I’ve been going to the Alps since 2007 I think. These days I just run organic, but I tend to stick to the easier trails and PDS especailly seems tamer these days, a lot less dragging.

Anyway, autobiography aside, the Alps is tough on brakes and IMHO it’s best to match the conditions. If it’s dry and you’re dragging sintered pads, they’ll glaze until you’ll be grabbing the levers like Geoff Capes tearing a yellow pages in half and producing nothing but noise and heat. ertainly not stopping power! You’ll warp your discs and destroy your forearms. If it’s wet and you’re dragging organics, the results will be largely the same, well, within 30 mins anyway when the pads are down o the metal. Sintered work well in the wet in the Alps, Organics when it’s dry.

The best solution is to adapt to Alpine riding and pick braking points rather than constant dragging, but that’s not always possible. Kevlar pads do seem to be a good compromise, the only downside I’d ever felt is they don’t work when they’re cold, not an issue in the Alps.

I’d sat type of house, and it’s level of insultation and boiler can trump size. Our old place was from about 1910, you could run the heating full-whack all day and there would still be cold rooms and drafts, our current place is a little smaller, but uses half the Gas.

Hmm yes , something else is afoot. I can’t see my payslip only wages pending in my bank account. Maybe it’s something else, we aren’t on £200k! Maybe a tax code adjustment, I recently started a new job.

I knew as soon as I read the OP, there was two likely outcomes, 1) someone would work out you’d be earning waaaay too much to be complaining about it, 2) there was more going on.

But, yes these next few weeks are when people are going to really notice the changes.

At home we’re £80 a month down on NI and yeah you can work that backwards, we’re not struggling and I’m not complaining too much. Energy is up £50, Water is up £50, Council Tax is up £25, plus food and fuel. We didn’t get the £150 council tax cash-back, I know, ‘middle class problems’.

I’d guess £300 a month less, will it push us into poverty? No, but it’s not like it’s unnoticeable either. We’re not savers by nature, we spend what we earn and we need to cut our lifestyle by £300 a month, which is noticeable, because we weren’t living the high-life before.

I won’t list the savings we’re making, it will sound like a utter pisstake to anyone who’s really struggling.

At least the NI rise will be largely reversed in July and those who are suffering the most, will benefit the most from that, I hope at least, that’s what was promised.

In other ‘good news’ Martin Lewis today announced an expected 30% rise in Energy costs in Oct, that’s of course 30% on top of the 54% that came in at the start of this month, for us that’s another £60 a month…

Daughter had a terrible time with her belly as a new born until she was about 18 months. The first time I was left in charge of her alone, she was making the ‘bad belly’ noises and whimpering, horrible to have to watch. Then there was a crack of thunder as she let out a fart I’ve never heard the like of before or after and she started smiling. Turns out it wasn’t a fart though, poo had ripped up the back of her nappy, through her vest and into her hair. I took one look at the mess before me, put down the box of baby wipes I had and shouted to the eldest “Son, prepare the bath!” we managed it together.

How’s everyone doing?

I’ve been thinking for the last week or two about coming off the Citalopram. I’d have swore it was 6 months, but it’s over 8 now. Not a long time, but long enough.

I’m doing okay at the moment. Coming off a long weekend away with my Wife, I’m clam, confident, happy, all that good stuff. My Marriage nearly ended in December, horribly, but we’re back on track now, doing a lot of the things we should have been doing before.

Work is good, another really rough ride, but we’ve made a lot of changes to make it interesting and rewarding again, mentally and financially.

I’ve got a summer to look forward to, Morzine with the lads, Croatia with the family, plus birthday celebrations and even a new car Friday, a bit of a dream buy that I’ve been chasing for years and years.

Really, I shouldn’t be in any rush to stop, the major downsides are weight gain, and a little lack of motivation sometimes, anxiety can be a good driver, and yeah having a rest from it and stopping to smell the flowers sometimes is great, but I do like to get stuff done.

What’s withdrawal like? I’m on Citalopram, 30Mgs a day.

Someone mentioned the cost of bike hire in BPW and I see a full day costs £75 (about €88). In Ireland (www.thegap.ie), it’s €65 for the same length of time.
For a pedal up pass it’s €8 if booked on the same day or €5 if booked in advance. For an uplift it’s €45 for the full day (6hr).

