ftpt has delieveed us a few supposedly ‘majority’ governments which by quirk of the distribition of votes still actually ‘lost’ the election in terms of sheer numbers of votes versus what the party that ended up on opposition got. This has benefited/bolloxed it up for both labour and conservatve governments over the years.

IMHO it is sad that it will take two hung parliaments in a row and a failed av referendum before westminster even thinks again about the ridiculousness of this. I suppose the barriers to this are that the only parties that would benefit from such electoral reform are minor national parties who put up candidates in as many places as they can ie Green and UKIP. Or I suppose labour and the conservatves could be interested in it in terms of the appaling representation they have/will have in Scotland and Nothern Ireland in a month’s time. :/

Surely Ernie’s point is that being honest about your idealistic motivation is better than dressing up as guff about the country being skint/broken/whatever. Thm you remind us so often that austerity is yet to start, yet we have had so many changes made apparently in the name of austerity.
If your ideals are to dismantle the state then why not just be honest about it?
If your ideals are to renationalise public services in which there is no realistic ‘choice’ eg the railways and health system then why not be honest about that too?
Instead we get oblique jokes that you need to have read the last week’s argu-threads on here in order to begin to understand. :/

Btw choose an apple with a higher percentage or polyphenols thm, science suggests you might be less of a burden on the state in later years.

I am most amused to see that even the Telegraph are breaking with the Barclay Brothers’ “to hell with journalisitic integrity, just get Cameron back in” policy with this commentary piece.

Gobsmacked at this site.

Oh do please elaborate. :D

I believe the usual form is for the owner of the car to report it stolen but only reliasing it was missing many hours after the accident. :evil:

Imo the paper/police are being a bit lame just saying you are ‘expected to make a full recovery’. Whilst i am sure that is true and am glad to hear it, I would be reporting the impact on you of several nights in hospital, many fractures and the amount if time off work this cretin has cost your employer (and you if you are self employed or are on any form of bonus or regular overtime. As well as the cost to the taxpayer of the subsequent police investigation.

Cheap vote winner imho. in terms of winning votes in areas with high levels of social housing (where people either vote labour/ukip or not at all) it is genius. But as above, in terms of the overall housing stategy it is far from “fiscally responsible” :lol:

I have a feeling that this might be a STW first – a political discussion where everyone, irrespective of habitual voting habits dislikes the policy.

Not so fast! Jambalaya to the thread please. :D

Conservatives were spending £100k a month on facebook long before the elction campaign started proper. 8O
I womder what the bill is now?

Oooh, this appearing in public business is really risky. What he needs to do it stage a “rally” inside a giant shed away from the public nd only invite people that will not heckle him.

Oh no he already tried that last week. [/url]

Not voting Labour btw, but that video they put up this morning of Osborne managing 18 times not to answer Andrew Marr as to where he will get 6 billion for nhs from is pretty funny. :D

Flooks works there still but is not the owner now iirc.

Is it time to post up the Berlusconi song? (“Thank goodness for Silvio”. -i believe there is still an English subtitled version on youtube)
…and he got (re)elected on it!

[edit: here it is!]

Claudio track run is crazy!
I used to live just down the road. Never rode anything quite like that track though. 8O

I like it. Fwiw if i was building a new bike up i would happily start with a v2 scandal, and likely end up with a very similar build. Apart from the tyres, as a front tyre find the xking A bit crap in the wet/damp/dust/loose, but i have had on on the rear for a while and its fine. Get a dual compound smorgasbord on the front, soooo worth the weight when you go back down hill. Also on-one are doing geax gato 29er 2.3 folding for £8 at the moment. (£8!!!) and they have more than good enough reviews to risk the money.

New-ish constituency but ultra safe seat for the incumbent. Next door seat (starts 400m away from my house) changes most elections though, the bookies are saying it will change colour again this time round.

Blowy though wasn’t it? I meant to go all the way over from burrator to ashburton but thought better of it at princetown. Got 49mph just freewheeling down pork hill on the way back round though. :D

Meanwhile, the Telegraph’s political section (and the Times, but no point linking to a paywall) feature a story about Cam and Sam rinsing the bejeesus out of their son’s departure to eke out a few more votes in the marginals reflecting on what would have been a landmark 13th birthday for their son. I must have missed all the times when Brown spoke about his loss in parliament, on television debates and in the press. :?

Stay classy, Barclay brothers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11516683/Samantha-Cameron-pain-of-son-Ivans-death-will-never-go.html

My wife has a garmin 500 and i have a 200. Without fail, once uploaded strava will give her 30% more climbing than it gives me for rides that we do together ie exact same distance, time, route, weather/atmospheric conditions etc. :?

