Mate please talk to us

Are you feeling that way?a

With any luck they’ll use the proceeds to buy a bag of crack that’s been cut with rat poison!

I reckon you should make like the Hulk and do

Where about s in the world are you RM. I’m sure there’s someone on here that would a call in for a coffee or meet you somewhere?
And as everyone has said, you absolutely must talk to someone about it. I’ve been in exactly your situation sadly, and its a terrible thing to go through. Quite honestly you really mustn’t think too much about the CPR. The 999 operator was urging me to try it even though rigor mortis had begun to set in and his pupils were fixed and dilated, but they work from a standard set of scripts, and are not to know that.
It is so sad, but you will survive this. It certainly helped me to talk to people. My little brother was in fact a massive help, as he’s a police officer and is involved in this sort of thing quite regularly, and a lot of what he discussed with me helped make sense of quite a few things.
Despite what you will no doubt tell yourself over the next few days there is almost certainly NOTHING that you could have done differently that would have made any difference in the end, either before or during the event.
I recall oscillating between profound sadness that my friend, who was also my father in law, felt so awful that this seemed the only way forward, through to anger towards him for what he had done, and the mess he had left (emotionally) with all the people that were going to miss him so terribly.
I too recall the emptiness in the hours after. Get out. Talk to someone. Anyone.

Been to morzine twice, on family holidays , with limits on tha amount of riding allowed. Green with envy at you lucky devils who are going!
Hoping to do it next year with daughter though! So the future is bright!

Lube Ride Beer

again, the “you’re liable” argument is just an excuse that comes from the mean spirited workshy idle bastards that inhabit these isles in their millions. I’m almost certainly personnaly more likely to be sued for twatting a workshy gobshite with a snow shovel for whinging than i am for clearing paths.
Interestingly, there are also local businesses that do the sensible thing and clear their carpark as necesary, and those that don’t….. guess its not just individuals that can be mean spirited and apathetic.

And as for the individuals that “yes the main roads are allright but I can’t get off my estate”…….get **** digging then until you can!

Having ranted about the idle bastards, may I say in balance that the majority of my patients turned up last Friday, and the first two even offered to help clear the car park with me ( i hadn’t quite finished and was about to start gritting having cleared) having been sensible and set of in plenty of time for their appointments.

Consequently, our carpark has been free of snow and ice throughout last week, and safe for patients and staff, unlike my local GP practice….kind of ironic given how many broken hips and wrists they will be arranging after care for next week! It astonishes me local businesses that i have popped into in recent days, including a “leading” local bike shop, that have staff sitting around doing nothing, and slushed up carparks that turn lethal every night with ridged and rutted icepack for the lack of 20 mins with a shovel.

Not too bad now, was roped at lunchtime, butt the ploughs have been through again and traffic is clearing well. The roads were ok to be fair, it was just the volume of traffic at the junctions that was the real problem. All clear now. Trails are gonna be dicey when this has frozen though. There were patches of rutted compacted ice on Wednesday night, but now those patches are hidden!

or the trail pixies

Thanks,

Congrats!!!

Anyone remember the year prior to that pic, at Farleigh, when Merv the Swerv ( i think?) took out THorpey on the first corner in the first leg ( back in the days of proper two times 40 mins plus two laps races!), it didn’t want to fire up again. Thorpey eventually appeared over a minute behind the last man, and began one of the most epic charges in the history of Motocross. Inside four laps he was back in the lead having scorched through the entire field like they weren’t there! There then ensued an epic race long battle with title rival that year Andre Malherbe, during which I believe they lapped everyone up to 4th place. Thorpey won it. I believe I still have damamge to my vocal chords done that day!
DT, AM, EG and GJ ……… Gladiators.

lance might be flush at the moment, but the sums of money that will be involved if these cases go to court are huge, and the real costs are even bigger. Plus his ability to trade on his reputation is now around zero. it it quite conceivable that unless he has been sensible enough to have moved money beyond the reach of the lawyers, that he may be left without the proverbial pot in which to relieve himself within a few years. One things for certain, his lawyers are gonna be charging up some overtime in the near future.
Having been so vigorously litigious in the past, he is about to reap what he has sown. One could feel sorry for him in some ways had he not reportedly been a major part of the destruction of the lives of decent people along the way.

