Thanks.

I have taken a look at the Polo, as I like its looks, but it is not available with a 1.4TFSI engine other the than the GTI and although the headline prices look good, when you get to a SEL model, there is only about £500 difference between a Polo 1.2TFSI SEL and an A1 1.4TFSI sport. No brainer on that count.

Fabia looks crap IMO and I am looking for a feeling of quality which is just not there. Like the look of the Seat Ibiza, but a bit tacky inside. I have also taken a look at the new Yaris (not driven one yet), but a reasonable feel inside.

I got some financing figures from Toyata and Audi yesterday, looking at a 2 year leasing deal. Toyota at 0% and and Audi at 7-8% or thereabouts. Over two years they cost the same (a £12.5k Toyota versus a £17.5k Audi) what you gain in paying no interest you lose in depreciation. OK insurance would be different, but not a deal breaker.

Waiting to see the Sportback, which looks a little bit better balanced to me than the 3 door. Lack of rear leg room is not an issue, ease of getting bikes in and out may be a bigger concern.

Any snags or known problems. My A3 has been faultless in over 5 years from new.

Looks like a few inches in SW London now. I fookin hate snow, completely fail to understand the fascination that most STWers seem to have with it. Looks like I will be WFHing on Monday 😆

Y tu mama tambian?

jota180 thanks that what I thought.

Not sure but I am just sat around in a shorts and tee-shirt so can’t be too cold.

I was under the impression that taking levothyroxine made people lose weight, I also thought it had a reputation of abuse by some people in this respect.

Are people saying that they are putting on weight, or really struggling to lose it as a result on the Thyroxine, or it is just the effect of the underlying hypo thyroidism?

I can’t say I ever noticed any positive or negative effect on my weight.

I also recently bought a 2011 Scott Scale 35 at much reduced sale price.

Best VFM I have ever spent on a bike. A decent Frame and Forks, kit is nothing special but it works and I decided to leave it on for the winter. It has brought a real smile back to face whilst after riding an Epic almost exclusively for the last couple of years.

Apparently thyroxine should be taken with water at least half an hour away from other meds and food.

I didn’t know that. I take it with other meds and water first thing in the morning. Haven’t read the PIL for years. CG what is the rationale for that advice/recommendation?

RocketRons might not be the best tyre for the next couple of months 🙂

That said, they are what I have on my hardtail at the moment, but I really should change them. They have been OK until the last couple of weeks until the rain and mud really arrived.

No problems or side effects here. I think I am probably a simple straightforward case. Been on 100mcg for 10 years or more. And pretty much we got the dose right from the off.

Whenever, I have some ambiguous symptoms the GP says oh perhaps we better test the Thyroid again, but it always comes up fine.

It wasn’t until I read some posts on here, for example CG’s thread that I realized that for some people it is a right PITA and difficult to get control of.

So not much help, but wishing you well.

I am starting to think about trading down and getting shot of the “high performance” car.

Relative to many people I don’t do many miles, 7-8k per annum, and only £150 per month in petrol. Petrol prices could double or more and it wouldn’t really affect me, but it all seems like such a waste, and for someone as wasteful as me, that is certainly saying something about how I feel about it.

The downside, of course, is that it is not really economical to trade down, unless you take a very long term view and that is not my nature.

I can’t ever imagine myself commuting by bike daily or even once a week on a regular basis. So I guess I will keep on paying whatever they decide to charge at the pumps.

CFH – the example you provided above sounds much more like commission than a bonus to me. There may have been a bonus element to it, but I find it hard to believe that a big chunk of that earned above the basic £10k was not earned as commission on sales.

Commissions and Bonuses are not the same IMO. There seems to be a few posters using the two interchangeably.

I would agree that you can have bonuses that are tied to personal targets rather than company targets, and you can devise schemes that blur the edges eg. tiered commissions rates above certain thresholds.

On balance though I don’t feel that using Sales (Reveneue Generation) roles as you describe them are very helpful in this context.

TandemJeremy – Member
Apparently the superrich need motivating by throwning money at them. strangely this does not appear to be true for lessor mortals

IME my friends* who are public sector workers fear bonuses, not because they fear bonuses themselves but because it requires acknowledgement of some formal degree of performance measurement and management.

