The Oxford / Astra Zeneca vaccine has received approval:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55280671

If the deal is as stated in today’s Times the outcome is ok – zero tariffs, zero quotas and no jurisdiction of European courts. It’s certainly a lot better than the doom mongers have been predicting.

This should be a relief on all sides – job losses avoided and a framework that should see us working together constructively on trade, environmental issues and security in the future.

I’ve tried more saddles than eaten hot dinners care of acute groin pain. The specialized saddles were the least painful for me – until I tried an Ergon. I’ve now got ergons on three bikes and really rate them. The best one I’ve tried so far is the Men’s SM Pro – seems better made and cheaper than specialized as well.

I’ve ordered two things from Germany and Netherlands this week and both arrived within 3 days care of UPS.

Italy have announced the same thing today and I think the Netherlands did a day or two ago. The latest mutation (there have reportedly been many so this isn’t news in itself) seems to have the epidemiologists worried.

I can’t cope with much more doom and gloom so I’m going for:

– The EU and U.K. use some common sense and get things sorted
– The Oxford vaccine gets approved before Xmas and we vaccinate 10m by the end of January
– People limit contact over Xmas to protect their loved ones and medics who have no choice but to care for people who have covid
– Social media is dramatically curtailed in order to curtail the commercialisation of negativity
– We don’t lose sight of what it’s felt like to see our friends and loved ones a lot less than we’d like

I’ll carry on eating supermarket pizza made in Birmingham and washing it down with strong continental lager brewed in Luton.

The bontrager Blendr system works pretty well with a GoPro mount holding the light and a second mount to hold a computer / whatever. It needs a Blendr stem as well though which may be an issue.

https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/bontrager_blendr_how_to/

I spent ages looking at the same thing and went with the following:

– domain name registration via Microsoft office 365
– Mail setup on the domain the Microsoft manage (nice and simple)
– wix for simple website – integrated with office 365
– single invoice for all the Microsoft bits including office 365 apps

Spotless is worth a watch – a bit like Breaking Bad so well written and good characters. Shame it didn’t get a second series.

We decided ages ago to not see any family / friends / grandparents over xmas.

For the sake of another few months of social isolation until a vaccine arrives I’m not willing to run the risk of my family potentially infecting others or exposing my own family to it.

Based on local friends / neighbours we’ll be in a tiny minority as pretty much everyone we know has flouted the rules right from the outset – they all still clapped for the NHS though.

Doesn’t the power bank need to conform to the Power Delivery (PD) spec if it’s going to be used to charger gadgets and higher power items like the MacBook via USB C?

The more expensive Anker powerbanks (and others) seem to have this feature but I can’t see it in the spec for the item listed above.

Krixmeister – you don’t live in London do you?

https://mobile.twitter.com/crimeldn/status/1328447722853195776?s=12

I’ve had two doors from Solidor – fitted by Timber Composite Doors. Very happy with both and price wise less than 50% the cost of the Anglian Windows / equivalents.

https://www.timbercompositedoors.com

Some of the points in this thread chime with a really great essay written by Trevor Philips (ex Head of the EHRC) in last weekend’s Times:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-march-of-wokeism-is-an-all-pervasive-new-oppression-s7dw3s5lr

Well worth a read if you can see beyond the Times paywall.

“Not THAT cold I hope! (-80C is jolly chilly, special freezer chilly).“

Just meant that when the ambient temperature is lower it can make it easier to maintain very cold temperatures.

I’ve used wiggle for close to 20 years (before it was even wiggle) and I’m really struggling to think of any problem I’ve had with them. They even gave me a 70% refund on a saddle I returned after a month’s riding when I complained it was giving me numb plums.

UPS (amongst others) have been making some pretty big investments in the cold chain facilities required to store and transport vaccines like the Pfizer one. The distribution across US / Europe will presumably be more straightforward than other regions – not least helped by the fact we’re coming into the cooler season in the northern hemisphere.

Scattering round poison outside will potentially lead to the deaths of other animals that come across a nice juicy recently deceased mouse. Traps are the way to go but put them in a box to prevent hedgehogs etc getting stuck in them.

Kelvin, it’s a bit hypocritical of Angela Rayner to roll out the apologies for abuse within the party only a week after she called another MP “Scum” in the House of Commons and subsequently resulting in the other MP and his family immediately receiving all manner of threats from Labour activists.

