Soma do ones with a netal core and plastic outer.

Don’t bother looking – I’ve got those A2s and they are really nice.

That guy had the look of someone who’d got a speeding fine dropping through his door in the morning and had gone out for a few beers with mates to rant about it. I was just waiting for the phrase “police oppression” to come out.

I don’t like RLJs but to be fair on the man he did slow down and take a decent look for any traffic coming. Not that I’m condoning that.

Still, makes interesting reading the old posts of people who had no idea of the actual situation slagging off the cops. He had plenty of opportunities to step down and get his ticking off.

A guy I know got stopped for being pissed on a unicycle

Surely that’s not possible to ride a unicycle with any amount of alchohol in you!!!

PP – I know, I can’t remember if they quoted that at him, or did he say that to the cops?

So is being drunk in charge of a pedal bike actually an offence?!

He’s gotta be a STW regular with that attitude.

I’m assuming it’s been done on the 40% tax rate to avoid the usual Labour way of setting up some useless call centre/computer system that actually costs three times as much as the savings it makes?

I expect the usual reaction in all the papers tomorrow – there’ll be one person on £44000 and 37p complaining bitterly about the loss of 2 grands worth of benefit. And no doubt somebody else complaining that they now can’t afford Jemimas school fees.

Though I do agree with the idea of stopping benefit after kid number 2 regardless.

The real kickback might only happen in 15 years time – if anything like us the child benefit is going into the little un’s pot for university fees or house deposit. There might be some young adults with less in their student account in a few more years, certainly with the child savings thing being scrapped too.

I disagree slightly about Tokyo not being strategic value. It was the capital after all. Yes, a lot was destroyed, but to have potentially all of it obliterated by a nuke would still be a pretty hefty blow to the guts of the Japanese.

But OCB has probably hit the nail on the head. The second device was probably more of a warning to USSR than a hit on Japan. Yanks thought Russia was 10+ years behind them in the nuclear arms race but when the US declared they’d hit Japan with a nuke the Russians didn’t even flinch, because they’d already had their spy in the nuclear programme pass on most of the secrets.

In terms of US taking various islands on the way to Japan, was it not the case that based on the range of the Superfortresses that basically Tokyo would have been next on the list as the Yanks built another airstrip on a nearer island.

I remember an article on the BBC website a while ago. Some poor guy was on a business trip to Hirosima when the atomic bomb went off. He survived that attack and managed to get home. Alas his home was in Nagasaki so he was the only person to have been nuked twice. Now that’s being unlucky. He only died last year or something.

Bigyinn – no, proof of postage is pretty much that. The postmaster says you sent something to somebody. To be honest, Recorded isn’t really tracked, if it goes missing you have no idea where it’s gone. All there is is proof of delivery based on a signature, not like couriers where you can see it’s in the, say, Durham depot after going via Scunthorpe.

PP – is it worth the buyer checking with his sorting office to see if is just sitting around? It’s been known to happen and the postie hasn’t put a red card through the door.

Someone (Zefal I think) used to do a mini fender that fitted actually onto the seat kinda like a seatpack would. It wasn’t brilliant but kept most of the dreaded vertical brown stripe off you.

I’d say eBay, it will sell, though don’t expect £200 for the shifters etc!

Old thumbies seem to go for a good price.

Ah, if only some bright spark would make the Fibre Flare side lights the right size to mount onto the crud catcher fittings on my downtube….

Thoug +1 also for the wheel reflectors.

I think Cateye are doing a fancy ‘commuter’ wheel set that flashes too.

Surely this is normally the point in a compact/triple thread where some ‘man’ comes along and categorically says there is no need for anything less than a 52t front chainring and 11-21 cassette on the back. And just MTFU.

I’ve been running a Campag triple 30/40/50. To be honest I am tempted to just remove the 50t chainring as it never gets any usage.

What shifters are you using? SRAM don’t do triple shifters (though I suppose if you just wanted the inner and middle rings of a triple it would work) and IIRC Shimano are double/triple specific (assuming roadie style STIs here mind..) so it gets expensive to swap them.

If you’ve got compact at the moment I’d suggest just keeping it. Maybe try a hilly test route out and see if you need the lower gearing. If you’re choosing now betwixt them I’d err on the triple side.

They gotta make them lighter so they can put the electric battery and motor inside to power them up the climbs…..

Use smallish drill to drill out the litle silver bit that connects the two “star” bits that grab the steerer. You might need a little screwdriver to push the bit of alloy out from between them as the drilling will loosen it and it’ll just spin round with the drill at the end.

Then you should have two separate star bits in the tube. You should be able to flip each one around enough to just pull the out with pliers or something.

you must wear a uniformn at work and you must not wear it on the street.

Woah, the number of nurse etc. I see on the bus wearing their uniforms here is quite worrying…

I’ve had most banks contact me telling me my account (I don’t have) is frozen blah blah blah.

Worryingly most using the email address I only use on this site….

There was a paypal one that was very very good one day about my accoutn being suspended. I might have got caught out if I hand;t actually been using Paypal at the time.

If in doubt always go to the banks website and log in that way.

Some of the top range Specialized leave a little to be desired in terms of value for money.

I was bored once and worked out I could buy a S-Works frame and all the identical components (with even some upgrades) from the shops for less than Specialized were wanting for some S-Works Stumpy (or Epic)!

