chevin

Some steam engines had sand dispensers in front of and behind the driving wheels; the heat kept the sand dry and it ran freely. The way a lever was operated determined where the sand went. However, sand was used sparingly - sand and machinery are not good friends. I guess that if ice is frozen water, then molten ice must be water. I think that Vagabond might have been setting a little trap for the unwary there. He knows that not everyone twigs that as quickly as you did!

I loved this. :D http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12...ern-trains.html

It all made big new here too, but the book is all about how the web of deceit was uncovered. Rather like the movie "All the Presidents Men". Everyone knew the story and the eventual outcome, but the movie told of the work that went into the expose as does "No Expenses Spared". Worth asking at your library, they'll probably have a copy.

Another MP nominated his/her second home and furnished it through expenses. The next year, he/she flipped the nominated home so that the first and second homes were reversed and furnished the new second home on expenses so that the British tax payer paid for the furnishings for both, One or two of them flipped their homes so that when they sold one, they avoided capital gains tax. It is unbelievable. The book reads like a novel, but it is all true.

He wasn't going to deny it, he had claimed for the cost of it so that the British taxpayer paid for it. One male MP claimed for tampons and panty liners among other things. :D

It's the story of the exposure of the way MPs were ripping off the expenses system. How the whole thing was exposed as the journalists uncovered those involved in the scams piece by piece. It must be made into a movie and it will be better than "All of the President's Men!" The arrogance of those MPs is just unbelievable. It's not an expensive book and you can get a copy signed by the authors directly from the Daily Telegraph cheaper than one from the shops. When the investigative team learned about the infamous house for the ducks, they did a Google Earth scan and could even see it on the MP's lake! http://books.telegraph.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/...N=5038495014733

Last Thursday I received my copy of the book No Expenses Spared by Robert Winnett and Gordon Raynor from the Daily Telegraph. What an incredible read it is! I can hardly put it down. One of the best buys I have made in a number of years! I thoroughly recommend it.

I don't see a problem with that!

Last year I wanted to send Bowie knives to two friends in the US. I parcelled up the first, completed the customs form and said that there was a knife in the parcel. The woman told me that I couldn't send a weapon in the post. I explained that it wasn't a weapon, just a knife. It was like talking to a brick wall. I took the parcel home, ripped off the customs dec, put on a new one and said the contents of the parcel were "Fishing Tackle (bait processor)". Oz post accepted the parcels and both of my US friends (Newt was one of them) received their knives a few days later.

Forget about mackerel until at least June or July next year. Don't think about taking a speed boat out to sea at this time of the year, most are not built for rough water. Do a few searches on the net on "How to catch mackerel (Scomber scombrus) and then take it from there. As was pointed out the last time you brought this subject up, mackerel are not really bottom feeders and are more interested in shoals of bait fish such as sand eels which they frequently drive to the surface.

I wonder if anyone who has had to face up to one of these thugs could care less. I have been in that position and once I had the guy down, I just set about making damned sure that he wouldn't get up again. He didn't and the police weren't happy with me either. At least they never put me in front of a stupid judge, they just gave me a caution.

Another thing that can cause a river to change is the growth of towns and cities. Every extra square metre of concrete is another metre of instant run off. Before this extended urbanisation there were hundreds of square miles of farm land etc into which rain would soak before heading towards the river. Unfortunately these days, that land cannot handle the extra water and so it gets into the river more quickly, the floods are bigger and bank erosion is greater.

Look at the address I included in my note.

Well Rusty, I would have thought that perhaps a little note of thanks to those who have tried to help you with your question might have been nice.

I have a couple of ICom M32 sets and they are brilliant I used them a couple of years ago as two of us drove across Australia and while we were separated by reasonable distances at times, we were always able to keep in touch. I guess that the M33 that has been mentioned may be a better or superceding model.

I think you might find some answers here. http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/forums/Mackere...amp;pid=2630752

Shark attacks always make big news, and this headline was chilling. http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/surf-boat-...c-1225810309102

It takes a bloody awful fart to smell worse than an onion!

