Big J

A democracy has real issues when those in charge start to say "Do as I say, not as I do" Cummings needs to go.

I feel the same ?

Or indeed in most of the other European countries. ?

Absolute merchant bankers. Well done for keeping your cool. I must admit the more time I spend driving around the West Country, the angrier and more impatient I become. I went to pick up some beams at a sawmill today for a friend and despite it being in a small town, there is no route into it without doing single track roads. So inevitably ended up reversing my trailer to let a lorry past, squeezing through gaps not wide enough and generally enjoying myself as much as having invasive surgery without anaesthetic. At least I didn't meet any horses ?

In the news this evening that preliminary antibody tests suggest that 5% of the population outside of London have had covid 19 and 17% of Londoners have had it. So that's 1.53m Londoners and 2.95m of the rest of us. So 4.5m infected with lets say an upper end estimate of 50k deaths (many of which could reasonably be said were patients that died with coronavirus rather than because of it). So that's a 1.1% death rate, which fits with the previous data. On that basis, I don't think it's severity warrants the level of lockdown we've experienced. The vast majority of those that have died have been either very elderly or with comorbities. We should shield them and the rest of us should get on with life as normal, with reasonable efforts made to limit direct social contact. Sitting in the nurses waiting room the other day, two of the people in there were so overweight and infirm, I was surprised they were still alive. Only in their sixties, I'd say, each of them 3 times their ideal bodyweight and struggling to walk. The best thing anyone can do in the interim period before a vaccine is developed is to try to improve their own health. I know not everyone can do that, but those at higher risk can really improve their own chances of not falling seriously ill by doing all the usual things to get healthier. Why anyone is still smoking these days is honestly beyond me. One of the simplest and easiest things to do to improve your health, especially given the nature of covid 19 attacking the lungs.

Delivered in, yes. That's £10/HF. When I was harvesting elm, I had over a dozen logs which exceeded £35/HF at roadside. Assuming the base is OK, £10/HF is low end delivered in. Seriously. You might be able to get it for less than that, and that's fine, but given that the kiln dried value of decent, wide, patch burr oak is £50/CF and up, £10/HF makes sense financially.

Speak to Patrick Baxter at The Wood Place (formerly Lanarkshire Hardwood) or failing that, Ian Brown at AJ Scotts. That's an easy job as the ground is so hard. Hire a HIAB for a day, drive it to the log. Cut to required lengths, lift and deliver to customer. Assuming the butt end is OK (and tidied up), you've got an absolute minimum of £10/hf (£270/t) in it and at a guess, there is £2.5k in it.

Not actually heard of him Apart from a few niche parts of the market, Scottish oak is generally of poor quality. It's characterful, and in a few places it'll grow with quality and character, but most of it is just riddled with tension, brown rot and poor form. In service, it's pretty (if you can get it to behave), but it's so much less attractive than elm that I just never warmed to it.

Oak is generally 26-28 hoppus foot per tonne. £2.50/hf is low. £125/t is also low, but demand might be different in Scotland to here. In Southern England, the glut of ash on the market means a lot of oak that would ordinarily be cut hasn't been cut, and there is a shortage. £200/t or £7-8/hf is more typical down here at present.

That is true. The UK is just about the fattest and unhealthiest country in Europe. I'll get slated (as I have before) for saying it, but take a flight back from Scandinavia and you can pick out almost every Brit just by looking at them. As they say, prevention is the best cure and given that obesity has been classifed as a serious risk factor by many nations, in terms of likelihood of severe complications from Covid-19, being thinner and healthier is a no brainer.

Wales is renowned for rain! ? Just my experience with poplar. We used it a lot as a cheap and cheerful timber, but it's troublesome. It makes marvellous firewood, and that's what I'd recommend using it for

Keep in mind that the shrinkage in drying is huge. I did a mezzanine at my old sawmill in green poplar. 30cm wide floor boards, fitted butted right up to each other. By the time it dried (which was only a few weeks), I had 2cm gaps between all the boards. Personally, I wouldn't use poplar in this capacity. It's just too unstable, and with it's hygroscopic tendencies, it'll swell and contract a lot depending on RH. On the flipside, this is great for indoor air quality, but it's a pain to work with.

