Snooze

Have to agree - the amount of "quantative easing" that was introduced and the collapse of the GBP means that the upshot is going to have to be some serious inflation. All the extra investment they're talking about making now is just delaying the inevitable..... at some point soon, inflation is going to hit HARD. At that point the BoE is going to have no choice but to blast up the interest rates - I wouldn't be surprised to see it back up into two figures within the next 5-10 years.

lol

Oh - very much so. In fact, as mortgage selection is just about guessing what's going to happen to the interest rate, isn't it pretty much luck-based whatever you do?

Nope - it's 0.5% over, so at 1%. The mortgage was originally taken out in 2001, tho' - so I've been sat on it a while. Started out as a stepped discount over the first 4 years (3%, 2%, 1%, 0.5%) then they automatically shifted it onto their lifetime, 0.5%-over-base rate tracker after 4 years. Was paying £800 a month back then - I'm paying £550 a month now! It's with Alliance & Leicester, who are part of Santander, so they can afford it! I was actually looking into shifting it just a year or so before rates started dropping through the floor, so thankfully my apathy actually worked to my advantage this time! The only problem is that with the recent arrival of my 2nd child, the house we're in is way too small, and if we're looking to move to a bigger place, I'm not sure how willing they'll be to let me keep the current arrangement (obviously taking out a different arrangement for the extra), or whether they'll force me to re-mortgage the whole lot....... I'm thinking now is the time to take out a term-lenght (20-30 year) fixed mortgage. Is anybody doing these at the moment?

I'm currently paying ~1% on a lifetime, base-rate tracker. HTH!

ice hockey short track speed skating snowboard board cross basically - any event which is directly competitive: ie. doesn't involve having to watch the competitors go one at a time!

Yep - the value on these cars has plummeted. Admittedly, mine is far from a perfect example, but I reckon I'd be looking at £5k tops if I sold it just now.

Okay - so what these converters do is change the magnification of the lens you attach them to. There is a 0.45x converter and a 2x converter. So attaching the 0.45x converter to your 18-55mm makes it equivalent to a 8-20mm. Attaching the 2x converter to the 18-55mm makes it equivalent to a 36-110mm. So the 0.45 converter would be the one you're after for a wider-angle picture. At that size, it will add quite a bit of curvature to the picture (a so-called "fish-eye" view). The downside (of course there's always one!) is that you're putting extra glass and tubing in front of your lens, which means a lot less light will get into the camera - and the cheaper the converter the worse that's going to be, so expect these to only be useful in pretty bright, sunny days and with little to no movement in the pictures, and expect to end up with a slightly poorer quality image than without the converter. Also be wary of the impact on focusing - not sure how well these will play with the autofocus system. To be honest, I'm not convinced you're really going to achieve too much better than that you have already with an 18mm view. My suggestion for trying to capture a whole room would be getting up on a stepladder in one corner, taking multiple images and stitching them together.

These are converters, not lenses. What lens were you thinking of using them with?

Thank goodness for that!

I used a Maxi Cosi Tobi too in the Supra - yep - a good fit - one of the few with a narrow enough base to go down into the bucket. However, the Maxi Cosi Tobi is quite a small Group 1 seat - it's probably only good up to about the age of 3.5 for an average-sized child. Afraid I can't help with Group 2 seats for the Supra. I'd already moved to a "Group 2-sized" car by then!

911s cover a big range. My mate has a 993 Carrera 4. That (only!?) runs ~270hp, and that's through 4wd too. The XKR runs about 370hp, I think?

Nah - you don't want an Aristo. They're rubbish!

Soarer?

Interesting post, Tannhauser - personally, I still prescribe to the theory that NDEs are a specific incidence of lucid dreaming that happens to occur at certain moments (ie. near death!). I believe that so called "out-of-body" experiences and eastern-style "astral projection" are also peoples description of lucid dreaming experiences. Having experimented with lucid dreaming quite a bit (back in the days when I had time to spare snoozing around - ie. at university, mainly!), I can easily see how the amazing vividness of a lucid dream would be startling to a first-time lucid dreamer and how they may easily end up describing it as any one of these things. The hypoxia theory kind of ties into that too - I believe that the triggering of REM sleep at unnatural times during the sleep cycle (by either oxygen starvation or any other means, in fact) is more likely to induce lucid dreaming than REM sleep occuring at its usual regular interval during a normal sleep pattern.

The Witchery The Kitchin Martin Wishart

Well - surely the most effective and sensible thing to do if you don't like Tesco's car park policies is just to not shop there. That'll be what makes them suffer the most.

Erm........ The MkIV Supra?

I'd like to see the Saints do well, but even with their defense I think they'll struggle to stop the Colts at the top of their game. Colts by 14.

Lots of records of Spa Cars all over the place (also looks like they sell golf gear!), seems somewhat legit. Matching up phone numbers, looks like they are also on ebay. EBay ads also mention finance an awful lot too!

Prices seem low, but maybe not too far off for crash repair / auction lots? I was offered a similar-sounding Cayenne to the one they list for about £15k - was a Cat D repair.

Don't look at Aristos! They are WAY out of your fuel economy range!

Cnapan ?

Am expecting Engalnd to do pretty well this year, but I can't see anyone beating the current French squad, unfortunately

I believe the mechanism is not to actually imagine a tennis game per se, but to conjure imagery of watching something moving left and right, like watching a tennis game from the mid-way point of the court. The motor part of the brain, whilst it can't trigger any actual muscular manipulation can be mointored reasonably accurately to monitor attempted visual manipulation - something similar to the way your eyes still move whilst in REM sleep even though the rest of your muscles are "paralysed", I believe (although without the actual eye movement, of course). The media just simplify it to "imagining a game of tennis", mainly to make people go, "huh? How does that work" and keep reading.