Keeping off the bike and not exercising at all would make a very significant difference!

There is a big misconception that skiing is just for rich people. It’s been wide open to any class for two decades at least. I’ve had loads of cheap ski holidays. I ski down the same white stuff as the toff who stays in the posh hotel. Just like I walk along the same pavements as rich people in other holiday desinations.

There’s a well known left winger on here who’s thinking of taking up sailing. This came as a bit of a shock to me because i thought sailing might clash with his socialist prejudices! 😯

The Guardian and it’s readers have such a bloody chip on their shoulders!

Everyone will become a toff given enough money, especially those who have come from a deprived background. Precott is a good example.

Speaking of Prescott, guess where he spent Christmas? On the Queen Mary Two, cruising round the Carribean. Makes a ski holiday look like a day trip to Blackpool!

CAREFUL! You’ll have the STW police ban you and you’ll then be greeted with “You are banned for 24hrs nasty **** racist”.

This happened to me when i wasn’t even being racist!

I heard it and stuff about a jealous God who punishes subsequent generations for their ancestor’s misdemeanors

This “God” bloke sounds a bit like the Scots and the Irish then! 😆

Religion: Such UTTER twaddle!

Squeezeboxes, X-Box 360 and PS3 at the moment. Netgear ReadyNas Duo.

Planning on some new kit this year and CAT5e infrastructure is slowly taking shape in my house.

I was looking at the Pocorn Hour C-200 and adding a Blueray and a HDD. A lot of money to spend if it’s pants tho.

Also hoping we might see some HD PVR’s with not just net streaming ability, but local streaming and uploading from/to a NAS.

Streaming hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, but it will in some shape or form sooner or later.

Have you scoped out the news from CES? LG have an interesting product on the way.

I wouldn’t bother with an expensive brand tent for family camping.

If you want a small packed size, go for the smallest family tent which will give you adequate space.

The bigger the tent the longer ot takes to pitch. I fell foul of this and our group all stopped going because of we all got fed up with the huge amount of faffing and the volume of gear we found we were carting there and back.

So, smallest sized dome/tunnel with porch you can get away with. Coleman, Vango, Outwell.

This sort of thing. Coleman 5 berth tunnel I like the all in one outer and groundsheet – less faffing – a bit expensive though. I’m sure you could find something like this for a lot less money.

I can’t believe anyone would be bothered to complain about the content in Eastenders at the moment!

Really, how daft can people be?

Chicken caracass boiled for an hour.

Seive the stock into a pan and let carcass cool.

Add 2 chicken stock cubes

Add:

Chopped celery,

Carrot,

A little potato,

A dash of curry powder.

A spoon full of gravy granules

Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 mins.

Whizz up the whole lot with a hand blender.

Add Chicken bits from carcass and other bits carved from it beforehand.

Season to suit.

Simmer for another 15-20 mins and serve.

If you do a turkey version, add a tablespoon of cranberry sauce

Parsnip is a good addon, especially with the curry seasoning.

You can use up any old veg really.

Proper winter soup!!

1 Tin Heinz Tomato soup
1 Tin Chopped Tomatos

Nice!

(healthier too)

I have checked them out. They are pretty light, but seem rather expensive in comparison to other tents.

I compared a cheapo £20 tent with the Vaude. It was the same size packed but bigger inside (full rectangle footprint inner). No vestibule though.

Both had separate fly and i couldn’t feel any significant difference in weight.

If you want a serious ligthweight tent, i’m sure you will get something just as good as the Vaude, but for about half the price.

You could spend £300-£400 if you want something weighing in under a kilo, but I just can’t imagine these superlightweights withstanding rough weather. IMHO, this is a huge premium to pay for shedding a kilo or so of packed weight.

The money you save you could spend on a couple of nights in a hotel when the weather is rough.

The Ashes: A small terracotta urn was presented to England captain Ivo Bligh by a group of Melbourne women. The contents of the urn are reputed to be the ashes of an item of cricket equipment, a bail.

