Certainly not make a martyr of him.

Heard on the radio a while back of USA ‘breaking them down’ and then using mullahs of a non-jihadist disposition to explain what Allah would say was wrong with what they did. They don’ t exactly televise this though! …and they stay locked up forever. Just repentant and locked up, as opposed to defiant and martyred. No idea how this works out in real life but yes thats what i would do.
That or make them suffer a couple of hours of Dawkins a day. Not sure how many bits of the international convention for human rights the dawkins bit would violate though. :P

Rim brake rims. I keep the work/commuter bike pretty clean but on the other hand loaded up with clothes and varoius worky bits and food it weighs far more than my downhill bike, and does well over half my yearly milage and climbing/descending like this in all weathers, i suppose i ought to expect them to wear out every so often.

But somehow i still resent £20 to replace a worn out rim more than i resent the effort of rebuilding it (and/or what it would cost me to get a shop to do it). Funny really since £20 on other bike stuff that last fewer miles (drivetrain, brake pads, knobbly tyres for other bikes etc) seems ok value to me.

Also +1 for shimano spd cleats, and now t’wife and i have had roadie pedals for a couple of years i notice the same price/materials/workmanship anomaly with look branded cleats too. And as above, flat pedals look terrible value when compared with complexity and details on same price clipless ones.

late summer for ze germans in the south west IME. Don’t know whether that is when they traditionally go on holiday evrywhere (ie not jst cornwall) like the french (orgnised/agreed business holidays) seem to do in early august and the midlanders industry ‘July fortnight’.

Its a ‘qr for 10mm rear through axle’ if you want to search for one. Superstarcomponents.com do them in various colours but they are sold out at the mo. The dt swiss one is excellent but expensive. [edit] beat me to it^^ :).
Shimano saint one fits too but bolts up. If it was me and i wanted my bike working asap, i would be fine with £23 for the dt one at crc.

Sks chromoplastics come in various sizes, and the largest for 26″ wheel is rated up to 2.35″ tyre -also they come in black or silver.
I have the smaller size on crap 26″ commuter bike and they are just excellent. Most expensive sks guards iirc but only by a few quid, and the other ones top out at 2.1″ so that’s what you would have to go for i expect. Well worth it though imho. Top tips: is bodging your own brackets and using cut up plastic wine corks as spacers (borrowed this idea from singular cycles sam) to get mudguard as close to tyre as possible, also bending stays to fit round disc brakes etc if that is an issue. Dremel for trimming the stays down as the new built in end caps are well nifty and stay put but still allowing for 5mm or so adjustment. Oh and taking a 10mm spanner out with you to iron out the last little bits if rub and ‘shape’ of the guard particularly the rear one. Takes ages to get them fitting just right but once they are, they won’t be going anywhere!

Devon+2 topography is a bit bonkers, i feel like i notice far more 20%+ lanes over here than i ever did living right up in the pyrenees, they just take the longer way round to maintain gradients possible to drive in winter tyres with a bit of snow…
But also lots of roads down here (and i include cornwall really) with grass growing in the middle of them and tarmac either side.
High sided (as in 8ft solid hedgerow-over-earth-and-rocks) lanes all over including many of our ‘trunk’ roads in the south hams. But also so many folk incapabale of selecting reverse, and having no idea how wide their car isn’t. If i can fit a 6ft wide van through there, you can fit your focus through too!

Given the way little roads are funded, i wonder if there is a correlation between miles of road to maintain and council tax take. Given the low population density, relatively high numbers of these people on some form of council tax benefit (elderly, unemployed) and high numbers of holidaymakers hammering the roads with their suv’s and caravans but not contributing directly to council tax take, i wonder if little (local authority-maintained) roads in counties like devon and cornwall might suffer more.

Iirc there are loads of world and olympic athletics records set by East Germany in the early 80’s that they think may never be beaten under current anti-doping regimes.

Jambalaya +1
I think Cameron and Clegg are also trained in this. Gove not so much :lol:

Great fun-troll, way above usual standard of the OP.
Although i can’t help hoping that project actually gets one. With lots of extras. And a Jason Bent haircut to go with it. :D

OP, if you just want your front one tightening up, any casette tool will be fine. however if you have centerlok rotor on your back wheel too then at some point you might want to get a ‘deep cup’ cassette tool, as the normal size one will not clear the axle/locknuts on the disc side of your rear hub to engage with the rotor lockring. Superstar do a cheap one which is fine and of course works fine on cassettes too, there is a proper shimano one too that looks nicer but more spendy.

