Mark J

I agree with that. £180 is easier on the eye than £200+. I could carry out most tree works, a nifty climber lets me run the ropes and saves money, which I enjoy. Sad thing is, 15 years ago a decent climber was on £150 ish a day.

I'd go a bit further Steve. I reckon that top climbers should be on 200+ a day. When you factor in all the factors, a top climber will earn you much more than that. I suppose it depends on the dynamics of the job. I don't do much contracting anymore but I have a few numbers in my phone that would make the game easier, if I decide to play it again.

It seems that the gov has realised that banks aren't lending to small businesses. The tories always want to use someone elses cash first. Anyhoo, this may be of help to some folk on here, as of 4th of May: Apply for a coronavirus Bounce Back Loan - GOV.UK WWW.GOV.UK This scheme will help small and medium-sized businesses affected by coronavirus (COVID-19) to apply for loans of up...

A suspected Covid-19 male patient is lying in bed in the hospital, wearing an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. A young student female nurse appears and gives him a partial sponge bath. "Nurse,"' he mumbles from behind the mask, "are my testicles black?" Embarrassed, the young nurse replies, "I don't know, Sir. I'm only here to wash your upper body and feet." He struggles to ask again, "Nurse, please check for me. Are my testicles black?" Concerned that he might elevate his blood pressure and heart rate from worrying about his testicles, she overcomes her embarrassment and pulls back the covers. She raises his gown, holds his manhood in one hand and his testicles gently in the other. She looks very closely and says, "There's nothing wrong with them, Sir. They look fine." The man slowly pulls off his oxygen mask, smiles at her, and says very slowly, "Thank you very much. That was wonderful. Now listen very, very, closely: "Are - my - test - results - back?"

The guy who wrote it knows what he's doing.

John Scott GROUND CONTROL TO CAPTAIN TOM. Ground control to captain Tom. Drink your protein shake And put your medals on Ground control to Captain Tom Commencing lock down Netflix on Check your mission And may the squads love be with you This is ground control to captain Tom You've easy beat Band aid And the papers want to know who cuts your hair Now it's time to leave the garden if you dare. This is Captain Tom to ground control I'm schlepping across the floor And I'm walking in the most peculiar way And my Zimmer from the path it shall not stray For here am I sitting on a bed pan As a virus got the world Planet has the flu And there's f**k all we can do. Though I've wandered further than a mile I'm treating it like drill And I think the clip of this government goes to show They don't really love the NHS WE KNOW! Ground control to Captain Tom your hearing aid's dead there's something wrong Can you hear me captain Tom (What's that son) Can you hear me captain Tom (You'll have to speak up) Can you hear me captain Tom (two sugars please) For here am I sitting on a bed pan As a virus got the world Planet has the flu And there's f**k all we can do.

Perhaps she's summoned up some demons. To be fair, I would if I got the grief she's had.

Swede: Turnip: You'd expect them to taste different.

They're called turnips up here too.

I had fun in Munich. Good money, high standard of work.

I had a job selling corporate hospitality once. I have no idea if they actually came up with the goods or not, I doubt they did. It involved cold-calling with a standard cancellation script. The only criteria was that the target company had a turnover of over a million and that we could pitch the sales director only. I got 10% of their 2k fee for each 'Table for twelve' I sold. This was pre-internet, so cheques were faxed as soon as they were hooked.

That also explains alot.

Maybe so, but joe public, would consider gloves to consist of 'a pair'. It's misdirection at best. What about the other numbers

Nope, I said that I pay whatever tax is owed. I pay an accountant to determine that for me.

Counting by the Uk Government 1 pair of gloves = 2 pieces of PPE 1 recorded COVID-19 death = 2 actual COVID-19 deaths 1 actual delivered test = 2 potential tests subject to demand 1 week of UK post covid isolation = 2 weeks of WHO post Covid isolation New 4,000 bed hospital = 40 beds actually in use 10,000 Dyson ventilators = 0 actual ventilators

At least you're honest. You'd be a terrible politician too.

Is that because I'm full of shit? If so, then you should be a comedian too. I'd be a terrible politician.

You should be a writer.

A while back, triggered suggested that someone who was wanting to get into tree work should get study something else, in case they needed to get a 'proper job'. "The thousands of guys looking at possible redundancy and subsequent worries about how they house and feed families would not appreciate the left wing envy bullshit from a tax dodging fake ltd company director." You know nothing of me, my operations or my political leanings. I dislike the tories, I'll give you that.

