Skype, the kids live on it, using up all the bandwidth from our steam powered home broadband and they tell me it’s ‘free’ not that they’ve seen the broadband bill at home..

So yes, sort of they get used as communication devices in much the same way, why not if you have it hands free keep it in your ‘man bag’ no one need know – er except all of us of course. 😕

ernie_lynch – Member
F*** it, let’s do it.
Well we have a banker’s dictatorship – won’t that do ?

“As a minister, I experienced the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government. Compared to this, the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes is minuscule. This power was revealed even more clearly in 1976 when the IMF secured cuts in our public expenditure. These lessons led me to the conclusion that the UK is only superficially governed by MPs and the voters who elect them. Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, and some new Chartist agitation might be born and might quickly gather momentum”

T. Benn

This.

So how to end it?

It’s fairly simple, and i think do able if I still had that youthful fire of enthusiasm.

Basically what is needed is an egalitarian call to arms, not necessarily a ‘bloody revolution’ but certainly a revolt against the current system.

The weapon a seriously organised group called use?

Tax Strike.

‘They couldn’t jail all of us’

So if all the tax paying individuals could come together and demand a different system, a system where the politico’s have to have had some experience in the real world before they become politico’s, a sensible citizens charter of rights and responsibilities, maybe even a proper constitution.
A value scale of a mans worth, a day of his labour, a scale of when enough to live forever without working anymore, is enough and excess is not necessary at the detriment of others.
The level of profit that may be extracted from the proletariat by those that would supply essential services.

Etc etc, I’m sure a set of aspirations could be drawn up, a political movement established with the ultimate threat of withdrawal of funding for the current bunch if they do not accede to the demands, or of course a party could be formed an election fought in the old style but I doubt it would be as effective.

GrahamS – Member
I could well be getting trolled here, but sharing knowledge is always good so:

You’re not getting trolled, but you are missing the point, your number sequencing is off as well, they (3+3) fingered aliens would ‘teen’ their units at 6 if they have two arms, or 9 if they had three, but it’s all hypothetical, I’m simply trying to point out the arrogance of a ten fingered society in assuming their ‘science’ is correct over all others.

I’ve had time to look at that light explanation but it still doesn’t explain how light cannot be viewed ‘side on’ to the stream of light ‘particles’, nor how electrons can generate ‘particles’ when they have no mass.

It also actually beggars belief that road cyclists are allowed on the roads un insured

And I presume that then you’ll want pedestrians also insured?

POSTED 1 MINUTE AGO #

No, difficult to enforce, but tell me what’s the difference between a £6 thousand road bike travelling at 30 mph along the queens highway and a moped costing less than half that price. Why should one owner pay road tax and insurance and wear a helmet when the other on the more expensive machine and un protected so more likely to incur greater injury so more expense in a legal claim against a motorist should they crash into them has no legal obligation to any protection or insurance cover, or pay anything toward the upkeep of the said highway. Pure discrimination, I can’t believe the Tories haven’t spotted this huge potential income stream.

TandemJeremy – Member
Solo / teamhurtmore – come on chaps -how are your beloved tories going to get us out of this mess?

Solo – nice diversionary attack on labour there – but lets hear how the torys are going to get us out of this mess.

Allow me..

They will get us out of the mess the same way they always do.

1)Drive down wage costs with mass unemployment especially in the public sector which is over paid and largely over staffed.

2)Let Inflation further devalue wages and reduce the debt.

3)Eventually enable the private sector to recover thanks to an increased pool of more hungry workers working for minimum wage.

4)Inflation will enable property values to recover in time, then the whole cycle will start again.

5) With property moving, Industry staggering to its feet and exports moving thanks to the low devalued and infation racked £, consumers will start spending on the next bubble.

Have I missed anything?

GrahamS – Member

Erm.. sounds like they didn’t explain it very well.
Did you ever do the double-slit experiments at school (circa 1803):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

No, and that looks fascinating and I shall consider it tonight.

