I think it might also depend the size of your deposit. I moved back with with my parents and saved for 3 and a bit years, had around 47k saved up. From what I remember they offered to lend approx £100 to 110k (which at the time was just over 3 times my income before tax), but I only ended up borrowing 67 as didn’t want to stretch myself. Think I just got a deal in principle with HSBC (who my personal/business accounts are with), found the property I liked, then used a comparison site to find the best mortgage deal, ended up going with the Woolwich. Also make sure any searches etc the bank carry out on the property are actually 100% required, I ended up paying £300 for one which turned out wasn’t necessary, think the bank is on commission.

I just had to show 3 years accounts – dunno if that was standard?

A few from me:

Sumvision media player – around £30, plays back pretty much any file format – download films/tv shows and watch them via your TV.
£6 speakers – great for festivals, powered off AAAs
USB battery pack – charge your phone several times over, cheaper/smaller versions also available.
Sansa Clip – £30 mp3 player, with microSD card slot (up to 32gb), can browse music by folders rather than IP3 tags – cheap enough so if you lose it, it won’t really matter.

I was thinking more along the lines of cheap gadget stuff, but hey eggs and porn are pretty cool too (and yep, am sure there’s a website which combines them)!

Prob not safe for work

As fr0sty125 said, it’ll be totally impractical to enforce. As far as I’m aware the only way ISPs can block the content will be by either:

1. Blocking it on a domain basis. This means imgur.com, tumblr.com, photobucket.com etc will all be blocked, simply as around 1% of their user uploaded content is porn. This will affect a huge percentage of users who don’t even want to look at porn, and render some of the internet as unusable, embedded pics / videos not displaying etc, so users will be forced to lift the restrictions even if they don’t want to view porn.

2. Having a filter in place which blocks out pages based upon keyword frequency etc – this will inevitably block legitimate articles and again affect even the people who have no wish to see porn.

The whole bike weight thing seems a bit pointless anyway.. think it was Simoni (correct me if I’m wrong) who used to have weights stuck to the top of his crossbar to make weight, and pretty sure Nibali had weights inserted down his seat tube which obviously gave no structural strength to the bike.

Hopefully it’ll be interesting and blown apart on the first climb, leaving the big contenders to fight it out alone over the next few climbs.

I can see Contador trying something ridiculous from miles out, ultimately being unsuccessful / possibly losing 2nd place. I like his never say die attitude though.

I cut and pasted from an interview – http://www.starpulse.com/news/Fred_Topel/2010/02/18/qaamp_a_ricky_gervais_on_hbo_s_animation

Totally agree it’s impossible to 100% prove they’re not. But given the history of the sport they’re in, they can’t object about the inevitable questions, especially considering their remarkable performances.

A 100% impartial, separate and well funded anti doping organisation that gets to see all power data, blood data, Vo2 etc, as well as carrying out all the testing, separate from the UCI is the only way forward – even that wouldn’t be perfect, as new drugs will always come along, but it’s better than the current system.

Anyway.. have to actually do some work now! Enjoy this arvo’s tour!

Anyway, spent most of the morning on this – gonna head over to the actual cycling thread – hoping for an attacking stage today!

I totally agree that there isn’t any concrete evidence against Sky at the moment – if there is any, then it may take years to come out, if at all (after all Lance would have got away with it all if he hadn’t made his comeback, at which point all the Lance fans on here would still be shouting the skeptics down and claiming he was clean.)

However the hiring of Leinders and ex dopers etc, and the dramatic transformation of several riders doesn’t look good for Team Sky, even if it turns out they are clean, I think there’s reason to be suspicious at the moment, especially given cycling’s history.

BTW, haven’t been able to verify this, but according to comments on Cycling News, Dr Fred Grappe also said Armstrong’s power data was clean.

I don’t mean it as a conspiracy. I just mean that in relation to the USPS case, LA’s teammates spoke because of a FED and then USADA investigation, as well as the fact that Landis and Hamilton had nothing to lose.

I don’t think there’s been a case in cycling where riders have divulged facts about doping etc without it being a plea bargain or as part of an investigation. Even if they are clean, I’m sure Sky riders have dirt on other less clean teams (Porte rode with Contador etc), but releasing that would make them a lot of enemies in the peloton, so they say nowt.

Riders/staff haven’t talked as they have nothing to gain from it, many of them still work in the sport. They’ll just harm their careers – it’s not like they’ll gain anything from coming out with any revelations they may or may not have.