I like other peoples words too: Howie Turner 23 April at 20:46 Spoke with some UK based friends today about the CV19 situation there. They are living in another world. A world where the mistakes never happened and the lack of PPE is merely a matter of logistics. They were so proud of clapping the NHS on Thursdays and rainbows drawn by kids and genuinely perplexed that we had no common ground on that topic and had barely heard about it on the BBC. In France the response is completely different. It's surgical. Factual. Efficient. No room for sentiment when you are fighting a killer. And it's working. I just came across this little essay by Gavin Barber. It sort of sums up how we see the UK right now. “So, I'm getting increasingly concerned about the longer-term implications of what might lazily be termed the "Diana-fication" of the NHS - a mass outpouring of sentimental expression, and a sudden, rather revisionist clutching to the national bosom, as exemplified by large-scale charity fund-raising and public (social media) expressions of "support". First problem with this: the NHS is not a charity. It's a national organisation (the clue is very much in the name, here) which is and should be publicly funded via taxation. Treating it as the subject of seasonal/event-driven fundraising efforts undermines the long-standing, democratically-expressed consensus that the NHS is something that everyone should take their fair share of responsibility for funding - not something that you sometimes choose to give money to when you're feeling particularly soppy about nurses. Second problem: the trend for public "celebration" brings with it an increasingly prevalent portrayal of NHS staff as smiling, benevolent "heroes". They do heroic things, but they're not happy amateurs who put on a uniform when they feel like playing superheroes: they're highly trained professionals performing a range of difficult, stressful, and sometimes boring tasks in a variety of clinical and non-clinical roles. A sentimentalised portrayal of NHS workers risks undermining their professionalism. (Aside: as others wittier and more articulate than me have pointed out, the Thursday evening "support" events have quickly taken on a grandiose, almost aggressive edge, in much the same way as wearing a poppy in November was once a quietly respectful commemoration of sacrifice but is now a "my poppy's bigger than yours so I care more about dead soldiers than you do" competition. The public gestures of support have quickly escalated from being a nice thing to do, into something that people are *expected* to do - to the point where those who don't join in are on the verge of being portrayed as granite-faced malcontents who want to see all nurses locked in a cage full of snakes and lions and poo, despite the fact that those people might be sleeping off a hospital nightshift or putting young kids to bed at 8pm on a Thursday). Why does any of this matter?, some might ask. Where's the harm in a public upsurge of support for a vital, life-saving group of public servants? Why it matters, I think, is because movements of this kind are, by their nature, *transitory*. They capture the public mood at a particular moment in time, and then that moment passes, and people move on to something else. And we are still going to need the NHS once this is all over. (Which, by the way, it won't be, for ages). More than that: all this love-bombing gives the NHS and its staff a halo - a halo with a lustre that will inevitably fade. And that is dangerous. This is Britain. There will be a Newtonian response to all of this. A backlash. (It's probably already started in some quarters). So, once all of the coronavirus-driven disruption starts to fade, and the NHS is crying out for funding in more 'normal' times, there will be those - and there will be many of them - whose instinctive reaction will be that the NHS have had their day in the spotlight, and should go back to being undervalued and disrespected. "What? Them again? I gave £10 to Captain Tom and now you want me to pay more National Insurance? Fuck that. I'm voting Tory". Perhaps most importantly of all, throwing charity and applause at the NHS lets the government off the hook. It leaves people thinking that, individually and collectively, we have all "done our bit", because we gave them a few extra quid when we were feeling totes emosh, and banged a saucepan on a Thursday evening. Whereas the more prosaic (but much less Instagrammable) truth is that the parlous state of the NHS is entirely attributable to a government which has spent the last decade running it into a state of deliberate neglect to the point where its only possible salvation is to be sold off, bit by bit, to the likes of Richard Branson. Nationalise the risk, privatise the profit. As ever. But, because the likes of Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson can publicly associate themselves with a time and a movement in which EVERYONE LOVED THE NHS, they dodge culpability for their systematic dismantling of it. So, you know. Show some socially distant love on a Thursday evening if you want to. But remember that you can do far more for the NHS at the ballot box than you ever can from your window or your social media accounts.”

It won't work one-handed, but might be handy if you need help after a blade/pin/poultice doesn't work.

I suspect he was briefed on the research that has been ongoing regarding UV light to treat viruses. There's some really promising stuff out there. I suspect that he's too thick to grasp what he was told so explained it as best he could. Did anyone see panorama last night? The gov classed 500,000 pairs of gloves as 1m pieces of PPE. They like manipulating figures, when they can pronounce them.

Aye, I find myself apologising to my guitars after listening to him. His intonation is something else.

You never know, you might have to get a proper job if oil goes out of favour.