Still swollen up nicely and even itchier now after a shower, will give some insect spray a go which I always use and is excellent (homeopathic one that contains pyrethrum)

Thanks for the advice, not been got by these nasty little bleeders before

Spazzy or mongy were two I remember from my schooldays, hadn’t heard the term gay especially to describe Homosexuals, they were known mainly as ginger or irons and homos

The last one confused me when I first heard it a a nipper, wondered what it had to do with washing powder (didn’t pronounce the H and the powder was called Omo)

Being “worn out” isn’t a problem I’ve run into thus far with either USB sockets or SD cards

Some people have had a problem with CF cards and bent pins, not quite sure how other than ramming them in the wrong way round (don’t know what the OP uses)

Have seen official advice from camera manufacturers about using a card reader so as not to damage the mini usb port on the camera

Definitely saves valuable battery power using a card reader and could possibly cause problems if the power ran out during transfer

Less likely to damage the small USB port on the camera, saves battery power and a good card reader is a lot quicker (especially handy with high mp cameras and even more so if you shoot RAW)

The full entitlement is only there for people who work continuously. The majority of teachers are women, many of whom take career breaks to bring up kids. They retire with nothing like the full pension

Can you buy extra years? not agitating just interested as we used to be able to before the final salary deal was stopped. I paid in to cover the days lost when we went on strike, never bought any extra years though

Seeing as there are a few teachers here maybe they can answer a question that has puzzled myself and friends for years

Why do they always congregate around one table in a pub no matter how many of them there are? Can always tell when teachers are in by the amount of tables that have no chairs around them and one great big group just about balancing their drinks on a solitary table

The average pension drawn is £10,000

Given teachers salary that is a surprisingly low figure, not sure what the average wage is, but if they only get 50% of final salary i’m sure they earn more than 20 grand a year
My final salary pension having paid 31 years was frozen in 2009 which pays 50% and expect to get about 15 grand a year even with the last nine years or so reckoned at career average

Apologies if I quoted the 2/3rds incorrectly, relied on info from the BBC which said

It is a final-salary scheme, based on a 1/60th accrual rate with a normal pension age (NPA) of 65, offering a pension of two-thirds of final salary.

For those who joined before 1 January 2007, the NPA is 60 but the accrual rate is 1/80ths plus 3/80ths lump sum, offering a pension of half final salary.

Probably a good idea if Mr Gove had a day off and the public went in and helped out, that goes for the other 600 or so of his colleagues

Teachers have every right to exercise their right to strike, must say I was a bit surprised they got two thirds final salary as a pension thought I was doing ok on fifty percent (which was frozen in 2009)

My missus is a science tech in a school and their pension is nowhere near as generous and already have to work until sixty five for it

Fair enough not wanting to give up your terms and conditions, not sure public opinion is with the teachers though

Get back on good terms with ma in law, tell her you have bought some tickets to see Motorhead and she is welcome to come along

Went to Canon and left Pentax when the price of their lenses rocketed and the lack of anything (zoom or prime) over 300mm,also their lens based AF system called SDM is quite poor compared to the Canon USM

Saw a support band recently who did a rock stylee cover of Staying Alive, not sure whether if it was better or worse than the original

How many times do you think he had Chinese burns and his head stuck in the toilet at school?

I dread to think and now the sacraficial hate figure

Lightroom 3 courtesy of my daughter on the student purchase scheme

Not the first time this has happened, can remember the mortgage rate being 14% and stupidly high poll tax to pay

Got through it then and won’t be any different this time, bound to be a few casualties, hopefully without the wholesale house repossessions though

Let him play especially as he was born and grew up in the area, seems a nice enough bloke especially compared to some of the footballing scumbags these days

Not as though we are going to win it anyway

Now this was a good one, Lizzy blew out, but The Scorpions put on a great set

Don’t recall seeing them in my Reading days of the late 70’s

Latest edition of Photoplus has a very useful comparison review of all the better standard length zoom lenses

Have a guess which one wins, give you a clue its not the 15-85mm (they didn’t seem that impressed with it at all)

The updated model of the lens you are currently using did well, seems it now has a fast af motor and stabilisation too

Unable to compare because I only have the 17-55mm, superb lens and can’t imagine you would be disappointed with it.
Not a bad idea to buy the hood, bit cheeky its not included given the price of the lens

It’s this one, very nice too at 3 for £4.50 Juice
Should add my nearest tesco is six miles away and not about to waste all that petrol going up there when I can walk to Waitrose in five minutes. What I save in fuel means I can buy the juice I like, their free range scotch eggs are rather tasty too

Yeah, and how many bowls of cereal do you get from a box? 10?

