Definitely overthinking it here. If your dowel ain’t got the girth, wrap it in a bigger rag. As for getting fork grease into the uppers, the rockshox method is to stick some on the piston head and smear a bit inside with a mk1 finger. Shoving the piston assembly back in does the spreading out.

Now…

Misread this and thought it was about how to handle the moment you realise you’ve just knocked the end of the damper rod off.

That is a different kettle of fish. I presume you mean the thingy that ‘sets’ the bottom of the damper rod in the bottom of the lower. Ie you might have lost your rag with the bottom of the rod not releasing and overdone the ‘encouragement’?

If this is the case, the correct tool is a wooden cricket stump from one of those My First Cricket Set things. It knocked it back in and reset it so it hasn’t come out again in two subsequent services. Bodgetastic.

And to think we had a reciprocal returns agreement in place before we had a tantrum and quit the EU…

What would they say nowadays?

In the UK illegally? Go home or face being catapulted into a big fiery pit

Actually – deleted.

I can’t be arsed going down the rabbit hole of supposed equivalence etc.

I don’t think it really matters about your skin colour, background, culture or religion in the present Tory party

Not within the party itself – other than if it makes you feel the need to over-compensate.

The target demographic however…

alledged Buddhist

This guy was a Buddhist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_von_Ungern-Sternberg

Apparently it’s not all stopping traffic to carry grasshoppers to safety on the verge.

My daughter (14) got her first holiday/Saturday job recently.

So far it has been fantastic for her on a few levels:

1. Given her some confidence as hundreds applied.
2. Given her a new set of friends to dilute out some of the less desirable stuff with her school friends.
3. Given her another activity to look forwards to.
4. Given her £200 in her sky rocket to put towards a thing in the summer that my wife and I said we would half fund if she paid the rest.

The other day she let out a loud ‘Yes!’ which is not a regular occurrence. When I asked why, she said she has got five shifts over the crazy number of BHs and weekends in May.

We’re definitely viewing it as a good thing in the round.

John Crace on form as usual.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/26/rishi-sunak-keir-starmer-pmqs-sloganeering

When all is fury, the soundbite is king. But it comes at a cost to the national psyche. It degrades us.

Quite.

Perhaps it’s been explained earlier, but has anyone explained WHY I (or you for that matter) should “just accept” being poorer?

Sovereignty.

Wandering a bit off topic now, but this is what the modern tories want us to be – a nation of philistines governed by philistines.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/26/simon-rattle-britain-arts-classical-music-labour

From the article:

It wasn’t always like this. The opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics depicted a capacious British culture, accessible to all and appealing in multiple registers. That’s disappeared now.

How very true – on many levels.

And depressing.

The Rwanda deportation flights and new detention centres will join the 40 new hospitals and a nuclear power plant a year in the list of Tory fantasies/lies that will never happen.

And that can, in turn, be blamed on a woke/remainer/lefty/unpatriotic fifth column – aka The Blob as Thick Lizzy tried to characterise it. And a lot of people swallow this nonsense as it feeds some internal narrative of theirs.

The Tories have become Rich Energy! A brand with no product.

I was going to link to that Raphael Behr article yesterday. The last few year have clearly demonstrated that there is fertile ground for politicians willing to pander to prejudice and bigotry as well as disregarding reality as Project Fear or a woke conspiracy by The Blob – as Liz Truss characterised it.

There was another article earlier in the week about how Meloni is normalising the far right in Italy. That is unquestionably what the Tories are doing now too.

The likes of Braverman should be being laughed at, ridiculed and kept away from high office at all costs. Nowadays it seems the more sensible voices come from the backbenches whilst the nutters are in the ascendancy. And this will not go away – there will be a significant number of previously mute racists and bigots permanently emboldened by the actions of this government.

Disgraceful.

Can we ship Suella off to africa?

If that happened I would expect her to play every ‘card’ to avoid it, including an appeal to the ECHR.

Actualy, no, can we just set her on fire and burn the body in a ditch?

I can’t condone that – not acceptable given that a lot of the context around Braverman is the on the ground effects of her hate speech.

What is also unacceptable, though, is the notion that Braverman obviously has that all this nasty to foreigners stuff is a vote winner. It doesn’t reflect at all well on us as a country. Obviously culture war bigotry is all the Tories have left to deploy, but someone is obviously advising them that this is the way to go to pull in Labour’s lead.

