Bad beat/Moaning/Venting thread - Mammy told me not to come.

[eoghan104]

B) who set up out of offices, stating, 'I'm out of the office and will reply when I return' leaving no details of when they will return or who to contact when they are away.

Couldn't agree more, they would be up against the wall beside you and your airport selfie.

[Strewelpeter]

If you were to have the audience of a top jockey for an hour - what questions would you ask them?

Would depend on who it is but lots about the competitiveness at the top and what you have to do to stay there.

What does the concentration of resources across a couple of yards mean for them for their weighroom colleagues ?

Do they think much about or plan for the future after race riding?

Just how low would you stoop to ride a winner

I thought the recent OTB interview with Bryan Cooper was fascinating.

Where can I get to listen to that ? Had a quick search of the newstalk/offtheBalll site and don't see anything

[RichieM]

Couldn't agree more, they would be up against the wall beside you and your airport selfie.

LinkedIn post off an airport selfie telling the world they are on holidays because they have done such awesome work and need to recharge to smash targets on their return.

Some of the criticism of recruiters being a bunch of tools might be warranted.

[V for Vendetta]

Would depend on who it is but lots about the competitiveness at the top and what you have to do to stay there.

What does the concentration of resources across a couple of yards mean for them for their weighroom colleagues ?

Do they think much about or plan for the future after race riding?

Just how low would you stoop to ride a winner



Where can I get to listen to that ? Had a quick search of the newstalk/offtheBalll site and don't see anything

Search YouTube and OTB racing.

[6starpool]

LinkedIn post off an airport selfie telling the world they are on holidays because they have done such awesome work and need to recharge to smash targets on their return.

Some of the criticism of recruiters being a bunch of tools might be warranted.

Recruiters are just car salesmen in a different profession.

[Raoul Duke III]

Phew, that was a unrelenting 5 days of family time.

Edinburgh surprised massively on the upside I have to say.

[Strewelpeter]

a bad tradesman and all that

Indeed, If I had anything more than a vague grasp on what the fuck I'm doing it would probably help, I do find it hard to deal with the transactional nature of it all especially when complex biz logic is being handled inside the Db . Not sure if it is the nature of the tool or the people who created the original crap 20+ years ago but is it any way normal to populate a table of c.120 elements from a stored procedure, one of 1500 in the system, this one > 4K lines with the value going into some of the elements being decided by massive case statements nested up to four deep

[Raoul Duke III]

If you were to have the audience of a top jockey for an hour - what questions would you ask them?

Tell us the truth about drugs in racing plz.

[Solksjaer!]

Phew, that was a unrelenting 5 days of family time.

Edinburgh surprised massively on the upside I have to say.

So much more than Edinburgh. Toured Scotland in 04. Great great trip .

[coillcam]

fuck that.
I sent an email.
Respond back accordingly.
If I wanted you to have my phone number I would have included it.

+1. The amount of unsolicited crap and calls I get from vendors is ridiculous. No I don't want to buy your crap, no I didn't ask you to call me and no I don't want a follow up email. Please remove me from your DB and don't contact me again or get reported to data protection commissioner. Also whoever picks up our main line ALWAYS passes them through to me so I don't see the caller.

If I want someone to get my contact details it goes on the first email if I'm the sender otherwise the replies signature has no deets.

[DeadParrot]

Indeed, If I had anything more than a vague grasp on what the fuck I'm doing it would probably help, I do find it hard to deal with the transactional nature of it all especially when complex biz logic is being handled inside the Db . Not sure if it is the nature of the tool or the people who created the original crap 20+ years ago but is it any way normal to populate a table of c.120 elements from a stored procedure, one of 1500 in the system, this one > 4K lines with the value going into some of the elements being decided by massive case statements nested up to four deep

the proc is 4k lines?
I mean it's not beyond the realms of possibility but from experience, that's old code that has been hacked in and added to rather than rebuilt from the ground up as newer practices became standard.
The architecture it's built on should give you a clue really as you can easily shave off hundred of lines of code over time using functions in the body of the sp instead of massive case statements. e.g comparing and returning values and/or splitting numerical and non numerical strings.
the downside is of course performance.
As always though, there's a large caveat based on use case and what's actually being done. It's unlikely a massive nested case statement is the optimal solution, but it could be.

anyway...dinner time

[shrapnel]

Just a reminder of the genius that exists amongst us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB6YL1ko8_s

Was talking about him today. He was actually booked to play freddie Mercury, but during the filming there was a massive disagreement between him and Brian May and Roger Taylor as to his vision of how to play Freddie. He left, and that's when they got malek. Definitely a serendipitous moment.