Alloy nipples are easy enough to build with but if you ever have to retension the wheel, they are much more likely to be furred up/seized in my experience.
Unless the weight is a really important factor, for your first wheel builds alloy is not worth the weight saving, brass will be easier to sort out if you build a ‘friday afternoon’ wheel. Fwiw i have seen cracked/rounded nipples in both brass and alloy.

The RSPCA have a 97% conviction rate.

Wow! 8O

Also wondering this story would have been reported by the telegraph and indeed the beeb (if at all) if it had taken place with an unemplyed owner on a council estate in Bradford rather than a group chief accountant for TFL living in sunny Tring?

Unfortunately my exposure to them since then, through animal research, contact with farmers & years of shooting, has done nothing to change my opinion.

I always wonder if on threads like this whether it would help if all include anything relevantabout ourselves that might influence our opinions. Quite clear and understandable imho to see why ninfan might have a dim view of the rspca.

(JW, 14 years a veggie but cooks and feeds his son and friends meat, cat owner owned by one cat, errr, used to like the Levellers and Carter, mrs used to be a hunt sab back in the day, dishes out medicines tested extensively on animals as part of job.) :D

Care UK are playing the long game re: profits, demand for any paid employment in that region and indeed share of the market.

Also let’s remember how long Care UK have been, errr, “investing” in the contracting out of health and social care.

And then remember that this is the same Andrew Lansley who sponsored the transparency of Lobbying bill/act which does the square root of bugger all to legislate against, to pluck an example out of the air, shadow health secretaries having their ears bent and their future policies shaped by significant donors from private enterprise with excellent understanding of tax legislation. Really, this should be the stuff of Italy or somewhere in latin america, not the United Kingdom. :evil:

My wife follows Rob Lee on strava, apparently the crazy loon clocked up 220 miles riding from home to bath to exmouth and home again. 8O

Kimbers, listen out for greg dyke’s take on the bbc, and indeed the volume and content of complaints he used to get from israel about the partiality of the beeb.
”Any questions” radio 4, a couple of weeks ago.

(Edit) oh btw yes i do think the beeb are scared and bullied into reporting in a way and tone that they have not done in other comparable crises, and i base this in part on greg dyke’s comments in the link above, but i also do believe Bowen might just be on holiday. Will be watching with interest when he returns….

Crankboy, i was just thinking the same thing. Can’t decide if it was worthy of point 6 of the ‘israeli public relations guide’ gonzy posted above, whether or not it was, the text of the article hardly supports the argument it was used to back up.

I sometimes wonder whether ninfan reads the links he posts, or if he does, perhaps he does not expect anyone else to. Also (and iirc one of his previous logins is on record on here saying so) he often takes the contrary position to any prevailing (and his view OTT) opinion just for his own amusement, not because it necessarily reflects what he really believes. Anyone remember Stephanie? :lol:
Somewhere else on the internet, right now, ninfan is having just as much fun on an american forum using these very arguments to put the wind up blustering Hannity-types. :D

Good friend of my wife, respectable degree-level professional with no previous also went to prison for this. OP, its your criminal record, career, impact on family etc but even putting that aside, the risk of getting found out and the consequences she served was no way worth £500.

Local (to us) disabled soldier has started a CIC with a brief to make affordable/useable sports equipment for disabled folk (but chiefly a hand cranked mountain bike at the moment). His blog also highlights the huge price/quality difference for some adaptive stuff. Chris is well known in the SW as a (hand cranked) rider in his own right but also puts a lot into the DH (yes he races, on a hand trike!!) scene in terms of events and digging.

Facebook page

Chris’ blog.

Ah yes astroturfing. :D. It seems to be a sport on here to spot and shame the astroturfers. :lol:

Oh and sportpursuit links are frowned on here, as this would otherwise be a quick way for members to get multiple £5 credits for people who sign on, as the link you post links back to your account. I believe the norm is to post a generic link to sportpursuit and if people want to sign up then they can do so on their own and if they are really grateful i suppose they could always ask you for a ‘referral’ privately.

It seems to be the norm on here to use a link to show parts to someone, eg “recommend me a chain tug” etc. or i have been known to hotlink just the picture from a shop website by way of explanation or info.

It doesn’t mean you have to buy it from the shop you linked to but i am sure crc don’t mind the traffic. Lost count of the times i have clicked on a link in a thread to crc and ended up buying something different cos i spotted it or thought to look for it once i was there…

What would be extra clever would be if the site here got ‘clickthrough’ payments back from purchases made via links on threads in the forum. I inhabit a totally unrelated nerdy-forum where this is very much the case with a number of well-used retailers (incl amazon iirc), and the website owner and forum members are equally happy with the arrangement.