God forbid that as a nation we should look to assess the performance of our teachers etc relative to each other and pay the better ones more money either directly through consolidated pay or through bonuses.

* Albeit I do not have many friends who work in the public sector, as all my peers seem to be rich, god knows where I went wrong 😐

I have always used Look (using 9 degrees of float, red cleats) and have not had any problems, either with knees or reliability. I used to use SPDs on my MTB, again with no problems, but switched to Time and never looked back.

To be honest I never put much thought into it, I bought Look at the outset 10 years ago and have never seen any reason to change.

I have used Parcel2Go, Interparcel and SenditNow/ParcelForce.

Parcel2Go (using a DHL service) damaged the frame of one of mine in transit and then reneged on the insurance, so I will not use them again out of principle.

SendItNow/ParcelForce would now be my first choice but probably not the cheapest

a nation holds its breath! 😆

I suspect I have not been quite as caught up in the hype as others. The first time I saw/heard her was on Jools and I thought she was “interesting” without knowing that she was all other YouTube etc.

Since then I haven’t heard too much, I knew it was going on, but as I only listen to the radio driving to and from work and listen to Absolute Radio, then I have been spared.

It will be interesting to see how my views evolve over the week.

I also think that there is some truth in in the view of a negative correlation between seniority and length of CV.

At the most senior levels CVs seem to be shorter, and probably less relevant. To me it looks like your Company, Job title will pretty much open a door or not.

However, my experiences may be biased because I have worked in huge Corporates all my working life

If you can sell yourself adequately in one page then I would say go for it, high impact. If you are confident what a future employer is really looking for to hit the right buttons with something consise then it sounds good.

I try to write 2-4 key achievements in each role, together with a sentence describing role, accountabiliites and dimensions (staff, budget etc). It all adds up over a long career. First professional job 1 bullet, next 1 or 2 bullets etc.

I am not sure I would have the confidence to try to sell myself on one page.

I always have the Audi main dealer change my brake fluid every two years as specified. Costs about £90 IIRC, for that amount I can’t see the point in scrimping. Never touched the air con in 6 years of vw ownership then 5 years of owing an Audi. Never been asked / recommended by a main dealer to touch it either.

Mavic for Factory built road wheels, and Mavic Rims for MTB
Easton for carbon bits
Avid for brakes, but that is mainly because it would cost too much to change them across 3 bikes.
Exposure for lights – for convenience.
I can’t remember the last time I strayed from these choices

But apart from that nothing really
Shimano versus SRAM – happy with either
RS versus FOX – prefer FOX, if specced on a bike, but never bought them as a aftermarket product too expensive.

My prescription says 50mg 3 x a day, don’t think I have ever taken more than 2 in one day nor for more than for a couple of days at a time.

Mine was prescribed for a frozen shoulder with some Valium as well. Valium went down very nicely thank you GP 😆

Sound perfectly reasonably to me. A service on mine to broadly the same spec would be £249 plus £49 for the MOT insurance (in place of paying for the MOT). Audi main dealer in Surrey

Start reading the French newspapers online? Depends how rusty you are

My dad had a triple by-pass aged 73, about 9 months after a major heart attack and coronary arrest.

His heart was badly damaged from the earlier MI so recovery was never going to be complete, but 15 years on aged 88 he is OK. Sadly aging fast but he still lives on his own, gets out and about to meet his friends, those that are still alive etc.

He was in ICU for less than 24 hours and back at home after 5-6 days. I took a couple of weeks off to look after him but other than a lot of pain he was fine.

EDIT. Wallop’s post has just made me realize my dad was 77 when he had his surgery, so 11 years on now. He has also had major emergency surgery only a couple of years ago for a strangulated hernia and survived that, but that has really taken its toll.

3 CD Players – all good ones
1 printer with no cartridges
An old laptop PC and another that is close to dying.
A Nikon 35mm SLR camera and lenses
Old digital compact camera
Far too many CDs and DVDs
Assorted furniture now that I have ran out of space
Framed artwork (see above)

Bar the CD players nothing has any value.

Yes easily. I have a large flat in leafy SW London (mortgaged) with super high service charges, have a cleaner, drive an Audi and my base yearly outgoings are about £22k. No children mind you, no fags, booze or drugs.

