aldivalloch

As far as I can see nobody has mentioned "amazing" yet. It has become one of the most over-used, misused words of the decade. And then there's "devastated" and "decimated". Have a look at the dictionary definitions. And "defiantly" when the writer means "definitely". And don't get me started about people who try to use words that they don't understand and can't spell, anyway. And there's "were" for "where", and vice versa. English is a wonderful language and affords endless opportunities to be expressive, yet every day I hear it being tortured and mangled by people who are too lazy to take the trouble to think about what they are trying to say. Grump, grump.

Can anyone give me some advice? A few days ago I tried to unlock my car, which was parked outside my house, using the remote key-fob. It didn't work. Thinking the battery had run down, I went and got the spare. It didn't work either. I got in using the skinny little key that's fitted into the side of the fob, but it was really difficult to get enough leverage on it to get it to turn. The car's a Toyota Verso, by the way. I parked a couple of miles from home and found that the remote locking worked again. Over subsequent days I found that it still works pretty much everywhere - but not close to my house..... I've since discovered that my neighbour is having the same problem with his Kia. Now, the house over the road was rented out recently to some young people. One of them is an IT something-or-other - and he works from home. Could it be that his wireless broadband is jamming our remote locking? And if so, what can we do about it? Can remote locking be re-tuned to a different frequency? I'd be grateful for assistance, particularly if it's written in the sort of language an elderly technophobe might understand!

Good whisky, but there's no such place as "the Orkneys". Or, for that matter "the Shetlands". It's "Orkney" and "Shetland". We don't talk about "the Jerseys", do we? Well said, that man. No point in you lot claiming to be connoisseurs if you can't even spell the name of your "favourite tipple". It's WHISKY. No "e" in it. Long live the pedants!!

My sister-in-law's husband showed a high reading recently and was admitted to hospital for a few hours to have treatment. He was showing 258/118!! He's still alive.

Sadly, I have no reason to disbelieve you. I remember seeing this forty years ago when I stayed for a while in a small city and got caught up in doing a bit of voluntary work. I was taken to an estate where the "green areas" were litter-strewn expanses of mud, punctuated with broken fridges and abandoned toys. There were no lights in the stairways of the blocks of flats - they'd been smashed or stolen - and a lot of the windows had been patched over with plywood. The residents weren't exactly honest, civilised, industrious or hospitable..... It was some shock to a naive youth who'd been brought up in the country amongst hard-working, proud, independent people. I live in the far, windy north now, and have done for more than thirty years. Average incomes aren't great but unemployment is low. There's very little crime, no significant drugs problem, we don't routinely lock our doors or our cars, and there are no "ghettos" of mingers and scroungers. The weather's nothing to shout about but the shooting and fishing are good. I'm not planning relocating anywhere in the foreseeable future! Housing Benefit isn't only for the unemployed. It's available to people on low incomes - for example the retired; those unable to work because of disability or ill-health; part-time workers; and those in poorly-paid full-time employment. You'd be surprised just how few tenants actually pay full rent.

You're partly right - councils ARE paying over the odds for the reason I stated earlier, which is that they have a statutory duty to accommodate homeless people but don't have sufficient stock to do so. And Housing Benefit is already capped, the cap varying from area to area in relation to the local reference figure. But to say that we don't need to build more social housing, that we don't need any? How on earth do you come to that conclusion? What alternative would you offer people who can't afford to buy? A cardboard box in a side-street? Or are you suggesting that we should rely upon private developers, whose prime motivation would be profit? And by saying that social rented housing is a dumping-ground you insult the thousands of hard-working, honest, respectable tenants out there (and on this forum) for whom owner-occupancy will never be a reality in these straitened economic times because low wages preclude saving for a deposit and then managing mortgage payments which, let's face it, can only go up once the Bank of England decides to increase the base rate.