[Wombatman]

the proc is 4k lines?
I mean it's not beyond the realms of possibility but from experience, that's old code that has been hacked in and added to rather than rebuilt from the ground up as newer practices became standard.
The architecture it's built on should give you a clue really as you can easily shave off hundred of lines of code over time using functions in the body of the sp instead of massive case statements. e.g comparing and returning values and/or splitting numerical and non numerical strings.
the downside is of course performance.
As always though, there's a large caveat based on use case and what's actually being done. It's unlikely a massive nested case statement is the optimal solution, but it could be.

anyway...dinner time

Always onto a loser when you don't know the difference between set-based and procedural programming. Shitty normalization is the often the root of problem leading to spaghetti SQL.

I don't see a problem with business logic being reflected in stored procedures and have never seen ORMs work well for complex data sets where queries are baked into code.

[Wombatman]

Last day in my job of 13 years today. At times like these you realise its less about the work and more about relationships and people. Kinda like being released from prison. You know it's good that you are going but you don't want to leave the inmates you have been having the craic with for years.

New, better paying, job starts Monday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MImNGJNcvIc

[Lao Lao]

fuck that.
I sent an email.
Respond back accordingly.
If I wanted you to have my phone number I would have included it.

Yeah, thing is, I wasn't looking to respond to an email that they just sent me. I was looking to solve a problem for them. A problem that another one of their vendors fucked up and landed at my door. I could do one of two things, solve it very quickly and inexpensively via a two minute phone call or send him an e-mail, hope he reads it soon but if not, just let the problem fester away and let the bill for getting it fixed rack up, quite literally by the minute.

E-mail is a great tool and can be both very efficient and cost effective but only when it is used properly. Sometimes, you need to pick up the phone and speak to people.

It's not like I'm looking for somebody's home phone number or personal mobile, it's the landline sitting on your desk, the one you are paid to pick up and use as part of your job.

Maybe I'm the fucking eejit, maybe I should just sit back and let the bill rack up but it's something I really couldn't let myself do as for me, it's not the right thing to do. The right thing is to try and fix it as quick as possible and as cost effective as possible.

Slightly off topic but I'm a firm believer that business only works when there is a relationship (for all parties, whether you are a vendor or a customer) and you don't get a relationship over e-mail, you need to be able to interact via phone and face to face. The scary part about this is that I see younger people who are so embedded in social media/e-mail, that they don't know how to talk to customers and vendors and would happily send 50 e-mails back and forth rather then have a two minute phone call.

+1. The amount of unsolicited crap and calls I get from vendors is ridiculous. No I don't want to buy your crap, no I didn't ask you to call me and no I don't want a follow up email. Please remove me from your DB and don't contact me again or get reported to data protection commissioner. Also whoever picks up our main line ALWAYS passes them through to me so I don't see the caller.

If I want someone to get my contact details it goes on the first email if I'm the sender otherwise the replies signature has no deets.

Having your phone number on your e-mail doesn't lead to unsolicited calls, it's not as if the cold callers can hack into an e-mail you've sent and get your number from it, it's there if people you interact with already need to contact you and need to speak to you., which is part of doing business. From what you say above, you don't put your number on your e-mail but yet, you get a large volume of unsolicited calls, how do they manage that?

Sounds like, you've done something to majorly piss off the bint on reception and that's why all the calls get blind transferred to you

That and people who put your can of coke in with your chips.

Who da fuck commits such a heinous crime?

