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The widow of 'Only Fools and Horses' legend John Challis, Carol, has shared a poignant moment from her visit to his graveside over the festive period. Touched by the heartfelt decorations festooned on his grave at Leintwardine in Herefordshire, Carol took to social media to reveal how residents paid tribute with a wreath, blooms and even a small Christmas tree adorning his final resting place. Overwhelmed with emotion, Carol posted: "I've just had a little weep. The people at Wigmore Abbey, Steve, Andrea and Victoria went to see John early this morning and left all this Christmas loveliness for him. Never forgotten, Challis." Heartened by the gesture, she mused on the unwavering remembrance of her late spouse, the iconic 'Boycie' actor who dwelt in the famed Wigmore Abbey - a setting that shone in the 'Only Fools' spin-off 'The Green Green Grass'. In a touching tweet brimming with nostalgia, Carol recalled lost loved ones, sharing: "Especially over Christmas, my thoughts have been with my much loved and missed mother Libby, father Denis, nephew Simon and my darling husband. All gone. All those memories." READ MORE - Couple's St. Stephen's Day walk 'ruined' as they make grim discovery hidden in undergrowth READ MORE - Modern day 'Nostradamus' who predicted Covid gives seven chilling forecasts for 2025 John Challis, affectionately known by many, departed "peacefully in his sleep" after a defiant struggle with cancer at the age of 79 in September 2021. The family of the late John Challis, beloved for his role as 'Boycie', released a heartfelt statement: "He will always be loved for being 'Boycie' and leaves a great legacy of work that will continue to bring pleasure and smiles for many years to come," reports the Mirror . The Express covered the story, noting the family's plans to hold a celebration of John's life in the future, open to all. His health had sharply declined before his passing, with Sir David Jason commenting on This Morning: "It wasn't a complete surprise because poor old John hadn't been well for the last month or two. But he went downhill so fast, very rapidly, that one minute we were thinking he was on the road to recovery and sadly it just took him." At the time, his family said the actor died "peacefully in his sleep, after a long battle with cancer" and encouraged donations to Cuan Wildlife Rescue, Tusk, or the British Hedgehog Preservation Society in his memory. Posthumously, it was revealed that John's will instructed for his estate to go to his fourth wife Carol, whom he married in 1995. John had previously been married to Carol Robertson, Debbie Arnold, and Sabina Franklyn, but did not have any children. His headstone bears a subtle tribute to the much-loved sitcom; the inscription reads: "John Challis - actor - 1942-2021, I am here." A line fans of Only Fools will instantly recognise from the classic episode featuring psychic Elsie Partridge holding a séance with Del Boy, Rodney Trotter, and Boycie in attendance. Elsie channels a spirit calling for someone named Audrey... no, Aubrey. In the silent room, Boycie speaks out, "I am here," revealing his middle name is Aubrey. "You never said your name was Aubrey," Trigger remarks, to which he retorts: "Nor would you if your name was Aubrey." Join the Irish Mirror’s breaking news service on WhatsApp. Click this link to receive breaking news and the latest headlines direct to your phone. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don’t like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you’re curious, you can read our Privacy Notice .Women are more likely to need walking sticks, wheelchairs and other mobility aids compared to men, but they are less likely to use them, according to a study. And single people are more likely to use mobility tools compared to those who are married, according to researchers from University College London (UCL) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Researchers looked at information from a group of more than 12,000 adults in England aged 50 to 89 who were tracked over a 13-year period. At the start of the study, 8,225 adults had no mobility difficulty and did not use mobility assistive products (MAPs). Some 2,480 were deemed to have “unmet need” and 1,375 were using mobility aids. During the follow-up period, there were 2,313 “transitions” where people went from having no mobility issues to needing some help with getting around. And 1,274 people started to use mobility aids. Compared with men, women were 49% more likely to transition from not needing mobility aids to needing to use them, according to the study which has been published in The Lancet Public Health. But were 21% less likely to go on to use mobility aids when they needed them. The authors said their study showed “barriers to access” for women. For both men and women, with every year that passed during the study period