But, is there a chance that our employment laws would prevent that somehow?

Yes, quite definitely as it would be a breach of employment contract: you would still be working but have decided to not do part of your job which also tends to constitute a disciplinary offence in most workplaces. Might be wrong here but it opens up the individuals involved (not the union) to legal action as well and means that the employer can potentially terminate employment. IIRC industrial action in the UK can involve a work to rule (following work contracts to the letter so removing all flexibility/not doing overtime etc, or by staff involved refusing to do any work. These actions need to be agreed and clearly stated to the employer.

Anyway, looking forward to avoiding my London commute on Tuesday and Thursday next week. For all of the obvious reasons there is no way on earth I would ever try commuting from the south coast to Battersea by car, its too far to cycle (well, technically its not, but the 130-ish mile round trip is not my idea of a commute, more an all-day epic with “fun” rush hour take-your-life-in-your-hands cycling through south London for good measure) so its a happy couple of days of remote working and saving the train fare while idly watching the government and rail unions play a blame game.

Service desk at local garage was explaining to me how one customer managed to destroy the clutch on their brand new car within 100 miles of receiving simply as a result of their (unique) driving style… The clutch is considered to be a consumable so, if the buyer test drove the car and considered that it was ok, then its their problem as soon as they own the car.
Aircon failed? Well, so what? Again, that’s a consumable.
Complaining about these 2 months in (when anything could have happened to the car in the 8 weeks since you sold it) on a cheap-ish second hand car, well that’s just having a laugh and having negotiated a discount for service and cleaning then it really, truly, 100% is the buyers problem, not yours.

As everyone else is saying, its a case of buyer beware so frankly they can jog on.

If the buyer gives you any grief at work, that’s an issue to report to your line manager/HR as its not work related.

I now want a kebab…

Doner Kebab.

Yes, it will make you feel dirty but you know you want to.

Cant make it to the rough end of the high street? Fear not, its the 21st century and Deliveroo or Justeat have operators ready and waiting for your order and, as you will no doubt have passed out by the time they knock on your door, rest assured that they will post said kebab through your letterbox ( for you to discover in the morning/afternoon when you wake up*) before riding off into the night on their eBay franken-e-bike special/Honda Cub90 with no exhaust and bald tyres.

*in this event, you will still want to eat it even though its been lying on the carpet for about 12hrs and the dog/cat/children has probably eaten half of it because, well, its a kebab…

Its summer so the electricity usage is generally lower than the base load that all the power stations/wind farms/solar farms etc can supply.
Very simply put its a case of longer days so less lighting required, warmer so less heating required and the UK doesn’t really go in for domestic Aircon in the way that, for example, the southern states of the USA do.
During Winter its a different matter but the load requirements still fluctuate both during the day and from week to week.
There is some capacity to store the electricity that is produced but it’s still nowhere near what it could be. There has been a lot of investigation work done on using electric vehicles as a way of holding and feeding power back into the national grid when required as they can be thought of a nice big mobile storage batteries but the work still needs to be done on Grid 2.0 to allow this to happen at any reasonable scale (not an expert of power generation but I have done work on EV’s so tend to approach the power issue from the other direction as a user rather than a supplier)
IIRC the CHADEMO system on the Nissan Leaf was developed for this purpose but its pretty much old tech now and has been superseded by the now standard CCS charging sockets which doesn’t (might be wrong here though).

You can get the Topeak front loader on Amazon:

It works well, just make sure you take some time to set it all up on the bike and take care loading the dry bag that comes with it (which is great BTW)

50x on that ‘scope will work well, the issue could be the mounting as its not equatorial: it could be a pain to keep the scope aligned on your target meaning that higher magnification lenses may be a bit trickier to use.
Start with the moon because its easy to line the telescope up on and even at 50x it will look so different to what you expect, especially if its not full: the terminator line really shows the mountains off well.
Then try Jupiter, bit harder to find (but not much) as you can see the four Galilean moons, again, 50x will work well with this. You might also be able to see the great red spot
Saturn: you will be able to see the rings
Mars and Venus don’t show any real detail, one is reddish, one is just a bright point.
Orion Nebula, again, easy to find and take about 2-3minutes to properly look at it and understand its a big gas cloud. it wonderments look like the photos though, it will not be a bright splash of colour, more like a white smudge.

