The more I look at this, the more I’m actually wondering if the Tories actually want to lose the next election. The comfy (ERG) majorities won’t give a toss as they’ll keep their seats. The red wall seats will be a sacrifice, and a few pals they know will be unfortunate casualties. Truss will get kicked out too so, meh, unlucky.

The important thing is they’ll leave this country in an absolute shambles (albeit with a few rich pals getting some perks) and Labour will have no money or time to sort it out.

Then they can blame it all on Labour for the short of memory blue rinse brigade for the next election and, voila, another 12 years plus in power again.

Well no, it’s just labelling. You dont have to sell in round Imperial units. You could sell 1lb 1.8oz of something easily enough.

Well, you could but the swivel eyed loons aren’t going to buy 1lb 1.8oz of something just so johnny foreigner can have a nice round 500g as the dual labelling are they?

The people who care about this are the ones that bend sweet shop owners ears of the UK about not wanting 100g of boiled sweets but a quarter of them. They’ll want to buy a pint of something, or a pound. Plus then it’ll be easy to compare the price against another option of the same weight. Do that and then you’re screwing up your EU labelling.

I would add that I was born in 1970 and I have no clue how many pounds are in a stone, oz in a pound, or yards in a mile. I can manage inches in a foot, that’s about it.

I have a really screwed up set of measurements – big distances in miles down to maybe half a mile, then its metres down to about 5 metres, then back to feet until about 12 inches then back to centimetres. Anything accurate is in mm regardless of distance though.

hmm, I have no objection to buying food in imperial if thats what pisses people off, its moronic, but so are lots of things, each to their own.

No, but if you’re selling to UK and to EU then suddenly you might need to run one product line in imperial and another for the metric in the EU which adds costs that really don’t need to be there.

The RS700 11 speed shifters are also a tenner for the rear one if you want to run 11 speed cassette on a flat bar with the Tiagra rear mech and the RS700 shifter up…

how long before the Conservative party members implode with the realisation that what has been promised in the hustings cannot be delivered?

Jam tomorrow, the oldest Conservative trick in the book.

In reality Liz is just saying what that tiny proportion of the population who decide her fate want to hear, despite it being unpopular with basically everyone else. Cue a volte face once shes got the job.

I’ve just watched a great April fools spoof in August where they suggested GPs write prescriptions to the most venerable who actually manage to get an appointment. Admittedly the original source appears to the The Sun but even that kind of suggestion being let out into the wild regardless of whether is true or not (or even workable) just shows how much they’ve already lost the plot.

That Honest Gov advert is spot on!

Wasn’t there a regular boatload of assasinations/car bombs a while ago in Russia? Wonder if the Russian mafia are starting to flex their muscles again if times are tight.

I still find it astonishing that most of Russias ‘tech’ seems to be powered by all sorts of electronics by Sony etc. (even if Sony didn’t know). All this time, and working with China in some shape or form and they can’t produce their own (or at least order it sans globally well known branding). What did they think was going to happen when those parts dried up after the inevitable sanctions?

Conversely, next time the boffins in the US ask for billions of dollars for the next high tech stealth hypersonic thingymagig would the money makers say ‘hold on, Russia stuff is running off washing machines, do we really need to spend this money as all the stuff we have now will wipe the floor with them’? Suppose China is now the ‘enemy’ for that request…

They must be really really really confident they’d find something. Literally the heads of everything in America would have had to sign off on raiding an ex president regardless of who he was.

Trump is going to spend the rest of his life fighting some lawsuit or another, whether he ever sees time in jail is highly debatable.

Torn on whether I want him to throw his hat into the ring for another shot at the big job. The worry if he doesn’t is someone else as mad/extreme but with better presentation skills takes the nomination instead and succeeds with the MAGA crowd. Watching some of the US commentary, they seem to be loading all sorts of official posts with full on Qanon wackos. Last times ‘stop the steal’ was just a practice.

Except North Korea aren’t big exporters of gas.

Russias gas pipelines of any consequence are pointing towards Europe. The China version is a very small percentage of the amount coming our way. It’ll take Russia a very long time to get that kinda capacity to China (and India) even if they can actually afford it (and have the actual materials to make it).

Personally i think LIV is getting the bad press and Saudi stuff because the bigwigs at the PGA, R&A and so on are trying to get this nipped in the bud and kill off competition, same way as UEFA killed off the superleague stuff, there’s no saints on either side, but it’s all about business this stuff, same as F1 has been doing worse things for much longer, same as why we’re watching a World Cup in Qatar this winter and so on.

Well, I think they’ve got a kinda right to try and protect what they’ve built up over the years. Its like you spending a long time building up whatever business you’re in and then Amazon setting shop up next door selling everything at a loss just to get the market because they can afford to.

Newcastle, and certainly Sunderland has the life sucked out of them by the massive Metrocentre development – free parking, the usual ‘benefits’. Ironically, after a ‘forced’ trip there today with the family it looks like online is sucking the life out of that too, never seen so many boarded up shops (albeit, prettified to make them have attractive boards, but an empty retail space none the less).

