WorcsWuss

Quite... so long as he believes what you do....

One thing which crops up again and again from believers is their conclusion that those who do not believe lack a central pillar around which we can build our lives, something which keeps us grounded, gets us up every morning, urges us to be good people and put others first, to keep us strong in challenging times. That seems quite a misguided view to me, as a father. I'm sorry but no made up deity or even some dude claiming to be his son would ever have any chance of coming close to my children in performing that role. It actually quite offends me that anyone would suggest to me that my kids can't fulfill that role as well as something which, to me, genuinely is a work of pure fiction. And the thing which baffles me the most is that there are people of any faith who feel that the only good which can be done is in a god's name. Why can't people just do these things for the sake of human kindness. Why do they need some sort of carrot and stick...? I can safely say that I wouldn't be a better person if I followed a religion or had a faith. Which means, because I don't believe any of it, that I have the utmost respect for anyone of any creed. I cannot get my head round the fact that anyone who believes in god can be doing anything but disputing anyone else's belief system. To not believe means one treats all religions the same, as nothing more dangerous that a quaint personal choice. But a believer must surely treat their own religion as the only truth and everything else as fabrication or abomination. Just seems utterly bizarre, I cannot see how any religion can preach tolerance when defining themselves by their beliefs is at odds with treating everyone as equals.... Which takes me to the conclusion that ORIGINALLY, religion was not about a genuine god but instead about taking sides.... I'd be interested to know at which point the charade became accepted fact..?

Thanks for taking the time Graeme! There are obviously tenets in there which I do not have the ability to get my head round and bring myself to believe but that's a great factual answer. And it's nice to finally know the source of the expression 'well pleased'... as in 'I is well pleased innit'....

Well done all! It's not often I can be ar&ed to read 20 pages of a thread to catch up! I'd like to take a moment to qualify a couple of things from my post at the start of this and ask a couple of questions of some believers. 1. Although I don't believe a word of it [except perhaps that a fella going by the name of Jesus might have lived a while ago and became quite popular somehow], both my oldest children go to church schools, are full on believers, do Sunday school and love questioning why I don't believe.... But I have never discouraged them from believing. 2. I am open to be proved wrong [as I am in all things in life!], in the unlikely event that I do rock up at the pearly gates I will eat my words. But I don't let that potential occurence colour the way I live my life, I live my life as I do because making people's lives a tiny bit better makes me feel like I've earned my place in society and I do that for no one but myself. Now, questions... 1. The bible is often quoted as being the word of god... I thought it was written by people who are alleged to have known Jesus, or known people who knew him, mostly some considerable time after his death, and then edited by some Romans....? There's the odd quote in there but over many years and many translations that seems a bit like chinese whispers to me...? Is that basically right or is there unquestionable evidence to prove otherwise? 2. Who claimed that Jesus had been sent here by his dad, god, to die for us...? Was it Jesus? And if so, why does no one believe anyone when they claim to be his reincarnation these days? Is it because back then with a more limited understanding of the world, if someone could get enough support behind them people were too under-developed to see past this? Or was he somehow far more convincing...? Was it the miracles that convinced thousands of people he was special? Or was it just great sleight of hand and the people at the front of the crowd bought it and it rippled out through everyone and became 'gospel'...? I am utterley fascinated by religion. Not so much for it's social effects, these are well documented throughout history, but the individual events and places which combined to create the greatest story ever told I find spellbinding. I cannot see me ever becoming a believer but one thing I will fight anyone who says otherwise over, is that religion and belief structures have created the most colourful and fascinating cronicle of human development one could imagine. One final observation, although unintentional I hope, I notice [and am guilty of it myself] that believers and non-believers both look upon each other with a degree of condescension, pity, amusement, superiority & perhaps overinflated sense of their own intellectual capacity, either for seeing beyond that which we can see and 'knowing' there is something else out there, or for knowing that we are the beginning and the end, are pretty insignificant and are more enlightened for not needing the crutch of a higher power. It's a midlly amusing situation when you stand back and look at it, both sides think the other's a bit daft. But then when one side feels they're being villified for that stance, they become far more aggressive than their alleged enlightenment would suggest reasonable... Curious creatures human beans, convinced of our own importance and that we know it all....

I've been trying to find the precise formula for this to put into an excel sheet on my phone to calculate this from a green weight chart when on a job... Can someone tell me this, it must be more obvious than I'm making it seem....?! You know, height of drop x weight = load....? I just want to know what load will be imposed on an anchor from a given freefall height....

Woodland Scenics stuff is extortionate anyway... but that's a triumph of adding value...!