Re: Armstrong – again the evidence was there, but it was never used in court against him, hence him winning against the Times and the insurance company. If the evidence was strong enough at the time, he’d have lost the court cases – it was only the eye witness testimonies and confession that finally legally proved it unfortunately, even if it was fairly obvious he was doping.

edlong: It’s not about Froome’s improvements this year – it’s about how he came from complete obscurity to placing 2nd at the 2011 Vuelta aged 26/27.

Not quite sure I believe this:

“Team Sky have never measured Froome’s VO2Max – his maximal level of oxygen intake during exercise” – I thought pretty much every team does this, especially one so obsessed with numbers such as Team Sky?

Think it was Karl Pilkington, not Ricky:

We got this reality game show in England, right? It’s like a big brother type thing but set on an island. It’s getting so tenuous now because it’s got famous people. Now it’s got siblings of famous people. There was one guy on there who was the son of a famous footballer, right? We were talking about it and one of us said, “The thing is he’s only famous because of who his dad was.” And Karl went, “You could say the same about Jesus.”

Nothing happened in cycling before now without the aid of drugs though. If the peleton is mostly clean, we are treading new ground I think.

Maybe. I’ve just been through too many “clean new eras” to believe in the current one, especially considering a lot of the characters from past eras still remain.

Nobby – this might account for handling ability / downhilling etc, but climbing is mostly down to physical ability and the number of watts you can push out. Clean or doping, winning uphill mountain stages is mostly down to your body.

molgrips – I’ll rephrase that – Miracles of this nature have never remotely happened in cycling up to now, without the aid of drugs.

As a great philosopher once said “To all the cynics, I’m sorry for you, I’m sorry you can’t believe in miracles.”

munrobiker – congrats on the improvements, got some awesome results there! (genuine compliment, not meant to sound sarcastic!) However this seems to be due to your weight loss by your own admission – Froome’s improvements are a fair bit more dramatic, especially considering he was already a pro and so there would be less scope to improve compared to a regular guy.

You asked for ex Sky riders/staff who doped, I provided names.

I did not ask for this list..

Yes you did, you asked for exactly that info, see below!

nothing to do with the rest of the ex Sky riders with a history of doping? could you name names here ?

Re: 100m / athletics.

I totally agree that the history of a dirty sport (whether it be grand tours or 100m) is not 100% proof of a rider/runner dominating being dirty. However it can be quite indicative.

I have not explicitly stated that because rider A cheated, then rider B also definitely cheated – my main question which still no-one has answered is:

“Name me one other cyclist who achieved so little up to the age of 26, and then suddenly turns into a world beater?”

Junkyard you argue with a complete lack of logic. In every post I have included facts, you’ve just seemed to have completely dismissed them.

You asked for ex Sky riders/staff who doped, I provided names.

You stated Mercyx was clean – I corrected you by pointing out he failed drugs tests.

You used athletics as an example of clean sport – I pointed out 2 cases this very week of world class athletes getting caught.

At the end of the day, it seems I’m not going to change your mind, and you’re not going to change mine, but wish you well all the same, and hope you enjoy the remainder of the Tour.

Oh and re: Armstrong – the evidence that you quote was completely dismissed at the time by the majority of cycling fans, and the courts – hence Lance winning court cases against the Times, and the insurance company etc. It was fairly obvious he was doping, but until various riders came forward, and he actually admitted it then it wasn’t proven.

Yeah but TBF Lance’s “facts” were mainly spin (500+ tests etc) – as far as I’m aware mine are all true – although feel free to correct me if I have made any mistakes :)

To be fair, it was someone else’s comment about Froome’s Ventoux climb time (I was quoting it), and in the above list I can’t see many clean athletes. Setting roughly the same time as a peak doping Lance Armstrong is pretty suspicious in my eyes.

that is circumstantial evidence and there was some actual evidence about LA I have know he was a cheat for decades as has pretty much everyone

You have a pretty short memory. Besides which, the argument you are using here is “I know he was doping therefore he was doping”, which is the very argument you’re (unfairly I feel) criticising me for using.

I’ve backed up every point with facts, and you’re still yet to answer several of my points.

Regarding Bolt – I do not know if he is clean, but over a 10 seconds race, it may be that his physical advantages (I assume freakishly long legs, given his height?) may be the difference between him and the rest. However given that 8 out of 10 of the fastest men in 100m history have doped, then there is a high probability that he may not be clean.

the argument is basical Froome is the fastest, LA was the fastest Therefore they are both drug cheats

The argument is more along the lines of how does a relatively unknown rider show absolutely no promise up to the age of 26, then suddenly start beating Cancellara and Tony Martin in the TTs, and decimating the world best climbers (many of whom are dopers / ex-dopers), whilst riding clean?