[rounders123]

Last day in my job of 13 years today. At times like these you realise its less about the work and more about relationships and people. Kinda like being released from prison. You know it's good that you are going but you don't want to leave the inmates you have been having the craic with for years.

New, better paying, job starts Monday.

Congrats. Pal of mine last day too after 18 years under different circumstances.
The girlfriend unexpectedly called time on their 17 year relationship recently. Hes from GB so was all in with her here and nothing much for him to stay for now so needed to pack in his job and move back to GB too. They were getting on fine as usual to suddenly within 3 weeks no gf-no job-back home.

[The Aul Switcharoo]

Congrats. Pal of mine last day too after 18 years under different circumstances.
The girlfriend unexpectedly called time on their 17 year relationship recently. Hes from GB so was all in with her here and nothing much for him to stay for now so needed to pack in his job and move back to GB too. They were getting on fine as usual to suddenly within 3 weeks no gf-no job-back home.

Surely he has friends and stuff here? One of the guys in our group is just about to do that. Broke up with gf of 7 years and handed in notice to go home up North where there's nothing. We're all hoping he comes back after a few months when he misses the craic

[rounders123]

Surely he has friends and stuff here? One of the guys in our group is just about to do that. Broke up with gf of 7 years and handed in notice to go home up North where there's nothing. We're all hoping he comes back after a few months when he misses the craic

No not much friends at all, few pals and friends of her friends mostly. Plenty of work pals as he is popular but I find work friends are really friends as long as youre in the same job. Once you move out of the workplace you tend to drift out if touch so its only the work thats was keeping you in touch. His brother is coming over Saturday on the boat in his car and a roof pod and they are heading back Sunday. Few drinks arranged with the pals and acquiescence's Saturday.

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

...

[Hectorjelly]

They were getting on fine as usual to suddenly within 3 weeks no gf-no job-back home.

I'd imagine she would have a different perspective on this.

[coillcam]

Having your phone number on your e-mail doesn't lead to unsolicited calls, it's not as if the cold callers can hack into an e-mail you've sent and get your number from it, it's there if people you interact with already need to contact you and need to speak to you., which is part of doing business. From what you say above, you don't put your number on your e-mail but yet, you get a large volume of unsolicited calls, how do they manage that?

Sounds like, you've done something to majorly piss off the bint on reception and that's why all the calls get blind transferred to you

I was pretty grumpy yesterday and didn't explain this very well. Yeah there's two separate issues here: unnecessary/disruptive calls (usually legit) and the typical cold sales calls. I'm dealing a lot more with vendors for support and tenders in the last year than previously. I prefer to keep everything documented in email which I'll check a handful of times per day and only call if something needs escalation. There's a good argument against this for maintaining strategic relationships but that's another issue.

As for cold calls I think you could be on to something there, I should divert that person's extension directly to voicemail

As for the hacking side of it. At this stage with the prevalence of cyber-crime its safe to assume one of your colleagues or email contacts has been compromised at some point. Their address book and contact list dumped which would have your info. Unless you've a brand new number/email your details are going to be "out there" unfortunately. Interesting side fact - was doing some research for college recently and found out that the global cyber-crime economy is $1.5 trillion which equates to the GDP of Russia (The world's 12th largest economy).

[ionapaul]

Had a somewhat interesting/eye-opening experience this week; am thinking about switching our mortgage provider to save some money and get a few hundred € via a €2k cashback offer (am planning that the total legal and other expenses will be approx €1.5k).

So I called up the prospective new provider to start the process, not in any rush. As it was just me on the call, I asked them to see if my salary alone would be sufficient for approval for the switcher mortgage.

For context, the total amount is just over 2x annual salary for me, the new mortgage payment would be slightly lower than the current one and I am currently also saving an amount greater than the current mortgage payment each month. There's no question in my mind that to any reasonable person going through the figures, it should be a straightforward 'yes, securing this new lower mortgage on your salary is fine' response.

