“We have received queries from staff related to the payment of expenses for items purchased to facilitate remote working.

The position on this is as follows: the expenses policy does not cover the purchase of items such as screens, laptops, desks and chairs. It is important to note that staff making purchases like these will not be reimbursed.”

Given that we were chucked out at 4 hours notice on a day when I wasn’t even on site, they might as well have just said “Up yours”

I think I discovered irony the day we finished off a ‘Mass for Peace’ with the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

The wonders of a Catholic education….

Another vote for Little Yang Sing

I was there a few weeks ago and it really was excellent

I’m running a pair of Barzos and have come to like them. I’m very much a cross country rider but destroyed a pair of Racing Ralphs within four weeks over the summer so tried the Barzos. They have lasted pretty well and I put over 2000 km on them before I changed the rear a few weeks back. I took a little time to adapt to them at the beginning because they just occasionally seemed to lack a little grip.

My cousin did this. Perhaps ten years after graduating, she’s still trying to make a career singing, doing a bit of this, a bit of that, with bright young things coming up from behind all the time. Music seems very hard to make a career in.

More generally, through work, I’ve seen a couple of Cambridge Nat Sci grads who really didn’t benefit from the experience- 4 x A’s at A level followed by a 2.2 and shattered confidence. Took a long time for them to get back on track and I do feel they’d have been far better off elsewhere. They were clearly the stars at school and then very much run of the mill in Cambridge, and that can be a big shock. I think they went due to pressure from parents and/or schools.

I guess like anywhere it’s horses for courses, so provided he goes into it with his eyes open and for the right reasons, why not?

So far

145 rides
5652 km
119877 m ascent

Probably one more ride to squeeze in, to get me over 120000 m of climbing for the year

About 60% MTB this year, a big step up from last year, but total distance significantly down

I’ve been waiting a good bit longer than 11 weeks but I think we are near the end now. They seem to have made a lot of changes to the business over the last year or so, expanding their UK manufacturing and so on, and I suspect they’ve found it hard to manage all that. I’ve found them very professional to deal with and they have been very good at letting me know what’s going on.

Two new Stanton Sherpas, one before and one after Christmas. It’s complicated…….

Over the last 7 or 8 months I have gradually changed over completely from Shimano to Hope on 2 MTBs and 2 road bikes for exactly these reasons. I’ve lost count of the number of Shimano calipers which have been warrantied over the last few years.

Get rid of my current vile cold.

Get new ‘winter’ hardtail (Stanton Sherpa) built up

Ride it in whatever rubbish weather the Bleak Peak has to offer

Grounded- stinking cold. I’ll bake a lemon drizzle cake for the Sale v La Rochelle rugby game tomorrow instead

Metallic chromium is very unlikely to be soluble in MIBK.Things like MIBK are used in metal processing to extract target elements selectively from solution but that requires preliminary (and usually aggressive) treatment to get them into solution. However, your problem is going to be finding something you can reference which is applicable to 30 year old chrome plating.

If you are going to get some of the MIBK analysed for chromium make sure that all particulate is removed (centrifuge and filter). Otherwise your analyst will tell you there’s loads of chromium in there, but that’s because there are lumps of it in the sample.

Background in chemistry and chemical processing, mainly nuclear

I had no choice but to drive down the A555 to the airport in the morning rush a few weeks ago. It was horrific! Half an hour queueing down through High Lane to get on the A555 and then very heavy at the airport end too. The A555 is great outside peak times though so much depends on when you’d be using it.

L L Bean

Bit of MTB yesterday- cold but quite nice round the Goyt. Cut a road ride short today because there was too big a risk of ice on the small high level roads.

I probably average once a week, generally on a day when I can sneak away early and miss the worst of the evening rush hour. I take various routes in in the morning, anything from 1 to 2.5 hours, but I generally just try and get home as quickly as possible, which is straight down the A6. It’s not usually as bad as last night.

Well last night’s ride home down the A6 was great-

Which way is the idiot standing like a sheep in the middle of the bus lane going to go? Left, right, left. right, emergency stop.

Is that Fiesta really not going to stop at the give way markings? No, it isn’t; it’s going to stop with its nose right across the cycle lane instead. Still, I did get an apologetic wave.

Have you really just allowed your two feral children to run across the A6 at a pedestrian crossing where I had a green light so that I had to go between them and nearly took your little girl’s face off with the crank?

All that in the 10 km from work out to Stockport……………. Fortunately, the next 20 k was much better

LOL, I wonder how many engines were repaired under warranty?

