Far more depression and anxiety about than you realise I’d imagine – especially at the moment with finances strained.

IMO 95% of people would benefit from CBT – hardly anyone has zero issues. Those of us who get so far into finding life hard that we end up in counselling are, in some ways, the lucky ones.

I went into my first session after getting signed off with stress at work (related to my perfectionism) fully expecting to end up in tears. In fact it was the most positive experience and after 30+ years of trying to deal with my issues on my own it was a massive massive release.

Step one is admitting you’ve got a problem and are willing to accept help. It’s all uphill from there and IME you’ll wonder why you ever let it get so bad and didn’t do it years earlier.

Moodscope is great too – over time you get to see what the patterns and triggers are. Lack of sleep and too much beer always send my mood downwards, and now I know that I avoid doing either…

Moodscope[/url]

Halliburton are an oil and gas extraction company

IIRC they were working with BP when that well broke in the US

2 things:
1. If the industry had faith that the new size was really superior to what we’ve happily been riding for 30 years, they’d have introduced it as an option (as they did with full suss and disc brakes) rather than making it effectively compulsory by announcing they were no longer supporting 26…

2. If their profits have been suffering in recent years it’s because the US, UK and Europe consumers are seriously skint – standards of living are falling, incomes are falling in real terms. Cycling is a leisure pursuit and if Tesco and Morrison are seeing falling profits, it’s because people’s finances are too tight to afford the basics. Forcing a new wheel size isn’t going to drive consumers who’re this limited in disposable income into buying a new bike… if it wants to maintain profits, the industry needs to go back to the basics of successful business – meeting customers’ needs

I suspect if you’d explained to him why you found it unacceptable to spend all that time helping him, for him to then to take his business elsewhere, he’d not have understood your point. Some people just bimble through life without any real understanding of the idea of giving rather than taking.

I don’t know quite how you’d have done it but I think it would’ve been fair to say to him that you’d be very happy to help but not if he then goes and buys all the parts you’ve just helped him decide on elsewhere

People = short term thinking

The stats are scary on the impact on the UK mortgage market.

And what depends on the UK mortgage market?
1. Consumer confidence
2. Consumer spending (underpinning the current ‘recovery’)
3. Retail banks’ revenues? A collapse in which would likely lead to another financial crisis.

The more I read the more it seems we’re in a hell of a bind – if house prices don’t keep rising, the recovery is over, if they do the bubble will pop and we’ll be in crisis. If IR increase, we’ll be in crisis, if IR stay as they are, the house price bubble will pop…

Didn’t I hear excessive lending led to a housing market crisis which led to a massive global meltdown a few years ago? 😯

You don’t have to think about this too hard to realise that if Gideon felt it necessary to launch as risky a policy as Help To Buy as his pre-election pitch, then the underlying recovery clearly doesn’t exist and we must be in some very serious trouble underneath

The problem is you end up with an apparently wealthy nation, but with lots of people without meaningful work

I work in Marketing and can also confirm that these kind of jobs where you don’t produce physical, easy-to-quantify-the-value-of outputs are full of people who just bullshit for a living – and any value they may or may not add is ephemeral and therefore easy to give an illusion of value whilst actually not doing anything which adds to the wealth stock of the nation 😀

I’m sounding more and more like my Dad but I get the horrible feeling our wealth is a total illusion and the whole pack of cards could come down shockingly fast when people realise just how much of an illusion it is…

All you need to know is there’s more hills in Kent and Surrey than Cheshire 🙂

“If you get it wrong, you’ve got to eat it”

Which I think was Hans Rey c 1995

Best to insulate yourself from it. Pay off your debts, save for when your out of work and keep riding your bike.

And learn to pitch a tent, catch fish and make fire 😀

The London house price bubble suggests neither government, banks or consumers have learnt a thing from five years ago, which doesn’t bode well for sustained economic growth in the future…

exactly the same thing was going on in the US, Gordon was perfectly happy for it to happen here

Don’t forget Iceland and most of Southern Europe has gone pop too.

The big problem IMO with the analysis of our situation is that it’s somehow caused by a single group or person – politicians/bankers/Gordon Brown.

It’s a systemic problem with Western economies loaded up with debt and an illusion of wealth which has been building for 3+ decades… hence no one government or political party appears able to articulate a solution

when the whole ill-formed scheme finally fell apart.

Actually, on reflection, and as per the OP – it hasn’t fully fallen apart. The recent insanity in the London housing market tells you people still seem to think they can borrow their way to an unreasonably high standard of living, and banks/government seem unwilling to tell us the hard truth.
Which isn’t that we’re skint, just that we’re going to have to work harder and smarter and accept a lower standard of living now that globalisation’s changed the balance of global power in favour of developing economies

The Credit Crunch wasn’t the cause of the crisis, it was just the crisis making itself known.

Postwar economic growth slowed up in the 70’s and 80’s but rather than accept that and in order to meet our expectation of a continued rise in standard of living, we de-regulated Finance and got rid of the Gold Standard in order to generate ‘wealth’.

The added pressure of the rise of China from 1980’s onwards only encouraged this strategy…

Human nature being short-termist as it is, and a generally low standard of education in economics and finance meant we all – bankers, companies, consumers etc fell for this illusion and spent well beyond our means… the credit crunch was the natural conclusion when the whole ill-formed scheme finally fell apart.

The system is too complex for one party to bring it all down and you can hardly blame bankers and politicians when we all run around getting ourselves into unaffordable levels of debt to support some kind of consumerist ‘dream’

The Dublin Needle[/url]

Dubliners call this Bertie’s Erection

If your line of work allows it, why not get a job in Manchester/Lancaster – and just pop into the Lakes at the weekend?

brooess – Member
There’s loads of this stuff goes on but it doesn’t make social media or sell papers…

My mate’s derailleur hanger snapped on Pitch Hill but a bloke in a Landy gave us a lift back to Holmbury to save us a long walk.

