coppice cutter

Brown and Blair were certainly better Conservatives than the present lot.

Back closer to topic, how do y'all cut up your old pallets/waste wood? I gave up on the chainsaw as no matter how careful you were you always caught a random nail somewhere so that was another sharpening session. Ended up cutting it with a reciprocating saw, seemed slow at first but it's amazing the pile of stuff you can build up in half an hour. Harsh on the old joints though.

Plenty of brash bitches about nowadays, but you'd probably be more likely to find them in other settings.

I've my apple trees for this winter bought and paid for. Hoping that if they're paid they can't bump the price up in late winter as I feel that price rises are inevitable.

Well actually I wasn't necessarily thinking in terms of the UK only, or even Europe for that matter.

Just what popped in to my head this morning over the porridge while pondering the headlines.

Are people just becoming so lazy, feckless, spoilt, and self-centred in general that they are becoming ungovernable?

Have you not noticed that a central part of the 'progressive' movement sweeping across the western world is that humour is not allowed. It's been replaced with outrage.

No, just the general quality of materials and workmanship in the whole job. When BL were building Allegros and Marinas that wouldn't last two or three years, we had houses and building materials that would last several lifetimes. Who, or what, allowed standards to deteriorate to this level?

How does that get passed in the first place, surely that's a big part of the problem?

Thanks, and yes it is a credit to them. I take your point about government supporting the building of shitty mass-produced new builds, but then what is the alternative. Can you ever begin to imagine the waste and inefficiency of a public house building body nowadays. No easy answers I'm afraid.

That bad?

Self-build mortgages were almost impossible to obtain even before the latest carry-on. Daughter and Son-in-law are nearing the end of their own build which they've had to do without a mortgage, and that despite having over £70k of savings to begin with and owning the site. Every application they made for self-build finance was refused. There's been a lot of juggling and gathering up to get them to the end of the build.

Equally, some older cars will still be going long after lots of the stuff sitting in the showrooms today has gone in the crusher. The 'quality' of some newbuilds is atrocious.

Talking of which, does anyone else see red at the modern adoption of curb instead of kerb? You kerb a driveway, vehicles have a kerb weight, circuit racers use the kerbs to maximise lap times, old roads still have kerb stones. So how did a verb meaning to control or limit end up being substituted for it?

Well I was talking purely in societal terms, as per the thread starter. But think about it, no fumes, no noise, swift, silent, clean, deep lacerations (or worse!) at the press of a button. Seems like something that could catch on with a certain section of society. And nowadays, they don't even have to be able to wire a plug* to avail of this ability. * - a skill which would no doubt be beyond many of them anyway, and indeed, possibly a source of potential injury in itself should they have to try.

I wouldn't worry too much. Most middle class types are too limp wristed to be able to actually start anything that could harm them. Although electric, both corded and cordless, do admittedly give cause for concern. Axes could lead to problems as well I suppose.

Turned off at the minute. But busting it permanently removes the option of them using it as an income stream again in future. It also removes opening it up again as a bargaining tool in any potential future Ukrainian settlement deal. All the above assuming that it actually is catastrophically damaged as we are being told, which in itself could be complete or even partial bollocks.

Not fussed, don't ever see that it makes a lot of difference to be honest. Swap Truss and Starmer over and as regards governance and policy would anyone notice? "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss". Just thought it odd that there was 3% missing.

There's 3% missing there.

Echo introduced a new battery system this spring, the eForce. I was particularly interested in the new 2500 blower. So I emailed and asked if they could give me any info on when this would be brought in to the UK. They replied and pointed me to the existing range on their website. I thanked them for reply but stressed that I was interested in the new range and pointed them towards the precise items I was interested in on the ECHO USA site, said I was interested in the blower, and would be further interested in the brushcutter, hedgetrimmer, and possibly the new 5000 saw in future. I received no further reply until several weeks later which said they were looking at their range for spring 2023, but gave no further detail. By that time however I had invested in the new 40v Makita blower with batteries and charger, but would probably have waited on the Echo if they could have given me any sort of encouragement whatsoever. I thought it was very poor communication, at best!

I recently had an email exchange with the new Echo importer regarding Echo's battery equipment which didn't exactly inspire confidence. So I purchased Makita instead and will probably go that way with future purchases. Can't see the present Echo importer having any greater impact here than past ones to be honest. Then again, maybe it's just too Stihl/Husqvarna orientated for anything else to get a foothold no matter what.

A lot of what is deleted is merely opinion. Something which everyone should be entitled to hold.

I wouldn't judge Putin by what we've been told about him. How many times has it been reported that the Russian troops were on the run, loosing ground, etc. Well they're still there! It's always a huge mistake to brand and treat someone you don't like, or is a threat, as an idiot or a madman, you just make their job so much easier. We'll (as in, us plebs) probably never know who bust the pipeline, any side involved in this east/west battle is well capable as they are all essentially as power hungry as each other and will stop at very little to achieve their aims. But if you try to view it with a preset "goodies and baddies" perspective, you're probably just playing in to the hands of one side or the other from the word go.

There is definitely suppression, Twitter bans, Facebook accounts 'suspended', certain information and websites removed from Google search results, etc. None of the above would affect me in any way as I avail of none of them but then I'm unashamedly odd. Sadly however, remove a message or viewpoint from the above nowadays and it will indisputably have been suppressed, or in many cases, effectively vanishes.