Personally if I was Cameroon, I’d walk and take the money (if he has as much as everyone accuses) with me. Wether he’s a goody or a bady why put up with this s..t from people. It’ll be the same for Corbean when he makes it in, like the leader of any party, crap will be published true or not because some people hate you for what you represent. Why would anyone be a politician these days.

I starting to feel sorry for some of these MP and that cannot be right!

The specifics of this case are rather more nuanced…

1. The UK is financially in a very very poor place: look at the national debt and the current account deficit, and then also look at the costs of looking after and ageing and unhealthy nation (obesity)
2. The UK government provides services for the electorate in return for taxes
3.These taxes are particularly needed right now as a) we’re skint, b) we have more need of them than ever before (so it’s a very bad time to be skint)
4. A large amount of this desperately needed tax is being deliberately avoided by people. They know what their legal obligations are, they know people worse off than them desperately need it, but they avoid it…
5. Our Prime Minister says he understands all this and he is going to do something about it. Sound like progress to me….
6.And then we find out his own father was playing these games. The liklihood of our PM not gaining from these games is highly unlikely
7. This looks like a major conflict of interest. The very very big problem looks unlikely to be resolved… NHS carries on struggling, pensions continue to get cut etc etc etc
8. The obvious way for this conflict of interest is for someone else to be in charge of solving this particular problem

There’s more to this than attacking a politician because we don’t like him….

Or a belief that the ‘government’ won’t spend it wisely and that corruption abounds, which continues to be proved especially considering the present unsurprising revelations.

So, you act corruptly because you’re trying to end corruption :-)

You can’t blame any child for what their parents did

True. But when this child is (as PM) responsible for reducing the levels of such activity going on, it’s essential that we know if he received any benefits or will receive any benefits from his father’s activities.

After all, if he stands to gain from his father’s activities, he’s not very-well incentivised to cut down on such activities, as per his responsibility and public committment…

There’s a very clear conflict of interest – which needs resolving.

Trying to find a positive spin in all this… Offshore has been being used to launder money for longer than I’ve been alive – I’ve always assumed this kind of stuff was going on and assumed everyone else knew about it to… but now corruption is becoming a really big thing… so what;s changed? Is it?

a) the amount of it is so massively off the scale, so widespread and so blatant that people are now getting angry?

b) the economic crisis is making us all realise we’re not as comfortably off as we thought we were, and so we’re more angry that other people are scamming us that we would be if we though we had enough

c) email, mobile and internet make it much easier for records to exist of dodgy dealings, much easier for them to be leaked and therefore much easier for prosecutors or journalists to build their case… there was a guy on Radio 4 the other night made reference to ‘radical transparency’ which suggests it’s that much harder now for dodgy dealings to be kept secret. In which case, we can expect more and more stuff to keep coming out around all kinds of corruption for a few more years yet…

I believe there were rumours about Mark Thatcher for years, but the amount of pressure put on Maggie as a result wasn’t as great as the amount of pressure being put (rightly IMO) on Cameron. So I’m wondering what’s different this time?

<edit> I have it on good authority (my parents) that grass-roots Tory activists were talking about the need to get rid of Osborne and Cameron well before all this came out… they’re both seen as liabilities… so I suspect there’s some very serious plans now being drawn up in Westminster to replace him – this will be a massive massive gift to those who want to get rid, even if he does talk his way out of it in the short term

Some of the talk here about moving assets to avoid ‘losing out’ on care costs seems a bit off to me; if family members need the extra care, over and above medical care, then what’s wrong with using family assets to finance this in as good a way as possible? If you’re paying for a service, you control it a lot better than when you are not paying

^^ this

What’s the point of accumulating wealth for later life if you don’t then use it to support your care when you can’t look after yourself?

Basically, if you fund your own care, it means taxpayers’ money can be left to provide care for those who can’t afford to do so themselves.

If you transfer assets to give the taxman the impression you have none, when in fact you do and expecting the taxpayer to then pay for your care, well, in a time when we’re very very short of government cash that seems pretty damn tight to me.

I’m not sure it’s that different to all this offshore stuff that’s going on – moving money around to give the impression you have less than you really do so you can pay lower taxes/lower care costs…

London’s expensive property doesn’t really have a lot to do with high end corruption. Putin is not buying two bed flats in Morden.