It's a bad, ill-thought-out piece of policy. In the area I live in the average income is pretty modest and there's a steady demand for social rented housing. Additional pressure upon availability arises through homelessness - the local authority has a duty in law to accommodate eligible homeless individuals / families. That same local authority, and the housing associations with which it works in partnership, aren't in a position to build many new properties - there's insufficient funding available from central government. They don't have a big existing stock of one- and two-bedroom properties - historically the emphasis has been on building three-bedroom houses. That's because three bedrooms were / are best suited to traditional needs - one for mum and dad, one for male children and one for female children. Not surprisingly, these social rented housing providers aren't keen on building new one- and two-bedroom properties for the reasons stated above. One- and two-bedroom houses lack versatility. The fundamental problem with the so-called "bedroom tax" is that local authorities may quite genuinely have no accommodation of appropriate size to offer to homeless people, or to applicants who have risen to the top of the allocations list. So they will have no choice but to put these tenants in a situation in which they are automatically financially penalised for a situation over which they have no control. Before anyone goes off on a right-wing rant about immigrants, skivers and parasites, let me just say that I do know quite a lot about what I'm talking about. Homelessness is a very real problem which can come about for a number of reasons - loss of employment; failure of business; relationship break-down; family break-down; domestic violence; loss of private tenancy; etc. And with regard to the need for long-term social rented housing, well, that has increased - and continues to increase - as house prices rise, taking that first step onto the property ladder further and further away from people on ordinary incomes. Britain's housing crisis was born many years ago when the government of the time introduced right-to-buy and at the same time put a stranglehold upon the ability of local authorities to build new social rented housing. The outcome was predictable - council-housing waiting lists lengthened (where I live, the average waiting time quickly rose to seven years) and so people requiring accommodation had either to look to the private sector, where rents shot up, or purchase property. Of course the increased number of first-time buyers competing for property pushed prices up, and we all got to witness the ensuing mayhem in the mortgage market - unaffordable payments, negative equity, repossessions, and so on. What this country needs is a huge programme of government-backed construction of property for rent. It would provide a viable alternative to house-purchase for the thousands of people out there who need somewhere to live but are stuck away down the allocations lists and unable to find a deposit and stretch to the mortgage payments necessary to become property owners. The consequent fall in demand for property to purchase would also bring some much-needed sanity to a housing market which, in spite of local fluctuations, is still seeing average prices outpace increases in income for a large proportion of the population.

A few years ago I heard from a friend about a businessman who bought his wife K9 XXX (her initials). Apparently it was a while before she found out that he had confided to a mate that he'd chosen K9 (canine) because she was a bit of a dog.......

Don't go asking your vet to spay your MALE dog - not unless you want to give him / her the giggles.....

Thanks, gentlemen! I'll tell him to keep an eye out for further sightings. He's up on the site every day and always has his binoculars with him.

Small Dalek.

I was speaking to my son on the phone earlier this evening. He's currently living in Dunkeld (Perthshire) and working on the new wind-farm at Aberfeldy. He told me that he was walking just off the site as the light was failing, and disturbed two deer which, he said, were thick-set and about the size of a Labrador. He's absolutely sure that they weren't roe, and I believe him as he's got a very good knowledge of wildlife. But have muntjac made their way that far north?

Wymberley, we should meet up sometime! We might end up behaving like the Statler and Waldorf of Pigeon Watch, but the conversation would be stimulating...... Regards!

