Printers these days are more disposable than the cartridges. If the printer is bothering you just junk it and get another. I had a lot of photo printing to do last week and figured that it was better value to buy decent cartridges and a new printer to fit than keep buying cartridges for the printer I had, the waste of having to junk 3-colour units because one colour had run out was really bugging me.

So I went to a place that sells cartridges and (but not printers) and asked them which ones are the best value, bought those then got a printer to suit.

Seatbelt warning bleep thingy!!! It annoys the hell out of me.

I've hired cars (peugoets) that do that if you have a bag or similar on the passenger seat

Can't remember how he got it sorted in the end, I just remember him getting quite animated about how much traffic suddenly wanted to drive up and down the quite cul de sac he lived in once he'd blocked it (it was rush hour).

I had to help out some poor woman in a filling station who had left her keys in the ignition while she filled up. She had this super excitable barky dog that had hit the central locking button while jumping about. The sun roof was open though so I had to try and clamber in through the roof and rescue the keys with her bloody dog chewing my ear (affectionately)

I was fixingan ingntion problem on my car. Keyes in engine running all fixed close bonnet and wurrr clunk.

All 4 doors locked.

cue lots of swearing

Same thing happened to a friend of mine, backed out of his house, jumped out of the car to close the gate, slams the door, all the doors lock and he's left with his car sitting across both lanes of the road, locked, with the engine running and his house keys and phone on the passenger seat.

If you are self employed then in time the various encounters you make through work are where your friendships come from, pretty much my whole social circle is made up of people I've worked with or people I've worked for.

I like 6 music, but if you listen to it a lot the playlist does seem pretty short.

It has its moments, some of which are very good moments (I was listening at the weekend to an old episode where he was lamenting that you don't get any light hearted local news stories these days "You know, like a kitten with a flagpole stuck up it"). But for me it lacks flow and I sometimes find I'm not really listening anymore.

That has to have been the worst customer service experience of my life.

Until this time next year when you decide to leave, but every time you ask for your MAC codes you're told "sorry all our systems are down, you'll need to call back later"

I went through exactly the same story as yours exactly a year ago – same lies, our order quite miraculously seemed to be registered several days after the connection date too, despite giving them more than 6 weeks notice of the move. Been counting the days to get shot of them ever since

Commentating on rugby matches on a muddy must have been fun in the 70s, with real indication of what colour strip or number was being worn by the players.

In truth though there are just more things that people/children/families might do with their spare time now than there used to be, so there will be lots of things that fewer people do now than in the past.

When this little survey was being done I expect most of the people they questioned were speculating about why other parents don't go into the countryside rather than why they themselves don't which is why all the tabloid fears are voiced. Unless you spend a lot of time with people, interviewing them about a subject will just result in them projecting what they imagine to be other people's views, it takes much longer to find out what people really do/think themselves.

Our family used to spend a lot of time in the outdoors when I was a kid, but then what else was there to do on a sunday for instance. And the reference to people today not being able to read a 1:25000 map – who used a map back then? We never did.

If you have a reserve and tell people what the reserve is then thats just the same as setting the starting price as the lowest price you'll accept, so why not just to that? When I'm bidding and sensible bids are being made and the reserve is still not being met I just look elsewhere, it tells me that the bidder doesn't actually want to sell.

When selling I never bother with reserves, but I also don't do 99p starting prices if it would do me harm for an item to sell too cheaply. You need two serious people bidding to get a good price, if you've only got one then your stuffed. I've never had a problem with items with a reasonable starting price either not selling, or them not being fought over, just be sure that the price is the very least you can afford to let it go for and people will bid it up higher than if you set the start too high.

Ah the Bristol Scale, surely one of britain's finest medical and scientific achievements. (although I still reckon its possible to score an 8)

EDIT: that 'score and 8 – [close brakets]' not score as smiley

but sometimes they do get it right

, except that, as you said, they just printed word for word what was handed to them by a PR company.

There is a link, but I'm not sure what the mechanism is.

Although its for totally bunk reasons (I suspect) those health farm / spa places pump coffee up your butt while giving you an enema. With enemas like that who needs friends?

There will be software out there that does it "Spin Doctor" for the Mac, part of the Toast bundles will do it, it also makes a reasonable stab at spotting the tracks so you can sometime input a whole album without ending up with one big slab of music. If you've got a MIC input on the computer you don't need any special harware. The decks you get in Maplin and PC world differ only in that they plug in via USB rather than the mic input.

country parks and farms that catered for families.

So families favour venues that cater for families. Wowsers

You might find the hirer's standard literature states you can't take the vehicle abroad, but you usually if you talk to them about it its fine.