I draw things, usually cars but occasionally other things too. I draw things using pens, pencils but mainly using computers, I also 3D model the things I draw using computers and then make them look nice and shiny and almost real, I now do this using VR (which is nothing like it seems in the movies). Occasionally I muck about with 3D printers and a variety of CNC machines (which is a lot slower than in the movies but still very cool). Some of the things I have drawn have been turned into real things that, to my constant amazement, actually work. A few things that I have Drawn/CAD modelled/made shiny/played with etc. are driving around. Some of my time I spend teaching students how to draw, play with CAD, make stuff and think about things too.

I also drink a lot of coffee and read the internet.

So with the ACC set to 70, cresting a hill and going down the other side – it must dab the brakes to keep the speed at 70?

No, the DSG will work with the ECU based ACC (ooh, acronyms…) tend to do engine braking/coasting to keep the speed at or below that selected (usually to about 2-3mph). if the car needs to quickly drop the speed by 10 or 20mph it will use the brakes.

Warning, Anorak content ahead:

My (Hybrid) car does the same but blends the CVT gearing to provide engine braking and Regen function of the hybrid system to hold the speed steady when going down hills when using the adaptive cruise control. In normal driving you can occasionally feel a slight “step” in the braking when it switches from regen only brakes to add the “proper” brakes as well. Toyota Hybrids work best when you effectively hypermile them by accelerating gently using the battery motor and engine together, then once up to speed releasing the throttle pedal than gently depressing slightly to get the full EV mode to kick in to maintain the speed. Its not high performance but its not slow either and actually quite fun/engaging to do as the MPG/Regen displays effectively turn this all into a game to achieve the best efficiency as it gives you an effiency score at the end of every journey.

Hybrids are really a transient tech unless fully synthetic carbon neutral fuels become viable (they’re much more likely to be used for aircraft as Jet engines are very very good and no-one has yet come up with an commercially viable working electric alternative). I think we’ll mostly be driving EV’s by 2035.

I lived in a flat with three girls until they found out…

A Milton Jones classic

A woman walks into a bar and ask the barman for a Double Entendre.

So he gives her one.

It’s a great city to wander around, its been pretty much completely renovated but you can still see the bullet holes in some of the stone buildings.

Checkpoint Charlie is a tourist trap, its not even the original or right location now but you’ll go there anyway (I did, tutted loudly at the cheesiness of it all and then naturally took photos)

The holocaust memorials are rightly sobering, the tour of the Reichstag Building is also well worth a look. There is a display of the history of the building in the dome, lots of fascinating photos including the weird one where you see everyone dressing in the same gear from about 1936 onwards…

I’d recommend wandering around the eastern part of the city and marvel at some of the East German architecture and then realise that a lot of brutalist concrete shopping centres in the UK feel the same albeit without the statues of Marx and Engels.

Oh and don’t forget: Pretzels, Beer, Currywurst mit Pommes, Kaffe und Kuchen etc. 🙂

Little Jimmy Osmond.

OP whatever you do don’t go looking online for the cost of Bosch discs and pads for a Honda Jazz.

After the obvious labour costs you’ll find a chunk of the additional cost was for the disposal (which probably won’t make you feel any better).

And on that note, in a previous job one of my colleagues once used the workshop and car jacks to to change his front brake pads (plus a couple of people to also do all the actual spanner work for good measure). Once done he threw the old pads in one of the office bins, the cleaners were naturally very impressed at this very kindly dumped his old brake pads back on his desk for him to find the next morning. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how they knew exactly which desk it was…

Anyway, just thank your lucky stars you didn’t spec some trick carbon ceramic discs, they go for about £10-£12k for you average Porsche 911 GT3 RS, lots of owners got very nasty surprises at service time… 8-0

Yes, but will there be any more Billy Joel?

