frobozz

I use(d) it a lot. Specifically for pound coins, rather than the value of £1.

e.g. you would ask, "Can you swap us 5 nuggets for a Lady?" If you wanted to go and get something from a vending machine, but only had notes.

Even more so than other terms, I think this is being lost to cashlessness.

£5 and its multiples: Lady, Ayrton, Commodore, Score, Pony.

Sadly, I think these are dying out due to the move towards a cashless society.

The most common use for any of these (for me) was to ask someone to lend me a bit of cash when I'd left my wallet at home.

the infrastructure remains nationalised,

Slight correction. Renationalised, rather than remains nationalised.

The infrastructure was renationalised, because Railtrack preferred handing out dividends over maintaining tracks, eventually leading to a derailment that killed 4 people and injured 70, and led to trains being restricted to 20MPH across the country for months afterwards, because they had no idea how fucked any of the rest of the rails were.

"Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community"

There has been a reasonably priced way since 1977. It currently costs £5.50

Cheap divorce?

The sky is green!

You get what you pay for I think. $40 bookshelves? Not making it through a move

I'm sitting next to a Billy that's nearly 2 decades and 4 moves old.

If you are reassigned, you are not dead weight to your original division, because you aren't working for them, you are on the books of the other division.

Also if you are reassigned, you don't have your original projects to get behind on, they are someone else's problem now.

Similarly, if reassigned, and you do the work of the new assignment there's no grounds for a PIP, and even if there were, your original manager wouldn't be the one putting you on it.

on official assignment from higher management.

Unless your line manager authorised the secondment (in which case, why PIP?), it wasn't on official assignment, it was just a personal request from someone who happened to be in a higher management position.

Am I reading this right? You worked double time for months, and in that time you neglected your own job, without it being authorised by your line manager?

All so that a manager in a different department wouldn't look bad for losing an entire team in one go?

That's the lesson. Don't do that. Pick up extra work if you want to, but always do your own job first.

The story where emails could only be sent a certain distance is fun. I haven't read that one in a while.

Also:

The prevailing wisdom for this seafaring situation is “Don’t Stop.”

The law is to render assistance. That law was based on prevailing wisdom.

Apparently the author moves in different circles to the rest of seafaring folk.

Seconded!

This approach has worked for me several times over the years.

It takes time and patience. The companies you target aren't always hiring the roles you want. I've been lucky a few times, with opportunities arising just as I've been laid off, but part of that is the groundwork. I keep looking at them even when happy and secure, and tweak my skills in the right directions.

This can also work for other factors, like nice offices or short commutes. I also keep my eye on the jobs board at a company with a landmark HQ nearby.

I have never seen this, and I live right by a school bus stop.

The closest place a limited number of cars could wait is down a side road about 200ft from the stop, but they don't.

Many successful artists have not undertaken university-level training in their art.

However, most of them will have been trained by someone who did.

Reduce arts education funding at the highest level and the reduction trickles down to the lowest levels.

The thing is, "stop calling me" implies a pattern of behaviour you want them to break, not a one-off.

If it's the first call from someone who doesn't know your working pattern, then you're not really saying "stop calling me", but genuinely telling them when you are available. Putting the details in your email signature works well if you have unconventional hours for your workplace.

If it's someone close to you - e.g. line manager or team mate - then they know your hours, so responding by telling them what your hours are strikes me as less polite than simply saying "I wasn't working when you called, but here I am now."

stop calling me before my workday even starts

In what circumstances would you use this phrase?

If they are calling you out of hours, ignore it. They'll eventually get the message.

MAD is the same concept as "an armed society is a polite society"

I don't like either idea. Being civil to one another simply because the other party might respond with incredibly disproportionate violence is not a civilised way to live.

The shipping forecast is produced by the maritime and coastguard agency.

The BBC just read it out. As do the coastguards.

If you look at the actual HMRC guidance, rather than some random website, you'd see that

"alterations due to advancements in technology are generally treated as an allowable repair rather than an improvement, if the functionality and character of the asset is broadly the same. For example, when single glazing is replaced with double glazing"

So a more efficient heating system, better windows, better external doors, replacing loft insulation with material with a higher R-value are all within the scope of "allowable repair".

the cost of energy is borne by the tenant, but the cost of renovations would be borne by the landlord

In addition, as house prices are so high, owner-occupiers often don't have the means to make these improvements until they have been in the house for five or more years.

