GHE

In the past I've driven everything except a bus, and I used to do a lot of miles too, which I think has helped me to stay OK in my old age. But now I only drive around 4,000 miles a year and just drive a car, and my standards are slipping a bit, which may or may not be related to my age. I find it harder or slower to read situations, especially at junctions etc that I don't know, and I avoid driving on unlit roads when possible, because I struggle with oncoming headlights (maybe not helped by driving a small, low car) and get tired. I'm against compulsory tests and don't think that I will ever take a voluntary test - I have family and friends who I drive around, and they will tell me, very clearly, if they don't think that I should continue driving. A lot of people don't seem to like driving on motorways but personally I find them to be the easiest roads. What will end up stopping me driving? Probably insurance cost, it's now going up a lot every renewal, even though I have a perfect driving record.

That's correct. The RNLI do not and cannot make any judgements, if people need help then, like all mariners, they provide that help. The captain of the rescue ship makes the decision about where to land rescued people, and normally they just keep on going to their planned destination, and the country of destination has to accept the people who have been rescued. There are rare and odd exceptions. When Carpathia rescued the 705 Titanic survivors their captain decided not to take them to Serbia, where he was heading, becausue of the numbers and shortage of food, so diverted to New York instead. Nobody suggested that he was wrong to do so . . . The reason that the boat people don't usually get dropped off in France is that they don't want to go there and threaten to jump overboard if they are taken back, which is the opposite of what the RNLI want, they are trying to save lives, not end them. Whether the RNLI should be doing the job of Border Force or not is a political matter, but maritime law trumps politics.

Don't set it on auto, set it on aperture priority for most subjects and set it on shutter priority for fast-moving subjects, which need a much higher shutter speed. Aperture priority will allow you to blur the background by setting a large aperture (small number) and will allow some creativity, although the small sensor size will limit this. A fast shutter speed will allow you to freeze subject movement. What you have is a very good camera, much better than most beginners buy, and it has enormous potential - not so sure about the lens though, you'll need to try it out and see for yourself if the limited maximum aperture is OK, and whether the image quality at large apertures is good enough for your needs. If it's any help, I've written an e-book on learning photography, https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CFB2TX6R

Agreed. But they should still have sought help from a local farmer, that was the obvious and normal way forward.

Animals escape sometimes, it's inevitable. Police get called to situations that are way beyond their experience, that's inevitable too - they can't be expert at everything. The problems arise when they assume that they can deal with a situation because they are police officers and are experts at everything. Surely someone in their office could have phoned any livestock farmer in the area? That's what happens in our rural area, farmers always turn out to help when the police ask them to, it may be moving a tree that's come down (a forklift that's just half a mile away is always better than calling out a contractor 20 miles away) or it may be a loose animal, they always help despite getting little or no help from the police in return (theft etc doesn't seem to interest the police). It seems to me that this happened simply because nobody thought it through. The drama was created by ignorance!

A couple of (obvious) points: 1. Police officers and police staff (such as firearms enquiry officers) are people, and mostly they are reasonable people. They aren't going to go out of their way to cause problems for people who post on this forum, and who express reasonable views, although they may perhaps find some of the more extreme political and racist views a bit concerning . . . 2. Forums are social media, and the police are not allowed to invade people's privacy by reading forums in order to obtain evidence of misconduct, although of course this may not apply to government security services. If police officers want to read a forum to find out what people are saying then they have to obtain special permission to do so, they have to access the forum from a private room with another officer present and they struggle to get that permission. I know of a case that involves a violent alcoholic gentleman who frequently makes threats against other people and is currently on bail for threats to kill. Even in this case, they can't get permission to read his facebook page and when one of his victims handed them a file of screenshots proving that he was making threats on social media they were grateful, because that evidence may help them to get permission to look at his social media themselves. So, let's not be paranoid about a problem that simply doesn't exist.

