The more I think about it, the more I think they probably deserve an unstable orange shit gibbon for president. It’s just a shame there might be same fallout beyond their borders.

Indeed, if places like Ukraine wouldn’t be screwed it he got in and laid it on a plate for his mate Putin I’d be tempted to celebrate the good ol’ us of a voting him in and watching the realisation unfold.

Theoretically, Can Trump win, then cut a deal and concede the presidency to the Dems in order for them to not prosecute.. ever?

Theorectically, I get the impression if Trump did win then he’s looking at never having elections again and modelling his reign much like Putins, let alone conceding the Democrats might ever get into power again. Can’t imagine there’ll be much left of the DoJ and the likes once he’s finished with it.

I was of the view China was a staunch ally of Russia, maybe that is only as long as Russia can pay….

Nah, China have got their own endgame in mind here. There’s the obvious careful watch how the world reacted to the war as China fancy having a go at Taiwan in very much the same manner. And a very nice discount on oil and gas from Russia now that no-one else wants it, thank you.

They’re also licking their lips at a bit of a land grab into Russia as well to secure some resources for themselves. By all accounts theres some parts of Russia close to China that have a healthy ‘population’ of Chinese residents.

And don’t forget a boatload of potential ‘recruits’ upped sticks and left Russia as soon as they saw they might (literally) be in the firing line.

And a lot of the satellite ex USSR countries used to have people willing to go and work in Russia for more rubles than they’d get at home and send the money back to their families etc. – they ain’t going anywhere near Russia now as they’ll be straight onto the frontline too, so I can imagine less and less manpower is available to run the day-to-day stuff.

Probably plenty of bump stocks knocking around they can put on their semi AR15s

Even though the PDW always get well reviewed, 120 quid for mudguards, ouch!

We stayed here last year – https://www.hotel-arcade.com/eng2/, about 5 mins from Plac de la Concorde. Walkable to Sacre Cour, all around the main touristy bits in the centre and an excellent Decathlon store nearby just beside the Ralph Lauren store! Not sure if it’d be in budget, bookiung.com might have some deals.

Yeah, as above, I suspect you won’t get 22% if you don’t pay in your share.

Our company pension allow you to contribute 0% (basically withdrawing from the pension scheme) and IIRC they give you a 4% contribution instead.

I went to one episode – Play Dead and Lee Scratch Perry if I remember correctly. Good fun. Happy days, albeit 40 years ago!!!

The reputation VW has is just good marketing from a 1980s advert. In user surveys they don’t tend to do particularly well.

Bumped into my old boss (he lived in London, I was in North East) taking his daughter round Glasgow last week while we were doing the rounds. Maths lecturer was disapointed that not many wanted the free USB pen drives these days (and she did admit the Masters degrees were cash grabs from foreign students!)

And when did a ‘full time’ course become a lecture or two a day (same lecture repeated morning and afternoon for ‘those who like a lie in’!) and a couple of labs a week.

Home Newcastle leg this weekend, then Sheffield next week. Train fares starting to tot up…

Slightly underwhelmed with the 2x GRX offering, looking forward to see what Shimano do with the 1x version IIRC think they confirmed would be next year. I have a spider sense that it might be full wireless a la SRAM as sticking a battery (however big) up a seatpost then only powering the rear mech wouldn’t make sense. And might be a good test for the Dura Ace wireless road version that must come along at some point too.

The other route a lot of software engineers take is turning to the dark side and becoming project managers. Wish I’d done it earlier to be honest. As I got older being a Javascript dev, it was getting too hard for my old brain to keep up with whether I was now Angular, or React, or NodeJS and you get to a level where the next job/salary you want demands more and more that you just can’t keep up with (well, I couldn’t anyway). Life catches up too, you don’t have the time or inclination to study for the next trends when you’ve got kits to feed, water and read books to, so found project management was more tranaferable between jobs.

You can sometimes find Darn Tough stuff on sale for more reasonable prices. I’ll not buy anything else now to be honest, love my few pairs. Been absolutely hammered these past few years and look almost new.

Plus potentially extra over and above the £20k if Hunt gets this ‘British ISA’ or whatever its called going.

Also, its worth sticking a quid in a LISA if you’ve not purchaed you’re first home as there is an age limit to when you can open one of those, so might be worth thinking about.

The multiple ISAs in a year is about the only decent thing Hunt has done, means you can have ‘Kids Uni fees’ ISA, ‘NewBike’ ISA, ‘Grandads funeral costs’ ISA etc.

My 17 year old youth did one yesterday at the local National Trust establishment and thoroughly enjoyed it until she was asked if her kids had enjoyed themselves! She’d even done the colouring in bit too!!! To be fair she was trying to get some photos for her art assignment during it though.

I wonder whether Trump is being advised whether it’s a better look (politically) to sell them himself, or have them “seized by the deep state”.

He’s all about ‘the deal’ so he can’t sell them off quickly to the first bidder and stoke his ego so I’d go with the deep state stealing it off him (and if you could donate all your spare dollars to my fund to get them back please click the link here…).

Alpin, I think it would already be a done deal if there was a candidate the majority could get around.

And yes, I think they’re mad enough to go for another unelected throw of the dice.

Top trolling if they go for Trump Tower to start with.

What will happen if he can’t pay?

Well, assuming he hasn’t successfully transferred his holdings to Florida where NYC can’t touch them, I believe the prosecutors can apply to the court to seize whatever assets they think will cover the fine. And I’m guessing they won’t be massively bothered about ‘the deal’ part of it so they’ll probably flog off stuff at cut down prices to get the cash quickly so the true cost to Trump may be significantly higher than if he’d spent a year cutting deals.

No jail IIRC.

Needs to get his Indian trade deal over the line to please his father-in-law then he can call the election…

Can you imagine rocking up at the local BMX track for a tiny tots balance bike race and recognising the parents of the kid next to yours?

Imaging rocking up to the parents 100m race on sports day and the 100m Olympic champion decides to have a jog…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz_s5E_fsbM

With regard the E G Carroll case, I did watch somewhere a lawyer suggesting some sort of gag order rather than more financial penalties with could give rise to contempt of cournt and possible jail time instead of dragging the whole thing through court again for more cash – it must be pretty stressful for her so whilst its easy to say, hell yeah, lets sue him again for $200m this time from the comfort of our sofas there is a huge personal element to this for her.

Can’t see the TikTok guys helping out now that they went through with the promise of a bill to ban it. The Orange one must be livid they’ve followed his orders from last week rather than the revised ones this week after his ‘chat’ with the Tiktok investor.

When I worked in a well known wine merchants 20+ years ago we had people walk in and pick up cases of champagne and walk out casually.

Pfft, my sister worked at a carpet/furniture place for a while and they would happily come in and try and get a full size dinner table (and chairs!) out of the front doors on occasion!

Well – it keeps rising. Etherium up 51% in a month, Cardano up 53%.

I think a lot of the bigger cryptos are still wedded to BTC, thats on a run at the moment as I think the financial institutions ETFs are starting to buy bigly into it, possibly getting in before the halfing (halving?) next month (IIRC). It’ll drag them along with it.

Hasn’t 30p Lee been suspended for not apologising rather than the comments themselves?

Yeah, GRX rear mech might be you buddy here

And also don’t forget anyone buying any of Trumps ‘assets’ is going to be well aware of how much trouble he’s in so they’re not going to be buying anywhere full retail price. The only exceptions to that might be the Saudis or the Russians paying a good price to help their mate out. And theres someone from the gov running his affairs in NYC now too so thewy'[ll be doing a closing down sale price rather than solid going concerns just to get the money in a hurry.

Strange that Post Offiice bod was sacked DURING the ‘bullying’ investigation and not the end, surely?

Many years ago – at least 10 – there was some data potentially exposed at a previous company I worked for. Those affected were given paid credit monitoring services (Experian I think) for a couple of years to watch for any identity theft issues.

If this is a real breach, perhaps request something similar?

This.

We had something similar quite recently. I’ve now got a couple of years paid for covering my Experian account. It’ll alert you if anyone has a nibble at getting credit  for you. Think you might actually put a type of lock on there too (not sure if this is part of the paid service or not) to stop things actually progressing, bit of pain though as you’ve got to remember to unlock it when you’re doing proper things yourself like new bank accounts etc. but better than the alternative.

If the bosses don’t know anything then I’d suggest asking them on email what they do know and informing them that there are suspicions on t’interweb. Its possible they may be dealing with the ransomware people in the background (not that they’d tell you that) but worth letting them know you know and they should know as well.