Not worth flogging round the world to fight a cricket tournament over really!

Justice at last

You think so?

As he was a public figure in a position of great responsibility and public trust, they should have made an example of him!

3 years minimum in prison, so 6 years.

This may sound a bit harsh, but what the powers to be need to do is send a message out to the ordinary man, that they won’t tolerate people in key positions behaving so dishonestly!

The way it comes across to me is that the prosecutor has handed down the minimum sentence he can because Chaytor is part of the establishment.

It stinks!

18 months, out in 9. Soft!

Labour MP Siphon’s off £15000 of public money

And what makes it even worse is that he tried to lie his way out of his crimes.

I haven’t looked into whether he got more public money to defend himself. If he did, i’ll hazard a guess the tax payer has lost at least another £15,000!

There are expenses cheats in all quarters of politics. IMHO, anyone who fiddled their expenses should have lost their job!

These people have exposed what a rotten corrupt system they are a part of!

Democracy in the UK is a joke!

Where did the thread go?

TJ – Yes. Including housing costs. i suggest you look at the figures – its indisputable. Its not a matter of opinion. Its a fact.

I must live in a bubble then, because house prices in my town increased by 314% while Labour were in power – FACT!

As the government of the day, who could argue that they didn’t have any control over a runaway housing market, or the reckless lending of the banks? If the government didn’t have any control, then they were little more than a puppet show! The fact is that they had control, but they got their noses in the trough – more tax receipts -> more spending -> more bribery of the electorate!

Anyone who believes official inflation figures is daft. Housing costs were removed from the equation by the Conservatives before 1997. I can’t remember, but I think it might have been Lawson that did that. Shameful! It allowed employers to get away with shortchanging their staff. The true cost of inflation has always been much higher.

As I recall, the first thing Gordon Brown did when he became chancellor was to hand the responsibility of setting interest rates to the Bank of England. We had a sustained period of low interest rates as a result. This fuelled house price inflation, which was no longer in the inflation equation.

Brown also slapped a tax on stocks yields, thus damaging the biggest investors – pension fund managers. Combining this with low interest rates, private pensions were forecast to perform as badly as mortgage endowments. What did people do to protect themselves in their old age? You’ve guessed it; Buy-to-let. This further added to the property boom.

Labour presided over a period of stability because it spent billions increasing the public sector. When there would have been a natuaral slow down in the economy, thousands got jobs in the public sector, thus skewing the picture. A genuine false economy!

Public confidence was increased by the apparent end to boom and bust Remember Gordon repeatedly proclaiming he’d finally sorted it? He was either arrogant, or stupid (both come to think of it!).

The influx of cheaper and cheaper good from the Far East gave people luxuries they would never otherwise have afforded. Holidays got cheaper as the budget airline business took off. What were Labour doing to stop the burgeoning damage to the environment? Nothing, they took the tax money for their greedy spending plans! These low prices kept the official inflation figures low, but Labour claimed this as their victory. It was nothing more than good luck in reality!

Life for the average person seemingly could be no better. Labour had done it, the magic solution. Stability and prosperity for all, forever. Anyone believing that nonsense was thick!

The government had plenty of warnings from expert economists about the mess we were headed for, but they naively carried, on convinced they were right to keep spending and allowing the public to take on more debt (this is the Labour way afterall). When the banking crisis struck, they were slow to act, costing you and me a fortune (Northern Rock). Darling was spectaculary useless!

I know there are many other layers of complexity in this situation, but those at the helm have a duty of care to steer us through. They failed in grand style!

Another thing that shocked was the lack of protest by the left wingers at Labour’s bias against the working man, especially in the north. Prescott was bulldozing houses in the North whilst planning huge house building plans in the south. What did Labour do for the working man anywhere? They presided over the final demise of the steel industry and they continued to sell off public assets for a song (British Nuclear Fuels, BAA etc). They never managed it in time, but were going to flog the Port of Dover to a foreigner – mental!