On the wider points in this thread there’s a good article about Luciana Berger in The Sunday Times today. The abuse she received off Labour activists included threats of being killed, stabbed, raped and having acid thrown at her. This is the “gentler kinder politics” that Jeremy was promising us all. Even though she’s no longer a Labour MP she received further threats this week because apparently it’s her fault that Jeremy was suspended for his failure to see the blindingly obvious.

One further point of interest – even though it’s been years since Berger first became the victim of sustained abuse within the Labour Party, Kier Starmer only picked up the phone this week to apologise for it – having sat on the shadow cabinet for the interim and apparently having had nothing to say on the matter for the whole of that time.

Another vote for the jabra evolve 65 here.

I spend loads of time on Teams video calls and it’s very noticeable that people who use boom mics are often easier to hear / have less background noise. Conversely the people who rely on the laptop mic alone are generally the sort that always turn up late for meetings, haven’t don’t the pre-read etc etc. Nothing like sweeping generalisations …😂

Just to cover off a comment above – every network has a “fair usage” policy on their unlimited tariffs. I think the monthly limits are as follows:

Three – 1 x terrabyte
Voxi – 1 x terrabyte
Vodafone, o2, gifg gaff and ee contracts from mid September – 600 to 650Gb

I can recommend one of these for use on Three or Vodafone:

https://www.router-switch.com/huawei-5g-cpe-win.html

It costs about £350 inc duty and shipping and comes with a 15m PoE cable that can easily be extended without reducing the speed of the connection – just plug an indoor Wi-Fi router on the other end and that’s it.

If the OP has a TV aerial it comes with a bracket that will clamp round. As long as it’s pointing in the direction of the ma set it gives a very good stable connection – I’m getting 300-350 Mbps on Three.

I can’t recommend it on EE because they do something funny with their network provision that means it connects fine but the router bit gets disabled by the network. I tried to resolve it with them but EE’s tech team aren’t very good at listening.

The costs aren’t even subsidised – see sales / opex break down linked to from this page:

https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/foi/transparency-publications/hoc-transparency-publications/catering-services/transparency-reporting-catering-services/

The campaigners are ignoring a couple of things:

1. Most in house caterers (or outsourced) don’t pay business rates for the food prep / serve areas. In that respect they are “subsidised” but only to the extent that full commercial recharge of rent and rates is waved by the customer.

2. Most of the staff in the Houses of Parliament aren’t highly paid and also work pretty weird hours so the catering service has more in common with a manufacturing site with two to three shifts.

3. There’s not actually much alternative provision in the immediate area as the eateries on Victoria Street shut by 22:30 and are a good 15-20 mins walk away.

The first one was great. This one is embarrassingly bad – if the kind hearted black lady isn’t an actor the “setup” borders on pretty exploitative.

Agree with the comment above about water efficient taps. I added a flow reducer to the shower head and turned down the flow on all of the hot and cold taps and our water bill came down around 40%. Reducing the flow on the hot taps also saved on gas as we were heating less water.

TSD pretty much articulated some of what I’ve been thinking for a few years now i.e: social media is seeding division and intolerance and the only likely outcome is public unrest.

I haven’t posted anything on social media for quite some time now but I’m still wavering on deleting my profile completely.

If I analyse why that is, my conclusion is that I’d feel a sense of loss losing contact with people that in some cases I haven’t even seen this century. Which now I’ve written that is probably a good enough reason to crack on and delete my Facebook account.

I ran Swann for 8 or so years and in that time had 3 x failed boxes. I dumped it last year and moved to Nest – much easier to install and costs £100 a year for 60 days data storage. The only problem to watch out for with Nest is the upload speed on broadband – it needs an unlimited package and the upload on 4 cameras can easily chobble through 3-7Mbps.

Covid would probably have been less of a problem 20 or 40 years ago on the following counts:

– less devolution so easier for the government to take a decision and implement it
– same goes for the “Metro” mayors
– more people would have read newspapers vs relying on social media and algorithmic echo chambers for their news
– aside from David Icke, the “reach” of conspiracy theorists was a lot lower
– mainstream media was less focussed on monetising clicks – the news outlets didn’t need to “make” news in order to have something to fill rolling 24 hour news coverage. And yes, CNN did exist then but we didn’t have multiple rolling news channels competing with each other.
– personal hygiene was better, particularly hand washing. In 20 years we seem to have gone from some blokes not washing their hands after a pee to most blokes not bothering, and an increasing number of people (based on the offices I’ve worked in) who take a dump whilst on the phone and don’t even wash their hands after that.
– facts and logic actually trumped emotions and “feelings” in public debate

The main difference for me though would be the difference in numbers of narcissists / influencers etc and more people looking out for each other.