This goes far beyond private jets, the majority of airliners globally are leased by airlines and the leasing fees are usually paid in dollars. Russia is under sanctions now so has decided to offer to pay the lease fees in Roubles or threaten to “nationalise” the aircraft from the leasing companies. One of the two companies hit by this is based in Bermuda, the other is based in Ireland.

Remember that the vast majority of these aircraft are Boeing and Airbus models. Russian companies like Illushin and Sukoi do build airlines but they tend to only have a small Russian domestic market. If you look at the safety record of these airliners then you’d probably think twice about flying on them…

Big issue here is that the leased aircraft now can’t be used outside or Russia or possibly their affiliate countries as they can be legitimately be seized and grounded if the lease fees have been withheld or the lease contract has been broken. The other thing is that if the airworthiness certificates (v important if you feel that safety is important when you fly) are invalidated so the aircraft (and their engines which come from western companies like RR, GE, CFM etc) are both uninsured and out of warranty. Supply of spare parts will be, to put it mildly, an issue. Again, this comes back to the safety factors and international laws that are at the heart of global commercial air travel.

The Aircraft lease companies involved here are heading for a bunfight with their insurers too as their own exposure looks to be in the region of about $10Bn+.

Final point here is that Russia can nationalise the leased aircraft but it doesn’t mean they can use them. Once this all is over you can just imagine how willing lease companies are going to be to work with the likes of Aeroflot…

News is generally awful, work is not going the way I want it to, I’m back to being under a cloud and doom-scrolling on my phone every 10 minutes…

But…

Mowed the lawn for the first time this year on Monday, Allium bulbs are starting to come up, got a close view of a (march) Hare on Tuesdays’ gravel bike ride, finally got round to fixing the full susser’s gears on Thursday and the test ride involved some fast dry-ish forest singletrack at dusk, made an awesome Arozz con Pollo last night…

Oh, and the days are getting longer, the sun is shining and there are blue skies today 🙂

very late to the party but finally got into Parks and Recreation, its an absolute scream and a perfect antidote to the world at the moment.

Just found out that Amy Shumer co-produced (the awesome) Russian Doll as well.

Having just done my mid-week road sprint (well, kinda-sort-of) that was about 25kms in 1hr involving riding at a moderate/brisk pace plus a bit of climibing but riding in away that doesnt imply I have a deathwish, I’d suggest as others have double checking that they meant Kms not Miles.

Otherwise book a velodrome session with a gurney bike to lead out or head to the A259 coast road from around Littlehampton/Rustington to Shoreham on an early Sunday morning with a suitable tailwind and hope that the traffic lights are in your favour…

BTW Is the examiner called something like Van Aert or Ganna?

Can’t fault the durability of my 29er XCwides, 2 years on with a mix of South Downs and Surrey Hills trail riding (not stupid free-ride or jumps) and they’re still running tight and true, no dings on the rims at all (run with 2.3 Maxxis tubeless tyres at about 24ps) and the shot-peened finish still looks great. Fast pick-up freehub sounded like snake oil TBH but it really does make a difference and I like the noise it makes too. Rear bearings have just started to loosen which TBH is an easy fix when I finally get round to it, I reckon two-ish years is pretty good lifespan for bearings.

But the STW hive mind naturally cries “DTSwiss” so what do I know?

What? Yet another actor playing Batman?

I mean, why? Its frankly sacrilege…I mean George Clooney’s was definitive…

Got a set of 29er XC Wides that I’ve been using for about 20 months and done about 2000kms, not been doing stupid free ride/jumps but I’ve not been particularly gentle with them either, still running tight and true. Lightweight and with nice brrrrrrrrrrrrrr noise from the freehub as well. They look pretty smart too 🙂

First 15 minutes of World War Z are great, then it’s pretty dire.

TBH read the book, which is the north side of awesome, then consider for yourselves just how dire the film is.

