We can’t go the way of Greece because our debt is in British pounds not Euros.

We control the currency – how much there is (as we create it) and we can set our own interest rate targets to effect the economy and we have a lot of tools we can use to do so – debt levels, interest rates etc

Greece has the Euro, a currency controlled by the Eurozone countries. They look after the general interest of all countries so a country whose economy is struggling compared to the majority has no control whatsoever. They can’t raise their own interest rate (to increase investment and influence saving over spending) so are stuck with things as they are.

This political control is the key reason why the Euro was always going to struggle – Monetary union means political union and when you have such diverse economies (Germany with heavy manufacturing, Greece with high tourism) it was always going be be impossible to make things work for everyone. It works in good times but struggles in bad times.

Great pics. Makes me want to go back again.

As for creating more pounds to pay debt see my point about currency and inflation

The point I was making is that you cannot compare our economy to that of a household or business. The UK cannot become bankrupt (that is not being able to service it’s debt)

I’ve been a bond investor for 30 years, I expect my money back every few years and then decide at that point whether to reinvest.

And you will always get your money back as government bonds are risk free because the government can always repay them. Always, guaranteed, unlike a bond issued by a business, or a bond from a person. Therefore you can’t make assertions that they are the same.

How you manage debt is a policy matter – Japan is running a national debt that is 240% of GDP and is doing fine thanks. UK is around 85% I think.
I agree there are consequences to allowing interest rates to rise and printing money – that’s not the point I’m making.

We don’t have to make the cuts we are making to balance anything – this decision is arbitrary and Conservative policy – you cannot equate it to having household debt as they are different. We will always have a national debt – we need a national debt.

EDIT

These points only apply to a country with sovereign debt. If we had the Euro we could be made bankrupt, technically – like our sun loving friends the Greeks.

@Dave, you are sadly very much mistaken about potential economic pain.

I was only stating the misunderstanding that taxes/borrowing are used to fund spending. They aren’t. The government doesn’t need this money to spend.

And we haven’t reached a credit limit – There is no-one asking for the money back as it’s all GBP that is created by ourselves. This is where saying it’s like a household is incorrect.

And we have the choice of increasing interest rates – a key choice that Greece didn’t have. Saying “rampant inflation and massive currency devaluation” are scaremongering as inflation can be very useful for growing economies.

There are consequences of higher interest rates but it’s all policy – self imposed objectives. There is no need to have such austerity and make the policy decisions that the Conservatives have and they use analogies that are incorrect to try and justify them.

If governments stop spending “the” money (raised either through taxation or borrowing at lower interests rates than you can) then it forces the people to fund spending “the” money as a greater portion of their wages, or borrowing at higher rates than govts.

The government doesn’t raise money from taxation or borrowing for spending. It creates all money as all our debt is GBP and the sole source of GBP is the UK government. Any funding limits are purely self imposed by the government.

There may be knock of effects in terms of inflation and the value of the pound but these are policy decisions and nothing to do with taxation and government borrowing/spending

Taxation and spending cuts are political policy decisions not a necessity to raise money – usually to help control interest rates – the target of which is a government self imposed policy.

The Tory mantra of the country being like a company or household is totally wrong as the UK cannot default on any of it’s debt and thus be made bankrupt. Unlike Euro countries that have debt in a non-sovereign currency.

+1 for the water getting in via the neoprene cuff.

I’ve also tried a gaiter but kept finding it not staying put.

I recently decided to upgrade my SLR body as it’s 8 years old.

After all the looking around I went with Panamoz and spent a lot of time researching them. While they do grey imports they offer a 3 year warranty and it seems they use UK repairers and refund the money. Better than LCE who I bought my first camera from and I had a nightmare when the lens had an intermittent fault.

Even so they are so much cheaper that having to pay for what would be a warranty repair still makes them cheaper.

There are lots of positive experiences on DPreview which swayed me into the £400 odd saving.

It will depend on the design and how much stress the bearing is under plus the bearing quality.

My Yeti ASR needs one bearing changing more frequently as it gets a lot more wear. That ends up being up to twice a year depending on how much I ride it.
Some of the others have been 2 years.

I was hacked off with twice a year until I spent time thinking about the forces that went through the bearing and decided it was what it was.

We bought our large sofa from sofa workshop just before our 15 yr old daughter was born.
Still as comfy as it was although the cover is showing signs of wear. We are just about to replace it with another from the same place, and they offer a discount if the sofa is given to charity…

It cost a lot of money when we bought it but has turned out to be a cheap purchase.

If you change sofa’s every few years (not because of wear) then I think it’s best to get the best quality you can afford. Ends up lasting a lot monger and you get the benefit of a very nice sofa in the process. Or buy cheap and often.

