Interesting to see the latest news reports on this – the scientist that originally developed the threshold admitted he got it wrong. The Wada threshold was developed using data from swimmers – who typically end their events being well hydrated, and he didn’t factor in other endurance sports where competitors typically end up dehydrated.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i-made-terrible-blunder-says-drug-test-adviser-lxcnbrd8f

So the original scientist not only supported Froome in his appeal, but has also confirmed he has spent several years unsuccessfully lobbying Wada to change the threshold because of the error in the original science. So Froome’s had his reputation trashed because of a flawed test that Wada did nothing to address.

On a side note I thought it was very poor form by  Howies when they released their t-shirt jibe at froome and haven’t bought anything from them since – I very much doubt they’ll have the maturity to admit they were wrong or apologise.

I’m looking forward to hearing the forum’s resident expert on sports doping and everything else explaining to us why the scientist and Wada are both wrong.

It’s a service that ostensibly fails to deliver the value one could reasonably expect for the high fees – so no love lost on my part.

on the broader point the downturn in transaction volumes would seem to prove that the changes to stamp duty have distorted the market.

In my own case, I recently turned down a job because I worked out that by the time we’d sold up, bought something comparable and then paid stamp duty, I’d need to work for a good few years just to restore our savings.

Renting the house out for a few years whilst working somewhere else also doesn’t pay for itself anymore due to the changes in tax on but to lets.

So we’ve stayed put – I was up for relocating and taking on a more challenging role but the property market was too big an obstacle.

I’m sure there are many others in a similar position and collectively this isn’t very good for social mobility or the companies in the regions that want to hire experienced staff and expand but can’t persuade them to relocate because of property transaction costs.

By the time John McDonnel has finished “dismantling capitalism” and borrowing a 1/4 £trillion for government “investments” this will all be academic since no one will be allowed to have any assets. We’ll all be have nots.

I’ve tried a load of different kit over the years including Apple Airport Extremes, BT Wi-fi homeplugs etc. but installed a BT mesh system last year – it’s called “BT whole home”.

Everything I tried before was a bit buggy – and the power line Wi-fi solution from BT slowed down the overall speed a lot.

The whole home system comprises a series of discs – I installed them in the roof space pointing “down” into the rooms below – zip tied to the roof joists.

To install them like this the OP just needs one decent Ethernet connection to the roof space and a few power points, or put one disc near the router and daisy chain the roof mounted discs from there.

This solution has worked extremely well for us – no loss of “speed” even with 3 discs in use. The whole set up cost £180 care of some cash back at Robert Dyas.

The BT whole home discs can also be connected via Ethernet and organise themselves that way too.

Great – thanks everyone. I’m going to have a look at Starling and Metro for the bank account and will look at getting a quote from a local accountancy firm for book keeping.

Test the gazumper’s commitment by asking them to pay a £10k up front deposit that’s held by a solicitor and non refundable in the event they try to renegotiate the price or withdraw from the sale.

Be prepared for him to point out the forest of ear hair that you didn’t know you had

I spent ages looking for some new headphones and landed up with the Plantronics Backbeat Pro 2.

The noise cancelling functionality is very similar to the Bose noise cancelling headphones but they are a lot cheaper and the battery is good for 24 hours or so.

They can be used corded or via Bluetooth and a clever sensor works or when you have taken them off / put them on and puts them in sleep mode or mutes calls depending what you’re doing at the time.

Was David Copperfield in the area?

Approach it as if you were a seagull swooping in on a discarded chip – with all the lack of decorum and social norms associated with that – including loud squawking if anyone else tries to barge in before you’ve finished.

I’ve used the perfetto since Xmas and most mornings I’ve just worn a thin Rapha wicking layer underneath – this is fine down to 3 degrees or so but any colder than that I’ve put an endura primaloft gilet on underneath till I’m hot enough to take it off.

My winter riding has been transformed this year with the combination of the Perfetto, wicking layer, endura gilet, Pearl Izumi amfib tights and some northwave Celsius boots. Even down to -5 I’ve been toasty and stayed dry.

I’ve yet to find any combination of gloves that keep my hands warm though!

Almost as nuts as the age of the Icelandic sharks – some of the ones swimming round now were born before the American Declaration of Independence!

