As for riding fasted – I’ve done a lot of it and got much better at it, but I recently found I still go shitloads faster carbed up.

Yep. I found that, so if I know I’m going for a long ride, the night before is plenty of sweet potato, potatoes, etc.

I will sometimes have white rice as well, as this is a fairly “safe” starch, that doesn’t have the problems of other grains in terms of digestibility. But, at the end of the day, it’s bulk food, it’s not that nutritious. And that is my main problem with grains in general. Ditto for sugar – plenty of calories, but no nutritional bang for your buck.

“Conventional nutrition”, i.e. the eatwell plate, didn’t work well for me, and quitting on the grains, sugar, and booze was the only thing that helped me lose stomach fat as well.

There’s a whole host of other things you can look into as well, for example I try to minimise my intake of PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids) from seed oils like canola, sunflower et, and I use coconut oil for frying, ghee, and even (shock horror) bacon and duck fat. I also try and stay away from soy, although I do use gluten free tamari soy sauce sometimes for flavouring.

Basically, if something needs a lot of processing to become edible, it’s not food.

Better food = nutritional needs satisfied with less = reduced calorie intake without deprivation.

Our appetites go crazy because the highly processed food we eat does not provide us with the nutrition we need, so we stay hungry, our bodies crave more of it, and we eat more of it and get fat.

I am 70-80% Paleo, but not necessarily low carb. I do eat fruit, potatoes, sweet potatoes, starchy veg etc.

My weight keeps itself stable if I strictly limit grains and sugar and try and avoid “empty calorie” foods like crisps, alcohol, sodas etc. I lost a stone and a half after going gluten free due to discovering I was coeliac and then going Paleo for digestive issues.

My cross breed hound dog is insured with ASDA for £10 per month. Never had to use it touch wood.

When my mum had cats, she used petplan I think.

Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious. Yet conservative attitudes in the home and workplace persist. Japan’s punishing corporate world makes it almost impossible for women to combine a career and family, while children are unaffordable unless both parents work. Cohabiting or unmarried parenthood is still unusual, dogged by bureaucratic disapproval.

From the Grauniad article.

Many of the same reasons that women in the UK and Europe may choose to opt out of marriage and child-rearing. Childcare is unaffordable, prejudice (Daily Fail-esque hate of working mothers) and the modern workplace demands make it difficult to combine a career and family, and many women do not want to stay home and raise children, essentially alone, while their partner has to work long hours as the breadwinner. It’s difficult for women to get back into the workplace after a career break.

The Japanese corporate culture is far worse than ours – no flexible working, it runs on unpaid overtime, and taking time off for anything family related is frowned upon, because that’s the woman’s domain. Fathers are usually minimally involved in child rearing. This puts huge pressure on young men to achieve the kind of career success and salary that will support a wife and family. Welfare is almost nonexistent if you lose your job. Add to that the kind of conservative society that would frown on people, say, choosing to cohabit and live a DINK lifestyle.

I don’t blame them for opting out, to be quite frank. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

He’s not saying ban banks, he’s saying the money they make as profit is obscene, and that money needs to be taxed heavily. Instead, the government of today give large companies ways of hiding their money and not paying tax, while penalising the poorest people who are deemed to have too many bedrooms in their council house.

I don’t think Mr Brand is poor. Is he happy to submit to more taxation in order to right the social wrongs he quite rightly highlights?

Super tax a la Francois Hollande, if all European countries did it the tax dodgers would have fewer places to hide.

I know the whinge, “I built my wealth through hard work blah blah, I should be able to keep my money” but individuals with vast wealth have usually built it up on the back of the hard work of others, even if they have worked hard themselves and made sacrifices. Branson wouldn’t be a zillionaire without the workforce, many of them pretty low paid.

Since our taxation system, ludicrously, subsidises low paid workers rather than compelling companies to pay a living wage, then it allows companies to pay low wages and make more profit. The least they can do is share more of that profit in tax to subsidise the lowest paid workers who can’t survive without state benefits.

I understand how he feels. I do vote, however, because it was a very hard won right, particularly for us birds.

However, whoever you vote for, the government always gets in….

Yeah it’s a virus you get aches when you body is fighting an infection of any kind.

As for the no proof that vaccines work. I’ll just say when was the last time you had small pox?

