I sell a lot on discogs (record collector website/marketplace) and I live near a small 2-counter post office, with the nearest others being a mile and a half or a few more three or four miles away. (This in a city of 270,000! 🙄 ) Our post office man sometimes huffs a little bit when I turn up with a pile of stuff if there is a queue, I suppose because people don’t like queueing and he worries that people will migrate to the other six-counter ‘nearby’ post office.

But if there is no one else in the post office at the time, surely the few pence he makes on one parcel is better if it is ten parcels in one customer and actual money transaction. ??

Peter O’Sullivan was already taken.

The tories have just got in, so labour where responsible, for the privatisation of care homes,or should that be the local councils who owned the homes.

Its been happening since the mid-to-late eighties down here, despite local authority ping-ponging between labour and tory. Some were local authority and some NHS (so funded via strategic health authority via central government, not local authority.)

In fact the first one I remember closing was called ‘Tory Brook’. Oh the irony.

[edit] oh and in the 80’s the Care in the Community Act (guess who!) made a huuuuuuge market for the residential care of people with mental health and learning difficulties, largely catered for by profit-making private homes. Funnily enough it didn’t save much if any money, but a significant proprtion of funding for care of these people was paid into private enterprise rather than the salaries of hospital workers. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Bupa may be a charity but they have to compete with mostly private homes, whose owners are in it to make money, looking after your nan is a secondary concern.

The current move away from primary care trusts is leaving the door wide open to this happening to your health visitors, in-and-outpatient mental health services, non-acute medical rehabilitation and loads more. 🙁

Breakspear Triple is ACE.

Blandford fly at the mo and then blonde leffe (special at Tesco’s 😳 )

Mrs Julian really likes Poachers’ Choice and Longdays at the moment. Oh, how I love her. 😀

rp16v – Member

im on a 16″ soloist and running a 60mm stem im about 5’9″ and suits me fine going to try a 80mm tho as i need to try and help myself up the hills so more room may help breathing(aparentley)

…bear in mind the soloist has a slightly shorter (by an inch?) top tube than the life and breath.

plumbing/work cost not an issue as f-i-l will do all that, and place where we would put it is quite big well sited for easy plumbing using old pipes. Just that father-in-law thinks we will be fine with a 30l under/over sink type unit for much less money. Surely that is good for a couple of sinks worth of washing up, not a family bathroom?

Thanks for your comments folks. Personally i think combi is the way forward, but funds may dictate electric hot water heater….

so where are we with hot water tank capacity? Is 30l ridiculous then? I can’t help thinking 100+l is more realistic.

you’re not going to get much of a bath out of 8 gallons of water?

…was my thought too. Assuming my favoured hot/cold ratio for baths which at very best is 3:2, a 3kw heater with 30l tank gives me 50 litres of just-about bath temp water in my 140l bathtub. And no more hot water for another couple of hours. Hmmmmm….

I bought a cd by ‘Goats Don’t Shave’ once, based on the band name. It was crapola.

I bought an LP by ‘Velo Deluxé’ (sic) because it was nearly the name of the band i was in at the time. It was pretty bad but not as bad as us. 😳

Mr Nutt, mine is a ‘top 20’ but i suspect they were rebadged for whichever 60’s catalogue was selling them at the time. I re-earthed mine wrapping the wire round one of the bridge posts. Mine was pretty microphonic too. The pots are well scratchy and the ‘tone control’ may as well be a switch. Next time I’m at my folks’, I’ll dig it out and have a look at it for you…

Problem with them used to be mainly that if they loosened on a ride it was nearly impossible to correct.

One of the ‘extras’ you could buy for the original cool tool was a headset spanner.

I also remember threaded headsets that used the notch in the steerer and a couple of toothed spacers that bit together to stop your headset undoing itself mid ride. Never understood why all threaded headsets didn’t have the same arrangment. Stack height maybe? (added up to 8mm to it iirc)

my local b&q had a 2″ deep case with moveable dividers in the clearance bit for £3 yesterday. You won’t get much else in there though. My ‘main’ bike toolbox was from homebase years ago and is just what you describe.

My bb7’s were just as good at stopping as my juicy 5’s, though with the same pads and rotors that is pretty understandable. I also had speed dial 7 levers so feel and grabbiness could be adjusted much like avid did with the more expensive versions of the juicy and elixir. They also did not/could not boil, and were easy to set up and maintain. Unless you go through a set of pads in one downhill run, then weight is the only disadvantage to these brakes. They are nothing like the bb5 (different pad shape and less adjustable), that’s like comparing a hope mini to a hope moto.

[edit] funny, hairychested, my juicy 5’s were the quietest of the 8 sets of disc brakes I have owned. Had a ride on a mates bike today and his elixirs don’t like wet much though 😕

From the nukeproof site, underneath pedal with axles/seals uncannily similar to other nukeproof/kona/answer/superstar flatties:

Available in either black or yellow the Electrons are going to cost just £34.99!

Hurrah, so this means Superstar can bring the same thing out in daft colours for an even more affordable £25. 😀

I’ve got a guitar just like that round my parents. Plugged in, mine sounds like someone playing it loudly 2 houses away 😕

My father can arrange.