I went to school in the early sixties and it was particles and straight lines with light through prism experiments.
I reasoned that was improbable since light emanating from a single source would eventually diverge and there would have to be gaps, therefore it must be like waves as from a stone dropped in a pond, radio wave like, it follows that like a radio wave it must expand in a bubble. I don’t think quantum physics had reached Grammar school physics at that point (and ironically I’ve never gotten on with physics teachers, they tend to be cocks.)

And there was the fact you couldn’t actually ‘see’ light, Only what it touches, so the whole photon particle thing I wasn’t convinced by as you can’t ‘see’ a light stream from the side.

Anyway, I shall read that thing tonight wether it will convince me or not….

Three digits per arm, er could even be three arms.

But my point, the decimal system does it not come from our ten fingers then the next,

So if three were the multiple then 6 then 9 then it would start over ..

Then would there be eight bits in a byte.

Would their music have 9 beats in a bar?

I’m trying to illustrate in that crude post that our givens aint givens at all and that aliens could be a whole other thing that would be awkward to sya the least to see and communicate with, a bit like the earth worm spoken of earlier.

Clearly I’m no scientist, I’m interested, but not sufficiently to be governed by the discipline of proof, I just like to speculate.

The point about Mars was the difference in length of the year.

The point about Parsecs wasn’t time related, a clumsy sentence, I meant as I recall it’s a triangulation based from earth, how can that be considered a measure for ‘universal distance measure’ and distance has a relation to time if we are to travel. It’s as obscure as Miles are to Continentals.
So given my Martian length of a year, then maybe it is possible to travel faster than light. If the martians happened to measure the speed of light in the same method.

And anyway, yoda has 3 digits and he’s a Jedi master.

I heard that programme, didn’t rate Tatchell at all.

However it is discriminatory that moped riders some of whom cannot achieve the speeds some road bikes do have to wear helmets and road bikers don’t. So I’m sure a case could be bought similar to the Mini Cab V Hackney Cab and Bus lanes thing, to insist on any Cyclist riding on the road being forced to wear a helmet.

It also actually beggars belief that road cyclists are allowed on the roads un insured, so another potential way for the Government to get badly needed tax receipts and thus save some public sector jobs, would be to Tax road cyclists.

So compulsory helmets and road tax doesn’t seem unreasonable in todays climate, then maybe dutch style kerbs to protect cycle lanes could be funded across the land, think of all the employment that would create, oh and cycle helmet enforcement officers of course, a very popular job, I can see mental health professionals considering a career change for that job.. 😆

Oh er just to declare an interest here, I do sell nice helmets…. 😉

swedishmatt – Member
Derekrides: Are you for real?

Yes sadly I am, worked through the 3 day week that Grocer Heath brought upon us, suffered the raging inflation of the seventies (You really should watch that seventies programme it gives a good insight into how this all started) I lost a bunch of money in the crash of 87, watched my sister in law experience negative equity brought about by an idiot Tory Chancellor boiling the porperty market by announcing the ending of double tax allowances or something in 89 was it, I forget. I was exposed to the tune of 700,000 deutchmarks on black wednesday when another Tory Chancellor **** up and we crashed out of the exchange rate mechanism, you couldn’t even get through to a bank that day, they all pulled the phone line plug and let the £ crash, I lost thousands.

OK they did recover eventually and Ken Clarke handed Brown and Blair a pretty sound economy in the mid nineties and they took ten years to **** it up, so logic says it will take ten years to un **** it.

binners – Member
Erm…. I hate to say this, but in pre-general election Nick Clegg stylee… I agree with Derek.

Derek, could you just add in a comment about summary execution or something, so I can resume normal service by vehemently disagreeing with you. Cheers!

What like anyone who receives 217 times more than his work force as a chief executive should be sumararily executed as an example to the others, then maybe they’d stop their excessive pay whilst we suffer?

Yep, I think that’s the only thing that might stop them, any volunteers/ Pop a cap in that Diamond blokes ass as a starter?

I tend to the view there ‘must be’ other life forms out there, but often wonder that if they did turf up here they would be mad to make contact if they didn’t have weapons superior to our own.

I also wonder what would have happened to science had we evolved with three digits instead of ten, how different would our measurement perceptions be.

