Our dogs tend to be less barky if we leave Radio4 or LBC playing when we’re out.

OK, I’m officially an idiot – someone please put me out of my self created misery.

So the reason my brakes didn’t work is because I’d put the olives on the wrong way round. Although I watched quite a few videos that advised to screw them on counter clockwise (which I did) I didn’t notice the olive has to go down the hose, not “up”.

As it turns out my earlier post was also wrong – there are two ways to screw an olive onto a barb but only one of them works.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to give me their advice – I’ll take myself to the corner and will stand there in silence for a few weeks with my hands on my head.

I’m very sorry to read of your loss TJ.

From your post it sounds like you did everything in your gift to ensure Julie’s last few weeks went as she wanted.

I think you were a nurse until recently so you’ll no doubt have seen many times where the patient’s wishes could not be accommodated. I hope the fact you could do that for Julie will give you some comfort in the coming weeks.

Very best wishes,

Cc

Huel hot flavours – the mild curry and Mexican chilli are nice and other bits and bobs can be added to them.

Further update: just disconnected the hose from both levers and even pushing down very hard on the syringe connected to the bleed port no oil comes out of the connect-a-mi-jig. So even though both levers are brand new there seems to be a blockage in the levers or something else that needs opening in order for oil to move through the brake lever.

Ok update as follows:

– the hoses are now filled with fluid. I disconnected the levers and pushed fluid up from the bottom with no issues

– the olives screw on to the barbs so there’s only one way or installing them

– I’ve reconnected the levers and drawn a bit of air out but the bottom syringe oil lever doesn’t change – even when pulling hard on the syringe (bleed port open on the bottom)

– the levers don’t move the pads at all

Aside from taking a hammer to the levers is there anything else I can try? This is literally the first time I’ve failed at home bike fettling in 35 years – is it my lack of skillz or unintuitive design by SRAM?

Simon1975 – is that reach adjustment trick specific to the sram road levers?

Jamz – yep – and thanks for the suggestion.

The levers and callipers were set up for left hand drive countries so I had to swap both round and then cut the longer tube after putting it through the frame. I can’t bleed either of the brakes so it must be a problem common to both.

I’ll disconnect and try running oil in the tubes then reconnecting. Would I need to change the olives again before doing that or it safe to refit them?

Carlos / soobalias – thanks as well.

Bump for the day crowd. Any other bodges that might get the fluid flowing through the hoses again?

Carlos – the lever is a screw in type but the calliper is a push in and unscrew 1 turn job.

The fluid drained out of the system fine yesterday but now the cables are shorter I just can’t seem to push any fluid through the hose even with the lower port open 1 turn and the top port open. It’s the same on the front and back brake – all the parts are new so I can’t think what’s causing it.

Not such a stupid question coatesy but yep, have checked that!

+1 for the endura gilet – a really versatile and packable item. I use mine lots – never seem to be too hot in it in the spring / autumn and it keeps me toasty in the winter.

Ofcom has just auctioned off another tranche of spectrum – this time it’s reserved for 5G and in the 700Mhz band.

That’s the lowest band made available to operators so far and is likely to result in a noticeable improvement in voice and data coverage for o2, ee and Three users. Ee have already started rolling it out in urban areas but we can expect to see 5G appearing in some rural areas this year as well.

Speed wise, 5G@700 is unlikely to best 5G@3.6Ghz but will still offer an improvement over 4g in many areas. Three are continuing to roll out 10gig backhaul connections to their upgraded sites so expect some very fast download speeds in many areas as they have the most 5G spectrum overall.

I’m surprised that Beckett didn’t just go the whole hog and call Patel a coconut, a KKK member or an Uncle Tom – other lefty types including Labour MPs seem to think that’s perfectly ok based on what the various BAME conservative MPs have repeatedly received care of social media.

Another apology from the BBC for blatantly misrepresenting the facts…

BBC press release:

We accept that Sir James Dyson is not a prominent Conservative supporter as was stated in some of our coverage of his text messages with the Prime Minister.

The James Dyson Foundation made a charitable gift to support the Wiltshire Engineering Festival for school children.

We accept that this does not signal affiliation to any political party and we would like to put the record straight.

Sir James also raised concerns about the accuracy of other aspects of our reporting.

We wish to make clear that Sir James contacted Number 10 in response to the Prime Minister’s direct request to him for assistance in relation to the urgent need for ventilators and incurred costs of £20 million which his company voluntarily absorbed in trying to assist in the national emergency.

His text messages to the Prime Minister were also later sent to officials. We are sorry that these facts were not always reflected in our coverage, and we apologise for not doing so.

