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Not just fewer deer; one of the impacts of large predators is that they kill competing mesopredators, reducing the pressure on smaller prey species. The classic example is lynx predation of foxes. There's also the 'landscape of fear' consideration, whereby deer - or other prey species - under...

Not just size, but the airfield firefighting appliances must be available for airfield firefighting any time the airfield is open. If the domestic appliances are dual-hatted, then a fire somewhere else means the airfield gets shut down until it's extinguished.

The 'overriding operational requirement' thing is supposed to cover situations where following civilian regulations results in people getting shot at and killed. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free card for when the regulations are inconvenient. The armed forces have had to get that explained to...

In peacetime they do. Defence Safety Authority regulations dictate that the military has to comply with civilian regulations except where necessary to satisfy an overriding operational requirement and where compliance is not reasonably practical. The RAF can't land there (in peacetime at least)...

So far as I can tell, every fatal rail accident in the UK since the formation of the RAIB has seen both an inquest or FAI, as appropriate, and an RAIB investigation. The key difference seems to be that in Scotland, the fatal accident inquiry comes after the prosecution, rather than before it...

Getting the Edinburgh-London and Glasgow-London passengers onto high speed trains would go a long way to easing congestion. You might get Glasgow and Ayrshire passengers to use Prestwick, but the rest of Central Scotland would gravitate to Edinburgh. The settlement through which one travels...

They all (presumably) know people find their adverts irritating. But if they make theirs less irritating, the result will be that they get noticed less. So everyone is incentivised to be at least as irritating as the competition. It's a similar story as why getting out of the bus and into your...

When people drove to the speed limit and accepted they were at fault if they were caught flagrantly exceeding it.

I was fortunate to have driving lessons in snow, largely because I learnt in the Highlands and took so long to pass my test that it was essential. I also ran snow tyres for a while when I was doing a long commute by car. The combination was very useful during the 'Beast from the East' when I was...

One of the principal difficulties with heat pumps seems to be that they're incompatible with the British attitude of 'I'll just pop the heating on for an hour'. Operated that way, they're very slow to warm a home and cost a lot of money, leading to a lot of complaints that they don't work...

I've been known to ask for an iron & ironing board - some chains don't put them in the rooms by default as they're not much used. Always thought trouser presses were the most exotic thing in the world as a child. Which probably tells you how sheltered an upbringing I had!

No reason why timber framing should rule out gas - something like 90% of newbuild homes in Scotland are timber framed and the vast majority are also gas heated.

Combi boilers are great - but for larger homes, a system boiler and hot water cylinder is still preferred as a boiler that could keep up with maximum demand would be unduly large. Our immersion heater switch is buried away in the cupboard with the cylinder so it's really easy to forget about and...

Being pedantic, this term is a little loose: Namely, whose public holidays? One assumes UK. But if a holder travels from Gretna Green to Carlisle on 2nd January, does the minimum fare apply? Is the answer the same if they travel from Carlisle to Gretna Green? And are the answers the same on...

Not merely punctures, but catastrophic failures. If the tyre is intact, a patch kit can get you to somewhere that a proper repair can be carried out perfectly well. If the tyre has completely blown out, or been shredded, or is otherwise distributed along the previous half-mile, the spare wheel...

The really big deep sea stuff with two-stroke slow-speed diesels still does work this way.

As things stand, the delivery process is: distribution centre to HGV to local office to van to customer. From the logistics company point of view, minimising handling is the key to efficiency. You need the van/cargo bike for the last mile anyway. That means that the only potential use for rail...

You may wish to consider any similar jobs which your spouse has been putting off, or which you otherwise wish to have carried out, and purchase the necessary tools and/or materials as a gift. If you attempt this strategy, I'd recommend ensuring that the spare bedding has already been laid out...

Perhaps ironically, increasing fuel duty would be a relatively straightforward way to provide the necessary funds to improve public transport such that people didn't need to drive as much. But the political realities mean that this only works if you apply the stick (fuel duty) first, with the...

If you're going to handle the cages into a lorry to get to the station nearest the distribution centre, between passenger trains several times, then to a lorry for the last half mile or so from Wick station to the other shops, the economics work out better to drive the lorry straight up from the...