More or less. The gun was a S1 pump action, not a semi-auto, but that's just a minor detail. He shot 2 burglars, the first one was moving towards him and that shot was lawful and was taken in self-defence. The burglar survived but the shot placement stopped him breeding . . . The second burglar was shot in the back as he tried to get away, he wasn't a threat to Martin so the shot wasn't justified in law, which is why Martin was convicted of murder. His murder conviction was later overturned on appeal, but only because of public support for him, it's hard to find any legal justification for quashiing his murder conviction. Sometimes, just a second or two can change a self-defence situation into murder, as in the famous R-V-Clegg case, Cpl Clegg lawfully shot at a car that had crashed through the road block that he was in charge of in N.I., but then committed murder by firing another shot, once the car no longer presented a threat. The fact that Martin held the firearm illegally and that it wasn't locked away is neither here nor there, serious offences in their own right but unimportant when it comes to actually shooting people. There was a case where a man opened fire in self-defence, using his wifes' shotgun, he didn't have a certificate and should not have had access to her keys, but it didn't matter in the circumstances. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/sep/03/leicestershire-homeowner-suspected-burglars-shot

£39K donated so far, I think that this indicates how most people feel. I agree, but surely none of us are condoning illegal actions, we're just assuming that he did only what he was legally entitled to do, because no other choices were available to him. Right now, its all just speculation. The truth may out one day but probably won't, there are often people in authority who try very hard to keep the public in ignorance.

Medcert of similar, basically they are medical doctors who will contact your own GP and (with your written authority) will require your doctor to provide them with the info. They then analyse the info and provide you with the paperwork you need. Usually very quick, efficient and around £60, and the best thing about it is that your own doctor gets what they deserve - nothing.

I'm not that old either, but I do remember the coalman, once we moved to London. From memory, they had 3 sizes of bag, 1/2 cwt, 1 cwt and 2 cwt, the smaller bags being used for people who couldn't afford to buy 2 hundredweight at a time or who lived upstairs - how did they manage the weight? And before that, we lived in S. Wales. In theory, coal was free to mine workers but in fact was free to local poor people too, we used to collect it daily in a shopping bag. And I remember the Milkman and his horse too, the horse knew every customer address, the milkman walked alongside, delivering the bottles, the horse didn't need his input. Rabbits were free too, and the only meat available, as a young child I became skilled at snaring them.

English Shooting has issued a video on this, and I've watched part of it. To be honest, I find this channel difficult to watch, as every 5-minute video seems to run for a couple of hours, but I don't doubt his good intentions and he does seem to do his homework, so some people may want to watch it . . .

The most important thing is to evacuate, unless the fire is very small, can be tackled before any real heat has been generated and there are 4x as many extinguishers than you think you need . . . Many years ago, I worked in a large furniture factory, I was the personnel manager and so was ultimately responsible for safety. We had a lot of buildings, spread out over a large area. One of them had a fire on the top floor, which was a cellulose spray shop, a bearing overheated in one spray booth, which caught fire. Full emergency procedure, building evacuated, first-aiders and nurse on the way, 2 men trained in firefighting stayed behind to deal with the fire. They correctly used dry powder but by the time I arrived on scene they had used 8 10kg extinguishers and only had 4 left. I put out a tannoy call for volunteers to bring more, and by the time the fire was out we had used 34, a mixture of 10 and 20kg, we were going to switch to water to cool it down but at that point the first fire pumps were arriving so they took over - just as well, because the water fire extinguishers deliver a tiny volume of water, under pressure, and it takes a large volume to be useful. The mess from the dry powder was terrible, but we saved the building. A few years later, our house caught fire. The fire started at about 1am in the kitchen, the insurance company said it was caused by an electrical fault. I was away at the time, my wife was in the front room, she heard the fire, found that it was too severe to go towards and went out the front door. There was a neighbour opposite, Ray, he was a thick but very strong labourer and very practical, his wife phoned the fire brigade and he threw a brick through the front upstairs window, to wake up our daughter. She was only 15 and was wearing just her nightie, she ended up on the window ledge, a crowd had gathered and were shouting at her to jump, but Ray got a ladder to her instead. That left our 9 year old son whose bedroom was at the side of the house (converted garage) By pure luck, his 19 year old brother was sharing the room with him, on holiday from uni. He was woken, either by the sound of the fire or by a smoke alarm, and he got them both out, luckily there was a door that led, via a long external passage, to the back garden. Nobody knew that they were safe. The fire brigade were fantastic, they rammed the outside wall (where the garage door had once been) with their fire engine and then knocked it down with sledgehammers. The fire damage was very severe but was limited to the kitchen and adjoining morning room, the 2 rooms above, the loft and the roof. The only identifiable items were the drum of the washing machine and part of the frame of a metal/glass fish tank. All the walls were bare brick, the plaster had popped off. The rest of the house was fine, except for smoke damage, which killed the pet birds in our daughters' room. The point that I'm making is that fire spreads very quickly and needs an enormous amount of equipment to put it out, so in almost all situations the only safe thing to do is to evacuate. Even if there's no insurance, life is worth more than property.