BPW doesn’t seem too cheap but it’s on my bucket list. To be fair though, BPW is much larger than The Gap in Ireland.

I don’t know the nuts and bolts of it all, but if I were in Ireland and fancied a trip to a bike park abroad, I’d look past BPW and head to the Alps, it’ll cost you more to get there of course, but a lift pass in PDS is as low as €20 a day if you go for a week, or €24 a day for a weekend etc, and there’s not a UK bike park that can hold a candle to the PDS region.

I say this as someone who lives 30 mins from BPW, never goes, but heads down to Morzine every summer.

I think they’re talking about waiting times for the bus, not the actual ride.

Wales needs a DMBIN[W]S or similar.

We did have for a while, 2010ish I think it started, you can still see the odd ‘Cognation’ signs at Cwmcarn and Afan, they were also involed with BPW in the early days, they secured millions in funding, it paid for the Bike Park at the top of The Wall, Blue Scar than runs along Penhydd, Cafal and Pedal Hounds DH (or at least formalised Pedal Hounds). They also employed a Ranger to over-see maintenance. I think they also faciliatated the building of Blade with funding from the Wind farm people and the reopening of Penhydd which was closed for years for felling. You could argue without them, there would be a single XC trail at Cwmcarn (which was under threat for a while because whoever decided such things decided it wasn’t needed with BPW up the road), Afan would be Whites and the Wall and that would be about it.

North Wales had a simular thing about the same time.

Unfortunately, the ran out at some point and it ended, we still get money thrown it at sometimes, there’s a new Blue at Cwmcarn, which despite some evidence, has supposedly never offically opened, and it’s ‘closed’ at the moment. It’s a blue that runs like a black if you use a bit of speed, in fact, it’s the least friendly blue I know, but it’s fun. Twrch got a a lot of updates and there’s a new section which seems universally disliked and supposedly only forms the basis for a new connect between Twrch and Cafal, but funding hasn’t been secured to do that bit yet.

Perhaps another ‘threat’ to the TCs is there’s a growing movement to make a lot of unoffical trails, offical, like Risca BP, but away from the TCs, Manon Carpenter with sposonship from Spesh is involved somehow I think, but they’re working to formalise the trails above North Cardiff and Caerphilly, which are great – I won’t get into the whole TC v Natural thing (mostly because calling them ‘natural’ is laughable, they’ve all been built0 but they offer a different vibe.

I can’t remember how long I’ve been watching Binky for, I’m not an early adopter but at least 3 years.

Eps 1 – August 2013.

Thats a hell of a long time to fix an old mini up.

Having looked back though the series recently, it could be argued they wasted their time using the rotten old mini as a starting point, almost nothing of it remains.

They say projects are never finished, but I wish this one was, I need closure more than I need another “getting the funk out” montage.

Is the zero covid policy that much at odds with the views of the wider population?

Who really knows what the average man or women on the Chinesse street thinks, what I’ve seen from the news is they’re expecting a large lockdown, panic buying has started etc, but no mention of any Marshall law type things.

Who knows that the Chineese goverment are thinking though, Covid Zero just doesn’t work, ask New Zealand? Long seen as the gold standard for Covid response (well earned) but they’ve seen that it’s near impossible to eradicate it, you’ve just got to vaccine everyone as ‘let it rip’ as much as your healthcare system can handle it.

I’ve not been to Afan since pre-covid despite living reasonably close. The main reason being lack of time but secondly hearing from various places that the trails arent maintained much and are overgrown. I guess those sorts of comments spread easily and sway people to other locations

For those passing through S. Wales, from social media, there seems to be an active trail building/maintenance group going at Margam, right by the motorway. I tihnk it is largely family/xc trails but could be worth a stop (its 2 minutes of the M4), I guess building on the ‘World Cup’ XC cource that get built and never used.

Most, if not all the trail crews were off a lot of the 2 years of the Pandemic, and yeah the trails started to return to nature, but that’s not the case anymore, they’re free and easy to pass and lots of work seems to be going into puddle clearning.

Margam… I’ve been twice, they’re working hard on it, but it’s not going to compete with the other places, it’s still an XC race venue, the climbs are pretty technical, the descents aren’t really, yeah in some places, but mostly it’s a hard climb up, some epic views and herds of Deer to see and very short loops.

