Haven't you heard? Its all about Fish Flu now

Well there might have been a pedestrian in the middle of it all, or perhaps another vehicle involved in the accident left the scene. But maybe just the stories of the people involves aren't matching up, or quite strong accusation is being made. It could be a simple as trying to confirm which of the occupants was actually driving. Perhaps the pissed owner of the car is claiming that his sober passenger was at the wheel.

I'm not sure if it might be the reason the UK ones are disabled but……

While people wander around while the car is filling they can build up a bit of static, so in the same way that you get can a bit of a jolt as you grab the car door, they get a little static spark as they grab the pump handle. I've seen US cctv footage of this igniting the vapour from the fuel tank

boooph

Try the websites for the airports themselves they'll have a list of all the destinations they connect to and the airlines that fly them. Prob best to work backwards – go to Edinburgh Airport's website and see who is flying to the various London airports.

Settled with M&S in the end. The renewal they were quoting at first seemed really quite high, which is why as was shopping around, but it turns out they had mistakenly quoted as if I was living in, and insuring both my current and previous address. Just a slip up with the transfer of records to AXA as the move was in the last few months. So the premium dropped from 430 and 230 for Premium Contents and away from home cover. Wasn't getting quotes/cover that was any better from any of the others, if fact its less than I was paying for cycle insurance alone not so long ago, and its not like my bikes are super pimp, so staying put.

Cancels plans to insulate loft with carbon nanotubes 🙂

I used to have a thompson freeview/ top up TV one but had to switch to a Humax freesat when I moved house as the the terrestrial signal wasn't good enough for freeview.

The Thompson had the better programme guide – 2 weeks rather than one, more intuitive to use too. Its only downside was that it was unreliable beyond all imagining. Just about any action would cause it to freeze, lock up. It would fail to delete, fail to record, create fantom recordings that were 23hrs long. Utter utter garbage.

Yours for absolutely no money of you want it, or I can throw a rock at you, not sure which would be kindest.

The Humax interface is a bit more of a fiddle, easy to forget how to do certain things almost as soon as you've worked out how to do them. But….. utterly rock solid reliability. Flawless

To my mind fibreglass insulation is less dangerous than dust masks that don't work.

The disposable dust masks I use cost £15 a pop. And they work. Preferable to a box of 50 for a fiver (the same ones you'll get of B&Q for a couple of quid each) that don't work.

put the nut in a vice and turn the car

don't forget to put the handbrake on though, or its a waste of time

Had a Nathan Barley moment

Or perhaps they've discovered that the network is gay and are going to tell it's mum and dad!!!

The network's parents will have to pretend to be surprised

Nice. I'll give it a shot

Microsoft, hellbent on tackling the conspicuous lack of word-of-mouth recommendation, is encouraging people – real people – to host "Windows 7 launch parties"

I bet apple will be partying. Apparently every time windows launches a new OS, Mac sales surge.

No mail G_S perhaps I over obscured my address thats an INFO at the start and a CO.UK at the end. 3LA in the middle.

Either that or my junk filter is acting up

Big LOLs at Ian Munro/ Whoppit

I've been weeing in the petrol tank of my car for the same reason. It goes like stink

Yes please

i nfo at 3LA dot cock

The Bad Science book above does make interesting reading. Dismissing homeopathy because of the placebo effect is one thing, but homeopathy reveals something quite interesting about placebos.

Placebos are more effective if both the patient and doctor believe that a real drug is being administered. Big fake pills work better than small one, colourful pill work better, injections work better still. But both the doctor and the patient need to believe in it. But only if the doctor isn't lying, they have to be convinced themselves that they are giving a genuine treatment. That said the large proportion treatments available on the NHS (ie of the range available, not the ones most commonly used) are unproven.

Placebos still aren't a patch on the drugs themselves, but the placebo and it use (or homeopathy or anything else) show that the emotional commitment made by both the treater and the treated have some role to play in recovery. That said some ailments – pain, bloating, feeling a bit blaahhh can be pretty subjective in their reporting (compared to dying) so faith may be a big part of how someone reports their improvements. What placebos reveal is that care is as much a part of treatment as chemicals

Homeopathic ER

Blazing new trails with my internet machette

Don't get me started on my cheap taiwanese knock-off bladder

Waiting on the phone for 3 hours trying to make arrangements for the twisted remains of my car to be towed away after an astonishingly brutal but fruitless theft attempt. It was like the Hulk had tried to steel it. It was unsecurable and undrivable

It was the morning of New Years Day 2000, possibly the most universally observed day off in living memory and I was sat listening to a recording of 'Come on and rescue me' by Aretha Franklin that looped every 30 seconds.

