Room treatment makes a massive difference, it doesn’t cost much, and it takes a bit of effort, but if you are serious about improving the quality of your system (and not just into throwing cash at buying boxes), it’s a no brainer.

I got a Balaenoptera Musculus for my lad…c.£30 (I think)…went like the clappers, good fun while it lasted.

And Frank White who is mentioned as part of the second backing group played the main set at our wedding – anyone in the Sheffield area who sees his name – get down and see him. Proper 60’s musician. Quite often plays the Riverside…

I used to have guitar lessons with Frank when I was a student in Sheffield. Me and a few mates would go and watch him on a Friday night at a pub at Sheffield Lane Top. The lessons were properly bonkers, as I used to share with a mate who used to drink a bottle of wine on the way to the lesson (12:30 lunchtime) and Frank was a Jehovah’s Witness who thought that we needed saving from the sins of the workd (we did). Didn’t learn much, but it was interesting ;-)

PC > Lavry DA11 > ATC SMC20 Active Towers.

Great to see some other ATC users;-)

Emma is the lady round our way, she works tirelessly and even comes up onto the industrial estate where I’m working. 1pound for an Emma’s special

What’s that got to do with Ice Cream?

Amazing how many people can’t get their head around “if I wanted a flashier car, I would buy one”.

I totally ‘get’ that, just as I ‘get’ people having nice cars, it’s up to them. I don’t ‘get’ people being proud of making business decisions based on someone having a nice car, or assuming someone’s a tool because they have a personalised number plate.

Judging people for the car they have implies a knowledge of that person that you don’t have and is pure jealousy.

A massive +1 for this. It’s astounding how many people on these types of threads are oblivious to blatant jealousy.

Even in the dark days of IFA’s being mandatory, they clearly display whet commission they take. Why not look and compare the figures?

They actually make shit loads of money by transferring their clients funds to the pension company paying the largest kickback. This is how the whole industry ran for years. The last thing IFAs cared about was the return for their clients!

I agree they are overpaid scumabags, but that’s not the issue. The idea of negative discrimination based the type of car someone drives doesn’t sound too bright.

We had a pension company visit us to discuss managing our company pension. They turned up in a BMW 7 series. We turned them down on the basis that if that was their company car, they were taking too much commission

Asking how much commission he takes might have been a more astute approach?

^^^if that don’t press your buttons, you ain’t got buttons to press.

I don’t know the technicalities, but SD digital TV appears to vary greatly from channel to channel. BBC4 always looks OK to me, but CBebbies and some of the ITV stuff looks hideous. It’s not night and day but HD deffo. looks better to me, apart from when it’s on in public places with the image sharpened up it’s ass and the contrast set to ‘Vivid’ :(.

Thankfully, you don’t need to justify your car to anybody. If someone makes assumptions about you based on your car, it’s not your fault.

I don’t mix in circles with a lot of wealthy people, but the few people who I know who have nice cars (even, dare I say it, 4×4’s) are nice people who don’t think too much about what they drive.

If I was totally minted, I would not be driving round an a SMax diesel.

The humax hd box is a lot better than their non hd boxes, so deffo a good upgrade.

It’s interesting the number of posters that, while stating they can’t understand why people have ‘status’ cars use the opportunity imply their ‘status’ by another medium.

It’s alright…the DPF will be clogged soon and the car will be gone as it’ll be too expensive to repair.

Just sit tight a little longer

That’s some good thinking right there! Even if it never clogs, the thought that each time she does it increases the chance of it happening has gotta make things more bearable.

CBebbies is probably the worst looking SD channel at the moment. Anything that gets rid of the compression halo round the logo offending my eyes at 6:00AM when i’m hungover with a wide awake 2 year old has to be a good thing.

Plus, I quite fancy Nina, so better definition of her Neurons will be welcome.

What not to like?

CSA Basics

I worked with a contractor who prefaced everything with it’s value and brand (i.e. I was driving my 34K Audi after watching my 3K Sony TV while drinking a £40 bottle of Lindernams ). Bit sad really.

Oh well, he’s married with kids now and he’s driving round in a 15k Piscasso ;-)

I really like the look of that Adria Altea 390, nice and light. We came from camping and even the smallest caravans offer a big step up in comfort compared to tents.

A few years ago I looked at buying an Audi/BMW. I didn’t want one of the finance packages as a) I don’t understand them and b) everybody I know who has had one has been shafted in one way or another.

IME the dealers don’t take you seriously as a purchaser unless you think in terms of ‘how much a month’, partly because of their commission, and partly because if you pay outright and think about what it costs, luxury car ownership makes no sense.