Was told that given my situation (married, one child, paying into a pension and various insurances), the bank's calculator judged me to be left with something like €100 in free cash each month and I was offered a max mortgage of €22k on a 20 year term as a sole applicant

Completely different offer if the wife's salary is included but it surprised me and made me smile, I guess the bank has to use a standard calculation that in some ways needs to assume all applicants require €10/day for coffee, €20/day for avocado on toast breakfasts, get a new car every two years, etc...

[Raoul Duke III]

Had a somewhat interesting/eye-opening experience this week; am thinking about switching our mortgage provider to save some money and get a few hundred € via a €2k cashback offer (am planning that the total legal and other expenses will be approx €1.5k).

So I called up the prospective new provider to start the process, not in any rush. As it was just me on the call, I asked them to see if my salary alone would be sufficient for approval for the switcher mortgage.

For context, the total amount is just over 2x annual salary for me, the new mortgage payment would be slightly lower than the current one and I am currently also saving an amount greater than the current mortgage payment each month. There's no question in my mind that to any reasonable person going through the figures, it should be a straightforward 'yes, securing this new lower mortgage on your salary is fine' response.

Was told that given my situation (married, one child, paying into a pension and various insurances), the bank's calculator judged me to be left with something like €100 in free cash each month and I was offered a max mortgage of €22k on a 20 year term as a sole applicant

Completely different offer if the wife's salary is included but it surprised me and made me smile, I guess the bank has to use a standard calculation that in some ways needs to assume all applicants require €10/day for coffee, €20/day for avocado on toast breakfasts, get a new car every two years, etc...

I actually found the mortgage process quite straightforward. They were very thorough but I had all the relevant paperwork ready. AIB fwiw.
Approval in principle took less than 2 weeks - although we do have a couple of really minor pieces of paperwork left to send in to complete the job, it's done and those are in the post today. I actually found the IFSC branch very efficient.

(less straightforward is actually finding a house that fits our target criteria, that we don't continuously keep getting outbid on - just gave up on this after several rounds. , although even if we had got it a building project would have been required)

[Raoul Duke III]

As a matter of interest, the non-mortgage debt overhang in this country must still be quite significant.

Went through the process with 2 banks and both mortgage advisors did a serious double-take at the fact we had no PCPs, no credit card debt, no CU loans etc. I did ask the AIB lady about that and she said it was unusual, particularly for 'people at your stage of life'.

Middle-agedness ftl I guess

[Denny Crane]

yeah you kinda stop making friends after a certain point, unless your a bit of an excessively socially outgoing weirdo. Would suck to be going to UK though as a result. I'd imagine he's made that decision too hastily. Probably thought: fck you all, but then he'll get back to the grimness and sober up.

Quite noticeable too that even the friends you do have start to drop off rapidly around 30, people go out substantially less. And the generation behind barely go out at all so it's curtains really.

[Denny Crane]

[DeadParrot]

Always onto a loser when you don't know the difference between set-based and procedural programming. Shitty normalization is the often the root of problem leading to spaghetti SQL.

I don't see a problem with business logic being reflected in stored procedures and have never seen ORMs work well for complex data sets where queries are baked into code.

I was talking udfs instead of Cursors etc BTW.
The latter drives me bugshit at times.

Shitty architecture and incorrectly stored datatypes along with poor logic is my current bane of existence.
A lot of our legacy code was built using some substituting excel for SQL and as such approaching it arse ways.

Unless I took you up wrong.

[Strewelpeter]

there are 3 sides to every story.

There is a 1950 Japanese film made by Akira Kurosawa called Rashomon most people here are likely to know it from the South Park version or one of the many references in other modern media.
I'd put it on the shortlist for the greatest story ever told in film and its a highly entertaining watch as well.

[Raoul Duke III]

Quite noticeable too that even the friends you do have start to drop off rapidly around 30, people go out substantially less. And the generation behind barely go out at all so it's curtains really.

Bah, it's a mindset.

I have two groups of friends (of my age) - those that actively remember they have a life outside of work\home\family, and those that don't. The ones in the first group more or less force themselves to go out and do things.

The look of awe and astonishment on the faces of those in the second group when you explain you are off on a debauched rugby 4-day extravanganza in southern France with members of the first group is always worth the undoubted life-shortening impact of such activity.

