100% this.

theres plenty of ‘natural’ things in our diet that are far worse, obesity gives a 15-20% increase in cancer risk

youre better off with coke zero

I’d agree except drinking low-sugar drinks does absolutely nothing to prevent obesity and rots your teeth. The affect on your gut microbiome is also poorly understood, although it seems unlikely to be positive.

My main feeling on diet drinks is they’ve allowed the drinks industry to promote a “healthy” alternative to sugar drinks when really they’re both expensive and shite . They should be treats, not a staple part of kids diets.

That actually sounds ok, you’ve got a balance of textures and flavours there with a bit of acidity from the fruit and yoghurt to cut through the the clag.

I find a lot of the “pub classic” desserts pretty tough. Bread and butter pudding, sticky toffee pudding etc.

I’m going to nominate bread and butter pudding as the worst. It’s a waste of stale bread.

YHAs and SYHAs have been awesome for us as a family. Travel lodges and Premier Inns allow a max of 2 kids per room, so if you have 3 kids you need 2 rooms. Also the ability to self cater makes a trip a lot more affordable than needing to eat out.

My mountain warehouse ones are perfectly adequate. Very waterproof, quite light and seem to be tough enough. Fit the bill as for me they’re a “just in case” type of thing.

Probably bottom of the list was a charming beachide chalet / appartment that we rented a few years ago off AirBnB on the Baltic coast.

It was essentially a shanty lean-to constructed on top of a row of garages. For those from near Glasgow think Carbeth  hut (nut not a good one) plonked ontop of a row of concrete garages.

The owners had put a fair bit of effort in but there was definitely a lot of mould about that I seemed to have a bad allergy too so ended up sleeping outside on a hammock getting eaten by moquitos before giving up about 5 days in and getting a hotel.

Lesson learned: Look for what the AirBnB photos don’t show you.

If you don’t want communual spaces buy a detached house. Bike parking in closes has been fraught since bikes and closes have been invented. I had a neighbour that used to steal my wheel.

Just be thankful your close is free of theiving jakies as that’s far from a given.

*I haven’t done the calcualtions but my hunch is that 100g** of propane in the volume of a car or tent is more of an annoyance than a real problem

I reckon you can form a flammable atmosphere of roughly 2.5m3 in a confined space from 100g of propane. I think people frequently underestimate how little gas you need to do yourself serious harm.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>100g is 0.0023kmol of propane. Molar volume is around 22m3/kmol so 100g is 0.05m3, but lower flammable limit is 2% so you could dilute that to 2.5m3 and still ignite it.</p>

EV’s are hopeless as far as a decent range is concerned. Although Porsche have an 800 mile range car on the way – that’s what is needed. The map shows charging stations in South Devon.

You’re also ignoring that you can charge from any 3 pin plug of which there are many. Our car you can add ~100miles range on a 12 hour overnight charge on a 3 pin plug.

So, for example, if you were going for a week’s holiday in the Highlands you’d have far more ease “refueling” an EV than an ICE car (unless you’re staying in a bothy).

It’s been done to death on this thread but taking edge cases of car use and presenting that a proof EVs are crap is tedious.  “I’m a travelling saleman with sites in Thurso and Truro and my EV has been a nightmares” type of stuff.

Our 1970s era title deeds state both the neighbour and I are jointly resposoble for erecting and maintaining a fence on the boundary

6ft fence is pretty standard, not really a lot to object to. The opportunity here is to get your neighbour to replace the entire joint fence at their cost. If the posts need replaced that’s a substantial cost these days for any decent szied garden.

Yes I have the 18v DeWalt string strimmer, got it a couple of years ago.

It’s decent, works well for home use. Would lack the grunt for any serious clearing kind of work.

A 4Ah battery seems good for 45mins + of work in my experience of using it to strim a couple of f km of local trails.

Yeah it’s hard. I think what worked for me was focusing on adding in better quality non-ultraprocessed foods. It was kind of fun trying to find new stuff to eat and even learning to make stuff were I couldn’t find a non-UPF version.

There’s a huge mindset difference between “I’m not going eat cakes / chocolate etc this week” and “I’m going to find as many cool non UP foods to eat this week”.  It doesn’t need to be about denial and restriction.

I’m prepared to be a bit relaxed with porridge oats and shredded wheat, assuming you’re talking about the degree of processing both go through?

They’re both processed rather than ultraprocessed foods so good in that respect, but a lot of people (me included) get big sugar spikes from oats, wheat and raisins.