About 6 months back I was having similar discussions with Armstrong fans. Look how that turned out.

Preety sure that will stand up in court as proof – Really is this the best it gets?

Again, you can’t come up with a single example. Miracles of this nature do not happen in cycling.

Mercyx failed drugs tests, Indurain was almost certainly doping considering he was winning in the early 90’s. Even if Hinault was clean, that was 35 years ago – cycling has become a lot faster since then, look at the average speeds.

I don’t massively follow athletics, but recall a couple of high profile sprinters being caught this very week, which kinda undermines your argument slightly.

Ex Sky riders/staff fired include Barry, Julich, Steven de Jongh, Leinders (doctor), also Juan Antonio Flecha and Yates left under suspicious circumstances.

Dopers will always be ahead of the testers – they can only test for substances which they think riders have been taking, and have subsequently been banned – and with cases like Telmisartan, there’s no case to answer for as it’s not currently banned.

There’s no easy answer – However Vaughters makes the most sense to me. Despite the fact he’s an ex doper, he’s one of the few in the sport that I actually trust:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/blogs/jonathan-vaughters/opinion-its-not-all-about-lance-armstrong-and-heres-how-we-can-fight-doping

Couple more points – about Froome’s accelerations being on false flats – regardless of the terrain, it still doesn’t explain why no other rider’s could match them, and the rate at which he accelerated away from world class riders.

Also re: Evans – Evans’ (whether clean or not) road career has a fairly normal trajectory to it – he shows gradual improvement and incredible consistency:

Giro: 14 , 5, 3
TDF: 8, 4, 2, 2, 30, 26, 1, 7
Vuelta 60, 4, 3

That’s 10 top 10 finishes in Grand Tours, and add to that winning a World Champs RR, La Flèche Wallonne, numerous other stage races, he’s been consistently good pretty much as soon as he started riding on the road, which followed an impressive mountain bike career. Granted his results are on the wane, but he’s 36 now so it’s fairly understandable.

Mikewsmith – Had a quick look – re: Ventoux – pretty sure the commentators said there was a headwind, as did Ten Dam, and the footage from what I remember showed a pretty strong cross wind – don’t recall it having much of a tailwind.

Re: “Sky is far too strong to be believed” paragraph – I don’t think Sky are doing anything that the rest are not – all the stuff they claim to have pioneered, altitude training, wind tunnel testing, training blocks designed to build form for 3 weeks in July etc has been around for years. Saxo hired Rogers solely to get an insight into Sky’s training secrets, so they’ll have a pretty good idea of what Sky do, yet Contador still can’t match Froome.

Re: “Froome has come from nowhere” paragraph – it uses Evans as an example of another rider who achieved little on the road in his early career – that’s because Evans was a world class mountain biker. Froome also rode MTB at the Commonwealth games. He got lapped, that’s how ordinary he was. In 2010 he got kicked out the Giro for holding onto a motorbike going up a climb. 3 years later he’s riding faster than the motorbikes. Name me one other cyclist who achieved so little up to the age of 26, and then suddenly turns into a world beater?

Re: Quintana – no idea if Quintana is doping or not, but irrelevant – chances are a fair few of the rest of the contenders are, and Froome’s beating the lot.

Froome is as dominant as Armstrong – again, name me one instance where a clean rider has dominated a grand tour like Froome has. Wiggins and Evans didn’t win by this much, and this easily, and Froome is arguably against better opposition – the Movistar and Saxo teams are v v strong, and each team has 2 very good leaders.

The hiring of Geert Leinders is v suspicious. Brailsford is clearly v intelligent, and to suggest he knew nothing of Leinders doping work at Rabobank is bullsh*t. Whether he worked with CF or not is a different matter, but he wasn’t hired for nothing.

As for the bitter ex employees – it took ten years for LA’s ex teammates to start talking, and they only spoke because they hated him. A lot of the riders/staff quoted there are still involved in cycling, and would still be part of the Omerta. Sean Yates walked away (from what I recall) a fair amount of money, under suspicious circumstances (nothing to do with the rest of the ex Sky riders with a history of doping?!) and nothing was leaked to the press about his history. The official line was ill health IIRC, so he’s hardly gonna start talking when he’s got away with a clean reputation.

