Jonboy

Assuming they are terracotta they simply don’t transit well with parcel couriers packed stacked together. Anything ceramic needs at least a a layer of bubble wrap or cardboard between each piece or it uses even the slightest bit of space to knock themselves into each other on the conveyor belts and in the back of their vans and destroy themselves. Ceramics are also uninsurable in transit so the loss is all on the sender very time. ( he writes having managed a warehouse shipping well over 500,000 ceramic items a year). The palletised delivery’s to garden centres will generally be less stressful as they have less handling in transit (forklift rather than thrown!!), and are normally banded together to prevent such movement.

To echo a much earlier comment if it wasn’t for the need to care for the cats, my wife and I would likely have traveled much more often and far further over their lifetime. I just wish we could train them to s*&£ in other peoples gardens rather than keep buying litter that has all the extra carbon footprint of being produced, transported, retailed and disposed of...

Plugged into the same USB port?

Are they disused treacle mine entrances?

It was George that walked over to Bottas, and Bottas flicking the bird...George then hit his helmet which doesn’t seem particularly gentlemanly...but shows he has some passion.

Still trying to get my head around a Williams trying to overtake a Mercedes in the current era....

Well the wife had an two Identical items not arrive (sent together). She contacted seller who sent replacements that arrived around 10 days ago.she then marked items as received and left 5 star feedback as pleased with service. Today she received two refunds (one for each item) from eBay. She paid by PayPal, but the payment and refunds all show as an @ebay.co.uk email address so she cannot even resend the money direct...

Just to answer your comments in the freight. Exports from China/HK i general are still going ahead. What has happened is there are shortages on empty shipping containers.Partly because the factory’s that make them stopped for three months under COVID lockdown and partly because governments over ordered incorrect ppe and are storing it in them, in ports (at one point the uk had 12,000 such containers in Felixstowe). The shipping lines are also making sure every vessel is full. This combination means it takes 4-5 weeks to lock in a freight booking instead of 1-2 days. freight cost is also roughly 4 times higher than normal at the moment. The train service is running but again is fully booked way in advance.

Sadly that’s the case with almost any RC model, outside the ready to run (RTR) boxed kits. The tug I am building at the moment(as my first boat) started as a £100 or so kit and is currently at around £300 with extras such as optional fitting kit, motor, servo, speed controller, battery, water pump for fire hydrant ...I already had a controller and we won’t count the soldering station I had to order for the motor as the 18w antec wouldn’t handle it..to misquote jaws “ your gonna need a bigger iron!!!” (I keep looking at the Tamiya trucks, but reckon it’s a £1100 all in and thinking again...)

“Club 500 Slipway Fun Boat The Club 500 has everything to build the basic model - including propeller, shaft and tube, rudder/tiller, 550 motor, coupling and window decals. You can customise your model by selecting below the colours of your choice (the original basic model had a white hull and coloured deck parts). £59.50 + £10.00 postage and packing” “Additional items required: A good pair of scissors; a modelling knife; coarse sandpaper and rubbing block; masking tape; a small round file; pliers; double-sided sticky pads and elastic bands. Two part epoxy can be used, to bond the hull and deck together Soudal Fix-All crystal can be highly recommended being successfully used by a number of local club members. A two-channel radio control system using either a servo operated speed control, or micro switch to motor control (or an electronic speed controller minimum 15 amps continuous rating); 7.2 Nimh pack ( buggy type ) battery and battery charger” Radios are not included because they can shared with other boats. With a modern system you can bind multiple receivers to the same controller (similar in principle to dcc) but only drive one at a time.

I quite like the look of the club 500 boats for a bit of fun https://www.club500slipway.com and am sorely tempted to get one each for my brother and myself...

Couple of points on @The Stationmaster ‘s post. Until around three years ago VAT calculations always assumed any settlement discount was being taken up. This lowered the cash paid by the customer and was particularly advantageous to small retailers (or perceived to be) on flat rate VAT schemes who pay a simple percentage of turnover to HMRC rather than producing a full return of sales VAT less purchase VAT. Most accounts software had this built in. You now have to produce an invoice with VAT on the full amount and issue a credit note only if the discount is taken up. This means a small cash flow benefit is part swallowed by another administrative process. The other interesting thing of the Hornby accounts is up until around 2015 their revenue recognition specifically mentioned it was net of rebates. It has now omitted that but their marketing administration mentions it includes “customer support initiatives”. Whether these are rebates included under their trade terms and conditions, agreed individually with specific customers or more relevant to their larger high street customers ( who sometimes ask for “marketing contributions” or similar) isn’t disclosed...

