Putin doesn’t just view the killing of Russians as acceptable, don’t forget the poor souls on flight MH17 that were killed just for being on a passenger jet. With nerve agents being used in a city full off civilians then something should be done.

TBH I saw that one (MH17) as a cock-up at the tactical level rather than a deliberate act at the time. Case of mistaken identity I thought, it was hard to see what it gained Russia.

suffient weight of evidence has be accumulated against someone shown to be acting under orders of the Russian state.

You are never going to get to legal “proof” in international affairs. They’ll just deny it, and I can’t see Vlad turning up at the Old Bailey. Nobody is being locked up here, we’re just sending some diplomats/spies back to the motherland. Perhaps the lack of absolute proof, only strong suspicion, is the reason the Govt aren’t seizing assets etc?

Well on the poison, there was a report with a graphic to show how it’s transported as two harmless sutances and then mixed to make the active poison as required. Now if a TV channel can provide that amount of information about a substance it isn’t particularly secret or exclusive.

Perhaps that’s the unsecret bit? I could probably have explained that many years ago when I was a Chemistry undergrad. I’d imagine the fingerprinting lies in trace elements.

They’re ok if they don’t take the weird green sugar 😉

I took Europe 1/mainstream European opinion/EU opinion as interchangeable. And your posts in the EU thread as background, many of which I broadly agree with. But I do think that you and several other posters are an inversion of jambalaya; you can see no wrong in the European mainland’s actions and no right in the UK’s. In this particular case, what’s a PM to do? You suggest it’s disproportionate, do we just accept other countries bumping people off in our streets because they sell us some gas?

-doesn’t seem much bothered about the death of a Russian double agent (occupational hazard)

Well, that’s OK then!

Edukator thinks the EU is all-knowing,  benevolent and disinterested while the U.K. is the opposite. I’m shocked.

Apologies if this has been done, but it seems to me the engineering penalty for calliper compatibility on a road bike is far less, ie just a hole through the bridge and fork crown rather than posts, no suspension to worry about etc. I feel like road bikes tend to have a longer service life than mtbs too, plus they’re a more conservative bunch! I’d go discs if I was buying a new one, but I’m not worried about the support of my calliper braked 2011 road bike like I am my 2010 26” wheeled, straight head tube Mtb!

Well, all the mil do is put fuller’s earth on it 😆 Washing it away is diluting it down to ineffective. Over to the homeopathy thread….

Thirded or fourthed on “don’t wear a wing collar”. When I lived in the Mess, I used to have a queue form outside my room to tie bow ties before a do, and I never understood why; it’s just a neat shoelace knot! Black tie, not a colourful one, go fun on the cummerbund instead and remember the pleats point up!

Any excuse to show this picture again.

Per ardua ad astra.

Like a homesick angel!

Tbf, the Govt position they came up with yesterday is their starting point for negotiations. Of course they’ll have to compromise. The real crime is that this could have been done in late ‘16 (or the week after the referendum if CMD had stuck around) and the intervening time could have been spent making it happen. As it is, we’ve pissed around so long that there’s no time to lobby, develop detail etc etc.

TJ, I’m very glad to hear it. That doesn’t square with my experience I’m afraid, but then you are more up to date! Stuff like this still pops up in my Facebook feed mind:

Clearance: Britain’s Guilt-Ridden Denial

If that’s not English-hating historical whitewashing I don’t know what is!

<span style=”color: #444444; font-size: 16px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: #eeeeee;”>There is no similarity between Brexit and Scottish independence. None at all. Brexit is xenophobic, inward-looking, anti-democratic and focused on dragging the UK back to some golden age when there was an empire and foreigners knew their place. Scottish independence is about being open and welcoming to people who want to come here, forging closer ties with Europe and our other neighbours, being progressive and being more democratic.</span>

Lol. I think there’s an inconveniently big overlap between Leave voters and Yes voters for that narrative, no? People seemed to concede that not all Leave voters were xenophobic racists but a minority were. No blood and soil nationalists among the Yes voters? Would there have been any unpleasantness towards English folk living in Scotland if Yes had won, in among all the joyous, civic stuff?

<p style=”padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5rem; color: #444444; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 1rem 0px !important;”>sexist and proud of it
match-going football supporters
WWII fanatics
blame traffic density on immigrants
Military
live in Essex</p>
<p style=”padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5rem; color: #444444; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 1rem 0px !important;”>So why wasn’t I surprised these people voted leave? Sometimes you don’t need statistics to make correlations.</p>

Not if you’re just airing your own nasty prejudices whilst criticising those of others.

Agreed with most of what BenCooper posted, but I was struck by the irony of them being posted by someone who supports Scottish Independence. Same arguments!

Deadly, you’ve described me a year ago! Out of breath, sinky legs, the lot! A 6-month det to the Falklands with a 33m free-to-use pool 100m from my room did the job though! It was tough at times to get in the pool, but I really enjoy it now and knock out a mile of continuous crawl in 45 mins, so not quick but at least competent!

As others have said, it’s all technique and positioning. Get some lessons for sure, I had no idea of all the (many) things I was doing wrong! Slow down, head up, stretch and glide (fixes the sinking legs!), and you’ll click at some point.

I had it as my goal for the Falklands trip as I wanted a low-impact cardio option as Father Time marches on, also Mrs fancies a triathlon and swimming was my weakest of the 3 by miles.

Sparrow

Jackdaw

great tit

Blue  tit

robin

chaffinch

greenfinch

goldfinch

wood pigeon

wren

starling

Our occasional great spotted woodpecker was a no-show!

Shimano AM7.