The guy who wrote the second piece I quoted was indeed referring to Wiggins transformation, going from a world class 4 minute track rider who has quite handy in the TTs, but couldn’t climb at all, to a world class climber who could suddenly stay with Contador, Armstrong and the Schleck brothers in getting 4th (now 3rd) at the 2009 TDF.

I’m not claiming to be the most knowledgeable on here, am sure there are some on here who know far more than me, but have followed road cycling pretty closely since around 1997/8, and I honestly can’t think of another rider who’s made such massive improvements mid career as Froome, but using clean methods. He’s dominating a world class field, that statistically will contain doping riders (granted none have been caught this year, but a couple did get popped at the Giro, and most of the contenders have a fair bit of history, Contador, Valverde, Kreuziger etc), as do many of the riders, staff and a doctor that Sky have hired since they first setup. Clean riders don’t dominate doping ones in a grand tour.

I personally believe the phrase “marginal gains” extends to using performance enhancing pharmaceutical products that are not yet on any banned list.

Couple of interesting comments on Cycling News articles relating to Froome / Sky – first is about a not-yet-banned performance enhancing substance, second is just sceptical of Froome’s rapid transformation from a mediocre rider to world class climber / TTer.

The new drugs are “metabolic modulators” AICAR + GW1516 (which is banned and at2013 tour have tests for)…. BUT… Telmisartan is purported to be just as effective if not more and is NOT ACTUALLY BANNED YET.. WADA is still considering it…

EPO and blood doping concentrate on oxygen delivery… but that’s only half of the battle.. your cells need to take that oxygen an nutrient and convert to kinetic energy… that’s what these new drugs do… they can flip muscle fiber type, increase mitochondrial density etc… even in the absence of training (exercise in a pill).. with training the effects are that much greater… mice sedentary for 1 mth have shown 30-70% greater endurance than mice exercised for that one month etc…

so Sky and Froome could very well be taking PEDs and not ‘technically’ cheating… but still getting an unfair advantage… other are also free to use it and maybe they are, but as we saw with Armstrong some people are hyper-responders to certain drugs or methods…

“J Strength Cond Res. 2012 Mar;26(3):608-10. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e31824301b6.
Telmisartan as metabolic modulator: a new perspective in sports doping?
Sanchis-Gomar F, Lippi G.
Source

Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Valencia, Research Foundation of the University Clinic Hospital of Valencia/INCLIVA, Valencia, Spain. fabian.sanchis@uv.es
Abstract

The World Antidoping Agency (WADA) has introduced some changes in the 2012 prohibited list. Among the leading innovations to the rules are that both 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide-1-?-D-ribofuranoside (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-? [PPAR-?]-5′ adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase [AMPK] agonist) and GW1516 (PPAR-?-agonist) are no longer categorized as gene doping substances in the new 2012 prohibited list but as metabolic modulators in the class “Hormone and metabolic modulators.” This may also be valid for the angotensin II receptor blocker telmisartan. It has recently been shown that telmisartan might induce similar biochemical, biological, and metabolic changes (e.g., mitochondrial biogenesis and changes in skeletal muscle fiber type) as those reported for the former call of substances. We suspect that metabolic modulators abuse such as telmisartan might become a tangible threat in sports and should be thereby targeted as an important antidoping issue. The 2012 WADA prohibited list does not provide telmisartan for a potential doping drug, but arguments supporting the consideration to include them among “metabolic modulators” are at hand.

PMID:
22130396
[PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE] “

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22130396

also velonation.com/News/ID/11395/Doping-AICAR-Telmisartan-and-the-need-for-vigilance.aspx

and

OK,most of it I wrote here somehow before, so sorry if it upsets you.

I am one of these “sad people” as you labeled me.
I have only 1 medal from national championship of my country (europe mid size country) so I quess I qualify for “couch dweller with no cycling experience”

Chris Froome is unbelievable (this is key word)

Chris Froome was rubbish, rubbish not even mediocre, rider and basically overnight (by joining SKY) he is superman.

SKY rising is explained by “marginal gains”, but these marginal gains cannot explain total riders makeovers. before 2010/11 Froome had NO mentionable results in anything (1 stage victory in tour of Japan is marginal succes in D-class race), now he is super human. He climbed Ax 3 Domaines and now Mont Ventoux as fast as Armstrong when he (Lance) was chemicalized to the max.
This guy who came from nowhere after 3 years is as fast as Pantani, Ulrich, anybody.
There is such a deja vu.