I also wonder if we had developed on say Mars, wether a light year would be ‘faster’ than our light year.

I can’t help but notice the power of circles, everything seems to be round, orbits, planets, suns, maybe the Universe is also and maybe it is continuous.

Then I think about weight and wonder how gravity would be measured on a much bigger planet and wether coming from a big place, aliens would be able to bound about here and would they need full suspension or be content with hard tails.

Then I consider one of the only really known truths which is the Electro Magnetic Spectrum and recall in my youth and school physics Light being explained to me as particles when I believed it to be a wavelength and I turned out to be right. So that perception only came about in the last fifty or so years.

My point being we do know relatively little, what we do know is constantly changing and that knowledge is only based on earthly perceptions. There is no time per se, even our measurement systems (google parsecs) are crude and earth based, getting back to the Electro Magnetic Spectrum, what we view as visible light, even here other life forms view differently, so it is highly likely that Aliens from bigger or small planets might view things using other parts of that spectrum and we may not be even able to view them with our perception.
I even consider consciousness (gonna get deep here) tunes into this spectrum at different wave lengths, how else could we explain some natural occurences of anticipation of future events, wether by animals or even those we might refer to as gifted or mediums.

One could go as far as to suggest consciousness itself might be transferable, who knows maybe it’s the answer to the eternal question of what is it all about, so maybe our own consciusness becomes an alien elsewhere once it’s done here…

Only one way to find out, but it is an interesting discussion.

The thing I think most of you are missing is that it is the ‘Master of the Universe’ that are actually causing all this pain, not Governments. Tory, Labour whatever persuasion as things currently stand.

Banks, Financial Institutuions caused the pain and have yet to repair their balance sheets and restore their confidence to such a point where they’ll loan sufficient funds for the private sector to deliver what is required.(It’s easier to make paper money from money speculating on and driving up commodity prices)

I’ve always said, there’s no one like the Tories to really stick a recession to us steep and deep and saw this coming from the moment they got in, however they have been a tad silly here and there. They need Tax Receipts, putting vat up aint a way to increase Vat receipts in a recession, the other lot had a better idea dropping it to 15%, they should do that now if they want to kick things int action on the consumer front.

Having said that, none of us in the Private Sector can get the funds we need from our Banks and neither can our customers, whilst we are also being absolutely screwed with charges and scams from them that would make your eyes water if I took to anecdotal evidence of this.

So whoever it was that wrote the system is ****, about sums it up. There’s been a programme running on Mon Nights explaining how it was Grocer Heath that initially caused all this, how and why during the seventies, Thatcher only exacted a bit of revenge on the unions during her bit and Blair and Brown just wanted to be a bit like her, whilst making themselves and their cronies wealthy or at least appear to be in bed with the city.

So, if you want to blame anyone, it is the city and those poor saps are no longer in control of their own destinys, since big bang and the subsequent computerisation of their system with complicated algorythms that have an intelligence and what is worse, a perception all of their own.

The markets are driving Governments, they’ve decided the Euro is **** and so it will eventually be, the collapse of it is going to screw us all so badly I can’t dare to look over the edge of that particular abyss.

Politicians? They are but children with loaded guns, all pointed at us, I seriously don’t see any competence from ether of the two main parties and even if they were, their hands are tied by the City Masters of the Universe, oh and Basle Agreements that they pay lip service to when it suits them. (i.e. loaning money to the likes of us, so we can employ more of those of you that do work for small enterprises, so that together we can generate more money upon which to pay tax to them.)

pullfaces – Member
On earth we have perfect conditions for life to appear and evolve but its only done it once. All life on earth is related and comes from the same starting block.
If, in the billions of years its only appeared here once, why is it any more likely to appear somewhere else?
Probablility is about something not happening. Its not happened more than once.
So likelyhood may be we are the only part of the universe that knows its here.

Well, it has occurred here in all manner of ways.

Just take this little island, in the south of which you have reasonable looking, sophisticated, intelligent life forms, then at the other end – Scots, throwbacks to another dimension where they eat their young.

uphillcursing – Member
I do believe Derkekrides is a bit of an expert on standup paddle boards. Might be worth asking him.