Ultimately, without changing bank accounts, credit cards, address etc. then now info out there, there is going to be an element of exposure.

Sadly, and its a bit depressing to say this, you just need to make your details a bit more of a faff to scam than the next poor punter on the list. Its a bit like the online equivalent of the burglar seeing your house with alarm, window locks etc. – yes they could still put a brick through the window but the house next door left the window open so…

Many years ago – at least 10 – there was some data potentially exposed at a previous company I worked for. Those affected were given paid credit monitoring services (Experian I think) for a couple of years to watch for any identity theft issues.

If this is a real breach, perhaps request something similar?

This.

Actually an article in the Guardian about this kind of feeling:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/19/the-big-idea-this-simple-behavioural-trick-can-help-you-get-more-out-of-life

TLDR – shorter breaks might be better for you that one long one

Prime everyone to go early in May for the GE after your magic NI cuts then realise everything is going downhill fast, we’re likely to be in offical recession and you’re going to get stuffed in the polls anyway, may as well wait for Autumn and line your pockets for a few more months before you have to start paying for your flights and cars again, let the loons sort it all out with what slim picking are left…

Getting more pessimistic about an early chance to get rid of these scumbags

and unusually it’s compatible with SKX007 bezels, inserts and crystals, so some scope for customisation.

Speaking of which, and without plodding thru 200 plus pages of this thread, anyone done any modding of watches (presumably Seiko). Kinda want to have a play and find out how all the bits fit togther (not down to pulling movements apart though). Looking around I’m likely just to build a Seiko in my favourite colourways, but it looks a cool thing to try out for a relative (in watch world) money…

So I presume all these dodgy builders/roofers/handyman who do ‘cash only’ jobs literally have the roll of tenners in the pocket they pay anything with rather than straight round to the Halifax on a Monday to pay into their current account?

A reasonably cheap dongle DAC should feed those MR1s pretty well. Worst case you could feed them directly from the headphone output but thats the worst sound you’ll get outta tghe laptop.

Audioengine A2+ speakers are similar but have a DAC in them if you want something cheaper.

Same old playbook Binners, snouts in the trough for so long, leave things literally crumbling as you say then Labour have to come along and stump up the cash to rebuild schools/hospitals etc. etc. and bingo ‘Labour the party of tax and spend’, everyone forgets the past 13 years and lo and behold Tories back in after one term away.

Though if they’re not even the official opposition this time after a (hopeful) bloodbath and veer off towards Reform then maybe the cycle can finally be broken.

When you think you’re okay at art then your pal from school just casually announces to you he’s just completed the front cover for 2000AD…

Sounds like rebellion number 705 coming up now that some of the Tories have just realised they’re actually going to lose their cushy jobs in the very near future and are demanding they do something to turn it around. Obviously this means veering further to the right as thats obviously the vote winner. Sigh.

This whole thing was never meant to actually work. Its just some dog whistle, culture war nonsense to try and win voters back from Reform. It’d probably the best thing for the Lords to just wave it through and say ‘crack on then’

It can’t work, and if you listen to some pundits, even Cruella didn’t expect it to happen, let alone Sunak. By all accounts no private airline will touch these flights with a bargepole for fear of poor publicity. The RAF have said they need £x million pounds to secure any airfield they’d use for these flights (as there are likely to be protesters) which Cruella when she was Home Sec could have easily found down the sofa but didn’t.

They are just hoping those ‘woke’ commie Lords can be blamed for it. Failing them, the UN if they kick up a fuss.

All the more reason to pull out of the European Court of Human Rights so we can remove UK citizens rights so they can make more of a profit out of us  ship a few dozen people there.

It was reported yesterday that Russia has now instituted a series of scheduled power cuts that will last until April for 12 hours at a time. The temperature was -17C in Moscow this morning and -13C in St. Petersburg

Wonder if there an element of ‘forcing’ people to conscript to avoid dying in their homes.

Farage is going to look daft if he stands in the strongest Reform area and invariably gets beaten. Plus an early election isn’t good for his possible plans to tour US with the Orange One grifting a hell of a lot of money.

Reform are a busted flush if they don’t put candidates up for elections. What is the point of a political party if you can’t vote for them.

Aren’t Reform trying to crowdfund the deposit for one of the local elections? If so then that doesn’t sound like they have a massive coffer to cover the costs for all seats in the UK in the general election.