Virgin sort of has access – but has the same limitations as BT Mobile customers on EE and EE’s own pay as you go customers i.e.

– No wifi calling

– No Voice over LTE (4G)

– No access to 800MHz bandwidth (best coverage) for 4G in the areas EE have rolled it out.

That said EE’s main 4G network (most of which is 1800 MHz) is 90% landmass coverage now – population % is much higher but landmass is the more difficult one to achieve – other networks are now a good way behind that).

EE will price match the Virgin tariffs on their own nearest price plan so you get all the above without going on Virgin. I’m paying £15 a month for 25 Gb data, unlimited everything else including roaming data minutes and texts.

I don’t think I’ll be trying Pimlico Plumbers for a quote either:

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/679438/london-plumber-earns-prime-minister-exotic-holidays-weekends-pimlico-plumbers-jobcentre

£210K a year – fair play to them if they can get that!

We’ve just had a quote of £5,800 (ex vat) to re-fit a bathroom – this is in the non trendy / more stabby outer suburbs of west London. Works include:

– supply and lay 6m2 18mm plywood floor

– remove 5m2 existing tiles and make good

– remove stuck on wood panelling and make good

– lay 6m2 floor tiles (with me providing tiles and assoc. materials)

– install 9m2 wall tiles (per above)

– Install new bath, radiator, loo and sink – all pipes required already in situ

– Paint walls and ceiling – room is 7m2 x 3m high – with me providing all the paint

And this is from a guy I’ve used before who’s normally at the cheaper end of quotes.

At this rate it’s cheaper for me to buy 10 days leave from work and do it myself!

+1 for northwave Celsius boots.

I picked the new model up in November for about £150 and they’ve been great. I’ve ridden them in pi55ing freezing conditions for the last two months and combined with a pair of dhb merino socks they’ve kept my feet toasty and dry.

the boots do have a neoprene cuff but it’s lined with goretex so no water ingress there. I’ve also worn pearl Izumi amfib tights all winter which have cuff that comes down over the size of the boot collar and the combo is unbeatable.

Still can’t accept that I’m in the R2 demographic so my radio habits are largely confined to:

– R4 70%
– Kiss / Capital Radio 20%
– LBC 10% ( or less if James O’Brien comes on – at which point I turn off straight away)

I’ve got the gilet – it’s a nicely made bit of kit…. well finished and the fit is spot on. I’ve worn it in light rain over a wicking layer on some pretty cold mornings and it’s kept me nice and warm.

I tried Harry’s and Cornerstone but both of them fell well short of a Gillette Fusion and I missed the “edge” blade on the back of the Gillette cartridge.

I stumbled across the Doric razors on Amazon a few months back and the shave is pretty spot on – and also includes the “edge” blade on the back.

The blades last a few weeks and cost wise are cheaper than Gillette and about the same as Harry’s taking into account how long they last.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dorco-Pace-Plus-Razor-Built/dp/B0079Q3WZI

I’d personally steer clear of the WiFi cctv cameras – they are easily jammed so now way of the recording reaching the base unit or the cloud.

American Gods – very dark though

We’ve done the ground and first floor of our place to try and isolate the neighbours who do drum practice for up to 8 hours non stop.

The party wall is double brick and before the insulation we could hear most of their noise. We installed battens at 40cm centres, then 25mm isover wool and 2 x 12.5mm layers of overlapped gyproc soundbloc before plastering.

It’s made a massive difference to the level of noise but the trick is to cut all of the floorboards back so the soundbloc goes behind the flooring.

Cost wise we paid £3k for 39m2 of wall to be done including all materials and labour.

Smoove Chain lube – seems to still be running very clean despite 15 hours of riding through slop since I applied it. Chain needs to be very clean / de-greased / dry before applying and then needs to be left a bit.

Bikeradar reviewed it recently with similar results.

Even if the warranty is only 2 years it’s not reasonable to expect the product to fail in the first 5 years so the consumer rights act or sale of goods act will still apply depending when the OP purchased it.

I’d ask PX to repair or replace it and if the won’t just take them to the small claims court after sending them a letter to point out their obligations under the relevant act above. Even if they don’t play ball the chances of them wasting their time to turn up at your local court to defend a £150 claim is minimal and they would lose by default.