I didn’t say that – although neither of us have any idea who owns the rest of the property in our street, we just assume it’s legitimate… so we’d be naive to believe that only Prime London is getting bought up by the corrupt money…

Some basics maths based on this quote from The Guardian:

More than £170bn of UK property is now held overseas. Much of that is in London, where unprecedented house price inflation has transformed homes into highly profitable investments for asset speculators. Nearly one in 10 of the 31,000 tax haven companies that own British property are linked to Mossack Fonseca.

£170bn in a City where the median salary is £35k, which allows a typical couple buying at 5 times salary to raise £350k to buy somewhere, so £170bn is the equivalent of just under half a million additional couples or nearly 1 million extra people in a city of 8.5m…

… and you don’t think a wall of money like that has corrupted the market? Bearing in mind there’s plenty of legit money in London property as well?

Someone rather better placed than me has already flagged this last year, which really should be uncomfortable reading for those of us who want UK to be a free and uncorrupt country and given the price rises now rippling out across the SE and further and the negative impact that’s having on the wider economy (younger generation esp)

National Crime Agency…

Stealing QE plus need to get money nicely washed in bricks and mortar => asset bubble

It’s kept the bubble going, yes, but there must have been some trigger in mid-2013 to start the whole panic off. In SE26 where I was renting, the owners couldn’t sell in 2011 as the market was dead. In early and mid-2013 the highest prices 2-bed flats were selling for was £250k and by September the asking (and selling) price was suddenly £300k… I swear some wall of cash must have triggered it somewhere, it was a shockingly quick increase. Maybe it was Help To Buy, but finding out all these offshore co’s are wrapped up in London property isn’t really a shock when you look back at what’s happened to London

Interesting to see London property pop up in this case now as well… it’s so obvious to anyone who lives in London who saw the prices shoot up very very fast in late 2013 that something crooked was going on – prices were static from 2009-mid 2013 and then suddenly around September time they went through the roof – which clearly wasn’t some ‘supply and demand’ dynamic because demand doesn’t increase 20% in 3 months without some kind of trigger.

I reckon in time we’ll find out a massive tonne of crooked cash hit the market at that time as a load of these offshore companies bought into Prime London. It’s not just the scale of the ‘increase in demand’ but the speed of it which suggests something dodgy was going on.

It’s really not great that we’ve allowed our housing market to be corrupted like this…

100 miles isn’t a lot of riding so you may get used to it but I do find I get a strong intuitive idea very early o about whether a bike feels right or not.

Road bike feel matters in particular as you tend to stay in the position for hours on end.

A few considerations you might want to play around with:
1. Saddle position – fore and aft
2. Position of the brake levers on the bar – forward and back and even in and out
3. Stem height
4. Stem length
5. Stem rise/drop
6. Bars – some drops have more depth (up and down) and reach forward than others. There’s also bar rotation

I recently decided my 120mm Thomson Road Stem was too long despite having had it for 6 years, tried a 110mm Cinelli but the angle was too high, then a 120mm Cinelli which felt still too high and ended up with a 110mm Thomson – a right palaver if you’re a bit picky like I am (!) but it shows how much tiny adjustments can make on a road bike.

Worth paying for a bike fit IMO if you’ve not had one before. They can save you a fortune on faffing about with new stems and bars or physio bills

Looking at 25-year-old girls and realising they’re actually rather a bit too young for me 8O

I know of at least 3 couples where affairs were had and the relationships (2 were marriages, one just a long-term relship) broke up as a result. 15 years later at least 3 of those people are much happier as a result. There are some much stronger friendships too, having supported each other through the splits.

One of those 3 was one of my best mates. His wife was a horror – she had a real talent for picking on people’s weaknesses and having a go at them. It was never much fun going out to restaurants – she’d always end up in a row with the manager. She ended up in a senior HR role, which says a lot about corporate HR!

Either way – it was awful for my mate to slowly realise how horrible his wife was and his affair was him essentially needing to escape from what would have been a life of stress and misery. It made me realise some affairs don’t come from selfishness at all, they come from human beings needing to escape from very unhappy places and not knowing how to do it…

Audience is a bunch of desk-jockey MAMILS who need to feel like they’re tough and masculine…

Bit like the Mitsubishi Barbarian ‘manly’ pickup comes in black and silver rather than coming in pink with those headlamp eyelash things and being called the Mitsubishi Nancy!