Plus one. He was definitely out of a different mould.
RIP JG

now, this might be a silly question, but if I had nicked one of these bikes, and the only thing that makes a difference to discovery and recovery is that sticker, what is to stop me just peeling the sticker off??? or am I missing some thing here? Are villians capable of breaking into garages, defeating locks and cables but thwarted by a bit of sticky paper??

Nice one scruff.iagree that much of the time you need to let it go, but there was one occasion when I complained to tuffnells, as the alternative was to chase him the mile and a half to his depot and beat him to death with my bare hands for very nearly killling me and my daughter for the sake of getting back to the depot and clock off a few seconds earlier on a Friday afternoon. When I spoke to the transport manager he apologised and said that the driver concerned had not been with them long but had allready been the subject of several complaints, and would almost certainly have a very short future with them.

Sincere condolences to all at family smudge.

This above. Had some great , some not so despite the same care. Became quite OCD with the one pair to no avail.

I’ve a dirtworker which is good, but buddy has a new nomad which has a built in cleanable filter, which means he can use pondwater/river etc in it without buggering it up. Handy on occasions. Mayhem anyone?

Think we’ve had that much today alone!

Pah….next thing you’ll be telling me is that all those chaps that used to call round to see my mum weren’t really my uncles! Must admit though that we haven’t seen them for a few years now…..

…. but no, you wouldn’t really want to go out with friends and just ride around a field for a couple of hours.

Seems to be no shortage of people prepared to do this annually at Eastnor!
Soft and/or Muddy Field – check
Round and round for a few hours – check
Doesn’t roll so chuffin hard going – check
Without the thrill of MTBing – CHECK!

Hmmmm, rethinks next years plans…

SANTA’S NOT REAL?!

Whaddya Mean!?!? Nooooooooooo……..Say it isn’t so……………

Sits down to examine whats real and what isn’t anymore as whole world crumbles….!

re. the uni thing. would it not be better if more kids were to learn on the job …….. she finished her english and editorial degree with top marks.

…OR go for a degree in some thing that the country and its employers/businesses actually need. Three years wasted IMO in too many peoples cases.

And as for how do european countries manage this…….. I point you in the direction of the recent eurozone economic forecast. I.e. they don’t.

Ironic given the threads origins, but when we are trying to improve conditions for our workforce, we also need to be realistic and competitive: we need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Ransoms, I have 6 staff, most of them have been with me for more than ten years which in my profession Is not so common at all. We have on three occasions made adjustments, shift and opening hours changes to accomadate quite reasonable requests. It took a lot of work, and required compromises from other members of staff too. On the most recent fourth occasion, this member of staff took a less reasonable approach, and felt that as the others had been accommodated then why should she not. She
steadfastly refused to see that the changes that had already been made had removed almost any manoeuvring room w head left. We did make three different offers to her, after much more compromise from other staff members again. Sadly she offered no compromise herself throughout the whiole process. The right is only to be able to ask without prejudice, and that reasonable efforts are made to assess what can be done. There is a responsibility within the regulations upon the employee to suggest ways in which their changed hours might be covered, sadly no effort was made by the young lady in this case. Eventually she did reduce her hours, and has maintained her longstanding unhelpful stance. There is no doubt that she cannot understand and appreciate the lengths that we, her employer and her co- workers , have gone to to accommodate her. Sadly she is one of the new breed of me me me employees.
The amount of time spent on this cannot be underestimated, and the knock on effects of rostering staff in ever more complicated patterns is difficult to appreciate unless you have actually had to try to manage it.
If we were a simple trade that could get in an unskilled worker at short motice to at least fill agap we would be able to manage fine. As it is we cannot. I currently feel like selling the business to a corporate chain as a colleague has done near me this month, and retire for a few months then go back as an employee myself. Being an employer in a small business these days is becoming ever more challenging. And this is coming from someone who generally has the most excellent staff with whom I have developed a very strong long term relationship over many years in a close knit team., With whom I have been privildged to work. Sadly I know for a fact that the first people to suffer would be the staff I would leave behind. Corporates in our field are no friends of their staff.