If you can stretch to it the BT mesh Wi-fi system is really good – just try two units to begin with as you may not even need the third one.

Failing that the huawei plug extenders work extremely well and cost around £30

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-WS322-Repeater-Ethernet-Extender/dp/B00C6XH6EW

Slight thread hijack but has anyone tried the mt500 ii waterproof trousers? Are they as good as the jacket?

We bought a tracca and a SIM card that roams across networks . Works really well but the waterproof rubber shroud that attaches it to the dig collar is very flimsy and needs a couple of zip ties attached to it to stop it falling out.

https://m.facebook.com/traccauk/?locale2=en_GB

A lot of the dog gps trackers are pretty limited and only work if there’s a 3G data connection – the tracca also works by text where there’s no data service which combined with the roaming network sim meant it pretty much works everywhere.

£28 a month for line rental and 52meg BT infinity on a 12 month contract.

Less:
Cashback card £125
Top cashback £80
Credits for failure to supply the service for the first month and 4 missed engineers appointments in a row £69

And small claims court payout on the way for my lost wages which is what you get for missing 4 appointments and offering £10 compensation to the customer and telling them they should be glad you’re so generous.

So by the time we’re done Bt will have paid me around £200 to have their broadband for a year :-)

vodafone is £25 a month for 50Gb – with a bit of cash back on top if you shop around. 30 day rolling contract. Just get your own 4g router / wingle and that’s it.

Thanks everyone.

So basically any of those doors will only slow them down a few minutes?

I’ll now investigate options for an oil filled flaming moat round the man cave and maybe another moat round that with some crocs in.

5p that house gets burgled in the next week

Get towards the end of the ride and innocently ask when the warm up lap is going to end.

Thanks for the advice everyone – much appreciated!

Answers to some of the questions above:

Area: North West London / well into suburbia
Quotes: – yes the cheapest so far is definitely £7.2K + VAT
Why no combi? basically we want a tank with an immersion in case the boiler breaks down
Complexity of the job: All of the plumbers have said it’s reasonably straight forward

I’ve just booked a quote from British Gas on the basis that they are always at least double so that gives me something to compare the other quotes against.

anyone use the Bontrager ones? (Cambion or XXX)

Yes – the Bontrager Cambion ones and I’d have to say that they are the most comfortable shoe I’ve ever had for long road rides -a lot better than the Giro, Specialized, Mavic or Northwave shoes I’ve used.

in the loft
woke baby, now
on naughty step

how long does it take to wheel an empty barrow from the drive to the garden and back? Double that time to allow for trying not to slop the concrete out of the barrow en-route hen times it by 30 trips.

If the time works out get 2 x extra pairs of hands – one to swap over for each load if carrying 80kg and one to spread it out.

so Germany which has 15% more peopel than us does better than that

Doesn’t Germany (like many EU states) levy VAT on food though? So does the graph just show that where food is cheap relative to disposable incomes there is more waste?

Currently on EE – 20Gb of data and unlimited minutes / texts for £15 a month.

EE actually matched a competitor (Virgin Mobile) tariff and then gave me the nearest EE tariff that included free data roaming / minutes as well. So all in all pretty cheap and what I would have spent on data on a few holidays / trips abroad this year will actually pay for my whole year’s mobile service.

-100 for Virgin.

Tried them twice, both times the 100Mbps service ground to a crawl every evening. Abysmal latency so couldn’t work at home because voice quality was so bad on skype and livemeeting.

Regular instances of no service that in same cases would last a week or more – but the thing that really grated was the endless endless lies they would tell about fix dates – which would come and go with nothing happening. Our neighbours tell us it’s much the same now but still seem happy to throw upwards of £70 a month at them.

By comparison, BT and Plusnet* have both been extremely reliable. No outages over the 4 years that we’ve used them and the speeds have been pretty consistent irrespective of time of day.

* yes, I know Plusnet are owned by BT, but weirdly their ping times and speeds are actually a bit better.

Thanks – no wonder I couldn’t find any if they are actually using a completely different brand name!

Northwind – I’ll try that first .. cheers for the tip