Google Rolls-Royce Trent 1000

I’ve just been doing some of this stuff as executor of a relative’s estate, having previously had Power of Attorney.

I’m pretty sure that is naughty. As soon as a bank is notified that an account holder has died, then an account should be frozen.

If they have used POA to do this then I think that is illegitimate for two reasons. First of all, POA dies with the person and seecond, you are supposed to use POA in the best interests of the person for whom you have it, and I don’t see how emptying their bank account is in their best interest.

For probate purposes the value of the account will be that when the person died so ultimately I imagine the executor will end up having to recover the money

I think I’d raise it with the bank now, though. It looks as if the relatives have been naughty and the sooner this is rectified the better. If the bank let it go through because nobody had told them the account holder had died, then it is understandable that it happened but the bank needs to put it right and can probably just reverse the transactions.

Who is the executor?

I have been dealing with Cole Coatings in London who’ve been good so far. They really involved me in the design. I haven’t seen the end result yet.It’s probably another month or so to wait

We had our front garden completely redone last year. We now have a crab apple, birch, rowan and gingko. None is huge and I think the crab apple and rowan are the best ones. The gingko is just weird.

Goyt Valley. Errwood car park northwards on the paths and up on to the ridge at the road, southwards all along the ridge line to Shining Tor, and back down to the car park. An hour and a bit when I used to have a left knee and run around there

Well it’s done me OK! More seriously, I teach Chemistry (sort of) in a university pretty similar to Brum, and Chemistry does seem to be an undergrad course which sets kids up for a wide variety of different career paths. I agree that to follow a technical career path you pretty much need a PhD these days and even there the opportunities can be pretty thin- limited opportunities in organometallic but lots in nuclear, for example.

The general advice I give is to study something that interests you. If a student isn’t motivated then they’ll get a mediocre degree, so it is good if they study something which gets them out of bed in the morning. Chemistry does traditionally have a high workload so, again, motivation is important.

Feel free to PM if that’ll help

Well, wherever all the water is going, it isn’t having any real effect on the Goyt downstream

Attempt to post a link follows-
“https://flood-warning-information.service.gov.uk/station/5232”

There’s a little helicopter buzzing around at the moment, and I haven’t seen the Chinook at all today.

They have been moving towards bringing manufacturing of both steel and Ti back to the UK for about a year, and the cost of a UK Ti frame now is exactly the same as the cost of an overseas made one was a year ago.

Leadsom sacked me three years ago- my sole claim to fame!

Spirited Wines, Barton Arcade, just off Deansgate

Harvey Nichols

My mother managed to end up with two insurance policies on one car last year, then buggered up cancelling one and ended up cancelling both by accident. The icing on the cake was that she then drove into a Transit van.

Do not do this!

I’m at a similar stage to you with a relative’s estate. I don’t think there is any real oversight though I imagine if any beneficiary knew what was coming their way and didn’t get it, they could ask questions and, ultimately, take it to the police. Even though the estate I am dealing with is all going to family, I’m making sure that I can prove I have done what the will says.

Whyte 29CS in the snow

My normal little road spin from home, southwards from Whaley Bridge, is 35 km x 950 m

Could easily be extended to 42 km x 1150 m but then I’d probably be sick

Or there’s a 49 km x 1310 m option too…..

Nope. Out in it Friday and Saturday round the Dark peak and it was actually OK in a ‘Why do I have to put out 300 W to go downhill?’ kind of way. I wouldn’t have liked to be on a roadbike though. Just waiting for the hail to stop, then I’ll buzz out for a couple of hours.

I might be able to help you, and I think I have sent you a PM

Riding on Thursday was a mistake. It poured with rain from start to finish, and the cold and the wind meant I got myself properly cold and took all afternoon to warm up again. Probably underdressed by one layer

I have the Pro Elite one (it’s the nearest I’ll come to being Pro or Elite) and it is very good

Of the four road bike punctures I’ve had in the lat couple of years, three have involved big, ride-ending rips in the tyre itself and I can’t see anything making a difference to those. This morning’s not only destroyed the tyre and tube but actually blew the rear mudguard off.

When I read the thread title, I thought you were offering some sort of barter arrangement……

It’s well worth visiting Enigma. It’s interesting to have a look around, and I only ended up buying two frames…….

Can’t get quote to work……

Waiting months for a new bike and changing standards?

Sometimes it works in your favour. 12 speed XTR wasn’t a thing when I ordered mine, now that’s what it’s having

8 months tomorrow, and counting….

But to be fair it’s a special thing of beauty, I was told it would be slow, and the builders have been good at communicating so I am not stressing