

Nick, it is just a change of name for the developer. I have checked this with a company register and the company itself. The wording on the transfer is as follows:

“The pink land is hereby subject to an option to re-purchase in favour of the Company to be exercised at any time by service of a notice by the Company upon the Purchaser to this effect and the pink land shall as soon as reasonably possible thereafter be transferred to the Company free from incumbrances for a nominal fee of one pound and the parties hereby apply to the Registrar at H.M. Land Registry to note the details of the option as herein contained on the register of the title allocated to the Purchaser upon registration of its title following completion hereof. Upon any such transfer to the Company or its successors in title to this option or assigns formal right of way and services will where necessary be granted to the then owner of the property the positions of any accesses and service to reflect the access and service arrangements then existing or if none then by agreement.”

According to our solicitor no insurance company will offer an indemnity against this. I am looking into this myself though as I am not entirely believing of what I am being told by my solicitor.

Captain,
1, We cannot proceed with the purchase until this is cleared up. I presume this is because the bank will not loan against the property as the title is not clear.
2, It took us months to find this house and there are no other houses nearby for sale that are even anywhere near as nice as this one. We are relocating to another part of the country so it is not like we can just hang around waiting for another nice house to come on the market. I am working down here already and cannot afford to stay in B&Bs for another few months while we find and buy another house. If this cannot be sorted within a month I am considering walking away and renting instead.
3, See above regarding indemnity

That is pretty cheeky. I would kindly point out that you don’t work or give advice for free.

I don’t get anything through STW but get loads of requests through LinkedIn. They usually go something like this:

Them: Can I get some help designing XXXX type of antenna please.
Me: Sure, where are you getting stuck? Send me your workings and I will have a look when I get a chance.
Them: Oh! I haven’t done any I just want you to tell me how to do it all?
Me: Go away and make an effort on your own you workshy git and come back if you really get stuck.

Unsurprisingly they usually don’t get back with some working.

All on street parking. If you want to own a car buy/rent a house with a driveway and stop dumping cars everywhere so that no-one can now get down the streets or pavements.

Firefly should be on repeat
Eldorado should quite rightly never grace TVs again

a FTBer who bought a 200K house with a 10% deposit and 90% mortgage.

After 5 years, they’ll owe about 152K on the mortgage. So even with a market collapse of 25%, they’re basically in the clear, although obviously it’s not a desirable scenario.

That is some pretty optimistic calculation. As a FTB with a 90% mortgage we borrowed 159k and when we sold 2 years later we still owed 152k. The best interest rate we could find was 6% over BoE base rate so a total of 6.5% and this is what most of our monthly payments were covering not paying off the loan. So if the house price had dropped by 25% we would have been stuck there for a long time. It happened to lots of people last time the market crashed and would happen again if it crashes this time.

In your scenario the owner would be in the clear but would it leave them with a deposit to buy somewhere else or would it leave them with just enough left over to pay off the remaining mortgage and force them back into the rental market?

If you’ve mortgaged yourself up to the hilt and overstretched yourself financially to buy and as a result are in danger of being in negative equity, then really it’s your problem, no one else’s. No one forced you to borrow that money, and the fact you borrowed so much has just contributed to pushing prices up generally for the rest of us.

Being in negative equity has no bearing on whether you have overstretched yourself or not. We have recently bought a house well within our means but if the price dramatically crashed then we would be in negative equity and therefore would not be able to recover the deposit from the house sale if we then want to move on.

As such you would end up with people who want to move up into bigger houses not being able to thus not relinquishing the starter home to those first time buyers you think should have a right to buy them.

Stop mincing around Holmes and just **** buy them so we can get riding again.

Lomo are good and cheap. I have the 30L backpack but would get the 40L if buying again. It has lasted a couple of years now and is showing no signs of falling apart yet.

http://www.ewetsuits.com/acatalog/Dry-Boxes-dry-bags-uk.html#a778

Don’t know what Dundee’s reliant on,

Tesco! There are about 10 of their F****** extra superstores in the city plus the national call centre. It should really be renamed TescoTown

but none of those seems to involve an enormous integrated works built up over a century.

On a more serious note the jute trade in Dundee was massive. There were a lot of very large mills that employed a good number of the cities population. It was also one of the main users of the port (along with ship building and whaling) and rail network. When the mills closed there was mass unemployment but eventually they realised that something else had to be done and the city moved on to other trades.

What I have never understood about the miners, steel workers in Wales and the car builders in Birmingham is why they have never though to do something else other than what they used to do. This isn’t meant to be a criticism but i genuinely don’t understand the attitude of not moving on to other things if your trade is shut down. An example is the oil workers many of whom have (admittedly not all) found alternative work in other trades instead of sitting around for the next 10 years complaining that there is (comparatively) little oil industry left.

Option 5) get a projector and project it through his window so he can read it on the back wall.

How do you think a Muslim/Hindu/Wee Free baker would be treated by other members of their religion in those circumstances?

I think they may well face some recriminations from more ardent believers whether that would be boycotting the shop or removed access from places of worship. I also think some christian nutjobs would react the same is a christian baker said support an alternative faith.

“support christian beliefs” isn’t “directly denouncing their own faith/beliefs”.

but it could be viewed as such (by the more hard of thinking believers) for saying support an alternative belief system.

Which is their community, then?