the need for mobility aids increased. People who were older, less educated, less wealthy or reported being disabled were more likely to “transition from no need to unmet need, and from unmet need to use”, the authors said, with this indicating a “higher prevalence of mobility limitations and MAP need overall among these groups”. They added: “Finally, marital or partnership status was not associated with transitioning to unmet need; however, single people were more likely to transition from unmet need to use compared with married or partnered people.” Jamie Danemayer, first author of the study from UCL Computer Science and UCL’s Global Disability Innovation Hub, said: “Our analysis suggests that there is a clear gender gap in access to mobility aids. “Though our data didn’t ascertain the reason why participants weren’t using mobility aids, other research tells us that women are often more likely than men to face obstacles such as cost barriers as a result of well-documented income disparities between genders. “Many mobility aids are designed for men rather than women, which we think may be a factor. “Using mobility aids can also make a disability visible, which can impact the safety and stigma experienced by women, in particular. “There’s a critical need for further research to identify and break down the barriers preventing women from accessing mobility aids that would improve their quality of life.” Professor Cathy Holloway, also from UCL, added: “Not having access to mobility aids when a person needs one can have a big impact on their independence, well-being and quality of life. “Our analysis suggests that women, in particular, regardless of other factors such as education and employment status, are not getting the support that they need.” Professor Shereen Hussein, senior author of the study and lead of the social care group at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “The research provides compelling evidence of gender disparities in accessing assistive technology, suggesting that cost, design bias, and social stigma are likely to disproportionally affect women. “This underscores the need for inclusive, gender-sensitive approaches in the design, production and inclusivity of assistive technologies.”The Bank of Scotland’s business barometer poll showed 73% of Scottish businesses expect to see turnover increase in 2025, up from 60% polled in 2023. Almost a quarter (23%) of businesses expect to see their revenue rise by between six and 10% over the next 12 months, with just over a fifth (21%) expecting it to grow by even more. The poll found that 70% of businesses were confident they would become more profitable in 2025, a two per cent increase when compared with the previous year. Revenue and profitability growth was firms’ top priority at 52%, though 40% said they will be targeting improved productivity, and the same proportion said they will be aiming to enhance their technology – such as automation or AI – or upskill their staff (both 29%). More than one in five (22%) want to improve their environmental sustainability. Other areas businesses are hoping to build upon AI-assisted technology (19%), and 24% will be investing in expanding into new UK markets and 23% plan to invest in staff training. The business barometer has surveyed 1,200 businesses every month since 2002, providing early signals about UK economic trends. Martyn Kendrick, Scotland director at Bank of Scotland commercial banking, said: “Scottish businesses are looking ahead to 2025 with stronger growth expectations, and setting out clear plans to drive this expansion through investments in new technology, new markets and their own teams. “As we enter the new year, we’ll continue to by their side to help them pursue their ambitions and seize all opportunities that lie ahead.”panalo999 free 100 。

Gatekeeping is something that's brought up a lot, isn't it? It's frowned upon, obviously enough, as obnoxious, off-putting, and generally unnecessary – whether we're talking about gaming, music, movies, books, you name it. New fans aren't going to ruin Metallica for you just because they're, well, new, and they like St Anger. I'm not here to talk about that trashcan snare drum, though – no. I'm here to talk about PC gaming and how absolutely diabolically expensive it's become to even get yourself into the ecosystem. It's dumb. Real dumb. I bought my first gaming PC back in 2011. It was a pretty solid build back in the day: Core-i5 2500K, 8GB of DDR3, a nice BitFenix Shinobi chassis, the works. The crowning glory in that thing, though, was the graphics card, an Twin Frozr GTX 460, complete with 1GB of VRAM, on 's Fermi architecture at 40nm. Perfect for a bit of raiding with my guild at the time. It's a card that retailed for $250, but I paid around half that for the GPU (£130 in the UK to be precise). In January 2013, I upgraded to a GTX 660, Asus DirectCU II, with 2GB of VRAM. That