Quickthorn

can't think of anywhere in particular, I haven't bought one for a while. If it's just for the assessment, could you not borrow one from your college? FR Jones sell various sprayers, including the bastion 15 I talked about. I don't think they get much cheaper than that

Agricultural suppliers in your local yellow pages?..easiest thing is type brand of sprayer plus your location into google

true about funding..it needs to be in place before the course starts. There might be some funding money here: Wood Enterprise Yorkshire It might restrict you to farming- or forestry- relevant training only, so would rule out CPCS

I don't think either of those would be much good. You'd need one that had a CE mark on, at least. Those may have, I can't tell. They should have, to be on sale here, but you never can tell with ebay. The main thing is that you'd want a lance that can take a suitable nozzle that will give you an even flat fan pattern - probably an anvil type, or an evenspray fan tip. You might find that the nozzles on those ebay sprayers will only give you some sort of cone pattern, which wouldn't be appropriate for the test you'd be set. On those cheaper sprayers, you often find that you can't change the nozzle to something suitable. A professional standard knapsack comes in at around the £100 mark; cheaper ones aren't worth the money imo, you'll be replacing them every year. I've had good results with bastion 15l sprayers, and think they're good value for money. More expensive, but better quality, are bertoud sprayers.

Well done there - I like the bench..

HI Wazz, Thanks for your reply before. A bloke I've been working with mentioned one job. They make packaging machinery, and they'd need people to take it all to site, assemble and commission it, then sit with it for a few days. TIG welding skills would be part of it, but I've not had much experience of that process, and no certs. Even so, I'd have thought the market for welding skills would be reasonable, even if I missed the chance with this job. All my treework's on the ground now, but I seem to have to put lower and lower quotes in to get work in, and I can't see it getting much better with all the budget cuts etc in the public sector. An extra line of work, and not connected to local authorities etc, seems a good idea at the moment.

Cheers for that, I hear what you're saying about experience, but you have to start somewhere. The C&G's probably going to be a 2 year part time project anyway, so p'raps things will have picked up by then, either in trees or engineering.

Hi, I'm thinking I need a 2nd string to my bow. I've done a bit of hobby welding, but I'm thinking of doing something at night school with some sort of qualification at the end, with a view to getting employed. Anyone know what C&G level 1 or 2 is worth in the industry? That seems to be the easiest starting point in this area. What are job prospects like for welders at the moment? I know skilled welders earn well on certain types of contract, like pipelines, offshore etc, yet I hear others are on not more than min. wage, especially if agencies are involved. Cheers.

What Charlie said is right. Don't rush, and if you realise you've made a mistake in the assessment, it's best to come clean and have an idea of how you can get back on track. Chances are that the assessor will have spotted it anyway. There shouldn't be any traps or trick questions; most PA assessors I've met want their candidates to pass. Hope it goes well.

It's looking like a repeat of the 80s, when everything had to be put out to compulsory competitive tender. The idea was supposed to be that the private sector was more "efficient" than the public sector, but in actual fact, the savings were made by cutting the pay and benefits of the people who physically did the work. In a lot of cases, their jobs were shed, and those people ended up working for whatever company had won the contract, only on reduced pay, poorer terms etc. I can see this happening all over again, with all the work going to the cheapest outsourcing service provider that can stay solvent long enough to complete the contract. From my experience, if local authorities want to save money, they ought to first start looking at thinning out their middle ranks and above. There's more than enough dead wood there.

I wouldn't hire just kit out for the above reason, plus there are insurance implications too. It might be better to offer it with operator (ie you).

I think you're spot on there, Steve, that's exactly what I think they're trying to do. From what I've heard of the FC, there are some areas that are having to sell off certain bits and pieces to make up the maintenance budget for whatever's left, so the estate's slowly wasting away anyway. In this area, it's just not worth tendering for FC maintenance work now - you can base a tender on indicative prices that they themselves publish for the benefit of people claiming WIGs and such-like, and they'll just laugh at you. I think this is true. Also, some of the "volunteers" aren't as willing as others - I've seen a steady increase in the use of working parties made up of people on probation or doing community service, and it's the sort of thing this new government has been mooting as well.

