55 plate Saab 9-3 diesel estate. Those disastrous 1.9 diesels. It had cost more in warranty work than fuel by the time the warranty ended. Completed too many trips on the back of a tow truck. And eventually scrapped for parts. If we’d only bought the petrol version we’d maybe still have it because other than the engine it was great.

I moved on from mudclaws to La Sportiva Mutant. 10mm drop rather than the 8mm you said but ive found them really stable and grippy in all sorts of horrendous muck.

Just wait until they find out about the new rules China will put on fish imports. It’ll make EU border controls look lightweight.

Unionist politicians are throwing fuel on this fire, they need to reign themselves in

There’s a first time for everything.

So no hard border between N and S to avoid inflaming the situation. Replace with a border in the sea to inflame the situation instead. Long time since I left but sad to see threats returning to my home town. Perhaps rather than visit Scotland, the PM could try some essential travel to Larne and try and staff a border post for a bit, demonstrating the quality of jobs in the new red tape sector the government has been so keen on developing.

Someone on legal twitter has just pointed out the EU deal has a Force Majeure clause which includes epidemics as a reason not to be liable for delays. Not so clever.

Farmed fish is getting better, but is still not good. The waste from the growing fish ruins the seabed where they are caged up. They are prone to ticks and diseases. They are given a slow death again when they are pulled out – there isnt a man there knocking them on their head to kill them, they are left to struggle to breathe until dead.

I’m afraid this is something of an out of date view. It is a young industry and many criticisms can be levied at some of the early approaches as it learned in the 20th century. Now, however, the regulation is reasonably strong and the precautionary principle heavily applied by regulators who will act if any breaches occur.

You’re right that there’s no man knocking them on the head – it is mechanical and takes seconds from swimming to dead.

Hang on. What’s Johnson doing getting out of a grey plane when he spent all that cash having one painted red white and blue?

Wet feet is just normal. Cold though? In mountains in winter? No thanks. I’ve been using seal skins for years and happy with that. Find the feet less soggy and white with them rather than neoprene.

I can join the club of TRP Spyres being woeful on cx bike. They were OK when it was dry and my wife is happy with them on her road bike, but when it gets mucky they need too much mid-ride fettling. About to swap them for hydro (bought, just to fit them this week).

Claudie – none of us could say what’s up, but your experience does suggest some things are a bit too tight. But in case it helps – I ended up in a bit of a mess of injuries at one point and it took a long time with a physio to get fixed. But one thing which really helped that was walking lots. Time on feet / building some fitness / stretching / speeding up over time / adding inclines. Every day. Eventually started adding little running sections into the walks and got back to it.

Led by donkeys posters are in the style of tweets. Raab said it at a speech or lecture and there was video.

Brexit was ‘won’ by shouting of blatant lies, not keeping quiet.

It was, but the PM and his cabinet are running such a constant stream of nonsense that the SNP don’t need to go out and invent the lies like Vote Leave did because Westminster is writing their material for them. Just need to record and playback come any vote.

Whilst there’s plenty to attack the SNP for TJ, I think the UK Govt is giving them more ammunition daily than they are creating themselves. The steady erosion of constitutional norms and parliamentary scrutiny to put ever more power in the hands of the Executive is one of the aims they have on which they seem to be succeeding.

Sturgeon just needs to shut up and let Johnson do her indy job for her winding up enough people so that a vote is done on emotion rather than logic. SNP will have learned from Brexit succeeding that it is possible to win that way.

Honda demise was made more likely by the EU / Japan trade deal if i recall discussion at the time. And made worse partly because our exit from the EU meant we were not able to influence that deal.

However good the Nissan news is, comes as Vauxhall put Ellesmere Port at risk, brexit related weakness of GBP and rules of origin part of the problem.

Brexit doesn’t seem yet to be a net gain for automotive sector.