Response from Sir James Dyson:

“The BBC now acknowledges that it was wrong and has issued an apology – which I accept.

To justify its claim that I am a “prominent Conservative supporter” the BBC shamefully twisted our charitable gift to school children to suit their political narrative.

The Prime Minister asked Dyson to help at a time of crisis, in the national interest, and we did just that.

We dropped everything and focused on the national effort.

Far from any gain, the project cost us £20 million – a sum we voluntarily bore.

I am proud of the efforts of every Dyson person who contributed and we would do precisely the same again.

It was deeply disappointing, for me and for the hundreds of Dyson people who gave it their all, to have our efforts developing an emergency ventilator mischaracterised and used for political mudslinging.”

Source: Guido

A vote for Tractive here – it roams across
networks and has great battery life.

Pretty much the whole hospital records line up on that set.

Funny to watch but he’s a nobber for doing that in traffic wearing over ear headphones and fiddling about with the mixer.

All the gear and no idea here – this sounds perfect for me

EE works well:

1 x sim only unlimited data plan £25
3 x call and text only sims @ £9 each

Then gift up to 33Gb of data to each of the 3 x calls and data sims.

I wouldn’t be taking any chances – replacing a wheel to avoid further spoke breakages is a false economy. Purchasing a new bike would be the best option 😂

Hyde Park is one of the royal parks and nothing to do with the CoE.

Secondly, The Church Commissioners’ investments pay for the upkeep of thousands of historically important buildings. The Tax point is I believe a mute one for the simple reason that the state should probably make a greater contribution to maintain the buildings that are key to our rich history.

I’ve got the ergon sport and it’s very comfortable – a bit flatter than some saddles and it took a bit of time to get the angle dialled but it’s hands down the best saddle I’ve had – and I’ve had close to 50 or so due to chronic groin pain that can last for months at a time when it’s triggered.

Usual caveat – everyone’s saddle preferences are different.

If you want to track the bike there are a couple of discreet options for gps trackers in handlebars or inside the steerer tubes. There’s an article on cyclist.co.U.K. that reviews them – probably not a bad investment anyway given the number of kids that get their bikes stolen.

https://www.cyclist.co.uk/buying-guides/5391/buyers-guide-gps-bike-trackers

In the OP, person B has injected race into the conversation. If person A were to now find that racially offensive then the law says Person B has potentially committed a racially motivated offence – given that the bar is whether the recipient interprets it as racist, not whether it actually is.

So depending on how HR run with things they could find themselves handling a false original accusation of racism and a new legitimate one.

In tillydog’s example, unless the employees have referenced their place of work on Facebook or are particularly high profile (and directly associated with the ownership or management of the company) they probably have a reasonable case for unfair dismissal.

I’ve used silva timber a couple of times. The quality of the wood they delivered was pretty variable and I landed up returning some of it for exchange – quite a lot of it was split. They also delivered the wrong ratio of short / long cedar planks.

The guaranteed / treated joists they supplied rotted through with wet rot in the space of 8 years.

I would probably use them again just for cedar as my experience wasn’t too dissimilar to the other specialist timber merchants I’ve also tried.

Why are people so horrified when inanimate objects get smashed up but couldn’t care less when your rights are being steam rollered by a right wing government with the full support of the leader of the Labour Party ?

Fixed that for you.

I think it’s the case that Insurers can withhold payouts where there’s a suspected fraud – the bar for that is far lower than a criminal fraud.

Per the above post, if the dog will use it as a toilet the installation materials are different:

1. install weed net
2. Lay 75- 100mm x 10-20mm compacted granite chippings as base layer
3. Lay second layer of weed net
4. Lay 50-75mm of granite dust
5. Cover with zeofill or similar
6. Lay grass and DO NOT use sand – use zeofill instead – I think it’s 6kg per m2

Doing this prevents the stink you can get from dog urine baking on sunny days. It’s also worth going for a shorter grass as it’s easier to keep clean – 20-25mm or so.

Everyone who has shared the crazy examples above should be ringing or writing to the National Audit Office.

The NAO are ** extremely ** rigorous in their Value for Money audit work and would I’m sure follow up on any information shared.

Is that the same James O’Brien who demanded we all treat Carl Beech’s paedophile accusations as being “true” simply because he told us they were?

… and is now telling us everything M&H have said is true simply because they say it is?

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/james-o-brien-and-the-carl-beech-witch-hunt

“Then I reread the figure…and almost fell off my seat. That’s almost 750 quid per every adult in uk…

Where has that cash gone to??”