Saying that, knowing a shop manager in the Newcastle, the amount of shoplifting is at a phenominal level and they are basically untouchable (and know it), the police do nothing and becaase its public land they can’t ban them (like they can do on out of town spaces).

Chuck in this current inflation/energy price hikes and they’ll be less purchaisng too adding to the problem.

For reference my local high street is just charity shops, coffee shops and hairdressers. Even the local post office is now in a petrol station half a mile away. I don’t know what you can do to it to make it worth going to.

Theres a lot of money in general sloshing about in golf because theres a lot of people that play it, and yes, possibly the demographic also means they will pay a decent amount of money to purchase the same equipment as the pros.

The LIV stuff will never get a return of the investment though. Its not about getting their money back, its basically buying and appropriating an entire pro level sporting group in effect. They will just keeping spaffing all their oil money on players until they hold 99% of the cards.

And before poeple say, so what?, they’ll just go onto the next sport and the next sport. Football, boxing (lets be fair cycling is going to be very low on that list). Might not be able to do it with the american based stuff like baseball and basketball but its coming for everything else.

And really, do we have to try so hard to trash other sports? Can we not accept different people might play different sports/hobbies? Especially in the next topic we’re now saying we’re a country of obesity and we need to get fitter etc, or need to look after our mental health etc.

Quotes from a Guardian article from some woman in Roundhay. The logic is astounding!

“I’ve been reading [Truss’s] comments in the local media about pupils being let down and people thought she was being very unfair. It’s not true that it’s a deprived area,” she said.

“She got a good enough education at Roundhay to go to Oxford. I don’t agree with her comments at all.”

As a lifelong Tory voter, Lusardi has been following the contest very closely and still backs Truss. “I find Liz Truss more believable. I’m not biased towards women but I think women are more honest,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/27/shes-delusional-roundhay-voters-on-tory-leadership-contender-liz-truss

I’d recommend Bam Clothing, as the name suggests, bamboo used a lot in them, and not too expensive especially if in the almost permanent sale for t-shirts. Sizing a bit mental (med in t-shirts, xl in jumpers) but they have free delivery/returns over a certain amount so its sometimes worth ordering two sizes and returning the incorrect one.

They make some decent claims for their jeans in terms of water saved by using bamboo rather than cotton which I can’t verify but they seem nice anyway and way less than 100 quid too.

https://bambooclothing.co.uk/

what’s the uks plan?

You do know whos in power at the momnent?! There is no plan, unless someone is going to profit handsomely from it.

Also, does it matter so much? A bike ridden 200 miles in its life will offset the emissions used in its creation if used in place of a car doing the same distance…200 miles – that’s all!

But when you’re racking up miles in your smoky diesel driving to bike parks with the bike on the back causing more drag is that a win? (Sorry, thats another rabbithole to disappear down with regard bikes climate credentials).

I’m guessing more steel (and possibly alu) are used for commuting that carbon given the population breakdown. STW is an outlier in terms of using carbon bikes to commute. Though I am glad the offset of a bike is so small as they does make me feel so much better after many many years of commuting by bikes.

I would normally go to Lezyne but mine started unscrewing the tube value everytime I used it so I’ve go back to Topeak stuff (Roadie DAX for the road bike is nice)

Surpised the credit card didn’t bounce that request if the addresses didn’t match.

Rather than just expanding and expanding the budgets, the problem could be tackled from the other end, to reduce from the incredible diversity of medicine offered down to core treatments. If you want anything that’s not considered core, then you or insurance pays for it.

I doubt there’d be any senior politician brave enough to suggest it, and I’d not want to be the person drawing the line in the sand of core/not core activity but it is an option that never seems to get considered or discussed.

Whats the definition of ‘core’ though? The problem is if you sit down and think what core is then you inevitably end up with social/old age care being in that list and suddenly you’re paying more than what you started without it.

I think he’s been involved for two years, the project in it’s current form has existed for 6 years and the idea as a whole has been floating around for 10-15 years at least.

The current iteration of the project has cost £20m so far.

They’ve achieved nothing. Literally nothing. Nothing at all has happened so far. Not a jot. Nada.

Twenty mill.

That seems to be basically a summary of every gov department, sadly. I’ve just packed in a role in gov after watching some idiot spaff a million quids worth of resource up a wall until he finally admited there wasn’t any users for it, then promptly walked off to another dept to do literally the identical thing.

Theres a good person to watch on Youtube called ‘A Different Bias’ who was talking about Truss today (or maybe yesterday). She seems to have taken her entire policy on one black sheep economist who nobody else agrees with, and then only cherry picked the nice bits out of his work and forgotten to mention the ‘oh, and interest rates will need to be 8%+ for it to work’ bit he also mentioned. I can’t believe people are already talking about giving her a year to watch her plans collapse then the next Tory civil war (and possibly Sunak waiting in the wings to take over). This is genuienely despressing if so.

She’s BJ mark 2, literally saying whatever will get her progressed for the next week. and repeat even more crazy stuff the following week.

I’m guessing stuff like pressure washers ain’t work it with cordless?

