Revising.

It's always sunny when I'm revising.

Go to an opticians where they can properly fit you with a pair of glasses rather than ordering them online, where fit is guesswork.

SDS+ makes standard hammer drills look like a joke, and I'd never buy another hammer drill having used them.

Or better still, intervene early and alter cultures so that we avoid having to deal with kids with deep rooted problems as far as possible. At the moment people can treat their kids pretty horrendously for quite a while before someone will intervene, particularly if the man of the house is the sort to appear at the front door telling all and sundry to eff off.

Shoot a hole it it before you cut it open, just to make sure 🙂

How do you break the culture of several generations of feckless loutish behaviour though.

Surestart was set out to do just that, but unfortunately it suffered mission creep to the point of becoming something entirely different.

The big issue is self selection – you cannot compel parents to bring their kids to Surestart, and so you end up with mainly the interested parents bringing their kids in, rather than the disinterested ones you're hoping to target.

I suspect that ultimately there is a massive suite of changes that need to be made – you need to actually incentivise learning and hard work, and for that to happen we need increased social mobility. Or some serious state intervention in people's parenting of their children, but that's something I think would be rather ugly.

IT'S A HELIUM TANK! WE KNOW WHAT'S IN IT, AND WE KNOW IT'S INERT!

Mind you, the lads down at BOC might have filled it with Hydrogen instead for a laugh, you never can be too careful…

He's currently in Germany driving tanks, earns enough cash that he can drink a lot while he's out there, and when he came back last he bought himself a brand new car!

You get little chance to spend your cash when you're in the army, and drink is very cheap in NAAFI, so people do tend to have a bit of cash kicking around when they come home.

The basic army fitness tests aren't very exacting from what I understand

In all seriousness, helium is inert, so there's no danger posed by the gas so long as the pressure genuinely is equalised between the inside of the tank and the outside world.

I'd be more worried about the construction of the tank – if you cut box section lengthways for example, it springs open quite violently, because it's welded whilst it's under tension.

Helium is inert, so there's obviously the danger of explosion.

Actually, in all seriousness, if they work and you have the cash, get one of those electric robot lawnmowers. Life is far too short to spend your Saturdays with a flymo.

Can someone who's got a set of the magical cutters pick them out on the screwfix site so the rest of us get the right ones?

I think the Public sector can be something of a closed shop – they're usually required to advertise everything, when they often have someone they know they want to give to the job to.

thanks you all, just have to stop myself needlessly spending money now…….now wheres the nearest LBS?

Ha! I always find that when I get back into work after studying etc. There's suddenly a load of stuff you've been putting off buying…

Get a couple of sheep.

Jesus! I went out in shorts and thin jersey yesterday evening and I was very warm. I can't see an extra layer of merino helping at all.

On the other hand, a thin merino jersey would work fine.

You almost certainly have recessed bolt calipers and are trying to fit them to a frame designed for standard calipers.

You can tell the difference pretty easily – recessed bolt calipers are fixed by an allen headed "nut". Pretty much all modern brakes are recessed fitting.

Standard ones have a threaded bit that protrudes through the brake boss, and are held on by a domed nut.

You convert from standard to recessed with the aid of a drill bit – drill out the brake bridge until you can get a recessed fitting in there. You can DIY it or get your LBS to do it – mine did my Raleigh for me, and it's been stopping with me on top of it for years now.

Sheldon Brown tells you all about it here:
http://sheldonbrown.com/gloss_ra-e.html#recessed

That's missing the whole point of the show. It's very tongue in cheek, rather OTT (Normal coppers with guns?) and has some great characters and good humour. I love it, never missed an episode. (Same as Life on Mars)

I'd sooner it were a straight Professionals in the 80s type show than have all this ooh what's going on/time travel/pseudo philosophy business going on.

And Keeley Hawes is too mardy in it.

I have done in the past. Stuff that would be boring becomes interesting. Stick a 2.4 on the front if you find it too buzzy.

Compared to what over the last 65 years precisely?

Compared to say, the Japanese economy pre 1990.

There are 3 people onboard a bomber at any time who know exactly where the boat is and where its going to be (apart from changes due to having to get into a launch position, which aren't known until as necessary) also somebody mentioned that those onboard knew they were dead the minute they launched, well I can tell you having spent many years onboard I never felt that that was the case.

Not sure if you're talking about bomber aircraft or subs here, but certainly bomber aircraft crews didn't have a big chance of making it back. Lots of issues with flash blindness and there being no runway to land on once you got home…

There is a reason why Germany and Japan have two of the strongest economies in the world, and you don't have to look too far past the bit where they haven't spent the last 65 years funding a mahoosive standing military force.

The Japanese economy is distinctly unhealthy.

Any suggestions on how to make your snare differentiate between foxes, badgers, small deer, hares whatever?

The legislation, as I understand it, places the onus on not deliberately attempting to catch Schedule 6 animals.

So a snare near a chicken coop would be fair game, but one near a sett or on a path (and badger paths are damned obvious) wouldn't be.

I am not a lawyer, and I think snares are extremely unpleasant. But some kinds are legal. And I wasn't suggesting an air rifle as a sensible way of killing a Fox above.

If it's stuck to the seals, a palm on either side of the glass will get it moving again. Don't hack the seals up – they won't be cheap.

