Big J

America is divided on a level that I don't think that we can comprehend in the UK. The two sides are almost completely irreconcilable and the middle ground of swing voters is tiny. Trump has been roundly condemned by a large number of Republicans. Even the ones who support him now were largely scathing of him before 2016. Yes, the impeachment was doomed to failure before it was even presented in the Senate, but it was still justified. Just because an just action is futile doesn't make it any less just. The threshold of 67 senators is artificially high, and a majority of them voted to convict. I still (for the life of me) cannot understand why the average evangelical white voter supports him. He doesn't live by the beliefs that he espouses. He's three times married, clearly a million miles away from being a Christian and he has a long standing history of screwing over the little guy (as in people that work for him). He's quite successfully managed to cultivate a cult of personality around himself, which is all the more remarkable considering he's possibly the most obnoxious person ever to elected to high office. I use the term 'elected' loosely, given that he lost the popular vote on both the occasions the public were asked to vote for him. The Republicans have only won one popular vote of the last 8. An interesting factoid is that the 50 Republican senators represent 40 million fewer people than the 50 Democrat senators do. It is amusing that those that claim to have been disenfranchised are actually those that have proportionally the most power, from a democratic perspective.

I strongly disagree. Holding an amoral narcissist accountable for deplorable actions that lead to the storming of Congress and the death of a police officer (not to mention the serious injuries to dozens more) is not a waste of time. A significant number of Republicans put country before their own political survival and voted to impeach. Even McConnell held Trump to be accountable and only acquitted him based on the technicality that he's not currently in office. The state of mind of the more extreme elements of the GOP is frightening. They are a long, long way from the relatively moderate politics of the likes McCain, Bush, Romney etc. Marjorie Taylor Green is genuinely certifiable.

I take your point, but given that the risk of severe illness and death is highest amongst those who are oldest and most unwell, is it really justifiable to lock away the rest of us too? Is there not an ethical dilemma there also? Also, could it be argued that the ethical implications of targeted lockdowns are not as serious as the ethical implications of crippling our economy, bankrupting our government and knackering the educational and social development of our children? The argument of fairness goes both ways. Is it fair to seriously restrict the liberty of a person who is at very low risk of complications relating to covid? How is this better than a targeted approach?

I did say 'get back to some sort of normal'. I don't believe that we'll the highstreets recover at all. Lingering paranoia from months of lockdown combined with the ease of shopping online will see to that. Hospitality may recover to an extent, but it'll take years and years. I reckon that no country has gone down the route of targeted lockdowns partly due to the point you raise about the psychological and moral issues with locking down parts of the population. It creates a situation that is doubtlessly tricky to manage, from a government perspective, but one which if managed properly results in decent health outcomes and a much better economic future. I do fundamentally believe that you cannot treat the population as a homologous entity without incurring serious long term issues. And I'm not sure that many in the more vulnerable groups would want the young and healthy to be locked down for their benefit if indeed there was another way of doing things. Perhaps what is regarded as being fair and equitable isn't necessarily the best course of action. Politically popular perhaps, but economically and ultimately socially destuctive.

I'd make the argument that society as we knew it has been largely destroyed anyway. We've killed off physical shops, the hospitality sector, our children's social lives and by extension, their development. We've entrenched an attitude of government dependency, ruined what little work ethic we had before and left ourselves and our children indebted for decades to come. I really do think that our public health outcome would not have been any worse had we simply isolated and shielded our old and vulnerable. Yes it would have been crap for them, and it would have seemed unfair, but apart from the fact that others in society would have freedoms that they didn't have, how would a targeted lockdown be any different for them to what they have now? Lumping everyone in the same risk group doesn't make sense from a public health perspective, and from an economic standpoint, it's a disaster. I agree that the cost of covid is tragic (in terms of lives lost) but you have to ask the question - how many of those that died were already in declining health? How much longer would they have lived? I'm really trying not to appear callous about it, but I do fully expect to see a lower than average death rate for the next few years as the (slightly) premature deaths from covid balance out against the long term death rate. The ever spiralling limits on our personal liberties and the continued insistence from the government of using executive decree (rather than laws scrutinised by parliament) is deeply concerning. Once we're all vaccinated, we really do need to get back to some sort of normal.

I tend to charge £52-54 a tonne for roadside hardwood. If it's dead ash, I have to sell it by the cubic metre due to the variation in weight, but I don't like doing it. I try not to vary my prices in the hope that the consistency of cost for customers would afford me some loyalty (through market fluctuations), but it's not worked out as well I would have liked.