This.

I am in the vulnerable group and have it every year. Getting the flu could put me out of work for months, never mind weeks, so I’ll take the risk thanks.

Erm, secure YOUR garden so it can’t get in?

but thats why you ask questions and threaten to sue, to see if they have been adhered with……….

I would amend this sentence to

That’s why you ask questions to see if the rules and regulations have been adhered to.

If it becomes apparent that they have not been, you may then threaten to sue.

Too many people threaten litigation as a first response to anything going wrong. Accident simply aren’t allowed to happen any more – it has to be someone’s fault.

A school near me was sued a few years back because the school gave a child a detention, and the child was attacked on the way home from said detention. Parents tried to argue it was the school’s fault. Didn’t get anywhere, because the court ruled the parents are responsible for the child’s safety once off school property, and they had allowed the child to walk home in the dark. Parents had also signed the detention slip so they knew of and agreed to said detention. Didn’t stop them trying to sue.

I’ve got a novel idea to get around this.

Don’t go on Facebook! Live life instead :)

If a school is going to be in loco parentis then they should act like it and take the kid to hospital. School nurse or first aider should have permission to use their car or a minibus or whatever.

I agree with you on that point. That would be the common sense approach. But because of a) instances of abuse that have happened when adults in positions of trust have an opportunity to be alone with a child and b) the fear parents and carers have (and can instil in their children) of a) happening, common sense is no longer allowed to prevail.

A lot of parents only want the school to be in loco parentis as long as the school don’t do anything the parents disagree with, like give their snowflake a detention, confiscate their mobile phone, or give them a paracetamol when they break their arm. The schools and professionals unfortunately can’t do right for doing wrong with some people.

As a parent, my response would be: you broke them, you fix them.

IMHO, it’s the whole finger-pointing blame culture that means schools are becoming too scared of litagation to do anything other than wrap their charges in blacnkets and give them all the same grade by default.

WTF? You need two adults to take a kid with a suspected broken arm to hospital??? What’s the point of the CRB / DBS check, then?

Having a CRB check doesn’t make you immune to accusations of inappropriate behaviour.

This.

An allegation of inappropriate conduct towards a young person can ruin a career. Therefore as a professional, you don’t take the risk. If it was you and them in the car, it’s your word against theirs so you can’t disprove anything. And the parents will come for you with pitchforks, whether you are guilty or not.

In my experience in that area of work, there seems to be little in between the parents who don’t give a monkeys what their kids are up to as long as they’re out of their hair, and the parents who will sue over a broken fingernail.

If they are restricting it to company phones only I’d guess when they find out you are forwarding everything to a personal mail account they will be a little upset.

You could even be breaking Data Protection law by doing this.

Ask for permission before ever forwarding anything work related to a personal email, if it’s denied then don’t do it. By all means make it clear that it may make it more difficult for you to work outside the office, but if they are happy to accept that, you have to abide by their IT policies, however daft they are.

As a parent, my response would be: you broke them, you fix them

In my experience (admittedly professional) kids are fairly adept at breaking themselves. It’s that attitude that is the reason why schools, youth clubs etc act the way they do. Always got to be someone’s fault. When I was a kid, accidents, broken bones etc was part of life being a kid.

A hurt child usually feels better when their parent or main carer is with them, FWIW, so that’s also why it’s preferable that the parents take their child to hospital.

No one has mentioned it yet, but there was a complication, whether you like it or not. It’s called “shock” – it can’t be avoided and if left untreated it can be fatal.

Tell that to the paramedics who showed up at the youth club I worked at a few years ago and had a go at us for wasting their time on a kid with a suspected broken ankle. We were told it was non-urgent and therefore we shouldn’t have called them out.

**** some people on this thred make me want to puke, if ur child is a **** up its 100% ur fault.

In some cases I’ll agree with you. As an ex youth worker I’ve seen plenty of those.

However, there are also cases where kids have had perfectly good upbringings and it’s other influences, such as peer group, getting in with the wrong crowd etc, and previously good kids go off the rails. My younger brother did. To be honest, I think that his upbringing was a bit too permissive, and that my dad and stepmum didn’t nip stuff in the bud early enough, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Either way, he is now 18 but hasn’t lived at home for 2 years because he was a danger to his mother and sister (violence, stealing, and drug dealer mates coming round the house). Social services (who became involved when the criminal activity started) agreed that he needed to live away from the family home. He was re-housed in supported housing. He is doing better now, but sadly only after a spell in a YOI.

