agg221

Yes. Alec

What diameter is it and approximate location? Alec

I don't disagree with your assessment at all. FWIW I was not suggesting that any state is going to become like North Korea, rather that this would be the only way to create a truly ideology-based state because anything else requires interaction on a global level, i.e. it becomes a compromise. I expect that we will have a similar compromise arising here. The only exception is if some idiot in the White House decides it is a good idea to go poking rogue states with a big stick. Brexit will probably have more impact, but as you say this will be gradual rather than overnight. Alec

Unless the East European "Big Issue" sellers are claiming benefits, quite frankly, I have no problem with them being here selling the "Big Issue". Unless you wish to claim that they are taking the job of selling the "Big Issue" away from good honest British "Big Issue" sellers? Hardly a job though, is it? Millions of migrants would bring issues but we don't have millions, we have hundreds of thousands from the EU. We also have a substantial number who we choose to allow to emigrate here from outside the EU, where we have, and always have had, full control of our borders. From memory, in 2015 that was around another 150k, again including a large number of students because for some reason we think including the students in the migrant numbers is a good idea, even though they are paying full fees and thereby subsidising British and EU students. Class sizes are going up as it happens - if you want to know why, rather than (yet again) pointing the finger at migrants, try looking at the baby boom of 2008-2012. No idea why that happened but one thing is for sure, it was not driven by migrants. As it happens, my two children were born in 2009 and 2011 respectively, bang in the middle of that window. Elder is in a class of 30, younger is in a class of 23. My wife is rather looking forward to the numbers in her school going up too so that they can go back to five form entry which the school was built for but hasn't managed to achieve in many years. As the baby boom works through this should happen, which will result in the children getting proper residual funding per head once the fixed overhead is covered. Alec Alec

There would certainly be issues with uncontrolled migration, coupled with high levels of benefit. It would be inviting people with nothing to 'come and have some free money' with the inevitable consequences. We do not have this situation. Everyone in the whole of the EU has the right to jump on a boat/plane and come to the UK tomorrow. That's over 700M people. They have had this right since the Maastricht treaty of 1992 was enacted. Compared to this, the level of immigration is trivial - net migration to the UK in 2015 from the EU was 180,000 which, because of the way we calculate the figures, includes all the students coming here purely to pay to study. In the same year there were 698,000 births cf. 530,000 deaths so net growth of 168,000. All figures from the ONS. Notably of course, there is a right to work, not a right to benefits. Jobseekers' allowance can only be claimed for up to six months, after a residency of three months, and there is no right to housing benefit (source gov.uk website). Comparing the above facts to what is often presented, I am suggesting that there is a lot of mass hysteria and inflammatory language, whipped up by the press because it makes for a good story. It is very easy to write the politics of hate. It is also very easy to take two things and write that 'the link between them has not been disproved' to create a conspiracy theory (I really wouldn't be surprised to see a headline one day that 'Immigrants Killed Princess Diana' and I know which paper I would be expecting to see it in) but that does not mean these stories are true, it just means it sells newspapers; the trouble is though that people seem to swallow them. There are definitely financial issues on a grand scale and people at the bottom are not going forward - in fact they are slipping back. Immigrants make soft targets and it is so much more palatable than taking any responsibility yourself, isn't it. Ironically, in the US (which is after all what this thread is about) pretty much the entire population is made up of relatively recent immigrants. It is very easy to state that 'immigrants are taking our jobs' or doing them for less money, but there is very little evidence of this beyond 'a man down the pub says so'. We have a minimum wage and we live in a free market economy based on the principles of supply and demand. There is also the practical point that simply removing the person doing the role would not necessarily result in someone else getting the position, particularly if the cost went up. Take the construction sector. Assume for argument's sake that building a house takes around 500 man-days on site. Assume that the lack of alternative labour increases the hourly rate by £5/hr. That puts £20,000 on the build price of a house, in labour alone, let alone the increased cost of all the components, deliveries to site etc, pretty much anything with a labour component. Put that much on the price of a house and what happens - does the price stay fixed by reducing profit? No, of course not, the price goes up accordingly but the developers just delay projects like they did in 2008 and fewer houses get built. What I do find interesting is that what is being advocated is protectionism in the interest of workers' rights, which is a hard line socialist policy of the left. This is pretty much the policy of Momentum and was the original policy of the National Socialist German Workers Party, better known latterly as the Nazi party. Sometimes the difference between extreme right and extreme left actually does complete the circle. Alec

