The fundamental problem with this is that the flat rate of tax would be higher than the rate the majority are currently paying. This is due to the fact that the top 1% pay 25% of the income tax, or the top 10% pay 50% (figures from Institute of Fiscal Studies)
So if you are a politician getting elected it’s easy to win power if you promise a tax cut for the majority, ie a return to different rates of tax.

As we have different rates of tax for individuals we cannot have one rate of tax for companies.

The reason we hear about the rich paying more is it get’s popular approval as the word rich translates into “someone else can pay more as I already pay too much”

As others have posted the fundamental problem here is the tax system is too complex and the EU (that includes the UK) has allowed member states like Ireland and Luxembourg to have very low rates of corporation tax.

Jambalaya,

Thanks for explaining that. Much better than the usual “the rich must pay” simplification I normally see!

How many people here haven’t said to someone – “how much for cash?”

Good point.

Fortunately it’s easy to make the decision that Starbucks, Barclays and Vodafone don’t get a single penny of my money in their quest of making themselves even wealthier.

Certainly in the case of Vodafone, they have an investments division that invests in small, young tech companies throughout Europe to help them develop technologies that would potentially be useful to them in the future, as well as co-funding tech bootcamps (essentially incubator hubs) in several major European cities where they provide office space, infrastructure, support and funding too.

But of course, that doesn’t make good headlines for the media.

They almost certainly have a legal responsibility to maximise profit for their share-holders. So, once they know they can ‘use’ the tax system, they must.

This is actually a very good point.

I know we always hears lots about big companies and rich people should pay more, why don’t we have flat rates for all?

Surely our skewed systems for both personal and commercial taxation are what drives minimisation programmes? If everyone paid the same percentage of revenue in the case of companies, and income in the case of people, it would be much harder to try and manipulate figures.

Just a thought – unless there are some economists who can explain why we don’t?

Will be doing my first proper DH races this winter after completing my first full Enduro season and finding myself getting progressively faster.

Really looking forward to it as well.

Great thread

:-)

My wife really dislikes his voice/chirpiness and refers to him as ‘the new Fred Dibnah we’ve now got to put up with the for the next 40 years’.

I think this isn’t a bad thing but what do I know.

Follow the lead of my grandad when the cricket was on and my nan piped up out of turn:

“Shut up. Cricket’s on.”

Have you ever worked in sales?

That for me would be the fastest way. It’s hard work with lots of pressure but rewards are excellent for the right people.

Just hit delete when it comes through.

Net effort = less than this post.

Check out Camping Tahiti, just outside the town. They have little log cabins for not much money. Lovely people too.

Quick google search will find them :-)

Well said. Let me know how you get on.

Yep – it’ll be fine. ‘capacity’ refers to the difference between gears.

totalshell – perfect. Exactly the way to do it. End of the day, he’s failing so by offering all the tools and support, he’ll either raise his game or give a decent excuse to sack him without fear of recourse.

Something that has been overlooked is the negative effect on a sales team if they have a ‘passenger’ – hits morale very quickly.

Secondly, a sales manager will usually have part of their wages paid as an override of their team’s revenues against target. If this rep is underperforming seemingly through lack of care, he is directly hitting his manager’s take home pay so IMO the OP has every right to feel aggvrieved.

Agreed.

But I will say
that you need to examine your limitations
and get some training/skills in areas you
are responsible for but clearly know
nothing about.

True – so often a top performing sales person finds themselves in a “management” role with no training or support, something sadly overlooked further up the food chain. There’s often an unrealistic expectation from bosses that you can magically create an army of “mini me”s……..

Well worth getting this situ sorted then pushing for more support I reckon.

Good luck with it.

As a sales manager myself, I fully sympathise, especially if you’ve inherited this guy.

I’d suggest he is suffering standard sales burnout.

Put together a performance plan with clear 2 way objectives and very clear timescales to turn things round, make them achievable goals so you can’t be hit for constructive dismissal, then let it run it’s course.

If you want, I have a number of very good bits of paperwork I use for stuff like this that I can send you.

Oh and check out Sean McPheat’s sales training and management site. Lots of very good resource there.

Let me know if you want any direct advice!

Anyone tried the superstar yard stick bars yet?…915mm

Not seen anyone running them full length – but I do know someone who is 6’6″ and has them at 850 8O

5’9″ and run 711 on my enduro race/trail bike, and the same on my DH and 29er too.

Tried wider (even with shorter stem length) and it was just too wide.