Generally very good. The drive train is a bit annoying after the ease of the hydrostatic system, but it climbs well. The crane is amazing. On thumb jobsticks, the swing brake and the grab make for quick log handling. Hehe! Sorry about that. I dropped my phone into some mud yesterday and it's developed a bit of a mind of it's own.

Hi Mick - Sweden as it happens. My wife's brother is there, my mum has connections too and the language is fairly easy to learn. Endless work (75% forest cover in southern Sweden), politics my wife and I feel more comfortable with, great climate, cheap housing, better work/life balance, better prospects for the children and still within the EU. I still love Germany, but the summers are too hot for me, and the winters too inconsistent. The forestry industry is suffering a bit with the summer droughts too.

Hi Brian - sorry I missed you there. Yes, we still do a fair bit with the Kranman. With operator, it does the work of two men, but stacks the timber too, so saves on forwarding time too. A change of machine line-up. The Logbullet has been sold and replaced with a Vimek 610.2 from Northern Sweden. It's not new, but it's low hours and 5 years old. A bigger, but still very small forwarder. The Logbullet was great, but just not big enough for the jobs I had lined up. The Valtra N92 tractor and the Komatsu forwarder are for sale, and it'll be just the Vimek and Kranman until we emigrate next year.

It was the same for me too, and I'm a little younger than you. There were two guys in our school year (of just over 200) who were properly overweight, and really no one else. And they've since slimmed right down as adults as far as I'm aware. I just despair for their quality of life. If you take a hypothetical lad at 6ft tall, 20 years old. If he's of average build and healthy, he'd be about 75kg (12 stone ish). But so many at that height will be 95-100kg (15-16 stone). The only way I can imagine carrying around that sort of dead weight is to put my 6 year old on my shoulders. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be doing that 24/7.

I have noticed that, from my time in Sweden and also from house hunting and looking at the aerial photos. All the roads are linked together with excellent footpaths and cycleways. We're in a similar situation here in Devon. My daughters school is too far away to cycle to, but we can't really cycle anywhere safely on the road. No cycle routes (not a single one in Cullompton, a town of over 10k people) and lethal lanes means the kids are missing out on that. I grew up in Derbyshire, where the roads are generally much better, and as a teenager was knocked off my bike twice on recreational rides (I was never hit on the way to or from school). It's about establishing a pattern of behaviour when kids are young, that exercise isn't a chore, rather a part of normal life. Train hard to live easy, is another way to look at it.

Very much agree. It was pointed out earlier by someone that the Scandinavians have much lower rates of obesity than us. It is pretty standard for each village to have a sports pitch and hall. Given the severity of winter, indoor space is crucial.

I do remember some years ago reading about schools raising concerns about kids being underweight because their ribs could be seen. I cannot remember any time as a child when my ribs weren't visible, but I agree that the perception of what constitutes a healthy weight has shifted. I'm outside of the normal weight range (6ft 8", 118-120kg) but I train with weights and do rather a lot of rowing at the moment. On paper I'm almost obese, but I'm clearly not. As you say, incorporating exercise into daily life is of paramount importance. I don't have an issue with junk food really, but it needs to be consumed in moderation and with the understanding that there is a price. Eat a Big Mac meal, take a long walk. They balance out. As I said earlier though, I've never met anyone who had ongoing weight issues where the cause wasn't obvious. I'm not saying that addressing the cause doesn't take some will power, but it's not rocket science. Calories in need to be accounted for. Either you use them, or they get stored. Simples 😎

Agreed. I'd always like to know exactly how many of the supposedly "otherwise fit and healthy" younger people succumbing to C-19 are actually overweight. I hope and suspect that it's quite high , but I don't know as I've never seen any figures on it. It's never published. For whatever reason there seems to be a stigma attached to labelling people as overweight or obese. I think this is actually counterproductive in tackling the obesity epidemic in the long term and current pandemic in the short term. In my opinion obesity should be listed as an underlying health condition, especially if it's self-inflicted as is often the case, as you say. I agree that it is unhelpful. In order for people to be able to take action to minimise their risk of contracting life limiting conditions, they need to have a full picture of what the preventable conditions are. Being overweight is easily avoidable, and should be (as you say) listed as a comorbidity. It's going to sound harsh, but I have (as yet) never met an overweight person whose weight was caused by anything other than poor management of diet or exercise. I spent 4.5 years in my teens and into my twenties intentionally gaining weight for weight training (54kg in that time) and calorie management and exercise is not difficult. What is nice is that lockdown does seem to have caused a lot of people to exercise consistently. However, I suspect though that many have gone in precisely the opposite direction.