Haven’t got any bowls that small, sound more like egg cups and tesco grapefruit juice is like undiluted citric acid

I don’t intend to spend a tenner a week on food, but it is hard to believe anyone can eat three meals day with a balanced fruit and veg diet for that amount

No point keeping on about the person you know who eats one water biscuit a fortnight, this is about general household outgoings and how they have risen in price

You pay far too much for your milk and fruit juice BTW

No I don’t, I like jersey milk for my cereal and waitrose grapefruit juice, why is it too much?
Nothing worse than that white water and cheap juice that burns ones gullet

All relative really and i’m not trying to live on a tenner a week, just querying how anyone else can

finished uni 2 or 3 years ago

Well thats at least another fiver at todays prices then regardless of what the official inflation figure is

there’s absolutely no reason to lie about mrsconsequence spending 10pound a week

When was that, she could have been at uni years ago and my quote was from Becky anyway

Of course you could be a fruitarian, but I presume we are talking about someone eating the conventional breakfast,lunch and tea.
So far today I have had some sugar puffs with milk,glass of juice and several cups of tea.
Milk was a quid for two pints, cereal £1.50 a box (third off in sainsburys ) and waitrose essential grapefruit juice at about £1.80 a carton
Not exactly excessive, but that tenner won’t last long and forgot the tea bags/milk for the cuppas

This is heading the way of the Monty Python Yorkshireman sketch

Fair enough making dinner for two quid, but not a whole weeks worth of meals for a tenner

You could start with escargot for breakfast, fish for lunch, curried, err, meat for dinner. And you could have a nice fur hat

Very good 🙂

You had better not let my daughter hear you talk like that, poor old moggy has already lost one leg in a road accident

Still find it hard to believe you can feed yourself for a tenner a week, two pints of milk is about a quid and the lettuce I get for my kids giant snails is sixty pence a throw

Blimey costs me about a tenner to feed the fish and moggy, mince and pasta ain’t that cheap, even liver is about thirty bob a pound.

I feed myself for about £10 a week, and I eat quite a lot

This is getting silly now, how can you possibly do that on under thirty bob a day?

Interestingly, for cluster headaches, high flow oxygen has shown to be beneficial too

Indeed it has, but sadly only as an abortive treatment, best I have found in that respect so far are the Sumatriptan injections

473 High road
Leyton

That address they give is one of those ring your family abroad for a quid type places in a very grotty row of shops

Big Country still cut it live, catch them at IOW and a few other festivals this summer, new album coming too

There are still some of us left at BT that actually care about the customers when we can get past all the management crap and bullshit speak

All our internal dealings are handled in India too and dread reporting a computer fault or even worse try to get any information on important stuff like pay or pensions

Hope all goes well from here on in and if doesn’t drop me an email and will see what i can do

No problem, let me know if you need any help,sorted out someone off here last year with their broadband, but its not easy getting our friends on the sub-continent to understand (or some of them in this country for that matter)

You have my condolences

Thank you, not the employer they once were and know how hard they can be to deal with so might be able to help CG although won’t promise

Bit of background might be handy and yes I work for the company you are less than pleased with

None I can think of unless you are a fish

The rest of you sound remarkably like some of the whinging malingerers

Have a read (sound out the letters if its too many big words for you) and sorry for the lack of pictures Cluster Headache

Dave360, hope for your sake you never get cluster headache, also known as Suicide Headache as that has been the result when they can no longer be tolerated by the sufferer

Probably also think people with depression or mental illness just need to MTFU.
Good idea to research a subject before belittling or ridiculing the people who are sharing their experiences and genuinely trying to offer helpe

Lost in Space (“Danger Will Robinson”)) is based on a play called The Tempest by some chap called Shakespeare

Think its “Forbidden Planet” that’s based on the Tempest, very similar robot though

The Magnificent Seven is based on Seven Samurai

See if Sumatriptan work, available in tablet, nasal spray or self-injection form
I suffer from something known as Chronic Cluster Headache and know how debilitating a bad headache can be, so worth trying meds if they alleviate the problem.