If you’re considering the Wiim streamer and you need an amp anyway then I’d suggest looking at the cunningly named Wiim Amp which has all of it in one box for £299. Pretty neat and IIRC its bluetooth remote control so can stash it away. Its also got eArc HDMI so can take input from TV. Don’t think it has phono input though.

If I can claim 0.5% as non-alchoholic, then the Tiny Revel Clwb Tropicana is great and very refreshing. And they have an alchoholic version too for those times when you need a little more bit to it…

Reform have to run candidates in this election or they are toast. They conveniently dropped out of the last election, if they drop out of this one then even the loons will wonder whats the point if you can’t even vote for them at any point.

What possible reason is there for anyone who is currently saying that they will vote Reform UK to switch to the Conservatives?

If Torys can get even more nasty to get within at least toucing distance of Reforms policies then I could see people going back to the Tories as at least they have a chance of getting an MP or even winning the election (obviously they don’t but better bet than Reform). May as well get 90% of the nastiness and get some sort of power than just a potential wasted vote and end up with the wokerati Labour.

Worry not , there’s enough embargo busting countries happily buying up cheap Russian oil to keep the lights on

Thing is though, India are buying the oil in Rupees and China is paying in Yuan. Russia can’t spend those rupees as they don’t actually do much importing from India, and no-one else will use those for trade. Similar with the Yuan though to a lesser extent.

Ruble is down 40% on both those currencies too IIRC this year.

Russia might be selling oil but its basically been given magic beans for it which it can’t use so its almost of no benefit to them.

They knew they’d lose, probably betting on it. It was only 200 a year sent to Ruanda so even the far right voters would have gone ‘hold on, we spent £140m to send a planes worth ‘home’?”.

Next plan is no doubt to play along with the lie they are going to leave x, y and z, change our laws to allow it etc etc- House of Lords would knock all that back and iirc Sunak couldn’t force it through as last session of parliament before election. Milk that, tell the punters that voting us back in will definitely  mean it will happen and hope the mugs all fall for it again.

I hope that I’m wrong, that the supply of weapons won’t slow and that maybe Putin’s willingness to see any number of his people killed will be challenged 

Putin needs to hold out for another year and take the chance that Trump gets back in (or the Republicans control the houses) and suddenly that supply of weapons could dry up.

Cue some cease fire talks and we’ll keep these bits we already control, thank you very much. Lick wounds for a couple of years to replenish ammo/army and start again…

Basically what Winston says.

If they win it’ll become more obvious we’re spending many many millions of pounds to ship only 200 poor people (iirc) a year for processing. Probably less than keeping them in the mythical 5 star hotels they’re all living up in for a year.

Maybe just spend the money, you know, on efficiently processing the asylum claims here so they can either be released into the system to earn money/taxes/contribute to society, or repatriated if they are rejected and maybe we wouldn’t have 200,000 awaiting their appeals.

In terms of triggering the contest, it’s letters from 15% of the Parliamentary Party, so the threshold falls along with the number of MPs, so the question is could there still be enough headbangers in safe seats to trigger it, even if the Red Wall neanderthals are gone?

Won’t need it after the election, Rishi will have to fall on his sword.

Don’t think the loons have enough numbers to force VONC before election.

She might be focusing so much to appeal to the membership that she overlooks one fundamental issue – she needs to be on the voting slip for leadership, presumably after an election that could well wipe out many of her supporters. I’m not 100% sure she’s massively well liked by fellow MPs in the Tory party, especially as it could be easy to blame her for rocking the boat so close to an election.

At the first tweet on Wednesday from her, I wish Sunak would just remove the whip from her just to spite her and stop her even getting on the ballot paper for next leader.

Anymore cage rattling from the rest of the right wing loons and maybe he could just say, ‘Right, lets just have an election’.

Anyway, I’m off to write my christmas list for santa as he’s more likrly to listen…

Ok, forget the switching, how about a separate category.

20mph limiter, but you can only ride it on roads. Like a moped, but one where you can use a bike style helmet, or no helmet, no requirement for insurance or licence; and maybe you can carry it up to your city apartment rather than leaving it outside to be nicked.

How would we feel about them?

I feel most people would ignore the categories and the bell ends (or unknowledgeable) would just use their high(er) powered bikes on bike paths regardless.

I think its naive to think 20mph zone would magically make cars drive at 20mph (much as I’d like it to). IIRC the Welsh changes only dropped the average speed by a couple of mph and I’m guessing it wasn’t 22mph to start with. So even with 20mph ebikes you’re still going to get Billy Transit driver wanting to do 24mph and get by (even if you assume it’s not going to be 30mph anyway regardless of limit).

Ok, forget the switching, how about a separate category.

20mph limiter, but you can only ride it on roads. Like a moped, but one where you can use a bike style helmet, or no helmet, no requirement for insurance or licence; and maybe you can carry it up to your city apartment rather than leaving it outside to be nicked.

