[The Savage Squirrel]

HGI Snowdonia is near Snowdonia, DT Cadbury North is near the Mendips, Avisford Park nr Arundel is near the South Downs, and hell, even the seemingly couldn’t-be-less-inspiring DT Newbury on the M4 is near the the Ridgeway and North Wessex Downs!

[The Savage Squirrel]

Thanks Ikaz that’s really useful!

[The Savage Squirrel]

Please do be very careful and do your research.

Turkey has many oustanding dentists, some of them genuinely world class, who will be able to do it at a lower cost than is possible for a comparable level of work in the UK

BBCode you used is not allowed.

.
They also have some dentists that market to UK tourists and produce work that is low-cost high-turnround and is not planned or executed with long term health in mind.
Doing a good job is always slower and more costly than doing a bodge job. If you go there looking ONLY for the absolute cheapest possible, or are going on “dental holiday” package deal, then you are in grave danger of finding the second type of dentist rather than the first. Cost needs to be one consideration, but not the only one.

There’s one particularly well known Turkish clinic (that markets heavily in the Merseyside area), whose speciality is heavily drilling down healthy unrestored teeth to replace with ultra-white straight crowns; where tooth whitening and straightening could have achieved a similar – in fact better – result without the destruction of healthy tissue and commitment to a cycle of lifelong replacement. That is exactly the sort of thing you need to avoid.
Informing someone – who had that their previously healthy teeth drilled to stumps and replaced with ill-fitting crowns, which rapidly fail or cause problems, that they require complex rehabilitation at a cost many times what it would have cost to solve their initial problem, and that even with this there is no way to ever return their mouth to its pre-treatment condition, is not a pleasant conversation. There are always tears…

All dental work, no matter how good, requires maintenance and will, eventually, need replacement (remember your mouth and teeth are superbly evolved to grind up and destroy anything and everything they meet – that is their function after all). There is a chance of complications and unexpected events for any medical/dental procedure no matter how well executed. Be very clear of the realistic lifespan and how you intend to deal with maintenance and replacement of any work you have done. Be very clear how you would deal with any complications or corrections that are required – particularly urgent problems such as pain or infection (The NHS can not and will not provide replacements for failed or poorly executed cosmetic work or dental implants. Even in private practice, dealing with any poor execution or failure is difficult and may cost many times what the initial procedure did). Be clear exactly what regulatory and legal protections are in place and what recourse you have should the work not be satisfactory.

Hope that is of some help with what to think about.

[The Savage Squirrel]

+1
Made a post (on a different thread). It shows up as the last post for that thread on the “recent posts” page, yet when you go to the thread it’s not there!

[The Savage Squirrel]

The Savage Squirrel wrote:

Rhys Jones wrote:

JimBurgessHill wrote:

Use BA’s Chronomics link and the price reduces to £61.74 🙂 (No need to be flying BA)

[Edit: Was replying to earlier Chromonics post but my reply seems to have been positioned away from it]

You need to use the ‘quote’ button if you want to reply to someone.

That’s where things break down I think Rhys.
On Windows desktop Chrome….
It’s highly intuitive to reply to a specific post by hitting “reply” yet that’s not what happens. Reply seems to just add a new unconnected post to the bottom of the thread … which makes it illogical to have it on every post. It’s a redundant button.
You do get a proper attached reply if you hit “quote” but the issue here is that the button actually just dumps the relevant quote as a text in the “reply to” box at the bottom of the webpage (offscreen). With no hint that this has happened. It’s therefore highly non-intuitive and you can end up with several identical quotes in you reply box as you repeatedly hit “quote” thinking nothing happened.

Design suggestions:
1) Remove “reply” button on individual posts altogether.
2) Retain “quote” button on individual posts but rename it as “reply”
3) When quote button is hit the webpage needs to reposition oto the reply text box.

Hope that all makes sense – tried to make it clear!

—————————————-
Reply to myself…
Also the quoted text need proper separation (I think a shaded bordered box is the most common convention – with nested boxes for quotes within quotes) to make it clear what is quoted text and what is reply.

[The Savage Squirrel]

I’ve paid HMRC with COT/Curve every month for years. This is the monthly employees’ PAYE bill, so 100% is uncontroversial business spend; and is also part of a full suite of other regular business spend (we put everything we can through there).
Gut feel from what others have said on HfP: I’d say they’re fine with normal spending but small and nimble enough to notice if you start to f*** about doing dodgy stuff, so don’t.

[The Savage Squirrel]

Firstly where are you in the country if you want a quick break rather than extensive travel?

Cadbury House Bristol South has nice grounds, a decent spa, a couple of places to eat including a MPW, and is conveniently near the M5 (although NOT near Bristol 😀 )
Have heard good things about St George’s Park although haven’t stayed myself. It’s all pretty new and shiny.

[The Savage Squirrel]

dst87 wrote:

At what point is it worth contacting a hotel directly to make a group booking? I’m sure it depends on the hotel, but would be interested to hear any experiences.

