Sounds like we have it easy. 1 bin for recycling which everything bar soft plastics can go in, another bin for all the other stuff. I assume they do the sorting elsewhere. Emptied every 2 weeks on an alternating basis.

Old next door neighbour was a special case though. He never put anything in his blue bin so would spend most of his time roaming the back lanes with a black bag in his hand hoping some poor sod had left their bin out because his was full.

Hit the limit of what I  was prepared to pay when we went to Foo Fighters in Manchester, that was £85 each and I didn’t actually really enjoy it anyway. I would have really liked to see The Mighty Mighty Bosstones live but they split up before I could make good on that.

As for Oasis, I was at the ticket selection stage for Murrayfield but Ticketmaster decided I was a bot and I got hoofed to the back of the queue. They can stick their £300 tickets up their mardy arses. BIL was looking at hospitality for Wembley – £1200 each with no food/drink included.

I can’t add anything that hasn’t already been said but I’ve been there and it’s a horrible state to be in. I was saved by being made redundant otherwise I would have just walked not long after. Badly run company, shite flowed downhill, none of the high ups had a clue and were more interested in lining their own pockets.

Take the time you need, concentrate on you for now and then start looking for other jobs.

My go to for car hire abroad is always Zest, only real exception has been the Canary Islands as Cicar is generally the best there.

Round Sunderland there’s a guy called Gary Sparkes, got his name all over his van. Obviously he’s a plasterer.

Then there’s Dave Knott – Milkman, who is actually a milkman.

Last of all there’s Belle Tents, this used to be on all their vehicles but I think they may have moved on/grown up a bit since then.

Date my Brickie

I used Carwow to sell the Dacia Jogger I had, used them as their guide price was around £1k more than motorway. The car had a broken rear light cluster which I’d clearly included on the photos.

First time it went through the dealer called saying they wanted to knock £850 off the price they’d put in because the light cluster was £350+VAT and it would take 6hrs labour to replace it. This was cobblers, I knew the light clusters was £175+VAT and could be changed in about 10 minutes. Told him to jog on. Relisted it and the dealer I’d originally bought it from paid £300 more than the other guy.

Anyone that listens to the now dead Collecting Cars podcast may be familiar with some of this drivel from the newest Aston Martin Vantage release. Below are just two examples but the whole website is littered with shite like this.

Forged to be the most infinitely fine. Vantage is defined by an all-new interior, brushed with flawless lines, exquisite materials, state-of-the-art connected technology and positioned perfectly for driver centricity. Leaving your ears, eyes and limbs stitched into the limit of comfort.

Punched with poise, darted in dynamism, Vantage meets its new lease of power with growling muscularity. A body destined to beat away force and drive deeply into your heart.

11 – left him for half an hour or so but he has a mobile so can call if needed. Depends on the child though, I reckon we could leave him sat in front of youtube for 3 days and he wouldn’t notice we were gone.

Buy one of these https://www.argos.co.uk/product/2533393

and something like this https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/garmin-edge-explore-cycling-gps-bike-computer/_/R-p-X8535222?mc=8535222

Gossip are very good if anyone is finding Coldplay a bit boring.

Avoid Wickes or B&Q, they sell crap and if it ever breaks you’ll be replacing the whole thing. I’d avoid the online places for the same reason, unless you’re buying branded products. As mentioned above go to an independent plumbers merchant and buy from there. There’s also quite a lot of independent bathroom showrooms about that will do supply & fit using their own guys, as it’s their reputation on the line you’ll get better installers than you do from Wickes etc.

I’ve recently been speaking to these guys due to work https://atlasbathrooms.co.uk/ – they have a branch in Huddersfield

Cold fried egg.

gag.

FTFY.

Salad, cold not hot. Specifically the salad that comes with an indian takeaway. Made hours earlier, thrown in a small white plastic bag, then heated to just above warm by the surrounding containers of molten curry lava.

Does Conservative HQ have a duck pond and what’s security like around it?

They’re that backwards it’s probably a ducking pond. I bet it has a stool with Angela Rayner’s name on it.

For SciFi, I enjoyed Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

I’ve just finished this and it’s very enjoyable. The Martian is also a good read. On recommendation from someone on the other books thread I’ve started reading Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde which so far is pretty good.

Another vote for Bill Bryson. Also if you want proper brain out action grab a few of the Dirk Pitt books by Clive Cussler, they all follow the same formula but they keep your brain busy. (I wrote this but didn’t hit submit so I see people got there before me on the Dirk Pitt thing).

Most recently I read Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds. Bought because my Waterstones points were about to expire and I love the Revelation Space books. It was good but it just didn’t draw me in like the RS books did, it may be because it took me forever to actually finish reading it so I did have to go back and re-read sections so I knew what was going on.

I have some of the Thursday Murder books to be getting on with for now, read the first one ages ago so might start there.

Porsche also do a line of ebikes for those which have more money than sense.

Not a patch on the ones they made in the 90s though https://collectingcars.com/for-sale/porsche-bike-fs-evolution

Another vote for using Zest. Their additional coverage saved me a £500 bill from Goldcar for a non-existent scratch that they found 3 days after dropping the car off. I’ve used Centauro and RecordGo through Zest quite a few times at Alicante and Malaga and never had any issues with either of them.

Boats, how can that many tons of steel float on water?

Archimedes principle innit.

The landing of toast on the floor butter side down, its a tragedy.

