Flatpackhamster

Cost of fuel duty (+VAT) to the UK motorist - £30Bn in 2012. Department for transport's budget: £5.3Bn + 7Bn capital expenditure (2012) figures.

Exactly. Three quarters of your fuel costs come from duty and VAT. It suits the government to pretend they aren't buggering us when they are.

Hamsters go first, of course.

Back in the good old days of balled mice, you could assign them to clean the balls of every rodent on the site.

^^ This. Despite the BBC's best efforts to make us all 'good Europeans serving the Dear Leaders' by getting rid of Terry Wogan and overhyping this dull battle of rigged voting, it's a crap event and I would only watch it if I was playing the Eurovision drinking game.

I'm holding out for 7G.

Goodness, when I read what you guys are doing on your Minecraft I'm totally baffled. I'm playing the vanilla one and haven't really done anything with redstone circuits, let alone download mods and construct nuclear-powered thermowatt zap cannons or whatever. Guess I failed my geek test.

I remember my first IT job in 2002, where my network manager decided that what the school needed urgently was Netware 5 and Windows 98 rather than Windows 2000 server and workstation. My network manager was a cretin.

I didn't like it. I assume that means my donkey has a bad leg. But then I don't like a Simpson anyway, or any Yanqui comedy cartoons for that matter.

Download RuntimeSoftware's GetDataBack. They do an NTFS and a FAT version. They offer a free trial and you only pay for the software if it successfully finds the data to allow you to retrieve it. I use it regularly for clients whose drives have failed.

Photos from the edge of space using a helium balloon? Something linking the school with a local charity or local group in a techish way?

I'm switching phones soon, and looking at the Lumia 720. Is that the one you've got?

I can't imagine a private school paying less than the public sector rate. The few private school teachers I know certainly didn't earn under the public sector rate.

Wages wouldn't go down. Teachers' salaries are fixed by central government.

I didn't know that about the SATs. Thanks.

A £40,000 a year salary puts you in the top 20% of earnings by income in the UK. Of course that doesn't take in to account the final salary pension, which if it were in the private sector would put teachers well in to the top 10%.

Give Gove a chance, he's only got one pair of hands.

And yet SATs and the continual testing regime came in under the Labour government... Those crafty Tories, secretly exercising power while in opposition. Damn them. It's an OMGWTFLOLCABAL.

Plenty. And I also work in a primary school. Feel free to generalise about my generalisations, and keep reading that Guardian and Independent, I know they're the Fountain Of Truth.

Because teachers are the ones bitching about how dreadfully tiring their poor little lives are and how terribly hard done by they are. The public sector has had it way too easy for the last decade or so, and teachers have been given hefty salary increases with no commensurate requirement to up their game. We're paying champagne money for beer performance.

Apologies. You are right. I was out on my figures. I will rephrase it: Assuming that you are a man, or work in or around London, and have no prior experience and take on no significant responsibility which offers you a pay increase, you, as an NQT, will not earn the median wage for men in the UK. However, if you are a woman (like 90% of primary teachers and 65% of secondary teachers), or work in or around London, then as an NQT your salary will be within a whisker of the median wage for women in the UK. And within 12 months it will match it.

The basic starting salary for a NQT is the median income for the average earner in the UK. Teachers don't have a 'lower than average' wage, they have a higher than average wage. As well as 15 weeks of holiday.

The Metro is straightforward to use and clean and reliable. It does rather depend where you're planning to stay. If you get a chance, then travel to the Arc de Triomphe and then walk the whole of the route to the Tour Eiffel (Arc -> Trocadero -> Tour) and down to the Champ de Mars. Paris was designed with sight lines in mind. What you won't get if you use the tube to go everywhere is a sense of the majesty of the place. The walk will take about 40 minutes in total. But it really is worth doing, it's quite breathtaking. If you've got the legs for it, you can then walk to Les Invalides and see the Tomb of Napoleon. Some other thoughts: Don't imagine that pedestrian crossings on roads mean anything at all. Their job is solely to keep line painters in work. Parisian drivers ignore them. It helps to keep the pedestrians lively. Don't wander around looking like a tourist. This means - camera in a bag, no socks with sandals. If you're going to look at a map to find your way, find a quiet corner to do it. Do try to use your French if you have any. The effort you make to communicate in French will be appreciated. Parisians tend not to do breakfast - it's just coffee and a pastry (and sometimes not the pastry). So if, like me, you admire the Germanic style of breakfast (5 kinds of pig, 3 kinds of cheese and a loaf of bread) you will be disappointed. The Europe-wide smoking ban in public places does not apply in Paris. Nor do any of the other EU rules the French don't like. Paris is expensive.

I have to agree with this assessment. 1 is abysmal and has not a single redeeming element. 2 is poor. I haven't seen much of 3 but from what I've seen, it's just as bad as 2. There are some elements to 6 which aren't great, but most of it's good. To save you watching episode 3, here's a synopsis: STAR WARS EPISODE III A LOST HOPE - YouTube

I still do all my work in furlongs, hogsheads and groats.