Can you image the response from a less touchy feely place like Pistonheads or the sadly departed Barryboys?

Well, both approaches have their merits. Pistonheads would have, in the interests of brevity if nothing else, got to death threats and an attempted ‘meet-up’ in person by the 10th post. Four pages is kicking the arse out of it. Typical for us hand-wringing snowflakes on here, really.

Not sure how my post could be construed as misogynistic, I would say exactly the same of any male politician who has so obviously lost their sharpness and edge with time.

Mind you, when I say “I’m not sure how my post could be construed as misogynistic”…

dazh

Now it becomes clearer. For ‘construed’ read ‘deliberately misconstrued to deflect’. Yawn.

Despite my trite posts, I am actually quite interested in religion, as an external observer, though.

I’ve done a bit of listening, reading etc about Sunni vs Shia Islam, Coptic Christianity, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism etc.

I do think it is important to understand the ‘textbook’ definition of, for example Sunni vs Shia, but also more important to understand how and why those differences have been used and exacerbated by political actors.

I don’t know anything about Orthodox Christianity, though. Being glib again, the only thing I see is a tall ascetic looking guy with a massive beard waving a smoky metal thing around…

Damn it, I’m getting curious now, because my own ignorance is annoying me!

Orthodox is much more interesting IMO.

Nah, wrist spin has all the magic – googly, flipper etc.

Diane Abbott is not the full ticket nowadays.

That’s not meant in a light-hearted way, either, she is actually showing some signs of genuine illness. It is her time to bow out gracefully.

STW is less ‘toxic’ than the average internet forum, I would say.

Add in the fact that this thread is basically an arsey offshoot of another thread where the OP didn’t get the affirmation they were seeking, so had a bit of a tantrum followed by the inevitable mini pile-on and it comes across a bit daft.

My basic rule is:

Bike Forum = the one connected to the actual reason we are all here (or should be) = play it straight and expect to be played straight in return.

Chat Forum = Off topic (as defined in the name of the forum), for general musings, rants, life affirming stories etc = more of a free for all with windups and other slight naughtiness allowed. Admittedly on some topics on the Chat Forum (it is the side for everything except bikes) knockabout fun is not appropriate, but as adults we really ought to know where to draw that line. On the flip side to that, however, I would counsel caution when it comes to over-sharing and being overly open with strangers on t’interwebz.

Slag off my life choices if you like, but leave my ****ing bike out of it…

😉

Just realised we’re 3 pages in and no one’s asked for pics. Standards are slipping.

To be fair, the OP is arguing the toss over and over again about a few hundred quid. He could do without having to buy a new strimmer, weed the drive and have the brickwork repointed too.

I think a good proposal would also be to see if people on STW can grow a sense of humour.

I’m sure SaxonRider has to deal with stuff like that first post all the time and I’m pretty sure he’s OK with it. I imagine a slight raise of the eyebrows and a slight chuckle would be at the top end of the scale.

I’ll pass on the offer, thanks, but fully accept that it is an important part of someone else’s life and should be respected as such. A little bit of light ribbing is not disrespecting it. Second hand outrage really isn’t needed.

Best of luck with the idea. It can’t do any harm.

There is no doubt that there are huge inflationary problems caused by Brexit but given the US’ inflation is running at 8.5% you have to look at the larger supply chain picture across the world.

Presumably you’d be happy to sit on a panel opposite Posen and debate this?

Why, then, is Germany’s inflation (despite their dependence on Russian gas) around 2-3% lower than the UK?

Now this really is an area where you can say that every country is its own special case, but looked at in the round, EU inflation is lower than the UK with a higher dependence on Russian gas. What could possibly be causing that?

Also, one of the chief bullshit impacts of Brexit is to add time at ports (even if it is checks on UK exports causing the snarl ups). Time = cost in the world of logistics, so Brexit is behind much of the UK’s enhanced supply chain problems.

The IMF will rightly say “you’ve done this to yourselves, now grow up and start being a proper developed country again”.

I’m soooooooo looking forward to this nonsense imploding under the weight of its inherent contradictions and stupidity.

🤗

Result.

Edit: And I bet her and her bairn have got their best compo faces on for the subsequent interview in the local rag.

This has slipped under the radar a bit.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2022/may/05/the-fudging-is-over-as-monetary-policy-committee-predicts-102-inflation
Double digit inflation by Q4 now the mainstream forecast.

And despite their reliance on Russian gas, Germany has lower inflation than the UK.