Sad times.

‘Honest Bob’ Jenrick

Presumably accepted British values include conspiring with a tory donor to illegally evade tax on a housing development? Then admit to the illegality (only after being caught, obvs) whilst retaining your seat as a MP and remaining in ministerial positions?

Right you are Bob. If you don’t mind, I’ll be the judge of what I consider British values.

^^^

She doesn’t have to because these so-called policies amount to little more than virtue* signalling to a nasty tendency in our society. It is all designed to disguise the failure of this nationalist experiment and push Starmer into a pronouncement about international law and thus out himself as a supposed woke lefty.

This is the level, folks. A sad indictment of a first world nation.

*where hatred of foreigners is considered a virtue.

Andrew Mitchell was telling channel 4 news about the meetings he’s organised to discuss the options

And he’s the leading light on this with Cleverly where exactly? Either running around like a Beaker/Fawlty hybrid getting in everyone’s way or, more likely, slumped in the corner head in hands gibbering “make it all go away” whilst everything goes on around him. If these senior ministers are the best we can do we are ****.

Just dipping in for a quick reality check / straw poll. Won’t be hanging around.

Hands up who thinks having Diane Abbott in the Labour Party makes them more electable?

Not the Diane Abbott of 1990, the Diane Abbott of 2023.

Another vote for the Sawyer mini. Prices are through the roof since I bought it, but still well worth it.

I haven’t died yet.

Text alarm?

Funnily enough I didn’t get a text alarm.

Did they outsource that one to Dido Harding as well?

And just to add, this is the price you pay for elevating quarterwits like Cleverly to high office.

We have no friends so we had to send in the big boys to do half a job, doesn’t quite the same ring to it despite being far more accurate

Nailed it.

after Afghanistan its fairly obvious the government couldn’t give two hoots about UK nationals abroad

They’re abroad soaking up all manner of blasphemous abroadness, so they are borderline traitors anyway. They should look on the bright side, though, they’re still ahead of locals who have served us in some way. They can’t even get ahead of dogs onto the plane. But that’s their hard luck for not being born in the greatest country in the universe.

FWIW I think cock-up is way ahead of conspiracy here – having your own civilian nationals in direct danger abroad is never a good look, especially if you’re into all the chest-beating nationalism schtick. So I strongly suspect utter incompetence and a refusal to acknowledge that reducing our international co-operation might have consequences is to the fore here.

I particularly enjoyed a little aside on R4 earlier when Andrew Mitchell had to say for the second or third time that the only current advice for UK nationals was to stay indoors because it was dangerous to venture out. The interviewer just said “They’ve probably figured that out for themselves”.

And even that ignores the point someone on the ground said – stay indoors and await instructions – how? Given that communications are pretty much all down – how are those people huddling under their kitchen tables going to be reached?

on getting the job they all then booted out the existing civil servants in the department and appointed their own gang of nodding dogs, cronies and donors instead

It is known as State Capture in South Africa and it occurred most egregiously under Jacob Zuma. I can see some Tory ministers’ little grey cells starting to pulse at the implications of this if they can pull it off. Another opportunity if your world view is basically one where the system exists solely to get you and yours ahead in life.

Papyrus?

I thought the original wheel-building texts were engraved in an extinct language on ten mahogany tablets only rediscovered in the 1920s. Scholars then had to apply modern code-breaking techniques to decipher them?

Flippancy aside, I’m probably going to end up riding it once then swapping in the longer spokes and brass nipples.

To be honest, I hadn’t thought of that. Doh.

I’ll probably only be riding that wheel a couple of times before I swap in the new spokes, so I’m just going to keep a close eye on it.

Aluminium nipples. I’ve ordered some longer spokes and will swap them in ASAP – prob after one ride. Cheers for the help.

There’s definitely >3 full turns, so I’ll just keep a normal eye on them. Ta.

In something of an ironic twist, I snapped my front rim and taco’d it today. And got posted out of the front door as a result. Pretty much out of nowhere too. Spooky.

It’s mushy and tastes shit.

Not when it has been grilled by anyone Greek!

Edit: admittedly it has probably been grilled on something ingrained with a decade of lamb fat.

