Putting aside the politics and the practical need for cuts, that article reveals an extraordinary set of numbers that simply cannot be explained. How can any MP be so out of touch with his/her local authority’s financial situation? There is no excuse for getting it that wrong, and writing this down in a letter that can be seen by your constituents is a rather great way to demonstrate this.

That this MP represents a local aithority arguably less damaged by budget cuts than others in the Northern Powerhouse, and that he happens also to be the prime minister, also a man with a usually very impressive command of numbers and ability to reel off (usually partly true!) statistics off the top of his head in interviews and at the dispatch box, makes this all the more ridiculous.

Display models in Perspex like you find in bigger you shops are often glued :( as are all the outside models in legoland. Get on brickset or eurobricks forum for some proper hatred of the kragle!

The Tories are distraught that their PM has been held to account lying multiple times to the electorate about protecting tax credits

…and today Osborne (in Peston interview on r4) is still peddling the excuse that the electorate know the direction he is heading in so what do they expect. (And the answer is still that most people vote for their own financial interests, and the hard working families that voted conservative last time were fed a lie on tax credits which they took and voted on in good faith).

He also repeated himself a lot in that interview just as he did last night with the ‘unelected upper house’ sentence. Really, for such a clever man he should realise how coached and two-dimensional he (along with a few others eg Milliband) sounds when he is briefed by someone else just before an interview and all he can do is drop a coupe of t’s and aitches and repeat the key points verbatim over and over.

Bottom line is they said they would cut welfare by £12Bn. They got voted in. If people don’t like it they’ll get voted out next time. Democracy in action.

October phoned, it wants its viral videos back!

should we have had a smarter more cynical electorate which ignored both the prime minister and chief whip of the party stating 12bn cuts would not include cuts to working tax credits? Perhaps Lord Howe’s 2 in 10 should have read the runes, decided they were either lying or not communicating with their chancellor, and voted for their bank balances. That is democracy in action, after all. I am sure in time someone will extrapolate the losers in this into swing voters in constituencies and work out how much democracy has been skewed by the difference between ‘no cuts to tax credits’ promised by Cameron six months ago and what we have today.

I never go to ours, It’s basically a piss up in the nearby town where screws get plastered & talk about work, then try & bend each other up & get into bother.

Sounds crap. Many years ago in a health authority far far away I remember our local locked mental health facility’s ‘A-team’ requiring police ‘assistance’ when a very similar party took place. Oh how we (I suppose I would have been the ‘c team’) hung out heads in shame at them . Amazed it didn’t make the local rag. :?

How did this mendacious creep end up as SoS for Health? (I know, I know…).

It was a tough call finding someone even more spineless and totally “for sale” than Lansley but they did it!

Btw if anyone is not feeling cross enough, google what Lansley’s new job is. But don’t worry. He has undertaken a solemn promise not to use his considerable inside knowledge and experience as former SoS for health for at least two years so we can all sleep easy on that completely predictable career move.

Iirc our local refugee charity (ie big lorry of stuff ot calais charity) takes tents. Might be worth looking on facebook to see if you have one locally.

Jambalaya, what retail glapagos island do you live on? We have a full-on co-op supermarket near us with trolleys and everything. You can also buy a telly, fridge, laptop, and laydeez clothes etc there. Oh until recently a tax disc- there is a main post office inside it too. I have no idea how many smaller ones there are in our city of 270000, i can think of fifteen or so right off the top of my head and i don’t even get out or around much.

What’s going on with the story of “Austria challenges financial aid to France” angle of the story now?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/905342fa-b214-11e4-80af-00144feab7de.html#axzz3pH5kb7cq

I play badly, as in way too bad to gig (gigged with voice and guitar, mind). Son (9) may overtake me in drum skillz soon!
Some great drummers in this thread. Billy Cobham, mmmmmmyeah!!
I would like to add Kliph Scurlock and Sarah Jones.

and “One option is to”

I rather like the paragraphs before which are much clearer in raising one of the the advantages of an unelected upper chamber -that is in challenging a government with a very slim majority, (decided by a turnout and percentage that would not see them elected in at all if they applied their propsed rules about industrial action ballots to elections as well) -doing something that the prime minister categorically stated (live on the telly and everything) that he wouldn’t do six months ago before the election, and featured nowhere in their manifesto.