South Wales is home for me and I’m at the TCs most weekends.

TBH, Cwmcarn is busy most weekends, sometimes it’s not – for whatever reason the planets are out of alignment and it’s quiet (well half-full), but mostly very busy. Afan is genrally pretty busy too, especially if the weather is nice. Glyncorrwg down the road though, not so much.

Yeah, everything chanaged when BPW opened, but that was 9 years ago. If I had to say what the major changes have been in the last few years, it’s more choice – as a lot of people said, ‘off-piste’ riding has become more accepted by the powers that be in recent years and a lot of the previous ‘shady spots’ are becoming more offical, Risca Bike Park, the unoffical, offical name for the unoffical bits of Cwmcarn gets more riders than Cwmcarn. At Afan most people have worked out there are free car parks that service the trails (tight sods) and there’s not lots of tollerated trails in Cardiff for the first time every, Cardiff being about 5x more population dense than anywhere else in Wales.

Trail wise there has been a huge evolution, with every offical trail in South Wales being effected to a degree by harvesting, the old tight twisty single track trails are largely gone, replaced by wider, more bike park like trails. They suit me, others less so.

Looks like the lacquer is gone to me?

I guess you could use cutting compound / mop, but I think it’s borked. Either live with it, or get it sprayed I guess.

Paucity of Brexit-friendly talent in the Tory ranks is the main factor in this IMO. And Johnson’s team choosing candidates they hoped would be easily controlled.

Maybe, but the guy didn’t exist politically until 2014, he was a Hedge Fund manager in ‘the City’ and out of nowhere he’s given the candidacy for one of the safest Tory seats in the UK, became an MP in 2015, he’s Chief Sec under Javid 3 years later and goes from being a complete outsider to Chancellor of the Exchequer when he leaves. Compare that to even the shadiest Tory MPs and that’s blisteringly quick.

I’m not saying he’s been parachuted into Government by Billionaires to look after their interests, but if Billionaires were going to parachute someone into Government to look after their interests, it would look a lot like this.

Between the Non-Dom issue and the Covid fine, he should, well.. he should have resigned and said he won’t stand for re-election, but this is the new normal. No, really he should soon realise he’ll never get the big job now and there’s really no point in him staying around.

Even before all this, his magically rise through Politics has always seems dodgy AF, to come from nowhere to ‘next PM’ in a few short years, given his background, something’s not right about that.

Nothing it going to happen is it? Labour and the other Parties will make as much noise as they can, but I bet even the moderate(ish) media will drop it once the next round of Russian atrostities is revealed.

The whole thing is very sad really isn’t it? Does it really matter where you sit on the political spectrum, but our PM has lied about this, and so many other things to the point it would be farical to think he’s even close to being an honest person.

Does a covid fine make you a ‘criminal’? In either case, the Prime Minister has been found to have broken an incredibly important law in one of the darkest times in modern history to have a piss up and it’s ‘no big deal’ he’ll pay £50 (probably on expenses) and that’ll be it, and it’s not like he’s a dead man walking in the polls either, he could quite easily win another term as PM.

We’ve lost any sense of shame in the UK.

Rare failure from DPD for me this week, ordered some stock on Friday for Delivery on Monday.

Attempted devliery on Saturday (we don’t open WKs) okay, sorry for wasting drivers time, but I DID order a monday devliery.

Sucessful delivery on Sunday… with a blank photo for evidence… okay, that’s a worry, office is all locked up, no one in. Had to wait about 8 hours for a call back from DPD, seemed they’ve sent the lot back the our supplier, great.

You don’t need to set bit locker to ask for a PW everytime you log in, that’s what your TPM is for. Bit locker is for encypting your drive so it cannot be read by someone simply removing the hdd and plugging into a caddy for exmaple, it’s not designed as ‘better windows password’. I’d bet your issue is a security measure, not an error per-se.

If you want a secure device, use a secure windows password and/or MFA and you won’t have the dock issues. The access to your senstive software for the mobile network infrastructure should really have security of it’s own.

Yeah…

Was doing really well, but a nasty bout of depression/Anxiety and 6 months of Anti-Depressants, added 5Kgs of useless blubber to the rest of me.