At the risk of teaching the OP to suck eggs a couple of thoughts as follows:

1. The original post referred to “employer” but it should be “client” unless the OP is working on PAYE or umbrella I.e. the contractual relationship is key.

2. If the OP is a genuine contractor I.e. working through LTD company and supplying a service then there’s a “buying some time” option. In this scenario tell the client that you’re willing to consider perm but can do anything until the end of the current tax year – as a swap in the middle of the tax year would require you to pay a higher rate of tax on the dividends you’ve already paid yourself (impact of higher salary on ltd co dividend rates)

3. If that works, negotiate in good faith towards a start date in April but make sure that the “role” is not similar to the service being currently provided – if not HMRC will be knocking on your door down the line re: IR35 status.

If you can’t delay it and the client forces the decision the only real choice is to walk because to take a perm role will create an IR35 liability.

Our neighbours haul theirs up on to the flat roof and tie it to the chimney to stop it blowing off in high winds.

But it won’t “reset” things will it?

We know that because the last 3 week lockdown ran to 3 months. So we have another lockdown, the numbers don’t come down and then what, we do another 3 weeks? And another? We can easily add another 1/2m job losses to the pile and we would have another 7 months of winter to get through.

The other reason we know the lockdown would be disastrous is because Labour told us so. In fact, they told us so only 2 hours before Kier said we needed a lockdown when John Ashworth (shadow health Secretary) said the following in a House of Commons debate this afternoon:

“ But we also know that a full national lockdown stretching for weeks and weeks, like we had through April, with a rule, effectively, of one-household contact—a rule of one, indeed, for some people—would be disastrous for society. Again, I do not believe that anyone in the House is proposing that.” (See Hansard today). Quite incredibly the Labour Shadow Health Secretary and his own Party Leader said completely opposite things.

So forgive me, Labour have in the space of 2 hours told us that to not have a lockdown would be a disaster and having one would also be a disaster. There’s covering all bases and … covering all bases.

And given the police have made it clear they are not willing to enforce the law it’s unlikely most people would comply any more than they did in April which in this part of the country was not very much.

If I’ve got this right, Captain Hindsight:

– has criticised the government for both following and not following the science
– wants a national lockdown because that’s following the science – even though the WHO have warned against this approach only this week
– has criticised the government for not consulting the regions and tailoring the plans – but is now proposing a top down national lockdown with no advance consultation with those same regions
– has criticised the government for not protecting jobs but now proposes to shut down all areas of the economy even in the areas where the rate of transmission is under control. And also hasn’t got a clue how much this will cost.

It seems to me that Sir Kier is just playing schoolboy politics – for all the talk of constructive opposition he’s doing the exact opposite.

All in all pretty disappointing- effective opposition is the bedrock of our democracy and we’ll clearly limp on as we are for a while longer.

+ Starling for Business.

I tried and failed to set up an account with Metro. By contrast it took me about 5 mins with Starling from starting to download the app to finishing the application and downloading my new “virtual” debit card into the payment wallet on my phone.

I’ve started watching more subtitled drama on Netflix / Prime etc. Because it’s subtitled I actually have to concentrate whilst watching it which then counteracts the tendency to do other things at the same time. I’ve found that I’m more relaxed after an hour or two’s viewing than I otherwise would be.

yes. I also hide one in my bike in case the local scroats decide me to relieve me of it mid-ride.

The tractive one roams across networks so in practice works pretty much everywhere.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to buy from the local junkie / burglar and cut out the middle man? 🤪

Some amazing work in that link above – more creativity than I’ve seen in years all in one place.

I bought an endura singletrack onesie for £180ish last week. I’ll no doubt look like a d1ck while I’m wearing it but to be honest that’s no change from usual :-)

Where these things score is for winter slop and night rides when there are less people around to laugh at your clothing choice.

I’ve taken a hybrid approach – by turning my smartphone into a slightly stupid phone.

I’ve got airplane mode turned on and wifi turned on. This means it can only connect to Wifi calling at home and other places where I’ve added the network details. In those locations Wifi calling / texts / voicemail all work automatically – but everywhere else the phone just goes to voicemail. Notifications for pretty everything are turned off so I don’t get distracted.

So basically my “phone” doesn’t work whilst driving, when I’m out having a meal (in most places) but when I’m at work / home it does work. If I get really stuck I can also turn the “phone” bit on.

To date (touch wood) I’ve not missed anything urgent and the lack of attention stealing notifications etc is quite noticeable.