Most of the spend has been on “Test” not “Trace”. The UK has done close to 100m tests to date – more than twice as much as Germany. That’s reagents, systems, sample collection staff, lab staff, lab premises, lab equipment, logistics etc etc.

That said, I think the headline £37B is a budget for two years rather than actual spend to date.

I’ve got a nest Wi-Fi connected to a hub4.

The hub 4 is still in router mode but I turned Wi-Fi off.

It’s been rock solid for months – the nest Wi-Fi seemed to work out how to resolve the double NAT by itself.

Depending on the speed of the OP’s connection it may be worth using a cat 5e or cat 6 cable to connect the hub to the netgear router.

I’d get a local indy to recover it, fix it up for sale, MOT’d then either get it dropped off at the original address or taken straight on to the nearest webuyanycar or similar.

To the OP:

Don’t worry about notice periods. The reality is that even if a contract is 1 month notice the contractor can get the bullet and marched off the premises the same day.

Contracting requires some pretty strong financial discipline so think and plan carefully before you jump – the rule of thumb is spend a third, save a third and put a third aside for corporation tax etc. Most of the contractors that I’ve worked with who kind up with money problems ignore the last part of that guidance and always get surprised when it’s time to pay HMRC.

For anything outside of IR35 i.e. Ltd Company I would personally recommend Aardvark Accounting. They do a FreeAgent based service with all the standard insurances included for £132 a month and I’ve found their service to consistently be really good.

“I haven’t ridden since last Feb due to the worry of getting knocked off and landing up in hospital.”

“I find stuff like this quite bizarre. Is it a mental health issue? The roads are emptier than they’ve ever been (except for during the actual lockdown last year) and no more dangerous than they ever were.”

With the requirement to stay local that pretty much means cycling on roads – and with them being a bit quieter its noticeable that it’s brought out the stupid contingent in great numbers – much faster speeds and the like so it doesn’t feel very safe to be honest.

I’m also the sole source of family income so if I can’t work it immediately has a massive financial impact – I haven’t yet paid off the credit card bill from I was out of work last year so I don’t really want to chance having another period unpaid and losing the work I have in hand.

I was actually thinking about posting something similar here a few days ago – the OP beat me to it.

I’ve spent 13 months WFH in a small bedroom that has low ceilings – so I constantly bang my head when I stand up – I know I know – a slow learner, right?

For the last 4-5 months I’ve been sleeping in the same bedroom as well due to chaos with kids overnight – so I pretty much spend 18 hours a day in the same room. I’ve lost work and started new jobs a couple of times now so I’m not even working with people I’ve ever met – which makes the sense of loneliness feel more acute as I don’t really “know” my colleagues.

The constant chaos of young kids also means that I spend quite a lot of the day trying to appear professional on Teams calls / video when the kids are banging on the bedroom door / shouting / screaming / fighting each other outside. It’s been incredibly wearing and my ability to focus and get detail right is completely shot – which is a problem when work requires me to engage from 07:30 to 18:00 most days.

My partner has the short straw of wrangling young kids all day which has its own challenges – the only saving grace to that is they can all get outdoors in daylight a lot more than I’m managing – I typically get 45 mins in daylight each day.

I know I should be grateful that I’ve managed to find work and am not having to share a kitchen table in a flat as many people are doing …but the current existence is very challenging, not least as I know I’ve got at least another year of WFH unless I change my work.

I’m not expecting any real response to this. I’ve shared my mental state with my partner but I guess you have to walk in someone else’s shoes to understand them – and she would probably say the same.

Roll on June when at least we’ll be able to see family and friends again and maybe get out on the bike – I haven’t ridden since last Feb due to the worry of getting knocked off and landing up in hospital. I’ve been pretty strict at doing 45 mins on the turbo trainer though so my overall fitness is ok all things considered – and the daily workout probably helps with mental health as well. God knows how bad I’d feel without that!

Starmer made a (lame) joke in his response yesterday – something along the lines of “it’s nice for once to be addressing the person who really makes the decisions” (Sunak).

What he probably hasn’t clocked is that he’ll still be addressing Sunak after the next election – the difference will be that it will be every Wednesday at PMQs rather than in the annual budget. Odds on that Sunak will be the PM and Starmer will still be leading the opposition – if he doesn’t fall on his sword before that.

Sir Kier is really floundering be in his response to the budget.

Just watched both episodes of “Chile – the longest descent” on the fireTV app. For me, that’s the cost of the annual sub recovered in 2 1/2 hours.

IA – correct! My ability to do simple maths seems to have vanished during lockdown