I think that might have been me! Some time ago now? Did one of you have to jump in the back with the bikes because I only have one passenger seat?!

Couple of years ago, yes 🙂 thanks again!

There’s loads of this stuff goes on but it doesn’t make social media or sell papers…

My mate’s derailleur hanger snapped on Pitch Hill but a bloke in a Landy gave us a lift back to Holmbury to save us a long walk.

The people living in the house opposite Peaslake bus stop put my bike in their shed for me to pick up a couple of weeks later after I broke my shoulder and had to go home in an ambulance

I don’t think so, suggests a line over or something stopping him from having a full canopy and keeping some lift in the wing
In skydiving, a spiralling descent is used to lose altitude quickly, by jamming one side of the canopy down hard…but you have to level out in order to land in control. I assume a paraglider landing is similar…

Good luck.
A few thoughts:
1. prioritise your health in every decision you make – always go for the choice which has most beneficial impact on your health
2. Move around more on a day to day basis – it’s about more than just doing lots of exercise after sitting down all day
3. get more sleep
4. set a target and tell everyone you know what it is. The social pressure/support and male pride of having to admit failure will be useful in moments of weakness
5. Enter a competitive event you have to trail for – desire to do well will help motivate you to sustain the effort

Have you reached out to him yet?

The voluntary ban/agreement is essentially there for people who lack common sense.

+1

The end result of people lacking commonsense could well be a total ban…

This idea that we should be able to rag it down at whatever speed we like, whenever we want is the same attitude a lot of drivers have – and which is the biggest barrier to new riders taking up cycling (safety being the most quoted reason for not taking up cycling)

Regulation is only ever needed when people lack consideration or thought for the impact of their behaviour, and fail to exercise self-control

dangerousbeans – Member

Aracer – you answered your own question about what will happen if mtbers ignore the partial ban. It will be made permanent.

Mike – I never appointed anyone to give away my rights.

Um. The voluntary ban is about us demonstrating our responsibilities… 😯

I’ve been up Snowdon many times. Sometimes on my bike, other times walking and the voluntary ban is fine by me – it’s not the safest ride when there’s walkers everywhere and doesn’t make for a peaceful walk with riders ragging down.

If you’re complaining about the general mistreatment of cyclists on the roads and in the media, then you have my full support however…

I had a very slow (2-3 mph) rear end shunt into the car in front a couple of weeks ago. No damage to either car.
Being unsure of procedure I rang the police to report it, they told me I wasn’t under any obligation to report a collision unless someone was hurt…

If we have to report every near miss where someone may or may not have been hurt, whether I’m riding or driving, I’d be on the phone to the police several times a journey!

Stroll along South Bank (if it’s sunny)

What an infant.

A nymphomanic girlfriend is fun for a while. But you still need sleep 😀

someone had a lot of spare time 🙂

Pretty much all London property. Until the bubble bursts of course

tenancy T&Cs stipulate I have to keep the garden neat (even though last tenant didn’t). Happily signed up to that as I’d seen a Flymo in the shed when I looked around. Of course, when I went to use it, I found it was bust.
The landlord is also the estate agent and letting agent and has grudingly offered only a push mower- because he’s an mean-minded idiot rather than a normal human being 😀

I might just take his offer of a push mower if the STW consensus says they’re good enough and see how it goes…

Looks like a Mint Sauce cartoon 🙂

Shame the organiser has to explicitly say ‘keep your hands off this marker, it’s here legitimately’

My commuting riding speed is c15mph. Ironically it would be higher if I wasn’t having to filter through static traffic all the time!

don’t forget though, that barely anyone drives to work in London. I’ve been working here nearly 20 years and only one person I knew drove instead of taking public transport… and that was cos she had a problem with being amongst the general public 😯

It was making an unpleasant grinding noise which I couldn’t find the source of and the mechanic in the bike shop put a Park chain checker on it and showed me how much it had stretched.
He didn’t try and sell me a new chain either – so I wasn’t just a sales ploy

Why not do the same for somebody else? – some kind of gesture of generosity… that way it gets passed on and the world becomes that little bit more pleasant

Fair point. Not unhappy tbh, just assumed a singlespeed chain would last longer as it’s wider than your usual…

on the road, there are cars, cars in the main look where they are going, are reasonably predictable, and obey the rules of the road (in the main)

I’d like to ride where you ride. Came close to being hit 3 times on Weds – 2 cars trying to run ambers when I was in front of them dutifully stopping, as per the Law. And one guy pulled straight out into the road without looking – and then asking what my problem was after we both pulled emergency stops and he’d stopped looking shocked – he knew full well what the problem was 😯

‘Journalists’, scaremongering?
Nooooo, never 😯

They have to vote UKIP and then start a thread saying so

tbh the changes the West is going through (lower standard of living, lower levels of wealth and competitiveness) are way beyond the power of national governments – and no set of policies adhering to a certain political stance are likely to help us survive/thrive.

Essentially, globalisation and technology are wreaking havoc with the old world order and as the ones who have the most, we also have the most to lose. My view is that people are basically terrified about this loss of relative wealth and power – even though the reality may not really be that bad. The ageing population and obesity are added burdens that will inflict massive cost on the working population.

Farage is playing on this fear – nothing more – he has no better idea than anyone else how to maintain our standard of living.

Right now we need 2 things: 1) change our expectations of what the government can afford to provide for us at current levels of taxation 2) a technocratic government rather than a political one. Coalition might well be far better for us in the long run… party politics is all rhetoric and not enough pragmatism for the situation we’re in…