>>443086
Could also make your company dormant, after formation, if it's a long one. I'm not sure if that would affect trade discounts though.

>>443086

>just to use to get trade discounts and access to bookers

You could theoretically, but as >>443086 lad indicates, you'll be putting yourself through a lot of constant recurring paperwork that isn't necessarily worth the few quid of discount you get from having a - pretend - business. And even as a sole trader, the tax and record keeping responsibilities are really considerable.

The only way to get around this is by making less than £1,000 a year from being a sole trader, but it's almost certainly going to arouse HMRC's suspicion in the long run, and can result in a compliance check down the line.


>It'd be a fake garage so I can stamp my own service books, too.

Nobody will believe that you'll keep making less than 1,000 quid of profit a year running a one-man garage. And it could even constitute fraud if you stamp your own service books without doing an actual service, if you then at some point pass a car off to a buyer as having a complete service history.


tl;dr: bad idea altogether.

I've only just realised today how many watches I've collected over the last few years and how much money is just sat there on my nightstand. I think I need to sell some stuff off, but almost all of them are associated with an event, a milestone, a promotion, or suchlike. But despite having fancy stuff in there I really gravitate towards Seiko, I think the flightmaster is my favourite, I wear it all the time, I even genuinely use the slide rule sometimes at work to convert miles to knots. I even once did a fuel weight conversion which I'm sure impressed the ladies present.

I'm not sure what my point is, I'm a little drunk and not really comfortable with just now realising how materialistic a watch collection is.

Ah listen, it's the little things in life sometimes lads.

>>443089

You did just point out yourself that you collect them as they're associated with memories and achievements. I don't see anything inherently wrong with that, in fact I collect things on the same basis. I have books on my shelf I'll likely never fully read through again, but they serve as a visual reminder of what I learned from them and the period of my life in which I first read them.

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

>>443089

I'm in the market for a chronograph right now, but I really don't know much about watches as such. My price target would be the £200 to £350 range. I've looked at some fashion watches by Boss or Maserati, knowing that they're private-label, but they all seem a bit pretentious. I guess what I want is a "watch guy's watch", without actually being a "watch guy".

What do you lot think of brands like Citizen?

>>443092
>What do you lot think of brands like Citizen?

Seiko is a bit more classic and cooler. But each to their own, there are plenty of nice watches out there.

>>443092

For that price point, you're only going to be able to get a quartz chronograph - not a bad thing, if you ask me, the flightmaster is quartz - so that narrows your options for models down quite significantly, most chronographs are in the £1000+ mechanical price range.

Citizen are excellent watchmakers, and their ecodrive technology is, to me, a lot more fun and exciting than just bog standard quartz. They 'shouldn't' ever need a battery changed as they charge under any light source, and they need very little in the way of maintenance, though it's worth noting you do need a specialised citizen service if and when you ever do, but that's not a difficult thing to find, and it'll last decades without one.

At the higher end of that bracket there's not really much out there, honesty - The Bulova Marine Star is one I really think is very tasty and Bulova are likely described as a 'watch guys' brand. There's also a few Tissot watches in that price range, the Tissot V8 is my personal favourite, though honestly I don't know too much about Tissot - but they're swiss so definitely Watch Guy Approved.

Casio, under their Edifice brand, do some fantastic looking chronos, but they're much cheaper than your target. The EFR-526L for example looks the business and does it for £80. They have a few for £150 too, plenty to suit any taste really, and I trust Casio/Edifice implicitly.

I'm a Seiko fan, and Seiko make a LOT of chronos based on the same movement in that price range - due to them having a shit naming system I'm not going to bother reeling off a number of product codes, "seiko chronograph" is enough to find most of them - just have a look and pick one you like, you CANNOT go wrong with Seiko.

If it was me, I'd be looking at a Seiko Prospex PADI chrono, or trying to nab a second hand version of the PADI Sumo, or a Seiko Arnie. But that's me and they're very specific, bold watches.

>>443093

Forgot to mention, you have correctly identified that fashion watches are pretentious and shite. You really are just paying for the name with a Boss or anything like that. Avoid like the plague.

>>443094

>fashion watches are pretentious and shite

Right, something about a Boss gold watch just screamed rookie Croydon drug dealer to me.

>>443094

>For that price point, you're only going to be able to get a quartz chronograph

A quartz watch is what I am actually going for. It may not be seen by everybody as the high mark of watchmaking, but they are accurate in a way that a mechanical watch never will be, and that's what counts to me.

>>443093

>Seiko is a bit more classic and cooler

I'm open to whatever brand is good value for money and has a stylish looking watch I will like. Another brand that has caught my eye is Swiss Military, which are apparently considered good affordable Swiss-made quality.