At the risk of prolonging this discussion I think you should go back and consider the original post. The OP informed us that he is to become the owner of a side-by-side shotgun with quarter and three-quarter chokes. He then asked how this would "effect what cartridges i need to be choosing". So I inferred that his question was actually about appropriate cartridges, rather than choke, as whilst he can do little about the latter without resorting to a gunsmith, careful selection of the former should allow him to cater for most of his shooting situations. And rather than recommend particular cartridges I thought I'd offer him some criteria to assist him in choosing. I accept that the 96:1 ratio has been around for a long time. But it seems to have served an awful lot of shooters very well over that period. And it may also be the case that the faster-burning powders employed to produce the higher velocities of modern cartridges cause no appreciable increase in felt recoil. The "oldies" took a pretty sophisticated approach to their shooting and tailored their guns accordingly. Fowling guns were heavy, large-calibre weapons; live-pigeon guns, the forerunners of clay-pigeon guns, were built heavy to absorb the recoil of repeated shots. Game-guns offered a combination of moderate weight for ease of manipulation (repeated mounting and swinging on big days) and recoil absorption from the many shots fired. And the rough-shooter was well advised to choose a lighter gun for ease of portability, the trade-off being increased recoil in the relatively few shots he would take in a day. Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose (sorry, can't find the cedilla or circumflex) Don't be too quick to knock their theories. Old isn't automatically irrelevant, as you've indicated by your observations on the effects on pattern quality of high velocity. Don't forget that the oldies who shot with muzzle-loaders used to tighten their patterns by reducing the powder-load. Their maxim was "Little powder, much lead, kills far, kills dead".

Thanks, Evo!

Wymberley - congratulations on your apparently magical capacity to know me without ever having spoken to me or met me! Is it a pseudo-Confucian thing? I see the OP responded in a much more courteous fashion. Given that he asked the question, it may be that he is a better placed to comment on the merits of my answer than a know-all forum-sniper.

Well, next time somebody asks an open question we'll just refer him - or her - to you for the answer, since you obviously think yours was all-encompassing. No point in anybody else offering their advice. Smartypants.

It's not that simple! I take it you're going to be owning a reasonably modern gun, something made within, say the last twenty-five years and in good repair (not pitted or loose)? First thing that determines the cartridges you should be choosing is calibre (obviously!). Is the gun a twelve-bore, a twenty, etc? Next, and this is VERY important, chamber length - you don't want to be trying to fire three-inch cartridges through a gun with two-and-a-half or two-and-three-quarter inch chambers. After that, service pressure. Find out what your gun's proofed for and DON'T use cartridges that exceed that figure. Weight of the gun. A good rule of thumb is to use a load that is roughly one ninety-sixth of the weight of the gun. A light load will, generally speaking, make for light recoil. A heavy load will do the opposite - in the worst analysis it will rattle your fillings, blacken your shoulder, make you develop a flinch and strain your gun. Some folk on this forum seem to like firing heavy loads through standard guns. They are either masochists, macho-men, ignorant or just plain stupid. What sort of shooting are you planning to do? Clays? Rough shooting? Pigeons? Driven game? Wildfowling? The answer will indicate what size of shot you need. Choose within the capabilities of your gun - make sure the load / pellet size combination offers a decent pattern within the ranges at which you'll be taking your shots. And remember that some older guns aren't up to using steel loads. And steel is less forgiving (less compressible) than lead and so shouldn't be used in tighter chokes. Half-choke is probably tight enough. If you want to have information at your finger-tips, do some reading. There's a lot of good books on guns and shooting; you can pick up a lot of information from them and reading about the sport is great for keeping you interested when you can't be out because of weather / closed seasons / work and so on. Be safe and enjoy yourself!

There's a Tesco bag on the shelf in the third photo. Is Ray going to be endorsing horse-burgers?

Some great humour coming out here! But in all seriousness, doesn't this make a great case for shooting/catching/growing your own, or for buying from a good old-fashioned reputable butcher? The one I use has a notice-board up on his wall with details of the farm his meat came from, right down to the animal's tag number. And I still maintain that because he cuts the meat to order, it works out cheaper to buy from him. Go to a supermarket and you have to buy in the quantities that get put on their little polystyrene trays, regardless of whether that's how much or how little you really want. I hope the inimitable Clarissa gets stuck into this one next time she does one of her Great British Food programmes!

You were doing 42 mph? You say that "police see it happen". Was your speed measured by a following police vehicle, by an officer with a radar device (speed gun), or by a camera? Did the charges against you state that you were travelling at 42 mph, or is that how fast you reckon you were travelling? It looks as though you were being very irresponsible with a lethal weapon (your car), and the police have decided that you're not going to get a chance to equally irresponsible with another lethal weapon (your gun).