I am, and there is a simple self test you can take to decide if you’ll like them.

Do you like lycra, ride in SPD’s, ride single speed, or ride a road bike and test yourself constantly using Strava?

If you answered positively to any of those, then SUP is perfect for you, enjoy…

GrahamS – Member
Agree with TJ
So yes, I believe in aliens.

And if one of them call himself God?

THis is definitelt a UFO and y’all should prepare to be probed.

stever – Member
Real people, people. Real people with family, friends, lives that have been touched. A bit soon isn’t it? Tough crowd on here.

Tough crowd? They’re not a tough crowd, a lot of them are senseless fools, sanctimonious cretins or cynical idiots sitting in cowardly judgement behind the safety of their keyboards. Nasty place at times – this.

TandemJeremy – Member
Brown is not a posh boy.

He made that very clear in his assumption of the true value of Gold.

AS to the other two, I do tend to agree, Osbourne particularly, but heaven help us, what alternative do we have? You can’t seriously consider that back stabbing moron and Balls?

We so need a new political force in this country.

Mr Woppit – Member
The only downside of the description is that it was given by Nadine Dorries, a religious fanatic who believes that homosexuality is an illness that can be cured by jesus [Url=http://www.hetracil.com]Hetracil[/url]

FTFY

+1 For Dakine Nomad..

solman – Member
It is about making money in the end. But you can’t do that unless people buy, and are satisfied with the product.

One of the things they teach you in ‘how to sell stuff’ school is to overcome sales objections, one of the biggest of which in bikes currently is confusion, the second is confidence in a products ‘futureproofness’ neither of which is apparent with something new like this in tough economic times.

solman – MemberChange is inevitable, embrace it or get left behind

Change is only inevitable if it brings with it some advantage, and nobody has yet made a single point about what ‘advantage’ wheels of that particular size have over the encumbants..

So unless someone does, the only change will be to the specific detail of stock unsold in bike retailers in the future and from what I hear they already have sufficient to severely impact on their margins already.

Well thanks folk for enlightening me, I heard another school of thought that would ‘position’ 26″ in downhill, 650b for Enduro Cross and all mountain and 29er would be race /XC..

Which ever way it goes it seems it’s coming our way as the next big push wether we want it, wether bike dealers want it or not.

Ah, so the master plan is fast forward five years and there will be no 29ers, no 26ers and 27.5ers will be standard for the ever diminishing mountain bike market. That makes more sense, would that it be the case.

muddyfunster – Member
The joke is on you. Or rather by you I mean, people who got sucked in by 29er hype. It’s just marketing. When did you ever ride a bike and think “I wish it had bigger wheels to roll over stuff”

Yet another clever way to extract money from fools.

Well yes and no, I guess I am a bit of a victim for new kit, especially if I can see the advantage, and tbh I tended to agree with your view on the whole 29er thing and now I finally got to sit nearly astride one, I didn’t need to ride it to realise it would be hopeless, so at least i hadn’t bought it off the web to find out, that might have made me a fool.

Now had I been a lanky great bloke and they always complain about bikes not really fitting them well, which must be true if they fit me, then it must be good for them so there is some logic there, but where do you ever see it written? “29er – bikes for big blokes”.

So what’s going to be the slogan for 27 1/2″ inchers? “Bikes for not big yet not small blokes”?

And 26ers? Will they become Dwarf fodder?

The reach, the height off the ground, i just felt well weird and not in the sort of way you would want to, we have lots of granny climbs round here and if the rear wheel slips going uphill…..

So whereas I agree that stand over isn’t everything, just occasionally you do need to. I like with the reverb now to push the button and have both feet touch the ground, no way that would happen with that 29er medium, it’s a big boys bike, in fact, reckon it’s a Giants bike in a large or XL.

Found this picture on the sea otter thread of a 650b bike (the black KHS)which doesn’t look that much different compared to that Double.

So what conceivable argument is there in favour of another wheel size?