I’d be interested to know what the environment and ecconomical side of them stacks up like, surely running some meaty processors and sensors has an impact on vehicle MPG/MPA and I’m sure such systems won’t be cheap…

will this be offset by the vast improvement in mpg that impatient drivers lose in accelerating too hard and braking too late?

+1 to the capacity of raods and improved traffic flow. Hands up who has never been in a traffic jam on a motorway that is purely down to too many cars ‘caterpillering’ faster and slower, or a rubberneckers jam on the opposite (and totally clear!) side of the crash barriers to the actual RTC.

And what’s this about braking bumps? It’s mountain biking, guys. If you complain about 10m of braking bumps in a 11km course you should really find a road to ride on. ;)

I am sure that they were nothing to write home about at 12.00 on saturday, but your 10m is an underestimation of about oooh, 390m by the time the real riders were into their double-figures laps the next morning. ;)

I quite enjoyed this article the other day: Day in the life of a Boris bike. One person in the article really sounds like the people you are referring to THM. Crazy, who needs to be in that much of a hurry?

It being in the guardian it seems it would have been poor form not to point out that the scheme was planned and agreed under Livingstone, only ‘Boris’ sounds better. And that the bikes are made by Devinci (of freeride rad-ness fame) Both these points were news to me.

I thought the luff bus was ok really, and although i concur with the ‘festival’ vibe i thought they seemed a lot better organised/set up than last year or other events in which i encountered them. And fwiw i did spot Luffy a couple of times. You can also buy booze from them which was never the case for quaver iirc.
Sure i am biased as a couple of friends work for them and they are one of my favourite lbs’s, but Rockets and Rascals also did cheap but great coffee very quickly and had far better music in their tent.

I would also like to add my warmest thanks to whichever family/team it was camped trackside right at the far end of the main field, no matter what time if the day or night it was, however fast or painfully slow i was going and every lap without fail they had something really nice and supportive to say. Best cheerer-onners ever!

And my wife said the tea ladies in the shooting ground were just lovely. (She was in a bit less of a hurry than me and had much free tea and cake out of them over a few laps) If you only did the 12 hour event you missed out!

[edit] oh and i say it every year, but Matt Carr is still very funny and great commentator/compere.

Another ace 24/12. It is a real shame about the braking bumps, imho newnham is a little bit more fun to ride when it is just a bit wet, but then i suppose i seem to suffer less in the wet than others, and my tiny roadie t-rex forearms just couldn’t cope with the 2 worst braking-bumpy bits by about lap 10. I blame the enduro they had there a month or so ago as it was already quite lumpy 10 minutes after the course opened for practice on friday. Also amused to see that despite the proliferation of 170mm enduro-sleds at the enduro, there were some really excellent strava times for the cottage descent set by whippets on 80mm forked hardtails this weekend. :lol:

We used myhermes via parcels2go recently. It is cheap but the insurance is not, ie low headline price and then ‘proper’ insurance is almost 8% of the value of what we sent!

When after 6 hours of staying in, mrs wilson objected to staying in the rest of the day to wait for collection the nice lady on the phone directed her to a nearby shop who (apparently on instructions from the phone lady) accepted a frame box size. (They wouldn’t have normally but apparently complaining a bit helped). Courier turned up at about 6 in the end 8O

I spy a cube ltd and a couple of bianchis though coudn’t say what they are: one seems to be a hybrid and the other drop bar, carbon bladed fork/seatstays and low end shimano.

Post of the week and indeed the month!

I am crying with laughter and my daughter has left the room in disgust. She didn’t even get to the sleeping bag bit. :lol:

You can get a marxist card? Sweeeeeeet! (I am not a teacher, am i still eligible for one?)

I have a Unison union membership card though. Perhaps thats what he meant.

Track usually winds about a bit in the main field to maximise trackside camping space, but like MM, there is a mad rush to get set up as soon as (actually before :evil: ) the advertised opening time on thursday. And similar taping off of acres of trackside for team-mates tents that don’t get set up until the following day or saturday. Although quite how you could do this differently I don’t know.

There is supposed to be a dedicated solo camping area, again with lots of trackside and is marked with signs: every year its been at newnham this has been in the main field nearest the entrance to the site, so before you get to the event village/start/finish arch etc. Good nature in the solo camping bits with people up all night cheering you on when the rest of the campsite has gone to bed.