I always preferred UFOrb over Adventures in the Ultraworld

Kraftwerk – Tour de France – ideal for putting on when doing post-ride stretches – nothing is more appropriate!

the Panama papers are going to be in the news cycle and worthy of comment for a week or so,

I don’t think it was meant this way, but that sounds rather tired and jaded ie: no-one’s surprised, we all reckon this stuff goes on anyway and have tolerated it for years – and it’ll disappear off the front pages after a couple of weeks of fear for some…

Maybe I’m just getting old and cynical but I’m just not surprised they’ve been able to find a link to our own PM. There’s surely something on Osborne too, they’ve just not found it yet, and probably Blair as well…

Read Plato’s Republic, written around 300 BC and you’ll see that the idea that power appears impossible to deal with without it corrupting people, has been around for ever.

My brother’s in Ireland and never comes back to the UK. I remember how he was treated as a kid so I don’t hold this against him, but it does mean the care burden will be fully borne by me, which will take up a lot of time and travelling when the time comes.

So far my parents are still in very good health (79 and 77 respectively) quite amazingly so (having had her lens replaced during a cataract op last year my mum now has better eyesight than me!) but I suspect decline will come on slowly over the next few years.

They’re both rather stubborn, so I’m sure there’ll be challenging times. Main thing is I’m hoping they don’t get dementia or Altzheimers, I’d rather they go relatively quickly. Although seeing my mate’s grief shortly after Xmas this year after his Mum died rather unexpectedly (and quickly) of cancer I’m not sure it’s much fun in any circumstances. My parents are very sensible with their cash so at least we’ll be able to pay for whatever care they need…

This is going to be a bigger and bigger issue over the next 20-30 years as middle-aged parents try to care for their own kids as well as hold their jobs down and care for their declining parents – with smaller sums of money available to provide the care… I reckon we’ll see a lot more 3-generation families in the same house than we do now…. cheaper and less time-consuming. Challenging for those who currently rent their homes (can’t imagine my landlord being happy with me moving my Mum in!) or work in the SE because that’s where the jobs are, miles away from their parents. My Dad solved that one with his Mum by moving her to him but that may not be practicable in all cases

I know what you mean. I’ve had some rotten bosses and worked with some really incompetent and unpleasant people that I’d have had nothing to do with if I had had the choice.
Few employers seem to have any care whatsoever for the welfare or even basic human needs of their employees (e.g. sleep, desire to be present for their kids etc).
Also see the ‘sacking’ thread from the other day and how many people had to argue for the lad to be given a chance and not accused of theft without evidence and summarily sacked… it’s not abnormal IME…

However, if you’re in the UK and have a job you’re one of the wealthiest people in the world already… the fact we have 2-day weekends and paid holiday is a luxury…

So keep on keeping on till you retire. Or go contracting, when you care a whole lot less about all the ‘stuff’ or change jobs till you find a decent employer and decent boss…

That BMJ piece is interesting in a worrying kind of a way.

OP, are you a real Dr, cos it’s your own professional journal which reckons this guy is right :-)

One thing that’s bad about t’internet is it’s very easy to spread misinformation. One thing that’s good is it’s very easy to debunk it

Rock n Roll not yet dead?

Hmmm, the Sunday Times running an article about cheating… who’s it owned by again?

OP – good luck. I was 6 months unemployed last summer and it’s no fun – especially when you get no feedback from applications or interviews to build on, and you know you’ve got lots to offer…

I would say two things:

1) be flexible – I moved from London and out of financial services because I simply couldn’t even get an interview (I have a friend who’s finding it the same in FS in London – there’s just no vacancies there). It turned out to be one of the best career and financial moves I ever made even though I did it more out of fear of staying unemployed than anything else.
My last job was a 5-month contract which I turned into 4 years on sequential contracts at the same company so don’t exclude contracting from your considerations either, you can turn them into something more

2. Most important – take a look at your subject header in your post. You know the phrase, ‘don’t look at the tree or you’ll hit it’ – well your focus at the moment is looking at the tree, or ‘long term unemployment’.

You don’t really want a ‘coping strategy for long-term unemployment’ you want ‘an effective job-hunting strategy’. They’re two very different things, one is goal and solution oriented, and positive in nature, the other isn’t…. and once you have the job you no longer need the coping strategy :-)

I passed my assessment as a career coach recently and I need some practice hours to build up my experience so if I can help you with creating a job hunt strategy, send me an email (address in profile). I’m happy to do a couple of 90 minute sessions free of charge on Skype (I would normally charge but if you’re unemployed that seems a bit steep)

Nice one, OP, for treating him like an adult. Everyone deserves to be treated like an adult in the first instance IMO.

