mefty – Member

I was educated in a Catholic school, but I never would have sent my children to one

Which is a perfectly unhypercritical position to take.

I agree, perfectly unhypocritical.

Hang on, are you being sarcastic? It is hypocritical to aspire to give your children a better education than you had?

How about, say, if someone was beaten by their alcoholic father as a child – is it hypocritical for that person to not become an alcoholic and not beat their own child?

Hopefully, I have misunderstood your post.

Elfinsafety – Member
By your reckoning, the fact that a child is far more likely to be abused by a family member than a Catholic priest, then shouldn't everyone who is the relative of a child be locked up?

1. On average, children have far more opportunity to be abused by a family member than a catholic priest. Most parents are decent enough not to leave their kids alone with a man who will tell them that if they don't love god then that same loving god will let them burn in hell for eternity. All kids in the world are – unavoidably – vunerable to abuse from parents.

2. When in the world did I say or imply that anyone who might in the future abuse a child should be locked up?

As someone pointed out earlier, many children are abused by a family member. Be interested to see some statistics for what percentage of Catholic priests are in fact nonces.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/07/if-only-catholic-church-did-pr

Only thing I could find: according to Ann Widdecombe, who is in favor of the catholic church: "After all the dust had settled in America, 98% of priests were untouched by allegations, let alone convictions."

So Ann is showing off that only 1 in 50 priests have been formally accused of child abuse. But that is admittedly allegations. Given that we are talking about America, lets say half of the allegations are untrue and just people looking for a chance to sue. Thats ONLY 1 in every 100 priests abusing children.

To be honest, I don't really believe it is that high. But isn't it worrying that Ann wasn't able to give a upper bound that was lower?

Ok. So why does Christopher Hitchins have a problem with the idea of a Catholic priest babysitting his children then?

I think it might perhaps have something to do with the fact that a number of catholic priests have spent the last 20 years or more either raping children, or covering up the rape of children by their fellow priests.

Sure, its a minority, but a significantly larger minority than outside the catholic church…

Ignore the guys scoffing – 4 hours of continuous racing is hard.

Proper breakfast, leave snacks and spare drink in a stash somewhere on the course. Carry a couple of laps' worth of water and food.

Keep breaks as short and infrequent as possible – 15 seconds per lap tops. Think about how much harder you have to ride to make up a single minute, and consider, realistically, how much faster a minutes rest will make you. Learn to eat flapjack while on fire road.

If it is raining and muddy, just go home. Veterans of this year's Gorrick 100 or the first Brass Monkeys will understand.

Carry as little stuff as possible. Nothing silly like a spare top or 5 spare inner tubes – you can leave that stuff in the pits.

Good luck!

Mr Woppit seems to have seen the same thing I did…

Edit: Elfinsafetry – it is relevant since, in the Pope's view, Stephen Fry cannot be a moral, respectable man unless he apologises, feels ashamed, and promises never to have sex with someone he loves ever again for the rest of his life.

It is a distinction that I would be keen to draw between me and the pope too.

Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens sum up my thoughts rather brilliantly during this debate in London. Expect an angry mood to have rubbed off on you if you watch the whole (but frustratingly rushed) thing:

"We wouldn't have Nelson's column, for a start"

Classic.

OK, cant hurt – I'll call police tomorrow :-)

Police – I thought of that later. He was wearing grey pajama bottoms with his ass hanging out, and a black jacket. That's literally all the information I had, and I cant see that helping anyone…

"How can tuna be dolphin friendly? Doesn't tuna come from dolphins?"

– A friend from school who, at a very young age, learned that tuna fishing is endangering dolphins. He spent the next 12 years thinking that tuna was dolphin meat.

"Its so cute that you named your country after our language!"

– An American of urban legendry fame.

If you decide to go for the Mavics, I have a rear crossride UB/Disc (like the one you linked to but in black) selling for £45 – PM me if interested.

Not a film, but the full series of Planet Earth is cheap and utterly incredible on Blu Ray

I hereby present… Bizkit the sleepwalking dog

I did this a couple of years ago:

http://www.redletterdays.co.uk/Experience/Ref/ICNGS

The stock cars make up the meat of the day and are enjoyable enough, but for me the highlight was ragging a knackered old Ford Sierra with bald tyres round a gravel track in 2nd gear (power slides ahoy), then getting a robin reliant over on 2 wheels.

The speed is nothing compared to a ferrari but it is bluddy good fun and you get a decent amount of time behind the wheel doing stuff you wouldn't normally dream of.

Spongebob – unfortunate fact is that young male drivers really are just that much of a risk. Insurers are trying to scrape a profit in an incredibly competitive market (thanks to compare the market etc, if you arent the cheapest then you wont sell any insuarnce). So they are making more of an effort to ensure they dont sell any policies for less than the average risk they pose.

And now claim farming injury lawyers find multi-thousand pound injury claims in what would 5 years ago have been a £100 accidental damage car park bump, so premiums cant rise quickly enough. Plus the crash for cash gimps who keep on having 10mph head-on crashes 3am in a quiet industrial estate between two cars both containing 5 people all of whom have whiplash and want a big pile of compensation. The industry as a whole has made massive losses over the last few years and are jacking up prices now to try to get things back together.

In my opinion the answer is to copy what someone told me they do in Australia – absolutely no payouts for whiplash. Sure, some geniune cases will go uncompensated, but everyone's insurance goes back to realistic levels and the scammers have to find a new way to diddle cash out of the general public.

Not sure if it works for a Camelbak, but Homebase sell some lovely tubing for about 20p a meter that did the job for my platypus.

I dont know, but they were a couple of monumentally funny episodes. I think the whole idea was to point out the ridiculousness of the fact that we are giving in to this simply because we are threatened with violence.

They are allowed to show Budda snorting coke, they are allowed to show Jesus looking at internet porn, they can show celebrities defecating on an American flag, but they get censored by the networks when they try to show Mohammed.

I also loved the Cartman's real dad bit…

Samuri wins by 66p!

Got a new battery for my ancient Acer laptop here a few months ago:

http://www.laptopshop.co.uk/laptop-batteries-notebook-battery/newindex.htm

at £22 it was miles cheaper than anywhere else. Not the official one but it works just as well as the official one once did.

Vrapan, dont be afraid to try it yourself – I got 2.1 Maxxis Aspens (eXCeption casing) onto crest rims no problem (using yellow tape and no rim strips, as built by JRA).

Didn't need a compressor and not even particularly spastical pumping with a track pump – just lots and lots of foamy washing up liquid to get a seal and lubrication, then lots of shaking to get the sealant dispersed. Been out on a couple of rides and no problem at all – the speed difference against my old mavic crossrides with tubes and fire xc pros is massive :-)

To add some balance to that post – they are however sinfully ugly.

I'll learn to love them.

I have the new style XT levers (£50 a pair at CRC, deal of the century).

Absolutely love them – sturdy, shift very well (can do multiple shifts in one stroke which I gather was lacking from the earlier version). Easy reach adjustment, not-so-easy-but-still-tool-free bite point adjustment. Becomes second nature after a couple of rides.

Think the XTR levers are a fair bit lighter than XT too, but I liked the price too much on the XT levers to be tempted.

Like Evade, Im a long time lurker but would love to see the good bits of Swinley and and ride with new people – bang me down for an intermediate ride. (Will be coming on the train from London).