>>443096

>It may not be seen by everybody as the high mark of watchmaking, but they are accurate in a way that a mechanical watch never will be, and that's what counts to me.

I had included a very long rant about exactly this in my previous post, but cut it out as it was the ramblings of a mad man, but yes, I agree, it's almost silly to buy a mechanical chronograph if you actually plan to use it as a chronograph.

Do you need a tachymeter bezel or are you open to others?

>>443096

>Right, something about a Boss gold watch just screamed rookie Croydon drug dealer to me.

Exactly, and they're just a bit boring, from a watch nerd perspective. I'd honestly rather spend a similar amount of money on a high quality fake Rolex, at least that's the sort of fashion statement/lie that can get you some fanny.

>>443097

>Do you need a tachymeter bezel or are you open to others?

A tachymeter is a nice thing to have, although you will probably not get to use it in a meaningful way on public roads. Which brings us back to pretentiousness.

The much more important point to me is diameter size. I tried on a few chrono watches in shops last summer, and although my wrist size is the absolute average for a male adult wrist, 44 millimetres looked far too clunky to me on my wrist. 42 was already pushing it compared to what I am used to, so I guess 42 is the biggest I'll want to go. It's bewildering how much of a difference two or three millimetres of diameter difference make to a watch's appearance.

I guess that also rules out most diving watches, but I'm also not a fan of typical diving bezels, because again they make a watch look clunkier, and for the ten days or so out of every year that I actually go swimming, let alone snorkelling, it's really not something I need.

What I would really appreciate is luminous hands and dial. That really comes in handy when you wake up in the middle of the night and can't be arsed to reach over to your smartphone on the nightstand.

I've got this "All Search Engines" button which is handy for quickly looking up the source of an image but my favourite thing about it is the Baidu tab it opens. If you do a google reverse search for a photo of a person, a lot of the time the results will be photos of people in similar locations with similar poses, lighting and clothes. Baidu does the same thing, except they'll all be Asian.

To add to >>443100 the Yandex search does the same thing, but with Russians. It's just less striking. Still, it's fun to have an "Asian/Russian Doppelgänger" button.

My girlfriend hasn't seen a single one out of Fern Gully, The Brave Little Toaster, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Space Jam, any of the Fieval films, Short Circuit, The Mighty Ducks, Flight of the Navigator, the Iron Giant, Karate Kid, Three Ninjas, Police Academy, The Road to El Dorado or Watership Down. I could probably go on, but she's pretty much only watched The Land Before Time and The NeverEnding Story out of everything I could think of. I don't know if that means I had a wasted childhood or she did.

>>443138

Sounds more like she's just a bit younger than you. I'm going to guess your birth year was 1987-88, and hers is 92-93?

My girlfriend wasn't into pokemon as a kid and I always tell her she must be a robot with implanted memories because of it. I refuse to believe someone who grew up in the 90s could have possibly missed out on that craze.

>>443138>>443145

I'm 1989 and I've only seen Fern Gully and Space Jam on that list, that I can remember. It's not for lack of trying either, I don't think - I remember renting tapes from the newsagents near my grandparents quite frequently - but either because we never had Sky or because I was usually playing out or on my Playstation, I just think I avoided them.

Not otherlad's girlfriend, by the way. He should be so lucky.

I'm about 80% sure either you lot made up Fern Gully just now and are gaslighting my internet with it or it's been Mandela-effected in from an alternate past.

>>443145
She's six months younger than me; she was born in 1989.

The only kids movies I can recall her ever bringing up unprompted are The Rescuers and Aristocats.

>>443146

Also, my ex (roughtly the same age as me) was completely floored I'd never heard of Fraggle Rock, where she was completely obsessed with it. I thought it would be some weird obscure soviet thing she'd accidentally seen, but no, it seemed like I probably should have seen it at least once.

But I suppose we have to remember how different telly worked back then - You saw what happened to be on when you happened to be able to watch it. If my school got out half an hour after yours, we likely had an entirely different TV childhood.

>>443150
Down and fraggle rock, <clap> <clap> (?)

>>443150

Also the CITV vs CBBC thing - in this country, even kids TV is a class signifier.

>>443159

Lad we had four channels, class didn't come into it, I watched whatever I wanted to watch that was available.

>>443160

I'm afraid that makes you a pleb. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

>>443160

I think the real class signifier was when Channel 5 started.

>>443161

Obviously I'm a pleb, we couldn't afford Sky or cable or anything. But I don't see how that has anything to do with watching channel 1 vs channel 3.

For what it's worth I think I watched more CBBC than anything else. I remember watching newsround.