It sounds like he’s got some really challenging behaviour if nicking other people’s stuff is his natural way of getting his needs met – and frankly I’d struggle with knowing how to deal with that – and to be fair that’s your manager’s failure, not yours.

They’re clearly not giving you enough support to deal with this lad. You need to push higher up the chain and ask them for support and training… that’s taking responsibility.

Where I’m going to disagree with you is that treating people with respect isn’t some nancy-fancy nonsense – treating people badly screws up your business… I’ve seen at least 3 collapse and effectively go bankrupt because they failed to learn this lesson – had to sell themselves before they ran out of cash…

Timpsons has a revenue of £169m and their philosophy of “If you treat people well, it is blindingly obvious that they will do a good job” (from Wikipedia) might have something to do with that… certainly in my experience if you support people at times when they’re struggling, they’ll pay you back in spades

IMHO just sack them because it has “Not worked out” to avoid any potential aggro

The kid clearly has problems already, otherwise he’d not be thieving (based on his suspended sentence, not the OP’s assumptions) – I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some level of mental illness (which STW is usually very sympathetic about) or lousy parenting…

… and sacking him without evidence of his crime or even giving the time to defend himself helps in what way, exactly? Sounds like an excuse to victimise him…

OP – if you do decide that sacking him is the best you can do for him, do him a favour and point him in the direction of Timpsons – c 10% of their workforce are ex-offenders. It is possible to take someone with a record of criminal behaviour and give them the opportunity to turn their life around and if you don’t want to do that, let someone else – for this lad’s sake…

Timpson

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL

Timpson really are an equal opportunities employer. We consider anyone for our vacancies as long as they are able to do the job. This includes ex-offenders and other marginalised groups. We recruit exclusively on personality and expect all of colleagues to be happy, confident and chatty individuals.

Genesis CdA? Ally frame and carbon fork for under £1k

It’s not a world I’ve lived in either.

Well, that world may well be dead and buried now – if you look at a lot of recent legal changes re discrimination and generally trying to prevent abuse of power you may find that that old world is largely being rejected.

Emotional intelligence is increasingly valued in organisations – lack of it has a distinct habit of hitting the bottom line as productivity drops when motivated employees lose energy and the best employees leave for an employer who has the sense to treat them like a human being. Stress from lousy management imposed a massive cost on the NHS and welfare costs at a time when we can least afford it.

The Millennials appear (rightly or wrongly) to be focussing on this so this change will come about whether you like it or not.

Take it from me, being sacked on the basis of someone else’s assumption that you’ve done something wrong or simply and inadvertently breached their values will do enormous damage to that individual, their self-confidence, career progression and lifetime earnings… being a manager and the power and authority you’re given is a great responsibility, not something to be abused.

btw I’m a dirty right-wing capitalist, having worked in financial services marketing for 20 years, not some wet behind the ears liberal :-)

You’re not actually taking responsibility for him at all if you sack him for minor things which breach your personal values – that’s more like victimising him than taking responsibility for it yourself.

Taking responsibility would be treating him like an adult and having a face to face chat with him about all the issues and giving him right to reply – and listening to it properly, without judgement and without prejudice. And I mean listen – say absolutely nothing whilst he talks…

Show him some leadership and you may find him an awesome employee. Sack him and you teach him that managers will use their power irresponsibly, which will become his long term problem he’s likely to carry around for years and hold his career back.

I’m afraid it shows that you lack management experience but I’ll give you this – you’ve thought enough about it to come on here and engage with those who’ve criticised you for your approach. That suggests you are actually thinking about the negative consequences for this lad of your actions – do more of that before you sack him please.

Oh, and have a word with your employer about giving you some management training. I’ve seen so many weak managers over the years wreck people’s work lives because the manager was given line management responsibility without any training… so please make this your employer’s responsibility to support you too.

Good luck… I’m sure this isn’t pleasant

+1 on it’s passive aggressive I’m afraid.
If that’s what you want to say to him – say it to his face.
Personally I find that people who’re that nuts aren’t very good at acting like adults even if you treat them like one so worth saying it to his face but I wouldn’t expect a very positive response
Such a shame that angry people have to infect everyone else’s world with their own problems

She’s clearly been very stupid. BUT:

I’d like to know where the Guardian find out about the story as it wasn’t Mountain Rescue that carried her off – and I believe they will put stories in the press as a warning to the general public – ie: do the journalists just spend hours scouring the internet and then effectively write their own interpretation of the story in a way which captures attention (without actually speaking to anyone involved) in which case they need hauling over the coals for effectively making a story up.

