Rupe

I used to put it on between 5 and 6pm if I was home by then, not much else on then and its good back ground noise if you are still doing stuff.

Yep, its on freeview I think but not on freesat. Freeview in my area was rubbish 4 years ago (might be better now) so I got sky, now I have used the old dish and got freesat and DAVE is not on that, no more top gear all day long!

If you get a freesat HD box you can plug it straight into the old leads. Some record and some dont, but if you have twin leads already then you can get a recording one (like sky+) They are about 120 for a non recording one and 200+ ish for a twin one, but no more bills and HD without paying for it The Sky HD box will fetch something on e bay.

Yeah, not too bad. Got called out to it so not sure what to expect but easy enough. Everything stayed on site so not a full clear up, all chipped and logged in a bit of a long day but no worries.

I just got rid of sky too, they tried to keep me on but I had already bought and installed a free sat box connected to their satelite dish, thank you! I've lost the DAVE channel but gained BBC iplayer direct on my tv, good swap IMO.

Then took the ratchet strap off and lowered the stem down. Not very smoothly!! Forgot to use the fairleadso when I let it speed up one wrap came off the winch and I had to let go! Good thing I dont get on that end of winch very often! [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NThoE6Qj71o]YouTube - Chestnut Limb drop off[/ame]

Then after lunch we tension up the GRCS a bit more and it lifted the stem off the second tree no worries, so went back up and took the rest off the top down as far as the blue ISC pulley in the picture above then lowered the remaing stem down.

Got it rigged up to the remaining stems and put a ratchet strap around the bottom to keep that held back in place. Took all the top of the remianign part of the tree which was to go anyway then ran up the fallen stem (well not ran exactly) and into the second tree, re anchored and removed all the top and broken branches leaving just the bit that was resting against the second tree.

This stem had sheared right off and was resting against the next door tree. Job was to remove the stem and the remainder of the tree is came from, plus remove damages limbs/branches from the second tree.

I bought a new camera yesterday just cos I felt liked it! The guy was trying so hard to sell me SD cards, camera bags etc etc. lookign at me in disbelief when I said I had plenty already. Then came the extra warranty only £20!!! Trouble is I only get really cross about an hour after, never quick enough to say what I really want to there and then, I just say no thanks all politely!!

I'm not sure if thats correct but it may well be. Don't forget that Nike dont actually make anything. They are just a marketing machine, so yes I guess a third of gross is quite likely. There is no such thing as a Nike made product, all manufactoring is outsourced on the cheap, allowing them to spend more on marketing and still make massive proffits. Nike stuff is essentially junk, that might perform well and last ok but its virtually worthless until the logo is on it. Also for larger business a lower end profit figure of say 10% is ok if your turnover is billions. For us mere mortals we need to be achieving 30-40% of very much less money.

Do you know why, or how much by, you didn't get the job? Its worth asking if you feel comfortable doing so. It might not be down to price anyway there could be any numbers of reasons.

Nick Perks makes a good point there. The jobs that come from advertising are the ones where you are quoting against others, wheras referals/recomendations etc. often you are the only person quoting. So spending money to get the cheapest jobs means even less return on your advertising.

Good for you mate, good luck with it.

Looks more like a woodpecker hole, but bats use existing holes, they don't make their own as far as I know. So it is a possible bat roost. Often they get in cracks and cavities and there is little to show they are there.

Per tonne of what??!!

I have any driver over 25 allowed on my policy for no extra charge. I pay about £600 a year and am going to try and get that lowered. But the company I use at the moment is towergate.

I'm not havign a dig, and I hate it when freinds start telling me how to run my business but this is a thread about advertising. You spend £288 a week on advertising. So one £300 job a week from advertising does not cover it at all. In an ideal world only 5% should be spent on advertising. So from your £300 job £15 can go towards your £288 advertising budget, the rest is needed for costs and profit etc. But from your one £300 job, 96% of that goes towards the advertising costs!!!!! That doesn't leave enough to buy fuel to get to the job?? Your getting all your work from recomendations, which is great and how it should be. You not getting £3k a week from advertising, your recomendations work is subsidising your advertising, so whoever you advertise with is doing better out of it than you. It looks as though you could cut your advertising by 12K easily and maybe your gross income would go down by 15K or so no more than that, and your profits would be hardly effected at all. I'm rubbish at doing the right thing, so I am probably better at criticising. My advertising budget consists of signwriting which is a one off charge, and having business cards etc. I have no monthly or annual recurring charges. 100% of my work is referal or recomendations or "we saw you working the other day" and so less than 1% of turnover goes on advertising. My turnover is way less than yours (I'm below vat threshold) but I wouldn't be surprised if my taxable income (net profit) was very similar. I understand that companies need higher turnover in order to run mogs etc. and that is choice to be made. That kit allows you to do more on a day than the little firms, and so you need more work coming in to keep you fully busy and I should think there is a greater worry of not having enough work, and so more stressful. But 15k on advertising, thats some nice holidays you are missing out on IMO.

You said that the advertising was to fill in the gaps from the recomendations that give you most of your income. Lets say that 50% of your work is from recomendations (ideally it should be 80%min but I'm trying to help you out here) so that means you pay 15K advertising in order to get 80K worth of work!!! Sh1t thats 12%!! Your refferal work is definatly paying for your advertising work. No wonder folk in advertising drive nice cars!! Imagine having hundreds of clients like you that have 15K a year to spend and don't mind if they are not getting 300+K in return!

I5k a year? Most advertising experts will tell you that 5% of income is the most you should ever be spending on advertising, 1% would be ideal. But if we go with the 5% rule, that means you get 300,000K (yes, .3million) return from that advertising, does that sound right? If not then the people you are advertising with are doing better than you are. All I got with advertising was more time spent doing free quotations, so the jobs you actually do get have to pay for the ones you dont get which is pointless and lowers your overall proffit %. Especially if the ones you do get are from word of mouth, no point in them subsidising your advertising budget!

I think 1m is too short for anything. I buy in multiples of 1.5m but usually tie them with long tails on the fishermans so I am using the equivelant of about 1.3-1.4m 1m is too short, fishermans use up a surprising amount of length!! I'm not saying there is no knot, but if you can't tie a distel then I would think there is nothing else that uses less.

Good work, but I dont think it does count. A non qualified person could do the same. Well done though, a cool head was required more then AR ticket.

I think some common sense needs to be applied. Its extremely rare that a rescuer need sot rescue someone in the first place, let alone need rescuing himself. Havign a rescuer on site is a good thing, havign a rescuer for the rescuer is just daft. There are still very few cases known of where an arerial rescue has been carried out and a person saved as a result. There are cases where no rescue was done and the injured party died, and so rescue training is a good idea, but those companies with rescue trained employees are already way less likely to ever need them.

When comparing splitters, be aware of the difference in european tons and american tonnes. (I think I got that the right way round) An american tonne is 1000lbs not 1000kgs. I have an american built petrol logsplitter that says 25t. That is comparable to a metric 12t machine.

I buy mine from a the company I rent my lock up from. They buy it in 1000L at a time and only charge me the same rate that they get it at. last lot was 49p +vat. Will be interested to see how much the next lot is. I get 100L at a time in 25L containers because storage space is limited for me. My friend dropped round 25L of free Jet fuel last night so that all helps!!