Does it have to be Oslo? I’m not dissing Oslo as I love Norway, but don’t forget somewhere like Stockholm. Lovely city and great if you like museums. The ‘Vasa’ museum is fantastic if you appreciate stuff like the Mary Rose.

Don’t discount the Suzuki V-Strom. You can get a good deal on the DL1000 as they aren’t imported into the UK anymore (EU Emission Regs). Just bought a GS after trading in my Strom Grand Touring. The engine on the Strom is fantastic and incredibly smooth for a V twin. First big ride was a trip to Scandinavia.

[/url]
Me and Travis in Norway[/url] by dsmavisto[/url], on Flickr

Also own an AT that is poorly and off the road. I’ll be sorting that out later in the year

Officially you are not really commuting as it’s not to a permanent place of work. Going to a meeting at a different office from where you work would be classed as business miles.

If anything happens, you will certainly not be covered by your insurance, if you tell them the truth. If something does happen and you lie, who is to know? Depends on how far the insurace company wants to take it.

If your company is insisting that you go to the meeting and you are not required in your contract to use your car for work, tell them you need a hire car or you can’t go.

supertacky – Member
“MotoGP is a **** joke right now”

How come?

Ridiculous penalties, not enough riders/manufacturers, largely boring races (with the odd exception)…

Unfortunately this is the case without Rossi up at the sharp end of things. Like the majority of motor sport, technology seems to win over skill.

It will be a sad day when Rossi retires!

Plug it into a normal socket. Then try holding the power button in for 30 seconds, release, and then try normal power up. May sound daft, but a similar thing happened to my brothers Dell machine a couple of weeks ago and this is what someone recommended to him and it worked.

And Ernie, Can you or TJ answer my question please I’d really like to know.

I have a genuine question for you. I’ve been wracking my brains to think of a socialist or communist country or state, now or in history that has progressed humanity in any positive way? And I don’t mean ideologically, I mean practically. You know, ‘What did the Romans ever do for us?’

TJ I am fully aware that the philosophy of Communism exists.

I was actually trying to make the point that communism has never really existed other than as a philosophy. The so-called communist countries and states are of course totalitarian regimes. That was also my point. Many of these countries profess to being communist, but are nothing of the sort.

It is a philosophy that had never had a working application.

Ernie I concede that Cuba is not communist, but I believe Castro is still the head of the Communist Party. But they are certainly not socialist. Huge human rights violations, torture of its people, doesn’t sound very social to me.

Your definition of Communism is a philosophy that has never existed. The nearest thing we’ve had in modern times is Cuba. Great health care, but that’s about all that can be said about it. And you can’t tell me that Castro wasn’t in charge. So much so that when he’s ill, relatives take over.

As for the industrial revolution. Take away the investors and the inventors and what have you got? Nothing, there is no scope for the industrial revolution to have begun. The proletariat would still have existed (those of lower social class, not specifically working class), but working on farms etc. Take away the proletariat and there is still the possibility that the industrial revolution may have happened.

You may well be able to explain the principles of opposing forces, but that does not make it a precise science.

I have a genuine question for you. I’ve been wracking my brains to think of a socialist or communist country or state, now or in history that has progressed humanity in any positive way? And I don’t mean ideologically, I mean practically. You know, ‘What did the Romans ever do for us?’

Whether rightly or wrongly, the only ones I can think of have been driven by violent domination or greed.

Ernie. I know exactly what communism is. What you misinterpreted or chose to ignore is that even in communist states someone has to govern i.e. be in charge. And that usually means someone ‘wants’ to be in charge.

One of the forefathers of socialism, Robert Owen, attempted to create self sustaining communes in America. They all failed, basically because he wasn’t there to govern them

As for your comments to my post and the post of Mogrim about the proletariat,you appear to be arguing about which came first, the chicken or the egg. Society may have needed the proletariat to provide the manual labour, but without the ideas and the money to support them, the industrial revolution would certainly not have happened.

As for economics and weather systems being a precise science. Sorry, but you are mistaken. We might understand the principles of how they work, but the fact that we cannot predict accurately the simple outcome of a number of parameters makes them anything but a ‘precise science’. It is certainly not irrelevant,as science virtually relies on our ability to predict a specific outcome.

By your argument the principles of plate tectonics are a precise science. Try explaining that one to the people of Japan.

Social democracy provides solutions to some of the most damaging and intolerable aspects of capitalism, but it does not offer a solution to all the problems.

The problem is that Social Democracy is only Capitalism with a conscience. Agreed that for anybody with some form of social conscience it would probably be a solution to many of the world’s problems, but like so many political ideologies, you need to take the people out of the equation.

