Tom D

Wealth does trickle down, Fact. You can't live the millionaire lifestyle without spending loads of cash. For example I have one client who has spent maybe £15k on his trees over the years. There are factories in the Hebrides making tweed, who buys that? not nurses and social workers. When you are mega rich you have everything done for you, thousands of businesses are dedicated to looking after the needs and wants of the rich, these people take the money off the rich and then they pay tax on it, we all benefit. I have had a handful of mega rich clients and I have made more from them than many many normal domestics put together. These people spend millions on property (paying huge stamp duty in the process) then they spend many more millions doing them up, and guess what, they don't DIY B&Q it!

The rich didn't get richer during the recession, they lost millions, well most of them did. We have an odd concept of "the rich" , So for example the MD of a car parts supplier to the manufacturers will have been hit hard when car sales fell, he's still rich of course compared to you and me.. Whereas a russian oligarch who made all his money elsewhere perhaps wasn't affected all that much. In your view, who are the rich? Joanna Killian, who earns £289k? What is the earning threshold above which you are one of the bad guys? All this stuff about migrants driving down wages is nonsense really, they mostly do jobs that employers struggle to fill, as well as a whole lot of other jobs that young british people don't want to do. We have a generation of kids who want a well paid, clean, non physically taxing 9-5 job, yet they have no skills or work experience. So call centres are the only thing open to them. This is why so many jobs in catering and hospitality are done by eastern europeans, our kids just don't want to get up at 5 to work in a hotel kitchen, let alone pick carrots or leeks all day.

Can you explain how that works? You've lost me???

Thats always the way, the private sector always feels the recession first, and the recovery. The public sector lags behind. Despite what the politicians say the only way public sector wages will rise in when the government can afford it, and that depends on the economy. You only have to look at this breakdown of where the government makes its money to see that almost all taxes are directly related to how well the economy is doing.... Type of tax Revenue £ million Income Tax 156,898 NICs 107,690 VAT 104,718 Corporation Tax 39,274 Fuel duties 26,881 Alcohol taxes 19,986 Stamp Duty Land 9,273 Capital Gains 3,908 Inheritance tax 3,402 Shares 3,108 Insurance premium tax 3,014 Air passenger duty 3,013 Betting + gaming 2,098 Landfill Tax 1,189 Petroleum Revenue tax 1,118 Climate Change levy 1,068 I can't remember an election where we were given so little information by the politicians about what they actually plan to do, they're all big on promises but very light on actual policy.

Was it you GN?

Its not whats in the manifesto thats the problem. Its what isn't. Where will the tories cut? and where will labour get the money? And where will the SNP get even more money LOL?

The tories will poll as well or better in scotland than they did in 2010, SNP votes are coming from Labour and lib Dems. The unionist vote will still go to the conservatives. Sturgeon is staying to appeal to the labour vote with the anti tory rhetoric, I think there is a good chance that many NO voters will vote conservative as they are the least likely to further the independence cause. Meanwhile Labour are bigging up the chances of a tory -UKIP coalition, but in reality UKIP may only win 2 or three seats, so its not really anything to worry about. If ukip were likely to win 40 odd seats like the SNP might then it would be a different matter. A labour SNP coalition is a real prospect however.

Put up a nest box close by?

All I can say is that the stock pump on my Valtra 6400 managed fine with the 560.. I have heard of people fitting auxiliary pumps but for a decent tractor it should be fine.

I think that all the slovenian / eastern european winches are much the same, Kirpan, Tajfun and Uniforest, I have a uniforest and its good. Make sure you pay the extra for radio remote. its well worth it, in fact scratch that, its essential. Tonnage wise I'd go minimum 6.5 but bigger if you can afford it.

I find it pretty sick that we were prepared to do to war against Sadam but aren't against ISIS. ISIS make Sadam look like Desmond Tutu. I find fundamentalist islam so repugnant that I was happy with the war in Afganistan and would be happy if we did more against ISIS, the Iraq war however was a mistake. If we and the yanks had put the resources we used in Iraq into afganistan instead we would have had a much better result in Afganistan and Sadam would likely have been toppled in the arab spring anyway.

