Ashcroft knows Cameron won’t sue so he can do what he wants with impunity.

How long before a “full and earnest” review of Ashcrofts tax status and dealings?

Just been through this. Almost went for Corian, the kitchen designer (who we know) showed us quite a few of the Corian surfaces in the showroom and, admittedly in a farily harsh environment, looked dull and scratched.

So we ended up with Silestone. Don’t know if it’s the colour we chose but its a nightmare with water marks. Plus the little white bits in it it look like tiny crumbs which I’m forever trying to brush off the surface.

It’s nice, and works in our kitchen but if we had to repeat I’m really not sure what we’d go for.

Had “using a calculator watch” (showing my age there…) scrawled all over a mock exam paper by some loon of a teacher.

It was an English exam… 🙄

Yeah it takes about 10 seconds longer to make a proper coffee,

Then the five minutes cleaning out the kit for next time…

Well, its possible he doesn’t know this person. Mate has a similar issue, delivery firm left his parcel a couple of doors down at the drug-dealer/dodgy bloke who’d just moved in and nobody knew about. Suffice to say, this bloke then denied all knowledge of receiving a parcel.

Can’t remember how it was resolved.

You’ve done your best to deliver parcel – tracked etc. so plus points for you, though it could probably come down to the fact it was your ‘contract’ with Parcelforce so you’ll have to sort it out. Parcelforce 48 is insured so hopefully it should be covered.

Check wether you can mix and match those Tiagra and 105 if you considering, say, Tiagra shifters and 105 rear mech – I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that 4600 Tiagra might have a different cable pull.

I use a Shimano chain with a quick link. Never had an actual quick link fail, it’s always been the normal links. Best combo for me at moment.

He can’t be destroyed by the SNP – they managed to do that with the last Labour leader in Scotland. There isn’t anything really left to lose.

Unless the SNP are planning to stand in English seats too…

Any gains, however marginal will be spun as a Lab victory. Possibly in thehope it sparks some new momentum in Scotland.

Just a thought, would these type of barends be better for you? (can’t see the m-trax so don’t know if it has the original type that start at the bar and go forwards, rather than be more fitted at the middle)

MTBs have a longer top tube than road bikes – adding drops (or at least the reach of the drop, however small the bars are) will probably make it a big stretch even with a titchy stem.

If you’re having problems with reach now, I’m not convinced drops are the answer, riding on the hoods and using those cross top levers would just be like what you’re doing now (with the added hassle of having less powerful min-Vs).

That old m-trax might have a different reach to a more modern mtb frame though – that might be your decider…

What Jambalaya says – you might find it’s best to save in the ISA for most of a year, then put that cash into the mortgage at the right time.

Plus, make sure there are no fees for paying off too much of your mortgage, IIRC it’s 10% overpayment on ours before some penalties (though I’m probably wrong, apparently I always am if you listen to my other half…).

Moon Comet, or possibly the Moon Crescent fit neatly under the saddle.

Though there are a number of rear lights these days that just fit on the seatpost with the rubber loops – they might be an option for your

It’s not a unique things though, I priced up a top-end S-Works Roubaix road bike a few years ago and even using RRP for all the bits I couldn’t get within £1k of what Spesh were charging.

Specialized do it all the time on their top end bikes. On a quiet day I costed up one of their carbon mtbs and I had a sizeable amount of ‘virtual cash’ left even with a few cheeky ‘upgrades’ to the spec.

Groovy

Different question for othe LR owners;

Is anyone making use of the “low-rider” bosses ~1/3rd of the way up either fork leg?

I want a way to carry dry bags and that position is more out of the way. A nice minimal low rider rack or something like an anything cage that could pick up on those bosses would be great… anyone?

Aren’t they mudguard drillings? Might not be in the right place for the traditional low rider type panniers (or indeed up the job of carry that sort of load).

Am I within my rights to ask them to refund money for the airplane tickets which we did not book through them?

IANAL but I’d be surprised if you could. Especially as you have refused alternative accomodation.

Was it a pension started in a job 40 years ago maybe? Could possibly have been in your name but he forgot to move it across to a new beneficiary? Wouldn’t be the first time.

I’m kinda with Cougar on this one. Even just for a short term.

How is getting a 68mm bottom bracket going to make the axle on the cranks shorter?!

The cranks will fit, but you’ll have to use the normal bottom bracket that works with it and add the usual spacers in.

Chain line might be an issue though.

Yes, look out for that ‘handling fee’.

The left and right in Labour won’t split up to form a new party. It’d be political suicide for whoever does this as they won’t be able to trade on the “my grandfather voted Labour and my father voted Labour so I vote Labour” vote, and they know it.

More likely, as we’re seeing now, they’ll be a lot of in fighting to “save” the Labour party “that we all know and ‘love'” and lots of weasel words (mostly from the Bliarists I’d imagine). Hopefully sense will prevail after the outcome of this leadership campaign becuase I think a rebellion for either side would doom them all completely for a very long time.

The really slow unfit people who cant ride up the hills. Surely if you are that unfit and unprepared to ride 70km/100km its not going to be any fun.

No, they’ve just been onto STW to ask a question like “should I get a triple or a compact for my first sportive” and got the usual big hitter answers like “I once rode twice up Everest using a 52t front chainring, 11-21 rear cassette – just man up”

If the stop times are standing in queues for portaloos and water, I say fair enough.

If you just stopped for a, say, ten minute rest by the side of the road would that count? How many rest stops help with the average speed when actually riding the bike sections?

