Cosmicblue

Having retired last year and started drawing the state pension from September (month following my 66th birthday) I was surprised to find that it is paid in full (i.e. no tax deducted) - every 4 weeks. HMRC, who never miss a trick then deduct the tax for it from other pension income.

Understood. There is this: RONYASOFT CD DVD LABEL MAKER The demo version is unlimited use and will watermark the prints - maybe enough for your needs or buy the full version for the professional end result.

As udderlyoffroad has mentioned - writeable CDs and DVDs have proved to be a poor data storage option - I was holding a pile that had older data-backups on, after 5 years most were unreadable.

New York? Went there is 2012 for 10 days to placate the wife and expected to hate it - and didn't, Its like no other city on the planet that I've ever visited - Stay in the financial district (that's the bottom bit nearest the Statue of Liberty) and discover it goes quiet at night - must visit the Mexican: Mad Dogs and Beans: https://www.maddogandbeans.com/ down there - their Margaritas are lethal, walking back to the hotel was VERY difficult and it was only 2 blocks away. - The have a couple of nights up in Mid-town, just south of central park - nuts, construction sites work 24 hours a day as, its seems, everything else does too.

What's your budget?

Dentists are a likely example of the way the whole of the NHS will go eventually as the current arrangement is unaffordable: - Better drugs and technologies mean that people live longer which costs money - Better drugs and technologies cost more money in themselves - our health professionals are underpaid so the NHS needs more money A conversation with my NHS dentist went like this a few years ago..."Under the NHS the treatment is 'X' however that's not really the way it could be done for the best result, current dental techniques in the private sector are 'Y' so if you have a private dental plan this is the way we would approach it". Hello Denplan - costs me about £50/month. UK dentistry is already a two-tier system, the bare minimum vs getting the job done properly, seems only a matter of time before the rest of the NHS follows suit.

Weirdly, the best free convertor is from the author - Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/online/pdf-to-word.html

Adblock Plus - Free version: https://accounts.adblockplus.org/en/block-cookie-banners?an=adblockpluschrome&ap=edge&apv=121&av=3.23&p=chromium&pv=121

- Two things you can do. 1) Install a an Advert blocker as an extension to your web browser - I use AdblockPlus: https://adblockplus.org/download, contributing to its development is optional, I do put £5 in from time to time 2) If you are using a PC consider installing a free tool like CCleaner: https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/download/standard Adblock supresses adverts effectively, to the point that some sites will detect it is being used and ask you to turn it off for the site - which you can do. CCleaner's Custom Clean option, left in it's default settings will clear out the cookies that produce annoying pop-ups.

https://czechoslovakgroup.com/en/news/perazzi-acquired-by-czechoslovak-group

Me too. Despicable trick.

Trump reminds Americans of what the USA was like in the late 1980s/early 1990s and offers them the dream of reclaiming it. Back then the US had a strong manufacturing backbone, made good stuff and it was cheap, houses were cheap, cars were cheap, petrol was cheap and stuff in the stores/consumer electronics were cheap, those that wanted jobs had work and it was a genuinely decent place to live. The danger of 'cheap' is that there is always someone, somewhere who will do it for less - as was the case and now, much like the UK their manufacturing base has dwindled away to nothing. Detroit, a once proud automotive city, has almost nothing left, at least here in UK, our equivalent is Coventry and that's faired a bit better. Trump's message gives them hope - it ignores the economic reality of a global economy and that no single prosperous country operates successfully in complete isolation these days - there is huge interdependency. The last presidential run was fairly evenly split so there is a real risk that Trump will get convicted and yet half of the electorate will likely vote for the republicans and see Trump as the President elect. A convicted felon as President, sat in the White House? Of course he'll pardon himself but the possibility of a civil war could be real.

Lenovo (formerly IBM's PC division before being sold to the Chinese) makes very good bits of kit. On the data recovery aspect from the old disk - it maybe the case that the data is still safe on the old machine but the bit that contains the 'boot partition' is broken. You can inexpensively find out by removing the old disk (YouTube is your friend here for instructions on how to do) and buying one of these: itrust USB 3.0 to SATA Adapter Cable for 2.5" SSD HDD Drives - External Converter and Cable,USB III converter When plugged into another PC the 'old' disk might still be readable (as long as it isn't encrypted, i.e. MS Bitlocker).

We binned the landline with a phone attached to it about 10 years ago, wrote something to say we were no longer on landline and our mobiles were xx and xx in Christmas cards for a couple of years and that was the end of it. Live in a town and have expensive high 900 m/bit BT Full Fibre broadband without a telephone attached to it - needed the high-bandwidth/low latency for IT work stuff originally (and could claim it on expenses) but retired back in Feb of this year - fairly pointless now. BT are on a mission to get shot of all of the copper lines and have everyone on some kind of fibre service - the target was 2025 but I think that has slipped. When one travels globally it is interesting to note that some countries don't have the GPO/British Telecom legacy we have where wires are strung between poles or buried in the ground for broadband provision but went straight to 4G/5G mobile tech from day one. One, sometimes overlooked, element of acquiring a broadband service provider is that of 'latency', this is how long a 'packet' of data takes to do a round trip, from your mobile or PC device to service you are accessing and back again, measured in milliseconds. When computing devices communicate with each other they send these 'packets of data' and wait for a message to say it has been received complete/or not. Ideally you want 20ms or less if you use your internet connection for gaming and perhaps 100ms for movies.