Most young-family rearing, mortgage-paying, childcare-forking-out people are in the second group. Netflix is their new God.

[Keane]

I remember listening to a superb podcast about this several years ago that still pops into my head every so often. I must see if I can track it down.

[Keane]

There is a 1950 Japanese film made by Akira Kurosawa called Rashomon most people here are likely to know it from the South Park version or one of the many references in other modern media.
I'd put it on the shortlist for the greatest story ever told in film and its a highly entertaining watch as well.

[Goodluck2me]

I actually found the mortgage process quite straightforward. They were very thorough but I had all the relevant paperwork ready. AIB fwiw.
Approval in principle took less than 2 weeks - although we do have a couple of really minor pieces of paperwork left to send in to complete the job, it's done and those are in the post today. I actually found the IFSC branch very efficient.

(less straightforward is actually finding a house that fits our target criteria, that we don't continuously keep getting outbid on - just gave up on this after several rounds. , although even if we had got it a building project would have been required)

Would you not be tempted by the 5yr fix with BOI? I found AIB desperately uncompetitive despite banking with them my entire life. Fair enough if you’re want a SVR but it’s hard to see how this isn’t close to the trough in rates. Albeit competition could push it further rather than benchmarks.

[Raoul Duke III]

Would you not be tempted by the 5yr fix with BOI? I found AIB desperately uncompetitive despite banking with them my entire life. Fair enough if you’re want a SVR but it’s hard to see how this isn’t close to the trough in rates. Albeit competition could push it further rather than benchmarks.

We would buy first, then sell.

So day 1, our mortgage would be X.

Day 2 (the day our cheque clears from the sale), it would be ~ 1/3 X.

Can't do that on a fixed without penalties. Might look at fixed after that.

[RichieM]

As a matter of interest, the non-mortgage debt overhang in this country must still be quite significant.

Went through the process with 2 banks and both mortgage advisors did a serious double-take at the fact we had no PCPs, no credit card debt, no CU loans etc. I did ask the AIB lady about that and she said it was unusual, particularly for 'people at your stage of life'.

Middle-agedness ftl I guess

We were looking at mortgages recently and were advised to take out a loan to show we could repay it as i have no debt history bar an overdraft when i was in college and the misses repaid a loan about 8 years ago and nothing since.

Savings does nothing for your credit rating apparently

[Silver-Tiger]

I'm 3.5 years into Mortgage. If i had went 5 year fixed (Which i was advised by a few) I'd be quite significantly out of pocket. Ended up doing 3 (Still the wrong decision) and now on SVR at the moment(AIB) and not coming off it for foreseeable.

Still lost out fixing for 3.

GL2M why you recommend fixing for 5?

It's a strange game. read this yesterday https://www.independent.ie/business/...-37477298.html

Does this hold any water?

[Silver-Tiger]

We were looking at mortgages recently and were advised to take out a loan to show we could repay it as i have no debt history bar an overdraft when i was in college and the misses repaid a loan about 8 years ago and nothing since.

Savings does nothing for your credit rating apparently

That's fcuking BS. We had no problems like that when getting the mortgage and in a very similar scenario to you. No debt whatsoever.

But we had to go through this rigmarole for a 10k CU loan last year.

[Denny Crane]

Bah, it's a mindset.

I have two groups of friends (of my age) - those that actively remember they have a life outside of work\home\family, and those that don't. The ones in the first group more or less force themselves to go out and do things.

The look of awe and astonishment on the faces of those in the second group when you explain you are off on a debauched rugby 4-day extravanganza in southern France with members of the first group is always worth the undoubted life-shortening impact of such activity.

Most young-family rearing, mortgage-paying, childcare-forking-out people are in the second group. Netflix is their new God.

I'm not friends with any young family rearing types, so I dunno what their excuse is

[ionapaul]

The bank we're talking to are AIB and I'm also planning to go with a SVR, no interest in fixed. Don't think ECB rates are going up anytime soon (we're around the corner from a recession IMHO) and for me there's more likelihood SVR will go down then up in the medium term in Ireland, our margins are still very high!

