difflock

Have not the Americans recently done sommat about non-resident US Citizens being liable for personal taxes regardless of where the work or choose to reside, I dont remember the details, but certainly along those lines. marcus

A pity "They" could not bus a platoon of fit over-trained & bored spoiling-for-a-fight squaddies up from Aldershot, with simple instructions to clear the site and we, the brewery will provide the beer afterwards, a kinda a simple win-win. On the pretext they were simply coming up to do the brewery tour and the travellers picked a fight with them. Marcus

Ah fink one needs to take the mattress into a dark room, an hit it with the UV light & filming for best effect!

It killed the guy who made millions from developing, patenting and flogging to the British and American armies what were essentially "jumbo" sandbags as used by the building supplies trade. At no doubt stupid inflated/gold plated prices. Who then bought the Segway company. The name will come to me. Hesco Bastion mth

FFS! Eggs, Ah were trying to make the point about "labels" or "pigeonholing" when I mentioned our traveller/itinerient worker experience in France. BUT Unfortunately, as I also attempted to point out as well, "our" Irish Travellers are def. bad-uns, to a man, woman and child(perhaps excepting the under 5's) There are also many ephemeral tradesmen, or women, who travel to be where the work is, and temporarily reside, in vans, or caravans, or motels, who definately do not fit the generic disparaging traveller description. Like Wot the steelfixer guy wuz, who worked for a very reputable local firm, fitting reinforcing steelwork to silo pits. "E" turned up in a Father Ted type caravan, worked, ate, drank and slept, pocketed a very respectable payment, and pissed off to the next job. "E" ud probably ave gubbed one if "E" was addressed as a "traveller". "E" also had the unfettered run of our farm place, where he parked up, without any hesitation on my families part. Descrimination, or simple judgement, can be a positive thing ye see. marcus

Eggs, Old Chap, one does attempt to judge those one meets purely on their merits, however from a N Irish perspective, meeting mostly Irish Travellers, who are always in 2's or 3's and attempting to sell one "some tools Sur", or "we are fitting carpet locally, and will have some left over" or "I see you will be needing blacktop Sur" And with full local knowledge of scams and thieving directly attributal to travellers One does tend to have preconcieved notions of the honesty of all travellers. Such is life Old Boy. Cheers Marcus

Did I tell yous about being mistaken for a tradesman?(and I was proper flattered btw) Having just purchased a decent new-build in the toon, I was fitting out the utility room, other trades working elsewhere, happen during tea-break young Mrs Tang came over for a good nosy around(they had bought the house opposite) I said nowt, Henry the foreman joiner, known to Mrs Tang winked at me and gave her a guided tour, then kinda absently mindedly, on their return to the kitchen where we were still sitting, introduced us. Mrs Tang was absolutly mortified in embarrasment, me? I near pissed myself laughing. To get a better grip on the neighbour hood we had bought into, I was also mistaken for the Gardener on another occassion. One would not own a house like that and dress like that, if you understand. Which is to say, in support of how one would expect ones Doctor to dress, as above statement. People do judge others by their appearance if nowt else. Marcus Per another thread, too bloody hot for an ould done retired man to be working a solid day.

Any yet, watching a very good BBC programme hosted by a young ??? Snow(I think it was, son of another well known BBC Snow) on the Congo and its sad raped & pillaged history. A clip filmed in a hospital, "Madam"** the senior administrator/medical person, was so fornicatingly exquisitely primped and coiffured as to be abhorrent, I immediaetly wondered at how many thousands of Aid Dollars she was sypthoning off from funds so desperately needed in the hospital. Did she care, or even be aware of the striking irony? **Madam was black btw.

Certainly I have noticed how salty the sweat is running down my face, while working in this current heat. Ergo one needs to replace the lost salt, which I mostly do via our lunchtime salad. As a Roman Empire Era salad recipe apparently stated; "salt , salt, salt". mth

Hoyc, I doubt intelligence levels in the populations you quote have changed so very much, or rather it is much more likely the tests have changed. I agree however about excess intelligence possibly being a liability, at St. Andrews (when I was courting the wife) some of her friends were extremely intelligent, but virtually dysfunctional/unemployable. Like one bloke was awarded a First Class Honours degree in Astrophysics/Nuclear Physics despite being absent most of his final year, due to a nervous breakdown, but he was so ferociously intelligent the degree was awarded purely on merit As I commented earlier, one needs a balance. regards Marcus

twice? knobhead! P.s. I was all too aware of exactly wot Westphalian said about the Knobhead ending btw! My spelling may well be shite but my reading comprehension be shit-hot! PPs Laziness/boredom, catching up on an unmisspent youth, etc etc Were my reasons not not completing my degree, oh, that and an inability to "do" the hard sums, integration in particular. PPPPPS You sure got a good memory, as wuz alluded too elsewhere earlier my error, now edited PPS to the xxxx PS Two different posters the "knobhead un an the vehicilist one btw cheers mth