Yes, they did not test positive, because they must have something new. Neither Ullrich, Lance, Festina, Fuentes’s guys, Indurain tested positive. none of them. Testing is useless. Even Gewiss after Fleche-Wallone 1994 were negative – if you do not know it, google it. None of the big doper were caught be testing. if there is test, this dope is obsolete. Positives are only if they mess up (Landis, Hamilton), wrong dosage, bad bloodbag etc.

Froome has not history of excellence (like Nibali, Cancellara etc. others who rose year after year from obvious talent – outstanding juniors). again. He was rubbish, overnight, superhuman. UN-BELIEVABLE.
There is fairy tale about parasite (that was supposed to eat his red blood cell to make him not performing, when he was cured, suddenly superman)?
Before and after completely different guy, illness in between? Where did I hear it before? yes, Lance.

Froome does not mind cheating, he was expelled from Giro few years ago for holding motorcycle so he could even get to the summit at Mortirolo. now he would be probably faster that motorcycle.

Nothing about Froome looks credible, believable, real. Even his talking, he sounds like he is brainwashed and only says PR/marketing sweet talk Sir Brailford injected him. I believe he works hard, sure. But others dont? It is not only thing he does. Same applies for Porte. Or Wiggins (similar mid-carreer transformation)

there are other scary similarities to history (Lance Armstrong and USPS team):

Training in places where inspectors will have a hard time surprising you. Why did Sky train in Tenerife? They certainly have good excuses, but it is one of the puzzle pieces

Hidding data, dismissing any unpleasant questions

Hanging out with crooked doctors

Deny everything and treat your audience as if they were stupid – E.g., Froome’s comments on Vayer (former french coach confronting Froome with his power numbers and climbing data bettering all of dopers from past)

dismissing any unpleasant questions like “they are just haters” (Lance style) etc.

Yes I believe that cycling (post Armstrong) is much cleaner, cleaner than ever before.
But even so, that is why non-clean standout even more.

why do I think so (it cleaner that before)?
-they look “real – pain and suffering, they look tired. in EPO era they just looked plastic.
– colombians are back – natural advantage shows – it was eliminated by drugs in 90s.
– there are bad days – in stage races, sometimes even really good riders underperform in 1 day. in EPO era, that never happened, they were just robots. unlike SKY. they look plastic. Porte gives interview after stage and he looks like he just been for walk with dog.
they keep “top shape” for whole season round. UN-BELIVABLE.

never tested positive in not valid argument – e.g. blood transfusions are not detectable. only if you got someone elses bloodbag by accident. only way how they would “catch” them would be (like all big doping cases before) not by testing (you cannnot test something if you do not know what you are testing for – You cannot find anything if you do not know what you are looking for) but police – listening to the phones, emails, “follow the money”, payments, secret funds. Somewhere at the end of the chain, there will be crooked doctor, genetics labs or something we do not even ever heard about.

I am not hater. I just hate when sport that I love is raped and disgraced (again), as I think it is so shamelessly done by SKY.

Again, neither are my comments, and maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but be suspicious of a rider who has come from absolutely nowhere, in the middle of a pretty unremarkable career, and suddenly started dominating both climbing and time trialling in a sport which is so riddled with doping. I hope I’m wrong, but can’t think of a single instance in cycling where this has happened before, without the aid of doping.

Personally I think Sky are not using banned substances, but are using a lot of “currently legal” substances that achieve the same effects, that WADA are still mulling over.

yep, they’re about 11 mins behind Rui Costa.. 2nd and 3rd attacks by Contador!

Ha ha there’s his first dig.. game on!

Anyone reckoning on a Contador attack on the downhill to try and grab 30 secs?

I really like that (asides from saddle and stem angle) – IRC Mythos XCs were great tyres IMO, shame they stopped making them..

Contador implied he’s gonna try something from far out on one of the remaining stages, like he did in last year’s Vuelta, and ain’t afraid to risk losing a podium spot.. for me it’s either today or stage 19.

“It’s true that there is a stage where I want to see what happens, it could be a day to try and look for an opportunity, there is a very important stage and in a week’s time, you’ll know which one it is.”

“It is true that for me it’s the same to finish second or 10th.”

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/there-is-no-reason-to-doubt-froomes-performances-says-contador

Edit: Actually it’s probably either stage 19 or 20, less flat sections in between the climbs.. high pace on the first climb to thin out the peloton, attack on the second and then try and stay away til the finish..

As far as I’m aware Contador has to have his saddle in that position due to some strict TT rule about saddle positioning / angle etc.. been that way for years, must affect him a bit on the flatter TTs.. either way good ride from Saxo, losing just 6 seconds on the flat to Sky..