Steel cut oats generally get absorbded much slower than rolled oats if you can use those.

Agree 100% with the posts above about the importance of avoiding ultraprocessed food. If you manage that the added sugar thing sort of fixes itself but you also benefit by removing dozens of chemicals from you diet. Additives in ultraprocesses foods are there to make it cheaper, last longer or make you eat more of it. They’re not there to benefit your health and wellbeing.

I’d also watch with things like raisin wheats and overnight oats. Everybody is differnet but my body blood sugar wise responds to those in the similar way having a twix for breakfast. If I start the day with that sort of food I’ll be craving stuff all day.

It’s not an accident that countries that eat the most UPFs are fat as ****.

I’d just be looking to see what Little Life (or similar) carrier was available second hand locally. They are generally very well looked after (and/or little used) so you save a fortune and can pass it on to someone else afterwards.

This x1000

Not all kids like them. When our eldest was 18months it was like trying to strap an angry chimp to yourself. Definitely worth trying it but glad I didn’t spend £250 on it.

We ended up just carrying the kids by hand and letting them walk what they could. It worked better for us but some folk love the carriers so defo worth trying.

Had to order stuff this morning off Wiggle/CRC first time using the new site. Comically bad – trying to find 2 different sizes of inner tube was a challenge. Gave up after that and bought the rest off bike discount de who have a functional website.

Their are basically 2 acceptable versions of scrambled eggs:

1) French – eggs are stirred continually and gently heated until fluffy and creamy. A dash of cream at the end to stop cooking
2) American – bit of butter and eggs are lightly fried with some stirring to give larger curds and some extra flavour from browning

With very careful microwaving (low power, lots of stopping to stir) it’s possible to do an ok version of #1. But you could do it quicker and better in a pan so really only for when there’s no hob.

Growing up we had nasty scrambled eggs with milk added so the liquid leached out after cooking. I think the milk adding was something my parents picked up from theirs, who started it during rationing to make the eggs go further. It’s an abomination.

An observation of mine is some mates in trades have migrated away from domestic work towards commercial stuff because there’s plenty of work going. Why spend your evenings and weekends running around doing quotes and chasing for payments off dozens of folk when you can get weeks and weeks of reliable, low risk and well paid work?

When was the last time the head of state here interviened, it’s either never or every week in meetings with the pm depending on who you listen to

The role doesn’t have to have executive power to be important – it’s the difference between Liz Truss having to swear an oath to the Queen and us having to swear an oath to Liz Truss. Yes it’s symbolic but it is important. Definitely far from perfect. I think I’d definitely prefer a well functioning republic, but the risk is you end up with an extremely divisive “political” head of state (US today) or you end up with a weak and ineffectual president (e.g. Weimar republic).

England was a republic with no monarch as head of state for 11 years between 1649 and 1660 after King Charles I was executed. King Charles II was made monarch after it’d all gone to shit.

I think the historical argument for having the monarch as head of state was that republics were considered to be inherently unstable, either ending up run by a tyrant or collapsing into anarchy. Having some sort of semi- benign head of state who was above the day to politics was considered to have some sort of benefit. Whether that still makes sense in 2023 I’m not sure but I can sort of see how it makes sense.

I think having absolutely no head of state at all is impossible – the role will get filled but you definitely don’t one person running all the branches of the state.

The “official” guidance is this:

https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/guidance/s102.pdf

There is no handy read off chart, it comes out the COSHH assessment as you need to consider all kinds of factors when deciding what would be suitable. E.g. are there RPE requirements as well? Will it be worn for 5 minutes or 5 hours?

The legally compliant answer is “whatever your employer has determined via their COSHH assessment”. Otherwise just pick something out of the Arco catalogue and hope for the best.

Same boat here, got a Isla Bike Beinn 26″. It’s just so nice, simple and light. The narrow diameter bars, grips, brakes and shifter are very well deisgned for smaller hands vs lots of other which use adult components.

I did look at the Vitus – they look brilliant but wanted something really light that could turn it’s hand to any kind of riding.

A few years old but https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/media/document/b180002finreport.pdf suggests Salmonella contamination in ~5% supermarket chicken, and Campylobacter at 50%

So being careful when handling raw chicken and cooking it is actually necessary.

I don’t find the clear juices thing a reliable indicator. Far more consistent to measure it which avoids any over / under cooking.

