Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Oh yes I saw that advertised, but Aldgit won't go anywhere near that I suspect.

Exec,

I give little problems like that to my wife to sort out.

=====

But if you have a second hand antique "shop" near you, then if you show them the "junk" bit, they may have one in their "odds and sods" box, or may be able to point to and "Old Fashioned" iron monger who carries vintage stock.

Or make one!

The door catch assembly fits inside a slot in the door and the catch pokes out of the edge of the door.

Inside the assembly is a 'square hole'. This takes the square sectioned handle bolt that is turned when you use the door handles to open the closed door.

The square hole bit has fallen apart! It is part of a complete assembly which includes the face plate on the edge of the door. When replacing this face plate you can have the 'same size' or 'go bigger'. 'Going smaller is not an option.

And then the distance of the 'square hole' from the edge of the door is also critical.

I am telling you, the solution to this whole problem is truly orgasmic. It may involve a car trip to Wickes or some such like store and maybe even speaking to real people.....

Thank God (and Mercedes) for heated car seats!

Be careful.

You may add piles to your problems!

A lock smith might be able to cut the piece you wish to replace.

Fred has got a Roll's Royce he sits in the back, Stan drives but he only gets paid £6.70 per hour

Ha Ha Bloody! What a big bummer!

Or maybe even "Ha Bloody Ha! I told you this wasn't a good idea!"

Tower Bridge Glass Walk Way Shatters a Floor Panel!

EL.

Take the lockcase out of the door and go down to B+Q, they have a fair selection of different backset mortice locks on offer. The square bit shouldn't be a problem, the lock normally comes with a new one and they are standard fit jobs.

Doc,

Try Googling for Beaver Architectural Ironmongery. That's who my husband has always used on new build and refurb projects. They're a trade supplier who supplies to ironmongers and contractors, but I'm pretty sure they'll also do one-offs for retail customers.

Nice pics. Silly, but nice.

Representative.

Emblems of present day disconnected toryism.

This sounds serious E/L, better to put the house on the market to be safe.

LOL.

Whey Hey the socialist have it.

Camoron in for a real bad week.

Millis probs were a zit on his bum...................................

Ashcroft National Poll: Con 27%, Lab 32%, Lib Dem 7%, UKIP 18%, Green 7%
Monday, 24 November, 2014 in The Ashcroft National Poll


By Lord Ashcroft

Labour are five points ahead in this week’s Ashcroft National Poll, conducted over the past weekend. Labour’s share is up two points since last week at 32%, with the Conservatives down two at 27%, the Liberal Democrats down two at 7%, UKIP up two at 18%, the Greens unchanged on 7% and the SNP up one point at 5%

Max, ..........you can shove the Daily Express up your as-, you can shove the Daily Express up your as-. repeated like a football song.

hilary, your boys have taken one hell of a beating, one hell of a beating.

Meanwhile on Twitter, 'Camoron Must Go' is still trending at the Nos 1 position. This must be a record. Given younger people by and large use twitter and there as been an upsurge in tuition fees protests I wonder if the young vote is going to put Milliband in Nos 10.

Im now starting to wonder if the polls have got it right with the main partys.

By Jake Wallis Simons
12:54PM GMT 24 Nov 2014
By perpetuating the myth that Britain is a 'classless society', politicians on all sides have underestimated the power of the white working-class male, writes Jake Wallis Simons

He shaves his head, is covered in tattoos, and spends his spare time pulverising other men in cages. You know who I'm talking about: White Van Dan, the new hero of the British working class.

Over the weekend, the man whose enthusiasm for flags ended Emily Thornberry’s career published his “Danifesto” for the future of the country in the Sun (despite not being able to remember the last time he voted).

It included forcing people to have to work for four years before claiming benefits; jailing people who burn poppies, as happened in 2011; bringing back old-fashioned discipline in schools (“kids are too mouthy now, not like when we had the cane”); and toughening up on immigration (“if people show up uninvited, send them back”).

He seems to be a living, breathing cliché. But then, this has been a story of clichés: the out-of-touch Labour politician; the salt-of-the-earth working-class man; the hysterical media circus; the foot-in-mouth convulsions of Ed Miliband. And it took a man like White Van Dan to give the political classes a wake-up call.

Of all the idiocies that have been spouted by British politicians in recent decades – and there have been many – one of the most transparent is the notion that class is dead. When John Major said that we live in a “classless society”, and Tony Blair argued that “the class war is over”, they were speaking the most appalling guff. Yet it is a myth that is still perpetuated today.

Politicians, seeking to win votes from all classes, are too scared to talk openly about class divisions in Britain, preferring to continue to assert that “we’re all middle class now”. Ed Miliband and David Cameron refuse to even use the term “working class”, preferring mealy-mouthed, patronising euphemisms like “hardworking people” and “everyday people”.

Meanwhile when Emily Thornberry airs her true attitudes on Twitter, or when Grant Shapps commissions a poster suggesting that “hardworking people” are driven solely by bingo and beer, the mask inexorably slips.

Of course, the truth – as the popularity of White Van Dan has shown – is that although the old Upstairs Downstairs certainties have been broken down, Britain is as class-stratified and class-conscious as it ever was.

The London Health Observatory has found that those in the city’s poorest wards have a life expectancy that is almost 25 years lower than those in the most affluent.

In East London, middle-class hipsters can be seen on the same pavements as impoverished immigrants, but they frequent wholly different shops, pubs and cafés, talk largely different languages, and have vastly different future prospects and world views.

In state schools in the Home Counties, children from a variety of backgrounds might sit in the same classroom, but those from book-lined, hummus-eating homes simply will not become friends with the ones whose lives are dominated by Disney princess dresses, football shirts and Happy Meals. Even their names are different: Oliver, Isabel, Robin, Catherine; Lacey, Kayden, Madison, Reece.

In the north and in Scotland, entire communities of working class people feel profoundly alienated by local and national politics, ignored by the Tories and abandoned by a metropolitan Labour Party.

And all over the country, British people have very few friends, or even acquaintances, outside of their own narrow classes.

According to the Sutton Trust, just 21 per cent of children from the lowest incomes get five good GCSEs, compared with 75 per cent of the richest. Here can be found the clearest intersection of education, income and class: studies have shown that the single best determinant of a child’s success is the number of books on the shelves at home.

Moreover, the digital revolution has placed a greater pressure on the value of education. As mid-level jobs are replaced by technology, the poorly-educated are being driven into lower-paid employment in supermarkets, warehouses and cafés, while the well-educated are seeing their salaries soar as they harness technology at the top.

And in the Britain of 2014, world-class educations can be purchased for more than many working-class people would hope to earn in a year.

In 1845, Benjamin Disraeli wrote of a Britain comprised of two separate nations, “between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by different breeding, are fed by different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws”.

Plus ça change.

Which brings us back to the cliché of White Van Dan. The politicians may be repressing the open acknowledgement of class, but the rest of the country does not.

From the Pub Landlord to Wayne and Waynetta Slob, from Little Britain and Shameless to The Only Way is Essex, British popular culture is saturated with class stereotypes. These are counterbalanced by Tory Boy, Made In Chelsea and Life Is Toff.

It is clear that we Britishers are not only conscious of class, we are conscious of how much we are conscious of it. We talk about it, think about it, lampoon it and joke about it, and with good reason: it affects all of our lives, and often adversely. Meanwhile, our political leaders affect not to know what we talk about when we talk about class.

The debacle in Rochester and Strood could almost have been an episode of The Thick Of It. But it has shown politicians that, sooner or later, they need to start taking class seriously. And for that reason, White Van Dan is my hero too.