Paul

I think if you look closely at the condition of the building the cost of purchase will pale against the cost of keeping it standing. With the limited season, it's isolated location, the poor access road and other competition more easily accessible to the village I think the Ferry is fighting a losing battle. I hope I'm wrong. If I'd won the 155m on Friday I might be tempted but I wouldn't touch it if I needed to make any money. I understand that not everyone has been a fan of the Ferry in recent years, me included to some extent, but I take my hat off to all those involved in keeping it going as long as they have.

I understand Her Majesty's government is also considering banning flatulence because of concerns over the greenhouses gasses released, although it has been suggested that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is pushing for the introduction of a Trump Tax......

Whatever your opinion of the Authority or the man the point is a good one. Should the head of a National Park Authority, or even the Authority governing a member of the National Park Family (get that in before Jenny tells me off!) serve a maximum term? Thoughts?

To confirm that if, for any reason HRH The Price of Wales were not to ascend the throne the line of succession continues, i.e. William, George etc. Like any family, I think the House of Windsor has some better members than others but in general I have great respect for our Monarchy, I think it does an excellent job for this country. That said, I do think they treated Diana quite shoddily, virtually arranging the marriage between her and Charles but she was far from the sweet little innocent which she portrayed. She jumped on the train and rode it for all it was worth and became an expert at manipulating the press and public opinion. That said, she did support and promote a number of excellent causes. Whatever your opinion of Diana I find the constant attention she still receives in the media quite tiresome.

Am I the odd one out that has to have yorkie puds with Cottage Pie? Cottage pie in our house was always different to most peoples, and I much prefer it. It was always done on a Monday as it used the remains of the Sunday roast, which was ground in the old cast iron mincer then seasoned with WHITE pepper and half a teaspoon of mustard powder. It was quite dry so a tablespoon of jellied beef stock was added but it was still quite solid, not sloppy like the modern trend. Press it into an enamel dish and cover with mashed (not creamed!) potato. Just white potatoes boiled until just soft with a little salt then mashed with a small knob of butter. No milk, cream (or even creme freche - sorry Delia). Into the oven for 50 minutes to an hour, it needs plenty of cooking to crisp up and let the beef stock start to soak into the mash. Gran would make plenty of batter on Sunday so there was leftovers for pancakes for Sunday tea and puddings again on Monday. Still do it exactly the same way, except now that cast iron mincer has been replaced by an attachment on the Kenwood Chef! The taste of minced roast beef is so much better than using regular minced beef, and it comes out reasonably solid, it should hold it shape on the plate, not "slop".

I know this might be a bit basic, but you did use plain flour didn't you. The one sure fire way to get pancake flat yorkies is self raising flour. Hold the oil though, proper yorkies must be cooked in lard, or beef dripping if you're posh.

The Carnivore in Nairobi, a truly unique experience. Vegetarians need not apply! On the Broads the Recruiting Sergeant stands head and shoulders above all else, except perhaps the Crooked Barn at Ivy House, Oulton Broad, but they are very different concepts. Nearby the Broads I love, love, love Stoke Mill. On the no side? Fat Duck, Fat Yuck more like ........

This is a common misconception, the name Union Jack predates the flag's use only on Navy ships by more than a hundred years. The "British Flag" was first introduced in 1606 at which point it was required to be flown by all English and Scottish ships at sea, naval or merchantman. The first use of the word Union is believed to be circa 1627. The use of the word Jack to describe a small flag flown from the bowsprit was commonplace before 1600. It is not recorded when the name Union Jack was first used but it predates the introduction of the Jack staff in the 18th century, the staff taking it's name from the flag, not vice versa. The Admiralty has always referred to the flag as the "Union Jack" since is foundation in 1709, regardless of the flags position, and the UK Parliament decreed the name of the national flag as the "Union Jack" in 1908. The idea that the name Union Jack should only refer to the flag when being flown from the bows of HM Warships is quite modern and without foundation.