Probably just H&S... It can be both safe and sensible to fight small new fires, but it requires common sense, enough of the right gear and a clear and simple escape route.

Fires are classed as Class A: solid materials such as wood or paper, fabric, and some plastics. Class B: liquids or gas such as alcohol, ether, gasoline, or grease. Class C electrical failure from appliances, electronic equipment, and wiring. Class D metallic substances such as sodium, titanium, zirconium, or magnesium. Forget about D, very rare risks in the scheme of things. Water is by far the best for wood, paper etc because it removes the heat, which the fire needs. It can also smother the fire, if it's small enough and if there's enough water, and smothering the fire removes the oxygen that fire needs. Water is useless on Class B, and can easily make them worse by spreading the burning material around. Dry powder is best for flammable liquids etc but also works on wood, paper etc and electrical. It makes a terrible mess but is very effective because it smothers fire very well, and the chemicals also knock back the fire. CO2 is useless on everything except electrical, it smothers the fire but also blows it around under very high pressure. It also leaves the scene of the fire very quickly, so even if it puts it out, it often re-ignites immediately. It's perfect for first attack on electrical fires, and keep using it until someone else has managed to turn off the electrics, at which point switch to water I once (ironically) had to use C02 on an electrical fire alarm panel, due to lightening strike, this was a very enclosed area so should have been perfect, but in reality it just kept re-igniting. Insurance companies like it because it doesn't cause any mess or damage Foam pretty much does the same as dry powder, which largely replaced it, it works in the same way but has the disadvantage that, if used on a sloping surface, will just run away and do very little. AFAIK, all dry powder and foam extinguishers are now classed as ABC, which means that the chemicals can deal with all types of fire. The problem that most fire extinguishers have is that they are too small, unless a fire is attacked within a very few seconds. The basic rule is to evacuate, only staying behind to fight the fire if there is at least one clear and easy escape route and if there are plenty of fire extinguishers immediately at hand, and between yourself and the escape route.

I do, my views are honest and sincerely held, and you know the history. 2 points though; 1. Where a claim is covered by more than one insurer, the responsible insurer is the one that covered the risk first. What BASC seems to be saying is that where both they and another insurer cover the risk, they will take on the job of sorting out the very simple task of defining which insurer is actually liable. not a big job for anyone who can read a calendar. 2. BASC seems to be claiming that they are the insurer of first resort, which may be correct, But they indicate that this is a good thing. It is in fact the insurer of last resort (when there is one) that has to pick up the tab when there is no other insurer on the scene, for whatever reason - an example of this is where the government becomes the insurer of last resort if a financial institution fails. I'm NOT suggesting that there is anything wrong with the BASC insurance services, I'm not even suggesting that the statements are inaccurate, what I am saying that that you are using knocking copy, which is inadvisable for the reasons already given.