This is why you should always fix your toast to a cat. It’ll never land, just spin endlessly just above the ground.

I haven’t sampled an Octavia but for your budget I’d buy a Superb, because bigger is better right? And you could get a 280bhp 4×4 one which would be faster than the vRS.

Those are hideous. I like them.

I do 7s like that, I’m not German but my Grandma was, my writing just evolved that way.

Also I’ll join the even numbers brigade. The boy put the tv on thirteen the other day, I nearly throttled him. New car doesn’t have a numerical scale for volume which I find massively annoying as I can’t find a sweet spot without trying to remember the number of button presses.

Only had half an hour due to back to back meetings all day. Threw some chips in the air fryer and grated half a block of chipotle chilli cheese on top of them. Mullerlight yoghurt for dessert, got to watch the calories.

We live on a main road so get quite a few. They usually fall into two camps.

There’s the 1 litre Fiesta/Corsa gang with the cheapest aftermarket exhaust available that sounds like a fart through a straw. Usually completely standard with the addition of some local facebook “car club” stickers on the boot.

Then you have the RS3/Golf R guys, and it’s inevitably always these two specific cars, they have a pop & bang map so they can DSG trombone up and down the road and scare the local wildlife/grannies. If it’s an RS3 it will be Nardo Grey, if it’s a Golf it will have had the wheels painted gold.

Everyone else seemingly drives an SUV of varying sizes. As it’s Sunderland Jukes and Qashqais are the go to option.

I used Palicomp when the boy wanted a cheap gaming pc. Decent service and backup when a couple of things went wrong.

I was reading about him in the Guinness Book of World Records a week or so ago. The headline is a bit deceptive saying his spent his life in an iron lung though.

Sales Engineer for a software company. No sales or software qualifications but I did work in the industry we sell into for 14 years.

Nothing beyond a-level because I spent most of my student loans at uni on herbal cigarettes and cans of Carlsberg Export.

Picked this up on Saturday. It’s very nice. Already done a drive down to Reading and back which is juts shy of 600 miles. Managed to get 47mpg out of it cruising along the motorway, dropped a bit though when I decided to “make progress”. The Dacia got picked up today, I’ll not really miss that car.

I built a 12ft x 8ft shed from these people for my dad. Pretty solid but I wouldn’t say it’s going to prevent a determined wrong un with a desire for what lays inside.

Haas looking to follow the same as last year. Out the blocks with fast quali pace, maybe grab a few P10s, then it all goes to pot after the halfway point of the season

I’m assuming, and I probably need to check this, that if it breaks in the first couple of years at least, the installer will be the one who has to come back and identify the fault. They may get paid by the supplier to do that, I don’t know.

They shouldn’t be charging extra for this. Warranty is covered by the manufacturer, if they are the local appointed service agent for that manufacturer they’ll get paid for call outs. If it’s not them then they send whoever their local guy is or one of their own engineers.

Mini S24 is a system boiler so I guess you’ve got a hot water cylinder somewhere. 24kw is fairly big for a system boiler, usually they come in around 15-18kw. Even then £2k for the boiler, flue, & filter is steep unless they are fittings a Worcester with a 10 year warranty but I’d not expect £2k in labour for a straight swap.

Boiler prices have gone up a lot over the past couple of years though, and some manufacturers are passing on the government CHMM fine they are expecting to pay to the tune of around £150 a boiler.

What is coming out? Is it a combi to combi swap or are you taking out a heat only boiler & cylinder for a combi? What boiler are they fitting? Is it horizontal flue or vertical? So many variables. LPG may make it a bit more expensive but from memory LPG boilers were only around 50 quid more than NG ones, or the conversion kit cost that much.

I’ve just (yesterday) had a Nat Gas combi fitted along with a magnetic filter and 9 TRVs for £2300. That was a combi out combi in, minor pipework changes below the boiler. Boiler was a Main Eco Compact 30kw for reference and I’m in the North East.

A quick google of caffeine withdrawal symptoms suggests headaches is a common one and that it can continue for about a week. Maybe try and cut it out more slowly to reduce the effects?

Typed this while drinking coffee :D

It’s a fast EV SUV – I still prefer my cars to be car shaped, i.e. not massive just because ‘it’s what consumers want’. In reality the car companies sell them because they have higher margins. Anyway, that’s my tuppence.

Going back to the fast diesel estate theme, I’ve just put a deposit on a F10 BMW 535d. 309bhp, 0-60 in 5.5s.

Carwow or Motorway should get you better prices than WBAC. You’re effectively selling direct to the dealer. You need to be upfront with any issues or scratches/dents/damage. A friend didn’t have an issue selling his A4 Avant but I put mine on last week then got a call saying they needed to knock £800 off to replace a £200 cracked light cluster.

The ‘estate tax’ on the 3 series is quite big

I’m seeing the same thing on older (F10/11) 5-series as well but only by about £500-1000 on a £10k budget. Availability will be the main thing I think, twice the amount of saloons to estates in the range I am looking at. I did look at W212 E220CDi Estates but they’re bit minging and the interior is nowhere near as nice.

Whistlin’ diesel larking about

That bloke is a purebred arsehole. I’d rather poke my eyes out than watch some of the absolute shite he puts out.

Used Habito the last time but actually ended up with First Direct for the mortgage as they offered a better rate and don’t deal with brokers.