If you want the rest of the family to go a second time, comfort and warmth. Decent sleeping mats and bags for the kids. For adults – stack up double airbed, single duvet, fitted sheet, you, double duvet. I also use a pair of wellies a size too big so i can put on and kick off without putting down whatever I’m carrying.

The £23m for seafood won’t go far, and if they include the PM’s words in the eligibility (if you didn’t fill in your forms properly, that’s your fault) then many won’t be eligible as a large part of the chaos was caused by people unfamiliar with systems and getting it wrong.

Some might be eligible – such as if your load was caught up when HMRC systems went down last weekend. My view is that the £23M would be better spent on fixing the flaky systems, training on how to use them and resource in the logistics hubs to help people navigate them. Prevent future loses rather than patch a bit and leave systems so bad further losses are inevitable.

Only use cash for parking – could use a mobile app, but it is a work phone – and when want to send one of the kids to a corner shop rather than go myself. Could get rid of both of those if needed.

I think the idea of the food quality (risk to human health) actually being worse may be quite overstated, unless someone can point me to some definitive study?

Don’t have the links to hand, but there are contaminants allowed in US food not allowed here and suggestions of materially higher food poisoning risks in US (getting apples vs apples data though is hard).

The Abbot’s Choice. First pub i ever went into in Edinburgh nearly 35 years ago. Not been back.

Flat roofed pubs? The Budgie, Blochairn Rd, Glasgow.

Not sure why anyone would want the role in the run up to May. Can imagine them all trying to persuade each other to do it.

The idea that we should be celebrating part of the UK being able to get food from other parts of the UK as some sort of challenge completed is, frankly, offensive.

Disclaimer – born and brought up in NI. Family still there thoroughly unimpressed right now.

I keep thinking back to the announcement that we will need 50,000 new border staff to deal with Brexit.

It isn’t just them. There’s all the people involved in the process before it gets to the border too. HMRC estimated £20Bn costs in 2018. Government admitted at least £7Bn in July 2020. No-one is yet sure.

And prey tell us which countries you think we ought to be trading with now – be careful though, as I reckon that for every country you list one of us on this post will have worked there, and for a British company.

Or sold there perfectly happily from a UK in the EU. North America, Middle East, Far East. Russia before sanctions. Nowhere we want to go that we couldn’t.

Brexit is about looking outward to the world. Europe will become progressively less relevant

Brexit seems to be this idea that EU will decline so we’re better off out of it. It won’t. Rest of world will grow faster so EU will become a smaller part of the world, but it will still grow, be close and be wealthy. We didn’t need to lose the EU business to go get the rest of the world.

That this has come as a surprise is my point.

It hasn’t come as a surprise. The detailed requirements came with inadequate notice to implement, test and resource systems. Had the PM done his deal Sept or Oct the issues would have been minor on day 1, just as they will be in a month or two from now. Except the losses run up by many in the interim will be significant.

It should matter to you – the compensation paid by government will be added to the national debt we’ll all end up paying for.

mrmo, I’m afraid you appear not to know of what you speak. That the exit from CU / SM would create obstacles was certain – that certainty is only at a conceptual level. But that is something you need to prepare for in detail and that is what has not been possible. You do it by installing systems, creating data gathering routines and inputs / outputs to those systems and by resourcing them.

Which means you need the legal structure of the trading arrangements to do that work. The deal on Christmas Eve 2020 was the first time things like the % of goods to be checked became known. That’s pretty fundamental to preparation (we’re lucky at 10-15% – EU initially wanted 100%) on things like vet / EHO resources. Industry can only prepare for what government defines and the definition was too late.

The govt was told this for quite some time but ignored it. I know this because i was on the calls.

That was probably our mistake. We were relying on the previous two word slogan from the PM of “F*** business”. Should really have realised we should have spent Hogmanay implementing a three word slogan.

