Rotifer

I've only found one food that a labrador retriever will not try to eat - pongy mushrooms that have been hanging around in the fridge too long.

They will repeatedly spit out and then try again to eat oranges because they like the smell but can't cope with the texture and acidity.

Are there any other foods that they will turn up their noses at, and not try to eat?

Foods only please - not stupid things that they shouldn't try to eat like socks, marigold gloves and yew berries.

I nominate Channing Tatum.

Because of my hoarding tendencies, I collect a lot of stuff on the principle of "I'll keep that, it might be useful." I'd like to find a craft use for these clear plastic CD shaped discs,other than coasters. I don't know whether they can be recycled.

I don't want to offend people, but if your job involves communicating with the public surely you ought to have a decent grasp of punctuation and spelling. A company named Dvdgold.co.uk keeps sending me promotional emails that contain grocer's apostrophes, and even though I have emailed them and contacted them through their "Contact us" web form, they have ignored my messages suggesting that they remove the apostrophes from non-possessive plurals. Do you think if enough of us contact them, they might take the hint?

If someone emailed you to tell you that you had made an error, and suggested how to look more professional, would you take offence?

http://www.dvdgold.co.uk/723-4-for-740-documentary...

https://www.dvdgold.co.uk/contact-us

My GP has decided to discriminate against working people by refusing to allow patients to make appointments in advance. You can now only get an appointment on the day, by phoning up at 8am to see if they can see you that day.

This is presumably fine for people who aren't working but a lot of us are travelling to work at that time which begs the question:

Do I

A) stay off work, with no notice, for a non-urgent medical condition on the off-chance that I can get an appointment?

or B) go to work, but phone from a noisy bus for an appointment, then get off the bus and travel back if I do manage to get an appointment?

What would you do? I think it is quite dangerous and irresponsible to use that system as it discourages working people from making appointments during the rush hour.

I live in LS7, and would be very grateful if someone could recommend a local GP that lets you make appointments throughout the day for later in the week.

Last time I got charged £8, and the battery has lasted just over a year. I've found the cheap packs of batteries you get in Poundstretcher work just fine, but with this watch I just can't get the back off. I don't want to pay half the price of the watch just for 30 seconds work.

Hi, I bought this Cookworks Signature bread maker, which has quite good reviews on the Argos website but comes with an instruction book that has been badly written, with some vital information left out.

Before its first use it seems to want you to heat it up, but doesn't say how hot or how long or how!

"Open the lid and remove the bread pan and clean the baking chamber. Do not use sharp objects and do not scour! The bread pan is non-stick coated, grease the bread pan and baking chamber empty for about minutes. Cool down and clean it again: finally put kneading bar on the axle inside the bread pan."

It appears 2 bits of an important sentence have been missed out. I found another similar model's instruction sheet on the internet which said 10 minutes, but had the same unhelpful sentences otherwise.

If you have a bread maker with sensible instructions, what does it tell you do to it before using it for the first time?

Thanks.

I bought this LG RHT497H DVD recorder with a built in hard drive, but its manual is really unhelpful. Are there any people out there with a similar machine who can advise please?

It has a fairly easy to use on screen display, and it currently set to automatically put in 5 minute chapters on recordings it makes, but these do not appear when you play back the recording from the hard drive. This is annoying, but you can put them in manually.

More annoyingly, it doesn't seem to record from the hard drive to DVD properly. There are settings for display and recording which are both set to 16:9 widescreen format, however the 16:9 recordings made onto the hard drive which play fine, came out 4:3 when recorded onto DVD. I don't want black bands down the sides of my recordings, so what am I doing wrong?

Can you help with either problem please?

I think he is. He's got a very girly voice, and looks like a girl disguised as a man.

I'm not that bothered about having a phone line, and don't have or want Sky TV. Can you recommend a brand that is cheap and reliable?

I normally don't do exercise for the sake of exercise, but walk for at least 30 minutes a day. I have decided I ought to have some aerobic exercise and buy a keep fit DVD to help me stay more healthy, so I bought a Mr Motivator one, which is about an hour long. How often should I use it to keep fit?

Of the sort where you watch a film or episodes of a TV show, and take a shot every time you see or hear a certain thing. There was an episode of Frasier where Niles and Frasier got wasted playing the Antiques Roadshow drinking game, they had a shot every time they heard the word "veneer".