There’s a little magnetic fridge chart that came with my Salter cooking thermometer. It gives 2 sets of values – the recommended USDA values and the Heston Blumenthal* recommended values.

For whole chicken breast it recommends 65oC and 75oC for whole chicken. USDA says 74oC for both. I think one of the issues with chicken is the Salmonella is present in the birds guts and shit as standard so it’s highly likely to be contaminated at some point. That contamination will be all over inside and outer parts of the bird.

Whereas maybe for say a steak or bit of fish you’re worried about surface contamination during processing / storage that will get killed off on the outside of the meat during cooking.

*although his restaurant was responsible for a massive norovirus outbreak from contaminated shellfish so maybe not foolproof!

It sounds far better than if you were insured with Admiral rather than them being the third party. I had a no-fault claim and Admiral push their customers towards a shitty claims management company.

Personally I’d be all over Admiral’s offer

Exactly my experience when I, as an admiral customer, had a non fault claim (guy drove into me while I was parked!)

Ended up getting a hire car through the dodgy 3rd party scheme they recommended where they sue the other party to recover costs for the hire car. There was some sort of indemnity so I don’t end up paying for it but it was all a bit convoluted. It dragged on for ages – the charges for the hire car were astronomical.

I can only really speak about the dewalt one which I have – the saw body is cast alloy with a metal 12″ oregon bar and chain + motor. It’s a solid little lump. The pole has platic couplings and is not very rigid, it just don’t feel like it’d work well if used horizontally the forces are all wrong. There are quite a few other models on the market that might be different, the dewalt is sort of mid range price wise maybe the Makitas and Stihls are better. That said mine has lasted pretty well but I’ve only used for reaching up to stuff.

I’ve got a Tusker lease car, the documents and FAQs are very clear with what happens in a case like this for me on my scheme. If you check your sisters lease documents should be similarly clear it’s a common occurence.

T&Cs for me are

1) I am still liable to pay for the lease if the vehicle is broken or in for repair. It’s very clearly stated early in the contract in big bold letters. They’re leasing me a car not providing a rental service

2) It needs to go the dealer or whoever the lease company deem needs to repair

3) The lease company will provide me a relief car if mine is off the road for >24hours. They are very clear that they have no responsibility to provoide something comparable in value, perforamance etc. I do seem to remeber when I took out the lease there was opportunity to upgrade this but I didn’t bother. The dealer could also offer a courtesy car which might be better but again it’s a lucky dip.

I’m not sure how well this would work. I have the dewalt long reach pole saw and it’s very good at doing what it’s meant to do (i.e. reaching vertically upwards and cutting branches). The pole is relatively flexible and when it catches a branch is “pulls” itself up into the branch and locks with the bumber spikes so theres very little force on the pole.

If you wanted to use it horizontally wth a log on a saw horse the pole would be getting a lot of forces on it wasn’t designed for. Also very imprecise cuts vs a chainsaw.

If it were me and I only had the pole saw and no chainsaw I’d rather bash on with a bow saw.

The king and short of it, is that currently running an EV isn’t really any cheaper than running a dino-burner, unless you have a silly cheap overnight leccy tarrif and/or solar.

If you have a smart meter and home charger that silly cheap electricity is available to anyone who can use the phone or internet.

Even without a smart meter, if you hade eco7 you would be around half the cost of fossil fuel. Worst case you would on standard tariff which is still cheaper per mile than petrol.

All the public chargers where I live are free and chargers at work at 20p/kWh so basically most people would be better off per mile.

If you have no home charger or do loads of long distance driving then maybe the costs are similar but fir everyone else the per mile running cist is very favourable.

I used to use it for cycling and running but stopped a few years ago. With a young family the amount and quality of cycling a running had reduced and become an almost 100% solo endeavour. I actually found seeing the stats a bit demotivational as everything was just numerically a bit shit compared to before. Also the social media aspect of it wasn’t great for me as it was making me feel worse about the limited opportunities I had to bike / run rather than just enjoying what I was able to do. Anyway, it felt a bit liberating just to go out for a run or bike ride with zero expectations or tracking and I found I got my fitness back up a bit by doing this.

I have started logging some stuff again via Garmin but my focus is more on health / fitness monitoring rather than looking at segments and what anybody else has done. I liked using Strava, may well use it again, but definitely felt stepping back from it suited me at that particular point in life.

