AHPP

This swear filter is stupid, Steve. If you can’t call an estate agent a c..t, who can you call one.

Call him a babe, reduce your offer and tell the owners why.

Hartlepool particularly offends me. It's next to quite substantial industry on Teesside, nuclear power station, oil rig recycling, big chemical place etc. Surely loads of opportunity for support and ancillary work. I tried to get the wheels aligned on the van, a perfectly ordinary 3.5t small commercial vehicle, a perfectly normal example of support work to heavier industry. Nobody had a big enough shed, nobody answered the phone, nobody committed to a time, nobody cared. A complete absence of get up and go. When I eventually found somewhere, they tried to con me into a four wheel alignment and only relented when I asked them to show me on the rear hubs where they planned to make adjustments. Their neighbour did it after I'd hung around for ages. He dropped it off the hoist, took more money than quoted and had ****************ed off by the time I was back two minutes later to tell them the steering wheel was off sixty degrees. "Well it drives straight doesn't it." By the time they'd finished lunch and deigned to have it back in, I'd spent 6 hours trying to accomplish a 20 minute job. Utterly feckless town.

Same as Hartlepool and any number of other post-industrial shitholes up here. Lovely buildings and great history but the towns as they present themselves now do themselves no favours. I was passing through to some soulless new build estate at Ingleby Barwick, two financed Audis on the drive etc. I hate those places but the top and bottom of it was that I was able to buy a bike helmet and fiddle about fitting it for ten minutes sat on the bloke's front lawn while he filled my bottle. The same transaction in the centre of Stockton would have come with the risk of hep c. There's gritty and then there's just shitty.

Aye. That’s fairly hard to find an excuse for. I went through Stockton on a bike the other day as it happens. Didn’t stop. Shithole.

It's a silver birch. It'll get to 12" DBH (if it's lucky) and rot enough that he'll have it cut down. Fifteen minute climb. Discount for cash. Or in some desperately unlucky future, it'll get TPOd, get to 12" DBH (if it's lucky) and rot enough that it falls over, in all likelihood doing literally tens of pounds' worth of damage. OP, I wouldn't be worried. Take Stubby's advice.

I can be as cynical as the next man about beggars, drugheads etc but do keep a bit of an open mind. You don't know whether the man in front of you is lazy scum with no excuse or whether he's gone down a path that started with his dad's mates taking turns to rape him while his dad put fags out on the back of his neck. Or something in between.

It’s a metropolis.

I've driven through Penistone fifty times and always noticed the very smart barn and the logs for sale signs. I don't suppose that's you is it?

Back up again. What hashtags are people using to look at tree killing machinery? Diggers, skidsteers, grapple lorries, telehandlers etc.

I threw some red cabbage and vinegar in some questionably clean jars and forgot about them for months. Didn't even cover the cabbage. Tipped it around a few times in the first few days. Still fine. You can't go wrong (you probably can go wrong).

If you build it, they will come.

Mainly gives it to the government to spunk around the economy on wars, the dole etc. It trickles down to where most money ends up, landowners and producers of fags and booze. The money supply aspect of economics is monetary policy btw. The other side of the coin (pun intended) is fiscal policy, which is tax etc. Spend the evening following links on investopedia and look forward to being better informed and furious by bedtime.

The slavers want you to think inflation is some complicated thing about the price of milk so you don’t realise, firstly, that it’s them causing it and, secondly, how harmful it is. Here, the guy who causes inflation (by printing money) says he’s going to act forcefully to tackle it. He could start by not causing it in the first place. Deceitful scum. Once you get it, every article you see that blames it on Brexit, sunny weather, myxomatosis, the Jews, Wimbledon attendance etc will leap out at you as the bullshit it is.

Good article.

It's the increase in the money supply. Say there's £100 in the country. You have £1. You have 1% of the money and therefore 1% of the spending power. Then the central bank (BoE here) prints another £100. You now have 0.5% of the money and spending power. The confusing bollocks about the price of milk, interest rates etc is put about to keep people talking about them when they should be more aggrieved at central banks making the pound in their pocket worth less.

I was going to go with, "**************** off, shitehawk." but thought I might let others get in more fleshed-out arguments first.

I usually offer those optimists £20 on top of the price and ask when will be convenient to collect.

They’ll get dirty over five years. Makes more of a difference than you’d think.

What is the correct method, Commissar?

I really want to like rigging wrenches but surely annoying when you want to send a saw down or a really light rig. A bit of friction is so easy to put on elsewhere.

I understand they're prized for pollution tolerance. Surely there's some other tree that's tolerant enough, otherwise suitable enough and isn't bloody poisonous?

Keep one on the line. You can leave it with the main rigging anchor (or just use it as the main rigging anchor) or take it with the crab to redirect or span rig.