Panorama and Dispatches have become jokes…not much more than Daily Mail level thinking on your telly.

Finance packages which hide how much the cars actually cost by making things so complicated people haven’t got a clue what they are signing up for.

Another +1 for buying a good quality Dell/Lenovo business class machine. If two motherboards have gone (even on cheap machines) you have either been very unlucky, or your doing something bad to them.

A big problem with lower grade PC’s is amount of junk installed when you buy them, which can cause problems and poor performance. With the business class machines, they come with less junk and sometimes a copy of the OS which allows the machine to be reinstalled cleanly.

I recently bought a new PC for use with my TV, and until all the junk was removed, it was unusable (that’s not overstating it). I don’t think you have problems like that with a Mac.

Although I can see some advantages with Apple, unless AppleCare covered 5 years, there is no way i’d consider one, they are just too expensive to risk having a brick after 3 years if something fails.

Nice set-up Lodious, are the three windows up the side for three bunks?

Yeah, triple decker. The kids love it a each bunk has it’s own light ;-)

Lodius – let me know how that van does with fuel. They look like they should be more economical than usual

The car is 2.2D (manual) and normally does c.38mpg. With the van it does c.28mpg, is that good or bad? I tend to do at 60 on the motorway, I think the economy is quite a bit better @50. If you slipstream a coach it does low 30’s.

What aftershave do you use bearnecessities…I need to get me some!

Edit: where has the picture gone?

Our plastic lovebox….

[/url]
IMAG0229[/url] by Lodious[/url], on Flickr

Every time I’ve looked into it, anything above 2K is just not worth insuring (c. £150 pa), but i’d like to be proved wrong?

Yes, remember the Uk winters, cold and wet and windy

Same goes for normal British summer too…the weather ain’t typical at the moment ;-)

Oh and nobody’s mentioned tipping yet. Now, there’s a bloody stealth tax.

It’s a PITA, I tipped 15% in a restaurant a few months ago and totally ignored (as in, would not serve me) the following night by the waitress.

If you have ever done a tax return in the US versus the UK you will understand that overall you pay significantly less tax in the US.

How much does your medical insurance cost? Quite a few people I love who could not afford medical insurance are alive today thanks to the NHS, which is a big deal.

As my account tells me, ‘You don’t mess with the VAT man’

That’s an old saying, they have been merged for quite a while, and I think IR have all the power the VAT people had, so technically you don’t mess with either :(

I wouldn’t normally recommend contacting the Revenue :-), but i’d send them a email, and ask them what flat rate your business would be on (it varies based on what you do). My accountant put me on a rubbish rate. Colleagues who did similar work to me got told by the revenue to go on a much lower rate and have evidence of the recommendation, so they are sorted. Made quite a difference.

Personally, I’d use a simple spreadsheet, rather than any bespoke accounting software.

I’ve just read the mumsnet thread…they don’t show the sensitivity like us bike types do they ;-)

Hey, there is a mammaTJ on that thread…is that where he’s gone?

I spoke to the kids neighbours last night, who are friends of ours (they have kids and have been getting fed up with him ringing the bell constantly). They confirmed their one of their kids was bitten by their dog, and there is now way we should let our kids into their house. The kids dad is OK, but his mum is a scumbag. They didn’t think there was any abuse or serious problems, apart from the mum not having any social skills.

It’s interesting that one of them overheard a conversation where my lad was apparently politely explaining he couldn’t come to the BBQ on Sunday, and the boy got aggressive and started calling my lad names. He then came round to me and said my lad was being horrible to him…at which point I relent and invite him to the BBQ.

I’m thinking politely limiting his time he can come round to maybe once a weeknight and once at the weekend, and seeing how that goes.

He’s 7, and I don’t think he’s left on his own (he has brothers and sisters I think)

but you could just log all the visits/doorbell rings on a bit of paper etc. and show the parents how much of an issue it has become

Talking to a neighbour about it tonight, I don’t think they would be particularly interested. Bit of a sad situation really.

He’s just called twice more…

No, I told him I was doing Lego with Dan (although Dan was playing by himself) and he said that he could do that with Dan, and could he speak to Dan to see if he wanted to play. :(

That wasn’t something I enjoyed. Told him Dan was busy, he was pretty persistent but he walked off in the end, looking a bit tearful. Not feeling massively great at this moment in time.

does your son have a really cool toy/activity/thing that they play with when he comes round?

We have a Wii, which is part of the problem.

Thanks for all the good advice. Tonight I have given him a small lego set to do, so when Liam calls my lad will be busy and unable to play.

Gives us a bit of breathing space.