I dunno, stuff like peace, freedom, fairness, law and order. It’s a much better country than most for all its flaws.

You can rightly be proud of what your country stands for today.

Waving a flag does not mean you have to condone or be proud of its past.

It’s only a flag ffs.

The Union Jack and St George flag will only shout BNP if the rest of you don’t reclaim them.

(And no my limited wealth hasn’t come from past slavery. Most of it has come out of the North Sea.)

I’ve never had any slaves and neither, I imagine, have any of you, so we have no reason to feel ashamed of anything.

I don’t expect today’s Germans to feel ashamed of the Nazis.

It’s entirely possible to be love your country and be proud of what it stands for and fly your flag without being xenophobic etc. Take Sweden.

Name me a country that doesn’t have a chequered past.

Sounds painful. (Between lathes)

My son is a pro woodturner and takes commissions and always undercharges in my view. Contact him through “o.s.wooddesign” on Instagram.

Everything depends on what you’re after. I’m a qualified guide in Wales and I’m brilliant, but there are limits to what I can offer for insurance reasons.

First, what do you want to ride?

If you want big old-skool XC/wilderness loops, with or without gnar, that’s perfect, because that’s basically what we’re insured to do. (Although a gpx file will get you far without having to ride with a stranger.)

If you want full-on enduro/downhill on “secret” tracks, you need to tag along with a local or a local group ride. No professional guide is insured for that. (I organise a weekly ride on a group-of-friends basis where some choose to take in tracks like that.)

Sitting somewhere in the middle, we are allowed to take you on all “paths” in the forest. The definition of a path is up for debate. (I take a common-sense approach to that based on who I’m guiding.)

Next, do you want accommodation for that mtb holiday experience? That narrows down the list a lot. (I don’t do that.)

The fact that you are considering paying for guiding at all is quite unusual these days now that we can easily arrange to meet up with people online or follow a gpx file. Which is fine, but obviously a guide doesn’t just know where to go – we also know what to do if there is a problem, and we should be better at accommodating your specific riding preferences. We’re also more likely to carry a pump.

The idea of sliding a whole cassette off a freehub amuses me somewhat. I normally have to prise each sprocket off with a screwdriver.

I’ve been having the same problem with some XTR cranks that hadn’t ever been removed from new and have no spacers.

The only thing I’ve noticed is that there is maybe 2mm more of the splines showing than on my other bikes, which suggests the frame is just a little wider than it should be??? Or does that amount not matter?

I’ve changed the bb, cleaned and reassembled everything, and if that doesn’t work I will try a spare crank on it. And after that I will cry.

I don’t suppose I’m going to get this sorted under manufacturer’s warranty am I??

@Tom-B: No, are you?

Pretty reasonable questions in the light of this trial, which is just one among many:

Covid nasal spray trial

“We found that administering this vaccine through a nasal spray completely protected the animals from shedding the virus which causes transmission of the virus. This means the immunization of the upper respiratory tract through a nasal spray can prevent individuals from spreading the virus”

A pretty crucial benefit over the current vaccines I would think?

…

Don’t tell me, Kelvin, I missed this on page 162?

For the same reason most other vaccines are injected?

Which is?

One of the big concerns for some vaccine-worriers is that by injecting them you are bypassing the initial layers of the body’s immune defence.

1. Is that concern just complete bollocks end of, or is there a disadvantage in going straight into the bloodstream?

2. Why is the Covid vaccine injected rather than inhaled like the virus itself?

3. Why does the vaccine have to be administered by a finite number of medical staff? Why not speed up the process with an injection or spray we could all self-administer?

Is it beyond science to engineer and unleash a new Covid variant that is 100 times more infectious but completely harmless to speed up the vaccination process?

Jesus Christ I can’t believe were still discussing this sort of shite

A kinder response would be to post a little cut-and-paste list of useful links to simple and credible information that would help allay people’s fears, rather than exclude and ridicule them.

I still stick my head above the parapet from time to time and it still gets blown off every time, but some of the helpful responses have been, well, helpful.

Bear in mind that the current 100,000 would be multiplied significantly in the absence of lockdowns.

What if we’d just locked down the elderly?

