javelin10

I used to use a brown wheelie bin exacly as pictured a few posts up but on bumpy/sloping ground it doesn't work out. Also, dragging the bin up the trailer ramp got pretty old after the 10th trip and you can't close the tailgate! Multiple small loads (like feeding a branch into the chipper chute) is easier on the back then one big heave with a full wheely bin every 10 minutes. Remember, the chipper is doing some useful work for you lifting those chips from the drum up to the chute exit!

I doubt a stone would do that kind of damage; maybe a lump of steel perhaps, but more likely that looks like a defect in the blade. Is that an original or aftermarket number? Judging by the elongated outer holes (which I'm sure mine don't have on my M500) they are not original.

I was doing my NC arb when the issue of 2 rope working first reared it's ugly head. As an inexperienced climber we tried out 2-rope at college in a medium sized Sycamore and I found it totally impractical in that particular scenario. Mewps in stead of climbing was also looming and the fact that both eventually 'went away' gave me some hope for the sanity of our authorities. Both these techniques have been developed for working on man-made structures, which are simpler with few or no protrusions. Trees are ALL protrusion; especially with DDrt, managing all that friction with 2 systems and having to constantly redirect around branches so to keep it minimal is an unhelpful extra workload. Without reapeating some of the excellent points made by others in this thread, safety depends on Experience and Attention; the experience to know what your main hazards are in any situation, and the attention to be able to focus on those while excluding other details. Any technique or task that isn't significantly improving your safety therefore, is actively harming it, there are no "well it's a faff but it can't hurt to do it" considerations. Complexity and physical exhaustion are at the core of all Arb accidents, in my opinion; but are hidden by more obvious and well-defined errors, and these are the ones that end up in all the reports. I fully accept that 2 rope working, and also MEWPS, are appropriate for SOME jobs, but it has to be at the discretion of the responsible arborist. Anything else is a futile exercise.

Yep exactly my experience with the M500. The conifer flies through the drum so fast there's too much volume trying to come out of the chute and it blocks unless you grab hold of the branch to slow things down.

This point is worth exploring a bit. If you are a 'bona fide subcontractor' then why are you working by the hour? Does your boss/client supply at least some of your kit, your wagon, pay you holiday pay? Is he paying NI contributions for you our paying a miserable 1% of your earnings into a pension scheme? Assuming the answer is no, one approach you could take is to demand daily targets for your 'day rate' and then when you are finished you are finished. A proper subbie controls their own work flow, after all. If you are thinking of parting ways with your 'client' then you can give it a try. If they say 'get lost' and you are happy to burn your bridges then simply demand holiday/sick pay for the last 2 years and threaten an employment tribunal. A bit shit-stirry I know, but so many companies take the piss wanting to control their staff like employees and pay them (and HMRC) like they were proper subbies. In 10 years on the railway this was a constant problem that, as you can probably tell, irks me still.

@Richard 1234I don't have residency; I was born here and have been a British citizen and only a British citizen from birth. Having foreign family means only that I am perhaps more 'relaxed' about being around foreigners than some of my compatriots.

Do you have any proof that every Roma just sells 'Big Issue' or that most EU citizens over here are Roma? Or are you just picking a convenient unrepresentative sample that seems to justify your bias? Maybe round your way there aren't many foreigners, but where I grew up there are 100's of thousands, and they all do the same jobs as the Brits and do them just as well, and the city is a much better place for them. Yes but it takes someone with a slightly more sophisticated mind than that of the average 12 year old to realise that an economy is not a closed system. When more people come and do work, then they create wealth, keep some for themselves, and then spend most of that, creating more jobs elsewhere, no matter their nationality. There is never a finite number of jobs, I've heard that fallacy argued before. Our problem in the UK is that no-one calls out bad working conditions and no-one feels able to ask for a pay rise because we've been drip fed the line (by the tory press) that unions are bad for the economy and we should always leave things to the 'market'. In that environment, where many jobs are unskilled, it's no wonder foreigners are doing them, because we don't want to do them anymore. Kids learn when they want to. There are schools in Tower Hamlets where more then 50% of the kids arrive not speaking English, but they learn fast and they get excellent results in those schools, in one of the most deprived boroughs of the country. When I first went to nursery I only spoke Spanish. I don't even remember learning English but I didn't need any support because I just learned it off my school mates. By the time I was in juniors I had no accent and by the time I left primary my English was as good as anyone's. You're making mountains out of molehills; you may put a few foreign kids into school but what you get out is British adults.

And @ WesD as well: Taxes aren't stealing. With taxes we buy our civilisation; literally everything that keeps this country functioning. The richest have benefited most from this country, so i think they should contribute the most as a proportion of their income and not just in absolute terms. People don't pay taxes out of guilt either, or avoid paying them out of a sense of unfairness. Some people will always cheat on their taxes illegally (tax evasion, as someone was asking) and some will exploit our over-complicated tax laws to pay next to nothing in many taxes entirely legally; tax avoidance. Neither group pays a penny more than they have to legally, unless of course they are too poor to hire a fancy accountancy firm to set up tax avoidance schemes for them. One of my friends works for a huge accountancy firm and does exactly that for a living; only for those with lots of taxes to avoid and the money to pay her rates. I don't blame anyone, private or corporate, for avoiding taxes really, but I do blame the rest of us for letting them get away with so much for so long! And plenty of people in the government want to make taxes even lighter when we do leave....eventually.