I’m on 1900Kcals a day, which is pretty easy for me, as long as I don’t keep snacks in reach.

Fitness is shit at the moment too, I ‘think’ I had Covid a month or so back, 2 negative LFTs, but passed the same symptoms onto my Wife who tested postive for 8 days… anyway, I rode Cafal at the weekend with an Ave Heart Rate of 160bpm, Max 190 and had to walk some of it… that’s not good at 44. Mrs is going to take my SATS tonight to see i’m still a bit ill.

For my kids to play Game Pass games on our Xbox, my account has to be logged in whilst they play on theirs.

I think if you have an account on their laptops, they’d be able to play on their account, but you might find it’s a proper pain, unless you don’t mind sharing passwords with them etc.

Well this is a bugger. Can’t find any parts online to throw at it anyhow.

Looks like scrap ☹️

Yep, monitors are mostly disposable sadly, Dell themselves don’t repair them, warranty’s are new-for-old replacements.

I don’t know it that well, been a few times.

The way marked trails are Pendam which is pretty short, Summit which is the same trail with a big loop added which is where ‘mark of Zorro’ is and brillaint and there’s Syfydrin which is the same with a longer XC / hills and dales type loop to make it 30K ish?

It’s a great centre IMHO, where as all the South Wales TCs have changed over the years to be a lot more bike park like, Nant is still narrow, loose and slate strewn.

What’s Reaper all about? I don’t think I’ve heard of that.

Nope, mostly because the whole ‘hours’ thing is a bit much, I worked it all out once and I’ve be servicing both ends Jan, Mar, April, May, June, July, Aug, Sept, Nov and Jan/Feb again.

I do an air-can or lower service 2 or 3 times a year, I’ve got plenty of fluids and the special greases at home. I give the fork a full service at the start and end of summer and the shock I have to send off, because ‘there be dragons’ in shocks once you get past the air-can, in my book anyway.

I’ve had a think and I’ve decided it’s because if they weren’t, they’d have no purpose and we’d need to invent new ones.

Think about it, what are the actual meanings of the most common ones? Reproductive Organs, Sex, and Bodily waste, but we almost never use them in those contexts. That car in front isn’t having sex and the driver isn’t female genitalia.

They’re ‘offensive’, but usefully so and they’re not really acceptable to use in ‘polite company’ so if we’re under incredible stress or in pain, we can use them as a way of release, if we’re amongst friends / family / colleagues we can use them to express our comfort in each others company, or if we’re angry we can really make our position known.

I love swearing, it’s the best, but I always feel sorry for people who do it too much, like it’s lost all meaning and then end up double-swearing, like that teenage 7th **** of the day, it’s just habit now.

If I retire ‘early’ it’ll be at 63 and making do until my State Pension kicks in at 67, although that might be 68.

I plan to ‘downsize’ in my 50s, my Daughter will graduate (if she goes to Uni) when I’m 58, my Mortgage ends when I’m 63

The Subaru version isn’t coming to the UK, we’re not getting quite a few new performance cars, the Nissan 400Z or the Corolla GR

I’ve always like the idea of the GT86 and the GR86 is supposedly better in a couple of ways.

I also have to applaud Toyota for it, I love the way it causes the absolute worst kind of Car freaks to completely lose their minds because it’s ‘performance stats’ are modest and not another 600bhp all wheel drive monster that makes you top dog in the PH forum or Golf Club Bar.

I’ve always wanted one, but they’re just not practical enough for me.

Here in Germany it’s a thing to go to Budapest on holiday and get your teeth done whilst you’re there. There are even companies who organise it all…. Train, hotel, chauffeur to and from dentist, etc.

My Dad has his done there, some places offer a full set of new teeth for £6k or something, he was living in Bahrain at the time, he reckoned it a quater of the price of having them done there or in the UK inlcuding the cost of flights and hotel etc.

Why the obv not been back? Our dentist never closed, and continued with his regular checkups. He has thrown out the people who didn’t go in for their during covid appointments though.

Ours didn’t close per-se either, but what happened was this. There was a requirement for addtional cleaning between patients, who made this requirement I don’t know, but it makes sense. This reduced the amount of patients who could be seen in a hour/day or whatever, makes sense.