Got any like that? The sillier the better, whether you've played them or made them up.

How long does it take to go round them thoroughly?

I don't tend to linger very long at exhibits but I like to see everything.

How much time would you recommend I leave for a visit to either one?

I'm having trouble with this "organisation" named UNITE, which specialises in private student halls of residence. To say this lot couldn't run a bath would be an understatement.

Here's a list so far:

1. Not having checked the keys were returned by previous tenants at the start of term, and making students in multiple person flats share keys, while previous tenants could still walk in and potentially steal their belongings. For several weeks into the autumn term.

2. Not inspecting and cleaning all flats prior to new tenants coming in.

3. Showing tenants into (and noticing the state of) smelly, filthy flats, with limited cleaning tools and telling them to clean it.

4. Not maintaining the flats, and letting them sit in disrepair.

5. Not processing direct debit forms, then instead of warning the tenants, sending them threatening invoices with red lettering.

6. Not being willing to budge over rent due, given the horrible service, even after having that explained to them.

7. Rudeness from other members of staff.

8. Not fixing the outdoor aerial for 3 weeks, so bad TV reception and no internet TV (which is included in our rent). And not giving a discount for that.

9. Not even giving you an inventory specific to your type of flat, leaving you confused over what things including furniture are actually supposed to be there, but are missing.

Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with these firms? They have you over a barrel, so if you withhold any rent, they heap late payment charges on you and threaten you with legal action, but if you pay up, you have no leverage with which to negotiate a reduction in your rent. They win either way, because you either end up in trouble, or end up paying the full price for some shocking service.

Have you had similar trouble, or even worse?

Are there any watchdogs or other organisations that can intervene on the tenants' behalf? I would like to hear from anyone who has successfully challenged a company like this.

What should I do? Please help! The bad guys shouldn't be able to win like this.

while living above Greggs the Baker on Kirkcaldy High Street!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith_House

Very handy for the Clydesdale Bank and Discount Clothes Shop too!

I hope he wasn't too disturbed by the Neds.

I got Freeview OK before I went away for Christmas, and although the reception had deteriorated on BBC channels for the last few weeks, I got the other channels fine. I came back to Leeds, and had taken my Freeview DVD recorder with me, which worked perfectly in Scotland, and now it won't find any channels.

The TV gives me analogue channels through a snowstorm with a small indoor aerial, but I should be able to use my coax socket to receive TV from the external aerial. That socket gives me similar reception to the indoor aerial, but before Christmas the picture was rather better even using the analogue channels. It does suggest the building's external aerial has been moved, but you'd expect to pick up some badly rather than none at all.

I've tried more than one cable, and using the indoor aerial with the Freeview receiver.

I also can't receive internet TV on my laptop through my broadband which I could before Christmas which the provider (U-Want) can't shed any light on, and wondered if anyone else might be having similar problems that might indicate a weather or broadcasting problem causing trouble for others?

Any ideas?

I'm trying to find ingredients for various experiments that I've found on the internet such as rude putty and elephant's toothpaste - so many cool experiments I've discovered that claim to use household ingredients are written by Americans who apparently have access to a bigger range of available chemicals in supermarkets and chemists than we do - she says after searching fruitlessly in the big supermarket chains, Boots and Wilkinsons. Any advice for finding this stuff? I've run out of people to show my baking soda/vinegar volcano to and need some new experiments to show the kids!

Now that the European energy Nazis have outlawed normal incandescent bulbs, how are we supposed to melt the wax in our lava lamps? These things only work properly because the heat from the bulb melts the wax. Therefore an energy saving bulb won't be hot enough surely, and the wax will remain solid at the bottom. So why are Argos etc. still selling these obsolete lamps? Right now it is the 100W bulbs that are being outlawed, but surely it will be no time until it is the 40W and 60W bulbs they won't let us have. What will we do? I love my lava lamp! How dare they assume we don't want bulbs to produce heat!

Discuss.

I am thinking of getting a new computer, but I was advised to wait to see how others got on with Windows Vista and its service pack 1 first. Is it any good, is it better or worse than Windows XP?

I have a PC with XP which has always been very slow, much slower than my Dad's PC which had Windows ME and much less RAM, and I have absolutely no idea whether any of these operating systems are any good.

Any information about how Vista compares with older operating systems would be appreciated.