My Revs adjust from 140 to 110. Run them c 125 for most riding (Surrey Hills) but was glad to have them at 140 when I rode in the Peaks. Tbh I find the forks a bit wandery at 140 unless it’s a rocky downhill

What’s the difference between how you feel on heroin and how you feel on morphine?
I can still remember the intensity of the feeling coming round from having my collarbone plated in 2007. Just utterly happy and invincible

It’s easier to say ‘my bad’ than ‘sorry, that was my fault’

It implies we’ve all been banned from t’ internets at all times,

How’d you come to that conclusion? The title says explicitly social networking sites/blogs?

If was employing people I’d be pretty upset if they spent a load of time on STW… 😳

Lemmy’s been quoted as refusing to touch heroin. Tells you something about it…

stop on the left and turn when all is clear. You are very vulnerable when sitting in the middle of the road.

You are very vulnerable when sitting in the middle of the road, with oncoming drivers refusing to slow down and drivers behind squeezing past on the in side, but Bikeability and John Franklin’s Cyclecraft do not advise starting a right turn from the left of the road.

Turning across the carriageway is not what a driver expects you do and puts you at greater risk.

Possibly the best thing to have done would have been to pull up on the left hand side and walk the bike across the road as a pedestrian

Racism is nothing to do with where you are on the political spectrum.

Racism comes from people who are scared of change and scared of ‘the other’. The more extreme fringes of any political position tend to be racist because they’re the most scared. Both Hitler and Stalin slaughtered Jews remember…

(Is there an equivalent of Godwin’s Law for Stalin?) 🙂

Go to the Brompton shop
Get your credit card out
Leave Brompton shop with a new bike
Simple 🙂

Why self-driving cars are necessary

A driver who “hogged” lane three said: “It’s your fault, officer, you shouldn’t have been so close behind me”.

Another, stopped for speeding, said: “How am I supposed to know my speed?”

The KPMG report makes some interesting observations about the sheer amount of land taken up by car parks, which could come back into use if people just hail a car when they need one – playgrounds, houses (that would sort out the supply shortage nicely)

Also, why do we pay so much for an object which sits unused for c22h every day… massive wastage of expense and resources – self-driving will be far more efficient on many levels.

I suspect this could be like mobile phones – once the technology is ready to go mass and people experience it for themselves, they’ll be all over it like a rash. There’ll be few doom-mongers and Luddites but they’ll disappear over time. The financial, social, health, quality of life benefits are very, very compelling.

Owning and driving our own cars be one of those things we find hard to explain to our grandkids

Many people mistake UKIP as a British thing. It’s not. Extreme right wing parties are on the up all over Europe – the National Front are doing well in France for e.g.

We know from 1930s that extreme right wing views are magnified in times of economic hardship. That time, of course, it went way too far.

This time however, I think it’s just the cries of people who find the world a tough and scary place and would like to be back in the comfort of their mothers’ wombs rather than understand that change is an inevitable part of human existence.

These parties just tap into people’s grievances – they’ve no intention of actually being in power or showing any actual leadership.

As the economic outlook improves I suggest that whilst a hardcore might remain, any mass popular support will drift away.

The only problem really is that a lot of the unhappiness they’re tapping into is legitimate as our living standards fall away and the main parties fail to offer us any proper leadership

Aah – the ‘Bob Crow Memorial Strike’
I didn’t think it was too bad at all today – lots more riders but the general quality of riding was ok.
tbh – on a strike day you know you’re going to be dealing with a bunch of inexperienced riders so you just need to ride accordingly.

The obvious model here is no car ownership. You book a car to be in your current location in 10 mins and one turns up, you get in and go.
None of the hassles and costs of ownership.

People are already indicating in large numbers that they’d rather do anything else than drive their cars – hence so many eating breakfast/shaving/makeup/Facebook etc etc – the ability of self-driving cars to meet that need is clear.

They’ll get the technology and legals sorted – that’s all being worked through already KPMG report

+ the opportunity to make money is there – which is always a useful motive for technological development…

For many, many reasons this will be a great leap forward.

