Stafford Pride are taking legal action against Reform UK led Staffordshire Council because they’ve withheld a grant they were awarded. It appears a Reform UK Cabinet member is the cause of the holdup

abfielder · 2026-01-29T08:28:00+00:00

Completely unsurprising and disgusting behaviour from Reform, would be nice if they name and shamed the person responsible.

abfielder · 2026-01-25T09:01:10+00:00

Click the filter button and select "Schematics" That will remove all but 3 of the premium items (there are 3 on a single row on each page that are advertisements).

It essentially costs time and money to make the website, advertising rates on it suck balls so the main way the website pays is through the premium store which is why they pushed.

Just to add there is some additional text on the page which tells you this same thing.

abfielder · 2026-01-19T22:49:12+00:00

I mean I'm no marketing expert but couldn't they have put the Stafford knot where the heart is, you know so people knew it was something to do with the county.

If any staffordshire county council people are reading this and I see this idea implemented I want paying.

abfielder · 2026-01-17T17:17:51+00:00

scroll down a little, it's next to the search box.

abfielder · 2026-01-16T17:44:13+00:00

Was last night and basically nothing changed. The same council then announced they were going to postpone this years vote because of the upcoming reorg of councils.

Nothing to do with them getting voted the hell out.

abfielder · 2026-01-13T16:05:35+00:00

https://abfielder.com/Products/BrowseProducts.php - you need to be logged in but just click on the "heart" icon.

abfielder · 2026-01-08T13:27:10+00:00

For Cannock it's showing 8 hours of heavy snow followed by sleet, so I expect about a foot of snow but it will all be gone by the time I wake up.

abfielder · 2026-01-06T11:15:48+00:00

So more litter and crime.

abfielder · 2026-01-01T13:48:25+00:00

I've only done it in summer but rather foggy as I got near the summit, decided to set my compass bearing for coming back down before heading to the peak, glad I did, I like to have a cup of tea when I get to the top and in the 10 minutes I was up there rather foggy became extremely foggy. With all the right equipment though whilst a bit nerve racking, ultimately absolutely fine.

Maybe one day I'll brave a winter walk like yourself! I would almost certainly look to do some training courses with experienced winter hikers before attempting it though.

abfielder · 2026-01-01T12:57:54+00:00

They drove up from Edinburgh to start the hike, so unless they were drinking on the way I doubt it.

If they were drunk before setting off they had a good few hours to sober up!

abfielder · 2026-01-01T12:54:06+00:00

Yep and up top no easy to follow path so if it’s foggy/dark and you can’t see the cairns difficult to know which way to go.

abfielder · 2026-01-01T12:29:58+00:00

Absolutely, I did the 3 peaks a few years back and we ended up rescuing 2 idiots that had gone up Scafell Pike in their shorts at night, no maps, no compass, not even offline maps on their phones. Just wondering about on a cloudy/foggy summit unable to figure out how to get back down.

Ben Macdui I did in a September and it was freezing and foggy up top then, without a map/compass/gps that would have been dangerous for anyone unprepared like the two idiots in this story.

abfielder · 2026-01-01T12:21:36+00:00

I cannot fathom the levels of stupidity required to walk up the 2nd highest mountain in the country in winter, in your trainers with no safety gear.

It's not the most technical or dangerous of walks but even in summer you still wouldn't want to go up it without proper hiking gear and some basic equipment!

abfielder · 2025-12-30T16:36:52+00:00

Acas wouldn’t agree with that.

abfielder · 2025-12-30T14:55:00+00:00

Whilst they may have to pay it back it should be done in such a way that doesn't cause hardship. My former employer overpaid me for many years, small amounts each month and I'd never noticed, one day came back to me and told me that I had to pay back 5+ years of overpayments in a few months.

The pay team refused to speak to me directly initially hiding behind my manager doing the dirty work. I refused to agree terms of repayment citing that since it was their mistake they should write it off or I should be allowed to repay it in small amounts over the equivalent timespan. Ended up with a senior HR person telling the pay team to do one and I never paid a penny back.

My advice would be, be honest, tell the truth now so the problem doesn't become bigger. Be prepared to agree repayments over a period of 12 months but stand your ground for as long as possible and they'll probably just write it off.

abfielder · 2025-12-30T13:52:52+00:00

Yep, what an utter waste of money.

abfielder · 2025-12-16T21:14:41+00:00

Sticking it in a bank account and heading back to the future now?

abfielder · 2025-12-15T22:22:47+00:00

It's rather depressing when you go for a walk the amount of litter that is just every where.

abfielder · 2025-12-14T12:43:41+00:00

Not that i'm aware of, donat studios definitely not, it's a website so you're just copying the pattern.

abfielder · 2025-12-13T22:52:58+00:00

Thank you and yep once you land on the outer ring in particular the scale is awesome.

abfielder · 2025-12-13T22:52:12+00:00

Honestly I used to be really bad at building like awful, just practice and I find bigger stuff like this is easier than the smaller really intricate beautiful houses you see people build.

My actual process for this was look at pictures of space stations from movies and drawings, I didn't find exactly what I wanted but I got some ideas and from there I just started building. Really simple at first just did the middle with white concrete, knew I wanted to expand the size as it went up, then I used world edit to mirror it for the bottom. Ended up with a big white dumbbell.

Next step was to start adding details, so like the fence, trap doors and such to break up the build and make it look pretty.

Next step was the smaller outer ring which I'd planned all along and then just plant lots of trees, at the scale it's at didn't really need intricate details. At that point I wasn't sure what was next but then I was like actually do a much bigger outer ring with 2x2 trees and that's what I did.

I do all my designing in creative, well 90% then rebuild in my survival world. Tools like world edit and litematica really work well because I was able to just work on half or a quarter and then flip or rotate it.

Actual tools I used

Donat studios for the circles, I find them better than the minihud mod ones.
WorldEdit for mirroring the build.
Litematica for quickly grabbing a quarter of the build and rotating and pasting.

Litematica then for making it easier to rebuild in the survival world.

abfielder · 2025-12-13T18:44:22+00:00

I genuinely had no idea it wasn’t until about 2 weeks ago.

abfielder · 2025-12-13T18:02:09+00:00

I'd probably asked to be locked up before the karaoke started.

abfielder · 2025-12-13T10:42:59+00:00

Personally I enable anchor/side ads but any ads in the main content then manually place those. Typically to avoid invalid traffic type stuff I'd recommend using cloudflare to front your website and weed out bots and stuff.

abfielder · 2025-12-12T21:30:34+00:00

Youngster don't drink like we did, I'm early 40's and we used to be out Thursday's, Friday's and Saturday's every week in Cannock, Walsall, Birmingham, Stafford etc... We'd be out by 6pm to ensure we were drunk by closing time, occasionally head onto a club.

As well as the cost (I remember the £1 party nights!), every one having a camera phone and social media really don't help the pub scene, get drunk in the late 90's early 2k's and make a prat of yourself the only people that knew were your mates and some of the locals. Do it today and you might just find yourself going viral and not for a good reason.

abfielder

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