Perhaps fatmountain could quantify exactly what he would be like to be doing so we can assess how many life years for other people’s mums/dads/grandparents etc are expendable to help him ‘live his life’. I feel we need a yardstick for his individual tragedy which makes all these other tragedies worthwhile.

That doesn’t help. Were you clamouring for lockdowns two years ago when we had 50,000 excess deaths? It’s not black and white.

you only want to ‘understand the statistics’ if they fit your narrative. classic conspiracy theorist bullshit.

That doesn’t help either. It is better to explain than dismiss.

Fatmountain: At the end of the day we have 100,000 excess deaths and a government that has nothing to gain from lockdowns. The statistics beyond that are often confusing, inconsistent, contradictory and unhelpful, but the big picture is clear.

Go back and read the thread from middle of last year… we are now exactly where people said would be a reasonable winter outcome giving the (lack of) measures we were putting in place. And we have avoided worst-case scenarios… we are nowhere near them… that doesn’t mean that the UK is doing well, or couldn’t have avoided doing as badly as we have.

Christmas doesn’t seem to have brought as big a spike as predicted?

Pretty sure this was done quite thoroughly a few pages back when excess deaths stats for the calendar year were released.

I’m surprised I missed that, as I have been monitoring this thread. Any idea what date that was?

But here we go again, same questions, same people.

Same unwarranted hostility, same people…

Sounds good, but even major institutions are reliant on the predictions of individual health economists and statistical experts who have the same access to data as the rest of us. They don’t have an oracle stuffed in the vault. It’s a reasonable assessment but relies on a few assumptions about vaccine uptake, efficacy and the absence of vaccine-proof variants in the next six months.

Oh, definitely. Economic forecasters are never right about anything, ever. (Quickly checks avatar doesn’t include real name)

Just saying that other experts are drawing less apocalyptic conclusions than the STW experts. This thread does tend to get bogged down in worst-case scenarios. (And I understand to some extent why. And I’m not saying you won’t all be right.)

Look at the excess death figures. A death is rather binary (you’re either dead or not), but the cause can be rather complicated/vague.

It’s all a bit tricky, and to some extent to monitor how it’s going, it’s more important to have a consistent measure than to have a measure that tries hard to cover all scenarios.

Yeah, fair points.

I still think including clearly non-Covid deaths in the Covid death statistics undermines them.

And with excess deaths, isn’t the appropriate comparison with the worst of the past 10-20 years rather than the 10-year average?

In other words, how much worse the current situation is than the worst situation we have previously considered acceptable.

watching the poor starve is many a Tory’s wet dream

I thought it was watching them get on their bikes and make something of themselves?

More generally, I just wanted to say that the idea that the poor and the elderly are incapable of using a card or phone to pay for things seems a bit silly when their benefits are paid electronically.

ask yourself this… why would the government want to make things look worse than they really are by inflating figures?

To make people scared and so comply.

It is a valid question, deaths with/of Covid. There should be clear stats on this by now.

And just to counter some of the doom and gloom above: I know of two major central banks that are fully expecting restrictions to end in the summer and life to get back to normal across Europe due to vaccination, and they’re not prone to hysteria.

There’s a magazine?

I booked a course with the guy (leading, not skills) and he had terrible communication and eventually let me down with no apology or follow-up.

He might be a fantastic skills coach though🤷‍♂️

An odd way of interpreting it. The day the Tories took power the NHS spending was unchanged from that under Labour, so they don’t get any credit for the fact they started with a high watermark.

What they did choose to do was to reduce spending every year since (as a % of GDP).

But the chart shows spending as a share of economic output, not the absolute amount of spending.

The chart shows that, relative to GDP, the Tories have spent more on the NHS in the past decade than Labour did in the previous decade, apart from just after the financial crisis. The ratio shot up then because GDP nosedived, not because spending went up.

Taking GDP out of the equation, a quick Google shows that, in real terms, over the same periods, the Tories have actually spent more on the NHS than Labour did.

Now I’m not defending the Tories or their cuts. I’m just pointing out that some of the anti-Tory pro-Labour comments above are not supported by the facts and may be misleading.

You mean women who like horses but are not actually on a horse at the present time = hot

Woman actually on a horse = worse attitude than most car drivers and blinding levels of self importance

And they don’t pay road tax!