I couldn’t think of the better term at the time so went with community. I meant faith group or religious peers (actually these still sound correct when reading it back).

I would if it was just a high street bakery catering to everyone which happened to be owned by muslims/sikhs/whoever. Which is exactly the case here.

It’s a different story if it’s a shop called “Ashers Christian Cakes” and there is adequate signage and indication that they won’t print anything which would go against their “faith”.

Ok, I guess that is where our opinions differ. If I were to walk into a high street bakery and asked for that and was told ” sorry, doing that for you disagrees with our beliefs but can we do anything else for you” my response would be ok thanks for letting me know, I’ll try somewhere else. I don’t believe everyone needs to advertise their faith or beliefs just on the off chance they might need to turn someone away for asking for something they are uncomfortable with.

They are quite within their rights to say we won’t make that design of cake for you, but we are happy to make you any other.

What you said is exactly how it should be but now it’s not that simple because the original decision means they don’t have the right to say “we won’t make that design of cake for you, but we are happy to make you any other”.

Jimjam, so if you went into a known Muslim/Hindu/Sikh bakery and asked for a cake saying “support Christian beliefs” you would fully expect them to make it? Following the original decision they would legally have to. How do you think they would be treated by their community if it was then published that they made a cake directly denouncing their own faith/beliefs?

It is not the wording of the slogan that they found offensive but its meaning. They do not support gay marriage due to their religious beliefs and made a conscious decision not to make a cake with that particular slogan on it.

Why deliberately make someone go against their beliefs just because you don’t agree with them. Just let them continue to hold their beliefs in the knowledge they have identified themselves as backward thinking morons and avoid them in the future knowing they are in the minority.

Last I looked, marrying your cousin is against the law, whereas being gay is not.

Surprisingly it isn’t as cousins are considered distant enough not to affect the gene pool. Legally you can even sleep with them if you want.

An example of religious beliefs getting in the way of retail service is catholic and muslim pharmacists refusing to administer the morning after pill. A pharmacy and the NHS cannot legally force the pharmacist to carry out this service (nor discipline them for refusing) even if it is contractual as there is a legal right to refuse service on religious grounds. This is direct discrimination against the customer based on religious beliefs

So essentially someone shouldn’t be able to refuse something they disagree with purely for religious reasons unless it’s grossly offensive, or in very poor taste.

Exactly, but the difficulty comes from what you define as “grossly offensive or in very poor taste”. What may not be grossly offensive to you may well be to someone with religious beliefs. It is the same difficulty faced by police and the CPS in deciding when to charge/prosecute someone under that offensive communications act. Plenty of people have been charged despite the fact what they said may not be offensive to you or me.

In this case the baker found the slogan grossly offensive and refused to make the cake. I don’t have issue with that. If they had refused to make any form of cake and refused any service to gay people that would rightly be discrimination and they should be hammered for it.

I should say that I don’t agree with the bakers views/opinions/beliefs but neither do I agree with the customer trying to force them to do something against their beliefs.

So if a Muslim baker feels it’s offensive to print a cake for a British Soldier coming home from Afghanistan that’s okay because he finds it offensive?

No that would not be ok. however if the soldiers family asked for “Back from Afghan, glad you got them before they got you!” (something someone I used to know had put on a card for a returning soldier and pretty damn distasteful in my opinion) to be printed on the cake I would have no issues with that being refused by a Muslim baker.

They don’t advertise themselves as a Christian Bakery.

No, they don’t advertise it but it is well known in the area that they are.

The counter argument is always this, but you are equating LGBT equality with something offensive.

I am equating printing things that individuals find offensive. They didn’t refuse to make the guy a cake but they did refuse to print the slogan he wanted on the cake as they found it offensive (even if that offense is due to their belief on a made up deity).

people used iron age superstition to determine your freedom to live your life as an equal member of society.

They have not tried to determine how he lives his life. They have not tried to ban him from being gay. As far as I know they have not even refused to make him a cake. They have just refused to print a slogan on a cake they disagree with.

I would imagine most shops would have also refused to print “I’m marrying my cousin” as it is against most peoples beliefs but would that be considered “determine your freedom to live your life as an equal member of society” and discrimination or would it be considered OK to refuse that?

If I knew something was against someones beliefs I would not consciously ask them to do it especially if there were other options available.

From what I remember from when this was originally reported it was not the fact the chap was gay, it was the slogan he wanted on the cake that they refused.

If he had gone in and asked for a standard wedding cake I don’t imagine it would have been an issue but to knowingly ask a religious baker to put a slogan on a cake you know they disagree with is a bit of a childish thing to do.

Do you think they should put anything on a cake that the public ask for? What about going in to Millies Cookies and asking for a birthday cookie with “Millies cookies are S”£te” on it. Do you think they would refuse to do that knowing full well it would offend them?

Whilst the guy should not be refused service for his orientation he comes across as being an monumentally antagonistic tool.

Following some of the advice on here we have now got a house in Ferndown. I am hoping this area is a good choice. So now I know where we are going to be living, can anyone recommend things to do in the area such as:

Good places to eat?
Somewhere for my wife to meet people (mother toddler groups, etc.)?
Any decent nurseries?
Things to do with a 18 month old on Saturdays?
Is there a good leisure pool nearby?

Cheers
Jon

Philidelphia and beef hula hoop sandwiches!