Serious question – Does the executive component of OFSTED completely change when the government changes? Wasn’t it created by Labour?

No, and also no.

Prior to 1992, schools were inspected by Local Education Authority (LEA)-employed inspectors. However, this system fell into disrepute because of inconsistent standards across the country and concerns about the independence of inspectors of local chief education officers and councillors.

The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) was formed under the Education (Schools) Act 1992, as part of the major overhaul and centralisation of the school system begun by the Education Reform Act 1988, which introduced the National Curriculum, extensive testing in schools and the publication of league tables. The impetus to form Ofsted also came partially from the perceived unwillingness of left-leaning LEAs and inspectors to implement elements of the Conservative government’s agenda. (my bold bits) Source

You may be thinking of the bit where labour in 1997 expanded the remit of ofsted to include social care etc.

Do it!

op, move to exeter.. dont bother with any town within 15 miles, the towns are generally shitty and the commute will be crap.

yes the commute is crap- basically trying to get from anywhere to anywhere else in Exeter for office hours work, (or even as early as school run time) is pretty terrible, but the last two or three miles of your commute will be awful wherever you live be that in or out of town. As an example, recently I drove in from Plymouth (so 45 miles for me) to get in for 09.30 on a thursday, and the last seven miles took exactly as long in minutes as the the first 38. (and that was at OAP/fuel economy speed on the dual carriageway). But if you like little/rural towns then there are plenty of less crap places on/towards dartmoor. I would quite happily live in moretonhampstead, chagford or Bovey for example. And the Boveys (ie Tracey and North Bovey) have some utterly brilliant and challenging xc riding right on the doorstep. Exeter town is not a bad place to ride a bike round (ie to get to work etc) either ime.

I remember the first time i chucked a pebble in the sea in the dark. is it just our local sea, or does everyone’s glow?

I think he is secretly a really smart bloke, but working under deep cover under the pay of labour and conservatives, his mission being to present such a completely ludicrous political ‘alternative’ that the main parties are mistaken for serious and sensible voting options.

If i hadn’t repaired them myself, I would find it hard to believe that my nudging-under-9st wife has in the last month and 400 miles, pinch flatted her front tyre twice on potholes-hidden-in-puddles at 100 psi. 25c tyres too: tore a hole in sidewall of 2 rides old gatorskin. :evil:

Consequentially there are only a limited number of companies who can be chosen for pretty much any project – therefore any of those companies will continue to win contracts.

It is as if you think that the government has to sell off services and outsource everything. :lol:

I accept that new IT projects do not just get built out of nothing, but kimbers’ point is surely about all the other things that atos/serco/g4s/virgin make a profit out of taxpayers and squirrel it away overseas provide that public servants used to do. The game in investing £1.3 million is as jch about getting governments to put as much out to tender as possible as it is about who wins the tender this time around.

i would love a digitech xp series space station. they also go for silly money on ebay now: i remember when they were selling them at 40% off at my lgs, and like a fool i bought the rather less exciting modulator one. (also long since gone on evilbay).
if you do have any of the xp series pedals, apparently there is a mod to get the sound options for all three pedals from whichever one you had: chip is the same in all three.

I have my eye on the Moody Mushroom: d-i-y delay pedal (or you can buy a built up one for more) with an optical sensor that works like waggling the ‘time’ knob, and gives you sort of whirly pitch shifts to your sounds that you can do by waving your foot over the top.

Distance/geography a bigger factor +1

if you actually live in the mountains then skiing/snowboarding is pretty cheap. Like bikes you can go crazy with the latest kit but law of diminishing financial returns still applies -realy not that bad to set yourself up with secondhand or decathlon-budget kit which still works and still makes itfun. I once worked in a (state!!) school in the pyrenees and we used to go skiing for PE on wednesday afternoons, cheaper less glitzy stations like Luz-ardiden or Gavarnie cost a lot less than lift passes for posher resorts.
Going on fighting and mullets, I also dispute that ice-hockey is in any way elitist! Size-ist maybe (I can skate well and played ‘normal’ hockey well enough but i am like a frail old lady stood next to an ice hockeyeist)

Nice bloke to deal with, bearings are fine and competitively priced for what you get (and knowing you will get the right ones, typically the day after you paid for them!)

Iolo, the first half of my sentence that you quoted is the answer to the question you asked immediately after quoting me. Oakley have a usually justified reputation for doing just what I mentioned (but not for me) and this is what Oakley fans will say is one reason for their relatively high prices.

…aftersales didn’t help me: my glasses were discontinued and no spares available (would have gladly paid since it was I who sat on them), got politely told “tough” with no whiff of discounted replacement. Given the customer service that is normally raved about on here and tales of free repairs and replacements of truly ancient/knackered frames/parts, I was a bit disillusioned with them TBH.

Also if warranty/customer service fails you, find out what your frame is made of and Google away for what glue works.