The only blocker I can think of is that the way people drive and the cars they buy has everything to do with status – but if you’re just a passenger in a bog-standard car which is pretty much the same as everyone else’s then you lose that ‘status’. For some people (albeit a minority) this will something they’re unwilling to lose

My loaves have come out a little softer since I started doing 50/50 wholemeal with Spelt. Still ‘rustic’ though.

I think Junkyard has it – any bread manufactured in large quantities isn’t proper bread…

For £100 and a lot less time than you will waste trying to get the LL to sort it, you can get back to a normal life.

Correct. Just a bit hacked off they’ve not bothered with what I’d consider a few cheap-to-sort basics. If hallway paint can’t take a few scrapes it’s not really much use…

There’s the remainder of the tin of paint under the stairs which I can use. It’ll give me some useful practice learning how to paint but on someone else’s walls 🙂 I’ve mullered the place with perfumed candles and Shake N Vac all weekend and the local Tesco has Rug Doctor for hire…

It’s great seeing so many cyclists out these days… time to celebrate I should say.

Anyone who has a problem with cyclists ‘taking up the road’ should take a closer look next time they’re in a traffic jam and ask themselves whether the traffic jam would still be there if everyone was on bikes instead…

That said, groups of 10+ are tricky to handle unless all 10 are experienced and working well as a group. My club is overhauling the club runs to deal with the recent growth so that we can get back to smaller groups rather than one big one.

It would be help if drivers recognised that what they think is a ‘big group’ may actually be total strangers to each other – separate groups who’re momentarily riding along the same road

I make my own bread using the Dove Farm recipe and wholemeal flour. A chi-chi bakery would call the result ‘rustic’! It tastes delicious but it’s what I would call ‘substantial’ rather than light and springy like a lot of bread. Personally I much prefer it, you don’t need to eat as much to be full and anything else seems tasteless and lacking presence

hell on toast, aren’t they?
Ever noticed that everyone’s really angry with them, for various reasons… comes from routinely screwing people over I guess

I like the way some of you are passing character judgement on someone you don’t know from Adam 😯

Tbh, using paint in a narrow hallway which can’t take a wipedown seems like a bit of a poor decision to me. I want to keep the place in good nick so I’ll ask them if they can supply the paint and offer to paint it myself…

I’ve nuked the place with shake n vac and all kinds of deoderising sprays so we’ll see if that works or not.

The thing I like about old stories like that is you realise moral outrage and focussing on the sensational is something British newspapers have been doing since the year they were born…

Jeremy Paxman in his book ‘The English’ said we’ve been getting drunk and fighting with foreigners for most of our existence 😀

This particular landlord is also an estate agent, I know I’m dealing with someone who puts his business before my needs…

The deposit’s with the DPS. I took loads of my own photos on top of the inventory ones, and also made tons of amends to the inventory and kept my own copy.
Re the smell. I can’t remember but I think the windows were open when I went round – stupid of me to miss that one! I’ve made some progress with copious amounts of shake n vac, girly candles and cans of air freshener.

Either way, anything they won’t sort that they could try and take deposit for, I’ll make notes of all correspondence, take photos and send in advance to DPS so they know there’s a possible dispute. Best I can do I suppose.

Ring your card issuer (bank) and ask them how it can be sorted.

IIRC VbV doesn’t need a password if both your card issuer and the people you’re trying to pay are registered (which of course you don’t know) – it does it automatically

If only one party is registered, you will need to enter your password, so for some sites you’ll need it, others you won’t.

Land Registry prices that I’m looking at in Bromley suggest there’s a big difference between asking and selling prices, and has been since back end of last year – 2 bed terraces on the market for £300-£325 selling for nearer £285/£290. Comparing Dec – Mar (presumably sales agreed a few months earlier) suggest v little rise.

I think it’s worth doing some research before believing that prices are shooting up everywhere at a massive rate.

