Doubt the Coop staff can do it though which is a pity.

I dunno, they’ve done it in the past…..😁

Story behind the picture is that the kid had been walking in stealing alcohol, getting drunk with his mates in the park opposite. Manager called the police, who wouldn’t attend, I think the above is about attempt/shopping trip no 5 of the day for the kid.

Unfortunately for the manager it made national (and international) news, kid was 16.

When I worked in a well known wine merchants 20+ years ago we had people walk in and pick up cases of champagne and walk out casually. It was far more common in London, but as our shop was close to a main road with good, quick escape routes they targeted us regularly.

I’ve got very expensive (locally reared, pedigree Dexter cattle) steaks and beef joints in my shop at the moment, they are the only thing we ever really have nicked….. 🤷‍♂️

Meh, for non cyclists it will seem like a respectable challenge. For roadies, or anyone else that’s done L2P or similar prob not so much.

Monkeyboyjc any info on the Komraid stuff, it looks really nice tbh. The only thing is I’m not really much of a KOM kind of a guy so…

No experience of them myself but I’ve only heard  good things. Closing down sale apparently, owner says Brexit is the main cause.

I really enjoyed it – yes it’s long, yes there are parts that are a little disjointed. But…… they’ve packed in alot of story into those three hours, with blatant skips in narrative, it’s a film at the end of a day not a book.

40% off everything at Komraid cycling clothing

https://komraid.com/

Closing40 is the code

We had a partial concrete base in existence on the site of our prefab unit, but were unaware of depth etc. we used 6 treated railway sleepers as a base and craned in the unit.

If the railway sleepers ever rot out we can jack the unit up, slide them out and replace them.

Aw, for the first time in my CRC order history, I have an order stuck “Processing” for 2 days. It’s my lovely bargain wheel dish gauge, so maybe I’ll have to keep using the old homemade one 🙁

I ordered some stuff on Sunday – only changed to dispatched last night….

I run a postoffice – we’ve several customers who use their childhood picture stamp collections……

Pinta for us as we make no money on processing the items. They also come in and complain when royal mail either add additional charges or refuse delivery and return to sender because RM records on stamps is pants and the don’t recognise a limited release picture stamp from 1981.

Personally I’d send them to royal mail and exchange them for the new barcoded stamps.

Edit: just noticed that the Wiggle ‘top features’ say it’s 234g

Tbh I thought that sounded heavy for a carbon flat bar.

Bare in mind that hope space is free postage, that puts it at the same level price wise as 99% of shops on the internet 🙄

Thing is Sainsbury’s will refill the stock, making that investment worthless. CRC won’t be.

All the remaining CRC/wiggle stock could be sold by the administrator to one buyer who could do the same thing and stick it all on eBay. The buyer just takes on the element of risk and reward as well as selling fees and increases prices accordingly.

How many carbon fibre specialists does the Isle of Wight have?

Lots of high-end boat and aircraft specialists that’ll deal with carbon fibre repairs, no bike frame specialists I know of though.

Buy? No not at that price with no shock…

200 maybe, take to repair place, even then, with paint, it’s prob gonna work out at a similar price to an undamaged frame with a shock.

I’ve no issues with bulkbuy eBay business selling on stock, the prices will be over inflated as they have to take on the stock, store and be prepared for a slow sell.

FB marketplace being flooded with 5-10’s when the ‘sale’ stock @ Frazers is still available pisses me off a little.

I’ve the ‘old’ 2022 model, which is excellent. The FB wild group is a good community of other wild owners. My advice on the 2023&2024 models would be buy some spare headset spacers and at least 2 plastic motor covers when you can – both are in high demand due to the plastic being crackable.

There are also various aftermarket motor protection systems, invest in one.

The bike itself, geo etc is excellent though 👍

The 625 in my 22 is good for 24ish miles of hard use in constant emtb mode – prob close to 30 in tour. I’ve not felt the need for an additional battery, as it’s a good day out.

Pretty sure that there’s a time limit on a section 75 charge back – 3 or 6 months? Something like that. You’d also need the agreement by your card supplier that the item was faulty at the point of purchase iirc.

My bank balance is thankful it’s only in XL 😳

The only ‘police approved’ one I know of is a Master Lock combination safe – which is according to the lock picking lawyer is easy to pick, but you’ll need to be a skilled burglar with the correct tools so will foil most impromptu thieves imo. Down side is they are generally more difficult to use than a more expensive push button safe.

All of the push button ones are easy to hack as you generally can ‘feel’ which four  buttons are the combo, and you usually don’t need to put them in order.  The cheaper push button safes are also a little tricky to use if your not used to regularly getting in them.