There’s no real “formula” as such, as there are so many factors including top tube length, torso length, saddle to bar height difference, stem length, head angle, type of riding you do etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.

I’d suggest borrowing a wide bar off a mate’s DH bike perhaps and riding it on your current setup. See how it feels as you move grips & controls inwards. You’ll usually find a point where it just feels “right”.

The problem is that ANY MALE over the age of 40, and having contact with children wether married, single, gay, or in a relationship etc will become a possible target of internet chatter, and then the difficulty is proving youre innocent.

Destroying freindships, relationshiops and career prospects . Forever.

Its a horrible world schoffield had just dropped the uk into, by his stupid pathetic media attention grabing muppetry.

Agreed. This was cheap, nasty media manouevering by Schofield to try and regain a bit of publicity for himself.

If he was genuinely interested in forcing a fresh enquiry, he should have issued a statement to the press that he has sent sealed envelopes to Scotland Yard, the PM, the Speaker of the House and the House of Lords, with the evidence inside. That would have brought enough media attention to force action from at least one party (so as to avoid looking like a late actioning party), but without the pathetic media showboating.

This wasn’t about the kids or justice. It was about Schofield wanting to raise his flagging profile and trying to step into the void left by Esther Rantzen now she is discredited as the “Moral Guardian of Britain”(TM) after the Savile scandal.

Good lad. CB and Enrico from SuperEnduro are all the format needs.

Enrico has the sponsors, infrastructure and a proven model.

Chris Ball has global contacts in all the hot ride spots.

The UCI are rapidly becoming more and more irrelevant IMO.

Biggest change I made was to switch off all email notifications, so I only see new mail when I chose to read it.

^^^^^^^^ This. I learned a lot a few years ago from an old boss all about this. Essentially make your work day about YOU – set clear time zones in the day, probably chunked down into 2 hour slots. Plan around those slots – concentrates the mind on tasks and sets clear timeframes to get them done.

Do emails 3 times a day (first thing, lunchtime, end of day). If anyone needs you more urgently than that, they need to call you. If they can’t get hold of you on the phone and it is that desperately urgent, they need to come and see you.

By reclaiming your time as your own, and rejecting the “always on demand” culture that mobiles, email, emails on mobile etc have created, you can easily see at least a 30% productivity increase.

pussywillow – how do yours size up against their advertised waist size?

How do these size up? Normally I’m a S in Endura etc, about a 30 waist. Any suggestions whether I should get the 30 or the 32?

Great pubs should be celebrated.
Problem is, there are so few of them and so many mediocre ones…

Agreed – took a couple of mates to my very excellent local at the weekend and they said that they thought places like it no longer existed. Nothing too fancy, just excellent beer & cider from clean lines in clean glasses, good food at sensible prices and some good quality banter from the landlord and bar staff. Seems that problems start to occur when the simple things get forgotten, either out of laziness or getting too excited about some new fangled idea.

Best of luck to you – looks a fantastic place!

Not ridden it, but did see it up close at Finale.

Looks very, very nice – BUT how much benefit does it bring to the normal (i.e. not Jerome Clementz) enduro racer?

I raced all season on Truvativ Descendants with a 36t ring and 11-36 cassette. First half of the season was X9 short cage mech & X9 shifter, second half was Zee clutch mech and XT iSpec shifter.

For the money and based on my personal experiences this season, I would recommend having a 34 and 36 tooth chainring available for race days, an 11-36 10 speed cassette and either a Saint or Zee rear mech to have the advantage of the clutch (better than the SRAM clutch IMO) and also the fact that the Shadow mech is more tucked out of the way (I saw more SRAM mechs ripped off than Shimano this season – I can only conclude this is down to them sticking out more).

Spend the money you save on some sessions with a good trainer and you’ll see a lot more overall benefit.

Just my views of course……..

I’d say stick with the XT Trail. No real benefit in terms of function by going to XTR Trail, but the big advantage over the cheaper one (not sure of model number) is that they crack open with a 17mm spanner rather than that special tool thing.

Swimming (national level), rugby (county level at school), MTB XC in the 90s as a teenager, then a 10 year “misspent youth” gap, then back to MTB XC before moving to Enduro.

Pulling it about half way seems to work best :-)

What…cut main chute away in error……ouch!

That footage sent chills right through me. We’ve all had those moments when riding where it goes a bit sketchy and you know a crash is imminent – nasty, slow mo kind of thing. God only knows how that must have felt!!

c)

Now and again stuff’s gonna go wrong.