Plan to sell nature reserves risks austerity countryside.. nature reserves to be sold off, 40% budget cuts.. ..according to RSPB, Woodland Trust etc. Anyone involved in this area of work? It's hard to guess exactly how far any cuts might go, because the extreme case is often quoted in advance to judge public and press reaction. When the cuts come, they might be less drastic, and present ed as if the govt. are doing us a favour: "it could have been a lot worse...:sneaky2:" Anyway, I get the feeling a lot of the local grants for little schemes like short lengths of hedge laying and planting, small woodland management schemes etc. will disappear. Any maintenance of these sorts of sites under control of local authorities, FC, etc. will be cut back to the bone, as they'll be trying to save their own jobs. Tough times ahead for contractors..

"Oak before Ash; in for a splash, Ash before Oak; in for a soak" Don't think that one works, though

yes, private pensions..I get the feeling that'll be the next big mis-selling scandal courtesy of our wonderful financial services industry, along with useless payment protection insurance and endowment mortgages.. It's all very well telling everyone that we're all living longer and healthier, but that's the view from behind a desk. For people who do manual work (and the same goes for people who work in factories), your health can go downhill very quickly and with not much warning once you get over 50. I've worked with one or two people 10 years older than me who could run rings round everyone else on site, and i thought they'd go on forever; 5 years later, they're on their knees by 3pm. Luckily, they can fall back on easier work, like training and assessing, but that option's not open to everyone...

Depends where you are I think. I was putting out sample quotes for 5-20 yr old at £12/m, to include stakes, binders and chipping all brash and removing other waste; I still got undercut, and that was by a firm who subbed it out.

It's probably this at the moment - Harvest Pale. It's a perfect Summer ale, best as it comes in the pub, but you can get bottles in a lot of supermarkets.

Fair enough, then.

If people want to discuss my business in public, there's not much I can do about it, unless it's libelous. It's the price I pay for my rights to free speech, such as they are. My point is this: if this company goes under - and that's certainly not what I'm hoping for - it could take a number of arb businesses down with it, not to mention the effect it would have on employees. Given the hard work involved in building up a business, don't you think it's something that's worth discussing?

What happened to the Connaught thread? I tried posting to it around quarter to 9 last night, but couldn't. Now I can't find it, although older threads referring to Connaughts come up on search. I'd have thought discussion of this company at the moment would be quite relevant to a site like this, as I'm sure there are a few fountains/Connaught subbies or employees who come on here. Their situation, and the recent dealings of some of their directors, are in the public domain already, so i don't see any legal problems....

I agree with this. In my area, I can see FC and LA conservation departments cutting back hard on budgets to save their own skins, even though thinning out some of their office staff would be the best solution.. Mind you, I've heard some FC staff are feeling the pain, although they're starting on the lower orders first: a craftsman at the local office got some good news and bad news.. The good news:"We're buying you a new tractor" The bad news:"We're selling the house you rent from us to fund it - get packing!!" Absolutely typical of them..

Looks a good site. Shame you're restricted on machinery sales by those Stihl/Husqvarna "no online sales" policies. By the way, I've got the same question as Dobermandave: do you have an outlet in the east midlands/south yorks, near DN22?

I went last year..there were some very cheap lots in the auction.

I did it and got it, but let it lapse. If it's still the same, you have to get so many CEU credits within a certain period of time, otherwise it expires and you have to start again. From what I could see, you could only get so many credits from ISA magazine questionnaires; you needed to go on a few seminars each year to gain enough credits to keep the qualification. I just didn't have the time or the money. I understand the idea of CEUs, and that it keeps you up to date and all that, but I wish I'd done the RFS Cert. I'd still have that now.

I doubt if Bill Gates made his fortune by believing every single email that fell into his inbox. 11 Rules that you don't learn in school Whatever you think of the rules, they're not originally from Bill gates, they were published in 1995 in a book called "Dumbing down our kids" by Charles Sykes - who presumably isn't as rich as Sri Lanka.