The difference between Labour and the Conservatives over the selling off public concerns was that the Labour kept the money for it’s out of control spending habits and the conservatives offered the public an opportunity to benefit from these. The Conservatives achieved better value for the tax payer, but I personally did not agree with all privatisation, especially allowing the utilities into foreign ownership.

The other shocker was a Labour government prematurely leading the country into a war in the middle east. They patently cowtowed to the Americans, but had no plan what to do after they had won the battle.

Sorry TJ, you are either barking mad, or deluded beyond comprehension if you think Labour did a good job from 1997-2010. Your unwavering highly polarised opinions shows you are not a rational thinker.

I am no big fan of the coallition, the Conservatives, or any party. I think the political system is corrupt. It’s not much more than an expensive legitimised kind of bribery. We just can’t afford the system as it stands and successive governments have proved that they are all useless! All democracy in this country gives us is the freedom once every 5 years to vote whoever we feel is the least useless party. That is all!

Was this thread prompted by Ed Milliband on TV, telling us how the VAT increase was disproportionately unfair on “poor people”, citing the increase in a cup of coffee from your local chain provider??

Personally, as someone who doesn’t fall into the category of “poor”, I rarely afford myself the luxury of this sort of indulgence. The attrition of your funds over time if you frequent these places on a daily basis is considerable. Only an idiot would flush away money on such things if they had a limited income!

I find it bizarre that the Labour leader can equate expensive coffee shops with the NEEDS of “poor people”. Just another example of left wingers not having any ability for rational thought or any commercial sense!

Our country needs a wake up call on personal expenditure (£1.4trillion of personal debt in the UK at present).

The solution is simple, but it has been branded uncool to be realistic about money; you cut your cloth rather than adopt a stance of instant debt incurring self gratification (VAT increase or No VAT increase)

Just shows how out of touch politicians really are and that people need to wake up and….. no I won’t say it! 😆 regarding how they manage their means.

Well Milliband and his shower would do no better. Financially, they are away with the fairies and it’s a fact that they caused a great deal of the problems we face today.

Put in power again, Labour would destroy us – for sure!!! Anyone with a brain can see that!!!!

What we need is someone with a true commercial vision to get this country going again.

We need a radical re-think on our political system because it just panders to the whims of the electorate. It cheats everyone with it’s deception and lies. We need some people in the driving seat with a bit of integrity and with trimmed down egos too!

Travertine comes in different grades

Cheap stuff has a lot of filler in it and the colour can vary a lot.

It stains easily and needs several coats of sealer.

This needs to be regularly recoated too.

I’d go for a man made tile of similar appearance.

I thought is was pretty funny. Perhaps i’m too right wing! 😈

Don’t waste your money calling Vodafone!

Emails do no constitute a legally recognised form of communication.

Write to them and tell them you didn’t order the phones and that they arrived out of the blue. Send the letter recorded delivery.

What they do after that is up to them.

Notify your bank and get them to check for unauthorised use of your account. They’ll probably issue new cards immediately, so make sure you get some cash out before you call. Don’t delay!

Don’t worry about credit card accounts being used, or you bank’s – they will pick up the tab.

I was turned over for £9k in 3 days for a card i’d not taken out of my house and had never used. It must have been an inside job, but nobody from the card supplier would confirm this.

I also found £1300 missing for a credit card payment to a card provider I didn’t use. This was refunded too.

Those fraudster scumbags are costing us a fortune, but I actually blame the banks and credit card companies for declining higher security options which are routinely offered to them (according to a friend of mine who is in the biz of eSecurity).

Try Etymotic Research for “discrete” custom earplugs.

The music industry have been using them for years.

Still becoming? Thought that happened 20 years ago!

Jam Rolly Poly with custard this time of year.

Yeah, it never ceases to amaze me how many numbskulls there are on the roads now. The scary thing is that these people are often actually intelligent, they just switch their brains off as soon as they get behind the wheel.

Not on the road is where i like to be!

JEEZ! I can’t believe some people!

If your child is sick, get off your PC and look after her!