Sadly this is an often repeated but fundamentally wrong view. The majority of muslims in britain are peaceful and mean the rest of us no harm, unfortunately there are those who believe in the sharia and who would like to see its imposition across the world, wherever muslims live. Christians have their fundamentalists too, there are protests against gay pride etc by some pretty horrible christian fundamentalists in the US. Fundamentalism must be put down where ever we find it because its message is never one of peace or tolerance. IMO we need to completely disassociate the state from any kind of religion, no religion in parliament, none in schools etc. Most religions are peaceful if you don't follow them to the extreme, but because so many of them evolved a long time ago they are positively medieval when followed to the extreme. Its not that long ago that we were burning witches, and unfortunately extremist islam is about at the same evolutionary level, we can't wait 500 years for it to evolve into something more peaceful but we could help things along a little. If we want less terrorism then we need less religion. Sadly no political party is suggesting this, but it is becoming clear that the british form of multiculturalism has been a failure. And its time we looked at it again.

Just price the ticket onto the job, simples.

What people forget about immigrants is that they are the ones with the get up and go that makes them so employable. Imagine leaving your own country travelling thousands of miles to somewhere where you don't speak the language, where you have no accommodation, and no job. Its a scary thought, these people are the go-getters of their country. I'm sure there are plenty of feckless eastern europeans, but being feckless they stayed at home, we get the cream of the crop.

What angle is it at, horizontal, vertical, somewhere in between? this makes a big difference. Nothing wrong with taking it off in one if you do it right.

Spot on. Which is worse, a 20 year old diesel with 250k on the clock or a brand new hybrid full of rare metals extracted from all around the world? No one ever takes into account the environmental cost of building a car, and the car manufacturers lobby is so powerful that governments do what ever they want. Remember the car scrapage scheme? I wouldn't be surprised if the lobbyists haven't influenced the report at the start of this thread.

Are you saying that Thatcher made 1 in 4 people ill in Merthyr?

The reason we are short of social housing is that once your in you're in for life, social housing should be there for people who need it, once they get back on their feet they should move out. That doesn't happen, there are loads of working families living in social housing who ought to have moved out years ago.

Forget about spinning the fan if its electric. There are two types of fan: viscous drive, which are driven off the fan belt, as the engine heats up the coupling locks and drives the fan, when cool the fan spins freely by hand. Electric fans operate electronically by a thermostat, if yours is electric and if it goes when you apply power to the motor then its probably the thermostat.

Probably the viscous coupling is knackered, when the engine is over hot, switch it off and try and turn the fan, if you can spin it then the coupling needs replacing.

Totally agree with Eggs on the inheritance thing, you work hard all your life and pay all your taxes, you buy a home with whats left and then when you die they ask for a massive chunk of it. I'd rather pay more income tax and abolish inheritance tax all together, its morally repugnant. Regarding the NHS, sadly it suffers from the same problem as all other state run concerns, which is simply that the wage structure, leads to massive waste and over spending. It works like this: In a normal private business like mine or yours we pay each employee according to what they are worth and what we can afford. In state run concerns it is very different: after years of union pressure all employees are paid according to a strict pay structure, with bands and levels within these bands, wage increases are given as a result of non meritocratic factors such as time served and the number of people you manage etc. So if you manage 3 people you may be band B, but if you manage 5 you will automatically become band C. So its now strongly in your interest to have another two people working under you. So you go to your manager and make the case for more staff, he too gets a pay rise as when you move to band C he will need to move from band C to band D, as its hardly fair for him to manage you when you are on the same salary. So he is happy to approve your request. And so it goes on, and it does go on, in every council, hospital, and government body in the land. This explains the proliferation of middle management in the NHS. I would never advocate the privatisation of the NHS, but I do think that there is a lot of room for slimming in a lot of other government services. In local government for example I would have no blue collar workers. None. Many of us do local authority work, and theres no reason why we couldn't do more, not just trees, but roads, parks and many other services. it would save billions on a national scale.

Would someone explain to me how things will be better under a lab snp government? I can't see that it will be all that different.

Happiness ratings always show that those in the poorest parts of the world are happier than us in the west. Says a lot about consumerism really, the more stuff there is out there to buy the more there is we can't afford, making us unhappy and resentful of those who can. It will be the same for the super rich, buy a massive boat and someone else will buy a bigger one... Where we go wrong is when we buy what we can't afford.

The thing about this inequality thing is that the super rich skew the figures, they are set apart from the rest of us and the left never stop banging on about them, but their numbers are tiny. The real figures should be comparing a lawyer to a builder for example or a dentist to a tree surgeon, and on those figures I would say that equality is about the same as before.

Of course the poorest pay more when you take into account other taxes like council tax and VAT. But IMO the income tax system is fair, Like huck says you can't make a rich man pay £2 for a mars bar just because he's rich. As far as council tax goes I'd rather have a local income tax, which would be fairer, and it would show up the high spending labour councils more too. Its the only decent idea the lib deems ever had.