My brother in law paid circa £1500 all in to have his replaced by an independent garage (not an audi specialist)) based NW England. His was the 130bhp variant of the 1.9TDI but not sure if that is relevant.

I would vote for a law to be introduced to provide a 1 year amnesty for owners of any designated breed of dangerous dog to be put down (the dog not the owner)

After that if you are seen on the street/public place with a dog the police should arrest you resulting in an automatic 5 year mandatory prison sentence with no chance parole.

1/ Cocktails in Bar 89 at 89 Mercer Street in SoHo if it is still there.
2/ Central Park, skating if so inclined, but not at night 🙂
3/ Empire State
3/ MOMA/Whitney and/or the Metropolitan Museum
4/ Just walk around SOHO, 5th Avenue/Madison/Park Avenue between say 50th and 65th streets. Lower East Side, East Village/ Time Square (just for 5 mins then leave quickly)
5/ Visit Brooklyn, when I returned back to the UK after living there for a few years Brooklyn was becoming seriously Hip
6/ Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (a must), don’t go up the old lady so to speak, unless you like long queues
7/ Thai food at Holy Basil (2nd Avenue perhaps 10/11th street. Thai women in black thigh length boots, did it for me anyway, but also good food and reasonably priced
8/ Do Brunch on a Sat/Sun lunchtime
9/ Avoid cheap diners
10/ Wrap Up Warm – New York City in the winter is wonderful, bright blue skies, but cold. Not Norway cold but pretty cold by our standards.

I am able to save about 50% of net monthly income. I rarely do 😳

Argh. I don’t think my answer really applies, sounds like you are contemplating leaving? Are you sure it is not Year 1 Term 2 blues?

I think I understand the question and my answer is similar to that of Junkyards, but I think there are limited fields where you can “excel” outside academia.

If you are in the Arts and Humanities (say English or History) then what opportunities are there so follow your academic vocation outside of academia itself. The list of fields may be limited to Engineering, applied sciences, and computer sciences?

I got out of academia after my Masters and PhD because I realized that in truth I just wasn’t good enough to be special in my field. If I had felt I could be been a Prof by the time I reached my mid 30’s then I would have stayed, but I wasn’t interested in hanging around being medicore.

It is really 2x times as much earnings as a contractor over a permanent member of a staff when you look at all the relevant costs. No paid holidays, no bank holidays, no pension, no training, no sick pay, no bonus or other benefits (car allowance etc).

If so then great, but when I have looked into this, then looking at typical contract rates in my industry/field then it looks pretty marginal to me?

Very very badly, but at least now I am not having to resort to the valium, zopiclone and seroquel. Only problem now is that my stress reveals itself as acidic stomach and gastritis. So if it is not fookin with my mind it is fookin with my stomach

Thanks. Last time they tried, thankfully not my garage, they cut the locks off several garages, and still did not get in to any it them. but that meant that neither could the owners so their cars were all locked in.

There is definitely a gap between door and frame, but nothing is. 100% secure. I meant to call some people today but did not get around to it.

Audi A3 Sportback 2.0TFSI Quattro. Owned from new, now 5 and 1/2 years old.

Insurance £480
Road Tax £225
BreakDown Cover £100
Servcing £250
MOT £50
Tyres £250
Fuel £1800

Total = £3155, for about 7500 miles = 42p per mile

Taking into account depreciation to date estimated @ £3300 per annum = Total £6455

Giving an overall cost per mile of 86p

Can you even by a VAG normally aspirated petrol engine these days? 1.2T, 1.4T, 1.8T, 2.0 T There is the V6 which is still normally aspirated, but have they not dropped the gutless 1.6?

A3 Sportback for me.

I will admit they are not the best looking cars , but they are very practical in that Golf versus Focus size category etc. I have a 2.0 TFSI Quattto, but that may be too much power and with go-cart like handling for SWMBO. 5 and 1/2 years from new and not a single problem or snag.

Have driven the 2.0T and 1.8T and the latter was fine. Quick enough but clearly not as sprightly as the 2.0T, and even the newer 2.0 TDI 143bhp was OK and I fookin hate diesel engines.

skywalker – Member
From that era, a 150bhp GT TDI would be my choice.

Each to their own and all that, but I really would have preferred to drive a tractor, than any of the older VW diesel engines. The newer ones, I assume common rail, are not much better, but I thought the older ones were shocking.