Rupe

Well thats fine then, you were no where near getting a minor injury, let alone dieing!!

Did your trip switch work?

I think every bank holiday "can" come out of annual holidays, its up the the employer. So, if you have 20 days holiday a year and there are 8 bank holidays, then that means you can take another 12 days off. But some employers dont count bank holidays as part of the annual holidays. It depends on if you (the employer) want to run the business on bank holidays. So a shop that is open bank holidays employs someone on 20K and give them 30 days holiday, its not relevant if those days are bank holidays or not. Most tree companies dont work bank holidays, so IMO they should not be included in the annual holidays, so an employee should have XX amount of holidays plus all bank holidays, but of course this balances itself out in the actuall amount of pay per day,week,month, year. If there is an extra bank holiday next year then take it out of their annual holidays allowance, that is perfectly legal to do so, OR adjust their anual pay by a few pence a day to take inot account the extra day off. Simples.

In fact we should add, that you will learn 1000x more attending a comp than you would on any NPTC refresher course, I have always learned loads and loads at all 30odd comps I have been to. Entry into a comp. already does include the best refresher training you will ever get!

Good analogy! I was at a loss as to how to explain how awful that would be!!

Good thing he wasn't trying to spell cant!!

Nick, I don't think Loler was "brought in" to help our industry, its a regulation that covers lifting and lowering in ALL industries, and ours has just had to fall into line with those regulations.

In answer to your actual question of who to inform, and not how to do it, the HA would love you to tell them what you are up to, and in the event of an incident you might be prosecuted for not informing them. They might also impose restrictions such as work not to be carried out on weekends, specifically because if there is an incident they are not fully manned to deal with it. I would just get on with it if I were you though, like you say its a B road, whats the worst that can happen?

Yes, others have noticed that the grease used is quite heavy and its there to protect them while in storage prior to sale. There is not much to sort out, just squirt them and carry on using them.

Crossing the flipline in front of you would add more friction, so it would make you more stable but unlikely to be smoother at moving. Practice is the only thing that works. I used to not look forward to blocking, but I can switch off now and just repeat the same repetitive moves again and again, start at the begining and end at the end, nothing else to think about.

I bought some once on the day of a climbing comp and they failed the pre climb inspection. WD40 (actually GT85 is better) and they were fine, still have them now.

But they could be months old!! BEst to give them a squirt with something before use, and every week or so. As long as you loler bloke hasn't chucked them, give them a squir tand if they work ok get on with it, get them re inspected when you can. Any decent inspector would have squirted them before failing them, so don't use him again!

Freeworker or DRAYER Fachhandel für Baumpflege und Seiltechnik

All of us should be selling our wood as 90% hardwood, then chuck other crap in to make the 10% up. We all know that mixing it up in the fire works best. My mum burns loads of leylandii/willow/poplar etc etc. cos she wont let it go to waste, I've burnt Ash only a few times and I can't control my fire, so mixing has to be best, just don't tell the customer what it is!!

I chuck four logs in with every load!!

Im no expert at losing the weight (15 stone plus!) but I do know that there is no such thing as fattening food or dieting food. Alcohol, agreed, thats bad as the calories are useless and get stored as fat. But anything else is ok. The calories in bread, fizzy drinks, chips etc etc. are all the same as those found in salad, but there are more of them. True some fats are harder to break down than others, and pound for pound fat contains twice as many calories as protein, but ultimatly if you burn all the calories you eat then you can eat anything. So you put on weight by eating more calories than you burn (this should be measured over a period of months not days) and you can lose weight by burnign more calories than you eat over a long period of time. If it took 2 years for that stone to creep up on you then it will probably take a year to lose it permanently, anything quicker will not be permanent loss and you are likely to put it back on again. So, of course you can cut out high calorie foods but its not those foods that make you put on weight, its just the simple fact that more calories in than burned will increase weight, and as mentioned above your metebalism will be slowing down, so you need less calories. But that can be done with less bread and fizzy drinks and alcohol not stoppign those things altogether. If I am mega busy at work and just eat fish and chips every night and petrol station food then I will lose weight, if I am less busy at work and have time to go shopping and eat sensibly then I will enjoy eating a bit more and put on weight. I lost a stone one month eating fish and chips and bacon sarnies only, but I mean ONLY, no other snacks cos I was workign too hard. Its the work that burns it off not the healthly lettuce rubbish! Eat whatever you want!!

Do you mean your public liability insurance? They would want to know that the winch is maintained and serviced correctly but that has nothing to do with Loler, they are different regulations. Ask your insurance comapny. Its likely that if the winch fails and that causes damage then winching might not have been the best option, they might pay out but they might question why you were winching something in a high risk area i.e next to a house.

LOler is for lifting, not pulling, if its purely for dragging stuff then no you dont need loler, but you need to check and maintain it yourself in accordance with puwer. Which insurance policy is it that you are concerned about? Vehicle insurance won't cover winching activities anyway so no worries about that, i.e. you could hae the unsafest winch in the world but your vehicle insurance is for driving on the road etc. so wont matter about the winch.

Speedline it, and most of the main stem, no worries. Then half or quarter the rest of the standing stem and dice it into blocks there and then, they will then be liftable out. Seriously though, crane would be good, the cost of a crane is supposed to make you more money overall, so sometimes they are the best way forward. it depends a lot on how much work you have after this job. i.e. £1000 for the job plus a crane and done in a day =good money. Or £1500 altogether with no crane, might take you 2 days so not such good money per day, but higher overall profit unless you have another £1000 per day job to move straight onto the second day. If your next available job is a £500 job, then you would be better off takign the 750 for 2 days option, rather than the greedy 1000 day, if that makes sense.

The only way he will act is to get another freelancer that doesn't winge so much. Man up, get the work done and take the money. If you don't like it, leave and get a job with a tree surgery company.

I'll contact them tomorrow. I've dug out the CD rom that the originals came on, they are 20MB each!! Next challenge is to find the invoice, that could be tricky!!

No I wasn't joking, but I'm not having a go at you, I was having a subtle dig at you for knicking my avatar but now I see you have bought it, but I'm not happy that its ended up on sale on that website. I bought it in 2004 I think, with exclusive license to use it. Interestingly the guy who created it on iStockphoto has a homepage "vertebrate outdoor" based in Sheffield, and I bought the artwork from a company in Sheffield called vertebrate graphics!! I'm wondering if they think that purchase was long enough ago for the license to have expired? We'll see, some phonecalls tomorrow I think! So, how much did you pay and what did you get for it? Like what resolution image etc?

What do you mean "did you?" I own it, and have all rights to its usage, bought and paid for from the company that originally did the artwork, if you paid someone else for it then please let me know who, you have been ripped off!! What resolution image did you get for your money? I have never put the originals on the net and never would, but I have all the original hi res images here, and the screenprinting ones etc etc. I/we need to sort this out, please let me know what you think it is that you own.

The level and standard of arboriculture around the world is directly proportional to the affluence of the country in question. End of research project!!

These are the best IMO. The sign is seperate from the frame so either can be replaced as required, plus the legs dont stick out beyond the sign so are less likely to be run over. I say "less" likely, a cone is still agood idea next to them. Also the folded lenght is much shorter than the tripod ones so they will fit in a chipper hopper easily. I got mine off Barry Thomas, thats why his initials are on the back!!