If your gf can’t cope and she feels she is in danger from his behaviour, she needs to contact social services. Or perhaps the NSPCC would help with advice – at the end of the day she will be concerned that she can’t protect her son.

Ex youth worker here.

When I worked in that area, my car was insured for business purposes. The policy was though that no staff member was allowed to travel alone in a car with a young person – I would have had to have another staff member or volunteer with me if I had taken a child/young person in my car. This was to protect against any sort of allegations of inappropriate behaviour.

As for an emergency situation, it would be a matter of discretion. If a child was seriously hurt or unconscious, then 999 and first aid first, then call named emergency contact. Staff member would go with the child in the ambulance and meet parents/guardians there.

For a minor injury that still may require hospital treatment, we would not have been inclined to send a child in an ambulance for the reasons outlined by antigee. If we had the staff available, and the parents agreed, a staff member would take the child (accompanied by a second staff member). But the reality is that sparing 2 staff isn’t always possible, so in that case, we would have had to ask parents to pick them up. The alternative if parents had no transport was sending the child in a taxi accompanied by a staff member or volunteer.

We would not have been allowed to administer any pain relief to a child under 16 without parents’ permission, and even then not allowed to a child under 12 at all. If the parents allowed their child to carry kiddie paracetamol or something with them, then we’d look the other way though.

It all seems pretty draconian but the rules these days governing that sort of thing are, and you bet your life a lot of parents will sue the behind off you if anything happens to their kids, even if you try to do the right thing.

Interesting. There are two sides to it really, one side is the “green side” and the other side is the saving money, since the energy companies are holding us all to ransom. Any house we buy we would be looking at “greening up” as much as poss – insulation, grey water collection etc.

According to the renewableenergyincentives.co.uk site, it would take around 10 years to recoup the investment cost of solar panels.

Sadly, I think they believe that God will spare them and diseases only affect people of lose morals / atheists..

Sadly, these people ARE this delusional.

Anything that gives women greater choice, protection, and agency over what happens to their bodies is opposed.

Of course, you could always ask your daughters what they want.

At 13 yrs old, I know myself and most other girls were quite self aware and if my mum signed for me to have an injection that I did not want, there is no way I would have had it!

I cant imagine the wishes of the girls are not asked about!

Hell no, when it comes to their teenage daughters, a lot of fathers believe they are the guardians of their daughters’ sexuality, and therefore they just stick their fingers in their ears and go “la la la” when faced with anything that points to their daughters having future sexual activity.

All this scaremongering about vaccines comes from the American right, who have exactly the views above. They love a bit of Bible bashing, and you only have to read a few choice verses from there about how basically women are morally f***ed and have to repent their sins through the pain of childbirth and subservience to men. Punishment for sexual activity outside the prescribed Bible belt LifeScript(TM) is part of the deal, and since they believe that this vaccine promotes promiscuity, they prefer to believe that cervical cancer is a punishment for “promiscuous women” hence they will bash and discredit it all they can to try and prevent women having more agency, and choice, about their own bodies.

What women want rarely comes into it.

Just because some one is 18 don’t mean they stop being that persons child.

No, they don’t. But the expectations of behaviour/responsibility tend to go up as the child approaches adulthood.

Just saying, not tolerating being treated like rubbish/a skivvy by your own children doesn’t make you a bad parent. If it does, then mine both suck! :lol:

When it’s say me and daughter on our own it’s fine we talk like adults. She asks me if I need anything doing etc and me same for her. And she is a bright kid. But when we”re all in the way she talks to her mum when asked to do something by her is disgusting. And I get the back lash of their arguments which annoys me.

If you guys can talk like adults, maybe you could sit her down at some point and have a conversation about how it upsets you to hear her speak that way to her mum. Maybe ask her what it is that makes her do it – even, is she aware of how she sounds?

I had my moments as a teen for sure, but if I was rude or spoke inappropriately to either parent, their partners would have pulled me up on it, if it happened in front of them.