>>443164

Sky and cable were for monied plebs. Poor plebs made do with CITV. Lower-middle-class kids watched both but preferred CBBC, upper-middle-class kids exclusively watched CBBC and the truly posh had a tiny television that they kept in a cupboard and occasionally dragged out for Wimbledon or the Queen's Speech.

Fuck knows what the rules are now.

>>443166

I don't think I could tell you which shows were CITV and which were CBBC, aside from the obvious like Blue Peter. I reckon anyone with a BP badge is a posho, growing sunflowers and that, fucking toffs.

I think the rule now is that if you have a TV in your bedroom, you're working class, unless it's built into a cabinet at the foot of your bed and it comes up on a motor - in which case, if you installed it yourself you're ultra working class, but if you bought it as is or a man installed it while you were away, you're incredibly posh.

>>443160
FOUR?

I remember getting up really early on a Saturday morning and there only being three channels and absolutely nothing on except this weird Open University thing.

>>443168

Channel 4 launched in 1982. Either your telly was fucked, or you're the oldest person on .gs.

>>443169

You'd only have to be 45ish to be old enough to remember that.

Very early weekend mornings were for Teletext and whatever Channel 4 were showing before proper telly started.

I've spent most of the past week falling asleep on the sofa and when I've tried actually going to bed tonight I got a load of motion sickness. I'm back in the living room now and I can hear my neighbour blasting out UB40.

>>443138

Did you have cabal/satellite and she didn't? If I didn't have cable I couldn't imagine having seem most of them it's not like my parents deliberately exposed me to any of them.

I think a lot of it is also down to hoe likely were your parents to let you get video out from the rental shop. I grew up watching my whatever my dad rented, so before the age of 10 I had seen pretty much everything that starred Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, Arnie or Sylvester Stallone. As well as me getting one video on a Saturday, which was often the latest children's Action Adventure or a cartoon film.

I remember getting up really early over the weekend so I could use the TV in the living room so I could play on my Spectrum for a couple of hours before my parents woke up. BBC2 would have the Open University programmes hosted by bearded mean in brown cardigans and Channel 4 would have Teletext.

What was the anime that Channel 4 used to show super early in the morning in the 90s?

>>443248
Medabots?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_bIaF7P9WA

>>443271
I know they're quite shit, but I miss proper gameshows.

>>443271

I think we've solved a mystery here - that lad wasn't murdered, he just heard Barrymore doing karaoke and fucked himself to death.

>>443274
cripes

>>443274

It's like James Hetfield and Kurt Cobain had an illegitimate child together.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9LiPuVRyU8

Relevant because this is the chip butty edition- I've been constipated for a couple of days after overdoing it with carbs and blocking myself up a bit.

I've just had my morning coffee and cig and taken the dump of the year, holy shit, is there a better feeling on this earth. I feel like a king.

https://www.politico.eu/article/liz-truss-britain-new-iron-lady-uk-conservatives/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

>Whisper it, but there are some in the British Conservative Party who believe they’ve finally found their modern-day Margaret Thatcher.

>This potential heir to Maggie is Liz Truss, Britain’s trade secretary. She’s a Northern, state-educated free-marketeer with a passion for dirty burgers (her takeaway of choice is the British fast-food chain Bleecker, from which she orders most Thursday nights) and a hatred of mayonnaise.

>If she reads this piece, she’ll likely strike out unnecessary adverbs and send a late-night email asking for a better-written, shorter version — “It could come back marked TL;DR with dead-eyed emojis,” officials said. She might do so with a cold glass of white wine in hand, and occasionally a Scotch, but only the one: Her addiction is politics, not booze.

>“She’s ferociously, ferociously driven and she’s obsessed by politics,” said a person familiar with her political strategy.

Ye gods, she's going to be PM one day, isn't she?

>>443342

>>443342
You make it sound like Johnson is going anywhere.

>If she reads this piece, she’ll likely strike out unnecessary adverbs and send a late-night email asking for a better-written, shorter version — “It could come back marked TL;DR with dead-eyed emojis,” officials said.

We need to get people reading books again.

>>443343

I'd open up her pork markets IYKWIM.

Who's looking forward to World War Three?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56720589

>>443347
>So is this an invasion force? It could be, but analysts say a big invasion is unlikely

This.

Russian doctrine since Chechnya has become small and smart that emphasises speed and overwhelmingly firepower (and electronics) for limited operations. There's not much in the way of modern equipment to go around so a massive push into Ukraine will be a disorganised bloodbath against dug-in defenders while conversely there's no need to beef up security for a Ukrainian attack anytime soon.

The real reason I suspect is sabre rattling for concessions because Russia's occupation is pulling the country deeper and deeper into crisis. Including in access to water for Crimea: