I went to cross a road recently and my GF grabbed me and pulled me back, same situation as the OP but the kid was on her own, patiently waiting for the lights to change. Quite a risky stretch of road, but also quite sporadic traffic and a long phase for the pedestrian signal. tempting to just nip across. I hadn't even noticed the wee girl there, but then I don't really notice people at all usually. So we both waited too. Felt a little bit daft doing it, but I'm sure the wee girl felt daft waiting too, she was right to do it though. And I'm glad I did and would make a point of doing so now too.

Its no good saying the responsibility lies with the parents then undoing their hard work. We should all be parents, whether we have children or not.

We did some filming on an estate in Edinburgh a few years back and we got adopted by an old lady who would bring us flasks and biscuits. She was reminising on how there was a time when children, any children, would call her "Aunty" and responsibility for children lay with everybody. Now we just blame everybody.

Get them to check if they are still holding an old address for you, they've moved their cover over to AXA (from More Than, I think) and in the move it seems some records got a bit borked.

We got a high renewal quote but it turned out that the system was assuming we occupied both our current and previous property, so was quoting for cover for the both of them combined.

Skip hire companies?? Erm, don't they charge a hefty sum for provision of a skip and subsequent disposal (including landfill tax).

Yes they charge it, but there are (shady) operators who don't want to pay it out again. With most skip hire all you are really paying for is delivery of the skip, collection of the skip and the tax, unless you are able sort your waste into recyclable loads like timber or rubble, in which case pay for delivery and collection and nothing else.

I was on the hunt for a factory unit to hire last year, went to view a place in renfrewshire. Over the weekend the lock on the gates had been cut, when I turned up with the agent on the monday there were mountains of flytipped building and demolition waste. There must have been 40cu.yd skips being emptied being emptied there day and night.

Vivaros are actually a fair bit smaller than a transit. Depends what you actually want to do with it though as to whether the difference in size matters. For me its the difference between useful and useless.

Vans get driven by van drivers and are treated like vans. Other people treat them like vans too, lean crap against them, bump into them etc. They show their years more than cars do, but a van can be scruffy looking and well looked after. Its up to you to guess where the threshold between scruffy and knackered is. Aside from the regular test drive check every door, handle, lock, button dingledongle and knickknack. Check everything works,moves and adjusts. Thats where difference between used and abused will show up. Transits have fancy central locking and no key holes on most of the doors, so making sure everything is in order in that respect is pretty important. Try and gauge what a van has been carrying, if its full of sand and cement dust then its probably spend most if its life doing short journeys overloaded with building materials. I chose mine (a sprinter) because it had been used as a parts chaser for a dealership – long miles with light loads, loaded and carried carefully. Low milage isn't always a virtue, but a van that been owned and driven by one person (rather than ex-fleet or ex-hire) might be

Most people who buy transits new only keep them for the duration of the warrantee then ditch them, The market is usually awash with 3 year old transits.

Transits have a bit a poor rep with flywheels, effecting all but the very lowest power/spec model. I think with Vivaros gearboxes are an issue.

With transits there are an absolute gazzillion to choose from, decide the spec you want (there us a huge range of sizes, engines, payloads, even front and rear wheel drive options) and keep looking til you find one that has the history you're happy with

Does that mean the systems working(ish)?!

Only if people are aware that things could come back to bite them. Theres sufficient evidence above that many aren't

it is good to see construction companies taking corporate responsibility for their waste

its probably more selfish than selfless. If the waste contractor were to get busted for illegal dumping then so would you, whether you knew they were fly tipping it or not.

Not a pancake, but my earliest memory if of a bang, a piece pressure cooker impacted in the ceiling and stewed rhubarb raining down.

¿u?op ?p?sdn do?d?1 ??? bu?u?n? p???? no? ????

Greenflag can be competative if you have more than one car / driver in the household – they have a more complicated pricing structure, more like getting insurance cover, which can work out better value

To be honest I've been with AA, RAC, Greenflag and others that I forget, the quality of service is just a down to your luck on the day really, regardless of who you are with.

just stir raspberries into the batter

Emperor Pancakes from Mrs "First catch your rabbit" Beetons Cookbook. Separate the eggs and whisk the whites then fold them gently into the mixture so that you get thick, fluffy loveliness.

I would suspect apart from regular littering that most flytipping is by people paid to take people's rubbish away (tradesmen, skip hire co's) rather than average joes dumping their own rubbish. If people have the means to put the crap in a car they might as well got to the tip, for free, and dump it there, it takes less effort an imagination. Anybody disposing of other people's waste for them has to pay to get rid of it, they're the ones who have a financial incentive to dump it illegally.

As above the best people to call with fly tipped stuff is the council. My dad came across a pile of dumped plumbing scrap at a local nature reserve. Amongst it was an invoice. He called the council and someone was round like a shot. They traced the plumber who claimed he'd recently sold his van and that it was full of crap so the person that bought it must have dumped it. The council guy said thanks, then prosecuted the two of them.

My most recent weird find was a giant cuddly bunny.

As a youngster a friend of mine happened across a neatly folded pile of clothes, and a short distance away gentleman in basque, suspenders and high heals enjoying his own company. So he did what any right thinking young chap would do- nicked the clothes.

seem to think that Mr Fry just knows all this stuff off the top of his head

He's presenting a TV show, just presenting the questions and answers. However unlike some other presenters he also understands and is interested in the things he's presenting. Thats whats enjoyable. Most presenters and 'personalities' aren't even listening to what they are saying let alone thinking about it, as Chris Morris very ably demonstrated in Brass Eye.

This current season of QI seemed to get off to a pretty shaky start, a distinct lack of spark in the first few episodes but its picked up momentum now.