I think you'll find there were many parts of Eastern Europe doing just fine before nazism then communism. Millions, really? Oh you must be thinking of Phillip Green or Mike Ashley (Sports Direct) who pay their staff below-living wage 'cos they know the UK taxpayer will top up their miserable incomes. Yes, we've been VERY generous to those dole-scroungers! I actually agree with your 3 biggest problems! Leaving the EU will either not help, or make things worse, because the average EU citizen makes a higher tax contribution than the average UK citizen, at any given income level, so that screws problem 1. Problem 2 is something they don't have nearly as bad in France, or Germany, or Denmark, Sweden or Norway (all of them in the single market with free movement of people) so it is definitely not an EU problem but something we've been doing wrong ourselves. Problem 3 is the same. All those countries have better infrastructure, schools and healthcare, and have had way before Poland and Romania joined. Again, a problem we caused by ourselves. Brexit is the wrong solution because it 'solves' the wrong 'problem'.

Not as many as if they had to pay an equal proportion as the rest of us instead of hiding it away in off-shore tax havens, then we'd have more badly needed jobs in the NHS and proper investment in business instead of already-overvalued luxury homes in the SE and ridiculous sums paid for 'investment' in art, which produces no income or jobs.

Obviously they have but for the last 40 years their wealth has been running away so fast they don't even live in the same world as us (I assume none of you are on 250k/year?) So what if they pay 30% of the income tax? If they own 50% of the wealth then 30% isn't enough. Add to that the fact that Income tax is less than one third of treasury revenue, do you think they pay the same proportion of VAT, or Council tax, or fuel duty, or booze duty? The poorest households pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the richest; fact. Maybe you think that's fair? And you need don't worry yourself about my family thanks; we're better off than most in the UK, which makes me wonder how most people manage.

I wasn't 'throwing it away' it is getting obsolete all by itself. Up till now Britain has been exactly as you describe it. But those 'dirt poor ex communist states' weren't dirt poor before the Soviet Union took them over, and they won't be dirt poor much longer, Greece excepted. In one more generation they'll be markets for our goods and have functioning democracies themselves, maybe with a bit of leaning on from France and Germany. Outside the EU borders we are surrounded by countries that really are in trouble. I'd like a nation that looks after everyone who makes a contribution. Problem is, the UK only looks after those who own loads of property, and most of those aren't even Brits, not for tax purposes, anyway. I honestly don't know how so many people find it so easy to blame all our problems on minorities, or immigrants, or refugees when it's some of our own lot have been hoovering up all the wealth for the past 40 years. Must be the newspapers they read that are playing the oldest trick in the book; divide and conquer! Don't look at the fat cats, look at those foreigners - they are the cause of it all!

I'd put my hand up to that except for one thing; what you imagine is a federal EU is not what I imagine. We can't really discuss our differences when we have two different models in our minds. One army, for example? You really see that happening soon? What I see is a parallel to NATO, almost certainly within NATO, with multinational forces under foreign command, maybe with some permanent multinationally-recruited units. The whole concept of nations as we think of them today is barely 200 years old; it won't survive another 200 years, and maybe not half that as individual states realise that their 'sovereignty' is inadequate to meet the challenges of the future. Even looking ahead 20 years is pushing things when you're talking about specifics but nothing about the way the EU was heading up till last year worried me particularly, especially as we were there to slow down 'federalisation' to a reasonable pace. After 20 years, is not for us but for our children to decide.

Costs are definitely going up and wages NEED to go up so the only thing that can give is the price we charge to the customer. It takes some balls to up your prices but in my (admittedly short) experience it's not the domestic customers you need to worry about. If you listen to them, give lots of free advice and tidy up nicely they will pay any reasonable fee 90% of the time. Local authorities, utilities and agents subbying work out though... they can have totally unrealistic expectations. I used to do work on a council contract in Richmond, Surrey back in the early 2000's. Full size London Plane? £200 to reduce, £220 to Fell! Maximum size Black Poplars by Hammersmith Bridge (ie they would've been 40metres before pollarding) £375 each to re-pollard. Don't expect things to be much better now.

WesD the EU is a society of Nations; where do you see a society where everyone is equally well resourced? How else does any society deal with inequality except my asking the richer members to contribute more than the poorer ones? How is reducing inequality a sign that stability is threatened or that maintaining inequality is a good way to run a society? If there is a society that is threatened buy it's growing inequalities it is the UK. Social mobility has been decreasing since the end of the seventies. Wages for the lower half of earners have been going down for 10 years and our productivity stubbornly refuses to rise. The average German or French worker can go home on Thursday afternoon and still get the same amount done as a British worker does in a week. Don't lose any sleep worrying about Germany or Greece; it must be a comforting fantasy to think everything will go to hell on the continent soon but we've got plenty on our plate for the next decade.