👍👍

Definitely get travel insurance – my sis in law had a miscarriage in Spain some years ago (pre Brexit), it would have been even worse experience without insurance.

The local hunt to me were caught on film putting foxes in man made dens to throw to dogs a year or so ago. The hunt were fined 5k, no convictions etc. the law cirtainly needs to change and be updated with more severe consequences.

As a result of the above, the landowner who a significant amount of bad press, banned all foxhunting on his land and, so far, has followed through with that. The hunt were uncontactable for a statement at the time & pretty much threw the landowner under a bus, which I’m sure was part of his reason for banning the hunt. The incident not only damaged the landowners business, but also the the local pub and my shop – we all had a massive down turn In trade.

Unfortunately last week there was a hunt 2miles south of us, just on someone else’s land.

Rightly or wrongly, surely ALL the convictions have to be null and void now by default? and ‘lots of’ compensation paid unless there is real evidence of wrong-doing?

Yes and no, no because our legal system doesn’t work that way and every case should be reviewed. Yes compensation should be paid, but it’s a complicated process that takes time, especially when there are thousands of cases. The most complicated cases (where convictions were made) are taking the longest time.

Some people can’t afford to walk out of a job, and I don’t really blame them for that. .they may be coerced into towing the company line, and thus, become part of the problem.

It seems many if not most of the POL investigation teams had worked at POL for all or most of their careers. Walking away from a job that pays well with a good pension is very difficult I would have thought.
Add to that POL have, imo, a high level of excess middle and upper management left over from prior to privatisation. For example when I did site meetings as a project manager for a large supermarket chain, there would be two of us representing the supermarket and 6-8 POL staff per meeting – we were managing the multimillion pound development of supermarket, POL were putting in one postoffice counter. I must have attended 100’s of meetings like that.

Around my way (Cotswolds) there’s very little sub £200 a night with a hot tub. Cheapest in the area is a little over £500 for 3 nights  – but isn’t a cottage, or particularly private.
https://www.cherrytreeglamping.co.uk/
We specifically didn’t install one when we put on our Airbnb as the installation and running costs effectively double the per night stay for everyone – regardless of if they use it or not (as you have to treat them like every guest has used it).
airbnb.com/h/thecabinmiserden
If you want sub £150 and want something special, id look for property’s with a sauna instead and pitch them to the wife. The  installation cost is about the same, but running and cleaning costs are minimal in comparison to a hot tub.

Letter deliveries don’t make royal mail any money, the price of a 1st/2nd class stamp is dictated to them by Ofcom and the government. The system is out dated based on a 20billion item per annum requirement, where as RM now only handles 7billion letters a year and it’s declining year on year. There’s a reason the likes of yodel and Hermes minimal cost is around £3+. Add to that the large redundancies at the start of the year RM made it’s a bit of a twist of the knife to letter delivery. The current gov has said that they won’t support a removal of sat letter deliveries, but that’s almost certainly a political rather than commercial or social decision with the election coming up. 12-18 months time we won’t have sat letters imo.

It’s also one reason POL expanded it’s business into banking, insurance etc because there’s a year on year decline in stamps. We used to sell thousands of them at Christmas, it’s hundreds now.

I did the Cotswold Cross (bagman events) last year, weather was terrible, but it was a good fun day out for a sportive style event. I did it on my fat bike, but mostly gravel bikes.

What’s the average flight speed of a swallow?

Although in those cases where the postmasters made up the “shortfall” out of their own pocket it eventually just got swept into the post office general profit account.

Just to reiterate, it’s not just the 900or so prosecuted SPM’s that were affected. Of the remaining 11500 postoffices, 2960 have successfully claimed (of 3500 submitted) for erroneous weekly and monthly shortfalls totaling over 130million.

We took on our postoffice in 2015 and had shortfalls between then and 2017 so could technically claim but we’ve decided it’s not worth the hassle. The couple we bought the po from had a 8k shortfall appear but disputed it as at that point po weren’t taking people to court for less than 10k shortfalls.

Imo there wouldn’t have been a postoffice in the country that wasn’t affected by the Horizon scandal – there are 1000’s of postoffices that have shut since horizons introduction in 1999, I really hope the inquest highlights how many closures had shortfalls as a factor.

The fact that three Royals are all in the papers for medical reasons means that one of them – probably Kate, is having a op that they don’t want talked about (Probably hysterectomy). The multiple press teams they hire are trying to pull distraction stories.