FuzzyWuzzy – Member
Wheel size doesn’t really relate to your height, they just don’t look as weird if it’s on a large frame size. What 29er did you try?

I’m weird, I have 31″ inside leg but have a short top bit so my legs dictate medium but the rest of me says small. I rode a medium Covert all last year, this year I switched to a small. The bike I was going to blag for this weekend just gone, was a 29er bandit, everyone round here is going on about what a cool ride it is, yet for me the stand over height was total ball contact, not even a centimetre clearance as was the case with the Covert medium, and it made my Small Covert look like a kids toy by comparison so they now tell me there is no small frame in a 29 Bandit (I haven’t looked tbh).

Any someone I spoke to this morning on the blower, was kicking off about 650b’s, which I’d never heard of, so hence this thread.

What does 650 ‘b’ stand for is it metric, imperial? Rumour is Trek are maybe going to make a political gesture to stick it back to Specialised for their more ‘successful’ marketing of 29ers that seem to have gone down better in the States than they have here.

I’ll sell you the bread knife, she’ll make sure not a day or an hour goes by that every light bulb and appliance in the house (that doesn’t make noise to annoy here) is left on, day and night.

ernie_lynch – Member
You forget to mention rather intelligent bearded tent dwelling loonies pitduck. Unless of course you think there is nothing spectacular about a book still being in print 2000 years on.

As against er latter day bearded tent dwelling loonies who write atb gospels?

Funny I was following one of these down to the sailing club this morning and thought what a great little car it would be with a VW logo on it.

ernie_lynch – Member
derekrides – Member
However more than that I believe fundamentally to live and let live

Except of course those who fall foul of Dereks Law………..those you want to gun down in the street like you would a dog.

Still, it’s nice to see that you have your empathy hat on tonight Derek.

I try so hard to be good.

Resist the temptation to troll you lot.

But I fear it is temptation beyond my power to resist, I had to fall on my own can of anti troll spray last time to cut it out after 9 pages and this one is already at 4 pages and such a target rich environment.

Godless heathens abound and lots with beards, lycra and riding single speed, it’s already heaven. 😆

In answer to the OP, I’m not annoyed by that I’m sure the guy is equally thankful to those who he believes Gods hand guided.

When I’m not trolling atheists, ( in truth I believe them to be as bad as theists) I’m probably best described as an Agnostic or maybe a kind of Agnostic theist.

However more than that I believe fundamentally to live and let live, if this guy has this faith then great and I’m glad it helped him even though he’s a bloody footballing fairy, maybe it’ll change the way some of those Godless heathens that watch that stupid game week in week out in between beating each other up, think.

As to the Guy earlier in the thread that asked about near death experiences, I’ve had that and i have to say came away from it very enlightened, but not in any man with Beard sitting on throne with harp players surrounding him, way, one day I plan to write it all down but don’t, for fear of being defined as even more of a nut job than I currently am.

I believe we need faith in something other than man made guidance, so we’d have to invent some form of after life retribution for evil bastards that would rule us. Whatever, the threads not about wether or what we believe in, it’s the right of a footballer to believe he was helped by God and thousands have died to protect that right, so hardly our place to question it.

barnsleymitch – Member
derek – as someone who puts himself at risk of a good shoeing on virtually every ‘religion’ thread on here, allow me to give you some advice. Just stop it, now. This doesnt mean that I agree with your views in any way, shape or form, simply that those views appear increasingly ill thought out with every post you add. Yes, you’re entitled to your opinions, of course, but by branding everyone that disagrees with you a lefty liberal, etc, you’re hardly doing a good job of putting your point across.

No, but it’s entertainment for me, I haven’t had such a pleasant wind up for a while, has kept me amused for a bit, they do bite don’t they and that junkyard fool deserved a bit of winding in after getting me banned a while back.

What’s needed is a good can of this stuff…

It’ll keep the mass murderers away – honest 😆

rkk01 – Member
derekrides

Please. Go and find out a little bit about Norway…
… about it’s people and it’s culture.

Norway reallly doesn’t fit your UK left / right political model. They are socially liberal and have a Scandinavian welfare model, but they a very open, friendly and above all patriotic people.