Similar thread a few months had similar comments. Iirc it boiled down to the following things that make zhc ‘bad’
-obligation to be available at all times, inability to book days off or holiday and ‘punishment’ for not accepting shifts. (Not usually the case with locum agencies etc in public service)
-using zhc for people that effectively work full time and would gladly commit to a fixed term or permanent contract as a means to avoid givingtem in-service training, holiday and sick pay.
-not being able to get a mortgage or in many cases to rent a place -social and economic mobility implications.

Interestingly in my niche-of-a-niche of health, one of the measurables people are talking/fretting about is the use of zhc/agency/bank/nhsp staff. This is not about the cost implications to the service (there is a 15% premium on even nhs professionals staff let alone the agencies), or the rights of the workers, but actually about the recognition that our particular niche of patients are far better cared for by teams of regular and permanent staff, their inpatients stays are shorter, and being looked after by a succession of well meaning and skilled folk they have never met before is a rising source of complaints from patients and their families. Of course we are not out to make a profit or beholden to shareholders though.
[edit] iirc we have to pay the whole shift for staff we cancel within 24 hours. It suits us to have a few regulars on zhc but we don’t use them in place of recruiting to proper posts or get pissy with them if they don’t want to work or want to go on holiday. So not nearly as black and white as milliband would have us think.

cane creek enduro pogo stick.
What a great video! :D

National Trust to open ‘submerged mansion reclaimed by the sea’ to scuba divers.

I feel about 70 pence a week better off compared to last year. Apparently this is cause for celebration according to the chancellor earlier today. :?

[edit] of course as a public servants with a gold plated pensions, our household is actually about £200 a month worse off in real terms since the last general election. And only 2 years closer to retirement than we were 5 years ago, of course.
That’s before i get on to the huge disparity between the idea that the country is spending more in helath and the actual money spent on frontline delivery of care, as well as the countless tragic stories of hardship amongst the most vulnerable and least likely to vote members of society that i encounter in my practice.
So no, not really.

My house, this morning, just before i broke the lovely retro royal doulton sink i was supposed to be installing. :oops: :cry:

Otherwise, the opening of the Atomium, the HOC public gallery at the end of the repeal of the corn laws, and the Stade de France at the magnificent end of the 1998 world cup.

but if a private company can do the job to the standards required cheaper than the NHS, who cares how much profit they make.
the value to us as users of the NHS is greater despite the profit making.

Unfortunately, comments like that make it sound like you care more about taking business away from nhs trusts than you do about how your taxes are spent and value to the patient and taxpayer. If you can do it cheaper than the nhs making 10% profit, than you can do it even cheaper again at 5% profit. Tendering is not about dismantling the state, its about gettg the best value for money is what the last 2 governments have been assuring us.

Well that’s the priciple, but as others say the practice of this 5% profit cap looks impossible to administer.

I propose that my imaginary healthcare provider licences the knowledge base and treatment protocol for the treatments i provide from a company located in luxembourg. Since the expert knowledge base constitutes such a high proprtion of the value of the expert treatment my company provides, then i will make almost no profit at all in the uk whereas my Overseas knowledge-licensor is raking it in.

I actually have in mind a niche-of-a-niche of my own clinical practice where the above seems quite feasible, except that the licence and knowledge base is in the USA and a considerable amount of money already exchanges hands to be able to provide this treatment elsewhere in the world. :?

Blimey, i have a hammer with similar dimensions and weight to the ti hammer above, including replaceable plastic ends. I use it occasionally to tap in/out bearings and the odd ht2 type crank. It was A bit less than £110 though, iirc about £2 from toolzone.

I have that marzocchi one but without the marzocchi sticker and it was £20 from lbs not £42 from leisure lakes. It does fine with really high pressures (i am sure i have had pressures in the very high 200’s out of it over the years). Only issue is its quite a bit longer than the other generic one that you seem to get with new forks (if you are the sort that takes a pump with them on the trails for trailside adjustments to new bike/fork) and you have to get a good grip on it once you are up to really high pressures. I like it though, i would buy another for £20 (but not that marzocchi one for £42 8O )

:idea: Perhaps the Op is researching for his psychology 101 coursework.

I found out recently about those spinny knob things under the button/’wait’ light: so if its a loud road or too many crossings near each other which don’t all have green men at the same time, a blind person can ‘feel’ when its time to cross the road.

What i don’t understand is why if a pelican crossing hasn’t been used for minutes on end, it still takes up to a further minute to stop traffic. Often this is after the pedestrian has seen a suitable gap and crossed anyway, meaning the cars get held up for no one. There is just such a crossing on my way to work, which still has a delay of 40 seconds at 6am when the road and pavement are empty. At this time of day there is often traffic when you press the button but equally often you have found a massive gap and crossed by the time the lights change. I get that you need a minimum time interval between uses so traffic doesn’t get snarled up so much at heavily used crossings, but if a crossing has not ben used for several minutes, the traffic will have to stop at some point regardless of how long the pedestrian has to wait for it, in some instances you might as well stop traffic sooner and improve the pedestrian’s journey. I bet some people get annoyed at having to wait at an ’empty’ pelican crossing too.