I think the right thing for your missus to do is reply to the post pointing she is confused because the website says he did it in x:xx instead. And maybe post a picture of some Bombers and some soggy slippers. 😛

You’ll also note the amount of autonomous tech available in Volvos in the UK… today.

Is that the Volvo that couldn’t have an accident and promptly ploughed stright into the demostration car in front of it?

The real worry to me is these car manufacturers do the ultimate cop-out – hand the car back to the ‘driver’ if it can’t decide what to do in these kind of scenarios. They’d probably have to put down their latte, magazine and ipad first mind…

Northwave used to do a number of trainer style shoes, certain one was goretex.

We can afford a couple of quid a week so we put some numbers on – I’m fully aware of the odds, but gotta be in it to win it I suppose.

If granddad-in-law had been born three days earlier we’d have won the jackpot a year or two back (one line was the usual birthdays…). Was a bit gutted to have won a significantly smaller amount for five numbers, but still up on the entire venture…

Atlaz – I was thinking more about the pave cobbled sections actually. Think they are fine for the Hell of the North – a one day race where the jobs up if you go down. Potentially ending (as it did with Froome last year) the entire three weeks is pretty harsh. Yes, I know, you can crash/get taken out anytime and the whole race is a process of attrition. Tricky I suppose, they know better than me, but everything this year felt slightly ‘manipulated’ which was probably more for the benefit of everyone BUT Sky.

Ups:
Froome and Quintana apparent appreciation of each others efforts – nice to see the handshakes and smiles.
Cummings stage win.
Jalbert getting really uncomfortable with some less than subtle questioning on his doping background.

Downs:
A couple more ‘sensible’ sprint stages i.e. not up a 1 in 5 for the last 200m.
Don’t think Millar added much to the ITV4 coverage.
Valverde.

Can’t decide if the TdF organisers are trying too hard with the stages. Almost designing stages for people to crash out isn’t my idea of racing.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

Though to be fair the whole lot is good.

You’re correct, you won’t get much lower than 33t (TA do one) on a 110BCD chainset.

The double mtb chainset will be based around a 73mm bb shell (hence the need to put spacers on for most people on 68mm versions – road is always 68mm) so might throw out the chainline a touch.

Fair chance the sti shifters are double rather than triple specific so it kinda rules out a road triple chainset though nothing to stop you taking off the outer and running 28/40+ only or something.

I alsways thought front mechs had different throws for mtb and road but as you’d just be doing two rings I really can’t see it being much of an issue. Might be a bit /slowclunky but depends how many times you’re going to be shifting.

If you’re still on square taper, Spa are selling their own version of the ‘Stronglight Impact’ type cranks cheap that are 110bcd triples.

“Obviously”

My missus is currently using this everywhere. “Obviously, I bumped into Fred at the shops”. Well, no it’s not obvious as I wasn’t there.

You’d (well – I’d ) just think it would be more efficient to have one bloke on the front going full chat for, say, two minutes, then rotate him out and have someone else on the front for another two minutes, etc etc. There must be a logical reason why they don’t, I’m damn sure they know a lot more about it than I do.

You’re assuming the other 150+ riders on other teams in the peleton will graciously move out of your way to allow you join nicely back into the rear of your own train…

Mavic Aksium Disks can be swapped for 15mm front caps, not sure about the back.

Well rates ain’t going to plummet so if you’re fairly certain you won’t be moving then I’d be tempted with a longer term fixed rate.

Contador will be struggling now he has to ride the tour against all his rivals and without his special steaks and chef to make them for him.

My cycling mag with a review of the TdF last month came with a flyer from a butchers. I really don’t know if that was deliberate windup or someone in the marketing department didn’t really put two and two together!

Does every rider spend the whole day sitting in the middle of the peloton? It doesn’t take much to work out who would benefit from a decent aero bike.

Yes, bu if you’re the domestique at the front of the train on your aero bike then you’re not moving enough of the air out of the way for your leader thus making them use more energy than required. You want your leadout man to be cycling the equivalent of a bus surely 😛

and then you have justification for a HS2 link just to get anyone out of there

If only HS2 were going anywhere near Heathrow directly….

It was originally going to have flat bars and bar ends, however a bar narrow enough to be comfy on the bar ends was too narrow for the huge heavy wheels

And the even narrower drop bars were okay?

I’d need STI shifters, but they’d have to be disc, so that means either cable discs or road specific hydraulics, doesn’t it? Are road hydro stis compatible with say deore calipers? I’d have to build 700c rims onto mtb hubs, because even if I were to swap an axle on actual road wheels, the disc would be in the wrong place.

As far as I know hydro stis are only 11 speed (for Shimano). And £350 for a set. And your current rear mech almost certainly wouldn’t work. I’d not be surprised if they used standard Deore type calipers but I certainly wouldn’t be contemplating swapping hydro hoses from flat bar to drops.

Road hubs are 130mm (and obviously non-disk), so you’d need to use mtb hubs anyway (or mtb ones rebadged as cx/road disk…).

If you had a full set of gears/brakes hangin off the road bars and did a straight swap I couldn’t see if being a real faff (albeit an expensive exercise). If you had to start refitting cables to mechs/brakes etc. then that would probably push me over my threshold of annoyance and I’d be on eBay buying a new frame to fit onto instead!

So I take it now that STW is taking the moral highground on this then there’ll be no more threads about taking bikes to Morzine for a jolly weekend?

Oh, forgotten about the Chromecast.