Sorry for the slight hi jack of this thread

I understand that, but (IIRC) if you can demonstrate a genuine business need for particular hours/ days, then you don’t have a problem in law for refusing a request.

You are absolutely right. But the only real, and final, arbiter to this question of “genuine” is an employment tribunal. Should you need to go this far conservative estimate of costs to succesfully defend, ie that is if you winand are proved justified in your decision, is £5-10k. Heaven help you if you are not found ot be justified. I had to take advice on this a few years agoas a situation was developing, and it was truly horrifying.

I find it hard to believe that similar rights don’t exist in other European countries, so how do they manage it?

I’m sure that they are finding it increasingly dificult too. Plus many EU countries take a much more relaxed approach to regulation.
Plus they Europe they too rely to a very large degree on young keen labour from EU accession countries to fll these gaps. Trouble is its a one way street. Once staff have children who a little older they rarely want to go back to earlier or later starts.
And I can’t say that I blame them really. But it is storing up big problems for our national albour force verstility in the long term.

Don’t get me wrong, I do firmly believe that the family unit should indeed be the focus of much of our planning at the moment. It just isn’t being done in a joined up manner at the moment.

The option for Dads to take the womens share of the parental leave postnatally is a step forward though.

as regards staffign unsociable hours we now have huge problems in the UK. ANyone on here responsible for planning/staffing a hospital? They’ll likely tell you how much dificulty they are having these days since all teh staff started asking for family friendly hours.

What when this extends to other sectors,to the Police. Or the fire brigade? “Hello, you have reached the Singletrackworldshire Fire and Rescue service….the station is now closed. Normal opening hours are 9am to 5pm monday to friday. Outside these hours please leave a mesage and we’ll get back to you once we re-open.”

As the owner of a service industry busisness, you are quite right that we have issues in the Uk with our opening hours being 9-5.

But sadly one of the things making that worse is the dificulty getting staff to work the less sociable hours, and exisitng staff having the right to request flexible or adapted hours of work to suit family commitments. Whilst people only have the right to request changes, it becomes a very dificult request to decline and not leave oneself open to a potential claim for constructive dismissal.
Talk to any small business owner and they will tell you how much of aproblem this is. We have had to reduce the hours of our availablity to clients purely because of this in the last few years. It is a very diicult situation to manage indeed and causes alot of dificulties and stress.
Plans by Mr Clegg et al announced yesterday aim to extend this right to ALL employees in the near future, not just parents, if they get their way. Thats lovely, but soon we’ll all only be working 9 – 5, beacuse who wouldn’t. Not sustainable sadly.

A few weeks ago on a windy night, at about three am, the little barstitches chewed through the alarm cable to the garage and set the anti tamper off, cue sirens and flashing lightsinside and outside the house followed by me dashing outside in trainers and tracky bottoms clutching a golf club full of adrenaline determined to catch me a bike thief, only to find nothing. Followed by a very expensive visit from the alarm engineer to replace the cable. I generally operate a live and let live policy these days, but three
mouse casualties in retaliation so far. Bar stewards.

Bump for OP
Update needed!

Stephen Hawkings not been well. Broken Nose, fractured wrist, bruised knees…..went out on a blind date……but she stood him up!

Seriously though, he nearly died whilst being treated. It’s True, his heart stopped for a while….fortunately a quick thinking nurse switched him on and off at the wall a few times and hes OK now!
Bdum Tish

Good for you Flaps!

Plus one for Barefoot Soldier
Top read

Ok Flaps, hows it going now with the new guy?
Hope your new brickie has been kinder in his comments about his predecessor than some of us here! 😆 ( though to be fair, for a STW thread, it was VERY MILD indeed!)
Hope all is well, and that you are another step closer to your awesome man cave!!!

Result. All the best matey

Yo Footflaps, I do think we all mean well on this thread at least, and we feel for you, we really do. ANY building work is stressful, it really is!
Instead, treat it as an adventure, take as much advice as you can, pause a while when unsure: remember, its NOT a race!
It’ll be really cool in the end and all this will be irrelelvant!

Get out on the bike this weekend for sure!

Come on Flaps, we need an update…..anything……. no work is getting done here while we’re waiting! If we don’t get an update soon I might have to resort to reading threads about 29ers or CX bikes…..!