O.K. Knobhead! Pigeonhole me by my 1999 Steyr Daimler Puch Van as a daily driver then! backed up by an 120,00 mile 8 year old Skoda P.S. Perhaps I should not reveal that the lads at our local tyre depot refer to it as the "SS Wagen"

Intelligence is simply innate, one is born with it or not, good upbringing can compensate for less brains, through instilled good manners and nuturing good habits("drill and repetition" training) ditto poor upbringing can easily negate any innate advantages one was born with. For my real world proof, merely consider the world of dog breeding. It really is that simple, despite the constant whining of the sociologists that it is not so. marcus P.S. To succeed in life requires more than intelligence, hard work and diligence are also required(and ideally a nice balance of all three) all in all a tough row to hoe.

I knew the above, simply from attending a County Secondary school, and being bullied, because I did not fit in. Plus in later life listening to the constant shite in work, generally the less-bright/not-bright* workers blaming "them others" for their, and their communities misfortune(s). Ditto our own sad sub-set of rooting tooting flag following bandsmen that cause such mayhem, with madly over-the-top bonfires containg hundreds of tyres, associated vandalism, wreaking and general devastation, in the lead in to our 12th celebrations. All the above population of about the same cognatitive ability, i.e. their penis has more brains, or makes more decisions, than their cranium does. marcus *there were also sparky bright intelligent workers btw, and those in-between.

We saw proper gypsie/romany/itinerient workers on a municipal caravan site in rural France, well actually we didnt, they were away to work before we stirred and not back until after we retired. An pristine Fendt caravan with a spotless stainless steel kitchen utility unit on its on trailer chassis, and gleaming transit vans. These, from an Irish perspective, were NOT Travellers.

Proper jealous of your springs Matthew, my drainage will be via a 110mm/150mm Wavin to the origional trial pond and onward through existing drainage. Unfortunately my supply is located beside my logical drainage point, so I will need to re-route one of them, to encourage some sort of through flow. mth ps looking forward to your photos Matthew

Thinking of a pontoon island? Just need to figure the flotation mechanism marcus

see att, currently unfilled, I am gambling a mix of rising groundwater, rainfall and roof run-off, from some 550m2(and planning on adding another 200m2 shed) will fill it, fingers crossed. I lifted the surrounding bank up about 600-700mm to "lose" the clay i.e. to increase the depth, got somewhere between 2 and 3 m deep I reckon, if it fills to brimming. Clay is essentially rock flour courtesy of glacial outwash, locally notorious for its impermeable nature, i.e. mostly peat over such subsoil since there is almost zero drainage. My trial pond holds water right up to ground level, when the water table is naturally a couple of feet down beneath the peat. Fingers crossed(and almost wishing for rain!) marcus

making slow progress, too bloody hot, anyway after faffing about pre-tensioning the bundles with the splitter ram. Ye know what? A third strap does more good, starting with the middle strap.

Ah build a inner firebox outta bits selected from the log box(=a cardboard supermarket fruit box), than a couple o handfuls of scrumpled up newspaper, an a match, an sit, for a very few minutes and coddle the instant inferno with the draught from the just cracked open door. Foolproof, mind you with 10 or 12m of flue that catches our praviling wind, it would be harder to fail to light the dry conifer I burn. marcus

As Billy Connolly so eloquently stated, when asked by the teacher what had happened that he shit his pants in primary school. "A big boy done it and ran away" I found this to be a general excuse for broken equipment during my Council years.

The chances of any outsider getting near a traveller site, in the dead of night, and tipping rubbish, without being found out is zilch. zero, nada non existent. Unless of course they are all out thieving. imho

Dictatorship is dictatorship, whether inflicted by an individual or a committee, the human suffering does not be diminished simply because the ruling elite decrees it is for the greater good, that you and your extended family or tribe or ethnicity be robbed of honestly acquired wealth, translocated or die. I do not care what name, flag or creed it is run under the guise of.

FFS! Any how many times have not Commie/Troksie/Socialist" trial runs" been trialed without much, much more, human suffering, with nary a word of protest from the Left. If the boot fits, wear it, Communist or Fascist, both cut from the same cloth. regards MTH ps I read a very good article about the current breeding/child bearing status of Africa vis-a-vis Europe's capability to deal with their thus produced* Economic migrants/refugees, in pure hard number/population equivalent/country for country terms. *i.e. without let or hinderance. I also saw a very pertinent comment about those families choosing to expose their children to these known risks, ask yourself why? PPS Consider our indigenous traveller population who choose to cart a child or 2 about in their theiving, uninsured, running on red Transit vans, simply because it makes it unpalatable for our Police to engage with them, from a long disallusioned long serving Plod mate.

Nope ! The above but tis a conspricay theory, ah tink anyways.