I am spending a lot of time looking at a Mason Definition with Ultegra Di2 in blue…

from Apple.com/uk – the website

I got the cheap one

It’s as you’d expect.
Well made, works and thankfully having apps means there are bugger all things to choose from.

New remote is better.

edit
Main difference is it’s twice a thick.

One of the new Apple TV’s here.

A day early – I only ordered it at 7pm last night…

I packed my leatherman in luggage when going to France on the Eurostar.
No idea why as I know it’s not (or shouldn’t) be allowed – I just didn’t think.

Worst things was everyone asking what was I thinking when the security person found them after the scan.
I assume my reaction and embarrassment must have been extreme as they let me keep them just told me to not be so stupid again.
Managed to get them back from France without a problem !

+ 1 here with a couple of rigid singlespeeds.

I built up one and enjoyed it so much I bought a nicer one.

It was a bit of an n+1 excuse but it’s become a real pleasure to ride round the muddy trails on them in the winter.

There is an element of saving the nicer bikes from the mud but in reality it’s to save the washing as I’m not motivated to clean when I get back wet, cold and muddy.

Rat race crossing may fit the bill.

link[/url]

I have 2 Lezyne alloy drives (one in my road pack and one in MTB) and take them with a pump.

Reasoning is that if the weather is crap / cold etc I use the CO2 as it’s quick and the pump is a backup. I usually only take 1 CO2 cartridge with me, inside it.

Been handy on a few group rides where people are cold and tired and because they contain the whole canister they are easy to use (as they get very cold)

Well made and have lasted several years now so recommended.

We will have the same dilemma in a year or two and have started discussions already.

We’re probably going to do a week in the Maldives (or similar) so we can chill, swim and snorkel. Then a week somewhere else – I’d do Alps/Scotland, Mrs would do some thing Italian with art and culture and stuff.

If it is likely to be the last let your daughter have a large say in it would be my approach. You’ll have many more years of doing your own thing

Next springs challenge will be to ride to the seaside for a paddle.

Following on from this years challenge of riding to the pub for a beer.

I’ve just started shooting more and over the weekend used my 75-300 telephoto and the 50mm prime

While I do like the reach of the telephoto I much prefer the photos I take with the 50mm

It’s made me very tempted to upgrade my old 20D to a 7D Mk II. Knowing how much sensors and FPS have improved means it’s almost inevitable that I’ll get one soon I think.

50mm Prime f3.5 1/250

I applied for a mortgage with them and the process made me scream.

We have a mortgage with them and I thought the process was excellent.
The application I filled in was very basic and the phone conversation with the advisor was a personal experience. She went over my current account, essentially to understand my/our view to money.

There was a slight problem where computer said No which was resolved with a discussion with a supervisor.

I love our offset mortgage and the view I get of how much it saves us etc

IMO banking has gone downhill with a lack of a personal touch/understanding/knowledge of people. FD do a pretty good job of addressing this while still being a very large back with no face to face access.

Well I’ve been with FD for donkeys years.

The app is perfectly fine, I can do all the usual payments and transfers I want on it. Online website is equally fine. If you need to phone up they are brilliant and you rarely get passed around.

The only pain is that you can’t do payments to someone new from the app – has to be done first via the web with a code generated from the app.

I don’t mind this now I know about it and I understand the security reasons.

I applied for a small loan (as rates were very good) about 8 months ago – all approved and sorted online very quickly so I just don’t get the pain other posters are mentioning.

Rachel – you can stop paper statements from the website – There is a menu item on the right Manage Statements from which you can select online and or paper for all the accounts.

People start to boast about how many unread emails they have, how many meetings they have that day and how late they stayed last night.

I find this quite amusing and had a conversation about it with two project managers who were trying to out do each other with how hard they have things.

If you are trying to build a career it can be hard to buck the trend, but now that I’ve been there done that I’m happy to argue their long hours means they aren’t doing a very good job at all. It’s usually not possible to do everything to a high standard in normal working hours and working stupidly long hours is only one possible solution.

If I drove every day I’d have a 90 min each way commute and work with people who seem to think anything less than 11hrs in the office is slacking.

That would make a 70hr week but I stay over 2/3 nights, WFH one day and do 8hrs in the office as I’m sure I’d be closer to killing people than I currently am working that much

I tend to mix it up a bit as I’m on expenses and make quite a lot on petrol (costs £8 and I get paid £22)

Sounds like the route to a wasted life TBH,spending time pissing about with such minutiae….

This is so wrong.
It shows the OP’s attention to detail, a pride in doing the job as well as he can do it.