I always said to my ex-partner, if I am sharing the same space as your kid, then I have some say in what behaviour is and is not acceptable in our home. Parenting decisions, such as what school kiddo went to, or health treatment, etc, were totally left to the parents, but I said, if you want me to live with you, then house rules are my domain as well. If I got the “don’t tell me how to raise my kid” I’ve give him the “don’t expect me to live with your kid then”. Harsh? Maybe. But as pointed out above, I didn’t have the parental blinkers on. If parents don’t want to compromise on these things, they either don’t hook up with anyone until their kids are grown and flown, or they at least don’t get their partner to move in. Unfortunately, that’s the reality of post-separation parenting, and relationships, and the minefield that is.

Being rude to anyone, adults or otherwise, is not OK. In the real world, she won’t be able to speak to her boss like that, or colleagues (ha – well she can try, but woe betide her if she gets a colleague or boss like me!)

Another no good man thinks a woman is going to put him before her child, at the end of the day to the girl you’re just some man that’s **** her mum.

You know what? My step-parents were both lovely people. I was happy they made my parents happy, because f*** knows they were miserable when they were married to each other, and my step-parents were nice to me. I say were, as one has now passed away and my dad split up with his 2nd wife (now on to the 3rd). Their money contributed to the household, it bought me stuff I needed and wanted. I could talk to them if I had problems. But I was not allowed to treat them or my own parents like crap.

If you mean that a parent expecting good behaviour from their child, help around the house from a damn near grown adult, and for everyone in the house to be treated with respect, and that’s “putting a man before your child” then no wonder there are so many spoilt entitled little brats out there is all I can say.

If you truly love your other half, I would suggest that you’d find a way to work this out, and if she truly loves you, she should be more proactive with her daughter.

This.

It’s a meeting in the middle. Life as a stepfamily involves compromises on all sides. In fact, life as a family does – I’ve got plenty of friends who disagree with their SO on parenting matters even when they are both bio parents, and it can cause real friction.

People who think the OP should just “man up” probably haven’t been step-parents. It’s stressful, especially if you don’t get the support from your partner, and they make no effort to understand how their child/ren’s behaviour impacts you. Sometimes, even if the parent cannot do anything about the situation, then listening and understanding their partner’s point of view goes a long way. But many parents are not prepared to hear things about their children that aren’t 100% positive, or act upon bad behaviour, for a variety of reasons (divorce guilt being a number one reason).

Leave her. Let her find someone more supportive, loving and not as selfish.

Teens sometimes come bundled with such first world problems. Within a year she could naturally move out. Her mum has spent 17yrs toiling bringing her up thus far. Would you like to drive her out/drive a lifelong wedge between them?

Man up. Change tact. I say selfish because you obviously cant think much or respect your partner enough. Prove us and yourself wrong.

OK, as someone who has been on both sides of this fence (former step-parent and also a step-child) I can’t necessarily agree 100% with this.

Agree that teens come with these problems. But it is the responsibility of their parents/family to teach them that it’s not acceptable to sit around and do FA. Believe me, I have a sister that’s exactly the same and she is 21, and she has been enabled to do this, in a way that I was not (I lived with my mum, and she has a different POV on parenting to my dad).

Fast forward now, my dad is poorly and can no longer work, so the gravy train my sister has been relying on is going to stop. It’s going to be a rude awakening for her. Because neither of her parents wanted to have the “grow up, get off your arse, start helping round the house when you’re home and get a job” conversation with her (afraid of ensuing tantrum) I had it, because I give no f***s about overgrown teenage strops. She’s now got a part time job to help support her studies, and is applying for postgrad, and intends to apply for a bursary and work part time.

So I don’t agree that you should necessarily “put up and shut up” with a spoilt, enabled teen, and a parent who won’t do anything about it – it’s bad for everyone, not least the teen herself. Circumstances change, as they have done for my dad’s second set of kids, and it’s done them no favours being infantilised in the way they have been.

If you do get on with your partner’s daughter, can you not have a word with her yourself, about how her behaviour is impacting the family? Encourage her to start taking some responsibility and put a positive spin on it?

Where I do agree with hora is that driving a wedge between child and parent will be counterproductive. If ultimately, teen and partner refuse to change, then you will have to make the decision whether you stay or go. As a stepchild, who has had a parent’s partner try their best to drive a wedge (and is still doing it now whilst my father is very sick) it is very hurtful, and not something that you want to get into. But that doesn’t mean that you put up with all kinds of crappy behaviour just because of the privileged relationship between parent and kiddo.

