McSpredder

And there is still a valley in Sutherland named Glen Golly.

Presumably card-carrying members of The Vegan Society would not eat anything grown with aid of animal manure or human "night soil". Does the label on your box of plant food guarantee that it was produced entirely from plant-based compost? If not, it probably includes industrially manufactured chemical fertilisers or (God forbid) peat.

Good point. Also, will a scrapyard buy an electric vehicle, or does the owner have to pay a disposal fee? Is it expensive to dismantle an EV? Presumably there would be extra staff training and equipment required for dealing with high voltages and possible fire hazards. An EV that has been damaged in a collision might involve extra risks and extra costs. I imagine a landowner will be required to pay the full cost for collection and disposal of any electric vehicle dumped on private property.

The one who said: "If God didn't want us to eat animals, then how come he made them out of meat?"

Card payment makes it harder for a trader to defraud the taxman, but each transaction increases the risk that criminals will acquire information about my bank details and defraud me.

Liberace said something similar.

Cash can be used during a power cut. Cashless transactions seem to require an infallible power supply and infallible electronic communications. No more “honesty box” stalls selling eggs and veg at the roadside. Just over a year ago the villages round here had several days with no electricity and no mobile phone signals (no power to the masts), all because of some high wind speeds during Storm Arwen. Power and communications infrastructure are also very vulnerable to deliberate attack, as Ukraine knows.

Yes, steam engines, Stirling engines, etc. The Stanley Steamer was apparently very well regarded in its day.

Thanks for posting that picture of a tractor looking as though it might have just finished a day's work. Much more appealing (to my eyes) than some of the machines that have been restored to “ex-factory” condition.

That will be a nice bike when fully restored, but what I really like is the Marshall, complete with winch, in the first photo. Reminds me of the one we had at home, bought not long after the end of WW2, went to the scrapper around 1962. Ours didn't have a winch, and was used mostly for ploughing and belt work (thresher). Father sowed a couple of field of wheat with it, but reckoned it was going to shake the grain drill to pieces.

My priority would be comfort, not price. Sore feet can ruin your day, and even the most expensive brands might only account for a very small proportion of the cost of each outing. I have been lucky enough to find cheap boots that fit my feet very well, so I wear them all day and every day, buy a new “best” pair each year, and demote the old ones to garden use. Those £20 “Site Slate” safety boots from Screwfix are costing me less than 10 pence per day. Other folk might not like them, but for me they would still be good value at twenty times the price, simly because they are comfortable.

Cannot be sure about the rib in that photo, but noticed that the top lever looks quite a long way left of centre. Is that considered normal for a new Browning?

I feel sorry for young folk who have never had the chance to see those beautiful frost patterns on the inside of the windows, or to scratch their names with a fingernail.

In the nations among whom I worked in Africa and Asia, one of the most noticeable characteristics was the respect shown to elderly people, acknowledgement of what those folk had achieved (or struggled to achieve) in earlier life, and great tolerance of the foibles of old age. Not qualities shared by Ms Fulani, it would seem. Charity organiser? Yes. Charitable personality? Hmm.

It is good to see that BASC has drawn attention to this, and I hope the other shooting organisations will do likewise. The HSE dossier relies on 19 sources attributed to Green and/or Pain (cited 98 times), five from other named members of the LAG (cited 10 times), and six more attributed to the LAG as a body (cited 51 times). Professor Rhys Green may also have had an influence on other papers referred to in the HSE dossier, because the LAG website states that he is currently on the editorial boards of five peer-reviewed journals. I assume the quality of science accepted by those five journals might be similar to that revealed in Prof Green’s own publications. HSE's Independent Scientific Expert Pool includes not only Professors Green and Pain, but also Professor Len Levy, who has been a member of the LAG since its earliest days. At the end of a publication in which Green & Pain made one of their false assertions about evidence for an average meat portion, the authors wrote “We thank Professor Len Levy for his guidance and advice during the preparation of this paper.” Any further involvement of LAG members in relation to the HSE dossier would be pointless because they have stated unequivocally (minutes of LAG meeting, 22 July 2022) that “Consensus among the group is that the HSE Restriction Dossier for Lead Ammunition is thorough and evidence based” and that “No members have any major concerns with any of the science presented.” At least one LAG member (Professor Ian Newton) is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a body whose written evidence submitted to the Science and Technology Committee included this sentence: “Examples of poor science include excessive, exclusive or undue emphasis on certain aspects of science or data (often called “cherry picking”) and, in some cases, misrepresentation or public misinformation". LAG members have chosen to fully endorse the HSE dossier and the papers published by Green & Pain, despite the egregious cherry picking of evidence, the deliberate distortion of data, and the statistical analyses based on absurdly small sample numbers, all so obvious to other readers. LAG minutes do not reveal whether individual members had actually studied the documents, or simply approved them as a result of “group-think”. HSE dossier references.tif

Those of us who were around in the 1950s will remember that nuclear energy was going to be too cheap to meter.

What happens if Mr & Mrs Rich decide to live apart, one having a house in the city and the other living in a country cottage?

Is protection of solar panels mentioned in the GL?