In Leicestershire we already know school holiday dates up to 2019, well ahead of brochure / holiday prices so I don't think it's an issue of collusion, just data already in the public domain.

There is nothing to stop them ...... It is not the cost of batteries which makes electric cars non-viable for most users but the time taken to charge them. That is not going to change anytime soon. Advances are being made, but painfully slowly and at the cost of battery life, a cost the motor industry cannot afford. No it's not. There is greater environmental cost in merely shipping the diesel you use to the pump you buy it from than in the equivalent amount of electricity to provide similar power or range, even before you burn it in your engine. It is not correct to argue that electric is "zero emission" as it is often tagged, but it is much cleaner than burning diesel and as we source more and more of it from renewable sources it becomes more so. I know the counter argument is going to be the cost of batteries, shipping them around the world etc etc, but that one of cost is soon offset. It is an argument for the anti electric campaign that simply doesn't hold water, excuse the pun. Which would soon be mimicked and on sale at every riverside chandlers / hardware shop. Only if you can supply sufficient Amps, which you would not through a shore power lead. There is no way around the fact that you have to put as many amp hours into a battery as you take out, more in fact, as there is always a percentage of loss, as much as 40% in some charging circuits. Even without loss a single 110ah battery would need 16 amps for around 6 hours to charge to 90%. One 110ah battery would not power any decent sized boat for very long.

It seems to me the numbers began to decrease as soon as we were told to stop feeding them bread .......

This, to me the most hauntingly beautiful piece of music ever written

Welcome to the forum Paul. I'm pleased everyone is being very encouraging, but in truth there really is nothing to see on the southern rivers. The pubs are, without exception most unwelcoming, the food is inedible, the tidal flow will scupper all but the most experienced skipper and don't forget that the rivers are full of sharks. Oulton Broad is the lair of monsters and the residents of Beccles still believe themselves Iceni awaiting the return of Boudicca and seeing off all invaders in her absence. Ther is much to be said for the north!

Are they still "going", I note their website has not been updated since Noah ran aground.

I had this update on Monday after returning from holiday in the land of no signal (no not Horning!). Afterwards loads of things wouldn't work, wifi wouldn't turn on, or said it had but hadn't, SD Card reader wouldn't work, blue tooth adaptor. Of course, with no network it's a pain trying to do drivers but when I found an old cable in the back of the shed and wired it up the drivers were all up to date. I tried restore to no avail but after about six or seven restarts it began it's "preparing windows, do not switch off your computer" routine again and after that all was fine. I assumed it had not updated correctly the first time around.

What I need to look at is how the tracking software takes data, I have always assumed via blue tooth, but as I run everything on my Galaxy S6 it has never been an issue before. It runs the tracking app which updates the depot intermittently on deliveries, runs my sat nav (tom tom go mobile) makes and receives calls via the vans hands free on the radio and receives texts from the office with reroutes / new jobs. I did say I hammer mobile phones. As long as the S6 is "fast charging" then it is not a problem, but just lately it has become unreliable and now will not fast charge at all, either from the charger in the van or at home. It will also no longer connect for data transfer via it's USB port. It is a known and very common problem apparently, though one Samsung will not admit to, that a processor on the mobo which controls the various functions of the USB port fails, after which all it can do is slow charge. That doesn't put power in as fast as I'm using it. The screen is also starting to fail, with the brightness control not always working properly. It has various modes, standard, basic, super amoled, ultra hd 4k super motion blah blah. All I use is the standard but increasingly I have to switch it to one of the higher functions to get it to stay bright enough. Again, more power consumption. The ideal device would be the Galaxy Note series, but I refuse to go down the Samsung route again, and of course the latest Note 8 was withdrawn as it kept bursting into flames, an issue Samsung seem totally unable to rectify. The Acer Iconia Talk has the benefit of being a UK supplied model, so if it does need TLC has the benefit of Acer service centres in the UK, though I tend to find these things are increasingly deemed disposable. The Lenovo and Huawei offer better specs but would have to come from the US or Japan, hence little is any after sales support. The downside to the Acer, as far as I can see is the Battery, listed as 3500mah, not much compared to the 6000mah in most similar devices.