I seem to remember the German Alpine maps I had for walking / biking in Majorca had some kind basic trail grading on them. It doesn’t have all the info you mention above but even a simple indication of whether it’s an estate track / boulder strewn mess / vague intention of a path that got overgrown in the 19th century would be really useful.

The Harvey’s Maps are better than OS in this respect as they indicate clearly where there is a right of way whether there is a clear path on the ground or not. They also show “intermittent paths” differently. You can add them as a layer on some mapping apps like Outdooractive.

We made some at the weekend. Recipe a but different with the addition of nettles and chilli but was a really decent soup, would make again.

Torridon YHA is good , the fella that run it not so much but that was a few years back. Torridon Inn was agreat wee place not cheap but good food and drink and about 25 minutes walk from the youth hostel.

A bit out of date – the folk running the YHA now (great place to stay) are spot on and the Torridon Inn doesn’t do food for non residents.

The MG4 normal lists a nominal capacity of 51kWh and a usable amount of 50.8, which seems rather close. The long range one lists 64 and 61.7 so in that one they are holding some back. I wonder why it’s not the same the different versions?

The 80/20 thing is on the in-car display of our long range MG4, manual doesn’t have it. It’s called battery health range or some such thing. Ours is a work lease car so could just ignore it but I’ve set the charge schedule up to do 80 every morning mon – fri so no bother to follow and has plenty range for me.

Ian – our charger phone app lets you set different charge schedules on your phone. I have a daily commute one (80% overnight using cheap rate only) and a weekend one (100% overnight using cheap rate only). It’s as simple as just toggling the one you want. It’s been a bit of a mindset shift from an ICE but no bother at all. I’m not a great lover of tech and found it easy to get it all working.

I posted the other week about my neighbour who took delivery of her new Peugeot and was/is horrified that she needs to charge it every other day, doing about 50 – 60 miles a day. The car has a range of about 150 miles, she had no idea that some do that and some do double.

The snag is that the recommended usable range of the battery is not 0 – 100% to preserve long term battery health, on our MG4 it’s 20-80%. So car has 280miles claimed range but in practice it’s ~150miles between charges for day to day use.

We chose the long range model basically so it would do 3 days between charges for daily commuting use.

Refund of the 3rd night’s accomodation, which is basically what you’ve lost.

@Alex no complaints with ours after a few weeks. Very easy to drive and everything seems to work. Wife thinks it’s ace, she does quite a lot of A and B road miles and it just cruises along but has the accelration of a ICE hot hatch so makes short work of overtaking.

Home charging no bother at all on intelligent octopus. Takes 20seconds to plug in charger every 3 days. Sorts itself out overnight automatically. We always used to have to go out of our way to get petrol so it’s a genuine time saver.

Still better than the bloke from my work that got arrested for being T-boned driving along a wide empty boulevard by a local. The logic being that he shouldn’t even be in the country, and if he wasn’t in the country the god-fearing local wouldn’t have crashed into them. Therefore guilty.

A good rule of thmub is if a country executes people in the supermarket carpark of you local town every other Friday then you probably shouldn’t muck about there. We used to get notifications so we could time our shopping to avoid the executions.

Been to Saudi many times, do not chance it at all. You absolutely do not want to give a Saudi border guard a decision to make. Keep in mind a solo female traveling is transgressive in their culture, let alone one with opiates.

For me it’s:

– Choosing a good campsite. Something family friendly with feral kids running about is ideal. Essentially you have free entertainment on tap and kids will run themselves ragged. Fussy camping and caravaning club sites with loads of passive agressive signs are to be avoided. You’ll be ruthlessly judged for any parenting transgressions by retired daily express readers sitting in their awnings tutting away.
– Avoid in bad weather. It’s just crap, stay at home. There aren’t enough changes of clothes in the world that’ll make it fun once the novelty wears off. Speaking of which campsites with washing machines and driers are a good idea and take double the spare clothes you think you’ll need
– Local is good. Trying out in the garden is a good idea to test stuff out
– Also worth remembering some kids just don’t like camping very much or it takes a while for them to get used to it. Don’t expect too much sleep wise yourself and don’t get drunk as you need to be able to deal with stuff and drive if needed. Not like the wallopers that camped next to us in the lakes last year with a 2 yr old and 4 yr old. The mum basically got pished every night and the kids wouldn’t sleep and then dad got overwhelmed. My wife had to intervene one night to sooth the 2 yr old to sleep as his mum was KO’d pished and the dad had broken down. Fun times.