If you don’t get a trackside spot, there is also usually a covered area at the transition that unsupported soloists put boxes of spares, dink, food etc in.

Weather is looking good ATM. It is ****’ scorching here today (1.5 miles away) and hasn’t rained properly down here for quite a few days, so a small to moderate amount of rain if it does come will just damp the dust down a bit and get sucked up by the trees.

Partial reporting as ever, though that’s all it takes for simple thinkers to get sharpening their tridents!

I think the information from the actual court hearing shed better light on it to be fair.

Again, i think his political affiliations are irrelevant, that sort of behaviour (in front of so many witnesses!) shows a significant lack of self control for any adult regardless of the circumstances and regardless of any degree of provocation, and especially towards 11 and 12 year olds. If i or anyone i knew did similar i would not be at all suprised at the driving ban and suspended custodial sentence.

And again, his political affiliations are irrelevant to his being struck off as a teacher. If one of your kids teachers was only suspended for 2 years for an offence of that nature involving children that age, you would be appealing about it. If not for the possibility that that teacher might return to teach your children, then for whichever other children he might teach. Again as a registered professional working with children the original 2 years seems inadequate to me and being banned for life/struck off altogether seems proportional to the criminal offence and risk of similar events in the future given the hard time that teachers get from their students/pupils these days.

I am wondering what the precedent (if there is one) is for secretaries of state to intervene in disciplinary/fitness to practice hearings of professional bodies. You can appeal against a sentence in a criminal court because you think it is too lenient whether or not you had any involvement in the crime: obvious example being stuart hall, where many people who had nothing to do effectively went over the judge’s head to appeal to get a longer sentence. Who do you go to when a professional body (lets say the GMC for example) does not in your opinion act strongly enough?

Gove clearly had nothing to fear from the BNP politically, i think if his ear was bent about this, then it was about his own position and responsibility as secretary of state, not party politics; BNP are not the force they were since the far right has been split into so many smaller ways.
If it was a prominent ukip person in the firing line then this might have been a story!

Oh yes it will be hot. If it is the usual long climb, it is more of a hard track by a field rather than a forest fire road -and will be in the sun much of saturday and all of sunday morning. Fwiw it is still my favourite way to get to the top of that side of the estate -allows the maximum range of fun ways back down again.

bencooper – Member
What’s really weird is when people off here come into the shop and introduce themselves with their forum names.

Big bike bash was like that back along :lol:

What is funny rathe than wierd is when the penny drops that one of your real life friends and a forum regular are the same person. That has happened to me three times now (though not all on here). Turns out quite a few of my ‘real’ mates are on here but we seldom if ever discuss the forum in real life.

Or i suppose when you realise that ben ^^ from stw is the same as ben from 28dl (i am a long time lurker and extremely infrequent poster over there) -that was nice. Ben do the 28dl regulars know about your bike life?

Most dairy breeds are unsuitable for beef production, a few “lucky” ones survive for 12 months as veal calves.

Blimey. Every day is a school day innit.

Is the reverse true too? Reason i ask is that my brother in law raises steers for beef production and has a few cows (and a bull the size of a car called Troy!) only for producing more steers. But basically he just ‘does’ steers afaik, and as well as the few he brings into the world, he buys them (again, always steers) young and sells them bigger and meatier for slaughter. i wonder what happens to the few girl calves that he has, and indeed all the other girl calves that come from the herds he gets all his steers from.
Iirc his sheep herds (also for meat not wool or *winces* milk) are unisex, but he keeps them apart for most of the year so his lambs come at a predicatable time. One year, a single ram got in with the ewes and was removed after about an hour of fun, later that year about ten ewes went into labour ahead of schedule 8O

wwaswas – Member
Problem is that you have to also give up all cows milk based products to have a meaningful effect on CO2 production.

The meat is almost a by-product of milk production in most countries.

Unless they kill the calves as they’re born they need to keep producing young cattle in order to keep milk production going.

This.
I suppose i have been veggie all this time out of principe rather than dislike of meat and fish. But it bothers me that if everyone did the same overnight, we would not know what to do with all the steers, billygoats and cockerels etc that have to come as part of the overall upkeep of dairy and egg production.

However as ninfan points out there is a huge difference between different farming and rearing methods and their impact on the environment, with co2 emissions being just one measure/symptom.
We could make a huge difference to a lot of areas ecological and otherwise (including a host of rather nasty tummy bugs from hurried and sloppy slaughtering btw) if we decided it was ok to pay the same money per week for a smaller quantity of much tastier meat. Same for milk and eggs too.