Remember, the best place to be during, or indeed after, the Zombie apocalypse is Cuba…

OP:

Most of my riding on this bike will almost certainly remain on road

Get a decent gravel bike and you will rapidly discover that this opinion will change…They can go places wou wouldnt dare take a road bike and that on a mountain bike you would consider “boring”. Fast enough on road to get where youre going, fun enough on moderate trails to be interesting, awesome on poor/potholed/muddy winter lanes and comfy enough in most situations to be a real “swiss army knife” type bike.

A Roubaix with larger volume tyres would be very good too though, but TBH get a Diverge as its more burly and adaptable.

OP, you’re not missing something: if you read the timeline sheet it says “Future phases of project – Upgrading of the railway embankment will be integrated with Network Rail or Metrowest plans at a later date”

So a case of a new bridge (or heavily altered abutments) /raised railway embankment/additional drainage.

Pictonroad would likely be able to explain the planning intricacies of Network Rail/Great British Railways infrastructure projects more but this particular one probably has to be scheduled into the next control period.

Cos, you know, the Severn Bore and Tides works to schedules. Climate change induced sea level rise and storm surges, less so…8-/

Not had a car with a spare wheel for the last 16 years. I have had 2 punctures in that time, both where the tyre was properly holed so the foam/inflation kit wouldn’t work, both at night and both with long waits for the AA/RAC. One was on a motorway (oh how I laughed..)

Both times a space saver would have been useful but certainly with the one on a motorway, even with the car on the hard shoulder, I wouldn’t have felt safe jacking the car up and changing the wheel: steep twisty bit of the M3 near Winchester, offside rear tyre with big nail through it, unlit bit of the road, raining, lots of lorries thundering past…great place to be crouching down with my back to the traffic (even with my hi viz on) mucking about with bolts and a jack.

Spacesavers are useful but they are really only to get you a short (slow) distance to where you can get a proper tyre sorted. Still wondering about getting one but I would also need a jack too, however these people seem to be worth a look:https://www.thewheelshop.co.uk/product-category/space-saver-wheels/

I’m putting the kettle on, anyone want a brew?

Probably have some biscuits around here too.. 🙂

JWST…

over $10Bn..

with only 344 potential single-point failures, any of which could doom the project…

80% of these are to do with the deployment phase…

Being deployed to an L2 orbit beyond the Moon so out of range of any human or indeed robot servicing mission (unless there is a very daring deep space mission done later this decade)

er…

Eek!

I predict a few weeks of very squeaky bottom time for a lot of Nasa/ESA/CSA personnel.

Currently due to launch on the 24th and if it works it will be truly awesome.

The Exit games got us through a chunk of lockdown last year. yes, bit of a mixed bag but there are some very good ones. There are few recurring themes to some of the puzzles which tend to mean I always start a game by checking the games box lid by looking at it carefully with a magnifying glass, just in case…

oh and yes, you do need to photocopy everything.

I just go with:

” its been an absolute pleasure to work with you all, except for…”

or alternatively you go for one the greatest Rimmer quotes from Red dwarf (I paraphrase) :

“We’ve been through a lot and I consider you all to be people I…met”

Being morbidly objective about such things, the idea that you can let dead bodies rest in place forever is basically impractical.

When you think about the length of time that the country has been inhabited by humans (about 40,000 years) and the total number of people that amounts to, then consider the potential number of bodies that can be, then consider that you’re likely to be digging up, or digging close to, bodies just by doing some moderate excavation work anywhere that there is a few feet or more of ground cover. Do this in or around a Village, Town, City or even just a point where roads cross and the chances go up again…

Arthur C Clarke stated in 2001 a space odyssey that “Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.”, apparently that’s pretty close to the mark: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16870579

Why? Because you’re trying to go as fast as possible and then some. How long do you think a set of free-hub pawls would last when treated to a full on Chris Hoy ( in his prime with those humungous thighs and 2500W and 700Nm of torque..) 3 lap sprint from a standing start? The poor free-hub would be reduced to shrapnel in about 5 seconds…

Also it’s a right laugh (occasionally terrifyingly so) to ride fixies on velodrome track 🙂

I found a Zefal Swan rear mudguard plus a slightly cut down Crudcatcher at the front (my gravel bike has down-tube bottle bosses) works very well indeed for both on-road and off-road work.