Presumably if Ed Miliband gets in his brother will suddenly go off to that job he thought about in Europe a while ago. Certainly couldn’t give him the shadow treasurers job otherwise there would be uproar.

Yes, if you've got new(ish) calipers that are post mount, with a removable mount to fit them to the fork, then just replace this with the larger 180mm equivalent IS to post mount (or if you have a rear 160mm one knocking around they do the same job on the front!).

Fairly easy to get round – get an interest only mortgage for your house, then put the difference in a bank account. They can't touch your 'savings' as you'll still have the mortage debt.

It's a choice I suppose the punters will decide upon come polling day, but maybe as Burnhams not going to be elected leader he's just trying to 'prove' his Labour credentials….

Sorry, just me being dense! :roll:

Annoyingly freebies though when you get a waterbottle with a disk rotor which means it can't get through the letter box and then you have to wait 2 days and go to the sorting office to pick it up….

Maybe freebies are to make up for the shocking new CRC site and performance?

Psychie – even the 40Gb has a claimed read speed of 280mb/s and write speed of 270mb/s

SSD thingy

or am I missing something?

Technically thay could cancel it, it'd just be taken off the system, I'd be surprised if they got a refund for it.

Sounds like they just stiffed you up, though that is pretty shocking and they must be open to some form of complaint.

At a push thinking back the book that has had my heart racing and thinking 'oh my god' was a series of books by Stephen DOnaldson "The Gap Series". Certainly not your usual Buck Rogers wins the day type SF.

Pushing the boundaries of your price limit but I've got a Vita Audio R2i and it's a cracking piece of kit. Good reviews too.

organic355 – think it's got a clock radio function too, but never used it as its in the dining room.

But then the bikes are still locked to the bars

Whereby they will pop them in a van and cut the lock off somewhere else where they won't disturb anyone….

There's a good review of locks and ground anchors in the latest Cycling Plus that dropped through me door yesterday, Pragmasis (or something like that) get the nod.

"It's never been the same since they got rid of the giant pencils. "

Drac – will we be saying the same about the concrete lego people around the Haymarket in a few years time?!

I also believe that studies have show that those arriving on public transport spend more than those arriving by car.

Probably to make it worth their while going into town on public transport. I live 10 mins from town, it would cost £12+ to get the three of us in on the bus. Even taking into account petrol and parking charges that's still easily double what it costs to drive. Sad and selfish I know, but maybe cheap public transport would help too.

White101 – I know Tescos have run rings round the Gateshead council. They've done the same in Sunderland too on the old Vaux Brewery site. Can't remember how many years that's been closed whilst Tescos have tried to wendle there way in despite numerous rejections. Good to see the old car park in Gateshead is coming down now, maybe it'll start the ball rolling.

To be honest if he's stood outside the shop hacksawing a lock off in broad daylight then it's a fair chance he wasn't going to and give himself up if you'd shouted 'oi' at him.

What a cheque with all your bank details printed on the bottom AND a specimen of your signature?

+1 for Gosforth. If you ever fancy a bit of raod riding you're straight across the A1 and into some nice countryside that they use for the Northern Rock Cyclone, or my little ride past the Cheese Factory Farm and around the fancy houses in Tranwell Woods (and no, that's not a wood to ride in, its a place where footballers buy their houses if they don't fancy Darras Hall).

Be careful though. What people call 'Gosforth' exetnds waaaay past the boundaries of what Gossie really is. See many a Kenton place described as in the Gosforth area.

If you don't mind being close to Tescos, Kingston Park isn't too bad.

And for a 'secret' location that's a little cheaper – try Cochrane Park, just off the Coast Road, just up from High Heaton. Decent buses, Sainsburys etc. though not many rentals there I don't think.

God yes, its a fair chance of being a 27er!

MtbRoutes – do you work on the business park on Armstrong Road by any chance?

A couple of the Cruddas Park flats look neater now anyway. Think they had some rather shocked/bemused students in them a year or too back due to shortages of student accomodation. Now that must have been an eye-opening/eye-watering welcome to Newcastle!!!

Yet they've extended and filled Eldon Square, you can hardly call Newcastle a ghost town.

I know, don't get me wrong, the extension to Eldon Square is nice and it's still busy-ish but outside of Eldon things seem to be drying up and to be honest a few shops beside the exit to M&S seem to change hands on almost a weekly basis, it's almost as if everyone has abandoned one end of the shopping centre to move into the shiney new bit.

Interesting to see what happens. One of the in-laws is a manager of a large national clothing store. The rental prices in Newcastle town centre are phenomenal (especially Eldon Square). Out of town at the Metro Centre are cheaper, free parking etc. etc. – it's kinda a no-brainer for accountants.

Soon Newcastle will jsut be full of coffee shops.

Sunderland is even worse – the entire shopping centre is full of pound shops. When I worked there we used to wander around them on lunchbreaks asking assistants how much things were to annoy them.

Once rental prices drop in town centres I'm sure magically shops will start appearing, though will probably end up as identikit shopping centres and you'll never know which town you are in.

I suppose it's progress.

Cruddas Park?

Ha ha ha, is that like the posh one in Gosforth like Brunton Park and Melton Park?

To be honest they sent me some SLX brakes but one of the mount adaptors was missing. One email and some nice guy replied quickly apologising and a replacement adaptor was sent straight off to me.