You will a Norwegian flags everywhere – like America, but without the yucky, smarmy, rather frightening intensity of US patriotism. Your political views of wishy-washy leftist, socialist pinkos just does not fit.

What you are posting is way, way off the mark.

The trouble with assumption, it is the mother of all **** ups.

I’ve been to Norway thanks, I have Norwegian friends and business colleagues, I’ve also travelled in Sweden, some of those I know also think like me, sadly in the real world, not a cosseted fluffy bunny environment like this where views like mine get swiftly banned for fear of upsetting liberal sensibilities, there are mixed views on this and other subjects and they get sensibly debated without insult or ridicule or pathetic attempts at it by half wits.

The principle difference between Norway and here? Wealth, they’ve held onto theirs not having squandered it on overseas vendettas and offering a welfare state to the globe.

Now I accept it might seem a tad extreme to simply eradicate someone like this, but as I said previously, so often the perpetrator of similar atrocities self terminate on the spot, knowing ultimately right from wrong in the final clarity of the moment I can only guess.

So lets examine, purely financially the cost of all this against the cost of a couple of bullets at the time, for the cost of the trial alone you could feed and educate a village full of starving Africans for a year, and for the cost of his incarceration how many kids could be treated or receive vaccinations against life threatening disease the world over?

So no, rather than that lets have a high brow pseudo liberal discussion, examination, trial and merciful yet luxurious incarceration (by African standards) of this fellow to show the world how wonderful and advanced a society we are.

Straight thinking should have had him shot at the sight – end of, that is my opinion and nothing you folk, big hitter, small hitter or fluffy bunnikins lefty love everybody spanker, will do or say can change that.

Circular arguments to swerve the discussion don’t do it either, it is a plain fact, that giving that psycho the platform and the notoriety he has gained by this does not serve their case of preventing similar actions well, however you dress it and if you think it does, then good for you, clearly you are in good company.

As I said, I beg to differ and it is my opinion, damn I’m not even trying to alter your views, accept mine and have an end to it.

Junkyard – Member
they want to prevent it happening again Derek why is that stupid?

derekrides – Member
I’m not going to say stupid,

Junkyard you have already demonstrated lack of the ability to grasp the meanings of my posts before resulting in a ban for me I believe, now you may be a ‘big hitter’ here, but frankly I don’t think you have the intelligence necessary to discuss stuff like this without getting upset or insulting to those you disagree with, so you will excuse me for making this the last post of yours I reply to, thanks just the same.

konabunny – Member
So just to be clear – in this case the dudes referred to above who actually went through being shot at and having their neighbours killed are the naive ones, and you’re the well-informed one?

Stockholm Syndrome or some variant, ironical it is their close neighbours that gave title to that psychological phenomenon. Mixtures of grief, guilt at survival, Lord knows what’s going on in their heads, not straight thinking that’s for sure.

BigButSlimmerBloke – Member

Why is it ironic? They are simply bigger, better people than some halfwit with a gun.

Well there once again I have to say is where we shall have to beg to differ.

“oh he’s killed some of us and our kids.. lets try to understand him and why…” FFS and that’s not the blackest irony? Or is that just plain naive. I’m not going to say stupid, I’m assuming it is grief warping the judgement of whomever it was that gave that quote, I’m sure whoever it was there are four or five times more who would simply shoot the fecker on sight.

Lifer – Member

So not the ‘Socialist Society Leftist way’?

Well if I’m not mistaken Norway is a Socialist Society is it not? I could be wrong, but were the kids killed not members of the very leftist party our esteemed and now famous ‘hero’ eliminated? Ironical they now want to try and ‘understand’ him, such is the naivety of the ‘left’ in matters such as this.

Now I’m not saying the ‘right’ are not equally bad ( in truth I have a tendency toward anarchy personally, I think in this enlightened and better informed electronic age it could serve us better than our current Governmental systems) but they do things slightly differently and I wouldn’t be so crass or insult your intelligence by suggesting the difference to you, I’m sure you are already very aware.