Elfin, I don’t think the going rate for dowries on Swindon girls is too great Elfin. Try High Wycombe or Hemel Hempstead.

disappointed to see no knopfler on the tracklisting for local hero though. 🙁

Elfin: hug and a horlicks?

solamanda – Member

That Dualco gun in Steve’s link, is that a refillable container which you just wack any grease into?

Yes. It’s ace too. Mine has some cheapish castrol car grease from a massive tub in it for general purpose stuff (seatposts, bolts etc.) It might be my favourite tool if that’s not too nerdy.

Don’t forget your sweatbands 😀

I have 3 grease guns including the above one and i would say its definitely the worst. Mine dribbles grease out long after you have stopped pumping and have enough grease already. You don’t really really need a gun but its slighly tidier and easier. But not with that one ^.

Dualco grease gun from whoever is cheapest on ebay, [EDIT try here though ](the standard threaded fitting not just for bike grease, a good tool supplier may well have it cheaper than a bike shop.) and either shimano bright green grease or rock’n’roll super web for hubs IMHO.

Boards of Canada never made the charts and never heard in adverts, but pop up all the time as background to sciency/nature documentary stuff.

Have i missed another argument about correctly bedding in disc pads or hope hubs vs xt ones?

This thread is useless without the Zoofighter. I believe he legitimately pwned us all last time this came up.

It’s not about powdercoating again is it? 😆

Lovely products which depend a little on who instals them, but for me the Magnet trade prices versus ‘public’ prices is a huge (think 60-65% at the moment) eye opener. As usual with home improvment stuff, it’s who you know and how much of their tradesperson’s karma they are prepared to share with you.

I remember even in 1993 my school getting hung up on ‘c or above for 5 ‘core’ gcse’s’. As I remember our headmaster got really shirty as loads of girls did this, and only 3 or 4 lads. I don’t think anyone was suprised about that though.

Surely the Sunline one is better if it costs twice as much as the other two though? 😉

brant – Member

Nobody playing “name the factory”?

I know. I’ve been

…so what did you order from them then Brant? Or alternatively why didn’t you?

-dumb and dumber (“Mrs Samsonite!”)
-labyrinth (“Saraaaah!”)
-predator (“…and double it.”)
-ooooh, pretty much any Arnie film come to think of it.
-Transformers The Movie (80’s one)

And I loooooove the Princess Bride. Nothing guilty about that though.

KT, i’ll be a monkey’s uncle if i can tell any difference apart from the colour of the faceplate and the logo on them. And on-one list 60mm as 110g, ssc list 50mm as 108g and 70mm as 116g. Same weights too shirley?

Used thomson for strength but not necessarily weight. Hope and USE seem to come up less often secondhand, hopefully bgecause they are ace and still attached to peoples’ bikes. Depends how much of a hurry you are in, and how weight-conscious you are.

If it was me I would get the on-one, er, one though. £30 shiny new with a warranty seems great value.

They are most likely both from the same taiwanese manufacturer’s catalogue. But there is nowt wrong with that, dmr and on one have been doing it for years and superstar for less years, with better value kwality to the less brand-snobby rider. That both on-one and ssc chose the same stem is encouraging in terms of it being good. What raises a smile is that if the ‘rrp before discount’ prices are to be believed, on-one were selling the same product for more than 50% more than ssc were. 😆

Depends on what tyre size/pressures you want, the quality of the build, riding style and weight in that order, IMHO.

But on balance it sounds as though you’d be wanting xm719 or even 521 (cheaper and heavier but well good in my experience.) Also if you get into 521 territory look at dt e540 for similar wieght/profile/strength. I think crc do the last 2 pretty cheap at the mo.

Just get someone good to build them! Fancy/tough rims will still pringle and break spokes if you get them built poorly/in a hurry.

+1 for Certini’s Tony. When he finds the time to get round to it they are very good. And have a haggle with him, even if you don’t get much off he is usually a most entertaining person to bargain with 😀 .

Cyclescene also not bad IIRC.

Or if you’ve already got the bits, I’ll do it slighly (but only slightly) less well for a bottle of Soave.

ohlins rear shocks for motorbikes would seem to be rather better value for money than the ones they manufacture as the cane creek double barrel too. 😕

+2 for reba team. I suppose if you want the option to go longer and don’t mind a tiny bit more weight, a revelation u-turn with black box damping (for this is what makes the reba team so much better) would also be good. Not sure you will find one for less than £500 new though. That link up there is a bargain!

Last time elixirs were cheap i recall there being some very poorly bled ones sent out from whichever places had them cheap. My mate’s first set certainly were: I would budget for a bleed kit or getting a shop/mate to do it for you though.

Top quality ironicalness srom sbz there. 😆

In the sense that I find this Incarnation Of George a bit less contrary, then no I don’t miss any of his previous versions at all.

Crispybacon has dropped off here a bit lately. He must be training or something. 😉

I liked this comment in the mtbr thread:

I would venture to guess companies like L&M, Niterider, etc have paid big money for ads in that magazine and had a few words of their own in there.

…and frankly someone that is bothered about getting mud stuck in their cooling fins isn’t someone you should be interested in doing business with! FWIW there is way more crap stuck in my wife’s exposures than in my mate’s troutlight. And neither of them care.