Landlords get to claim the cost of improvements as a business expense and can save an enormous amount of tax on making those improvements.

Owner-occupiers have to pay out of their net income. So if it costs me 10k, it only costs a landlord 6k. But they still don't do it.

Forcing rented accommodation to have EPC E or better is a really low bar. I think it should be compulsory for landlords to carry out all EPC recommendations to a certain value within a sensible period.

Absolutely. What I mean is that we can't declare something "inauthentic" just because it was invented after a certain time or event.

Yes. To suggest otherwise is to insist that cuisine (or any other tradition) must be somehow frozen at a specific point in history in order to be "authentic".

Even if that is an acceptable assertion, what would be that specific point? Does a British recipe have to predate the Romans to be traditional?

I moved from induction to gas recently (not by choice).

Anecdotally, the gas feels slower. It seems to take an age to bring things up to the boil compared to my old induction.

Also, cleaning up after spills is a pain compared to a glass surface.

The "sweltering heat" comment was, itself, a bad-faith "Ha! you didn't think about this edge condition" kind of comment, in response to a comment saying this:

Take the gains you can access instead of quibbling about "But that doesn't work for everyone!"

The tone of that you describe as "if I can do it, anyone can", I read as "yes I did think of that, because this is my relevant experience, and people living somewhere hot isn't the massive 'gotcha' you think it is"

But the point still stands, this is about reducing car use by making places more walkable, and your reaction read as a response to reducing car use by banning cars.

Many places in North America are actively and unnaturally hostile to pedestrians, so that even those who want to walk end up driving. This is what needs to change first.

Moaning that Oklahoma gets so hot so you can't possibly install pedestrian facilities in suburban Philadelphia, or that some people need to drive along this road, so you can't possibly provide a way for pedestrians to get across it is ridiculous.

Improving walkability also improves drivability, because it reduces traffic and parking demand.

Quibbling about not working for everyone is precisely what you and the "sweltering heat" comment are doing. Take the easy steps and the harder ones can follow.

Moreover, I don't think you are really considering the reality of getting around with small children, just trying to win another gotcha. My kids hated getting into the car as babies. A pram ride along a nice tree-shaded, low-traffic Street would be far more preferable in all but the most ridiculous summertime-midday-in-the-outback heat.

I've normally thought of it as a retailer thing, but it does look a bit like it's brand-led in some cases.

I'm currently in the market for a few big ticket household items, and the Black Friday hype is everywhere I look. When I try to compare prices for specific models, they are suspiciously identical everywhere, with a few outliers charging the higher RRP.

I would expect a retailer-led approach to have a bit more variation. Just a few quid here or there, where some might have a genuine "clearance" need, others lower general overheads/margins etc.

The immediate point that you are obviously ignoring is that no one you are replying to has even suggested anything that you seem to be arguing against.

It looks like you are responding to someone saying "ban all cars, anyone living somewhere unwalkable just has to suck it up, regardless of any extenuating circumstances"

What was actually said was "LET people run errands by foot and by car", and "I'd like more awnings"

Basically - make places more walkable. "Low hanging fruit" meaning focus on making nearly walkable places into very walkable places.

I am a parent with small children. We walk to school. With a baby, I would walk to the supermarket, no one got ill any more than the occasional sniffle. Combining a pram and a backpack meant I could easily bring home the weekly shop, much easier than I can now that I have to carry everything.

It's also about places that are wantonly and deliberately hostile to pedestrians. Don't make people drive between adjacent destinations, don't force people to walk 2 miles to get somewhere half a mile away.

If you live in a village with a baby and an elderly parent and your nearest city is Timbuktu or Nuuk, this is not about you.

3800chf is an amazing price for that.

By contrast, that's roughly the same price as an annual ticket between central London and a town about 30 miles away.

I would like to have seen this explored from other directions as well.

It's clear that given a choice between top and bottom, light is expected to come from the top.

However, in real life, the sun crosses the sky from eastish to westish. Could both accuracies be better satisfied by placing the light source to one side?

Not really, because if they cheated, they didn't actually accomplish it.

They cheat to gain the prestige of having accomplished it.