True Communism is a great idea, but it will never work. Not only does someone have to be in charge, but more problematic, someone will want to be in charge. Then it stops being communism and becomes a dictatorship.

And do we want Social Democracy or Democratic Socialists? Human nature, power, greed, etc mean it will never work. Try and enforce the situation, like we tend to see with labour governments, and all we get is a excessive governmental interference (nanny state).

As for Marxism; politics of envy. I haven’t got anything, so you shouldn’t either. Ok it was born out of very difficult time and I can fully understand the desire for a classless society, but it cannot be relevant today. The majority of ‘aristocats’ now live in houses that they cannot afford to keep maintained and certainly cannot afford to repair. Who are the bourgeoisie these days? Footballers, Katie Price? And who are the proletariat? Is it hard working people like nurses (do you include doctors?) and teachers? Or is it the drugged up scum who make our lives a missery by burgling our houses and stealing our bikes? Or the parents of the ferral kids we see on our streets who don’t give a sh1t about what they are doing?

Where would we be if it hadn’t been for the capitalists? NO industrial revolution. No computers, all of us driving round in VW Beetle’s? As we discovered in the 70’s, so much of the publicly owned industry was starved of investment (and I know people will blame the previous torey governments, because that is what they’ve been told) but we wouldn’t have even had these industries if it wasn’t for capitalists in the first place.

The biggest lie in British Politics is the politicians themselves.

They will lie to everyone to get themselves in power.

Johann Hari obviously has his own agenda and plainly comes from one policital direction.

Some members of this forum, although well read and quite knowledgeable, also have political agendas and appear to subscribe to ‘If you can’t dazzle them with diamonds, baffle them with bull sh1t’.

I don’t care what anyone says, Keynes got it wrong, Thatcher got it wrong, Blair/Brown got it wrong and I’m sure the coalition will get it wrong too. And who will suffer? We all will.

Politicians have been playing with our lives for centuries, royalty before that. We need something radically new and we will never get it. Do you hear that, WE WILL NEVER GET IT.

We’ll continue to have the Tories screwing the people and Labour screwing the country.

And I’m sick of all of them.

iDave, If you don’t mind, I’d still like to know why fruit is not allowed? Most of the things I’ve read about low GI eating seems to think fruit is ok.

I also notice that whole milk has a lower GI than both skimmed and semi skimmed.

Another quick question if I may.

Why is there no fruit on the iDave eating plan?

Is this due to the sugar and therefore carb content?

iDave, you have obviously done a lot of work researching this, do you have any recommende reading?

The one I HATE the most is the Fine Young Canibals version of the punk classic “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)”.

Now that is how to murder a song.

I used to run a 52/42 with a 13-26.

I moved to a hilly area and wanted to enter a few local sportives so I changed to a stronglight compact 48/34. It seems like a huge change, but I only lost one gear from the top end and gained three at the bottom.

I also don’t get as much overlap.

Check out Sheldon Brown’s gear calculator.

You can plug in your current spec and see what difference a compact makes. You can then work out if you need a new block to give you a good spread of gears that will allow you to use both of your chainrings.

GEAR CALC[/url]

harryenthusiast

I’ve got a set of Campag Record hubs on some Mavic Sprint Rims if you want them?

If you are planning on going fully retro, these take a threaded 5 speed block.

Even if you don’t want sprints, you could use he hubs!

I was looking for somewhere to go for a motorbike tour in the summer. Looks like there are some nice roads in Luxembourg and the Nurburgring is only about 70 miles away.

I see a plan coming together!!

I had my 30 year old Harry Quinn refurbished a couple of years ago at Rob Jackson in Leeds. I wanted to use modern stuff on it and not do a ‘Classic’ refurb job. They replaced the rear brake bridge so I could get 10 speed campag hubs in and fitted a front mech hanger.

Other than that, I had to fit long reach brakes (Originally 27″ rims and mudguard clearance) and that was about it.

Did it cost more than a new bike? Yes!

Was it worth it? A big YES. I have my first good bike back on the road in better condition than when I bought it. If I’d gone the route of getting a new hand built frame made it would have cost 3 times as much.

They can’t consider Lithium for their batteries in the long term due to the fact that there isn’t enough Lithium on the Planet Earth to support the number of cars they would need to produce.

They’ll be fine as long as they carry a can of spare electricity in the boot!

Or some of Smudge’s batteries perhaps?