£75 a pop. 8O

Perhaps there is an oversupply of sweeps in plymouth, but I get mine done for just under half that, (2 storey 30’s house, 2 bends in unlined/built of bricks chimney in case they price each job by height/complexity) by someone whose kerrazy prices still get them in a smart van with a chuffin great vacuum cleaner and you would never know he had been in, it is so clean. And you get a safety certificate which i guess helps if you are renting out or selling.

What sort of ” dangerous driving” gets one a twelve month ban even when you plead guilty?

[edit]: and what sort of threatening behaviour gets you a six month suspended sentence on a guilty plea? And what makes you think that the magistrate that sentenced him was there at the scene to make his judgement, and how do you think they arrived at that judgement(ie of how serious an offence and so what sentences/bans to hand down) if they were not? Again, you do understand the difference between assumption and judgement don’t you? [/edit]

Perhaps someone will find us a report of what the court heard in that case. Is it conceivable that this information was used in his hearing at the teachers council? Remember this is a professional body with amongst other things, a duty to protect the public (and in this case children) from its own members.
This (sharing of full details of court hearing and conviction) would certainly be the case for fitness to practice hearings at the medical and nursing equivalents. And fwiw as a childrens nurse I would expect to be struck off forever for that sort of criminal conviction’ not just for two years. Fwiw the article seems to suggest both a 2 year and lifetime ban in the actual text.

In fact his political persuasions are irrelevant in his criminal conviction and his being struck off. I suppose the story is that someone with such a recent conviction should be the leader of a well known political party with (formerly) mep’s and councillors. Or that the media think this information is newsworthy and in the voters and public’s interest to know.
I can’t understand which of those things it is you seem to object to jonhdoh

Backpedalling already?
Were you there at the hearing to check whether these were assumptions or judgements?

Do you understand the difference?

johndoh – Member
Okay, so do children always die when they fall off their bikes?

Read the quote. The recorder was worried that if they fell off then he might have killed them. Not that the fall would kill them. I suppose you had to get a range of accounts including width and condition of road and speed/distance from the boys to judge the likelihood of whether he would have been able to stop or swerve in time if any of them had fallen off.

I don’t know why i am, bothering replying to this. Are you ninfan’s even more contentious and contrary second login?

bikerdan – Member
Team of 3 here, was 5 up until a week ago. Never ridden it or any other 24hr race before. Any tips on what to take?

-Take mud tyres so it doesn’t rain!
-Flipflops for the showers.
-Suncream!
-Money for food and special offers on trade stands. (Not massive but i have found something worth buying for quite a lot less than rrp evey year).
-Brushes- although there is a proper jetwash to queue for if its muddy, you can’t use the many drinking water taps on site to clean your bike but the river running through the middle is very accessible if it is muddy. One very muddy year solo i was riding round with a bottle of chain lube in my pocket and dunking bike once a lap where the track went near a convenient point.
-Loo roll, as the one time you need it it will be all gone. One year it was bad, but generally the loos and showers are well looked after and emptied/serviced during the weekend rather than getting proper minging.
-If you are planning on sleeping at all during the race, bring earplugs. I hear the small-hours shoobedoobeedoo jazz lady is back for an eighth gig ;)
-lights! You should be able to charge them between laps in one of the tents if you run low (which with only 3 of you and 6 or 7 hours of darkness you might…) And be prepared for the ‘light arms race phenomenom’ whereby you cannot see where you are going as the person 20 yards behind you has such bright lights all you can see is the sides of the trail as you ride into your own shadow. In this case ride faster or pull over and let the facemelters get past.
-I like yellow lenses for the late evening gloaming, partly for seeing and partly for fly/eye collisions.
-cheap energy tips -salted cashew nuts and a box or three of those flapjack squares. And bananas, for energy and also potassium which normal salt doesn’t replace but you will still sweat out if its mega hot. I try not to ignore this as i cramp fairly quickly in the heat.
-frozen bladder of your favourite sports/electrolyte drink makes a good icepack for your coolbox and you can refill your bottles with it as you go.

Also advertise on here or the xcracer.com forum for more teammates if you are worried about being down to 3. Many ‘real life’ friendships on this forum formed in just this way. Come to think of it, an insanely fit cx/roadie friend of my wife’s also wants to pop his mountain bike racing cherry, (he lives local to newnham) -if you want i will see if he is interested.