Now that is a bad enough story already. Looks like they will look rather undemocratic whatever they do from here. :lol:

Junkyard, did you miss the bit the other week where jambalaya told us he is an active member of ‘hacked off’?
I feel as though i should bow to his superior understanding of the meeja. (Tugs forelock).

Broadband-fine. Actually for us where we live its the fastest and most reliable we have ever had.

Phone- fine but check call rates for non ‘standard landline’ numbers eg ringing a mobile from house phone is like phone bills from the 80’s again. Also depending on local network you might only be able to have four rings maximum before your voicemail cuts in. Hard to believe on such a fancy network but nevertheless is the case where we live!

Tivo box -was great at first (especially after they removed the comedy timpani ‘boing’ sound effect, but definitely getting slower and slower the older it gets on anything that is not basic ‘channel up/down’ ie all the menus for everything. This does not seem to change depending on how full or empty the hard drive is. And the number/symbols rub off the remote control rather quickly. And the remote control doesn’t lke our tv (umc) so depsite this being known about by virgin and threads on the internet dating back years, we still have to use 2 remotes for everything.

Doctors will never be poor no matter what the junior doctors moan about, they have the best Union out there.

Nice to see the capitalist types on here getting all het up about a group of suppliers of a service with an excellent (for them!) supply versus demand arrangment and a fantastic grp of lobbyists.

Again, it seems absolutley fine and the way of the world for real businesses to lobby the bejeesus out of the government, we listen to them and put politicians on their boards of directors and their directors in powerful advisory roles to government, and then everyone forgets that this is not a million miles away from what unions do for their members.

As above. Could be, could be otherwise.
As a community mental health nurse for adults I knew quite a few people whose history of impulsive overdoses or overuse of sedatives meant that it was sensible to pick up each day’s at the pharmacy. None of the people i had in mind took methadone or even had a significant history of illicit drug use, this was about low mood (or rather disregulated ie not low all the time but very fragile/brittle) and risk of overdose. I work with children nowadays who have parents for that sort of thing, but AFAIK this arrangment is still the case for loads of people round our way with no methadone involved.

Whether its that or indeed opiates/methadone, some stability, realistic/consistent/reliable friends and family, and a secure base of sorts will be very helpful to him. You could be a part of that OP.

Michael Ashcroft must have waaaaaay more dirt on not just Cameron but most of the cabinet.

What alarmed me a bit more was the detail on the workings of the bulingdon club (the ‘uniform’ was £2000 in that day’s money for a start 8O )

But more so was that he knew (and is now caught out lying about) Ashcroft’s ongoing non-dom status a year before the 2010 election. That is not youthful hi-jinks whichever way you spin it. What will he come out with next week? Or is it a case of: “restore my non-dom or i Mail (sic) you bigger and bigger skeleltons from your closet every week.” :lol:

Re: Wilkinson, I heard he “snubbed” the rugby to do a constituency surgery. This is an outrage! ;)

I am an active member of Hacked Off and have many critism of the UK press

Funniest post of the week right there. :D

bainbrge – Member
Another thread, more of the same from the usual abusive individuals.

If i had a second login for my own amusement and general trollage, I would post up unflattering facsimilies of the flannel posted by bighitters on the opposite end of the pitch. C’mon DD, is it you?

He must have worked it out because he knows 20,000 is wildly
wrong.

Isn’t it quite a lot easier to say something is way off the mark than to be sure what the right answer is?

to pluck a simpler example out of the air, I know for sure that 25p a litre is a wildly wrong price to charge for my new tubeless gunk business. Doesn’t mean I know exactly what price I am going to charge yet. And then what if I name a ‘ballpark’ price before I have finshed my costings properly and its too high? (puts people off) or too low? (puts peoples backs up because I now want this much more for it to make it worth me selling.)

not a hint of how many refugees he would house in the UK if he were PM.