One issue for the white fish people is they’re not all doing the paperwork properly TJ, so they’re not getting to the vet / EHO until that is right. So under the sort of fish put in herring, rather than the scientific name (there are loads of different types of herring) and it will be rejected.

It really doesn’t reflect well on many British companies that we are where we are.

Oh do go away. The guidance came out 6 hours before it applied. Yes, change was known. What level and detail of data had to go into what systems at what notice was not. And how the French would interpret it too. Herculean efforts from business are why anything at all is happening.

On Sunday night the UK Government rejected the criticisms

They never do. Never apologise. Never admit fault. Always blame someone else. The arrogance which accompanies their ineptitude is impenetrable. I don’t know how long that approach is sustainable – for business or by govt.

TJ, i work in aquaculture and the process of getting exports away is painfully familiar as so much of the process is the same as white / shellfish and the logistics chains are the same. I’m inside this nightmare as it develops by the hour and day.

I mentioned the EHC issue. Crude numbers – 10-15% inspection required. For us I think one artic can take up to 1000 boxes / 24 pallets which has to unload, break pallet wrap, 100-150 boxes to open, inspect, reseal, repack onto pallets, reload. Vet time is one thing, but then there’s waiting in the queue for the vet. None of that had to be done before. And the worst thing is it is pointless. Can’t check health properly as that would be better done at the processing site.

Scottish fishing industry wasn’t ready. There’s a lot of pedantic detail in the forms and they’re not all geared up. Many relied on groupage, which requires all sellers on that lorry to get the paperwork right or the whole load gets rejected. So there’s less groupage on offer. The logistics infrastructure is also trying to get to grips with workload and inconsistencies in the application of rules / guidance at various steps on the journey. Health Certs very time consuming, underresourced and eating into shelf life.

Also, there’s a few chartered accountants round us and none of them seemed to do the working from home thing despite, I’m assuming, being entirely computer based. Anyone got any idea why they couldn’t work from home?

Chartered accountant working from home here. Not seen my team face to face for 10 months and run day to day quite happily whilst also completing pretty decent sized projects. I’d rather meet people, but with a bit of effort it can be avoided. Some people go to office for the odd bit here or there for filing or to use kit there it isn’t worth replicating in every home, but that’s a few hours every couple of weeks.

About ’90 I think. Road bike got nicked from the common stair and I thought I’d try one of these new MTB things. An Emmelle Cheetah which was poor quality steel and didn’t last very long before it was replaced by a decent Trek. Fun times exploring when not many people were really in the hills on bikes.

The UK Government is seemingly set on undermining or removing all the constitutional normal practice so that voting won’t matter much. The opposition will have no relevance, a majority will hand the PM executive power without meaningful oversight and boundary changes will have meant that the Tories can win with a tiny proportion of the vote.

Scotland will have voted to be independent, there’ll have been a border poll leading to a United Ireland.

surely it just needs a few high profile, well publicised interventions to scare the shit out of folk.

Yup. I think that’s what NZ / Aus did at the start – jailed people for a few weeks and gave that coverage. Here there is low risk of getting caught and negligible risk of meaningful sanctions.

That sort of thing is what annoys me Scotroutes. Being one of the majority following the rules but having to cope with them being deeper and longer because of the minority who don’t. I suppose i expect the government not just to set restrictions appropriate to the risk but also to enforce them so they are effective. I’d love to have spent last week there but didn’t because rules.

Was at South Queensferry yesterday and was amazed at the number of flights going overhead. We’re not allowed out of the Council area but international flights can come and go – what’s that all about then?

I reckon if bike + me is >100kg, then a bit of kit is neither here nor there. Lockdown local – basic tools, tube, pump in a bum bag usually – enough to get home. Don’t want to have to walk 10 miles in SPDs this weather. In the hills, same plus a few spares and first aid kit but in a camelback.

Half the time we did it in back in 2003. That’s really very impressive. Some dark hours in there on 35lb bikes and no support, but nice to be reminded of a great day out.