[RichieM]

That's fcuking BS. We had no problems like that when getting the mortgage and in a very similar scenario to you. No debt whatsoever.

But we had to go through this rigmarole for a 10k CU loan last year.

We would get approved and were just testing the water to see what we would get but we’re told that if we want an exemption and to push for higher it will be easier if we had a better loan history.

Not saying that we couldn’t get ourselves into debt but apparently it’s a bit easier if your already in it.

[Raoul Duke III]

I'm not friends with any young family rearing types, so I dunno what their excuse is

My excuse is 'I want to get away from my young family rearing' for a few hours\days.

[Keane]

I presume everyone knows you can split your mortgage into different tranches? For example we took 50% under fixed terms for security (not my idea ) and 50% under SVR.

We can overpay the SVR tranche to our heart's content as the situation allows.

[Keane]

On an entirely unrelated note I just learned that Lord Kitchener was born in Kerry. Every day is a school day.

[shrapnel]

I presume everyone knows you can split your mortgage into different tranches? For example we took 50% under fixed terms for security (not my idea ) and 50% under SVR.

We can overpay the SVR tranche to our heart's content as the situation allows.

The SVR rate would be massive no? can i ask what it is in Ireland? what's your fixed rate?

we just got our mortgage and put it on a 2 year fixed, we'll then move it most probably to a 5 year fixed as we'll as we'll have gone through a threshold which will considerably improve the rate

[Keane]

The SVR rate would be massive no? can i ask what it is in Ireland? what's your fixed rate?

we just got our mortgage and put it on a 2 year fixed, we'll then move it most probably to a 5 year fixed as we'll as we'll have gone through a threshold which will considerably improve the rate

SVR was 3.15% I think. Can't remember how many years we fixed for so not 100% sure of that rate. I didn't do a good job of chasing the best rate tbh.

[Raoul Duke III]

.

Meant to add this quote to post above but had to wade through loads of crap from Raoul saying how there would definitely be no deal

Just for idiots like myself, could you please explain where, on the below spectrum, this deal sits?

[Guest]

We had our 1st night in the house last night. We we're ready to move in a couple of weeks ago but I was away with work. We still have lots to do but it's a relief.

Our primary issue now seems to be that the internet in the estate is unobtainable for the next few weeks. It's a new build but the road it's on has a number of housing estates so it's not an issue with the area.
Technicians have visited a few other houses in the estate but to no avail so far, I'm hoping it's sorted soon because I'm hoping to be working from home quite a bit.

[Denny Crane]

I presume everyone knows you can split your mortgage into different tranches? For example we took 50% under fixed terms for security (not my idea ) and 50% under SVR.

We can overpay the SVR tranche to our heart's content as the situation allows.

Didn't know that at all.

Feeling a bit left out of the mortgage chat, but a) a single b) no real career security c) no real idea of where I want to live long-term.


you'd have to imagine the long-term pressure on prices is strongly to the upside though given influx of brexit, the age profile of our population, and our complete inability to build with any sort of density.

[Keane]

Didn't know that at all.

There you are now that's your Lord Kitchener moment for the day!

[Solksjaer!]

Anyone hear about the police drone involvement in the helicopter crash last week ?

[Denny Crane]

Sounds like Africa ticks all those boxes especially the travelling solo part.

Addis makes a good base and you can fly anywhere from there with Ethiopian. A day or two in the city and you can take a trip out into the mountains and visit the monasteries. From there I'd look at going to places like Kigali for the genocide museum, the Gorillas and a look at how they have managed to rebuild, maybe Kampala for a contrasting style of governance that's still safe to visit and fun. Zanzibar or somewhere near Maputo for a bit of beach and seafood. Okavango delta or Masi Mara for safari and wildlife the possibilities are endless.

Going to be booking something along this in the next couple of days

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

...

[Guest]

Quite noticeable too that even the friends you do have start to drop off rapidly around 30, people go out substantially less. And the generation behind barely go out at all so it's curtains really.

That is because the Irish/British don't really do friends, we do drinking buddies!