No I'm not happy that towns end up in recession and communities have the heart torn out of them, but trying to turn the clock back to some rose-tinted view of the past, running away and hiding behind literal or metaphorical walls is not a solution. The starting point always seems to be people creating themselves as victims. It's not their fault, blame it on someone else. The language evolves, from terms which are now deemed so offensive that I can't write them on this forum, to 'foreigners' and latterly 'immigrants' but what they all have in common is identifying people as 'other', amplifying differences and engendering a sense of fear. It makes for good scapegoats, if you want a nice simplistic explanation rather than to address the root cause. Words like 'exploited' get used to describe people working on a lower cost base, but quite simply if your basic living costs are £1000 a month based on market forces for rent, food etc then you need to earn (or get given by the state) that much to live, whereas if you live in a lower cost-base economy, say £500 a month, you can have exactly the same standard of living for half the money - just look at the variation in cost of rented housing across the UK and you can immediately see the effect in miniature. Globalise it and you realise why it is pointless trying to recreate manufacturing jobs in countries where the cost base is too high, as the goods produced would simply be unaffordable, so the whole economic cycle of production/consumption fails. You could try to drop the cost base, reducing housing and food costs etc but so far nobody has worked out how to do this. It hasn't even worked in Greece which was the best attempt so far that I am aware of. Ultimately, you could in theory go back to this mythical point in history when everything was supposedly great, if you close all borders and operate as a closed state - North Korea does this quite well today and the entire Soviet empire managed it for decades. I wouldn't say they were exactly known for being great places to live though. So those are the reasons why not to do it. What to do instead? You can see some interesting possibilities from where regeneration has been attempted before. The thing is though, I don't think people want to listen to this. They want a magic quick fix and are listening to people who promise one. Anything less palatable will be dismissed as being 'establishment' or 'from experts' which are now derogatory terms. The current mood is one where people with no knowledge, experience or understanding seem to feel they are the best people to address complex global issues, in some cases not even having bothered to read around the basics - they pick the one view which aligns with what they have already decided and dismiss anyone who presents a different view as biased. Where I work we have a library. The librarian has as her email signature the line 'three months in the laboratory often saves an hour in the library', but it seems that we are now doomed to an enormous experiment since nothing other than the outcome will convince a large proportion of the population of both the US and the UK that magic doesn't work (and even then they will probably deny it and claim it's someone else's fault). Alec

They are worth milling -if- you have a plan for them or are likely to use the timber in the future. The oak in particular (the heartwood) will keep pretty much forever once milled and stacked so is worth hanging on to for future use if you do the odd project. Alec

Just to clarify, are you offering this as an explanation for the behaviour of the average american voter I agree that, sadly, this is the case. Alec

You need to remove the risk. One idea would be breaking one bag up into small nets and offering them free. There will inevitably be some people who just take it as a free net but it shows you believe in the product and there is a psychological dimension where most people will feel they owe you if they like it. Alec

This was the rendition of Tower of Song which I saw. Not quite solo as I had thought but the humour in it is brilliant: [ame] [/ame]

I saw him in 2013 at the O2. At one point it was just him on stage, alone, in front of an audience of 20,000. You could have heard a pin drop. His presence was awe inspiring. (Oh and he then did Tower of Song solo on a 1980s keyboard, somewhat taking the mick). Alec

Just to clarify, are you offering this as an explanation for the behaviour of the average american voter, or expressing your own opinion that the actions/statements of Trump are justified so long as he supports white people? Alec