Also worth bearing in mind a lot of people knew the lending criteria were being tightened up this month so quite likely a lot of FTB have been rushing in whilst they could still get a mortgage, which will have contributed to the recent hysteria…

The FPC are looking at tightening up further later this year, possibly a limit on multiples. Personally even if prices do continue to rise in the long term, right now is a lousy time for FTB – estate agents and sellers are taking massive advantage of young FTB panicking

You kind of feel sorry for people like that… so wrapped up in their existential anger that they think time spent writing such an article will somehow make them feel better. It doesn’t, of course…

A bit like the passenger of the speeding car last Bank Holiday Monday. If you’re in a moving car, there’s no point shouting abuse out of the window at me, I can’t catch a word of it but you’re still angry 😀

Worth looking at Land Registry data to see if it’s realistic, of course.
It basically suggests the Estate Agent and seller are being greedy buggers and taking advantage of naive and desperate buyers with access to too much credit.

Personally I avoid these as they’re basically saying “we’re not prepared to negotiate even if the price is well in excess of any house like this in this area ever before”

Leasehold strikes me as a mug’s game tbh. I was offered a flat last year with £190pcm service charge, 50% of which was a sink fund for building repairs. On top of the mortgage, this made a small 2-bed flat more expensive on a monthly basis than a 2 bed terraced house. Financially and in terms of quality of life it’s a no-brainer.

I don’t get why he’s saying no service charge if it’s not share of freehold. It’s also small and priced cheaply so I’ll steer clear – something not quite right here

So what does this reply from the estate agent mean then? I asked him what the service charge would be:

There are no service charges.
999 year lease,

When he says there’s a 999 year lease, does he actually mean I would own the freehold, and would not be buying the flat leasehold?

tbh the more national this bubble goes and the quicker it goes up, and the more people are affected by it – including the lawyers and the bankers, the more likely a) BoE will have to step in and increase rates b) the more of an electoral liability it becomes, rather than an asset – and therefore puts pressure on Gideon to stop ruining people’s chances of owning their own home.

All it will take will be a suspicion of the bubble bursting and sentiment could change very quickly…

When I did A-level Economics I remember being told that inflation came from “too much money chasing too few goods”.

My Mum’s take is interesting, she blames Feminism (in part). My parents bought their house about 1967 – when only one income was available to pay for the mortgage, than of the husband – because women were generally at home looking after the kids.

She says feminism, as positive as it has been, simply doubled the amount of money that families could afford to pay for a house as women went to work. Housing stock hasn’t increased, the amount of money has. Hey presto, prices have gone up. And up ever since.

The main problem now is too much money supply. The population of London hasn’t increased 20% in a year, but prices have… so ‘shortage of housing’ IMO is not the main problem here, just an aggrevator to the fundamental issue of way too much ££ being lent out

Binners, the other silliness also means people have higher mortgage repayments or have to put more of a deposit down. That means lower consumer spending and pension saving.

So the additional tens of thousands I’m going to have to put down into a deposit because I didn’t buy a year ago is just disappearing – into no-one’s pocket anywhere. Instead of spending it on bikes, new car, home improvements, eating out, trips to the Lakes, saving it, investing it etc etc

It really is utterly moronic. Especially as even those people in silly expensive houses are no better off in any way at all, they just have an illusion that they’re richer – it’s 100% illiquid.

I’m not expecting a crash, just a cooling off of the hysteria and outright greed which puts me in a very weak negotiating position…

Although, the bubble has gone up so fast this time, it’s clearly being manipulated rather than a properly functioning price rise based on demand.

Interestingly though, Land Registry data (for Bromley at least) shows prices not going up at anything like the headlines and estate agents’ evaluations would have you think… maybe a few % but certainly not 10+.

100% agree, not right, but then when their agent is telling them they can sell for £££ then can you blame them?

. Yes, I can. You know full well you’re screwing over some young couple who’ve stretched to pay a price way more than you paid. That’s a conscious decision to enrich yourself at someone else’s expense

At 42 and with 10 years of savings and help from my parents and well above average salary and I can’t afford to buy in London except in undesireable areas and even then it’s something small – unless, of course, I borrow to uncomfortable levels.