I'm going to run the risk of stating the obvious.......... The combination of hammers and an under-lever indicates that this is a very old gun and therefore almost certainly proofed for black powder. Please, please DON'T fire it using modern nitro catridges. You stand to lose some body-parts which you'd be much better off keeping intact. Take it to a gunsmith - that's a gunsmith, NOT a gunshop, and get it inspected.

Congratulations, MattSoanes! Children are indeed a blessing, and daughters particularly so. You can look forward to your wee baby blossoming into a destructive toddler. She'll become toy-obsessed and you'll be reduced to a trembling wreck trying to track down that latest must-have every Christmas and birthday. Next it'll be clothes to a soundtrack of unbelievable tantrums if you don't cave in. Don't take it too badly - the tantrums generally only go on for the first twenty years or so. And all that time you'll be praying that she won't like ponies. Oh, and perhaps I shouldn't mention the unsuitable boyfriends...... And the cripplingly expensive driving lessons. And then your car won't always be there when you want to use it. Then she'll crash it - at least once - and some of her less discreet friends will tell you how unbelievably fast she can get round that tight bend just outside town. Then you'll lie awake at night waiting for the police to bring her home, or tell you which cell they've got her in. She'll probably go to college or university, and you really will be reduced to wondering whether you can afford to have the heating on on anything but the coldest days in winter. As for being able to buy cartridges, well, dream on. And then one day she'll tell you that she's getting married (possibly to one of the unsuitable boyfriends). She might as well tell you that you're getting bankrupted. It's the same thing. You just have to take it on the chin and try to dismiss from your mind the knowledge that the cost of her "do" would have bought you a Purdey sidelock or a small four-by-four. The bung towards the deposit for the flat / house won't hurt at all - you'll still be traumatised and numb after paying for the wedding! Finally, there comes the BIG NEWS. She's pregnant. You're going to be a grandad. You rush into the bathroom to check how far your greying hair has receded (if you've got any left) while the prospective granny immediately checks out the cost of prams on-line. You steel yourself for the inevitable - the handing over of your credit card. And you shake hands with your son-in-law, congratulate him, and think, oh, boy, if only you knew what you've got coming. Mine's called Fiona, by the way, and she'll be thirty in April. AND NONE OF THIS IS FICTION!

Some good advice being offered here. If I may add to it I'd say that you should always bear in mind that farmers are by nature a cautious lot. Make sure you look clean and tidy, and be warm but respectful. Go through the usual pleasantries about the weather and how life is treating them. Stay away from contentious issues like politics, or else be prepared to agree with whatever opinions they express! If you've got some knowledge of how farming is faring, then all the better - you can talk about crop damage, poor harvests, bad prices, etc. Don't go straight in with "Hello, I want to shoot on your land and I've got a gun in my car." First impressions count - and they can count against you. Most farmers, busy people though they may be, will want to suss you out and so if you can establish common ground - and particularly if you can find mutual acquaintances - you'll have a much better chance of "getting in there". Reassure him with information about your experience and insurance cover, and an undertaking that you'd always make him aware of when you were on his ground. Put yourself in the farmer's shoes - if it were your land, would you just hand over access to a complete stranger, regardless of what he was driving? The last time I went through this, I approached the farmer in his yard. We did weather, the state of farming, etc, etc. The conversation moved up onto the top of his feed wagon - his new, expensive, labour saving toy. We exchanged names, and it turned out he had known my late uncle. Link made. An hour later I had open access with shotgun and rifle to a lot of farmland and rough ground that holds rabbits, hares, snipe, duck, geese, pheasants and a few grouse. Well worth a strategic approach!

Surely he must be having a laugh? Or does he have a 50,000 of them at a quid each? I've got one at the top of the stairs, a red ten-pointer that's over a hundred years old and was known as the Wide Stag because of the immense span of the antlers. Mrs Aldivalloch would dearly love to chuck it in the nearest skip, as she hates it. That's why I've held on to it, I suppose! I bet she'd have a change of heart if she thought it was worth a few bob!