He’s been in the job 3 hours!
Do you honestly think any PM/Leader of the opposition or indeed cabinet/shadow minister doesn’t have an office full of minions doing these calcualtions for them? IIRC Corbyn had a slightly smaller office and one or two fewer people to help him work this out than Cameron has had these last weeks. ;)

As above: the tri-align stuff goes with the avid caliper not the mount, if that makes sense. Mount should be fine with just the new brake and possibly shorter bolts but if they are both is to pm mounts, you might find the bolts work too and just stick out the other side of the brake mount.

Peanut butter and cucumber. In a sandwich.

I had some sh56’s one one pair of shoes and sh51’s on the other. Apparently i set my cleat mechanisms relatively slack and i couldn’t really tell the difference between the two.
So if a set of sh56’s lands in your lap for free then you might as well use them, but equally you could save some money and just use the cleats that come with whichever pedals you buy -The case almost always is that unless you buy off ebay/classifieds then the corrects cleats are part of the purchase of the pedal ie if its in a box not a bag they will be supplied. Even oem bagged shimano pedals i have had in the past off discount internet shops have had cleats.

Brickset.
Diystompboxes.com
Occasionaly seymour duncan or tdpri pages.
Lurker on 28dayslater which i gather is known to many on here not least bencooper who is very well known and respected over there.
Used to post a bit on xcracer but its a bit quiet there these days.

I am starving by the end of work, quite happy eating whn my kids are hungry ie 1730-1800. I like to think it is because of the power draw of my amazing brain and how hard i am thinking all day, 8) also well-known in my field that doing the eating disorders clinic makes you proper hungry as if ‘by proxy’.

I too have a couple of mates who have tea after the night ride. I just don’t think i would finish the ride with no tea! Sometimes i have a tiny little second dinner (in France this is quite seriously known as ‘le cinquieme repas’) after a night ride too.

Wilson family consensus is that it was the best one so far. In fairness to the venue some of this was down to Avon Tyrell ‘regulars’ too -improved camping facilities, we used the new cafe three times, the swimming pool twice and it seemed to be easier to get into archery/kayak etc this year. But the running of the bands, events and beer tent seemed better again too. That hair metal band was amazing :lol: and so was the last ever flight of the Vulcan we briefly spotted. Also glad of the increased marquee square-footage what with the weather this year!

A mate has one as a normal torch as opposed to bike light.
+ve: it is stupidly bright (no way 15000 lumens of course, and seems reasonably well made for a dealextreme typre light, better made than my solarstorm.
-ve: fairly tight beam. Massive! (Way bigger than the largest exposure bar lights) and will have less battery life than one that uses 18650 cells will last longer if you get better quality cells for it. However if you can get a foot/cleat and exposure bar mount that might be an ok way to mount it, and you won’t need to bend very far at all to rest your chin on it for warmth on cold rides. ;)

trailmonkey – Member
any public school accent

Clearly you are not the only one. :D http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/georgeosborne/9966717/Mockney-George-Osborne-backs-the-Briddish-who-wanna-work.html

Although always imagined Portillo was a great example of this, it turns out he actually went to a grammar school (in Harrow, mind!)

What annoys me more is the rythm and pitch that many of our politicians adopt for speeches and television, which feels very scripted and fake. Seriously, i would rather listen to Russell Brand getting righteous than Cameron, the difference between his normal voice and that “lets get the job done” speech voice he has (most recently heard in the Calais refugees speech) is just ridiculous.

I recall a thread on here once about the difference in crank length (equal sides) where a few of us confessed to never realising we didn’t have 175mm cranks, and then lovely sfb popped up saying he didn’t realise for a couple of years that his left and right ones were 5mm different! (Those of you familar with sfb’s bike may not find this all that suprising, but he certainly put some miles in on them! )

Fwiw dt comp (db) and dt champion (plain gauge) both have dt stamped in the spoke head. Butting on comps is less obvious than on other db spokes (as above its only 0.2mm thinner in the middle) but it is definitely detectable by hand or tool if its not obvious by eye.

Gowrie, 55% of a turnout of <66% of the total english-in-england electorate (your words) still doesn’t make over 50%! (Even if i grudgingly accept the political compass calucaltion that the lib dems were one little square to the right of Labour at the time of the last election, your figure is far far more like 40 than 50%)
And in any case labour will probably run candidates in all constituencies not just the english ones, whoever is in charge.

