Tom D

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.

The bobcats were very good 10 years ago, not sure about now as I haven't tried one.

Not the most powerful I have used in that class.

Working for a client isn't the same as working for another company, even as a subby. Its fine to work for £8-15 an hour for another tree firm, but the moment you work for a private client you should be asking £150 a day. If you want to work for farmers join your local machinery ring, you'll find the rates are better..

Thats when you say "ok do it yourself" and walk away....

This is the fundamental problem with the SNP / Labour tax the rich policy: 10 drinkers in a bar who decide to settle their £100 weekly beer bill roughly the same way we pay our taxes. So, the first four men (the poorest) paid nothing; the fifth paid £1; the sixth £3; the seventh £7; the eighth £12; the ninth £18; and the 10th man, the richest, paid £59. Then the barman decided to give them a £20 discount for being good customers. The group wanted to continue to pay the new £80 bill the same way as before. While the first four men still drank for free, the other six divided up the £20 windfall by following the progressive principle of the tax system. So the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing, making a 100 per cent saving; the sixth man paid £2 instead of £3 (a 33 per cent saving); the seventh man paid £5 instead of £7 (a 28 per cent saving); the eighth £9 instead of £12 (a 25 per cent saving); and the ninth £14 instead of £18 (a 22 per cent saving). The 10th man paid £49 instead of £59 (a 16 per cent saving). The men then began to compare their savings. “I only got £1 out of the £20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the 10th man, “but he got £10 – the wealthy get all the breaks!” “Wait a minute,” said the first four men, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new system exploits the poor.” So the other nine men surrounded the 10th and beat him up. The next week he didn’t show for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when they came to pay, they discovered they didn’t have enough money between them to pay even half the bill. Say what you like about the Tories, you can't argue with the maths.

One percent of what? GDP? maybe but GDP is effectively the "turnover" of the entire country, and as all of us business owners Turnover means nothing. The important thing is as Skyhuck says we are currently spending more than the defence budget on interest payments on the national debt. To put 1.6 trillion (the national debt) in context: Imagine we payed it off at £1 every second. 1 million seconds is :11days, 13hours, 46 min, and 40 sec . 1 billion seconds is :31 years and about 9 months. 1 trillion seconds is :31,700 years. So our 1.6 trillion pound debt would take 50,720 years to pay off at a rate of £1 a second. Still think its affordable?