Heed the advice of the medical professional you saw and take no notice whatsoever of so called medical experts posting on this forum!

I do know that very high temperatures can be very dangerous, especially in young children, so keep an close eye on this and seek proper professional advice. I know from when my two were little that the situation can change very suddenly with infants.

If in doubt and a doctor is not available, get her into a hospital.

I hope she get better soon!

I used to have an RS2000 and drove it in the snow in the 70’s/80’s. Traction was rubbish with a RWD and widish tyres. It was good to learn about how a car handles in snow.

My first car was a Fiat 128 and this was totally different in snow.

My sister had an ugly FWD Peugeot 304 with it’s spindly tyres gripped a treat though.

Most 4WD’s out there are specced up for road use (for the poseurs), so the shallow tread of the tyres fill with ice and then spin like slicks – advantage of having all that complicated, heavey and expensive 4WD technology — Nil! Not helped by the idiot’s who often choose such an inappropriate vehicle.

A set of winter tyres will make all the difference to any car!

A 2WD car with winter tyres in snow will beat a 4WD with summer road tyres, hands down!

A 4WD with winter tyres is the ultimate for the snowy conditions, but is overkill in all but the hilliest of areas.

They should create another class. You have genuine 4WD – geared for proper offroad use, fitted with suitable all terrain tyres and driven by competent people who have a genuine need for such a vehicle.

Then a whole new category: “CWD”- “Cock Wheel Drive” – for all the pointlessly oversized heavy 4WD vehicles with unsuitable tyres, driven by arrogant and unduly self-reassured stupid people! 😆 😆 😆

Are you asking people to advise you on how to commit insurance fraud?

TSK TSK!

I remember going to a Light of The World gig at Zero 6 in Southend in the very early 1980’s. They had a soundsystem with speakers floor to ceiling and powerful enough to easily fill the Albert Hall. We ended up 10 ft from the R/H stack. My right ear was ringing loudly for the first day, then less so for a couple of days after. Stupid things you do when you are a teenager!

Last weekend I went to see Lissie at The Junction in Cambridge (she is awesome btw. One of the audience shouted, “what a fabulous pair of lungs” and double entendres aside, I cannot dispute this! She will make it big one day)

Take a look at the vid….

There are some Youtube vids of the actual gig at The Junction if you can be bothered.

Anyhow, although pretty loud, my ears weren’t ringing much after, but my daughter said hers were. That’s age for you I guess!! Now Lissie’s rig was nowhere near as big and as loud as that of L.O.T.W’s, but the Db’s were as much as you would want in a venue that size.

I don’t have a tinitus problem (thank ****), but these days, I always opt to be out of firing range of any speakers at gigs. The further back you get the better, or off to one side makes a big difference. You are also more likely to hear deep bass further back as this requires distance from the listener for the speakers to deliver what they are designed for.

I went with Aviva this year who aren’t on comparison sites (I don’t think).
They were loads cheaper than any other quote.

I often wonder if anyone ever finds them cheaper, coz in my experience, they are ALWAYS much more expensive than any quote i can find through various sources.

Perhaps they don’t like low risk area, middle aged, low annual mileage drivers with clean licenses and clean driving history! 😯

I don’t!

Christmas is a time where everyone is expected/pressured into spending a pile of money on presents, food and drink.

People are under presure to have a “happy day” and to get along with people they’d sooner avoid.

Great for the kids though!

Kids aside, the best Christmas would be in a catered ski chalet in the Alps, where most of the day is spent out in the fresh air.

thugs?!

YES! EXACTLY WHAT THESE PEOPLE ARE!

When you combine a bit of bad weather and all the stupid people who buy enough food for a fortnight, for a 24-48hr period at Christmas, no wonder the shelves are empty.

Britain is populated largely by really thick people!

To be fair. I think I’m with the north on this. The south and the US are just trying to provoke the north into starting a war.

Didn’t North Korea bomb a South Korean island recently, killing four civilians?

And people on here say it’s the Americans/South Koreans provoking the North!? HELLO???