As for Corbyn, he comes across as a likeable fellow, but more than 50% of the English electorate voted for parties further to the right than the Labour party under Ed.

?!?
Turnout was only 66.1% -are you saying labour, greens, plaid cymru and snp only got no more than 16% of the vote? 8O

I split up a cheap cassette on mine and had a bigger jump somwhere in the middle but 13-30. It was fine. Iirc there is a good thread on mtbr about this, with people extolling the advantages of dishless wheels. If you already ride the hub you know how loud the freehub is!

jekkyl – Member

When you speak to your dog do you ever reply for your dog & give him/her a gruffly voice?

I often greet dogs I meet on the trail with a sort of ‘camp Muttley’ gruffly doggy voice. They don’t usually reply. Thinking about it i suppose I speak to animals (esp horses) when I am on a bike to reinforce that I am also a human even if i am moving faster than hey usually do, make a different noise (brakes/freehub/tyres, i wonder if our bikes make high frequency squeaks that animals hear but we don’t) and am not the usual shape for a human: ever seen a dog walk nonchalantly past fifty people of all shapes and sizes and then freak out at the two-headed one? (aka parent with baby in papoose or carrier.)

Desructive (tocranks and your nuts!): undo or even remove bolts, ride around and pop off kerbs until crank loosens and falls off. You will trash the tapers on the cranks but possibly not the bb.

I have also heard folk using car bearing pullers but you would need a smallish one i guess.

oh also if crank is alloy (which square taper ones aren’t tbf) then its a 10 minte job to dremel a slot in the bit where it meets the bb spindle and then use a big flat screwdriver to prise it open a bit till it drops off. obviously also destroys the crank!

ooooh, have we done this bit yet?

Unison backs Corbyn.

I must say I also expected unison to back Burnham given the seemingly moderate stance they have localy to me in health (as compared to unite/GMB on the one side and ‘spank me MR Hunt’ RCN on the other.)

first thoughts yesterday on hearing this were positive. FPTP failed to give the actual idealogical alternative (ie greens) the seats, maybe someone who is more than halfway there will give people in actually -approaching-marginal contrituencies a realistic alternative.

Tyres/tubes for me.
Rebuilt a wheel on my commuter with the nipples in a pot of old fork oil (this in itself is not a bad thing) but needed for work the next day, quick wipe down, rim tape on and tyre up. A week later the oil from the nipples has soaked through the cloth (velox) rin tape and perished the innter tube in a pretty spoke hole pattern all the way round the tube. Of course i did not realise this until the front unexpectedly flatted at 40mph down a 13% hill with traffic lights/queue at the bottom. 8O

Also on another wheel, using slightly too narrow plastic rim tape in road wheels means no matter how hard i tried to line it up righ there would always be a flat tyre by the next morning as tape slips over and 100psi tube nips itself on the edge of a spoke hole. Even glue doesn’t work.

Many years ago i torqued up an old octalink crank to stupidly tight trying to fix a creak that was actually the bottom bracket failing. Did it so tigh the threads stripped when i tried to remove it with a crank puller: had to dremel it off but did prompt purchase my first set of ht2 cranks which are still going and still great.

Emai kael from katec bearings. He has an entertaining posting history on here but as an actual business (essentially he sources nice bearings, repacks them with nicer grease and sells them on in kits for frames/hubs at a very sensible price) he really is great.
Chances are he has done bearings for your model/year before and will sell them cheaper than a peoper bike shop, only issue will be if your epic is one with those big spherical bearings on the shock which may be marginally harder to get hold of and indeed to press in/out without damaging them.

I will give it a couple of seconds and then ask if the person behind wants to go past. Then follow them! Nothing quite like following someone a bit faster to get you to realise that line x or line y is possible when you might have plumped for slower line z on your own.
This i do for racing as well as busy trails/trailcentres. i can’t imagine it costs me more than a couple of seconds, which hopefully i get back pushing a bit harder chasing the faster rider and seeing that it is possible to ride this or that bit a bit quicker on this or that line. Then everybody’s happy.

Uncarptegorised path? Trying to imagine what depth of trees etc there is between you and the park- can you just make (ie clear a bit and walk on repeatedly) a new path that leaves your neighbours’ builders to flytip in peace?