It tends to happen just as the warrantee runs out. Shocking, nothings built to last these days. Except ear hair.

What I like about M&S is the non-specificness of the cover, i'm interested because I want to cover the bikes but I don't like all the niggly exclusions you get with bike specific cover – only locks from the approved list, only secured in a certain way, at a certain time. Some cycle specific cover is no reassurance at all. But I've also had the bike covered by home contents providers (specifically covered as bikes) only to find out they were only covered while they were in the house!

Interesting that ING have exactly the same online form for quotes – going to have a dabble and see what they're offering

If there are other people that could do it, there might be ways of sharing the saturdays about. I used to work at a place where myself and a colleugue had to do alternate saturdays. Same deal as yourself, it hardly needed doing but basically there needed to be one extra person in the building so that the the front of house staff could take tea and lunch breaks. So i was there all day so that I could do two 15 minute and one 1 hour stint of failing to operate the phone system and arsing up the til.

Nominally it was useful to have office time to catch up and review work or do other housekeeping, but it never seemed to work very well like that.

Anyway I got a similar overtime/odd hours incentive, and a day off in lieu during the week, as did my opposite number. We tended to use these as long weekends – so we'd both take one saturday shift and one three day weekend.

If you are only working 3 out of 4 sats at the moment someone is presumably covering the 4th, so maybe you could work out some sort of share with them.

Direct Line used to do my GF's car insurance and their behaviour was indefencible

But is their house insurance deal comparable to M&S?

The £4k item limit across the board (no specific arrangements to make for bikes, laptops etc) for instance? and applying they 4k to items away from the home too?

I found vast swathes of police transcripts of interviews, naming the suspects (supported by their bank statements and other personal documentation) going into quite a lot of detail about their case and naming the officer interviewing. Reams of them. They were in some second hand filing cabinets we'd hired from a prop house. We thought they were leftovers from a Taggart shoot until someone realised that they knew one of the PCs named in the interviews.

They might be journalists – do you have any news worthy neighbours? If they are journalists just bludgeon them and stuff them in with the landfill. Nobody will miss them. Try not to get any gore on the recycling though.

Whats the worst that could happen if you asked them? They might be doing something really interesting. Perhaps they are worried that people are contaminating the recycling by putting the wrong stuff in with it, so are keen to check that their efforts aren't being cancelled out by other people's errors, maybe its the little plastic windows in envelopes they are checking on.

Maybe they've lost an important document and checking to see if they've thrown it out in error.

If identity theft was their motive then the advent of sorted waste, and all the paper kept nice and clean and together is a bit of a gift. Chucking your ID in with the general waste is a guarantee of nothing though, if you are going to the trouble of treating your paperwork differently why not just do the job properly?

Not sure she'd answer if they tried to discuss it.

Ok just the missiles and bombs then 🙂

How about if the cameras could launch missiles instead of post fines? How about if we replaced speedy bumps with hidden, velocity sensitive IEDs.

How about if everyone had to drive about with their own name and address and their granny's phone number displayed clearly on their car rather than just a reg number, with an open invitation to come and discuss it if your driving upsets anyone.

I think cameras would make more of a difference if the prospect of getting caught was terrifying

Looking at national figures for road deaths means you are counting the stretches for roads that are policed along with the stretches that aren't. The actual areas of roads that are covered by cameras is miniscule, even when the cameras are roving. So a 7% or even 14% shift isn't really the picture.

The average speed scheme near me has seen 7 funerals in a period where you would have previously expected 22. So thats a huge shift, although the cameras have only been there a few years, so I'd want to see longer term stats. But even though the cameras cover quite a long stretch of road, its only about 5 miles, so its still only a tiny percentage of the roads in the region, the death/ accident rate elsewhere will (presumably) be unchanged. Averaged out it makes cameras seem less effective than they actually are.