Is that a 'NO' or a 'YES' then....?

I have tried twittering and cannot get on with it at all, find it a loathesome development... my sister loves it... @hamlikes.... WTFlip....?!?! and why on earth do we need another bastardisation of the English language...? #notputtingspacesinphrases .... I don't even know what these things MEAN...?!?!?!

Humanist! That's the one! I read about that once on the internet, it's a pretty good philosophy I reckon...

Interesting thread Butler, didn't you say you were going to bed an hour ago..?! I went to schools where we had chapel every day and twice on Sundays until the age of 12, my next school was attached to Worcester Cathedral. My wife is Catholic, my kids go to a church school, we got married in church, my kids are all baptised [littlest at harvest festival last year], I'd class our local vicar as a close family friend, we do christmas, easter, pancake day and I like to support our local church. Our best friends are heavily involved with a evangelical church in Brum and I like to live a good Christian life. All that said. I don't believe a word of it. I dislike organised religion intensely, it is used as control or an excuse or both and the bible is nothing more than a story book. I don't pray when I'm in church, I don't sing the hymns or take the wafer, I don't join in because I feel obliged to because I'm there and the vicar knows how I feel but appreciates that I support the church for what it is, ie a great pillar of support in our rural community for those who need it. It doesn't need to be in the name of god and I don't need to be a hypocrite to support it. So it doesn't mean that I can't pick out the good parts of our current chosen native religion and live by them. I try to put others first and everyone round here knows that if they're ever in need they can always ask us and no matter what, we will do everything we can. In all honesty, I'm could even be a better 'christian' than many card carrying religionists, I don't go in for gay-bashing, I don't discount other peoples beliefs or try to convert them to my own. So, when is a Christian not a Christian....? When they're just a nice human being I suppose....

You've misunderstood this one Tom . This is a charge on top of the legitimate planning fee. Let's say you want to extend your house. Last year you phone up the planning department and say 'I want to put an extension on my house, it's X big, do I need planning permission?' The planning officer, who is paid to be a planning officer by each and every one of us already, says 'I'll call in when I'm in the area, tell you if you need it and what the application fee will be'. You then make a planning application, pay a few hundred quid, everyone's happy. This year, you phone the planning department and say 'I want to put an extension on my house, it's X big, do I need planning permission?' The planning officer who is paid to be a planning officer by each and every one of us aleady, says 'You need to download these forms off our website, submit the form and a full set of plans, pay the fee of £30, we will then process it and tell you whether it needs planning permission and what the fee will be. If we need to make a site visit that wil be extra'. The you make your planning application and pay another fee. NOT everyone's happy! And the most ironic thing is that I'm pretty sure that the additional work in processing all these initial applications for whether an application is needed probably costs more than the fee they charge anyway... which seems fairly typical of LA thinking. Do a job. Then invent another job. Charge for it. But don't charge enough to actually cover the costs of the work involved. I don't doubt for a second that this will be how they approach contracting, ie not really accounting for all their costs and so under selling their service [and ultimately undercutting anyone who runs their business well and DOES know their total running costs and baseline overheads], but one which morally they should not be offering / charging for anyway.... Surely if local councils are contracting, there should be a rebate through our council tax when they make some money out of it, just the same as shareholders get a dividend when a company does well...?

Absolutely! Claim it back, definitely eligible, and as said, definitely do it yourself! The firms who advertise on the TV only use the same method available to you, they just skim off a load of it... balls to them, of only we could find such a convincing argument to get ambulance chasers squeezed out of the market...!

As ever, Precisely the factual and logical argument to put an end to this. No public sector body should compete with private sector companies for private work.... unless the local authority is going make things fair and pay for private companies rent, rates etc of course..... Public sector workers are there SOLELY for the purpose of working without further charge for us all. End of. I have seen this scenario appear in construction recently, planning departments now will not visit your property to give advice on a planning application, you have to fill out what essentially amounts to a full planning application and pay a fee, just to find out if you need to make a planning application. I'm sorry, but they are paid for this service already, that is what they are employed to do by the taxpayer already, I fail to see how it can even be legal for a public office to charge the public again individually to carry out nothing more than the job they are employed to do. If the public sector want to charge the public for their services, or compete for private work, then we should not be paying the level of council tax we do and / or ALL council services need to be opened up to the private sector, including things like the ability to grant planning permission. It seems that the public sector want it all ways. Rather than accepting [granted, understandably] that local authorities are grossly overstaffed and a massive financial burden which needs to be streamlined, they cling onto these massive structures they have created by finding new ways to take money off us to perpetuate their existence. And all the while, they continue to waste money... I got a letter the other day telling me the council had conducted height surveys in all the schools in Worcestershire and purchased booster seats for children who need to use them in cars to use on school buses, my 5 year old included. The letter ended saying that it's not a legal requirement but they thought it was a good idea. I wrote a very strong letter back requested statistics showing how many children died on school buses in the last 5 years and how many deaths or injuries would have been prevented through the use of booster seats. I may be wrong but my guess is zero on both counts. I really do despair. I believe that local government & the wider public spending model we have represents the greatest hurdle to regaining economic vibility in this country [look what it's done to Greece] and the sad thing is there seems to be nothing ANYONE can do about it. Central government tell them to save money and cut their budgets? They just start charging for things. It's not what they're there for and someone needs to be a bit firmer with them and remind them of this in my humble opinion. I'm so exhausted now I just fell off my soapboax...