It’s to be applauded not ridiculed. Says to me his priorities are properly in order.

If I take my bike in to be serviced, I look for the little touches like rp16v talks about. Then I know the bike has been serviced properly. I’ve stopped using my LBS as the mechanic changed and things didn’t line up perfectly.

As you were OP – job well done.

I was there 2 years ago on holiday and hired a decent mountain bike for a day. I took my own helmet shoes and pedals which they fitted for me.

There are maps available and I took one and rode over the bridge and picked a few to ride.
Not the most exciting riding I’ve ever done but very glad I did, knowing these were the trails where it started back when I were a kid.

I love SF – to the point that I started looking for jobs when we got back and I’d probably head over for a few years given a decent opportunity

A quick search would have helped

link

… having read a few more ailments I feel like a bit of a wuss with the old frozen shoulder

My good lady was 39 when we had our daughter.

All the usual extra risks and possible tests stuff was a bit nervy but we passed on all the extra tests as it would have made no difference to what we would have done had they been positive.

Benefits of being older are you’ve usually done the partying, living it up stuff so staying in a bit more isn’t so much of a drag. You’re usually a bit more advanced career and finance wise which helps. I think you’re more likely to want to be sharing responsibility and to talk more which helps.

I wasn’t overly keen on the idea and it is hard work but well worth it. Not dissimilar to getting a puppy except you can’t lock it in a cage while you go out for 2 hours – legally anyway

I have also had a frozen shoulder that made me pretty miserable.

Went to a physio who indicated it may take 18 months to get better – which made me feel worse. It’s known as an old ladies injury – which made be feel doubly worse.

I decided that there was no way I could last that long so did a lot of research, a lot of exercises (as prescribed by the physio) and 2 sessions a week of massage and manipulation.
Took 3 months to get almost full movement and 6 months further on I’m almost back to normal.

Physio reckoned that being a cyclist and being able to stand pain helped a lot as she was able to push me further than most people which undoubtedly helped the speed of recovery.

The opinions (and increasingly the company) of people who are idiots*.

*This tends to cover most people particularly those who read tabloid press, watch soaps or celeb reality TV. Those who are rude, selfish, religious, racist (closet or not) or those who ride a 29er.

Phew.

Walking the dog.
When there’s no-one else about, the sun is out and he is happily tearing around.

We chose Matki.

British company and when we did have an issue with a plated part showing signs of pitting they came out quickly and replaced the part without question.
Also fitted a new rail system even though it was fine as they had made improvements.

So while I wasn’t happy with the pitting, the after sales service was top notch.

Not cheap but then you asked for a quality brand not a cheap one

The Leamington Lemmings

I’ve been looking at a new road bike for about a year now.

Quite fancy a Ultegra Di2 with discs. Not overly bothered about frame material.

Short list currently comprises
Cannondale Synapse (as per relliott6879’s post)
Giant Defy Advanced Pro 0
Mason Definition

Given that I don’t ‘do’ mainstream brands – looks like the Mason.

I now need to convince myself that the £3.5k is best spent on a new bike rather than new garage doors…

I’ve only broken 2 sets of XTR SPD’s as far as I can recall.

Probably the only parts I bought due to them being fit and forget.

Typical.

I use squirt.
Apply every 5 or so rides. No build up of crud etc

I work with a bloke who has a teenage son with a similar approach to expensive phones as Edukator.

He has in the past ‘lent him the money’ for a replacement which of course is never repayed

He has today decided to simply not replace the recent drowned iPhone 6 with another nice phone but a ‘burner’.
Son has to pay for a new one himself and is not a happy bunny.

From this I’ve learned that I’m bloody lucky with my daughter (or we are outstanding parents)

No matter when you want to buy a laptop / pc this question always happens and the answer is always things will get cheaper for the same spec machine.

Buy now and get on with your life is what I’d do.

As for recommendations – If he’s likely to be tough on it, get a less well specced one that is build well. He won’t notice the speed / storage difference.
If he will be kind on it get one with the best screen / most memory.

#edit bugger – beaten by a single second…

I guess learned is pushing it but I’ve had re-confirmed that a lot of people don’t listen to what you tell them or think about what they are doing, then lie about things and try and blame other people when brown stuff hits spinning things

The world is full of idiots (STW posters excluded of course)

re-read this after the bump

Has anyone made a claim via Pedalcover?

The policy is underwritten by Axa – the same as M & S so claims processing should be the same.

If you have a bike or, even more so, bikes worth over £2k then it’s hard to see past pedalcover.
Got my policy through on Saturday with a stamped addressed envelope to post it back to Darren plus a free waterproof valuables case.