Matar Paneer would always be my go-to suggestion. Just make sure to slightly brown the cubed paneer on two opposite sides.

Saag Aloo – for a twist, use nettle instead of spinach – gorgeous.

To be honest, I like the cop-out student special too – a nice fresh veg stir fry with a tangy sauce.

mainstream parties chase the non-sensible voters by pursuing stupid policies

Something Starmer is doing by stating that there is no economic case to rejoin the EU, despite the massive elephant just behind him stating the opposite.

But hey, it seems my contributions are not wanted somehow, so I’m out. I don’t know what axes are being ground but I know when I’m not welcome.

Suffice to say that, whatever attempted re-branding people try, the phrase ‘A bit Brexity’ will always mean the same thing in general parlance. In spite of whatever sophistry the apologists try to come up with.

Au revoir.

Well it looks like the penny is dropping with the Tories – despite all the posturing by the likes of Braverman as she preaches to the already converted whose only other option is to vote BNP. I.e. the less Brexity nutters in prominence, the better their chances of nicking a GE result next year. As those distribution-points-seats point above make clear, the Tories don’t actually have to make up as much ground as you’d think.

Definitely not safe. Not only will the wheel be substantially weakened, the ripping out of spoke will have started cracks around the spoke holes – probably not drastically structural in themselves right now, but it is a front wheel and dentistry is expensive these days. 🙁

How crazy is it to have two rounds then leave the racers kicking their heels for two months? Add to that no DH before June and it is a weird old season and one I hope can be sorted in future.

Obvs May hasn’t been a busy month historically in the gravity calendar but surely they could manage one or two rounds? On the DH side both Losinj and Lousa suggest themselves. 🤷‍♂️

It’s been a slog for the last 6-8 weeks, that is for sure. But 3-4 dry days, some sun, some busy trees and a brisk wind has made our local patch 85% perfect again. Last night’s ride almost made up for the previous god knows how many. Unfortunately there is rain forecast for tomorrow, I’m just hoping it isn’t enough to bugger things up again as I’m out again on Saturday morning.

If I’m really struggling with the weather it is simply a matter of reminding myself that the fitness and bloody mindedness gained in the slop will stand me in good stead when conditions improve.

Take the positives.

Picking up on a sensible point/question from the previous page.

Yes, I’ve noticed an uptick in middle aged people being pretty poorly with whatever variant of covid is going around at the minute. I’ve no idea about their vaccination status, but they seem like functioning adults so I would guess they are as vaccinated as can be. It certainly isn’t going away, but we are now in the living with it stage so a certain level is to be tolerated. That is a result of vaccination and little else – the being able to live with it acceptably, that is.

I think it is fair to say that the initial lockdowns in particular had an effect on the mental health of a lot of people, to varying degrees.

But by now, nearly 18 months after the last partial lovkdown, I’m surprised that people are still feeling the need to air their issues into the ether of Internet forums. Even if someone was badly affected, I would have hoped they would have sought some help by now – or worked it out for themselves.

But then maybe spouting off into the virtual world is their therapy. It takes all kinds.

3.5% for that hangover!

What else is in it?

Bud is just fizzy water with a vague taste of something – and that something isn’t particularly pleasant. I’ve only ever had any volume of Coors on one occasion as a student and two things stood out – it didn’t taste of much and it gave me a crippling headache the next day. Both are so meh that if it was a stinking hot day and they were the only beers on offer, I’d probably have a lemonade and be glad of avoiding the hangover.

Is the original notion of this thread satire? Honestly, who can tell nowadays?

making a name for the White Hart for all the wrong reasons

Depends if the clientele think they are the ‘right’ reasons, I guess.

As with much of the service industry, generally the front line staff do a pretty good job, but they are prevented from doing that job in a significant % of instances by crap systems and/or back office. They then also bear the brunt of much of the frustration of customers. Our Evri guy is great like a lot of posters above. Oh, and a lot of customers are total arses as well.

Slightly off topic, but someone mentioned wicket keepers. My mate was a first rate keeper – now his fingers point in all sorts of weird directions. That is sort of funny until you see him try to undo a fiddly packet, write something down or even use a debit card machine. He’s 52 and will struggle with anything needing any fine motor skills as he gets older.