If that's not it, then the regulator's probably dead. Door card has to come off, put another one in, seal it all up properly again when you've done or water will get into the car. Normally they cost around £15, but you've got a Toyota, so it'll be more like £50.

e13 xcx?

It is a concept store and it is huge.

He'd obviously arrived on the wrong make of bike.

But if you had humanely trapped 'Ol' Fantastic' himself, couldn't you dispatch humanely with a blow to the head?

I very much doubt that many folks on here would be able to bring themselves to do it. I expect a deal of those who could, would probably do it in a ridiculously half hearted manner, maiming it rather than killing it cleanly.

And if the neighbours saw you, I'd be amazed if they didn't get the RSPCA or Police around, legally done or not. There are shades of grey to killing something humanely, and shooting is the obvious method which is clearly humane, but that's not possible in an urban context. A blunt instrument would most likely be perfectly humane in the right hands, but I'd much rather be in front of Mr Ruraltown JP rather than Mr Urbanite JP if it came to it.

Free running snare: May be legally used to catch foxes but is subject to many restrictions. In urban areas its doubtful that these restrictions can be met.

Set on your own land and checked daily, it's legal, unless the caveats I mentioned earlier about protected species (Schedule 6 is you want to google it) come into play.

No snaring Badgers, Hedgehogs or Bats now!

You can snare animals, but certain types of snare are illegal, and placing snares / traps in such a way as to catch protected species is illegal.

I researched this a little after finding a snared fox on a farm I was surveying. The above about snares never being legal is claptrap.

However, it's unlikely that you'll be able to kill the fox in a humane manner once you've snared it.

Shooting it is out of the question in an urban area, except with an air rifle, and you may well struggle to make a clean job of it.

I'm not a squeamish person when it comes to killing animals – I grew up on a farm myself, but catching things in snares really isn't pleasant at all. Animals will, on occasion, knaw off limbs to escape, and snared animals are an absolutely pathetic sight. I expect what would happen in reality is that you'd snare the fox, and then be unable to kill it, leaving you in a rather difficult situation.

If you seriously want to keep foxes out of your garden, get a dog.

Do Pupil Referral Units not exist any more then?

Fingerprint data is rather different to DNA data though. There are lot more ways in which it can be misused – leaks to insurance companies and exposing illegitimate children / relationships are two that spring to mind.

It'd make genocide & eugenics simpler too – no need to go around measuring skulls and the like..

There's also the fact that the government seem quite capable of losing sensitive data – child benefits records and vetting data for security clearance are two off the top of my head. The loss of vetting data is absolutely ridiculous – the whole point of vetting is to investigate someone's background extremely thoroughly, so as to assess the likelihood of them being blackmailed. The kind of data that's collected is of course about things like affairs, closet homosexuality, visits to prostitutes and fetishes, with the government having as much to lose by its release as those who were vetted.

I don't mean to be an old fuddy duddy and I don't know the full story but wasn't Miss Norris a guided customer. Without dissing her achievement was it technically a climb.

Agreed. It seems to me that people are sitting down with the Guinness book of records and actively looking for stuff that hasn't been done, and wouldn't be that hard to do. Retirees go up everest these days. Obvious by the number of hugely specific records about – youngest british woman to climb everest. So we can assume that at least a few younger people have done it before. If she looked like the back end of a bus, we'd never have heard of her.

I'm not saying going up Everest is a walk in the park, but it hardly puts you up there with someone who does the north face of the Eiger in my book.

Some firms (ragley for one) will tell you how the head angle is calced – with a typical fork of X travel and Y% sag.

Some others give unsagged static figures, which are pretty pointless for comparision purposes.

I am having a BBQ every three day at the moment. Actually it has been 3 month that I have a BBQ every three day.

Epic fail Juan. You should also have mentioned merguez and the fact that you can buy things in tasty marinades at the supermarket. Whereas we get burgers and foul "chinese style" marinades.

I personally wouldn't resign to go to college at the moment. I finished uni a couple of years ago, got a job, got deleted fairly early in the recession along with something like 50% of the firm's bottom two rungs.

Now I'm most of the way through a Masters that I thought would see me through until things picked up, and there's still F all out there, major firms are still cancelling their grad intakes etc.

I'd only pack in if you had another job to go to.

EN521s are tough. Like, I ride with very little grace and they're still alright tough.

I'd go for something as wide but lighter.

Our work generates cash on a time charge basis, and the higher priced fee earners are actually less profitable than more junior fee earners – therefore anyone who isn't a senior associate or partner gets shafted until they bleed.

Been there, done that and don't envy you at all.

Some stuff can be incredibly hard work – the early stages of entrepreneurial stuff for example, where there can be a lot of time pressure, and you're effectively a one man band with his house on the line.

On the other hand, those who make a lot of money in business often assemble a hard working and extremely competent team of managers below them, which makes the business much easier to run and sell.

Think about it. If your bike gets nicked out of your car, you'll have no bike, and a car that's likely to need to go to the bodyshop (from general wrenching of doors etc). You'll lose your NCB, and have no transport at all for some time.

Would really make having your bike nicked into a massive kick in the balls.

Mercedes and Cosworth for two sisters.

No, really.

Seriously, seriously put in for extenuating circumstances for the exams. If they're GCSEs it's not ultra important but this can obviously affect exam performance, and if it's A-levels then it's very worthwhile.