Whats their policy on sending to non-credit card addresses? If yuo’ve not ticked the box for ‘deliver to other address’ then possibly its a long conversation between JL and the credit card company…

Are you just slouching when sitting/working at desk etc.? I bought a relatively cheap support from Amazon a while ago that almost looks like a bra you put on backwards (velco straps though, that would have been a game changer in my youth with the girls, but another story…).

Its just really enough pressure remond you to sit with shoulders back etc., not really a support per se but keeps you right with enough feedback to keep correctly positioned.

Typically, if you are handing your notice in then holidays would be pro rated depending on how many months left until they reset (ie if you get 24 days holiday then 2 a month, so if you packed in 6 months into the leave year you’d only be allowed 12). Anything over in our place is clawed back from last payslip.

Sounds like the SSP was negotiated so that will be different and possibly ‘managers discretion’ type thing.

If you were injured due to work and have to ‘medically retire’ (and I’m using that term loosely) then as said you’ll have RIDDOR to think about and that will certainly affect the outcome.

But yes, good advice is required – any union where you work?

Tough one, his wifes non-dom isses and hidey hidey taxy taxy will be an angle of attack from the other parties. As will the fact he’s stinking rich anyway. He also had his hand all over this cost of living stuff and all the tax rises etc.

Hopefully we’re over the fact in this country he’s not a while but possibly not in some rabid Tory seats.

Whilst I don’t think he’ll be brilliant as PM I shudder at some of the other options.

EU aren’t going to let us back in if we have a referendum that comes out close again. Even if it isn’t that close.

The only real way is to get rid of the Tories, accept brexit as it is and edge back into working more closely with the EU. Once the ‘benefits’ are more obvious then we can talk about joining again. So maybe this Starmer announcement makes sense from that point of view. Don’t rattle the cagwe of the Red Wall that is flaky.

I’d love to rejoin tmrw but I really think its baby steps again.

Russia seem to be just using artillery as a 20 mile deep bulldozer and just edging forwards obliterating everything slowly. They’ll get short of ammunition at some point, or the 15 mile UKR gubs will get replaced with longer range Western ones with potentially guide munitions and then it could become interesting. Though I don’t Europe and US can keep producing the rounds in quantity either.

I don’t recall that being the case when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.

I think thats not really a reflection of the strategic importance of UKR, more Russia wins and they can do what they like with other (nonNATO) countries and we keep buuying its gas/oil and China gets emboldened, or Rest of World wins and Russia (and possibly China) get put back in their box and Russia goes bankrupt.

To be fair if the chainrings are knackered and you’re replacing them seperately anyway it probably the same cost as a new chainset anyway.

That’s 4 possible by-elections coming up:

Windsor – bankruptcy trial
Somerton & Frome – coke & hookers
Home counties MP we can’t name- nipplegate
Now Tamworth – Pinchy pincher

Five if you include the possiblity the committee decide good ol’ BoJo lied to parliament and give him a long enough suspension and he gets a recall.

and icing on the cake is the car is listed without the Ac fault and states ‘slight judder, doesn’t affect driving’ for +£400 what he bought it from me.

Some mug will buy it off him and then it’ll go quiet after that. He’ll somehow internalise it that he’s stitched you up by flogging it for more than he paid.

Not sure if they are quite on their knees yet with gas prices through the roof they’ve kinda covered themselves.

They are close to default on some payments (was it due this Sunday?) but I think they actually had the money, just they couldn’t actually do the transaction as there as an embargo.

When things do start to break, then thats going to be the issue – no replacement parts for your civilian planes, cars, computers etc.

Mechanic ‘conversation’ three days after but still knocked around in it for another two months before coming back to you?

Is it too cynical to think that it quite suits the US and allies for the Russians to grind away in Ukraine getting their stock of weapons slowly whittled down at no cost (apart from lives of Ukrainians, who obviously don’t count), and it is serving as an excellent sales pitch for the manufacturers of western weapons systems ?

Possibly cynical, but Russia are already losing plenty of orders from their usual suspects after their showing in Ukraine by all accounts. China are probably raising their eyebrows as well now that the US have got hold of some fairly modern Russian parts to examine especially since a lot of their engine technology are clones of Russian ones (and not to mention, somewhat unethical copies of the planes). Of course, all the embargoes also mean all those Western made chips, personal GPS and parts can’t be used to buld the things in the first place so Russia are struggling to fulfill internally let alone export.

IIRC Turkey got kicked off the F35 programme, took a look at the state of the Sugois and now are looking at the Typhoon/Eurofighter.

Kask for me too. Though the POC Omne Air I’ve just picked up for the commute is surprisingly slim considering what I thought they were like

Bob Mould played The Thekla last night. I suspect the hull is probably still ringing.
An hour and a half of exceptional melody and distortion.
His support act, Katie Malco, was excellent too.

I’m off to see him on Thursday in Newcastle. Scary it was thirty odd years ago when I first saw him in Husker Du….

Would a standing desk be better for you? I have read those kneeling chairs put a shear load on the knee and might not be that brilliant but I’ve no real expereince of them.

I’ve a standing desk at work, and soon to be gettingn one at home as I’m swapping jobs.