How would we feel about them?

I feel most people would ignore the categories and the bell ends (or unknowledgeable) would just use their high(er) powered bikes on bike paths regardless.

Tyres were an eye watering amount per corner if I remember rightly when the next door neighbour told me the price a while ago

I’m almost letting myself believe he might see the inside of a jail at some point.

He’s not ever going to jail. As ex-pres he’s the right to security protection for the rest of his life. I think the worst would be home arrrest at Mar A Lago (or Trump tower or wherever) which doesn’t really sound that terrible. I’d still love that to happen and the judge to force him to wear the orange jumpsuit 24/7 regardless but I think thats as close to a comeuppance that he’ll get. Apart from going bankrupt/having to admit he’s only worth 10 dollars and three cents after all

IIRC there is now a class action in the states about this. Can’t remember the details, I imagine its much like the thoughts on here – you know they are going to fall apart and I don’t fancy riding on them until I find out one day when I break one so give us a replacement regardless of inspection.

As part of Engoron’s ruling putting Trump’s companies into administration he’s also asked for details of everyone who has a stake in these companies. Should be interesting what overseas names come out.

Don’t think having most of his stock owned by Russians or Chinese will help him much!

I’m guessing it’ll also show that he doesn’t actually have as much money as he says he does as it’s actually investors that have the cash. And he’s out of the Forbes top 400 rich list, probably the opnly things that’ll make him smart at the moment, but that will all be political witchhunts etc. etc. I’m sure.

Yeah, assuming “expenses” come from my mum’s estate then that’s surely moot, there’s little point I can see in expensing myself.

This is not necessarily the case – in theory, upon death all bank accounts etc. will be frozen (I’m sure you’re aware of this) and whilst you can get dispensation from banks I found it easier when I was dealing with things to pay for funeral etc. myself as an expense and sort it later. Some things won’t wait to be paid unfortunately.

Can’t imagine a massive amount of companies willing to sponsor an anything goes category so ultimately thats why it would fail. If its more profitable to enter the non-dope race then guess where people are going to head…

@breatheeasy I wonder what the Ukrainian for ‘YGBSM’ is.

Ha, yeah, those wild weasels sound like a fun (and possibly short live) occupation.

Call me a sceptic, but if Putin did have him assasinated, he waited a long time to do it, given that the attempted coup was quite a severe humilliation.

Well, theres the revenge is best served cold idea, but possibly Prighozin was being ultra careful for the first few weeks and then maybe thought he’d got away with it and got a bit sloppy with his security.

Though I suspect its more likely that Putin held a very very thorough FSB investigation into anybody else who might possibly be involved and has just started ticking off the names on the list, Prighozin being first and some generals/unheard of people start falling out of 10 story hospitals and then stab themselves 15 times on landing.

A few years back they did a survey in our local high street. It was fairly random questions like ‘what was your first pet?’, ‘the name of your best friend’ etc. (you can probably see where this was going). All those who completed the survey won a £100 voucher. They just needed your bank details to send it to…

Thankfully it was a security company and the people actually won a lecture about not being so stupid and giving basically enough personal info to wipe them out.

The HARM missles have three modes. the UKRs have managed to hack one mode to work with the missiles hanging off their MIGs. F16s will open it up to having all their functionality back so they can go hunting radar sites with free will.

Frankly, I find it hard to believe that Biden/the Democrats don’t hold huge poll leads or majorities in Congress but that could be because my views are too “metropolitan elite”

The number of votes each state gets towards the presidential race is wildly skewed in Republican favour – I think possibly because of the concentrations of population on the more coastline states, makes the North/South divide in the UK look fairly balanced.

I can’t believe that over 40% of the voting population are so wilfully ignorant of what’s happening here to consider voting for Trump.

The 40% will vote Republican. Who ever is in charge doesn’t really matter. The strange concept that is electoral colleges in the US helps the cause too.

So, long story short, what the hell are the centralists going to do to pull this back from them brink??

Actually, the cycle of voting might help them out IIRC. Can’t remember the exact details but this next round of elections (not presidential) is the last chance for Republicans to take over the Senate etc. properly for a good number of years (I think there are more Democatic seats up for re-election this time around) as the next couple of rounds have more Republican seats for grabs, so in theory they can lose more than they could gain.

I think Biden isn’t massively popular either but he seems to be getting the economy going again (green subsidy/state intervention) and they’ll judge him on that and likely vote him in for a second term.

Trump has a vocal, yet small(er) number of followers. The clown show that is going to be him in court/jail whilst campaigning might rile up his vocal cultists but its not going to get him anymore swing voters. Sadly, as pointed out, one of the maga loons will have an AR15 he/she is not afraid to use, but can’t see a widespread uprising.

I think once he’s wearing the matching orange jumpsuit I can see the Repulicans rapidly distancing themselves and (possibly) positioning themselves back to the centre. Or they could go more extreme but that’ll likely not win for them next time, much like the Tory choice once they get booted into opposition. Trump won’t got to jail, much as I’d like to see if if he’s convicted. He’ll either be under house arrest in Florida for 200 years because of the ‘security aspect’ or bailed/grounded until he does the appeal after appeal until he croaks it.

In the end of the day, the big money will realise the loons don’t get into power so they don’t get their say so that’ll ultimately affect the direction of travel.

Of course he was popular in Richmond (or did you mean Harrogate?), he was funnelling all that leveling up money into Tory strongholds from those pesky plebs.

Next door had one a while ago. IIRC replacement tyres were an eyewatering amount per corner but if you’ve already got a fairly large beast I suspect you’ve already noticed that cost…

Classic jam tomorrow.

“No, honestly, vote for us in the next election and this time I definitely will sort out <insert issue we haven’t fixed in over a decade>, I promise”

The main pain for me after giving up is going out – still like a nice coffee but I do notice now the effect it has on me so have to just be a bit aware if having an evening meal with a coffee. Its pretty hit and miss what brown liquid you get as decaff coffee in most establishments.

No, but it will demonstrate to a jury that he knew what he was doing. One important thing about Trump is that, despite lying shamelessly at nearly every opportunity, he knows to shut up in court and not get caught lying there.

His lawyers conundrum – they need him not to go on stand as he will at some point do his equivalent of ‘you can’t handle the truth’, but also he needs to explain a lot of his actions. I can only think they’re desperately looking for a technical get-out-of-jail (literally!) card to play.

I guess thats the hope, the ‘proper’ boys disappear and the jail-clear-out cannon fodder gets foisted on the regular army.

I see it the other way – the murderers/rapists etc. sprung from jail take the ‘you can go home as an option’ which I presume probably doesn’t mean going back to jail.

Guessing the original Wagner members might just join the other mercenary groups that are definitely not in Russia.

I’ve a paid of Skechers boots with the memory foam insoles. Fine for knocking about it, but really uncomfortable for sustained mooching/walking, unless the trainer versions are more forgiving. I found the foam packed down as you say.

Decent pair of trainers not do you? Have a look at sportsshoes.com – some decent stuff to choose from if you’re trying to avoid the trainer look.

When I finally get hauled back into the office I’m tempted with a Raleigh Trace

https://www.raleigh.co.uk/gb/en/trace-electric-bike/?attrMarketingColor=Blue

About as non-ebike looking as I could find for (vaguely) reasonable money.

Next year we’ll have mortages up £4k a year, stricter border controls (so even costlier imports), NHS likely collapse, fuel prices no doubt going up, everything going properly downhill.

Rish! to call a quick snap election now then blame Labour for all the woes coming and bounce straight back in the following term?

Isn’t the oath he took to the committee the equivalent of being in court? Sure I read the perjury was potentially an option, and they seem pretty confident he did.

So, with no appeal to higher court available

A) the judge can decide a not guilty verdict on her own

B) there is bizarrely not a minimum sentence time for these Florida crimes so she could give Trump zero years in jail if he is found guilty.

And she’s had something like 14 days court time experience!

One of Trumps current lawyers was on TV stating the Presidential Act, was, like, duh, an act that allowed the president to do whatever he wanted with stuff.

Rather than the act very specially saying anything produced by a president was property of the US.

He’s doomed. Unless she’s a grade A troll.

Does anyone have any idea why he wanted those documents? What did he want to do with them?

Some (CNN?) presenter was suggesting it might be for revenge on certain people, kinda being able to wave (classified!) documents in the air and say ‘Ah ha, you said XXX, and these papers prove its YYY’.

Though to me, some of that stuff looks very useful to people who might pay him lots of money for a new hotel.

Yep, its whack-a-mole time with mortgages at moment. Likely deals are getting pulled from undeer the advisors nose so I’d maybe not word the snotty email too strongly.

Perfectly timed leak to coincide with a recommendation of 10+ days suspension, and hence a suspension/byelection? Any fuss kicked up by people saying its a harsh recommendation now drowned out by even more evidence of his wrong doing. Genius!

I’m always surprised that we don’t seem to have an existing U.K. battery maker willing to produce e.v. Batteries TBH.

There probably is, but not to the costs required to make it feasible for the tiny base of car makers we have left here.

I imagine there are enough Trump supporters that you could represent him once, not get paid, then pimp yourself out to any hard done by Republican in the area and make your cash back. He’s just a promotional tool.

I do think theres a few of the lawyers thinking they can get a good gig on Foxnews as a legal correspondant or, like you say, getting work from a rich Republican billionaire. However agrowing number are finding its a fine line between getting recognition and getting fined, sanctioned or disbarred.

Looks like the latest one to leave was working on the secret documents case and suspiciously left just after the town hall shizzle storm where Trump was asked if he showed secret docs to people and his reply was ‘Not really’. Tough to argue any logical defence when your boss has basically admitted to it.