Every serious commentator says London/SE is in a bubble. Only the naive first time buyers, sellers and estate agents are quiet on this…

It’s so clearly cynical electioneering… and the Tories are supposed to be the party who are strong on managing the economy. It suggests things are in a far more delicate state than we’re being led to believe… they wouldn’t need to do it otherwise…

When you compare salaries to prices I can’t see from where the first time buyers are getting their money which means the demand has to dry up at some point.

The housing market is not a functioning market, it’s herd behaviour and sentiment – which can go down as fast as it goes up. The economy is not is as good a state as the headlines suggest – our national debt has increased again.

I’m tired of estate agents playing games, telling outright lies and pretty much refusing to show me properties of any quality so for now, I’ve decided to keep saving until after the election when Gideon will hopefully stop playing games (I wish) and interest rates rise. Hopefully more and more first time buyers are coming to this conclusion, which will put a brake on the hysteria.

Hopefully then I’ll not be in such a weak position as buyers currently are and will have a fair chance of buying something decent at an affordable price.

The greed on show from sellers is astonishing. We blame media, estate agents, Gideon etc but, no-one’s forcing you to go for maximum price and rip off someone less advantaged than you who’s dead scared they’ll never be able to afford a bit of security to raise a family if they don’t dance to your tune…

I’m here because my parents weren’t satisfied with my older brother 😀

In the meantime, make the best of the opportunities on offer while you can, and just because you can…

Road biking is using the ‘need’ for discs as an excuse to phase out the standard we’re all currently very happy with.

You’ll also note in the recent trade shows that a few manufacturers were touting wider tyres as ‘necessary’

Funnily enough, both developments, whilst offering only marginal benefits to only one element of the ride, require purchase of a complete new bike…

One of the problems with the basic design of the bicycle being got right first time in the late 19th century is constant and unnecessary dicking about with minor points of detail

As much as I believe everything I wrote, Binners is also 100% correct 🙂

I’ve been in London since 2000.
A few thoughts;
1. Day to day life is expensive – the money just seems to disappear. In part I think this is because you tend to be out and about more rather than staying in and watching TV every night
2. For culture, music, events, social etc it’s an amazing city. There’s absolutely no point being here if you don’t take advantage of this. But these things all cost money…
3. You’ll likely eat out a lot more, because you’re out and about
4. Don’t even begin to think about living anywhere central – zone 3 at least, and even then your monthly travelcard will be c £140
5. Rent is taking up more and more of your income. At least £500pcm for a room in a shared house, plus bills

Personally I would say anything less than £40k and you’ll be scraping by and not being able to make the best of the opportunities on offer. And even then you can forget pension or other saving…

Don’t let this put you off, though, there’s a reason why so many people are moving to London. If you’re young and have the energy and money to take advantage of the opportunities it’s a great place to spend a few years

Who from STW is going to email Paula and express horror at her level of illiteracy?

This story has only come about in the first year of 650B, you’ll notice… the new wheel size will save the world!

Radio 4 had a programme on this on Monday where Michael Howard was trying to take credit for his focus on imprisoning people in the 90’s (even though this reduction in crime is a global trend). The more sensible commentators pointed to a whole range of factors which could all be partially linked to the fall in crime, rather than one single, definitive cause e.g. the cost of consumer electronics falling makes them worth less on the black market therefore not worth mugging and burgling in the first place… also, it’s cheap enough for people to buy for themselves rather than nicking it.

I suspect in the UK at least it’s because would-be criminals are now too fat to get out of the house to go and nick your stuff…

I have one which I use mainly for running and love it. Non-flappy fit, windproof and very breathable and will keep a shower at bay.
Don’t know what it’s like for abrasion for mountain biking but you can fall off your road bike on it and it’ll survive with just a few scrapes and holes…

22. And I’ve been told that I can be too sweary, so clearly I have some very polite friends 😀