Find someone who needs to repatriate a corpse to Oz, roll the corpse up in the carpet and go halves on the shipping.

They are indirectly theiving from the skip firms.

Nothing of retail value is likely to get past the skip truck drivers, they'll hive it all off before they get the skip back to base. Then when you hire a skip the driver will regale you with stories of all the crazy things people throw away and how much they sold them for. Unless you can fain a heart attack or an alien abduction these stories never reach a conclusion.

Not so much a skip find as a catching-it-before-it-hits-the-skip: An edinburgh police box. Rarer than rare as the remaining ones on the streets in edinburgh are iron, my ones wooden and the same pattern as the iron ones but more finely detailed. Possibly the only remaining example of its type in the world.

And I'm buggered if I know what to do with it.

thomas 'barspin' edison

Thats a film by Edison, Edison isn't the rider.

I remember the accelerator sticking in my Polo

so not just me then.

perfect, Magnum, the font of choice for 8ft plywood typography made with a router compass. and cheers for the heads up on the myfonts Mrs D

Hockney is an artist, he's really quite rich and enjoys the lifestyle and good health that accompanies wealth, regardless of bad habits. He also says things that are quite fanciful.

Not a bad start – its the straight horizontals and verticals (no diagonals) and simple radius corners that are important. The soft soul is a bit too Data70 though

I think you have to avoid giving any one product undue prominence, but in some cases its unavoidable if one product dominates the market. Its difficult to talk about online auctions without speaking only about eBay for instance.

Facebok/twitter/youtube are 'channels' rather than products. Although they may generate advertising revenue the Beeb isn't necessarily selling their service just pointing the existing service users towards content. And non of the beeb's users need to pay to either join theses sights or access content. With youtube the more people who upload and view video the more money google looses so having one of the largest broadcasters in the world pointing to their content is probably doing google more harm than good.

Instead of spilling claret is there maybe some way of embarrassing your hands? Make them blush somehow?

Save up all the money you would have spent of tabs and buy some smack.

If you've been with your current mobile provider for a while try giving them a call. I have my phone with T mobile and my dongle with vodafone but recently T Mobile have been calling up offering me a third off to bring my broadband over to them.

What limit have I reached?

I think with paypal once you've made transactions up to a certain cumulative value you need to take greater steps to formalise the account. Probably an anti-money laundering thing.

guess how much it'll cost to get rid of it again

Surely if you screw up the same thing happens as if you were a salaried employee: You get promoted to somewhere where you can only cause offense instead of do any real harm.

Thats what they mean by 'being your own boss' isn't it? You get promoted to 'boss'

Please tell me thats true otherwise I'm f*cked.

AgentOrange – Member
HEREPolice Auctions.

Don't make the mistake of giving Wilsons Auctions your email address, they have no concept of "UNSUBSCRIBE"

You might be able to get Misfits on 4OD. Sounds like the worst possible synopsis but a very good (and sexy, and sweary) comedy drama.

We Need Answers (BBC4) is good too, like watching an edinburgh fringe show on your telly.

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe / Newswipe / Gameswipe are all worth a watch too

How about the tagline "You can watch while I screw"?

Am I likely to find these are just mainly Tesco & Asda 'Specials' ?

99.995% yes. The odd entry level big brand bike and if theres anything better then that would be a surprise. There being enough good bikes to choose from to find something you want and in your size is unlikely. No reason not to look, but I'd get hold of a catalogue first rather than just turn up. The catalogue probably won't have any info on sizing though.

If you do find something you want you only need one other person in the room who knows what it is and wants it and its not a bargain. And given we're discussing this on a very popular cycling forum…….

Its head on collisions rather than rolls where stuff flies about. Even with a big ply bulkhead behind me I've been pushed into my seatbelt by stuff in the back of my van and not under particularly heavy breaking either

slams brakes, hears a whoooooooooooooooooooosh BANG!

I've seen a truck on the hard shoulder with a big inch thick piece of plate steel sticking out the front out the front of the cab at about driver's knee height. The truck didn't seem to have hit anything else so just the trucks brakes had propelled the steel through the bulkhead and cab. So don't carry boiler plate in the back of your car, or if you do drive with your feet up on the dash 🙂

Its a pretty sensible concern, but the parcel shelves in hatchbacks aren't much better, and stringy nets attached to plastic clips aren't going to do much either. In a real shunt anything is going to come through. Heavy items will just go straight through the seats.

The crash test item fifth gear did about loose items in cars, even just shopping, was quite revealing. Although it seems to be the only one of their crash tests thats not up on Youtube

A friend of mine crashed with a boot full of crockery and cutlery once. He was buried in the stuff when the fire brigade cut him out.

Men, shave (your legs) and drink beer. Because you're already brilliant.

I've now learned that manonsoul is a Glasgow resident too

and from that learned that he is an Ape

When I lived in the highlands you'd just have to leave something of yours, like your license and just take the car for an hour or so.

I knew a guy there, who to be frank was a long way down a spiral into madness and eventually suicide. He was the last person I would have handed a set of car keys too and yet he was able to use frequent test drives of Audi A8's as free taxis around the whole of the north of scotland.

I've used national for MOT's and associated works and found them OK. They're better than Kwickfit for that kind of chain-store model of garage, better service with more advice and less sales-pitch. For some work I use them simply because I drive a hightop van with a roofrack and one of the glasgow branches happens to have enough roofspace to get it up off the ground. There are other garages I use in preference but only because I'm a snob. I guess not every owner of 10 year old vans uses an independent Rolls Royce specialist for servicing.

Except mebbe Bobby Charlton & his brother wotsisname.

Heston