If anyone is interested, the shop in Pitlochry appears to be still there 12 years after my last visit. It is called Robertsons. I should have asked them to put a barrel down for me it might have been ready now

Robertsons Whisky Shop

Heaven

One of the beauties of whiskys and whiskeys is that they are so varied but you won’t like them all.

Went to a great whisky shop in Pitlochry that had many hundreds of them.

While I was in the area, I also went to the Blair Athol Distillery (home of Bells). Now I’m not a Bells fan, but when you did the distillery trip in the old days, they tell you about the 37 (I think that’s the number) of single malts that go into Bells and you got your wee dram at the end of the trip. Both me and the Mrs chose different single malts, hoping that we could find something good to take home. What was a huge surprise was that they both tasted like Bells. As a result, we necked them and went to the Glenturret Distillery in Creif. Now that is a whisky or rather was, not had any since it was taken over by the Grouse people.

As for how I drink mine, with a drop of water or ice if it’s whiskey.

Think I might have to go home and wake up my taste buds!!

Sorry, I forget to mention, if you want a great blended, try Chevas Regal.

Got 2 of these from Halfrauds only last week.

Boot Liner

There were on a half price special offer so I bought 2. 1 is big enough for the hatch of my Focus and the other goes on the seats when they are folded down.

Also watch out for the ones who put ‘Looks not important’. What they mean is looks aren’t important as long as you resemble Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt.

I got fed up too, so was ‘ruthlessly’ honest with who I was looking for (or who I wasn’t looking for). I got more replies telling me I’d get nowhere with that attitude than I had with my normal profile.

However, someone appreciated my honesty and she moves in after xmas. Happy Ending!

Do you live anywhere near a Decathlon?

Decathlon[/url]

Picked up a long sleeved wind shell for £4.99 on Sat in Stockport.

Mock me all you like, this is the beginning of a journey into faith, I’ll let you know how I get on with it.

You did ask for it Mr Nutt!

Mr Nutt,

I’ve not been reading this thread for a couple of days because I got bored with it. But some of the things you have been entering recently just don’t make sense.

Your first post seemed to be asking for help in deciding which way to go. Your later posts indicate that far from not knowing, you appear to have definatetly made up your mind (I suspect before you first posted). What I’m afraid you are experiencing though is not a leap of faith, but simple guilt.

Why would you change your persona so significantly? You make it sound like you were a real shit before you looked for answers in god (or faith).

I’m not sure you understand the meaning of faith. Faith isn’t something you believe in, it is the belief in something. I have faith that gravity will bring me down to earth when I fall off my 29er, it is NOT faith that brings me to the ground.

Faith will not make you do good things or stop you from doing bad things, try being a good person and not being afraid of some ultimate reprisal.

For reasons I don’t understand, people that don’t believe in God are at odds with the thought of other people believing in God, and the reasons they most often point to, in my experience, is lack of evidence

I don’t care who believes in god, my in-laws believe and that is their choice. My GF believes, sort of, and that is her choice too, but I don’t go round telling you that you are going to die the most horrible death and suffer for eternity because you believe in something I don’t.

I don’t want to believe and I certainly don’t want to worship something that if it really exists, has caused me and the people I love so much pain.

If there is a god and I really don’t believe that there is, it is not the benevolent overseer of the world that most religions portray them as, it’s a guy in a lab coat, wondering what happens if he pushes that other button!

Anybody ever read ‘Small Gods’ by Terry Pratchett?

One of the main premises of the book is that many gods exist, but some are more powerful than others due to the number of people that believe in them. If no one believes in a god, then the god ceases to exist. And if gods don’t live up to their end of the bargain (answering prayers etc) then people stop believing in them.

Having Faith is not a bad thing, it provides a clear path to doing “the right thing” but as with everything its important not to blindly accept but to question what is right, that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Sorry Mr Nutt, but I think you are mistaken in your thinking. Faith in itself does not provide a clear path to doing the right thing, faith in what someone tells you is the right thing is purely a choice you make, not necessarily the right thing to do. This is where religous doctorine comes into it.

I know you come from a CofE background and are defining your idea of what is right by the teachings of the bible, but please don’t confuse faith and religion. You can have faith in a religion and I can have faith that the rope I’m just about to swing from will hold my weight. But faith isn’t what makes me like going on the swing. In the same way, the 7/7 bombers had faith that what they were doing was the ‘right thing’.

schroedingerscat !! Good to see you again, i thought you were dead!

Personally I’d have taken the money (you have to be of a certain age for this one!!)

Interesting outlook on faith and religion this morning on the BBC News Pages.