I did hear Sweden as a whole, but I may well be mistaken.

Sweden reckons it'll be most of the way to herd immunity by the end of the month. It'll be interesting to see.

Interest is paid by the government for 12 months. Beyond that, it's 2.5% above base rate, which is effectively zero. So the money is free for the first year, and then basically at inflation thereafter.

Have a case of Corona, by which I mean beer ?

I'm not complaining, quite the contrary. I'm not sure that is necessarily sensible to give out unchecked loans, but again, I'm not complaining.

I don't know, and I think I'm beyond caring. However bad we have it here with Boris et al, I'm eternally grateful not to be in the US with almost half of the population thinking that Trump is (literally) God's gift.

Feels like this needs to be posted, in light of Trump turning on his own experts:

Ours came through yesterday. Easiest finance application I've ever done. I do reckon an awful lot of businesses won't be in a position to pay it back, and the government is going to be hit with picking up the bill on all those defaults. Suddenly, the furlough scheme won't seem so expensive!

From the bit of research I've done, I really like the nordic capitalist model. Supportive of entrepreneurs and business, but very socialist in it's social mindset. The poor aren't really poor and the rich aren't that rich. I was looking at average salaries for lorry drivers in Sweden the other day (out of curiosity) and the average starting wage is £4k a month, rising to double that with 10-15 years experience. They place value on essential services (like transportation of goods) in a way that I don't think we do. Truck Driver Average Salary in Sweden 2020 - The Complete Guide WWW.SALARYEXPLORER.COM

Interesting thread, and one I'm surprised I missed. Firstly, the furlough payments are going to be very tough to wean a chunk of the population off of. There is endemic fear of covid-19 in the population and I understand that. I think it's overblown, principally by a somewhat hysterical media, but is does remain a deadly virus for some. That being said, personally, I must admit that I've become a total nihilist with regards to the whole situation. Life isn't really worth living in the long term if it's going to continue like this (huge restrictions on personal liberty and businesses collapsing left right and centre), because the economic effects with far outweigh any struggles we'd have with the virus. I'm young, I'm fit, I don't have any preexisting health conditions, I don't socialise at all at the moment with anyone in high risk groups, and if it does get me, I'm life insured to the hilt, so my family will be covered. There is no guarantee of a cure, no timescale for a cure if one is found and no assurances about it's effectiveness. The general public not in high risk groups need to get back to normal. The vulnerable need to be shielded, and those that care for them protected, but everyone else needs to work to pay for that continued effort. On the topic of wealth inequality, it's something I do feel quite strongly about. The disparity between rich and poor is astronomical, and has only been increasing over the past 100 years. There is no justifiable reason that anyone needs hundreds of millions of pounds, and it's worth remembering that for many of them, it's inherited wealth. It's really easy to completely avoid inheritance tax, and wealth passes through generations without any challenge from tax authorities. The poor do need to be paid a bit more, and the rich a bit less. With egalitarianism comes increased overall happiness, which is surely the goal of life? Money to a point helps attain that, but it's surprising how low that point is, after which additional money makes no difference to life satisfaction.

Yes, to a reasonably extensive degree.

I wouldn't have thought so. I am not aware of red deer being present in that valley. It was very articulate, but a bit ranty. Probably best I lost the post! ?

I had a long reply. The mouse fell off the chair, closed the window and I lost it. In short. I love being outdoors, I dislike cities, I hate mounted hunting. I dislike the English countryside and I'm at my wits end with the UK if I'm being honest. I apologise for the brevity, but there is little in life that is so frustrating as to spend 15 minutes typing a reply to have it vanish in an instant.