They have the funds to go private, many people do. If they went through the NHS, they’d be torn apart for taking up vital services or queue jumping.

Get a Schengen app on your phone, and plan your trip as you go, you can pop in and out of areas out side of the Schengen zone to extend your stay (Andorra / Bulgaria etc.). The app will total up your time and work out how many days you have to go. When coming back to the UK allow enough days for travelling back to the Eurostar or ferry. The app will then indicate on what day you can return and for how many days from your first visit within the zone.

Stamps

So I bought the top carbon fusion form volt in the current crc sale, as ever with saddle it seems you have buy before you try soooo….

Anyway I thought I’d update this thread for future forum searchers. 

After my first short ride it’s a very different base to the regular volt, far less padding and much firmer, even though WTB put them both in the medium soft cat on their web site.

The shape is the same, so still comfortable but a fair bit firmer. Also RRP of 199 is a complete rip off, it’s the same base and padding as the other non carbon versions so it’s a fair bit more cash for some carbon rails, the £80 I paid seems like the price point it should be when you look at the other saddles in around the 200 mark so unless you have deep pockets just go for the steel version.

Looking at the trailers the game part is ‘better’ than the current game tech. Super realistic etc presumably using alien tech. so puts a better narrative on the  game part than the book did.

I did the first (audiobook) and found it pretty boring/crap

I started reading the book, and swapped the book and audible in the car, found the narrator of the audio book to not be the best and tricky to follow which character was who.

Always wondered if some of the overall quirks of the books were from them being translated from Chinese

I’d agree with this – I found the cultural quirks and language the most difficult thing, the science and characters were good though.

The three body problem was the first part of my maths degree that I found really, really properly interesting, so the geeky aspects were always going to appeal. I hope they show the mega human computer and don’t skim over those sorts of details to dumb it down.

I think that they’ll need to show things like the ‘human’ computer for it to work.

I found the first book a difficult read, but the underlying premise and general storyline was great so it could make an excellent show.

Read the first book recently in prep for the show. I’m betting it’ll be an inspired by, rather than direct interpretation. Still I’m looking forward to it.

Would love to see the condition of the mudguard when he finished filming.
Is it just me? And I know I’ll prob get some abuse for this but I don’t get excited by these sorts of videos anymore. Impressive riding yes, but just seems to be more of the same. 5 /10/15years ago I’d have been waiting on YT for a vid like this to premier, before that I’d have bought the dvd. I found his day to day vlog stuff much more interesting when he ran his own channel.

I can also confirm I’ve reached grumpy middle age as terrible fashion from my youth has become trendy again.

Vennells became CEO in 2012 so this would suggest she knew that there could have been wrongful convictions in the past, yet continued to instruct po security to prosecute based on the same or similar evidence. As well as continuing to insist that Horizon was infallible – I still hear daily about issues with Horizon. A PO on a FB group yesterday said that a counter that hadn’t been used for some time (essentially turned off) had just shown a £2.49 discrepancy.

I’m sure PO were aware at some level that Horizon had issues a significant time before 2013, this evidence is just follows the law team catching up and realising potential consequences of previous witnesses telling fibs.

The original raceface and Easton posts (6or7yrs ago?) didn’t work below freezing at all, a Nd would randomly activate iirc.

They doing a prototype 27.5 mullet dropout so I’m sure Ministry would supply that instead of the 29….

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C174LclvBBN/?igsh=ZTBqMzlhc2huemhr

Jeremy is complaining again, and rightly so.

https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/24053419.jeremy-clarkson-admits-screwed-diddly-squat-farm/

The farm side of the business is ‘screwed’ apparently. However no mention In his article about how profitable the seasonal tourist attraction he’s set up is.

We had a holiday a couple weeks ago in Wales, absolutely loved the 20mph limit. Wish it would roll out across the rest of the UK….

The crown offices and those managed by big chains although they had errors didnt get the same treatment as the individuals with one or maybe a couple of offices.

Crown offices losses are liable to postoffice plc as far as I’m aware, not the postmasters. The staff also are on a wage Vs commission.

When I worked for coop, we had significant backup, both in management and legal for staff members that may have found  shortfalls – as well as our own internal security investigation teams. The postoffice management within coop I’m sure we’re fully aware of issues at between 1999 and 2015. The coop postoffice area managers I worked with always dreaded Wednesday’s as they never knew which branches would call with issues.