<span style=”color: #444444; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: #eeeeee;”>My parents enjoyed a high standard of living in middle age because they were elevated from working class backgrounds by post war Labour policies. </span>

Or possibly demographics and economics?

<span style=”color: #444444; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: #eeeeee;”> the wave of hope and optimism swept the UK (much like seems to be present in a booming global economy).</span>

Distinct whiff of “seen from afar” here. Don’t other places have their problems? I’m sure the U.K. looks pretty great from outside too (ok, maybe excluding Brexit!)

Defo 2 pairs of shorts, surely the weight and bulk of the extra pair is negligible? Wash that day’s pair in the evening when you wash yourself, dry them out the next day on the bike. Even if you can’t, they’ll dry on you in an hour 😕! I used Savlon on lejog etc and had no problems, good balance of slippery and anti-bug. I’ve found with chammy creams I tend to get big angry arse zits, for want of a better term!

Point of order: we don’t fly supersonic over land;). Not so much a change in stance as a clarification of the proposal, bit of consideration, then an objection. The cable is actually higher than a low flying jet, not much fun for either party!.

Poopscoop – Member
Just got a like from a nice looking lady (obviously myopic) but….

36 miles away.

Deal breaker. They got any idea of the price of petrol these days!?
Bloody hell, 15 years ago I’d drive the length and breadth of the country on a Friday night, on the sniff of an off chance of a promise!

Anybody else get thinly veiled solicitation from ladies of negotiable virtue? I would get a picture of an unfeasibly gorgeous girl, and a message like “one hour 100 roses, evening 300 roses”. It took me a while to figure out roses were code for £! I guess the site looks for commercial negotiations and it’s a way around it?

I like it!

Very sad. An amazingly talented lady, and a troubled soul.

I’d suggest aviation is different though, because you don’t have to actively steer around physical objects all the time.

Valid point but remember aviation isn’t just pilots, also ATC (hurrah) and engineering. We’re talking about a property of the human animal here -propensity to get bored!

The road should demand ALL your attention – so the more you have to divert to operating the car, the less is available for driving, IMO.

If your attention is wandering whilst driving then surely having to do more stuff to operate the car is going to distract you all the more?

It doesn’t always take all your attention though, especially on the motorway; if you’re at capacity all the time you’d never nav, fiddle with the stereo, have a conversation…. You’re talking about the line between under and over -arousal, distraction… human performance sure is a complicated thing! Just to be clear, I agree driver aids are a good thing in general and the nugget behind the wheel is the weakest link in the system, just saying it’s not simple!

It’s an issue when the tech can’t cope. I agree the autopilot is an extreme example of it, but under-arousal is definitely a thing, we see it all the time in aviation. It’s actually an argument against artificially low speed limits; your alertness levels drop.

Regarding driver aids, I definitely think they reduce what’s called “arousal” (no sniggering at the back!) in human factors. If your workload drops (assuming you’re not a driving geek), you take up the spare capacity by doing something else. That’s why the fatal Tesla “autopilot” crash happened and why category 3 autonomous vehicles are very problematic; human nature says that after a while of the car doing it’s thing autonomously, the driver will be looking at the scenery or reading a book or something, and thus be ill-equipped to take over when the car encounters a situation it can’t handle and dumps control back to the driver. Driver aids are a less extreme version. They also erode skills in the driving population, how many folk now know how to pump the brakes, double declutch, drive in snow etc since ABS, synchro and traction and stability control became ubiquitous? All good things but they have their downsides!

Those are only little ‘uns. There’s a policy at present to try and replace red lights with IR at the mo, as most low level night flying is done on night vision goggles now. So they might just have a black light on now?

airtragic – plus the amount for the nukes. so the NHS needs about 20% more dosh. thats less than the defense budget and far less if you include the useless nukes

The bombers are included in the defence budget. I’m in favour of more money for the nhs fwiw, was just addressing the argument that the nhs should be funded “before nukes and carriers”; it is, it (rightly) gets lots more money.

Chaps, you’re all missing the essential truth. I’m both faster and safer than you all. I’m also manlier and more attractive to the opposite and indeed the same sex.

It’s the one thing money should go to by default before the likes of nukes and aircraft carriers are even considered.

NHS budget about £130bn, from memory. Defence budget about £35bn.

I am certain gluttony is a sin, but you have no idea if that means I saw a documentary about the 7 deadly sins and rembered it from that or if I torture fat people to death in my spare time.

The second one?

Junkyard – lazarus
i have kids but i have never tumble dried them either

That’s political correctness gone mad, you vegan hippy. Builds character. I was always tumble dried, never did me any harm and was very useful, growing up in Glasgow.

Fake news. Bet you’ve stayed in hotels.

Edit: my smiley didn’t work. I too don’t own a drier, but then I’ve got no kids…

Once a day before bed. Exercise after work so that works quite well. The problem comes with cycle commuting; I can’t not shower after a fast hour on the bike. Possibly irrational but there we are. I’m also required to be clean shaven for work (my face!) and can’t get away with the night before, plus my shirt needs to be ironed and then not squeezed into a bag. All of this makes cycle commuting a logistical challenge for the military chap, especially when work doesn’t have a shower!

Being as the Pentagon and it’s global operations are the number 1 consumer of fossil fuels on the planet, reckon I’ll stick it to the military industrial complex good n proper.

Bullshit. The Pentagon might burn more than any single airline, but military aviation is a flea on the flank of civil globally. Military ground and naval traffic Is even teenier compared to civil.

Edit: Lush are all about the eco, and their soaps come wrapped in paper!

Oh yeah, that too!

Cutting right down on meat, and a posting back Home to a cycle commute