Meanwhile the very clever and correct Adam Posen says 80% of UK inflation can be attributed to Brexit.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-27/brexit-explains-80-of-u-k-inflation-former-boe-official-says

Inflation was always going to be the death knell for Brexit. The only question is how much pointless pain are ‘we’ willing to put up with before we start reversing Brexit bit by bit.

I particularly liked this from the Hyde opinion piece.

Calling an election when you won an 80-seat majority not much more than two years ago feels like the equivalent of having a baby to keep your marriage together. A baby with your wife, I mean, not some art consultant or heavily injuncted Jane Doe.

Narf!

On a more serious note, I think a fair few backbenchers will have a swipe at Johnson next week (with an eye over their shoulder at their constituents) then it will fizzle out. This isn’t the kicking I, for one, had hoped for.

The Graun seem to be trying too hard ‘mixed picture cannot obscure anger at Johnson’. Oh yes it can. And if there is one thing he is good at, it is ‘obscuring’.

More crap.

Well, it was meant to be taken with a pinch of humour.

🤷‍♂️

Far more reliable correlations include.

Number of flat-roofed pubs in the vicinity.

Number of England flags blocking upstairs windows per street.

Number of men who think a ‘singlet’ is appropriate street wear per head of population.

Weirdly, I think Alan B’Stard would be classed as a center right by the current standard of the Tories these days.

In terms of the ‘true believers’ (aka thick Brexity loons) I think you may be right.

In terms of those riding the shitshow for personal gain he is pretty much bob on, though.

There aren’t any other sub-divisions of Tory MP anymore.

As a MP…

If you still ‘believe in Brexit’ you are an idiot.

If you are going along with it just to keep your job (as well as potentially massive opportunities to monetise it) you are an exploiter.

That is basically ‘it’.

^^^^

Sounds like the textbook definition of stagflation(?)

I’m pretty sure I don’t understand international ‘money’.

But, humour me to some extent…

If these mega-rich football clubs only transferred players, the money is not ‘real’. So if I sell Brazilian superstar Overratedinio to Fulchester United for £100m and then buy Italian star Flopperelli for £50m in return + £50m cash, that cash really doesn’t become real until I step outside of the notional value of footballers market and spend it on a new stand. Then I am having to buy real stuff from outside ar real prices.

Is this not similar to saying that we can value our own currency how we want, but at the point where reality hits, we can’t escape the true value as perceived by everyone else?

And isn’t this a major problem with being dependent on services? The value of a service is always somewhat notional. But if I have to buy something tangible from another country/market, then shit gets real?

I must say I do find this notion that money is just an abstract concept and is limitless somewhat puzzling.

When we are a massive net importer of essentials (fuel, food etc) that need space and/or non-plundered natural resources and a massive net exporter of ‘nice to haves’ (with huge attendant flight risks), I believe two things:

1. Having to buy stuff from overseas means money is real.

2. We should be looking to be as open as possible to trading arrangements with our closest neighbours.

🤷‍♂️

The thing is, we all knew this years ago, when this nasty piece of work was not only repeatedly sacked for lying, but conspired to get a journalist beaten up. We know he’s a liar, we know he’s a criminal… surely, everyone still voting Conservative while he is leader knows that as well? More lies, corruption and law breaking were the only likely outcome of making him PM. Everyone knows it, don’t they?

Like Trump he legitimised being a bit of an arsehole. Turns out more of the electorate had a nasty insular side than was initially thought.

Pointing out facts?

No union jack stickers?

Must be the work of an unpatriotic traitor.

Johnson won’t care. His supporters will just believe it was a stitch up orchestrated by the Liberal elite. That’s the great thing about framing conscious choices as a culture war – everything can be pinned on the sneering elite.

^^^^

That is one ****ing confused Mail reader.

🤣

The correct reply is:

“If he cared about the UK he wouldn’t have backed Leave”.

Plus at least 20 laughing emojis.

The country will laugh at her, her party will hate her, and labour will be laughing all the way to a majority at the next election.

She’ll wrap herself in a Union Jack, make some anti-immigration pronouncements and she’ll be grand.

A great line from a long forgotten song by The Chameleons:

“Obnoxious actions… obnoxious results”.

It worked for Brexit, it worked at the last GE and it will work again.

🤷‍♂️

Truss would sell her own family into slavery for a promotion. Seems the ideal candidate.

^^^^

Yeah but Steve ‘I look so calm and assured because I am in fact a total psychopath’ Baker is not in the cabinet either.

<Shudder>

We really need some grown-ups with a plan.

