benedmonds

You also get lots of low value jobs from Facebook in my experience.

Does that include, insurance, service and consumable costs? It does illustrate that the 45p a mile HMRC says you can pay as milage won't cover it.

The environmental benefits of an ev were not convincing and the "real world test" was practically worthless to extrapolate from. When I looked at getting an ev on lease for quoting a year or so back, I worked out the 45p a mile would not cover the running costs. Whereas my purchased outright 2 year old economical diesel would be paid back in a few years.

Interestingly I listened to the same program but came to the opposite conclusion. Especially if you already own a car..

Isn't that is what a private pension does..?

I think probably it is more dangerous. Lots of instances where you might want to get out of a tree quick or with one hand. It's certainly not safer. It's just not required.

I don't understand why you need knots, unless you run out of rope? Up until a few years ago all tree climbers used to ascend and descend was a rope with some type of friction hitch. No backup or anything.

Back in my rock climbing days (20+years ago) we were taught to back up the descender with a sling or even a shoe lace tied with a prusik knot, if you didn't and for some reason lost consciousness or dropped the rope you would end up descending freely. You could still rappel with one hand as you hold the prusik knot as you tend the rope. It took me a while to get my head around tree climbing where we just relied on rope on rope. The knots every 3m sound like a complete waste of time, you could have one at the end of the rope if you really needed. The op really should get some training as they seem to be making it much more complicated than it needs to be.

We had two 250's, only reason we got rid was the lack of spares. We made one good machine from the two. I did notice them both come up for sale 6 to 12 months later and they were advertised as both running so he must have had some luck with spares.

Thanks

No,makes a sound like it's trying then stops.

My msa161t has stopped working. Only used it for a couple of charges. It felt like the chain was stuck and I pulled the chain backwards as you would in a normal saw, (which with hindsight may not have been the right thing to do) now it is just making a funny noise. Any ideas? Battery fully charged.

Sounds like a business opportunity. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-54250282.amp

I love their marketing, a black jacket on a black background in the dark... I "won" a raid jacket off ebay, paid £250. Is it good? Yes. Is it worth £550? questionable. Do I need a £550 jacket for walking the dog? No.

What3words is great for condition surveys but 3m is not accurate enough for a development survey.

The anti reduction brigade should consider the long term consequences of not reducing trees. There is a place for reductions in urban areas and they can keep trees looking OK. I put in an application today to reduce a TPO'd sycamore that we have done previously in 2006, 2013, 2017 and now again in 2022. I am pretty sure I recommended its removal in 2006 but the council would not go with that. I have had another 4 days work since maintaining it.

A client has been asked for a complete tree radar survey. I am not completely sure what use it will be as evidence of roots near the foundations are not evidence that they will cause damage. But before I reply and say it is pointless I thought I would check views on here. I know a user Arboraeration invested in the kit. The extract from the survey says; “A number of trees are within proximity of the house, there is evidence of root damage to the hard standing areas (front and rear),next doors garage and potentially damage to the house’s foundations. Therefore, a complete tree radar survey should be carried out by a specialist company before purchasing the property”

The original discussion has moved and the thread has wandered. But the same applies discussing wages, half the people on here will quote what they pay a climber for an odd day compared to a company paying an employee PAYE.

Discussing rates in here never ends well, I have tried many times over the years.. There seems to be huge variation depending on area. Many are unable to tell the difference between a freelancer and employee and we are never comparing like for like. Many of the most vocal may not even be actually involved in tree work or do it as a side line where paying a one off climber for a day a large rate is not really comparable to a full time employee. Some of the rates quoted on here sound amazing and I know are unachievable in my area. It is difficult to know how much your competitors charge but I spent all Friday afternoon calling back quotes we didn't win and asking why. Nearly all were because we we too expensive and for many jobs the winning quote was considerably less that ours. What I do know is that costs are rising, freelancers seem to be doing well at the moment and pushing up rates. As an employer this is making life difficult as it in turn is pushing up what employees expect. the risk is that if the busy times stop freelancers will be dropped and employers with high wage bills are going to struggle. It would be nice if the companies at the bottom pushed up their rates .

You should be able to push those day rates.

Cheers for the feedback. I am accused of being too negative by some of my employees, (I really do try to be positive when I can....) I personally feel while not awful, there is plenty of room for improvement. But wanted to be able to pass on some unbiased opinions that were not mine.

We have not had one of these for a while. I have a freelancer who needs independent feedback. Comments please.

Absolute twaddle. We need to bring state schools up, not bring public schools down. You don't free up a place by going to a private school. Schools are funded per pupil so if a school doesn't have pupils it gets less funding. What does happen, is those parents who care about educating their children (and can afford it) move their children to fee paying schools. Moving these (lets be honest) nice middle class families out of the state school reduces the proportion of nice families and that impacts the school making it a place where is more difficult to achieve

The average private school fee (not including boarding schools) was found to be £13,700 a year, compared with £7,100 in spending on each state school pupil. According to the Guardian. They are plain wrong unfair and should be banned. The few proxy bursaries are irrelevant in the larger scheme and removing the smart kids from the state sector doesn't help the state schools if anything it does the opposite. They teach privaliged kids to think they are better than the lower classes. Old boys clubs mean stupid people end up in positions they should not be and make it way harder for smart people to achieve. Teaching in them is much nicer as the kids can be booted out if they are naughty and their parents expect them to work hard. State schools are underfunded, many of the parents don't give a toss and few support the school. Would I send my kids to one if I could afford it... Probably.. They are still wrong.

They definitely should NOT be charities imo. My son play as hockey at quite a high level and as Hockey is dominated by public schools, I have visited a large number of schools over the last few years. The facilities at these schools is amazing, I was a secondary school teacher and worked as a supply teacher so know the state school system pretty well. The public school system is so wrong and the fact they get a tax break by claiming to be charities is massivly unfair.