card was available for £155 (retailing at $229), offering much more performance and twice as much memory (for less money in the US). Flash forward to 2024, and it’s a whole other ball game. To get even close to a similar model, you're looking at a minimum of around $320, and that's on the low-end. That's an increase of 40% over that 11-year time frame. Take mid-range and high-end cards though, crammed with even more goodies, and that price shoots up even higher. RTX 4090s debuted at, what, $1,800? Even the best Titans used to land around the $800 to $1,000 mark back in the day. That's nearly double the cost for the flagship GPU of choice. The thing is, though, the more you look into the details – into how it's all lining up – the more you realize that actually a lot of this price hiking ties into inflation quite nicely. Certainly with the more , anyway. $229 in 2013 works out at around $310 in today's money – about right for the low-end pricing I mentioned. I'd be less begrudging if economies of scale weren't a thing, and you know, continued advancement and production improvements should lead to a reduction in overall cost, like we've seen in TVs for example. Yes, of course, there's the argument that these companies need to make money, and there are R&D costs involved, but even so, graphics cards and products just haven't dropped in price like they used to gen-on-gen. And the thing is, these companies clearly have the profit margins to do it. With the current inflationary pressures out there globally, Nvidia, , and Intel all launched new product lines in the last 12 months, all of which either match or are cheaper than their similarly named predecessors. A good PR move – and a smart sales move. Buying power, build complexity, and influencers I believe there are far more complex issues at work here. As far as I can see, there are three primary reasons why buying a mid-range gaming PC today is far more painful than it used to be on the old wallet. First on the agenda, localized buying power has not kept up with inflation. Certainly not in the US. If you look at real median household income in the States from 2013 to 2023, it increased by just 18.2%, a far cry from that 35.4% cumulative inflation over the same period. Simply put, wages haven't kept up with rising costs. Why that’s the case is more an argument for those in the political sector than for me, but the stats don't lie, and its impact is clear. The second, and more pressing factor, is the radical increase in companies making ever fancier components across every facet of a modern-day gaming PC build. Although entry-level and mid-range graphics cards (that still make up the vast bulk of sales, I might add) are amazingly on target for affordability lining up with inflation, the rest of the PC ecosystem isn't. Higher-end GPUs, as well as CPUs, motherboards, RAM, and SSDs have all seen major increases in overall costs. Certainly, if you compare product lines, Asus ROG Hero motherboards used to come in at just under, or over, the $200 mark – and now one of the latest models will set you back nearly $700. And then there's everything else. Cooling, lighting, fans, custom keyboards, monitors, the works. Everything is a specialist product now, and that all adds to the overall build cost of a PC. Lastly, in part thanks to influencers, and the internet more broadly, it's no longer enough to just have a non-windowed chassis packed with the core hardware. The humble gaming PC has become an ornament, littered with RGB lights and enough accessories to make even the most avid of kleptomaniacs blush. It's a struggle to stay five minutes on social media without getting fed an Instagram Reel or Short of someone showing off an epic PC build, or gaming den, complete with a $1,200 GPU and RGB lighting that costs nearly as much. All of that comes together to push an average system build well out of reach of an average wallet. Consoles aren't faring any better either, with the likes of the PS5 Pro debuting at nearly $700. Once upon a time, building a custom gaming PC that was more potent than a console for similar(ish) money was a good reason to jump on the PC bandwagon. Now, it's a pipe dream. A memory from within the mists of time. Intel leads the way, weirdly That's why Intel's latest move with its Arc B580 graphics card has got so many people talking (in a positive way for once). Its latest generation of desktop processors (Core Ultra 200S) might not have been released quite as oven-ready as Intel had hoped, but Team Blue's new Battlemage graphics card? Oh boy, it is top-notch, at least on the value front. Our own John Loeffler took a look at the at the tail-end of 2024, and it absolutely stomps 1440p gaming, which, let's face it, is slowly becoming the de facto resolution for most modern PCs at this point (sorry , you're still too damn expensive). But the big thing, by far, isn't the fact that the B580 does very well