[Tar.Aldarion]

It definitely sucks when people go into a relationship or have a child and then they are essentially dead. I have more friends now than I ever did even with rarely drinking now, so I guess it depends on what you like to do.


Kinda want to buy a house personally but dunno where I want to live so have to keep at paying too much rent and saving with no real purpose.
My friend did the splitting mortgage thing which seems like a great idea. Is it still a case that people can't get mortgages from other countries btw?

[Raoul Duke III]

Seems to be first step at the moment. They are just leaving the EU but being forced to agree to not change anything. Who knows what will happen in a few years, but once again a deal will be struck then too.

So they're going to throw out every single one of their red lines?

[Keane]

Going to be booking something along this in the next couple of days

That looks class. You might share your itinerary when you have it hammered out just out of interest.

We're heading to this place in Mexico next week for two weeks. It will be my first time doing one of these all inclusive resort style holidays so interested to see how I'll find it compared to the tour type trips we have been doing for the last few years. If I avoid putting on two stone it will probably be a win.

[6starpool]

Seems to be first step at the moment. They are just leaving the EU but being forced to agree to not change anything. Who knows what will happen in a few years, but once again a deal will be struck then too.

If the EU and UK negotiators agree stuff in the next few weeks, do you genuinely think that the UK parliament will back it?

[Lazare]

One of my main customers is a bit of a fruitcake. Into all sorts of pseudo bullshit, numbers have deep meanings etc, auras, energies etc, all that nonsense.

Anyway she's trying to push homeopathy on me, sending me a number for her 'homeopath' (put in parenthesis because it's a bullshit made up term just like the bullshit peddled), giving me 'remedy pills', basically sugar with made up Latin names.

Apparently masenium or whatever the fuck it was called will 'promote healing' and stitch my calf muscle together.

I can't laugh at her and tell her to fuck off, she gives me too much business.

She's gonna keep asking me did I contact her looney.

Advice please.

[6starpool]

Also, on the subject of mortgages, I moved from a 3 year to a 5 year fixed with BOI. The rate I got was 0.2%lower than the advertised rate, so I'm fixed now at 2.8% for 5 years. I'm also overpaying by 10% a months (which I can stop /start whenever I want for no fee).

The fee for breaking is derived from the cost of finance to the bank at the time of fixing and breaking, so in some cases it might cost relatively little to change product, especially if close together in time.

[Raoul Duke III]

If the EU and UK negotiators agree stuff in the next few weeks, do you genuinely think that the UK parliament will back it?

The EU negotiators must feel like they are living Groundhog Day:

EU: "OK, you want to leave the EU. Fine. Here are the rules by which we will preserve the integrity of the Union and we will not negotiate beyond those. This tall French chap is our representative - he speaks for us and has full authority. We speak with one voice. Best of luck."

In the intervening time since the vote, it's been up to the Brits to come up with a formula that will define their future relationship with the EU. The Brits are impossibly divided politically, with a lunatic press egging on the worst political chancers and an opposition that wouldn't be out of place in Petrograd 1917. And they persist in the delusion that they somehow have the majority of the leverage in the negotiations. Hence....

UK: "Insane suggestion # 1, 2, 3......"

EU: "eh, we refer you to our opening position."

Hitch is suggesting that the UK will both leave and remain at the same time. This, is, of course completely politically impossible from a UK domestic standpoint. So I'd like to see how that little circle gets squared.

[ionapaul]

That looks class. You might share your itinerary when you have it hammered out just out of interest.

We're heading to this place in Mexico next week for two weeks. It will be my first time doing one of these all inclusive resort style holidays so interested to see how I'll find it compared to the tour type trips we have been doing for the last few years. If I avoid putting on two stone it will probably be a win.

Oh man, so jealous - you are gonna have an amazing time. Would love to hit up a Mexican all-inclusive once a year for a week, would really recharge the batteries. Mimosas for breakfast... It's relatively easy not to eat too much, if you are not naturally a glutton you'll be fine. Drink, well that's a different story entirely and you'd feel like you wasted $$$ not to get a decent number of drinks in per day