As a digital-not-paper subscriber, I value the reading mag online and back issues/downloads way more than the ‘premier content’, competitions, lack of ads or the little “P” for that matter. At £15 it is interesting to see what price stw towers put on what I always thought was the minor/boring/inexpensive bits of the whole subscribers package.

Never mind scones, the real debate in Cornwall is top crimp versus side crimp. (but fwiw, cream, jam and then a bit more cream. If your chosen cream tea caterer does not provide sufficient cream for this then don’t go there again as they are pennypinching scumbags!)

On my asr, the year of manufacture is in the frame number (i forget whether its the beginning or the end of the number) -on the bb shell. Also yetifan.com website will have guide and plenty of ‘post your bike’ gallery to compare yours to.

Last week’s Ed Millipede one was toe-curlingly embarrassing, because Millipede comes across badly and also because the lovely Kirsty laid into him at every opportunity. “Did you pick these yourself or were they chosen for you?”

As per jy’s post up there ^^, she missed a trick with Cameron and Clegg’s obviously focus-grouped selections. Who says the beeb is left-biased? :lol:

iirc there was a thread on here back along about Johnny Marr’s fury at being on cameron’s list.

Chris Packham’s was the most recent really great one for me. Poodles, who’d have thought it? :D

The more that voters get involved, the more active their engagement with their MPs, the more likely that they will behave in the way that we expect and deserve (IMO).

I would love it to be like this.

But risk of being ‘whipped’, deselected and plain old “I got my seat on my party’s policies, not my own reputation” apathy seems to paralyse most into trotting out (or getting their interns to cut and paste!) party memo’s and approved ‘lines’ in response to requests over and above intervening for individual consituents. Sarah Woolaston being a local exception to this; though she will be a fun one to watch closer to election time![/url]

The amount of my very educated colleagues who have never written to an mp about something is a real shame. :(

[edit] Moreso if the transparency of lobbying act is actually enforced in the way the charities are fearing it will be.

No, you didn’t need hindsight. I always thought he was a slimy little toad long before he was elected. Just that most were blind to this, and now don’t admit to voting for him.

Only people in his constituency voted for him, strictly speaking.

In 19967 (doh!) I voted for Jim Marshall (labour, leicester south, whip in the 70’s but quite the rebel mp by the 90’s, opposed the iraq invasion and did supply teaching/ran a market stall when he lost his seat by 7 votes in the 80’s!) but less for all that stuff and more because he was my tiny way of making a difference to getting the conservative party out of government. I might have felt more aligned to green party at the time but what good would that have done and what difference would that have made under the circumstances? And nowadays living in a seat so safe that a three toed sloth with a blue ribbon on would get in, I might as well draw another three toed sloth on my ballot paper for all the difference it will make.

Amazes me that so many of the same voices blaming voters being reactionary sheep who are bamboozled by thin ‘policy’ and vote people out not in, are so often the same voices who oppose electoral reform. You get more choice, and your individual vote makes more difference to the outcome in the x-factor ffs.

yes, the m756 rear hub is 135mm. Well at least the two I’ve had are!

Racing at Newnham? Miner’s Arms in Hemerdon for all your requirements chips/posh food loads of proper ale. You can leave you bike in the beer garden and they are welcoming wet cyclists/walkers in the ‘pub’ bit (sit-down restaurant is a bit too nice for riding clothes IMO)
There’s a pub in Bicknoller Village in the ‘tox that is quite good and there are worse places than the village hall car park to start/end your ride.

Forgot to mention earlier OP, but you are going to keep the bar aren’t you? :D my 80’s rockin next door neighbours had one with labatts beer towels and all sorts. It was ace!

Perhaps they should do an uninhabited property discount based on what they don’t do for you if there is no one living there (bins, social care, errrr) and what they still do (street sweeping/lighting, local road maintenance, monitoring residents parking if applicable) or could do if you really needed them (pest control, and i forget whether fire and polis are LA funded in any way).

Whatever happened, yes you should an yes it will cost you. My car got hit in a supeemarket car park, there was no one in it and other drivers insurers coughed up quickly and decently, but that “accident magnet” notion still meant it put £30/10% or so on following years premiums (i did quotes on the internet with and without mentioning it as I was curious). And yes my insurers do know! :evil:

fwiw my experience with claiming from Lloyds (June/July last year) was pretty good. Took a few phone calls (and for some reason they phoned me and I couldn’t get a number to ring them) but it was always the same guy who rang me and given my relatively poor recollection of it all (ppi was started in 1999), I was pleasantly surprised they coughed up! I now have no overdraft and a road bike. :D :D

teamhurtmore – Member

“Do a Hutton”

Become the father of Geology? Schweeeet!

Oh, the other Hutton. :?

No problem is an orphan.

late to the thread, all my most irritating people been done already.