What our dentist did though, was for me at least, a bit snide. They first informed us that because of the above, we might not see our NHS dentist every 6 months, but “within a year” but this just didn’t happen. Like OP, I didn’t get to see mine for about 2 years, in fact, call me cynical, but I didn’t get a reply to any of my e-mails / voice mails until I enquired about the bridge, then I got an SMS reminding me of my NHS check-up 48 hours later.

We’re getting the ‘hard sell’ about going onto their in-house plan, it’s not great value at £22 a month each, £88 a month for the 4 of us.

Apple stuff can be added to MDM (mobile device manager) without being opened. You just register the SN and it does it’s stuff in the background when it connects to the web first time.

It can’t be used to ‘monitor’ it though, Apple won’t allow that, but they can block it remotely, which will wipe any data from it.

TBH, I’d just use it for personal stuff, if they ever ask for it back, just reset it and send it back.

Fine if you sell now to rake in a profit, but then what are you going to buy? It’s like the housing market, hopefully both due a crash soon

I’ll admit, I was expectin the car market to drop months ago, my Dealer Mate was struggling in Oct saying they couldn’t sell cars even with wafer thin margins because the auctions were crazy, but it’s not colapased as eased a bit and the finance Cos are adapting by increasing their GFVs and extending the age of cars they’ll offer PCPs on, you know, making the unafordable, afordable to keep the wheel turning.

The phrase “the new normal” is being used a lot, the market was being driven by the chip shortage and lack of new cars, but now, it’s because prices are so high, a lot of us are wondering aloud “do I really want a new car?”

Personally, I’m staring down the barrel of a £900 service that’s due I’m hoping to make someone else’s problem, so I’m hoping to part-ex mine for something simular but newer, for the same sort of monthly (it matches my car allowance) but it doesn’t seem possible, that £900 service is looking pretty good value at the moment.

Went a few weeks ago, luckily we found an NHS dentist after our last one bounced us and then claimed “We’ve never had NHS patients”.

Check-up lasted 5 mins and everything was “fine” I enquired about a bridge to cover a tooth I knocked out a few years ago and bothers me, their website says “from £300” which translated to “£1000 please”, it’s funny though, I had to go to the ‘other side’ of the surgery for a clean first so they can match colours etc, it’s like another world! flavoured polish, soft music etc, I suppose you get what you pay for.

Frankly, I’d drag the lot back into the NHS if I was in charge, how they ever managed to weasle out I’ll never know, I guess we’re lucky GPs don’t all decide en mass to stop seeing NHS patients!

If I were OP I’d be over the moon with that result compared to the dramas we had with our Eldest, he’s 16 now and was seeing 1 Lad, or they were in a ‘Situationship’ for a bit, now he’s seeing another and everything finally seems pretty ‘normal’ now. When he was younger and “the only gay in the village” so to speak, he spend too long on the Socials and Internet looking for like minded souls and it’s a **** sewer of nonses and other wrong ‘uns for Gay lads sadly, that said, I doubt straight girls have it much easier.

Youngest is 7, she had a BF, but he moved to another school so she’s back with the other one who’s a lovely Lad, their courtship is limited to playing football in afterschool club. I have a good vibe about Her, she’s far more level headed than her brother and I’m nievely dreaming that her Teenage years will be easier on us…

With the caveat that I haven’t looked into this in any great length,

Minimum requirements are generally specified for a reason. Ie, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. It may well be fine but I would be wary of Internet ‘advice’ on how to fudge things until W11 is a little more mature.

I should have given more context.

The min spec for Win 11 is pretty low:

64bit Dual Core Processor with a clock speed of 1GHz
4GB of RAM

There’s also a requirement for TPM 2.0 that throws a lot of people because a lot of stuff doesn’t have a TPM chip as such, but it’s built into the CPU and called PTT or fTPM, this can often be disabled as default or even disabled when someone wanted to install a fresh OS.

Dispite the pretty low min-spec, a lot of PCs will show they’re not Windows 11 ready in upgrade settings because of either the TPM thing, or because Microsoft hasn’t written a specific upgrade path for that CPU/MObo combination.

The easist workaround it to just install Win11 via an ISO rather than via the upgrade path, this will enable the on-CPU TPM and as long as it meets the min spec, will install and run fine.