I’d suggest looking at tyre pressure – I use non UST Minions tubeless and have no problem with them – but I run at 35PSI as below that, it just feels all wrong and squirmy.

I always use Stan’s now after experience of a couple of others.

Bontrager stuff is RUBBISH – a mate got this as it was the only stuff his LBS had in stock. Simply wouldn’t seal. We then put Stan’s in when he could get some, and it worked perfectly first time on the same setup.

I’ve tried Joe’s Eco and yes it’s good and seals nicely, but seems to dry out faster than Stan’s.

No business “deserves” to go under.

Sadly Comet have failed to adapt to a changing market and have missed lots of opportunities. Hopefully the administrators will be able to wield the axe where necessary (upper level management/board failings) and put in a new team who can make sense of the rather disjointed product set and incoherent branding. Get the impression that over the last few years they have lost direction as a company and don’t actually know who they are anymore and who their target market is.

So many missed opportunities – upsells, customer data management to run targeted promotions, package deals etc.

Pricing was always miles out, indicating that even with the added cost factor of bricks & mortar, they were massively out of touch with competitor pricing. Should have been constantly reviewing & then using their buying power to renegotiate with the suppliers. Then have an “added value” proposition of proper experts (or even semi-experts) rather than the sub-retail teenage boys manning the shop floor. Contrast with CDG and their bright, enthusiastic and pretty knowledgeable staff, and you’ll see that there is no reason to shop at Comet as it stands.

None of it is unrecoverable though if the right rescue team is dropped in. Hope they make it work.

And they get tatty as hell in no time at all………

Must be insurance implications as the linking stages are part of the ‘race’.

I’d imagine so. Most organisers are riders – it’s the risk averse landowners and insurers that create the extra restrictions.

As you’ve said – them’s the rules. Either take part or don’t. But don’t whinge about something you can’t change.

I got 2 Minions for £44 using their 25% online discount. Happy with that :-)

My local is a gem of a place (The Star & Dove in Bristol, the owners have just taken a second place on too) – it’s about more than the drinking, it’s a social thing too. Seeing people, chatting to strangers, banter/abuse with the landlord, that whole interacting thing that seems to have been lost since the internet became such a big thing.

Back in the day when men were men, we’d go to the pub with our mates, bang the world to rights etc. Now it’s just attention seeking Vaguebooking instead with those terrible posts like “Don’t know why I bother”, blatantly posted in the hope of 600 replies like “oh no babes, hope you are ok” etc like some teenage girls.

A good pub is so much more than just a place to drink.

Did a conversion on a mate’s wheels the other week, these exact rims.

5 wraps of this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/150333028414?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649 which coincidentally is the tape Stan’s used to recommend before they started to make strips.

We used these valves: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/310407534562?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

Little trick is to take the valve cores out when doing first inflation and have them ready to F1 style refit. Helps you get loads more air in quicker and seat.

We were using standard Minions and a track pump. Went straight up, used 2 cups of Stan’s fluid and have worked perfectly with no burping at all.

For 31 euros you can enter the Super Enduro races, which for Finale included a street race on the Saturday night, followed by 50k of the best trails I’ve ever ridden.

Agreed – by far the best event I have ever taken part in. Enrico and his team have absolutely nailed the format.

Are there any other reports of those archi enduros going? That’s the only one I’ve ever heard about.

I think that’s a pretty one sided report and speaking to several riders, we think his helmet actually was badly fitted, hence it moving round. I have an Archi Enduro and a Down-o-Matic – both are really solid fit and the only way it could rotate on his head is if he hasn’t fitted it right. But heaven forbid someone should paint a balanced view on the internets……… ;-)

710 12mm rise on 55mm stem on both my enduro/AM bikes – I’m 5’8″ with shortish arms so anything wider just feels all wrong.

Just about to take delivery of a Whyte 29er and expect I’ll be tweaking position a bit to get something similar……

I’ve filled and bled XT and Zee brakes using the funnel & syringe as per the instructions.

One top trick though (taught to me by a bl**dy good mechanic and DH racer) is that once you have completed the bleed process, you can “trick” the caliper into thinking there is a bit of pad wear, and so get a more positive bite point feel.

To do this, take out the bleed block and put pads in, then put about 1cm of fluid into the funnel, slowly pull the lever once (with lever at horizontal position and nipple on caliper CLOSED) and release. Then close off funnel and bleed cap, insert wheels and away you go. Helps remove the very last little bubbles and ensures a really good lever feel.