in pretty much every game you throw at the GPU currently, beating out the likes of the Nvidia RTX 4060 and AMD RX 7600 XT. No – it’s the fact that it does this while being 20% cheaper than the cheapest of those cards, and it easily outguns the RTX 4060 Ti in terms of value proposition given the relative performance of the two GPUs. Well played, Intel. Well played. Team Blue has made a grand statement with this thing. Intel has repeatedly said it aims to target the entry-level gaming market, and if I'm honest, I'm glad. AMD used to hold that mantle nicely, beating Nvidia in the lower-end price bracket while Team Green dominated the high-end – but those plucky Team Red GPUs have since lost their affordable sheen. Intel, with its Arc GPU line, seems to be pulling back some serious street cred – well, at least for the time being. This'll hopefully lead to both AMD and Nvidia countering with their own price cuts, and that's going to be a major positive for all of us. Where will all this lead? Still, this is just one drop in the ocean. One component out of many. PCs are still too expensive. The , and more and more we're seeing this ecosystem that used to be so inclusive, just price people out. If you want to get into PC gaming, or even console gaming, it is now so difficult with modern hardware. This is just a fact. You want the best experience? Best take out a loan or remortgage the house. There's always been an "us and them" mentality when it comes to PC gaming. Always a Red versus Blue, or Green versus Red, or PC versus console conflict. The latter in particular is an age-old tale, but not one that stemmed from cost – it was built off the back of issues like ease of use, graphical fidelity, or mouse and keyboard versus controller. There wasn't artificial financial gatekeeping as there is now. The thing is, unless there's a radical shift in the world of PC components, and the way they're made, it's difficult to see how there will be any change. Prices are only going to creep up higher, wages are only going to stagnate further, and the situation can only escalate. Combine that with the threat of Trump’s trade tariffs in the US adding an extra 20% to 60% onto the cost of those imported components, and, well, you've got a recipe for disaster. The glimmer of hope, for GPUs anyway, is that challenge presented to the current duopoly by Intel's Arc Battlemage and the new B580 – and the hope that a rumored B770 model might prompt some further price cuts (although the high-end is set to remain Nvidia's domain, sadly).

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Republic Servs RSG has outperformed the market over the past 20 years by 3.58% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 11.99%. Currently, Republic Servs has a market capitalization of $65.80 billion. Buying $100 In RSG: If an investor had bought $100 of RSG stock 20 years ago, it would be worth $973.73 today based on a price of $210.13 for RSG at the time of writing. Republic Servs's Performance Over Last 20 Years Finally -- what's the point of all this? The key insight to take from this article is to note how much of a difference compounded returns can make in your cash growth over a period of time. This article was generated by Benzinga's automated content engine and reviewed by an editor. © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.The Bank of Scotland’s business barometer poll showed 73% of Scottish businesses expect to see turnover increase in 2025, up from 60% polled in 2023. Almost a quarter (23%) of businesses expect to see their revenue rise by between six and 10% over the next 12 months, with just over a fifth (21%) expecting it to grow by even more. The poll found that 70% of businesses were confident they would become more profitable in 2025, a two per cent increase when compared with the previous year. Revenue and profitability growth was firms’ top priority at 52%, though 40% said they will be targeting improved productivity, and the same proportion said they will be aiming to enhance their technology – such as automation or AI – or upskill their staff (both 29%). More than one in five (22%) want to improve their environmental sustainability. Other areas businesses are hoping to build upon AI-assisted technology (19%), and 24% will be investing in expanding into new UK markets and 23% plan to invest in staff training. The business barometer has surveyed 1,200 businesses every month since 2002, providing early signals about UK economic trends. Martyn Kendrick, Scotland director at Bank of Scotland commercial banking, said: “Scottish businesses are looking ahead to 2025 with stronger growth expectations, and setting out clear plans to drive this expansion through investments in new technology, new markets and their own teams. “As we enter the new year, we’ll continue to by their side to help them pursue their ambitions and seize all opportunities that lie ahead.”