I regularly organise a handful of rooms for a quarterly event (normally only 4 or 5 rooms). Is that a level where any hotel is likely to offer a better rate? I’ve assumed not (previous rooms just booked online) but maybe I’m a mug for not asking?

I’d definitely be Emailing. x100 if it’s a recurring booking at the same hotel every time; 20 room nights per year recurring is not megaVIP but not trivial either – certainly worth keeping you happy, for a small/mid sized property anyway. Every sensible hotel LOVES predictable regular repeat custom. Even if you’ve just found a better rate at a third party site and Email reservations, they’ll almost certainly match it direct.
I’ve had my own room free or even just had my own room upgraded to an embarrasingly nice room/suite (compared to what I booked, and what everyone else therefore got 😀 😀 ) when booking blocks of around 8-10, for example.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by The Savage Squirrel.

[The Savage Squirrel]

Olly wrote:

Why? VA made a big announcement about this new functionality about a month ago (covered on HFP) but no idea about how one actually makes it happen

Olly, HH is usually used to mean “Hilton Honors” on HfP hence the confusion and lack of replies.

If you mean a Household account with Virgin Atlantic then I think you still have to call the call centre to do this (and as you probably know, it’s Silver status and above only).

[The Savage Squirrel]

A list of most recent posts would actually be very useful.

How useful – well some other forums realise this is such a powerful tool they have it as their root address page! For a travel example that is really basic but works well, see:

https://www.vegasmessageboard.com/

[The Savage Squirrel]

EDITED: quote nesting was OK after hard reset.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by The Savage Squirrel.

[The Savage Squirrel]

Rhys Jones wrote:

JimBurgessHill wrote:

Use BA’s Chronomics link and the price reduces to £61.74 🙂 (No need to be flying BA)

[Edit: Was replying to earlier Chromonics post but my reply seems to have been positioned away from it]

You need to use the ‘quote’ button if you want to reply to someone.

My second suggestion would be:

It’s very unclear what is original post and what is reply.
The convention on the internetz is a greyed out box (and often nested boxes for replies of replies). I think it has become the convention and is used almost everywhere because it actually works really well. I suppose Flyertalk would be the most familiar example to HfPers. In this instance I think it’s fine to copy…

Design suggestion: Nested and shaded boxes to contain quotes when quoting previous posts.

[The Savage Squirrel]

Rhys Jones wrote:

JimBurgessHill wrote:

Use BA’s Chronomics link and the price reduces to £61.74 🙂 (No need to be flying BA)

[Edit: Was replying to earlier Chromonics post but my reply seems to have been positioned away from it]

You need to use the ‘quote’ button if you want to reply to someone.

That’s where things break down I think Rhys.
On Windows desktop Chrome….
It’s highly intuitive to reply to a specific post by hitting “reply” yet that’s not what happens. Reply seems to just add a new unconnected post to the bottom of the thread … which makes it illogical to have it on every post. It’s a redundant button.
You do get a proper attached reply if you hit “quote” but the issue here is that the button actually just dumps the relevant quote as a text in the “reply to” box at the bottom of the webpage (offscreen). With no hint that this has happened. It’s therefore highly non-intuitive and you can end up with several identical quotes in you reply box as you repeatedly hit “quote” thinking nothing happened.

Design suggestions:
1) Remove “reply” button on individual posts altogether.
2) Retain “quote” button on individual posts but rename it as “reply”
3) When quote button is hit the webpage needs to reposition oto the reply text box.

Hope that all makes sense – tried to make it clear!

[The Savage Squirrel]

Cloth rags/masks of all varieties are a terrible idea, collect moisture, feel hot and fit terribly. If the public stopped wearing these stupid things they’d complain less about trivial mask wearing stints for 15 minutes round Tesco’s.
FFP masks are a bit restrictive for the general population.
To be honest, a box of IIR masks is better than anything. They’re designed for healthcare professionals to wear all day every day so are pretty decent for comfort and lack of restriction, and the moldable metal strip over your nose (not your chin like so many!) will prevent steaming when molded correctly while giving you a bit of space round your lips and chin to not feel restricted. Just pull out a new one if it gets damp/soiled/scratty. Ear loop or tie-behind is personal preference.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by The Savage Squirrel.

[The Savage Squirrel]

Barraclough wrote:

I’ve transferred 40,000 Virgin points to Hilton Honors and was told when I called Virgin to make the transfer that it will take up to 30 days to complete. Does anyone know if it’s quicker than that in practice?

They do a manual sweep once a month if I remember rightly, so it could be anything from a couple of days; up to 31 days if you just missed the cutoff.

[The Savage Squirrel]

8 hours is a looooooooong time. Airports are boring. The beach is 10 minutes away while Venice and Santa Monica are 20 minutes away….

[The Savage Squirrel]

Well my first thought is – fun game – guess every “anonymous” identity from their now-big-enough-to-be-visible avatar pic
Second thought – would it be a good idea to have a “dustbin” off-topic forum for the interesting chat on every subject that pops up every day from the very informative HfP crowd. I get that it would increase moderation work … but I’m sure you could recruit a few of your regulars for that purpose just like so many other communities do.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by The Savage Squirrel.