He's a canny judge old Jenny, Ivy Farm is superb, a tad pricey but worth it.

5.5 inches is not really big enough. I currently use a Galaxy S6 which is only slightly smaller at 5.1 and that really struggles. Two separate devices is a real pain as I can only connect the phone either to the tablet to update the delivery apps or the van to make / receive calls, hence the desire to find one device to do both. It doesn't need to be cutting edge, no need for ultra hd 4k screens, octa core 2ghz processors etc. A number of companies like Lenovo, Acer, Huawei, HTC etc make them but very few are offered in the UK. If you ask in the mobile phone shops the acneid assistant looks at you as if you've just landed from Mars. If you search on the www most of the results are US based and refer to models never to have seen the UK Market. I might just have to trust the Acer.

Thank you everyone who contributed to my plea for help re Jamie's new tablet. He is now the proud owner of a new Lynx Gaming tablet. I have to admit to having given in to peer pressure somewhat. Many of his friends have the same tablet, and if you haven't seen it it slots into an xbox style controller frame meaning it is much easier to play games on. The down side is it runs Windows 10 but I have run the copious amount of updates that hit it "out of the box", so hopefully that will be it for a week or two. Now I need help for my new device. I need to replace my Samsung S6 which is slowly failing, bit by bit. I need a large screen device to run business apps (I work as a courier) but need it to be able to make and receive calls as well as text messages (real calls and texts, not via some third party app). Having visited our local shop it appears that what I need is not offered in the UK market, a tablet with phone capabilities, in stead you have to buy an "ultra" screen mobile phone which retail at about £600-800. He admits that the UK market is manipulated by handset manufacturers and that what I am looking for is readily available from the US or Asian markets at a fraction of the price. So the question is, does anyone have any experience of these devices (7inch plus screen, 4g data / calls / texts)? The option seems to be take a chance on something I have never heard of, or a refurbished Sony Xperia Z Ultra which sell for around £200.

Great post, thank you Vaughn. I had always known about Prop Kick but it's nice to know why it happens. Am I right in thinking that twin screws normally have props which contra rotate to solve this, meaning that they have dedicated port and starboard props?

I hammer mobile phones, I run tom tom on them 13/14 hours a day. I never had a problem with a Sony, but both Samsung's have had problems after 12-18 months. The lack of a replaceable battery on the S6 is a real error IMO, as is the lack of an SD slot. The speaker volume is also pretty poor. The S6 also gets very hot after a couple of hours constant use. I also hate the loads of Samsung additions they make to android which are no use but cannot be deleted.

Thanks everyone for your input. I will not go down the apple route, so it's android or windows. I currently have a Samsung s6 mobile which has convinced me not to buy anything else samsung ever again if they are the last manufacturer of techy stuff left when the sky falls in. Jamie's school friends all seem to have vision gaming tablets, which do run windows, but all they use them for is minecraft so not to demanding.

Any comments on Windows 10 tablets vs Android

We've checked the charger, it's charging my S6 ok and Elaine's Sony. But nothing on the tablet. I have tried all the button combi's different sites seem to say different things, power and v+ or power and v- or all three, so tried them all. Tried the reset button, nothing. So off it went back to Tesco this morning, the young man there tried various things, different chargers etc and no joy. It gave it a cursory once over to establish it had not been manhandled then refunded it. He did offer to replace it like for like, even though the current model is more expensive but having searched the web this morning there are rafts of reports from owners / users of Hipstreet tablets about them dying. It seems the power control modules, specifically a ceramic resistor used are, in the words of today's generation "well dodgy". Once the refund comes through I'll put a few extra quid to it and buy him something a bit better. Any comments on Samsung Tab vs Acer Iconia tablets?

It's a HipStreet pilot. We don't have Apples in this house, other than those you eat!