Depends on where you were – somewhere theres plenty of CCTV? The culprits are probably smart enough to have chosen a spot off camera for the actual deed, but if you can give a decent description chances are there are other victims and other reports from the same night and the culprits might be identifiable en route between muggings or their MO might give them away if they've got previous.

Where is the gas tank situated, inside or outside? Back in the dark ages when caravan sites didn't have elec hook ups even for statics we used to have gas mantles to light our old static caravan in the lakes. We'd get the same problem with the bottle freezing in winter and the pressure dropping. Our solution was to piss on the tank, the heat from the piss was enough for the lights to burn brighter and we'd get enough pressure to run the stove and boil a kettle, so we'd spend the evening chugging gallons of tea and taking turns to piss on the gas tank.

You'll be lucky to find a double cab to hire though, except as a tipper

Do all four of you need to travel in the van? You're going to be struggling to hire something with seating for more than 3, and don't even think about chucking someone loose in the back. You could get a people carrier and take some seats out, but they are much more spendy. It might be cheaper to hire two berlingo-size vans, than one people carrier. But if you do that you might as well use your own cars.

Thought it was going to be easier than that!

It is easier than that – claim on your car insurance.

Britain isn't a democracy – it's a mediocracy

Its a mediacracy, in reality we've no idea as to whether we have a government that is succeeding or failing in any issue, or whether any policy would succeed or fail in addressing an issue if any party did it there way. We don't even no if the issue is really an issue, we just have the newspaper headlines saying "IT JUST GOT WORSE!"

To have democracy you need voters to make an informed choice, but theres so much bullshit in the air we wouldn't know information if it stuck its arse in our face, voters vote on the strength of vague hunches.

I'm resolved not to factor

blessed be the STW

To be honest TJ, the time it takes them to pay isn't (often) out of line, but its still time, whether its a small amount of time or a large amount of time doesn't matter. The presumption with public sector clients is that the supplier will provide goods on credit, regardless of whether the supplier is offering credit or not. Its funny how many public sector organisations I've worked with who find themselves blacklisted by their regular suppliers not because they don't pay/pay very late, but because they pay within their own terms rather than within the terms their suppliers offer.

Because the nature of my work is very diverse I'm almost always sourcing services and materials on a once-only basis, so I'm having to get my supplies on a cash basis, but provide my service on a credit basis, so for 30 days from invoice plus the time between me buying things, doing things to them and delivering them I'm a bit cash poor, if the jobs bigger than usual, or if two or three jobs are running in parallel then it gets a bit sketchy, as they are now with three jobs all kicking off at the same time, to be delivered at the same time and all quite spendy.

If its a second car then sensibleness is less of an issue, when I had my MG it was my only car, it was perfectly reliable and practical in most senses (apart from being the coldest environment on earth for 8 months of the year) but the time spares took to arrive, even though they were really cheap, could make routine servicing and repairs an expensive burden sometimes.

I still don't see tax as being much of a burden, even at the current high levels its still an insignificantly small part of the cost of running a car, its just a lot to spring for in one go.

Thanks for the input everybody (I rudely posed a question then realised I was supposed to be 30 miles away so had to rush out)

Clients getting rattled by the factors isn't a huge issue as its mostly big public sector clients I work for, the individual contracting me and the individual getting it in the neck over payments probably never know or meet each other. I suffer from unnessasary delays in payment, usually due to the individual contracting me not having a clue how to put payments into action so the invoice just sits in their in-tray for weeks. Particularly annoying as they've usually contacted me too late on a highly time pressured job and I've turned myself inside out in order to deliver it, they seem to be less adrenalin-driven to figure out how to process the payment though. But I never have a problem with non-payment.

Only factor if you absolutely, really, can't live without, have to.

Whats your experience MF? And what alternatives?

s'like Paris or Brooklyn, innit? Named after the place of conception, given that both parents do wildlife photography and camerawork for al iving

I pity any child conceived in Ecclefechan if thats the case 😀

It looks like they are delivering a waxwork model of the Russian Curlerist

Ahh, the sound of Sunday evenings in my childhood.

You were watching Heidi? 🙂

Practical Classics mag (I think) has a section where it gives a mini review of each make and model of old cars giving you a typical cost, performance, economy, but more importantly availability of mechanicals and bodywork.

MGs and Aircooled VWs have just about every nut and bolt available, remanufactured or improved, so some of the imconviences of older cars can be ironed out (and probably will have been by previous owners), with others though you might struggle to keep the car on the road routinely if you are constantly on the hunt for spares and service items.