Blimey, taste is a funny thing. I have ridden and loved a few bikes in this thread. Lots of love for the huster, sx trail, mk2 hj, (even the trek fuel!). I had the ‘team’ nrs xtc. I thought it was ahead of its time: dropper-friendly, really easy to change bearings (when you got the betd replacements for the horst link), 44mm head tube. I only rode the version with the +ve and -ve chamber sid shock thoough, and ‘over forked’ it too- once you had the pressures just right for your weight (just about breaking into the travel rather than all clunky and platforms) it was a suprisingly capable bike.

I had an Azonic saber that could could probably have done without, (rather wallowy and neither one sort of bike nor the other) but really i have liked all my bikes, just some more than others. I reckon good brakes and a good fork can often transform what you otherwise think is a crap mountain bike.

Bloody hell, how much did they take?? (I’m reading overdose as something more than double/triple the recommended dose, which would be easy enough..)

[professional hat] It is possible to do yourself severe damage or worse by taking too much in less alarming quantities over a long time rather than chomping down dozens in one go. This would be known as a staggered overdose and can occur when people don’t realise the paracetemol content of otc remedies and take a few days of lemsip plus paracetemol plus whatever else, or are just burning the candle at both ends and getting more and more fed up of the pain and overlapping doses etc. A mate of mine was a charge nurse in a very large A&E many years ago and lost (yes i mean she actually died, in a painful and slow way) a student nurse to exactly that.

Iirc one reason paracetemol is available in france only in dissolvable sachets or fizzing (alka seltzer/nuun type) tablets is that it too was found to significantly reduce the incidence of deliberate poisining by overdose, because you have to drink so much water with it to take a big ‘all in one’ overdose.

I wonder if paracetemol would be licenced if it had never existed but was invented tomorrow. [\professional hat]

Vito drives much more like a big car than a t4 does IME (and i love t4’s) and practicality-wise there is not much difference. If i was buying a van now i would be looking at (newer, galvanised!!) vitos too, t4 prices are a bit silly these days and i would be only buying another t4 to keep it really nice and hope not to lose any money when i sold it (book price on mine seems to be significantly more than when i bought it despite 4years and 40k!)

Sounds like they did a proper risk assessment – as mentioned above a few times, stuff involving vehicles tends to get ignored, when it’s actually some of the most dangerous things people do. There’s certainly a quantifiable risk to crossing a car park on foot, one which is likely to be reduced by wearing hi-viz.

I wonder how many times the job centre staff have to cross the car park to get to and from their vehicles in a working day? There is a quantifiable risk to crossing a car park on foot which of course is more significant the greater the number of times you cross it, hence hi-viz for parking attendants, trolly collectors and those car wash people in sainsburys. If the total amount of times you cross the car park per day is the same as that for the public who use the job centre (ie when you get there and when you get home again) then i would argue that there should be some serious consideration of the risk with the design of the car park or the behaviour of drivers in it. Is there a ‘standard’ for what constitutes enough visits to and from your car in a working day to put you at significantly greater risk then the public also using it?

According to a recent thread on here, if you are riding less than 50k you shouldn’t be needing more than a solitary tunnocks to keep you going. I must be doing something wrong then. I can recommend the Burrator Inn, Dousland, Dartmoor for somewhere near great trails that is a pub but also serves food like a greasy spoon caff at greasy spoon prices. I had the ‘veggie option’ (egg and chips) and it was like going back in time but in a nice way.

you mean this one?

Just replaced the shimano ht2 bb that came with the tiagra-but-different-colour oem cranks on the wife’s cx bike after a couple of thousand miles, suprised to find that they manufacture a ht2 bb with even poorer quality bearings and even less sealing than deore. 8O

Bits of Warhorse filmed near us. (moorland stuff). About half of the footage in the binge drinking documentary ‘unruly britannia’ was filmed in Plymouth.
My favourite was a documentary about crop circles back in the day, with some pseuds and droods pontificating on a rash of new crop circles in east cornwall that the documentary crew were also filming being made by 2 of my mates and a lot of cider. :D

some super-steep trails that mtbel built back in the day.

What i really want to know is for events longer than 31 miles, how to keep an unsquished tunnocks in my bumbag enduro pack.

Ref: decisions about the graduated scale of welfare/cruelty. Colin the chicken looked like a happy little guy :D

Inner tube makes it hard to get the derailleur on perfectly straight in my experience as the tube does not compress evenly when you clamp it up, it worked but worked much better in terms of rub/rattle when i butchered the plastic spacer from a different sram derailleur to fit the one i had.

:cry: