If you live in the SE maybe you should look at joining th RauxAF they have a media sqn which might be of interest;

http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafreserves/squadrons/rafhaltonno7644mediaoperationssquadron.cfm

Terrible film, very funny bunch of sketches and wind ups.

Can someone explain why some S’s used to be written/printed like an f? I’m sure I could google for an answer but why do it myself when 50 people on STW will race to do it for me?

Thanks

Getting totally rid of nuclear detterance should not be an option unless it is part of a world agreement with other countries to do the same. It is worth keeping to;

1) Use as a bargaining chip to help slowly chip away at other counties stockpiles.
And..
2) Be a big stick that other countries know we have. – It’s not usually the big fella’s acting all agresive now is it?

Trident is an independent weapon, it can most definately be used without approval of the Americans. Missile servicing is done by the Americans but the warheads are British. If the time came when the US refused to play we would have to source our own missiles or hand back the nuclear role to the RAF.

Remember the idea behind the bombs is to have them but never use them, personally I think they have paid for themselves several times over. The cold war would most likely have gone hot with out them. Just because today we are not in that situation does not mean that in 10 or 20 years we won’t be. How many people in 1989 thought we would be fighting in the Gulf within 2 years, how many in 2000 though we would be deployed in Afganistan and Iraq at the same time within 5?

It may also be only a matter of time before a country like Iran builds nuclear missiles capable of hitting Europe, if we & the French keep ours other NATO members have no need to build them, thus our having them perversally helps non-prolifieration. If the Iranians did build and test a bomb. We might also find ourselves having to offer an agreement to the Saudi’s and Egyptions to defend them against Iran to prevent them from building their own. Great isn’t it!

So you see our & Frances nuclear weapons don’t just protect us they also help stop proliferation. Still I’m not saying Trident couldn’t be scrapped but realistically at the moment it is the best tool for the job.

The newer macbooks have much better graphics than the old ones so that’s probably not an issue, bootcamp would use it with the correct windows drivers so that too would not be a problem. If he must use a VM layer on top of OSX then the newer VMWare and parallels also now support OpenGL although performance takes a hit.

For the most part I think the macs are worth the extra money, as already stated my 2 1/2 year old macbook pro (cost £1250) does not look it’s age and performs better than my wintel work laptop that cost £900 new 6 months ago.

I don’t think there is an input on the imac to just use it as a monitor. Is it an old non-intel one? I’m sure if he is taking it with him he will find a use for it – watching films, itunes etc.

No issues at all, XP pro SP2 runs fine on bootcamp or as a VM.

Don’t forget if he is working on it for long hours he will likely buy himself a larger monitor and an external ‘full’ USB keyboard which cost as little as a tenner.

I’d definately get an aluminium macbook, it will last the 3-4 years he is studying. I bought my Macbook pro in 2006 and upgraded the Ram, it is physically in better shape and generally out performs my own and my wifes work wintel laptops that are both under 6 months old.

When you create an underclass to the extent that has been created for the Romany peoples of that part of the world, is it any wonder that they repay society in the way that they do?

Trouble is once that underclass is created it takes a heck of a lot to undo it. Efforts to try to un-create it will often be met with hostility from within that group and more often that not from the groups that feel they are losing out to such efforts.

To the ‘prolitariat’ the answer is often blindingly obvious but to the ‘intelectuals’ the ‘prolitariat’ are often part of the problem. Whatever ideas you come up with will not work as some $hit will tear them down and ensure any success is limited for a number of reasons.

Perhaps the best policy is to keep a lid on it and just concentrate on the kids in one form or another?

Drac, Do we as mountain bikers call on you guys too much? Some of the stories I read on here and hear from mates really makes me think we should all probably all do a bit more to keep the mountain resue teams and air ambulances in funds. I suppose as a group we are insignificant compared to the friday binge drinkers though!

Neverfastenuff – I’m glad you are walking wounded, reading your pals first post sounded like you were gonna be off the bike for a long while!

mt – I agree, Out of all the similar type off road events I have attended that one is definately one of the toughests km for km. It’s good to have at something different though.

Swoosh, Before my mechanical I had to push up on two of the climbs, both times I got a lot higher than most around me but had to give in due to limited line choice due to the amount of ‘bodies’ around me. It just struck me that in the 8 years I’ve been biking I have never seen that many pushing up hill at a mass start event unless it’s a complete mud fest like last years mega.

Completely forgot about marzocchi, did they sort all the problems with the early 55’s?

Hi Ton,

Send me an email with afew details. If the price is right it sounds ideal so long as it’s not been crashed 😉

Nah, too convoluted a route and would probably cost more than just buying a new set of forks. I also expect I’ll be able to get over a ton selling the floats even in their battered state.

I enjoyed the first 18Km. The walk/push coast downhill that followed after my freehub died wasn’t as much fun. Fortunately the weather was nice 🙂

The fastest guys from the club did the long in around 5 hours and the slowest 8.5, I think everyone enjoyed it in equal measure.

Was it just me that found it odd to be a cycling event where the majority of entrants had to push bikes uphill? It was some how surreal to see even some of the fitter/faster guys get off and push.

Is some one out taking revenge on middle lane pootlers? You deserved it, stay in the slow lane, you pootler 🙂

…Take slime tubes or Tubeless though, lots of prickly things.

Take the Alpine you will enjoy it more. Hopefully you will have revelations or better and wheels with a fairly strong rim and 2.2 tires.

All the rides are perfectly doable on a HT with 5″ fork and a decent wheelset/tires.

I believe these still do, others ended it recently.

Austria,
Germany,
Denmark,
Sweeden & Norway?
Switzerland
Turkey (does that count in your requirement?)

Watch the wrestler whilst you are recovering. I shan’t say more I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you…

If you buy a fuel you will end up buying a shorter stem and an extra set of heavier duty wheels and rubber for the alps. I know I did.

The fuel is great but if your buzz is getting to the bottom faster than your mates and they are on 6″ bikes get the Remedy.

That is not to say the fuel can’t do it. I raced last years mega on mine and it was fine. However I can’t help but wonder how much quicker I would have been on a Remedy or similar 6″ bike though…

Our leaflet was hand delivered by a completely normal looking bloke. No big swastika on his forehead or even a football tatoo on his forearms…

My brother in law has struggled for regular local work in the past year as either a steel worker or carpenter. Where he lives wasn’t a great distance from the recent strikes protesting about EU workers. I should imagine some of his peers who are traditional labour supporters will consider voting BNP in protest in the forthcoming elections. This is simply because the old labour party who looked after their interests (or at least tried to pretend) isn’t there any more.

I’ll be voting tory, their big scandals are usually far more entertaining than anyone else… and they are quite clearly the bunch of muppets we know them to be without even trying to hide it.

If you use umbrella compainies such as Giant you needn’t worry about IR35 as you are their employee as far as the tax man goes. I only recommend this route if you are not earning too much (ie < 50-60k) your expenses are fairly straight forward (petrol & lunch)and you think you will likely be doing work that the taxman would definately consider to fall within IR35.

If you are doing lots of different contracts on specific areas where you are definately your on boss then def set up an LTD and get a good accountant.

When I was contracting I had to use an umbrella as even a good accountant could not protect me from IR35 if the taxman had come looking. I was effectively someone elses employee working at a managers descretion on whatever workload came up day to day.

On the statistics side however you would have to be very unlucky to get caught. HMRC have only bought a couple of successful prosecutions for IR35 dodging in the past year. These however laid out quite clearly what they considered to fall inside/outside of IR35.

Panracer Ribmos here, no problems todate.

I just wish certain sections of the media would give Iran some space. Why has Israel been allowed nuclear weapons for decades yet Iran cant have its own for self-defence?

If Iran does succeed in building and testing a nuclear bomb (it’s no good just claiming you have it) then there is a good chance Saudi Arabia will then go down that road. Therefore Iran getting the bomb is very bad for proliferation.

Note how I said about testing the bomb – Isreal have never done that (unless you like the conspiracy theory that linked Israel & SA to an Indian Ocean bomb test)So officially they don’t have one and therefore no one is ‘allowing’ them anything. The suggestion that they might is enough to help guarentee their security in a ‘Yes Prime Minister’ kind of way. Remember common sense and plain speaking do not really apply to politics!

Personally I don’t think there will be that much long term fall out if Israel do strike Iran. They will likely be in and out before the Iranians will know about it. Do you even remember hearing about the mysterious building in Syria that was replaced by a crater last year or the exploding military installations in the Sudan even more recently? These were most definatly the Isreali air force at work and interestingly the Sudan mission was of a similar distance from Israel as Iran.

The main worry of course is that Israel messes it up and leaves Iran with conclusive proof and something – even long range missiles with convential warheads to respond with. However it’s very likely that there are allied forces already at work in Iran so I suspect the scattered secret sites rather than just the official ones are already known about!

I also wouldn’t put much hope in Irans new Russian supplied air defence systems (if they are even on line yet). The chances are they won’t have enough experience or know how to get the best out of them and I also suspect that forces friendly to Isreal in countries neighbouring Iran will be able to pass on all the knowledge gleened in the past few years on the Iranian air defence systems.

Hmmm… Could be a sign of another attempted hack. If a hacker has found a vulnerability where they are able to inject code and then started guessing database field names it can result in emails being pinged out to users. This can happen as they blunder about trying to ennumerate the backend to see what’s what. Lets hope not…they are a **** pain in the arrse and I would happily burn them all along with the developers who take short cuts and let it happen!

Still it’s more likely someone on the site is trying to stitch you up 😆

At least it will be quiet on here tomorrow since all the left wing pinko members will be doing their bit to smash the establishment rather than boring us to tears…

I think that very bike was for sale in the classifieds a while back. Not my cup of tea but plenty of people wear camo cycling gear so the next step i suppose.

You can fit better antennas to the router and sometimes the cards in the PC. They cost about £4-5 a pop. The other things to look out for are cordless phones as they run on 2.4Ghz and therefore your wifi takes a hit when they are in use. Microwave ovens can also interfere.

Download netstumbler and use it to locate neighbouring networks it could be someone has set up a new one on the same channel as yours (probably 6 or 11). Change your network to a new channel that no one else is using and the problem might disapear.

JamesP – Member
We had more than 40 women racers at the Black Park Race last Sunday. We even had enough to have a SS womens category!

James, that’s because we told them they would be kicked out of the club if they didn’t race 🙂

My wife hates mountain biking as shes says there is too much faff to make it worthwhile. You see plenty of ladies in running and triathlon events so I think there is something to that.

Just goole it for details. In essence if your xbox is under 3 years old MS will fix it for free.

Have a couple of mates who are similar. One left the church as it were but still struggles to shake off the rubbish he was bought up on, try explaining that the world is more than just 10,000 years old meets a blank look and questions on how we really can prove it…

If they are receptive to it as he is and you have lots of patience you can get there but its at best frustrating but does lead you to question certain asumptions that are in the main stream at the moment. Look up the Aquatic Ape theory for example – lots of good reasoning behind it but it is laughed at by mainstream science.

Questioning theories and chucking out what does not fit and replacing with something better is what science is all about, if your friend could conclusively prove that the world is only 7,000 years old by finding human fossils in the same strata as dinosaur fossils then maybe we would start listening to them 😉

My house insurance won’t cover all mine in the shed, and a seperate insurance policy would cost silly money. I’ve speant a few hundred on locks and will put money into savings as my own insurance.

My wife has a 03 plate Cooper S. We only bought it as a mate was emigrating and offered it at a good price. We’ve had it a year now and probably covered approx 10k in it taking it up to 66k.

To date it’s had a new exhaust system approx £700 fitted at a BMW garage and 4 new tyres all round. (£535 fitted) I recommend you go for one with 15″ wheels rather than 16″ runflats as the bigger wheels and runflats upset the ride somewhat. The other downside to runflats is that some garages (quickfit) will only replace them with runflats which can limit choice.

Servicing at BMW can be expensive, as ours is now 5 years old I took it to my local reliable garage. The only problem to occur was that the oil filter case had seized and a new one had to be fitted. Apparently the oilfilter itself is biodegradable so look for one that has been regularly serviced otherwise you could get one with lots of gunk floatinmg around in the engine…

The only other issue we’ve had is the drivers doorlock is playing up. Other than that it is mental and corners like its on rails 🙂

A mate has a pair seems to like them for long rides, they come across a bit ’emperors new clothes’ to me though.

Macbookpro if you are serious about it. Any non apple laptop built to the same spec/quality will cost a similar amount anyway.

Just to play the devil with you (this has sadly amused me foe a number of years), it is ironic to read an apparent socialist bleating for a facist goverment that often used it’s navy to throw it’s own left leaning decenters out of planes and helicoters into the south atlantic. A war is a war, if you can’t take it don’t get into one. At the last count our wonderous goverment of the day has taken the uk to war far more than any goverment of any colour since Suez (now that was a cock up).

MT – Here here, my thoughts exactly.

S&J – Some very well put points there. buggger all to do with miners strikes.

Rudeboy – Thanks for the distraction, work is dragging today.

My thoughts are with the families of the two young men murdered.

I can’t quite believe some of the posts on this topic and those of you who are suggesting that this crime was somehow justified even just slightly should be ashamed of yourselves.

If peace is to last in NI then anyone who knows anything about these attacks needs to step up and speak to either the PSNI or the Garda to make sure these criminals are brought to justice asap.

There is no reason why in these enlightened times there needs to be any armed struggle. Both NI & ROI can exist as peaceful democracies within the EU where the rule of law and politcial process should be supported and encouraged.

As far as I am aware, only Switchbacks and one other company are legally registered in Spain. Check the companies have a “Registro” and full insurance otherwise theoretically if you are riding in the national parks, the police can fine you and/or confiscate your bike (apparently).

That seems to get mentioned quite a bit on this site and is unfair to some of the other companies. I think you will find most of the companies are legally registered Spainish compaines. From personal experience I know FreerideSpain and Joyriders both are.

However being a registered Spainish company does not automatically provide the right to guide groups in the ‘National Parks’, the outfits that don’t use the Sierra Nevada don’t need to bother jumping through the hoops to get permission as they ride in ‘Natural Parks’ which fall under different laws i.e. the Subettica for Joyriders.

If I were concerened about going with a different/new Spainish MTB company company I would just make sure of the following;

1. Spainish Company Registration.
2. Guides with first aid qualifications to at least REC level 2 or similar and preferably some form of mountain leadership qualification. It does not have to be mountain biking. Skiing, walking or climbing all cover the same basic areas of group management/saftey and emergency actions.
3. That your own holiday insurance is all sorted and you have an EHC or E111.

BigEars

MTFU and perform your civic duty. We (the innocent citizens of the nation) need you (the poor sod in the wrong place at the wrong time) to help put evil doers away. I’m afraid you are failing all of us if you don’t do it.

Now take one for the team and go, if they do happen to come after you let us know and the STW massive will be down with several sets of bombers.

Actually chatting to a mate who is a DS very very very few witnesses get intimidated unless they are actually grassing on their mates.

Good luck!