I’m interested to know why this is front page on The Guardian – it’s hardly that important and the number of people who harm themselves daily by driving like idiots or eating/drinking themselves into hospital is far far higher – so ‘public interest’ doesn’t wash as an argument here…

Seems like they’re just trying to make something from not a lot and victimise someone who made a mistake – and if you read her posts on UKC is fully aware and deeply apologetic!

This is getting a bit like Viz Top Tips :-)

I ride with a Lithuanian ex-pro wrestler and he looks after my bike when I go into the caff. Rides can be a bit slow and the conversation’s not great but no-one’s nicked my bike yet, so it works for me!

BT Fon uses your neighbours’ wifi signals and cobbles something together for you. Not 100% ideal but better than nothing.
Google it.

+1 for tethering your smartphone or a dongle or portable hifi hotspot with a data SIM

Condor are excellent – the service is very good – they’re very knowledgeable

Also Brixton Cycles, simply for being legends :-)

Or
1. loosen/remove Qrs
2. Flip the brakes open
3. Helmet clipped through the front wheel and downtube

* remember to sort 1 or 2 out before you get back on, obviously!

Alternatively, put your bike against the wall first so all your clubmates’ bikes are on top of it and more likely to be taken :-)

Thanks Burko,
I’m going to be using this for a mix of road and relatively flat countryside bridleways so strength and reasonable weight are important. Not least the wheels on my other bikes are all eyeletted and sensible weight so I don’t want the Escapade to feel sluggish in comparison.

I was very impressed with the Roadrat rims and hubs I had (a 2008 model) so if the standard wheels are the same quality I’m sure I’ll be fine. The review I read which commented on weight focussed more on tyres than the wheels and I’m changing those already.

£200 extra for a pair of non-eyeletted rims seems poor value to me – better off selling on the standard wheels or excluding them from the purchase, and sourcing my own…

Interesting stuff about final payments and extended hire periods because my contract makes no reference to either – or if it does, it’s buried somewhere in obscure small print. My reading of it is that after 12 months the bike is fully mine, and no further payments are required.

I’ve emailed Cyclescheme for confirmation, cos paying an additional final payment makes this rather less attractive… as does the inability to sell the bike if there’s an extended 3-year hire period…

By all accounts a lot of BTL numpties have been pouring into the market over the last few weeks to get ahead of the stamp duty headline, which coincidentally is April Fools’ Day…

I just checked my contract and I hire the bike for 12 months for 12 months of payments. The only reference to any final payment is if I leave the company during the twelve months, in which case they can ask me to pay the remaining amount, without tax benefits. There’s no reference to longer hire periods or other termination payments.

I guess different organisations can implement the scheme in different ways?

I’d assumed that for an additional £200, the Stans rims would be eyeletted but apparently they’re not! Surprising, as the Hope Hoops with Mavic Open Pro do…

I’ll have a chat with the LBS on the wheel choices then and see what my options are re getting some decent wheels for it

+1 for asking Cotic.

The reviews I’ve read on the Escapade say the hubs are good quality but with the tyres that come as stock, the wheels are overall quite heavy.

I asked Cotic last week if the rims are eyeletted (which I view as making the wheels stronger as they spread the load from the spoke) and they said no – so I’m paying the additional £200 to get the Hope/Stans wheelset and putting some Conti Grand Prix 4000s on, on that basis…

I had some Cotic wheels on a Roadrat from 2008 – 2013 and never had a problem with them though – but they were eyeletted rims rather than these new ones

Bridgedale and Smartwool been good for me. Helps to prevent blisters if you layer up too – a liner sock and then full hiking sock.

I would take your boots to a decent store and try on different pairs of socks to see which give you best fit – all the different brands seem to have entirely different thicknesses which makes online buying something of a random experience

I don’t understand why anyone would build a CDF up as a pure/fast roadbike? It’s designed for general commuting/touring/rough road use… the description on Genesis’ site is clear and they surely know which bike is best for which purpose

For a fast road bike I’d go for the Equilibrium – all the reviews I’ve ever read seem to rate it highly.

OP – call Genesis and ask them. I’d be really surprised if they suggested CDF for use as a main road bike