It is a tax. (full stop) to think it relates to safely is just gullible/naive

Around 85% of drivers have never had a speeding ticket. You'd think otherwise, but thats because people who get caught squeal so much about it that you'd think it was common place. Why devise a tax that so few people have to pay? Thats not 15% of driver paying the 'tax' every year, thats 15% who have ever paid the 'tax' whether thats being caught by a camera, or being caught more sportingly (and time consumingly) by the fuzz.

The implimentation of average speed cameras (with no photos) near me have resulted in massive drop in the number of road crash related funerals, widows, orphans, smashed bodies and smashed lives, all from one short stretch of road. Its a success thats difficult to 'feel' because who knows who's lives / livelyhoods have been saved? Could it be mine? My GF's? My little nephew's? My Parents? I bunch of people who I'll never know? Yeah probably a bunch of people I'll never know, so thats fine.

Its the randomness of the risk that makes people simply not care, about themselves or the countless meaningless strangers on the roads and pavements around them, they're all idiots anyway. Fuckem. So the success of camera schemes is never seen as something to party about, even though saving quantifiable numbers of lives would be an act worthy of celebration and honour in any other instance. You could get a medal for it, or an OBE, a roundabout named after you. A national holiday in your honour.

I do tend to think that a financial penalty for speeding offences is failing though. Being found guilty of any crime should be a massive social taboo. Certainly nothing to bleat about, and in some cases even brag about.

When I need to make declarations of my worthiness/ suitablilty – on a job application or insurance application for instance. I'm asked if I have any criminal convictions, but told to except any motoring convictions. Why? They should be in there. They shouldn't be anything to be saved the shame of. Not any more or less than shoplifting or fraud or you know… victimless stuff.

Heres an off the cuff proposal.

If we consider that 12 points= 36 month ban

So each of the those points is actually worth 3 months in the end. But why wait til the end

You get caught speeding. Get 3 points. Get 9 month ban.

Two years later you get caught speeding again with 3 points still on your licence. 3 points+3 points = 18 month ban

And so on

I'd actually make it week per point (up until you hit 12 point/ 36 months) its plenty to get the idea across. A little ban, a little loss of liberty, compromise your home, social, work life. Shamefacedly explain your friends/family/children/employer/client that sorry, can't do that/go there because I'm not considered fit too.

How embarrassing.

Its a bloody stealth holiday, thats what it is. Its the government forcing us to take gardening leave and alphabetise our CD collection, its some sick social engineering experiment to make me use public transport and try to find ways of not making eye contact with people in case they talk to me. You'd be naive to think otherwise.

So quit your bleating in case one day I end up in charge 😀

Still, everytime I get drunk I still miss the buggers!

you've given up buggery as well!

Any B&Q should do Dulux trade paint. They certainly do trade white. Isn't the stuff they mix to order trade as well? or did I dream that.

A friend / family member is good for practice, if you have the right relationship with them, but as you maybe suspect yourself, perhaps having a friend as an instructor isn't so useful.

If its those very specific instances with the gearchange/clutch thats the stumbling block maybe look to another instructor – or maybe some sort of 'crash course' one day thing – to just get those things nailed. Perhaps away from the public roads so that you can focus on them alone. Then go back to you mate to just put in the practice hours prior to a test.

I think the biggest thing you miss if you don't learn to drive young is the opportunity to practice between lessons (presuming you have parents who drive)

My mum had only fairly recently learned to drive herself when I was learning, and seemed to have endless patience for being driven around the same backroad circuit again and again and again. Each 5 mile circuit only had two stop and pull away junctions in it, but enough gear changy bends to make it a useful to get a feel for everything without the time pressure of a lesson.

People who have learned themselves recently are good coaches, as they still think about how they drive, and how they learned to.

There aren't many relations / relationships that would survive the learner driver scenario though, so choose carefully.

You might also be pleasantly surprised at the difference the lay-off has had. The biggest jump forward I made came as a result of a break in lessons and practice.

Thats what TVs used to look like after my grandad had 'fixed' them (they weren't broken to begin with) with a series of carefully time whacks.

You want to get some cream for that.

Look out theres a monster coming

The Monster Mash by Bobby 'Boris' Picket and the Cryptkickers

I don't know why, but for years (and until quite recently) I always thought it was a Beach Boys track

I put a spell on you : Screaming J Hawkins
Most of the tracks on the Gris Gris by Dr John the Night Tripper