The Wahl Corded / Cordless Super Taper seems to be the default answer to any clipping questions…. I’m waiting for my current cheap cordless set to die before investing in a cordless super taper myself. As for corded or cordless? Personal preference 🤷‍♂️

I had been an hp instant ink user for years – until recently.

Printer had an update and just wouldn’t work. I spent around two weeks and 15 hours in total on chat and calls to hp to try to resolve it without success. Every time I thought it had been fixed it would download the update again and stop working.

So I bought a Brother and haven’t been back to HP. Shame as I really liked instant ink and the hp printers. But when a software update kills your printer for no reason 🤷‍♂️

Allen Bates saying the government should see the post office for a quid pissed me off tbh. There absolutely no chance of getting a better deal for SPM’s with a private companies as he suggested.

Did anyone watch Panorama last night on Royal Mail delivery failures?
First thing every SPM said when watching was that the journalist had underpaid on every one of the items she sent to test the system…. All should have been large letter rather than standard 1st class – we’ve all been shocked that any arrived at all….

I did two days last year with a couple mates. Rented an Airbnb a few miles away on the coast and drove in each day in one car. The queue in to the car parks can cirtainly take a while. Get tickets posted to you rather than pick up in site as again this is a big queue.

As for other hints and tips. Do the super car section last, not first as it’s right by the entrance and gets very very busy in the morning. If your interested in the hill climb cars, when they depart for the start and return to the paddocks is a good time to have a good look and listen to the engines, I found the actual racing up the hill a little dull as they just zip past unless the driver wants to do some donuts on the first corner area.

Look at the time table, if the rally stage is on, get a tractor to the top of the site and watch some.of that and the off road buggies and work your way back through, doing super cars last.

There are plenty of food stalls, but it’s expensive (£12 a crappy burger) so you can take a pack lunch, best food I had was the Yorkshire pudding company? Full roast dinner wrapped in a giant Yorkshire. If your planning on drinking, take your own beer as it’s far cheaper than the bars on site.

Theres absolutely loads to see and do and lots and lots of stalls. Like I said we had two days and still didn’t see everything….lots of walking though so wear good shoes and suncream / raincoat.

There were/are numerous bugs that horizon thew up which caused the system to generate false discrepancy’s.
Some were simpler to track than others (if the paper trail and digital was kept), double stacking of cash withdrawals for example (cash withdrawal goes through twice rather than once). Frozen screen and repeat hitting the enter key was another cause of multiple transaction logs. Other issues like power cuts and repeat duplications of losses also were reported.

We don’t know how many of the 900 or so contented convictions had which bug or which issue with Horizon & the enquiry isn’t looking at a case by case. It’s identified that there were bugs and that horizon had flaws but not how wide spread or frequent they were.

Many of the wrongly convicted have expressed frustration at not knowing why they were sent to prison, bankruptcy etc. and a blanket quashing of convictions means that they will never know beyond “the computer did it” & pol back the system rather than the people.

Don’t forget that those who receive a pardon, who were wrongly convicted, will never find out why they were convicted in the first place.

There are 11500 post offices still operating with Horizon on a daily basis, the issues still exist, I regularly hear of numerous issues and bugs, none of which will be fixed unless identified which POL seemingly have not got better at doing.

But the issues with POl management go far further than a toxic investigate work force.
My PO is a little different to others, we are effectively a permanently sited mobile office (only one of 9? Or so in the country), as a result we are constantly forgotten about. We like to be a full office, as we’ve increased trade enough to do so, but POL’s contracts don’t allow this. A third of our commission goes to a separate office which ‘manages’ ours, but in reality, delivers stock and that’s it.
We’ve seen an area manager twice in 9 years, both times we contacted them direct for a meeting, they discussed our issues and agreed to sort them only never to be heard of since. It feels like we’ve had a new area manager covering 100’s of offices every 6 months or so. It’s taken 7 years to be put on the areas postoffice what’s app group, which is helpful as we get a response from other local offices quicker than being connected to the help desk. Even the FB group of offices is better.
We have had zero post office on site training, only ‘on screen’ which is repetitive and mainly for products we don’t have the function to sell. When we bought the office we should have had a trainer for three days (we didn’t), I only found this out 4 years later. We can’t sell half the products we’d like to.
When I worked as a PM for a supermarket, incharge of new convenience stores, myself and my boss would turn up for a meeting – responsible for the entire job. POL would send 6+ people, the post office PM would write notes down that their superior would direct.
POL’s maintenance contracts needed a compete over haul. The safe company used to charge 3 or 4 times our (supermarket) rate to POL for the same job – to the point where I had calls from the POL PM to do things for them as it was cheaper.
POL constantly invested in large chain stores and restricts investment in independents. The difference in help of development between my old job and personal shop is immense.

The problem with that is that POL have held and hidden evidence along every step of the way, as we are hearing in the enquiry. Add to that the huge amount of time it’ll take, along with further legal fees for both parties.
There’s still parts of POL that regard all sub postmasters as the enemy.