I am fairly sure Scully is correct in his overall assessment of the situation. However, I still think we should make MPs aware of any instance where campaigners indulge in deliberate dishonesty or issue publications liable to bring the UK scientific community into disrepute. Modellers deliberately exaggerated risks to human health by pretending that all meat in the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) category “Game birds” had been killed using lead ammunition. They knew this was untrue, they knew that 70% of meat in those NDNS figures was duck, and they knew much of it was from farmed duck. All that information was contained in a report by the Food Standards Agency Scotland (2012), and Professors Green and Pain definitely knew about it because they quoted the FSAS report no fewer than six times in their paper at the 2015 Oxford Lead Symposium. All their statistical analysis of game meat consumption should be regarded as invalid because they had no idea whether any individual in the NDNS records had actually eaten meat from wild-shot game, but they did know that most had probably eaten none at all. The NDNS documentation makes it absolutely clear that the category Game birds included “Any muscle meat from duck, goose, partridge, pheasant.” DEFRA monthly statistics show that UK production of farmed duck to be almost 30,000 tonnes per year, which is several times greater than the total quantity of all wild-shot game. The same two professors claimed that “We followed EFSA CONTAM (2010) in assuming that an average meat meal for adults contained 0.2kg of meal.” (Green & Pain, 2012) and “…If it is assumed that a typical game meal includes 200g of meat (EFSA 2010)” and “EFSA (2010) assumed that an adult portion of game meat was 200g” (Green & Pain, 2015). I have read through that lengthy EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) document and never found any suggestion that 200g would be either an average or a typical portion. (That portion size was mentioned only once, for a theoretical EFSA assessment in which “The influence of specific diets containing a high consumption of foods with elevated lead levels was tested assuming a weekly meal of 200 g of game meat”). You can read the EFSA document for yourself and make up your own mind. If you find nothing stating 200g to be an average or a typical portion size, you will have to conclude that Professors Green and Pain had a deliberate intent to deceive their readers. The HSE dossier claims that “BASC and Countryside Alliance estimated in 2014 that 9,000 (midpoint of the range 5,500 – 12,500) children under the age of 8 from the UK shooting community consumed at least one game meal per week (all types of game, one portion assumed to be ≥ 100 g), averaged over the year (cited in (Green and Pain, 2019; LAG, 2015b))”. If BASC and CA really did estimate a minimum portion size of at least 100g for children under the age of 8 years, they must be blithering idiots with zero experience of child rearing. If (as seems much more likely) BASC and CA simply estimated the numbers of consumers, and the minimum portion size was inserted by Green & Pain, the authors of the HSE dossier have been dishonest. Perhaps somebody from either BASC or CA will tell us more. As far as I am aware, the authorship of the dossier has not been revealed. It might have been compiled by HSE staff, but I suspect it was contracted out. Based on the way the information has been set out, I could hazard a guess as to the actual authors, but will refrain from doing so.

Knob at the bottom of the dashboard, right hand side, about knee level. Turn it to raise or lower the headlamp beam. That is what my Duster has, so I presume other versions are the same. Or is yours different?

We have one of those Dacia Dustcarts, bought s/h four years ago. People who love Alfa and BMW will tell you the Dacia is horridible, but it does everything we need, no plans to change it in the foreseeable future. It’s the vehicle I drive most of the time, because “er indoors” usually grabs the Panda 4x4. Can’t beat the Panda for narrow country lanes or for shopping trips, but the Dacia is better for long road journeys. Older models have a more upright windscreen, which I prefer. Rear visibility is not great for reversing – I wouldn’t like to be without parking sensors. Driving seat is fine for me, with a 2.5 inch thick cushion, but a bit too low otherwise New shape (post-2018) have better seats, but I found their windscreen pillars more of a hindrance at roundabouts. Diesel 2109 litres for 22999 miles = 49.5mpg in our ownership. Rated to tow 1500kg, but I only have a 750kg un-braked trailer. Original tyres (Continental Cross Contact LX) must be very hard compound, only half-worn at 40k miles, but skittish on ice. (Panda 4x4 came with winter tyres as standard, and is much better in slippery conditions). Only thing that has gone wrong so far was the fuel gauge. I blame that on PW, because it happened the very next day after somebody mentioned the same thing on this forum. Said to result from filling the tank right up to the brim. I refused to spend £200++ on new tank sensor, so I carried a gallon can in the back and re-set the trip mileage whenever I filled up. Anyway, it now seems to have cured itself, and reads correctly (but I still keep the can in the back, and still zero the mileage).

+1 I spent a few years working in parts of Africa and Asia where it was easy to distinguish between rich and poor -- the poor were thinner. That's what I call impoverished.

Not unexpected, a TIGHTCHOKE points out, but where is the logic behind it? A newcomer to shooting gets a certificate for five years from the date on which the FEO has completed all necessary checks. Why shouldn’t the same apply in the case of a renewal, provided the forms were submitted in good time? Have any of the shooting organisations ever campaigned for the back-dating policy to be changed?

HSE say a ban on lead ammunition will save the cost of replacing woodpigeon that die after picking up spent shot while are feeding. They calculate that 216,684 woodpigeon are at risk, and replacement would cost between £3,431,085 and £14,296,186, which works out at £16 - £66 for each pigeon. If we assume that feed might account for 70% of bird rearing costs, that suggests each woodpigeon could be eating about £50 worth of agricultural crops. It’s all explained near the end of the HSE consultation dossier: 2.5.3 Quantified benefits / 2.5.3.1 Impacts to wildlife / Table 2.17 I hope HSE have passed that information on to DAERA .

Thanks, that would explain it. I had been under the impression that the system excluded all military aircraft, but obviously it does not. I have never previously seen anything military on Flight Radar - the only things that show up in the ordinaryway are big airliners, a few smaller civilivan planes and helicopters, and tow planes from the local gliding club.