It’s a phased changeover: https://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/selling/managed-payments

As I mentioned in my earlier post that does chime precisely with the issues I am experiencing at work, across the arts and crafts sector. The alternative would presumably be for Hornby to produce their full quantity’s of each item, but reduce the range of items of items being produced and assumes it isn’t partly due to specific components being less available. This would make lots of items much later than announced which leads to howls of protest on places such as RMweb.... Given the extreme extra demand caused by so many people being at home (whether furlough or simply time normally spent commuting or on other activities such as pubs, trips out, following a partner around another shoe shop etc ) all previous experience in how to handle such decisions is less valuable and it is very difficult not to upset someone. If we do reach a point of back to domestic business as usual with the vaccines, it will be interesting to see how the shortages across many areas of retail pan out for the next year or two.

I just got a roll of the eyes, I may pay later....

Many like my employer have an annual policy in place via their normal insurance broker, so the forwarders don’t have sight of it ( other than knowing they have to add 0.02 percent of the value of goods or similar to any customs clearance as its a cost of importing and needs to have duty paid on it). Some just try their luck on the basis that any one shipment won’t bankrupt them. Others do pay the forwarder to arrange a policy per shipment and you can tell a quality forwarder over whether they discuss this when opening an account. Generally there are no guarantees timewise in shipping and if there are they are limited to the cost of shipping (and you would pay a premium on every shipment for this to cover the occasional claim so no real gain). Even the domestic couriers offering “guaranteed next delivery” caveat themselves out with exclusions such as traffic, vehicular breakdown, etc etc. and limit compensation to cost of delivery.

I buy a wide variety of arts and crafts products from around the world (branded items from factories and our own brand items) for work at a wholesaler. We are seeing a non-stop issue of orders being short-shipped, postponed, delayed and cancelled as our suppliers are struggling to get raw materials, packaging and also manage their production around their various countries versions of COVID secure, social distancing, lockdowns and self-isolation. This against a backdrop of record worldwide demand for hobby items as people are generally at home more at the moment. It has deteriorated from a normal rate very high fulfilment rate on our purchase orders to a significantly poorer level depending on the suppliers, and we cannot rely on any orders being fulfilled until in the hands of our freight forwarders. Freight is also unpredictably high in cost and in short supply leading to a squeeze on margins and delays in shipment (even when you think it’s all booked and ready to go in some cases). I do wonder if Hornby are getting full fulfilment of their orders from the factory’s, but don’t know if they would short-ship one customer or evenly chop them from all orders....cynically editing one customers orders is a lot easier than trying to evenly cull all of them...particularly if the customer has volume discounts or performance rebates negotiated that lower the bottom line further...

As a regular importer my first instinct would be to tell them where to go....we wouldn’t be expected to pay GA if the ship shunted into the dock or some other similar incident whilst positioning so why would we pay it for hitting the side of a canal....it was not genuine peril with cargo at risk of being jettisoned, just a lot of aggravation in the public eye..... Then I would pass it over to our marine insurers and leave it to their legal team to worry about....

It is also possible for sellers to outsource all their warehousing and distribution to Amazon under the FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) arrangements. It is often used by overseas sellers.

Personally I don’t have an issue with a passport if it is a short term show and proceed (similar to a driving licence being used as ID in a pub). I would be less keen if private companies were to have to record the details and keep them on file etc etc. I am always uneasy about the vast levels of information and data some organisations want and how it could be (mis)used in the future. This is especially the case with medical records for me personally.

I suspect if you look at the methodology that Germany have used to prioritise vaccines there is much bigger spread in ages ranges that have received it. This is apparently because their decentralised health systems dont have sufficient detail on file to target age groups en-mass in the way the uk have done, partly due to GDPR.... In some areas they seemingly resorted to guessing age based on first names... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/german-covvaccine-officials-play-name-game-to-comply-with-data-privacy-laws

The only thing that seems slightly out of sync is the pit penalties so far, given the significantly smaller pit presence on this track, but I guess safety deterrents need to be severe and running three at a time may change the dynamic anyway.

Personally World of books is my first go to place to check for any book I want to buy these days. I initially found them through Amazon marketplace and then found their direct website which is normally cheaper. I am up-to 40-50 books from them now without any problems.

As cargo was not jettisoned and there was no “Peril” involved I would fight a General Average claim tooth and nail (written as someone who is booking freight for my employer numerous times a month). I am aware that sometimes salvage exercises could result in a claim but as this was in a canal channel, and not a reef or shore it will be extremely interesting to watch it play out. The real fun bit is that often when booking lCL consignments you don’t know precisely what vessel cargo is on unless you ask specifically. Often you get a voyage number or ETA at port and nothing more.

The bit that confuses me with the scrap merchants is I had around 500kg of steel shelving (awful stuff that had to be screwed to a wall etc) a couple of years back. Took a sample to three legal yards and was told it was valueless as scrap but if I delivered they would dispose of it for me. Booked a skip as less hassle than booking a hire van etc etc and the whole lot was stolen overnight by skip rats. If the legal boys won’t pay for it, how are they making money from it... back on topic just realised said stickers are still on our washing machine and tumble dryer...which surprised me as i normally enjoy removing stickers and plastic off new items...