Not true, council tendered contracts are tragically low margin, because the councils specify them so heavily and then put them out to 6 contractors so that it comes down to who will work closest to cost price. You can only make a comfortable living working for a local authority of you actually work FOR the local authority...

Yup... catches the soots, gets superhot and incinerates them every now and again... that's all it is... Idea is to reduce the black smoke all round the city from dirty old diesel trucks... DPF is the tool they came up with although they do have serious shortcomings...

You can get an appropriate DPF fitted to any non-compliant vehicle and a VOSA inspection will see you allowed to drive into the LEZ. It's all down to soots isn't it...? So if your diesel engine meets the emissions standards after whatever date it is you're OK. If this can be achieved with a replacement engine and that can be proved in a VOSA inspection I see no reason why it wouldn't work. Paperwork will need to be changed though, remember LEZ fines are automated through ANPR!

My wife loves this... I have to admit though I'm starting to get a little cheesed off with it all now.... Seeing them swanking around in expensive cars, flouting the law and generally contributing little except mindless entertainment.... I doubt there's a lot of tax contributed to the public purse, they don't appear to have any moral urge to abide by the laws of the land and glorifying them with a TV series, while genuinely interesting for the first series as an insight into a culture I knew little about, is starting to seriously grate on me now.... Good to ogle a few hooters though....

This is far more clear cut that it sounds, and it's down to language and confusing / overlapping terminology. Generally in the construction industry there are contractually 2 sorts of sub contractors [so the same applies to any industry]: Bona Fide Sub Contractors - These are companies, however large or small, whom are retained by an appointed contractor above them to carry out the task, or part thereof, which they are employed to do. Generally they provide their own equipment, materials, labour and insurances. Labour only sub-contractors - These are self employed people who you employ on an ad-hoc basis, either piece work or day work and some maybe act as gang masters, invoicing for a few other self employed guys and then paying them. So, a bona-fide will provide all their own kit, labour, insurance. A labour only sub contractor, otherwise known as self employed dude or dudess, can be employed for their bare hands and nothing else. The terminology is confusing but when people talk of Sub-Contractors they generally mean bona fide's, but when they say they are subbing to someone themself they usually mean just working for someone on a self employed basis, with or without their own kit and often on their employers' insurance etc. As said, Bona fides have a proper contract, labour only sub contractors are effectively the same as directly employed staff..

I'm concerned that the truck now has a girl's name and you're taking black & white photos of it Sam.... have you ever seen the film 'Christine'...?!

There's a guy who writes for Classic Tractor or Tractor & Machinery who brings old tractors back from the continent, he seems to just rock up with a trailer and bring them home... Could try posting on the British Farming Forum or something like the Farm Toys Forum, lots of tractor geeks on there.... someone will have the definitive. I guess the only issue would come from road registering it perhaps...?

How about this beauty HRG....? If you are VAT registered it's in your price range... Guide price £6850 + VAT in the Brightwells unsold list today.... Brightwells Auctions - Defender 130 Lwb Diesel Double Cab Pickup Td5

Probably this in reality... SAGE Instant Accounts 2011 at cheap prices | PC World Sage is actually very good and intiutive software. Definitely something I will pick up next time I'm in PC World...

Another great tyre, had those on a RR Classic many years ago, with the air suspension that was a brilliant combination... if I could find that car again I'd buy it back in an instant!

My wife tells me I make a mess, my kids tell me I make them embarrassed, I make my parents disappointed, my boss frustrated and myself happy.... I do all of this wherever I am.... I mentioned this before, Surveymonkey....!

My friend has the new General AT's on his GS which I think are 20" and they're brilliant for a dual purpose vehicle... but for serious off road work I'd hunt for a set of D3 alloys or even steels and stick some KM2's on instead....