Anyway, MS in theory could change the min spec, say 8GB of RAM and a 1.2GHz processor something, but it’s unlikely to make much of a difference.

I’ve told people “Mountain Biker” before, but sometimes they actually listen to the answer and then I have to explain that in fact no, no one is going to pay my middle-aged, over-weight arse to ride a bike, sadly.

I’ve had worse though, I had to go to the home of a Vicar once to ask to get married in his Church, he asked me what I “read”. “Comics mostly” I replied jokingly, not really knowing what he meant. Turns out he wanted to know what I studied at Uni, when I told him I hadn’t gone, he looks at me as if you would a rotting bird at the side of the road, half pity, half disgust. Luckily my Wife has two degrees in completely different fields so they chatted about all that jazz for half an hour, but that’s how he worked “Oh, you’d like Sally, she read Literature at Bristol, oh and Simon read History at Bath” and I’m thinking these people are in their 50s at least, does something they did in between pints of snake bite 3 decades ago that important?

OP might have missed the point, it’s not a case of “Oh, aren’t things terrible, look at the state of this food” it’s really “WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO, WE’RE OFF TO MEXICO – and here’s a humblegripe in case we haven’t already told you 5 times”.

I don’t know who to blame, but this type of nonsense is everywhere now, the sad thing is that Social Media (which WA groups have become a part of) could be a really positive thing for us all. I’m part of a group with friends who just don’t see enough of each other, it keeps us in touch and it’s great, but Humans just can’t help **** up things can they?

Like Molegrips IT consultant*, but from memory in a very different way (it’s meaningless really).

Specifically I advise on Cyber Security, mostly by convincing people to buy our Managed Service. I also consult on hardware, networking kit etc. In a more honest world I’d be called Technical Sales or something, but specifically in the UK people hear the word “sales” and assume “con man”. I’ve got very many industry qualifications for the Security side of things, but I’m so often shouted down by IT hobbyists, I will almost never get involved in IT stuff on here, that and it’s boring.

Formally I was a Relationship Manager, Underwriter and Fraud Prevention person for RBS, again, apart from the fact I’ve not bothered to a keep up to date on it since I left, I have an understanding of UK banking rules and more than a laymen’s understanding of Economics.

Combined I have a better than average understanding of bank security, but it’s not really my field.

I don’t know of it’s been mentioned, but I just listened to The Boxer for the first time in ages, it tells a lot of story from a few words.

I am just a poor boy
Though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles such are promises
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest, mhmm

When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of a railway station running scared
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know

Asking only workman’s wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there

Now the years are rolling by me
They are rocking evenly
I am older than I once was
And younger than I’ll be, that’s not unusual
It isn’t strange after changes upon changes
We are more or less the same
After changes we are more or less the same

Then I’m laying out my winter clothes
And wishing I was gone, going home
Where the New York City winters aren’t bleeding me
Leading me, going home

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
And cut him ’til he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains, mhmm

Ah, when RBS let me and about 5000 colleagues go, we were all gathered around those Charlies Angels style desktop phone in our various offices in groups of 50 or so. The then Chairman started the call by saying “you might have heard we’re shrinking, you might even have heard we’re going bust! Well, nothing could be further from the truth, As of today the Government has given us £50bn to lend to small businesses so get Britain out of the Credit Crunch” (or words to that effect). Now, as my Job was lending money to small businesses, I felt pretty safe until “Unfortunately, none of this comes without sacrifice, so if you’re Job role is RM1, AD1, etc etc, your Job will cease to exist from April the 6th” and that was me gone. Some people who had be left go stated crying, some smiles and even the ones who were staying all seemed to be smiling or crying. We then got to listen to a 45 min speech about how great things would be now they’re shed the excess people, which was nice.

IME, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Chinese Tech Worker, a British Banker, or a Dutch Oven maker, when it’s your time, you’ll be under no illusions that, you simple do not matter to them and you’ll be gone the very second it’s more profitable to pay you off, then to keep you.

Wait until the actual Humans who supposedly owe their living to matching people with jobs and vice versa call you out of the blue (and text, and email multiple times a day) saying they got a fantastic opportunity for you, only for you to wonder in amazement at how badly suited you are for it, and how terrible it would be for you.