I can’t forgive them, I keep praying that God will curse them”

Esmael Mangudadatu Governor of Maguindanao

However, it can be strongly argued that without the unity that religion brings we’d have no civilisation.

I’m sorry, but religion does not bring unity. That comment is so misguided.

Religion has brought nothing but disunity, from Herod to the present day.

The fear that religion instils in people maybe, but not religion.

Mr Nutt,

Sorry for the question, but do you think that by having faith in a religion (for want of a better description), that your luck may change or that you may find a meaning for your life?

I don’t want to stop you from reading the bible, but I’m not sure you will find the answers there. For one, it is not an easy book to read and as so many scholars have found, it is open to huge misinterpretation. If you want to read and try and understand it, go to one of the Christian bookshops and get some of the guides that are available. They at least cut through the Thees and Thous and Therefores and try to make it understandable in plain English.

Also for balance, try Dawkins ‘The God Dellusion’. I also found that heavy going and needed a dictionary to look up some of the words he used.

There seesm to be something in the human condition /psyche that means we seek meaning /patterns everywhere and we have to have a reason for everything/ God/religion/ deities are a simple one to create but very difficult to counter /disprove

Now I’m not saying that Scientology is a religion, because having read the actual history L Ron Hubbard, it is obviously the dellusions of a third rate Sci Fi writer, but it just goes to show what can be created from the mind of one man, believed by a few misguided people, and now cannot be disproved!

I was always a questioning agnostic. Married a Christian (in a church) and was quite happy to embrace the church, but perhaps not in the same way she did due to her being brought up in a Christian household, but I was willing to be shown that there was something in it.

One month after our wedding she was diagnosed with breast cancer, two years later she died.

After a great deal of soul searching with her family (mine aren’t religious), clinical depression, attempted suicide and finally the removal of my head from up my arse I am now a fully paid up Atheist.

If there is a god, how can a god that is supposed to love us (his children) keep destroying our lives? I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who, when something bad happens think exactly this, personally I cannot let myself believe this. If I do, it eats me up inside and all I do is hate something that, to be honest, isn’t worth my time and energy hating. So, as a result, I am spiritually devoid.

It is only human to try and find a reason for something that happens that cannot be explained, In reality, shit happens. To you, to me, to small children, to innocent mothers walking in the park, sometimes there is no rhyme or reason as to why bad things happen.

And, and this is a big AND, if there is a god why would I want to align myself to something that lets all this shit happen. And please don’t insult me by giving me all that nonsense about free will and choice, it is an excuse for religious leaders to pass the buck. I often joke with friends that I want to be buried with a baseball bat, because if there is a god out there somewhere, I’m after him big style

In response to the OP’s question about MTFU, I let myself believe for too long that something or someone had it in for me and that I had done something, or my wife had done something that had let this happen. As I said before, shit happens. It isn’t a case of MTFU, you just learn to accept it. I’m pretty much at peace with the world, ok, I still have a few issues, but they are usually with tangible physical beings (I hate politicians), not your imaginary friend,

On a slightly more humorous point, I’ve been lucky enough to meet someone else who I think the world of and who thinks the world of me. But, if there is a god and heaven and all that, my wife will already be there. I’m an Atheist so I’m not going at all. My GF is a Christian, so she’s going to be up there too at some point. Being a bit big headed, neither one of them would want to spend eternity without me, so do I get a guest pass or something? And if I do, do I spend a week with each, how will it work? I bet the two of them will talk about me behind my back anyway!!

Didn’t mean ‘Logic’, suppose I should have said logical thought. Mathematical problem solving, especially algebra, requires logical thought processes. First year degree covered logic gates and all that stuff.

Computers wouldn’t have been invented if it wasn’t for mathematicians.

Not sure about needing A level maths to study computing either.

You still need to learn logic though and unfortunately one of the best ways to learn logic is with maths. The ICT course taught in secondary schools, no matter what anybody says, has more to do with design than with computing.

After being made redundant the last time, I thought I might pass on some of my computing skills by becoming a teacher. They taught them how to make a website look pretty, with the appropriate design software, but didn’t teach them how to do a simple calculation in a spreadsheet. A month into my first PGCE teaching practice I quit. Nightmare!!!!!

Yep. Shame because an understanding of C helps you pick up higher level languages

Couldn’t agree more. I believe you don’t need ‘A’ Level maths now to study computing at Uni. They call it Computer Studies too, to take the science part out. I still remember my first year course in Algorithmics with Pascal. Now there was a highly typed language! Never got on with Pascal, but found C relatively straight forward.

Memories, memories :)