The ability to think is undeniably more useful than the ability to memorise. However, education is not all about rote learning - as an aside, the examination system for doctorates makes it nigh on impossible to rely on rote learning. But, deriving everything from first principles each time is equally impractical. Hence you need both knowledge and the ability to apply it. A decent education teaches you the former and how to do the latter. There are people who are educated and lack common sense. There are also people who are uneducated and lack common sense (visit most University town centres at chucking out time on a Friday night to see them side by side). There are probably more people who are uneducated and lazy/stupid than are educated and lazy/stupid - it takes a certain amount of intelligence and application to absorb, retain and use knowledge. Trump did very well amongst the college educated and higher earning demographic, but he won his votes in the small c conservative areas rather than the more diverse areas. The same was true of Brexit. The issue really is that both were protest votes against the status quo, won on slogans and disaffection. The problem with 'anything is better than this' is that it is a leap of faith rather than a credible plan (unless anyone seriously thinks that building a 2000 mile long wall is realistic....) Alec

But you have to admit, it would be funnier if he channelled RuPaul Alec

So what would you recommend then? If education makes people 'dumb as a box of rocks' and 'the uneducated' are better at understanding important things; 'an expert is a drip under pressure' why bother having them? Do you feel the world would be a better place if nobody was educated? Alec

On these dark mornings, this is what has been getting me going in the car on the way to work: [ame] [/ame]

Very true - my careful pre-drilling of slightly oversize holes to allow movement, aligning the holes just above the tongue to allow for expansion and contraction in the width and nailing down with stainless ring-shank clouts, using a punch to avoid marking the surface is rather at the opposite end of the scale This is true - it probably depends on whether you are producing to order or for stock on either product. If one or the other is for stock you can afford to convert the falling boards to plain sawn and the central cant to feather edge. Otherwise, a block bolted to the fence on a vertical bandsaw to produce the tilt is fairly straightforward, so long as you saw the falling boards to a thickness which allows for the central kerf (I did this to make use of a few wedge-shaped offcuts from something or other). Most of mine were actually milled using the Ripsaw, which is a bandsaw that runs down the log like an Alaskan. I rigged a tilt jig, rather like using a tilted ladder, referencing off where I wanted the thick edge to be. This worked rather like continuous quartersawing, going round the log and pretty much cutting along the same grain as the older cleft style of boards. Boards were then seasoned and edged to a chalked stringline. It worked well but would not be a good solution for high volume production. Alec

You gone soft Ed? Didn't you get them doing a cord of logs before school from the age of six?

For cladding, so only one face will be exposed, there are several advantages. The first is yield - assume you want a 3/4" bottom edge, parallel sawn it takes 3/4" of timber to make a board whereas feathered to 1/4" you need 1" plus saw kerf to make two boards. Assuming a 1/8" kerf, in a 20" cant that means the difference between 35 boards and 26 boards. Feather edge lies flatter, so it drains better and should last longer. Lying flatter also decreases the size of the corner cappings - the 'stick out' of flat boards as above would be just over 1.5" whereas feather edge will be just over 1". It also keeps weight down which decreases loading and means smaller fixings. It also puts the thickness where you need it, on the bottom edge without compromising lifetime. Practical experience of installing it, it is also much easier to get a tight lap as you easily deflect the 1/4" edge to conform to the profile of the thicker edge and close the gap. Alec

For a single log with a milling spec of reasonable thickness boards that might work out most cost effective. 4' with an 090 is OK, although if there is more to do it's worth going to a double powerhead set-up (also possible). I have milled in Ipswich before - http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/alaskan-mill/49031-need-some-milling-done-near-ipswich.html and could do it if required. Alec

'The Sisters' - Elms at Terling Painted by David Rolt in 1954, probably sold from one of his exhibitions at the Hazlitt gallery. Alec

I haven't had Fiesta for years! The fruit farm down the road from us where I grew up used to grow it (part of their pick your own) and as I recall it was perfectly decent but I don't recall it as being outstanding. Grafting onto crab stock should work fine (I use strips of polythene as binding) but it will give you big trees which will take a long time to crop. Alec

I forgot to comment on walnuts. I suggest looking here: catalog They will ship to the UK. You might want to look at the variety Chiara. On plums - purple and raw, try Angelina Burdett and Kirke's Blue. Alec

Collect from where, and any chance of a model number or photo? Alec