I really hope there’s a substantial silent majority wanting Harris.

It’s hard to remain optimistic
Trump saying Jan 6th was a day off f love, Vance said the 2020 election was rigged…

All of that crap should see them marginalised, yet half the country loves it ?

In the last election the democrats had a significant advantage in postal and early votes, so I hope that is indicative of an energised opposition to another Trump term (got to find hope where I can).

worryingly The Republicans are heavily pushing the vote early idea, Musk & Thiel have been pumping a lot of money into tech and ground games to do just this as well as using cash to bribe voters indirectly https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/10/07/elon-musks-pac-is-paying-47-for-each-solicited-petition-signature-from-a-swing-state-voter-heres-why-its-controversial/

the press, Congress, the courts — they’re not going to let him be a dictator. ”

I don’t disagree, but he’s done a pretty good job of morally bankrupting both the Republicans in Congress and the supreme Court

Pages are loading much quicker all of a sudden

are the hamsters on amphetamines?

I did think him stranding all his fans in the desert he cause he hadn’t paid his coach bill was quite amusing

What’s not so funny is that everyone of them will still vote for him, without once wondering if he can’t run a small gathering of people on a farm, why he’d be able to run a country

Polls are still incredibly tight, especially in the swing states, 5 million votes have already been cast and it’s exactly 3 weeks until polling day.
It’s hard to be optimistic at this stage.

Signed wife & myself to morning yoga at our hotel in Amsterdam, mighty hangover had me sweating and queazy was over an hour long too

Camden skatepark at lunch, fortunately the crappy weather kept all the rad kids away, so no one got to see me fall on my arse trying to go off a curved bank, bodyweight workout last night and a 5k run on tuesday

From Farages attack on Jenrick, Id say he’s more worried about him than Badenoch

Ive no doubt that Jenrick will flip flop all over the place, but adaptability rather than inflexibility isnt a bad thing in politics

Badenoch who is now the firm favourite, will cause Labour the biggest headaches of any of the candidates.

I think she’ll cause the biggest headaches for the conservatives, she could start a brawl in a nunnery, she has an impressive ability to wind up both friends and enemies, Cleverly was a far bigger threat

however the unknown is how many current Tory voters would stay if it lurched (further!) to the right – many have already defected to the Libs, and equally how many Reform could vote Tory,

The Tories lost way more seats to the lib dems than to Reform, that belies the numbers obvs, but reform overperformed in specific seats.

Conservative + Reform share of vote is more than labour in this election

Polling showed that at least 1/3rd of Reform votes were never winnable by the Tories

Trying to out-farage Farage has been a disaster for the Tories and assuming that Farage will align with Badenoch or Jenrick is entirely missing the point of farage.

Cleverly was by far the best shot for the Tories, they’ve just blown that, Labour now have to deliver, that will determine the next GE, but this has certainly given Starmer breathing room

This is hilarious

https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1844024791759749594

Starmer, Reeves & Co will be ecstatic

Schools were shut for far too long as were most walks of life. You reap what you sow. Many on here were all for closing everything down indefinitely by the way, even after the vaccine was rolled out. You know who you are. You can’t have it both ways. Many were and remain ignorant to the effects of locking people up in their homes for months on end and homed in on the fear and scaremongering tactics that were being driven by the media, much of which never materialised. The UK government has since admitted this albeit very quietly.

without wishing to derail the thread, theres some truth in this, but a lot of ignorance & nonsense, if COVID came again tomorrow, we’d probably do something very similar, why?  because the NHS still could not cope with such a huge numbers , that really hasnt changed, Through my work I saw how many urgent cancer ops are cancelled because of a regular winter flu surge.

Schools could well stay open (and remember they were kept open for many key worker kids) BUT , COVID unlike regular flu didnt have mortality rates that hit the young the way they did the old .

As the inquiry has shown the government planned for the wrong pandemic (a more flu like one) but thats the problem with novel viruses, you never know their characteristics until theyve been studied.

What I would say is that schools are now better able to provide online teaching: all of my eldest 2s homework is online and all our parents evenings are now virtual, which is much easier, those first homeschool zoom class assemblies were chaos!!

(Our scout group went entirely online thanks to the hardwork of our GSL and unlike many groups we didnt lose kids or leaders, we did a weekly meet, virtual campouts and other activities)

Much of the damage we are seeing now is because our social safety net is already broken, theres no way it could cope with lockdowns, look at the insane ideological battle the government had with Marcus Rashford about feeding the least well off kids…

Very tough one

as a parent with 4 kids who were aged 5-11 when lcokdowns started, the homeschooling was tough, luckily my wife wasnt working and my work was split into shifts and I was on 2pm-8pm so could help homeschooling in the morning, were also lucky enough to have enough tablets/computers to do the online work. We also did mandatory daily family walks, like every day! around local area, lots of bike rides etc  again we were lucky that we could do this, but I think it really helped. Our neighbour is head of maths at our secondary school and she couldnt praise us enough for doing that (she set up a home gym in her garage for her 3 teenage sons, which she credits with keeping them all sane)

Even tho my youngest  were just starting school, I think that they seem to have been absolutely fine and are doing very well now academically, I also think with 3 siblings to play with our kids got plenty of interaction , but again single children families for example would have been much tougher

With my Cub Leader hat on…….. we have a few that are very poorly disciplined, is it worse than pre-covid?, no I really dont think so. there have always been little gits acting out, for whatever reasons!

