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    planting for a river bank

    If by "reeds" you mean Common Reed Phragmites phragmites, the fact that it's not already growing there suggests the conditions might be unsuitable (too saline perhaps?), and a bank of reeds really isn't going to present any sort of barrier to kids or geese. A living willow "fedge" might be...
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    Ivy removal from house wall (help, it's out of control!))

    I used to work in archaeology, and more than once had to remove Ivy from standing walls with minimum damage. It's a horrible job; messy, fiddly and time consuming, and I had to work out how to do it from scratch. Eventually, I settled on the following technique: You will need a largish...
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    Old Ponds - sorting them out!

    I certainly agree with footprints that your best option is to reline with underlay (you can also use old carpet or sand for this) + butyl. There is never a good time to do this sort of work on a pond, but winter time, when most pond critters are dormant, is the least disruptive. It's worth...
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    This should be read by everyone, claiming Benefits or not

    A Titanic for the 21st century http://speye.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/getting-benefit-and-have-a-facebook-account-oh-dear/ "Iceberg? What iceberg?"
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    Slave labour in the Uk exists - official!

    I don't know how long it is since you had to look for a job, but things have changed a lot in the last 10 years. There's no need to go tramping the streets or rooting through the Sits Vac columns of newspapers, the internet does it all for you. And before you say anything, the days when you...
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    Slave labour in the Uk exists - official!

    Speaking as one of "them", I can assure you that I'd be only too happy to do such work, as long as I'm paid what the work is worth.
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    Slave labour in the Uk exists - official!

    You're making a very sweeping assumption there. What evidence do you have that Ms Reilly "refused to look for paid work elswhere"? I've been following this case closely over the last year, and at no time has anybody - not the Government, not the DWP, not the Press, not the judiciary -...
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    Slave labour in the Uk exists - official!

    You can't infer anything from that; we're in the middle of a recession, the worst recession the world's seen sice the 1930s. Nobody's hiring. What you can say, with a high degree of certainty, is that when Ms Reilly got her part-time supermarket job, it was at the expense of a substantial...
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    Slave labour in the Uk exists - official!

    Surely an important part of the "work ethic" is the principle of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work". I don't know whether it's enshrined in law or not, but it's a right that working people have been struggling for, for at least 200 years. If you deny it to someone just because they're...
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    Slave labour in the Uk exists - official!

    Unfortunately, the judgment is purely about technicalities in DWP regulations, nothing to do with the ethics of Mandatory Work schemes or "forced labour" (full text here: http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/reilly-wilson-v-secretary-state.pdf ). A minor embarrassment...
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    What to do with a field?

    If your mate wants to benefit the local environment and wildlife, then managing the field as a hay meadow is a simple and low-cost option: let the grass grow over the summer, cut for hay late summer/early autumn (scything would be practical for a small area, and damn good exercise :wink: )...
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    It's a cliche, but old George must be spinning in his grave

    If I can't trust the govt's own statistics, how can I have any confidence in the policies based on those statistics? And whose statistics can I trust? I disagree. The only people reponsible for the government's clampdowns are the government. Everything else is just pretext. You might have a...
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    It's a cliche, but old George must be spinning in his grave

    Since you ask, I get Jobseeker's Allowance, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. All together, they add up to £7.8K a year. I'd guess I'm on the low side of average, because I've got a cheap flat. As far as in-work benefits go, I recently had a "Better Off" calculation for a job I applied...
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    It's a cliche, but old George must be spinning in his grave

    Fair comment, but I suspect the reality will be rather different. Universal Jobmatch, along with Universal Credit, are both part of the Goverment's plan to completely digitise the welfare system over the next 2 - 3 years. If it's successful I predict that, within 2 years of its initiation, Job...
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    It's a cliche, but old George must be spinning in his grave

    Oh, please. DWP statistics: "For 2011/12 (preliminary), it is estimated that 2.0 per cent of total benefit expenditure was overpaid due to fraud and error. This is down from the 2010/11 level of 2.1 per cent. " http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd2/index.php?page=fraud_error I can't find...
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    It's a cliche, but old George must be spinning in his grave

    “By late Autumn the Government's Department of Work and Pensions plans to introduce a new Universal Jobmatch website for anyone seeking a job. The US company commissioned to deliver this service is Monster Worldwide, an online recruitment and technology service company infamous for numerous...
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    Garden Obelisk

    Is this http://www.allotmentforestry.com/fact/facts.htm#pp any help?
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    People on benefits..

    I'm sorry, but this is out of order. I think I can safely say that I have had much closer dealings with museums than you, Aron (I've worked for several over the years), and I know for a fact that many, particularly the smaller local or more specialised museums, could not survive without the...
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    People on benefits..

    I'd like to tell you a story. Once a week I travel to town for a supervised "job search" session. Back in March, I struck up a conversation with one of my "colleagues"; what he told me left me utterly dumbfounded. To look at, there's nothing exceptional about this young man; early 20s (I...
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    People on benefits..

    Is that a rhetorical question or are you asking me why I don't move? If the latter, I think I answered it earlier - I can't afford to.
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