Some really daft people on here!!!

WHen he said point and shoot, I thought he meant computer game.

The roads are full of useless drivers!

Associating bad driving with a particular brand of vehicle is totally stupid – the usual narrominded STW nonsene!

Best thing is to not drive, but this is impossible for many. If you have to, develop a thick skin as nobody is going to bang to rights the idiots who put your safety at risk.

People who are either aggressive, unattentive, or clueless will be able to carry on with indefinite impunity, because our PC society makes it impossible to put these wrongs right.

However, do expect to get fined if you stray into a bus lane, stop in the wrong place for a few seconds, or marginally excees the speed limit.

Cars – driving – waste of time.

Adapt your lifestyle so that you aren’t dependant on four wheeled private transport.

Hahaha. You must be an airhead X Factor fan!

Maybe they didn’t want their name linking with that tosh

Like the winner’s inability to sing in tune!

Utter rubbish that programme!

It’s all about Cowell’s bank balance.

I believe Cardle polled the most votes week on week and this just shows that stupid people, prone to wasting money on expensive phone votes, are also tone deaf!

They should rename the programme: Popularity Factor! The end result just goes to show what a bunch of airheads the chart music buying public are! They don’t buy into music, they buy into who they find attractive. They are swayed by trash newspapers and other forms of tittle tattle. Meanwhile, record companies bank these lost sheeps’ money.

We witnessed the few talented singers getting booted out, but this year, barely any outstanding performers got through to the live shows. Given that there were thousands of auditions, this is testomony to the weakness of the selection process. The laughable thing is that four music professionals are arrogant enough to think they know who is good, mediocre, or bad.

Then they cynically pick a “freakshow” contestant for their entertainment value, in the full knowledge they cannot win, but just to court controversy. They know this will encorage more voting, thus making them more money.

So Taylor guitars and their refusal to have a large sum of money extorted from them just to air their name was a good move. Being associated with that plastic commercial rubbish is possibly would have been the most uncool thing they could have done!

This anti-social individual who’s caused misery, suffering and expense to the British people should have been packed off where he came from straight after his first offence!

This would be my “law”: If you are an asylum seeker who is being given food and shelter in a foreign land, you should not be entitled to as many rights as the legal residents of that country. If you step out of line and commit crime as a guest in that foreign country, you should then be deported immediately – no exceptions!

If you face certain death back in your country of persecution, then more fool you for not showing any respect for the most generous circumstances afforded to you FOC by a nation that owes you nothing and was protecting your from extermination! The basic principle is: don’t bite the hand that feeds you!

There is a tiny handful of people from nice comfortable sheltered backgrounds deciding what is right and wrong. They sit on the board of these expensive unelected quangos spouting hot air,. The quango is not representative of a cross section of society. They are out of touch with reality and may not even have any respect/loyalty to this nation.

In their ideal little worlds, every tiny little injustice right up to the really big ones needs to be resolved by a structure of rules of “fairness”. These people philosophise over ethics and morals to the point that they don’t know whether they are coming or going. These quangos may well be tainted by extreme left wing ideology, or discriminate against the sections of society that they have no personal experience of etc etc.

The solution is to make sure these bodies are elected, accountable and open!

We need to regain the power to make our own laws. The EC aren’t worthy of the responsibility!

Add up the cost of insurance, loans, fuel, depreciation, servicing, incidental costs and divide the total by your annual mileage. Apportion an amount after working out the ratio of business to private mileage.

You’ll then have your cost per mile, total cost for business and total cost for private.

Then factor in tax allowances, any tax liabilities (such as fuel cards and mileage allowances).

You’ll then have an idea whether it’s worth destroying your own car for the benefit of your employer.

The other consideration is whether you want to be at the wheel so much. Consider the implications of the increased risk of accidents, fines and the damaging effect too much motoring has on your wellbeing.

Personally, i’d only drive for an employer if they provided a car entirely at their expense. A vehicle to be kept at my place of work – a pool car!