Oh no! What are we all going to do? Will the country grind to a halt? How one earth can I be expected to get to work now???????

(typed as I am sitting at home preparing for the first Zoom meeting of the day)

On a completely unrelated note, it’s the 20th anniversary of the 2001 fuel protests (aka, “well the French did it last week and it looks like a laugh so why don’t we?”). Simply cannot imagine that the press would take advantage of that fact to run some news stories…

Looks like the Aussies realised that they were being dramatically overcharged (the French designed diesel subs would cost about 3-4 times the going rate for a modern US or UK nuclear attack sub) and reacted accordingly…I think this project was one of the the jewells in France’s military-industrial export strategy hence the subsequent outrage in Paris.

Or perhaps they undiplomatically said that Jacobs Creek Cabernet Sauvignon was way better than ChateauNeuf du Pap and it all went downhill from there.

Only 1 set of bottle mounts on a XC hardtail is a massive put off

I thought that too then realised I use a Camelbak…so went ahead and bought the frame option for my winter project bike build.

Well the total costs include building at least 4 large interchange stations (including a complete and long overdue rebuild of Euston), a heck of a lot of tunnelling (more than the channel tunnel), quite a few (read: a lot of) viaducts, bridges, about 40 new trains, maintenance depots, all the associated electrical, signalling, drainage, the huge cost of the environment mitigation works that have been required/demanded (about a third of the total) and the contingency fund (which I think is about £15Bn on its own). The railway is designed to have a lifespan of 150 years and the cost which looks on the face of it, eye watering, needs to be factored against overall benefit (economic, social, environnmental, etc.) over its lifetime.
Total projected cost for creating a 150 year piece of infrastructure is about 40% of the yearly NHS budget…BTW, definately not bashing the NHS here, its just important to remember that very big infrastructure projects tend to cost a lot of money. Outside of IT (the failed NHS IT project cost over £10Bn) I’m struggling to think of a bricks and mortar-type strategic infrastructure project from the last 40 years that ended up being a white elephant but would be happy to be corrected/enlightened here.

Funny, I was talking to a very well known car designer about this project just yesterday.
TBH I can’t help thing that this is a car without a market: big petrol/diesel 4×4 based on the idea of an old Land Rover Defender 110 with no real defining features other than it sort of looks like an old 110, coming out after Land Rover have fully updated the Defender and just as everyone else moves to full EV’s…
Ineos want to make 25,000 of these a year. Its up against the new Defender, new Toyota Land Cruiser, Merc G-Wagen, Tesla Cyber Truck, the Rivian SUV etc. so I reckon it will struggle to sell 10000 globally in year one and less after that until they realise 2-3 years down the line that there is no way it can be profitable.
Still, its Radcliffe’s own money being poured into the project so…

£9k for what looks like a very iffy service history which tends to point to the displayed (and TBH suspiciously low for a 7 year old car: take a close look at the pedals, gearstick and steering wheel for wear) milage being a possible issue.

Unless the dealer is willing to give you a gold plated warranty then its best to steer clear.

The ethical decision a car might have to make in the real world is whether they crash into dog or another car for example, so do they crash into a dog crossing the road or into a car with a family with young children in it? How does a computer on a car decide who lives or who dies?

Those are the situations that are a nightmare for the car makers, governments and insurers to battle through.

Er, well, 5 or 10 years ago this was possibly the case but now its a bit different as there is a lot of real world data available and it tends to show that these systems are making a big difference. The real question you need to ask here is if an average human driver in the same situation could or would be making the same kind of split second either/or, “lesser of two evils” ethics-based decision process or instead would simply stand on the brakes, close their eyes and scream “MUMMY”…or perhaps would do that but forget about the bit about standing on the brakes.

…or possibly stand on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal and scream “STOP!!!!!!”…

All of the above are standard human responses in a crash situation BTW.