Weren’t they meant to have shown up by now? Or was that the German car industry?

They’ll just be labelled unpatriotic and ‘hating brittun’ and ignored.

If significant enough protest votes occur next week that might persuade some of them, but I honestly think Boris will try to ride it out no matter what, and is hedging all his bets now entirely on how spineless his backbenchers are and where they see their own interests being best served for the next 12-18 months.

He will adopt the unflushable turd tactic without question. It is what he does.

On a much less grand note I did a neat bit of sewing (third repair) on my Brisker gloves a week or so back. They’ll last at least another year.

It is the insinuation that socialists or centrists want to take away the few crumbs you have been tossed from the top table and given to the ‘undeserving’ that does it.

Let’s face it, we all have things in our lives that make us a bit cross as they seem inconvenient and pointless.

Motorway signs that get left on long after the incident has cleared.

Having to make a two hour round trip to dispose of paint because no one will take it any more.

But a lot of people seem to feel the need to carry that anger and project it onto someone else to apportion blame.

The right is very good at providing aimlessly angry people with a focal point for that anger.

All of a sudden the half hour wait before anyone even looks at a ringing phone down at the local GP practice is the fault of ‘forriners’ or ‘benefits cheat druggies’ who have eighteen kids Sky TV and go on holiday to Spain every year. Even better, that blame is deflected away from the main culprit – namely Tories starving it of funding so it can fail and the good bits privatised.

Well, I am coming from a V2 Bossnut, so I’m expecting a night/day experience!

Was doing some gardening with the missus earlier and looked at the state of the bird bath and decided to give it a clean up. I then remembered that it came from her late grandmother’s house when she died, so I got the wire wool attachments and the drill out and buffed it up to a spanking finish with a bit of patina. Jay Blades eat your heart out. 😂

He was known by most as ‘Weary Willie’ it and was considered by many staff that, whatever got him this plumb establishment position, it wasn’t his talent

Like father like son. The apple never falls far from the tree.

^^^
Oh cheers for that.

🙂

But is the argument perhaps though that its parallel pushing back of pistons that’s the issue being addressed? And that everyone’s leaky shimanos were just down to the lack of a £50 tool?

Discuss…

<Discussion initiated>

No, it isn’t.

<\Discussion ended>

It is a solution looking for a problem and fifty quid is taking the piss.

I would be very pissed off. It’s not just ‘a prank’. A prank would be to pretend you’d done it then admit you hadn’t, or something similar. This is an actual offence.

Also, knowing how kids can be very self-conscious at this age, I would suggest that letting the kid off with a talking to is not enough.

There are kids around and about where we live who you hear about every so often and they’ve just gone and done something ‘next level’ from the last time. I think a bit of terrorising is in order here.

The whole ‘hush it up and handle it internally’ thing is how proper ‘beasts’ get away with it for so long.

^^^

That’s pretty much ‘it’, yes.

And it was only advisory too.

And it didn’t stipulate the type of Brexit, either.

52/48 on a pretty low turnout and then it was immediately THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE and high court judges who were trying to uphold the law in the face of our little experiment were branded TRAITORS. Then we were pushed into pretty much the hardest Brexit possible, despite anyone with half a brain knowing it was against the interests of >99% of the population.

It’s enough to make you suspect that those pushing for it might have had ulterior motives…

🙄

Ha, yes, glad you enjoyed yourself. My mate who knows the trails pretty well also managed to find a bolt on his garmin mount that fitted. It knackered the collar of my grip, but I had spares at home anyway.

Wharncliffe is a real change of mindset for me. Just so much steeper than what I am used to. So it was good to start to feel a bit more comfortable with it.

👍

Well, considering all the anti-“woke” nonsense being pushed by Johnson’s ministers (their term, used by them) then they’re turning voters away.

Not this ^^^.

Or perhaps they understand how Johnson became PM, and are doubling down.

This ^^^.

Fabricant with his nonsense, Edward Leigh with his anti-immigration stuff on Ukraine, etc.

They know their audience. And a lot of them reply to opinion polls saying how ‘enlightened’ they are, occasionally give to charity, go to church and pray for all mankind… then get nasty when it’s time to put a cross in a box.

As for Sunak, what a horrible piece of work. And totally out of touch and just thick. They haven’t got any savings, Rishi, you moron. That is why they are on their arses. And now they can’t afford basics. Due in no small part to the genius idea that is Brexit.

But wrap a Union Jack around it and say “we’ll stop forriners taking your slice of nothing” and it is job jobbed.