Do you see an NHS Physio? IME the hospital based ones are many times beter than the ones attached to GP surgeries.

I did, but only for 2 sessions!

I do have tri bars but can’t steer with them! I think I’m a bit dyspraxic….

I couldn’t do press-ups for about 5 years, at least not with my palms flat on the floor, I had to do them off my knuckles or by using dumbbells.

I’m getting around doing press-ups at boot camp that way.

I’d really like to do some climbing too, but not getting much chance, due to working away a lot at the moment and getting back at the weekend totally shattered. I’ve been once, and it wasn’t really causing too much bother. It just seems to be the road bike.

ah well on with the rehab eh!

Anyone who wears their old public school tie to work or asks new work colleagues aged over 30 where they went to school.

I guess you don’t know what someone’s living situation is, as someone mentioned, access to washing facilities, being able to afford a washing machine etc.

I had a housemate who had a bit of an issue in that department, we did tell him, turned out he had a poor sense of smell, and couldn’t really tell himself. My partner’s dad has a similar issue with the smell thing but he doesn’t tend to pong!

I would really like to go back into the nonprofit sector. Job insecurity and lack of ££ and full time work drove me out of it, as well as a bit of “compassion fatigue” but I saw a part time job with the CAB this week that I’d really like, and was spending my insomniac time last night calculating if I could afford to do it!

Tory MPs in general
Zoe Ball
Jonathan Woss
Top gear presenters
Robbie Savage

I am a PMO (project management office) manager and manage a small team of project support analysts.

Don’t ask me what that means, I don’t really know other than “I make sure that stuff happens”!

I’d like to do something like this where I live. Exeter a bit far, but I have a ton of stuff I need to get rid of!

The tram tracks that I have to cross at a really shallow angle on 23mm tyres. Terrifies me every day.

Not part of my commute, but had a bad accident involving those earlier in the year. Can no longer ride a road bike with drop bars because of it.

3 and a half years here, living happily in sin for about 18 months. 1 very adored and spoiled hound.

I was married, briefly, in my early 20s, it didn’t work out. Happy now though.

What about the royals? Biggest scroungers of the lot!

Hmm. Ransos asked who wipes the bottoms when we get old?

Answer: for most people it’s low paid care workers in nursing homes.

The nursing home my grandma is in isn’t even high dependency or dementia. Most of the people in there have kids, very few don’t. So where are their devoted offspring?

Many of them don’t live nearby. Some are busy raising their own kids still, or more likely (like my mum’s siblings) caring for grandchildren while their adult children go back to work. So they can’t take care of their elderly parents. And by the time someone is doubly incontinent, they usually need more specialist nursing care than an untrained adult can give anyway. And a lot of the time, your kids simply won’t want to adjust their lives in order to care for an ageing or sick relative, my own siblings being a case in point at the moment, and have barely bothered to get their heads out of their own asses to call our sick father since he came out of hospital. Guess which adult children end up doing most of the care? Yep, the ones who don’t have kids of their own, because it tends to be expected that they have the capacity and free time to do so by their siblings.

So, if you want your bum wiped in old age, encourage your children not to have children!

Edit: I’m sure there are many good reasons to have kids, but “to have someone wipe my butt when I’m old” is not one of them. Sure, you might get a wonderful devoted son or daughter who will do everything for you, but these days, more often than not, that won’t be the case. Go to any nursing home in the country for proof.

Thyroid issues maybe?

Are all pregnant women nuts?

Yes, they are. And I don’t blame them for it. I’d be nuts if I put myself through that. Hats off to women who can do it.

Some letting agents will guarantee your rent even if tenants don’t pay….worth having a look. Don’t know where you are but there is one called Northwood round here that do that.

Of course – you don’t have to tell me how stupid the idea is!

Lol – I saw “US” and “religious” in the sentence and I figured! :wink:

That’s part of the public opposition in the US, within a religious framework. As in, our kids should not be having sex, and they should only sleep with one person, so why should we support them doing anything else?

The thing is, that one person they sleep with could have slept with one other person who had HPV….even if the girlie is a wee angel, the boy might not be, or vice versa!