Have just replaced our gas boiler (a week ago), I did look really closely at an air source heat pump as there are government grants (https://www.gov.uk/apply-boiler-upgrade-scheme/what-you-can-get) to support the purchase and installation of such things. The hidden bit of detail is that they consume expensive electricity to operate AND whilst the water is warmed by the heat pump it still needs to have it's temperature increased to be tap/radiator temperature. Some installers said 'try to forget radiators and go for under-floor heating where possible'.

Was reminded again today that despite the premium prices for Berghaus kit, the fact that you can get it repaired for free (you have to pay the postage to get the item back to them) is an exception in this throw-away world. One of the boots that I use for shooting has had a lace-loop break, simply logged a job here: https://pentland.my.salesforce-sites.com/D2CBrands/ContactusRepairhaus?RepairhausDE=False along with a photo and they came back with a 'Yes, send it back, we can fix it' Email. P

Either your pals are trying to guide you or they are unable to make the kind of purchases you might be considering. I look at it like this (66 next month and retired earlier this year), there is going to come a time, maybe tomorrow maybe many years into the future when I'm going to have a few moments to consider that the end of the road is close. I don't want to have any regrets at all, my father (who passed away when I was 30, aged 56) used to say 'life isn't a dress-rehearsal', so go out there and live it - buy the gun of your dreams (I did, twice!) if you wish or whatever takes your fancy. I have that one too...not smoking but cars and bikes...yikes, gives me the shivers when I think about it.

Have my best ever year with the PBs, have the max investment, currently standing at £825 this year with the July draw adding another £100 (2x25 1x50). Right now the winning odds are 24,000:1, from the August draw that's being increased to 22,000:1.

Many people don't realise that the fact that FB is apparently free is underpinned by the reality that everything you look at or search for is recorded - and then used to target you - interesting article on the topic here: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-youre-product-facebook-business.html

Its a interesting situation. 1) Prigozhin is in Belarus and the president (Aleksandr Lukashenko) there is supposedly close to Putin Aleksandr Lukashenko must be wondering if backing Putin is still a good plan - as things seem to be going a bit sideways and he wants to be on the winning side whatever happens whilst being conscious that Prigozhin could cause him trouble too. 2) Prigozhin - would have every right to be concerned that Putin can't afford to have him alive so the two of them are likely on a collision path whatever happens 3) It seems a possibility that Wagner, possibly led by Prigozhin will attempt to break the Russian military from within, not exactly mutiny but more of terrorist effort aimed at infrastructure but avoiding spilling Russian blood. 4) In the meanwhile the Russian army are trying to stop the Ukraine army from advancing but anyone with half a brain in the Russian army will be wondering if their own leadership is still committed. The next few weeks will be interesting.

Being a cynical fellow I wondered if this is information warfare and the Russian thug has said no such thing - but its been widely reported across the media channels. Those with insecurity baked-in within the Russian military leadership might assume 'no smoke without fire' and he's toast anyway?

Caravans will be banned! More seriously though for a moment, our generation can drive and have grown up with the idea of personal transport - the youngsters that follow us have a different mindset.

I'd like to offer a slightly alternate view. 1) Battery technology and associated chemistry is changing rapidly, current EV battery tech is caught in a loop where more range = bigger battery = bigger vehicle = more weight. Right now lithium is current tech, that will get superseded quickly. 2) An article on Toyota's roadmap was published a week or so back: Toyota claims solid-state EV battery tech breakthrough could offer +900 miles driving range 3) I think we are in the twilight years of car ownership for personal transport - an EV is much closer to an 'appliance', like a washing machine. When an electric motor is the power source, aside from suspension design they are all going to be similar to drive, some will be quicker than others but that's about it. As the tech is evolving rapidly the rate of depreciation accelerates - no normal individual will want that cost burden. Its already happening 6 months ago the Audi Etron S was nudging £100k, now they can be picked up used for £50-£55k - a scary loss. 4) The number of teenagers learning to drive each year has been falling for 10 years or more: Number of young drivers plunges to record low 5) Autonomous vehicles are already a reality and regulatory approval seems inevitable. I can see, perhaps 10 years from now that we'll have something like an Uber app on our mobile devices that will summon a vehicle without a driver to take us to our destination - a depressing thought. Perhaps we will have a monthly subscription for say 2,000 miles of travel for a fixed fee? 6) So whilst some suggest that countryside dwellers will have to move into the cities I can't personally see that happening.

Had a few days away down in SE Cornwall - used the ferry boat (like a fisherman's work boat) to get from Polruan to Fowey...sat there in the boat with my £5.60 in cash when the 'driver' whipped out a card machine - I very nearly fell over the side in surprise... the chap said "I know, even in Cornwall!". Almost all the car parks accepted contactless cards for payment - except Polperro (truly beautiful), where the massive car-park had machines that only took cash (£6) and had numerous machines that converted notes into £1 coins....felt like a tax fiddle....

John Jeffries does a fitting service: https://johnjeffries-customguns.com/gun-fitting-service-sussex/