No, I meant: I’ll happily sit behind a female bottom bobbing up and down for 30 seconds, but I’ll be irritated by a bloke on a horse for wasting that crucial period of my life.

IME you won’t remember having any 20 years on and you’ll look back on it not being that hard really

Good luck!

Because most cyclists are men

Man on horse – ****
Woman on horse – hot

🤷‍♂️

I think Minion SS is too draggy for xc, very noticeable on tarmac

Ralph on back is ideal. Not sure why Schwalbe making the new version faster is a problem. You wouldn’t really run a Ralph for grip…

“I’d never ADMIT voting for them…”

Why not?

still our servile population make excuses – it’s unbelievable.

I’m not making excuses. I’m just saying there’s little to suggest that Labour would’ve done better.

Bear in mind that almost all other countries are also condemning their governments for messing up.

Similar story about highly paid consultants the other day in Wales which has a Labour government: Article

It’s mostly the system, the world, not the parties or the individuals.

900 consultants on £1,000 a day, some on up to £7,0000 a day DOING ****ING WHAT?!!!

Probably providing expert advice at the going rate… which the government then didn’t take.

Can only agree with Craig

I looked at a new Whippet for when my old one finally dies but it does seem surprisingly uncheap.

I’d rather have another 26” Whippet really, only all second-hand 26” suspension forks with a straight steerer are now buggered.

I love my Whippet. Even now. Bizarre, really.

Mate has lived in Norway for 3 years and he tells me he has never seen cash there.

He is of course exaggerating. I did work on the new bank note series the Norwegian central bank has only just introduced…

But yeah, that is where things are headed worldwide, and I’m all for it.

In fact the one problem I have with cash is I stop by at the farm entrance with the honesty box for the eggs…. I’m running out of smash now to pay. Ive already raided my wee boys piggy bank

Meanwhile we’re drowning in pound coins from our egg honesty box now that we can’t give them to the kids to pay for their school meals. Wanna swap?

(Well not drowning exactly, we haven’t got that many hens, but there must be a hundred quid in the quarantine pot)

Now, where were schools fully open to all pupils for ONE DAY of term? There’s “last minute” and then there is “too late”.

And again, that was his fault, not that of the public.

Plus the population hasn’t really taken responsibility.

They have. Don’t believe the spin.

If the population had taken responsibility, they wouldn’t have sent their kids to school for that one day… 😉

If it’s obvious to you what Boris has done wrong, don’t you think it’s as obvious to everyone else? So why haven’t people gone beyond? People aren’t even doing what they’re told.

I won’t defend the Tories, but the failure of the other parties to do much better elsewhere suggests it isn’t just down to party politics or an individual leadership failure.

1) Labour poured billions extra into it.
2) We’ve not had a Labour Goverment for 10 years

It’s been falling at a % of GDP since the Tories took over…

I don’t know all the ins and outs, but that chart seems to me to be pretty telling. Spending on the NHS is still, even after a decade of Tory cuts, higher relative to GDP under a decade of Labour except for a brief spike at the end of their reign. And that wasn’t down to higher spending but to lower GDP due to the financial crisis.

But either way, never in my lifetime have the NHS and education not complained of underfunding. So it’s too simplistic to just blame it on the Conservatives. I’d never vote for them, but…

has failed time and time again to make decisions in good time. The whole nonsense about having all kids in school buildings for ONE DAY this term is just the most recent example.

So again… the public are not to blame, remember that… Johnson is.

He’s not really though, is he? Not him alone.

He was chosen by his party and elected by the public, and he is accountable to his colleagues and to parliament.

Here in Wales we have a Labour government and a very competent LibDem education minister, yet they too were going to open schools right up to the last minute. There’s lots of balancing to be done and lots of last-minute decisions do have to be taken.

Lots of reasons other than Boris for a high death rate. A fat, unhealthy, old population for example. A health system run down by Labour as well as Conservative governments. Not being at the arse end of the world. Data collection methods. You name it. Plus the population hasn’t really taken responsibility.

I wouldn’t say the lad done good, but…

How do you 100% cashless people transfer your shopping from supermarket to car boot?