Apart from the one with the ponytail and the man-bag also off Coast.
And Ian Paisley, David Miliband (the less irritating of the two, mind) and how could I forget Thatcher. :D

irc there was a nice explanation on here from someone in the industry a few years back about how it can arise that your product and a compatible or right-size product are at the opposite ends of what is usually an acceptable ‘tolerance’. No one stopped using inbreds or 27.2 thomson seatposts though iirc.

From the implications of posts above, it does seem strange however that kmc might use different tolerances/tooling for their own chains than they do for the ones they make for shimano though.

DOH

but would they now, thats the question being asked,based on the present cockup not the past responces to voting.

You could interpret my answer as “they never had my vote in the first place but as for my (hypothetical, since I live in a different and equally safe Blue constituency) neighbours, then yes they still would”.

I hoped that the tone of my post up there implied that there would need to be rather a lot more disruption to the lives of a lot more people living in such safe Tory seats for enough of them to change their politics to make it a difference at polling day. Not enough people voters or interests of large industry have been affected for any government to do anything radical or expensive.

Pointless thread: the poor flooded folk of the Somerset Levels and Thames valley would put on flippers and snorkel and swim to the polling station to vote in a goat as long as you put a blue ribbon on it.

YG more M

I have quite a few hip hop albums which although have great proper tracks, are also peppered with 30-60 second filer/skits/sketches, and although they seemed rather fun at the time have not aged well. Step forward Handsome Boy Modelling School, Outkast, Saian Supa Crew etc…. :evil:

I lost the plastic shim and bodged it on 25.4mm bars with a few layers of cut up innertube and electrical tape over the to to keep it all still.
I expect the same would work for other less-than-31.8mm bar diameters. (anyone else remember the short-lived 28.6 mountain bike bar clamp “standard”?)

One of my wife’s relatives was an hgv driver and killed a cyclist, in fact such a SMIDSY that he would not have realised there was a cyclist except that someone flagged him down to stop/tell him what he’d done. :( iirc he was turning left or leaving a roundabout but had been going faster than/past the cyclist prior to the collision rather than there being ill-advised filtering by the cyclist. He is not an hgv driver any more (or any type of driver actually) and am not sure he would want to be even if he was allowed.

I have not disowned him and neither has my (more cyclist than me) wife.

OP, your sainsburys supply of cards are all in the plymouth one, which had 2 metres shelf width of them in the card aisle, another metre or so in the the ‘power aisle’ and a couple of other randomly placed displays around the shop. As well as just tons and tons of heart shaped tat!

Is there some place they keep the unsold ones until next year, or is the markup on them so fantastic that they can afford to just pulp/recycle/burn the leftovers?

Humans have between 0.5% and 2% neanderthal DNA, and best guess/explanation for this from scientists is that our homo erectus ancestors fooled around with some of them. 8O

linky

slight tangent: every time this forum discusses “importing a nice frame from USA how much will it cost me?” , (which usually features the phenomenom of most frames being the same number in dollars over there as they are in quid over here) the conclusion is that the ‘worst case’ import tax/handling fee etc is usually just shy of the uk rrp.
Does this change mean that import tax and indeed ‘charge what you think people will pay’ will make lots of bikes/frames cheaper for us to buy from uk dealers?

To add to the above, the Giant/Liv Invite has massive clearances (even 35mm cross tyres look lost in it), disc brakes and mudguard/rack eyelets. Not light with cross tyres, 11-32 cheapo cassette, disc hubs and disc brakes though. My wife is a right fusspot/snob about big bike brands and still plumped for a giant. The most expensive one is a grand and has tiagra (well, oem identical to latest 10sp tiagra but painted black for some reason) and bb7’s.

If it was me and i could afford it, I would be getting a salsa vaya though.

Feeling old +1

One of my favourite bands in my later teens, but still not sure about the cello phase (irc he is/was James Banbury, the same cellist as the Auteurs had, and must have been a busy boy around that time as both bands were recording/touring iirc. He is only ever referred to as “the Cellist” in the rather excellent Luke Haines books.) (edit) actually Discogs says they were 2 different cellists all along. :oops: Anyway, I digress. Opal Mantra EP was my favourite release. Especially the James Joyce bit.

My fairly modest collection of their vinyl was recycled via ebay a few years ago into quite a lot of bike parts. :D Sacrilege, I know but you can’t ride a bright green 7″ disc of plastic round the woods can you?

withersea – Member

On the homework apps front who wants to get together to develop ‘the language homework cheating app’s as devised by me and my 12 year old daughter last night. Children studying a foreign language ask kids from the relevant country to do their work.

In our university modern languages department, we had formal translation classes (in preparation for bastid hard no-dictionary-or-nuffink 2×3 hour exams in translating) in our 4th year with erasmus (do they still do that?) students who spoke the target language and needed their (usually rather good) eeengleeesh sharpening up: the whole idea was that we helped each other out. Split into groups of four, English to Foreign one week and Foreign to English the week after. It was ace!

Mr Gove would applaud her early adoption of free market spirit and entrepreneurship.