My lasting hope for all of this is that people start to look after their health as a matter of course. For too long, people have treated the NHS as an insurance policy, there to pick up the pieces after a lifetime of abusing their bodies. Covid has really underlined these health inequalities in society. Whenever there is a story on the BBC of a very young person succumbing, they are nearly always extremely overweight. I'm looking forward to getting vaccinated and in the mean time I'll continue exercising. Keeping fit and well is the best thing that any individual can do to minimise their chance of ending up in hospital. I'm not saying that fit people haven't been seriously affected or even died - there are always exceptions. I do however always despair when in the supermarket and see someone the size of a house shovelling chocolate and junk food into their trolleys. It's such a clear case of cause and effect; eat badly and don't exercise and you will shorten and reduce the quality of your life. And in these times of covid, it's like putting a bulleye on your back for hospital admission.

Calmer and cooler outside now, but yesterday was grim. 30mm of rain overnight and into the morning, and very windy with rain almost all the day. Using the rain radar, I managed to squeeze a walk in with my older daughter and not get soaked, but it wasn't particularly pleasant. I think we're on day 19 of rain now. Last month saw 27 days of rain out of 31. Anyone who tells you that a southern winter is preferable to a Scottish one is having you on. This is horrendous 😄 It's hardest for the kids really. My girls have got tonnes of energy and need to run around and play, but it's always a case of full waterproofs and complete change of clothes when they come back in. We had one morning with a dusting of slushy snow, and they squeeled with delight at the prospect of a snow day but were back inside glued to the stove within 30 minutes, soaked.

In which case I apologise. The timing of it just seemed a little odd.

^ Digs up and quotes a five day old post:

There is a huge difference between all season and standard summer in the snow. We had a Citroen C4 Grand Picasso some years ago. Bought with the standard summer tyres on it. During December one year, I ordered all season tyres from Germany and in the intervening time, had 2 inches of snow. The lane up to our house was 150m long, slightly uphill and had a sharp corner in it so you couldn't carry any speed. It took 15 minutes of wriggling to get the car onto the drive, at which point the ABS and traction controll had a melt down and the car had to be recovered to Citroen. The tyres arrived whilst it was there, I had them fitted, we had a repetition of the snow a few weeks later and the car went up the drive like the snow wasn't there. I am sure that full winter tyres are much better (I've had snow tyres on the Citroen Relay van before and they were excellent) but all season are miles better than summer tyres in winter.

I think that is a very sensible policy, but there just isn't enough snow or ice here in the SW of England to warrant that. We've had a fair bit this year, but last winter saw about 4 decent frosts in total.

Will do. The tipping point for having to put an end to my procrastination was having to grit a snowy/icy hill yesterday ahead of getting up it with the van. I did get 1/4 the way up on the first attempt, but just spun out. Tyres on 2-3mm, even if they are all season, just aren't that useful.

After a couple of weeks of indecision, I decided (rather than ordering them online) to support one of my local tyre places and am getting a set of BF Goodrich Urban Terrain tyres. 90% on road, 10% off (though a fairly aggressive tread pattern) and all season. What was staggering to me was the chap said they hadn't sold any all season tyres since before Christmas. It's been pretty frosty/snowy/icy/slushy for almost that entire period and people still don't think that they might want suitable tyres.

What did the pirate say when he turned 80? Aye matey! Working in a mirror factory is something I can totally see myself doing. Someone stole my Microsoft Office and they're going to pay. You have my Word! I broke my finger the other day. On the other hand, I'm OK! My Grandfather has the heart of a lion......and a lifetime ban from the zoo. Why should you never date a tennis player? Because love means nothing to them. What is the difference between a well dressed man on a bike and a poorly dressed man on a unicycle? Attire. In our family we have a genetic predisposition for diarrhea. Runs in our jeans. I took the shell off my racing snail, thinking it'd make him faster. If anything, it made him more sluggish. How do you find Will Smith in the snow? You look for the fresh prints.

Welcome to the forum. Your installer is indeed correct. Open door and you're wasting at least 2/3 of the heat. Open fires are at their very best 30% efficient whereas a modern stove is usually 80%, or more. Invest in a flue thermometer. This is the only way to tell if your fire is operating at the correct temperature, and is therefore most efficient. It's also the best way to reduce the polution. Rather than buying by the net, buy by the tipper load from someone like (and I only googled it, so this isn't a recommendation, rather a suggestion): Order Firewood Online | Jonathan Le Maistre Tree Surgery, Jersey CI TREES.JE It'll be much cheaper, but you will need a woodstore. As regards timber species, there are small variations, but the best rule of thumb is: wet wood is bad and dry wood is good. What species it is is not as important.