If a river is not affected by man then it is a natural river. Any action to prevent river banks becoming overgrown is man's intervention. Having been a fishery manager on the upper Ouse I saw the river change in many ways, both from natural activity and man's interference. Generally speaking, while the river might change it shape quite drastically from time to time due to bank erosion, the bottom features will remain pretty much the same. The shallows are generally such because of the nature of the bottom, it doesn't scour too easily and so erosion is generally at the banks, and so the river may get wider and shallower at those places after serious flooding, but rarely deeper. Th deeper swims normally have had a softer bottom which may have been scoured to a depth at which harder material has been reached in which case that part will get no deeper. Very often the banks are more stable at those swims because the water is better channelled in the deeper runs. Unfortunately, sometimes a river authority will decide to dredge a river and that is a disaster because a dredger can do in hours what nature never does to a river bed. The gravel shallows can be destroyd and once removed, rocks from a deep run can allow further erosion in those runs which is not always a good thing. In my experience, dredging is a disaster as far as the angler is concerned - nothing short of vandalism in fact. It is also a disaster to the fish because of the removal of so much of the natural food in the way of loach, millers thumbs and crayfish etc. I used to do river side work and from time to time I did remove some vegetation but I was always careful only to cut - never to remove. Removing bankside or water vegetation can also have an effect on water flow and injudicious work of that kind can soon cause major changes that might not be wanted. While I frequently planted along my fishery I never removed. I recently looked for my fishery on Google Earth and the picture was so clear I could see trees that I had planted in 1976 and I could see that they have now created magnificent chub swims. Unfortnately not many anglers realise the importance of allowing a river to mature in its own way these days which is a great shame because it is much easier to find fish in their natural environment than in something that has been hacked around - though to do so, it is necessary to develop a knowledge called "Watercraft" but once you have done so, you will catch fish in any natural water because they are in effect, very easy to read.

Exactly!

The figures I have are at todays values, prices are obviously going to rise both in use and providing. It is a viable project otherwise I wouldn't have gone in for it. Suffice to say I am happy with what I have got. That is all that matters.

That doesn't surprise me one little bit. I used to be the fishery manager at Snowberry Lake, Little Brickhill and there were a lot of rats there, so one day, I went up there with a 9mm shot gun and got rid of quite a few of them. As I was cleaning the gun that evening, I realised that the barrel was a bit short, so I 'phoned the local police station, (Luton), told them what I had, gave them my car registration and told them that I would be taking the gun to them for destruction. I walked into the police station and held the gun in my right hand and the bolt in my left. I made sure that they could both be seen very clearly and I put them onto the counter. Before I had said anything, one of the coppers there picked up the gun, inserted the bolt, cocked it and pointed it at another copper coming in through the door. I was totally astonished, got hold of the barrel and pulled it down to the counter and told the copper to never point a gun at any one, he said, "Well, it's not loaded". Anyway, we then went through the paper work relating to my handing in the gun and when it was completed, I was charged with illegal ownership of a fire arm. A charge that carried a jail sentence. I was so furious I just walked out, but I had some pretty smart friends in good places and I got onto them about it all. It was the time of the Old Bailey bombing and anything to do with guns was extremely serious and my complaint very quickly got to people who listened. It seemed that at the time, the handing in of guns was something that was welcomed and that the charges laid against me were well out of order. It was an official line that had been given to all police stations. Anyway, this went as far as the Chief Constable of Bedfordshire, Superintendant Wyebrow I think his name was and I got a real nice letter from him, telling me to apply for a fire arm licence and the gun would be returned to me with charges dropped. I believe that the copper who charged me had things explained to him.

We are going the other way here and yesterday I started running on Solar electrical power. I signed up in time to get the government's $9,000 subsidy so it has only cost me $1500.00. We average 8 hours sunshine per day here and so most of today, I have been putting electricity back into the grid system for which I get paid.

Unfortunately the gunlaws applied to the honest citizen far outweigh the penalties handed down by the judiciary when a criminal is tried for home invasion, robbery, rape or assault. Strangely enough, if I threatened an intruder in my garden with an unloaded gun, I would lose my gun licence for life! If he threatened me with a pick axe handle he would probably get away with a few hours community service - which he wouldn't bother to do anyway.

That just never occurred to me! :clap2: Nice to see that bra's are not so tenacious