With a one caveat, the single child kids do seem to have a bit less independence and confidence. But teaching independence and those kind of confidence building experiences is what cubs is good for imho.

Maybe being in a mostly middle class area our group selects for kids that fared better, as always its those at the bottom that get hit the most, saying that our schools had quite a lot of key worker kids in school and I know they tried to keep up food packages etc for those on free school meals.

I ride with an inspirational primary head who has a school in a “challenging” area. He’s adamant that his biggest issue is parents attitude.

I would add that this is definitely rings true and Im not sure if the perfect storm of covid & , ‘having enough of experts’ + social media etc has had a bigger effect on some parents being a major factor

Yoga last night then a 5k run between rain storms tonight, still tired from the weekend!

Trutune is a good option for lighter rider

Never watching Grave of the Fireflies again since having kids.

Amazing film but won’t be watching again

Recording threads
I remember bits of Threads but didn’t really watch it as I was about 12

Agree about the anker earbuds, very impressive

I need some new trainers, well they be discounted?

Absolutely spanked after 46km round the Grwyne Fawr loop

Weather mostly stayed dry, until the last few km it started to rain heavy and I got a pinch flat that wouldn’t seal after the last rocky descent

We did a conkers night at cubs last week

I remember spending ages dreaming up hardening strategies for conkers, now all the cubs have no idea how you n play!

I think that the best case scenario is for Israel to destroy Iran’s missile manufacturing facilities because they are a clear threat to Israel, don’t touch oil facilities or anything else and de-escalate into ceasefire because the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah have lost their missile supplies. Discuss

Iran’s defense industry is pretty big, and exports have been rocketing (boom tish)  theyre big in drones too, I cant see Israel wanting a  full scale attacxk on Irans manufacturing right now though, even netenyahu must know it would enflame tensions even more. At some point the IDF will want to limit how many fronts they are fighting a war on at once?

not sure why the BBC was doing a  promo for his new book anyway

I see Vance seems to have sleezed to a narrow victory in the VP debate last night

I doubt will change many minds but polls are still 50/50 and a few lately edging back toward Trump in the swing states, plus war in middle east (& rising pump prices) and hurricane all are headwinds for Harris

Dementia Don will be pleased on the whole

A damp 5k run this evening

Giuliani didnt work for free by choice, just another of trumps gullible marks

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-law/giuliani-says-trump-campaign-rnc-owe-him-2-million-in-fees

Who fills the vacuum?

I dont think youll ever fill up Truss’s head

1

Specialized probably got an even better deal on the groupsets by going wireless only

Shimano would be better looking at just making mechs tougher (eg Transmission) , and linkglide lighter

Cub camp this weekend,

Spent the day at Whipsnade zoo then a 6km hike to our campsite, walked 21km in total yesterday!
5 hours of interrupted sleep then activities and breaking camp this morning
Some gentle yoga before bed I think…

Filthy 10k in the rain round the local trails streams while my son was at scouts, had to hose down myself and the bike

fascinating post blokeuptheroad!

Rustynissanpirate my mate had a very similar experience on his Jekyl at the Megavalanche, I think he managed 3 days riding out of the week we were there, the rest of the time it was being repaired.
He was very annoyed when the French shop mechanic waggled the floppy back end and said it was made of cheese!
At the time Jerome Clementz was winning EWSs on his.

Not happened today, been busy doing various jobs around the house but not enough to claim it as exercise

chuck a yoga vid on youtube and get some stretching in before bed

The area around Euston is not particularly nice, imho,

Directly by Euston, no

walk a few 100metres and youre at granary square which is fine, you can also do the tourist thing up in Camden

The premiere inn hub at Kings X is cheap for the area, has free bag storage and is nice enough if you want a basic room, you can walk along the Canal to see the Monkeys at London Zoo and Beer + Burger near granary square is great

You can watch live counts of mail in ballots in Florida, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania here

Pretty meaningless obviously with 40 days still to go!

https://projects.votehub.us/pages/early-voting-tracker

I mean, If you said to me, who is the most reprehensible person alive, Trump would probably top the list, but only because Epstine ‘hung himself’.

Trump will end up implicated in the P Diddy scandal, either supplying underage models via his agency or a video of him at a party will emerge………….. and the MAGA loons would still vote for him

Went for a 5k run this evening, my usual route underwater in a few places so ended up a bit of a tour of industrial estates!

I see his social media company shares are tumbling and thatll be leaving the chumps that bought into it, out of pocket

Race is still incredibly tight, polling is still 50/50 in those swing states

He does seem to be low energy these days, even saying he wont run in 2028

imnotamused
Free Member
Is it possible to replace a 2 pot Shimano SLX caliper with a 4 pot? No need to change the lever?

Yes, same levers

Ryan leech yoga after cubs tonight

I went from deore 2 pots to deore 4pots

The 2 pots were fine but the 4 pots just do everything better, they still stop me fine but at 90kg after a day riding on the 4 pots my hands are less fatigued.

Also got the ruxton but dy armour, really happy
Might have to start riding some big stuff to justify it

Was visiting my parents in dunstable yesterday

nearly didnt make it back home, flooding was nuts, the area had over 100mm rain in about 6 hours, the average for the whole of September is about 50mm!!

https://twitter.com/ChrisKimberley/status/1838140336469577818