Either we're all Spartacus or that friendly blue cat who helped put my new bookshelves together is?

Seriously, just use your critical thinking skills. I note the gutter press whining on and off about current History teaching. See, secondary school History lessons have abandoned memorising dates and names in favour of teaching critical analysis of sources (exam questions are now along the lines of "how reliable is this"). A much more useful skill for later life than being able to name every King with an R in his name as it enables you to see through the spin and propaganda. Actually, you don't think that's why they're upset about it?

In my experience...

Lenses with a starting price which is reasonable either don't sell, or sell at that price. I'm quite happy to bid on such items.

I'm not so keen on reserves, as if nobody else is interested they don't sell. Simply list them with a starting bid which is the minimum you're prepared to let them go for and see what happens.

If you do decide to add the "Best Offer" listing then do please be prepared to haggle. It drives me spare when sellers add this, then ignore offers or seem to think they should only knock a few pence off (there are three sellers I will never buy from because of this). If you're not willing to haggle then don't invite offers!

I do seem to see a fair number of BIN listings asking daft prices, however they do go.

If you want a standard walkabout lens which does the same job as a 50mm did on film, go for the DA 35mm f2.4. It's the modern version of the Pentax-M 50mm f1.7, small, sharp, lightweight and sensibly priced.

Of the two you mention I would pick the 40mm, as I've never found 50mm terribly useful on digital. It's just a bit too long. But the 35mm is a lot cheaper and more useful again, unless you need the ultra-compact nature of the 40mm (which can be very handy - I have the old M series 40mm and it's great on an M series body as a pocket SLR).

Personally I wouldn't bother with the 55mm f1.4. Too long for digital IMO. Unless you're planning to shoot portraits in heavy rain I just think it's too much to spend on a single prime lens.

I think where lenses are concerned it's a case of buying what you find for sane money. Definitely look for something around 40mm/50mm, a 75mm as standard, and a 150mm/200mm ish as a telephoto though.

If you really want to be able to shoot portraits you need a decent off-camera flash.

My advice:

Kit lens is pretty decent, can be a tad soft but not unpleasantly so. As for a flash, look for an AF240Z or AF280T, the former can be had for £10-£20 and has a bounce head so you can use a light coloured ceiling or wall to give more even lighting to your subjects. The AF280T is more flexible but also more expensive (unsurprisingly so!)

Don't just walk in and expect to be able to do this shoot. Get the gear then practice loads. Anything will do - try a candlestick or lamp if you can't find a human willing to hang around for ages while you learn.

Hmm, see, I would agree were it not for the individual making the claim. Ecomentalists really don't like criticism and will generally try to smear it all as being by the oil industry or similar. There's a lot of money and power at stake on both sides, so trust neither!

It's been going on for years. One model train forum I used to be a member of had an obnoxious German who wouldn't accept that anything could be wrong with the models and would more or less try to blame the unfortunate purchaser when their new €500 toy produced a puff of smoke and refused to run immediately after the box was opened.

In that twit's case, I can't help but think the manufacturer was frantically emailing him and asking him to give up before he alienated their entire customer base (he frequently claimed to have insider connections)!

Well, some legitimate automated menus use the hash key as "enter", I know mobile phone top-up vouchers tend to ask you to enter the code then press hash to confirm it. Could be that it causes their autodialer to go slightly nuts as it's getting inputs it hasn't been programmed to handle?

"Fan Boy" is generally used to describe people who're evangelical about their product of choice and completely blind to any faults with it. It also seems to be used as a lazy put-down when forum users can't be bothered to actually counter someone's argument.

What annoys me about phone scams:

BT are allowing these people access to their network. In the case of premium rate line scams they are collecting the money for the scammers and claiming they can do nothing about this. They can.

Start by banning "withheld numbers" or allowing subscribers to refuse calls from them at no extra charge. No legitimate organisation has any reason for withholding numbers. Then start banning nuisance numbers and handing details held on them to Trading Standards. The DVLA are allowed to give your details to private car park operators so I don't see much difference. If they're passing money to these vermin they've got addresses and names to tell them where to send it to.

Spamming email addresses can be blocked, why not phone numbers?

They tried that stunt on my Gran a while ago. Thing is, she had just bought a new laptop but was very proud of the fact that it was Windows 7. Telling her that it was running XP didn't exactly support their story...

I will not give personal details to anyone over the phone, regardless of who they claim to be. Sales callers get the full icy polite treatment with much mention of the TPS (worth signing up for, it reduced nuisance calls by a fairly staggering margin here).