The main issue with anything 30 years old, or even 10 years old…. have you looked at new cars recently? Go into say a Peugeot a show room and open all the doors on one of their cars, look at the thickness of the sills, and pillars, the big triangulated braces around the bases of the doors. New cars are tanks, heavy and rock solid, now look at all the pics that have been posted, with their lovely slender pillars and panoramic glass. That golf will weigh as much as any car it passes on the roads today. These days in an old car you are the crumple zone.

I used to drive an old MG, and it is great fun, the savings in tax and insurance though are insignificant, if you are driving daily then although parts and servicing can be cheap, the wait to get stuff, usually by mail order, means you can be off the road for a week or more for work that would be an afternoon with something more contemporary. I don't own a car at the moment, but if I was to buy one self preservation would lead me to the newest car my money can buy, not the oldest.

I was reading somewhere that most of the most cars racing in things like the Indy Car series in the states are british built

In fact I was reading that in julianwilson's post 😛

We're still a fairly major hub for the art world. Tate Modern is arguably the most successful art museum in the world

Most of the the major players behind the scenes in Hollywood, on the technical / craft side are british, infact most of them started out working on thunderbirds. And of course all of the baddies are british too.

We're also a big deal in motor racing in terms of the design and manufacture, I was reading somewhere that most of the most cars racing in things like the Indy Car series in the states are british built (regardless of who's badge is on them), as are almost all of the engines. Subaru's rally cars are/were british too.

We have the kind of culture that creates very successful architects, but not the kind of culture that patronises them which is why our UK architects keep winning plaudits for buildings they built in Germany 🙂

The BBC has set the bar in broadcasting and no other broadcasters anywhere can come close, and never have and probably never will.

The NHS, and particularly the NHS right now is phenomenal. Absolutely sparklingly bullseye fricking brilliant. Myself and pretty much everyone close to me have had to patronise our local hospitals in the last 12 months, and the conclusion we all share is that hospitals are better beyond recognition than the last time any of us needed treatment. If you've not been sick or injured in the last 10 years I'd recommend you contract the plague or chuck yourself down a flight of stairs so that you can go check out your local hospital. Right now they are ace, ripe for being run back into the ground again from June no doubt.

If your lad can get his hands on a copy the Economic and Social Research Council publish a magazine called 'Britain in 2010' (or Britain in 2009 if you pick up last years copy), its a fascinating publication in that it takes the issues that are kicked around in politics or the press (or the pub) – health, crime, sustainability, immigration and so on and presents them without political or populist baggage (or Jeremy Vine). In doing so it reveals alot of the perception gaps we have, which contribute to your sense of 'other places seeming to do it better'.

look up your local councils website, they'll tell you what they recycle, divide your stuff up into those groups of things, it'll take 10 minutes.

Pikmin

Are chips a whole food group anyway?!?!?

They are part of the food group "….and chips"

Who needs to make an effort to sell chips anyway? Its like trying to persuade people to breath.

Theres money in it for the the Potato Council who hand ready made articles to the press to print out, allowing them to circumvent advertising and food labelling legislation. You can't make a health claim in an advert or on a food label without it being verifiable. But you can make any claim you like under the guise of 'news'. Which is why food labels and adverts will tell you that a product is an excellent source of Antioxidants but stop short of making any claim as to what antioxidants might do for you. Maybe they'll kill you, who knows, but they'll do it 'excellently". You pay for the advert, then hand the paper a 'news' article to print next to it, making any claim you like.

Theres a suggestion that the bullshit factory that used to make up the science/health stories in the Daily Mail now run things at the Daily Telegraph. But that clearly can't be the case, I mean read that, its quality journalism from a respected broadsheet, giving us information about chips that may very well save out lives. 🙂

Apparently if you feed your children chips they won't get cancer from the MMR jab. And drinking red wine will stop us from getting global warming on our balls.

Theres a reason why people on here post links to stories in the Mail and Telegraph every bloody day. Its because the Mail and Telegraph want you to post links to their stories here every bloody day. Whether you buy the paper, whether you think the story its laughable, or genuinely informative, or controversial. They only want you to cut and paste the link. The story, even if there is the hint of one, is completely secondary to that. And everybody posts the links. Hooray

Its a bit too Veruschka/Peter Beard/The 1980's for me, but without tits.

I'm not sure if its still there, but the National Museums of Scotland had a part of its natural history display that explained the taxidermy process. They did is using a cat, so every stage of dismembering a cat, and putting it back together was shown step by step. For some reason that seemed more gruesome that using a golden eagle, a sloth, or a whistling chuff.

So anyway, while there may be more than one way to skin a cat, there is authoritatively only one way to do it properly !