I found some of Nick Reid’s answers annoying to say the least, he cirtainly doesn’t want to throw previous board members under the bus, and I can see why – PO ltd head office has had the vast majority of the same people people working there for decades. 

The question about crown offices was worrying – he didn’t know how many crown postoffices had had convictions, if any? Crown offices for those that don’t know are generally the main office for a town or city, large multi counter offices, managed directly by postoffice ltd (not private individuals). This could be key to the investigation.

Again it wasn’t asked how many offices had been affected by faults, only that 2000+ offices had been agreed compensation.

Again no one asked how many offices were operating in 1999, and how many had shut between 1999 and 2015 due to “operating losses”, and if horizon could have been a contributing factor.

The enquiry is about so much more than 900 convictions, not that they shouldn’t be investigated thoroughly. But I feel the cultural implications are far larger.

I’ve spoken to many a retailer who’ll never work with or have a post office in their shops.

Buying a physical tape is more of a momento

A novelty item then.

It is not about whether they are good or bad (they are bad), it is about who is listening to and who is selling tapes.

I highly doubt that cassettes are being sold for profit reasons – better of with a qr code with a direct link to paying for a download.

It’s far more likely they are being seen as edgy, nonconformist, fashion items, much like the player itself.

The things that we know are crap from our youth have now just become ‘retro’.

We were with zen, found them a little expensive so changed. We good when we had issues though.

Sounds like the machine was compromised to me…..

100% purley a “style” fashion item….
Performance has been super seeded by, cd walkman, minidisc, MP3, phones etc.
Was great 40 years ago. Not now. It’s a no from me.

Seems most people like double diamond style full Sus frames or those hiding the shock completely.

My bikes are on Bikmo, I’ve only heard good things about the claim process and you can edit and change the cover and values through your online account – I’m a bit of an upgrader / changer of parts so I find this useful. Also covers for racing and when in a vehicle etc. It’s cirtainly more expensive than sticking if on home insurance but the cover is way better imo. If your a British cycling member you also get a discount.

When GCN+ was active with all the cycling and bikepacking content etc, is this all available on the discovery+ channel?

It’s not been on Discovery+ in the past or currently, it was very much a case of one or the other when gcn+ was running.

It may be on there in the future.

 I did find it somewhat odd the PO lawyer whining about being expected to produce documents and how it was unreasonable for them to be expected to work day and night.

This would suggest to me that the law firm isn’t big enough, they don’t have enough people working on the case or they under quoted/budgeted for the work. Having gone from a design / construction career, with regular late nights expected and required to running my po/shop this is one of the reasons I made the career move. Running my shop is 7 days a week, but no where near the levels I used to do Monday to Friday because of miss management.

gets worse for Post Office Ltd.

Back in 2015 when the first case was brought against the po, we were told that if the PO lost they would go insolvent. The PO lost, ran to the government who paid out the compensation from taxpayer money. The PO is still 100% publicly own company – not sure if it works this way, but it’ll be odd for tax payers to bail out the PO again but this time pay the Tax shortfall back to ourselves?

There’s a bunch of scandalous things yet to be exposed that the media could latch onto, but I doubt public interest will stay with the story much over the next week, let alone months, years. Fake giro payments in the mid 2000’s being one of them. PV’s threatening letter to all postoffices in 2013/14, backing up horizon and basically saying “don’t bad mouth Horizon or we will take your business”. Etc.

This week we’ve had a noticeable drop in the sales on the postoffice, many other offices are reporting the same. Media have now been requested to throw in lines about “please continue to support your local postoffice” as people have started boycotting. For my shop a significant drop in sales could mean Ill struggle to buy stock or pay bills. But for others who’s main trade is postal, it could be wages or lively hoods.

Presumably it’s not impossible to quash the convictions of those convicted solely on the basis of Horizon “evidence”?

Pretty much every case where actual cash has gone missing in the last 24+ years would have used Horizon “evidence”. The issues come when trying to prove the glitches in the system Vs a physical theft of cash.

BBC News – Swedish alarm after defence chiefs’ war warning

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67935464

Decided to take the splurge and buy the full carbon version whilst it’s so heavily discounted – it does seem that the only way you can find a saddle that fits is to just buy them. 

I’ll update once I’ve tried it out in comparison to my other volt.

Bradshaw is definitely being set up as the fall guy here.

He’s actually too stupid to see it too

100% this – the man comes across as thick as ****