These are the sort of issues we’ll have as long as we continue to use horizon and a suitable replacement isn’t implemented.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/23/post-office-investigated-sub-postmaster-own-board/

(Sorry if it’s behind a pay wall)

100% salt & vinegar should be blue.

I’m an I subscriber – although running a shop I technically get it free. Times has cirtainly gone further right than it used to. Some Gardian articles are good, but I’d say the paper is as much center left as the times is right.

Byline times, The week & private eye seems to been good level magazine newspapers.

The job if anything is more complicated than in 1982 as you need to also sell a verity of insurance and banking facilities.
We worked out that we would need to sell 300 stamps per hour every hour we are open to make minium wage for one member of staff.
I make more selling a 25p Wam bar than I do selling a 1st or 2nd class stamp.

Don’t forget it’s also, as far as I’m aware, the first time parliament will stepping over the legal white lines drawn between governance and this part of our legal system at such a large scale and could open up a can of worms in the future.

As someone who works with POL on a day to day, has worked within my own post office and others for over 10 years, and had direct involvement with POL middle and upper management in my past career @martinhutch some of your comments are valid, others I find not so much.
The Mr Bates media and public outcry has been great and it’s cirtainly pushed the current gov into action. But I’m still not convinced this is the correct course, and not just a way of some quick positive public engagement on the issue.

POL’s issues are and we’re way bigger than the convictions of 900 SPM’s. Almost 8.5k postoffices have shut since the introduction of Horizon. The remittance offer for postoffices is so bad – it’s the worst £ per sqft in my small shop. The current 11500 that are left are paid 6p per 1st class stamp, RM gets 25p (apparently) so POL pockets 99p.

Every single postoffice in the country would have been  effected by the faults of the horizon issues. What happened with the convictions is awful and those effected should get compensation, but the story, social and economic is far larger than just the 900. A blanket squash of convictions is a quick easy way for the government to regain ground and gain public confidence and that’s it.

16/17 flunked the last one by not double checking….🤔😁

Submit button is just below the last one…

Yes, our landlord ‘could’ chuck us out, when you’ve invested everything into a site that could be an issue.
The PO is cirtainly not a money maker though, it’s time consuming, involves lots of staff training, little to no support and high risk. Years ago, when staff were paid a wage by PO it was a different matter.

We could refuse and close it, but it’s classed as an ‘essential service’. In our case that would put our lease at risk and open a tin of worms.
It’s also what rural communities value the most from rural shops.

When we took on our shop, two months into running the PO we had a  random £650 negative on our cash up in month. We threatened closing the PO as our renumeration was around 250 a month at that point and we were fresh into the business. After days of stress PO relinquished and said it was a bug and wrote it off…

I don’t know one postoffice within our local group chat that wants blanket over turning of convictions.
It’s a political play to try to win the election, trying to make up for government mismanagement of the situation, rather than carry on with proper investigation that’s again been delayed and hindered for political gain.

This is also worth a read:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-68328188?fbclid=IwAR0EeOlIVH6aAQR0jnBDUkCKmVOhec6RFBr_6qRcCjZ295nlIENvaSNISCg

The postoffice counter in our shop would need to sell 300 stamps per hour (for the 53hrs a week we offer postoffice servies) to meet one members of staff minimum wage.

It’s clear he sees value where others don’t – and is willing to take a financial risk.

Buying only the IP isn’t much risk in this case imo. His USP is to buy a brand cheap, stick the logo on crap and sell it cheap. He’s bought marketing and brand awareness for a fraction of the cost – that’s not a big risk, it’s his business model.

People were only really fans for the price IMHO.

After the wiggle / CRC merger id agree with you. Before that it customers were also driven by the range, fast reliable delivery and customer service (back when you could speak to someone). The recent web site changes were a complete joke.

Its not like the guy is Phillip Green ffs

He’s a property tycoon rather than retail – buys a failing shop franchise, boots off the the expensive rental sites & keeps the freehold ones, then rents those sites back to his other brands. So he makes money twice on them all. High streets have died off, not due to lack of footfall, but lack of freehold and affordable rents/rates.

They are just not needed for me.

You can’t have you cake and eat it…. Saying IP buy outs are bad because

You are basically conning the unaware consumer that the new owners/operators deserve to be trusted the same as the old ones. It’s a bag of shite.

But local shops are not required just because your knowledge is larger than the average consumer.

There’s a place for both. My LBS is excellent and also does significant trade on the internet with regular great deals. I often buy from them online and pick up in store, within hours.

Ah, but if your cooking with it, then it’s pain to ‘squeeze’ out a table spoon of the stuff 🤔😉 either way I can’t win as I only have enough shelf space for one or the other….