Point proven – its a want not a need. You only "need" a car because of choices you have made

If I want to do X then I will need Y…

Well yeah, because supply's fixed more or less. I mean increasing network capacity is mostly prohibitively expensive, is it not?

Not entirely… extra carriages would help in many cases but even that level of investment seems hard to come by. Road pricing is being proposed for the same "demand management" reason – it grinds my gears, 'cos it's not really reducing demand, it's just keeping a lid on it 'cos they will not invest in increasing supply.

And a car can be a necessity, if you want to have any sort of reasonable life outside of a city or have other reasons to need to travel. This the problem, no-one's prepared to do anything about the reasons why people need to travel (sorry, wish to have the luxury of travelling to work), only to bash people verbally and financially when they do. It sucks.

Yeah it does. There's limited capacity on the rail network, right? In most cases, it's at capacity so they can't put on any more trains. So there's only so many people that can travel, but MORE people than that actually want to. So the only option is to raise the prices until enough people are put off that demand is equal to supply.

The amusing thing is that transport types call this "demand management"…

Yeah, but they've produced a nice iPhone app!

It's just as annoying to use as their website.

Let's suppose I'm in Sheffield and want to go to Manchester, 30 miles or so away. Which 'region' do I click on to get traffic reports? North East? Midlands? North West? All three? Rubbish.

New Forest is not too far from where you will be.

Then again the Peak District is only 3 hours from Surrey…

Snow and snowdrops here…

doctornickriviera is right, this is surely the final proof of the madness of New Labour's obsession with managerialism.

I went for the macbook, the new one seems like a bargain compared to the equivalent pro. I would assume a new pro model must be in the pipeline otherwise they're relying on people paying £100 extra just to have the metal body but a smaller hard drive…

Have the police got nothing better to do? Mental…

I had the free MOT from Audi last year, they passed it but said I should get new tyres soon. Which I did, 3 months later from somewhere else.

To be fair, their price for the tyres turned out not be too bad…

Not quite in the middle, but there's a nice campsite above Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire, overlooks the sea and the village. There's no beach as such at RHB but it's not far to Whitby, Filey, or Scarborough for bucket and spade action, and then there's the North York Moors and Dalby Forest nearby. Oh and you can cycle into Whitby on disused railway line I think.

Where I used to work there was an office manager who stuck notices everywhere, "Turn off after use", "Please leave this area as you would want to find it", "Bicycles are not allowed in the cellar", "Do not store anything here without written permission", etc., they were everywhere. So I printed off a poster that said "Please do not stick posters here" and stuck it to one of the cupboard doors.

It lasted about 2 hours before she saw it and ripped it down…

What tyre heel-strike for snow? ;-)

I've got a MacBook and a Sony laptop running Vista, similar speed Intel 2 core processor in each. The Mac is way quicker in actual use, the Vista machine spends half its time running anti-virus and downloading endless Windows and Flash updates, etc.

There's plenty of Mac software for what you want to do, and in fact it comes with some fairly good software to get you started.

I find I can run on my toes uphill but I can't see how not to heel strike when running downhill…

A lack of smokers helps…

Can anyone explain to me why a terrorist would need to take photos of a building anyway?

People have gone mad lately, I remember one mate of mine being worried about taking a flight on the aniversary of the 7/7 bombings, as though al quieda were radical numerologists or something.

I don't buy the smoking ban argument, that's a convenient smokescreen (ahem) for the pubcos who charge unrealistic rents and are more interested in selling the building to developers to build flats half the time.

In my experience well run pubs are doing fine…

I would struggle to read Eragon as well, as it's such a steaming pile of poop. My son made me take him to the cinema to see the film, he didn't like it when I pointed out the plot is precisely the same as Star Wars.

NHS – we do more for less than anywhere comparable

I wonder why no other country copied the NHS model then?

Errr…. just testing… we do all realise that the 'Great' in 'Great Britain' simply means 'large' (as in, we're bigger than Brittany), and not great as in 'really good'?

What is Britain good for? Well we probably make more of a cultural contribution than you could expect for a country our size (e.g., music etc.).

If any MP has the common sense to do what I do, book a ticket in advance so that 1st class works out cheaper than the regular fare, then that should be applauded. In terms of expenses the fees office should probably be much more concerned about MPs who pay the walk up price for any train fare when they could have paid half by getting the ticket the day before…

kimbers – so any island 500km from the coast of a larger nation should be invaded by that nation so it can exploit its mineral reserves? Not to mention that Argentina is trying to lay claim to South Georgia too, which is 1500km or more from Argentina.

By your logic Iceland should never have been Danish and so we should invade immediately.

And don't go on holiday to the Canary Islands, Madeira or the Azores, that would be supporting imperialism by Spain and Portugal ;-)

a gay brother-in-law? That's confusing.

Wife's brother?

Not hard to work out is it…

+5 for Moon… I watched it alone in the house and at no point went (any more) mad.

MaverickBoy repeating whatever they say on Top Gear as though it's fact there… ;-)

Isn't the BMW 1 series more of an equivalent for an A3 / Golf? 3 series is more Mondeo size isn't it?

I'd like to like the 1 series but I can't help thinking of the Munsters whenever I see one.

My French mate from Brittany drove to Poole for St Malo (I think) ferry to get home from Sheffield. Portsmouth to Caen also fine I expect, but why would you drive out of your way to the wrong side of England just to get a ferry at Dover when that will only take you to the wrong part of France? Just leave the M1 when it turns left and goes south-east and keep due south on the A34…

(Today's geography fact – Portsmouth is east of Leeds – and Bristol is east of Edinburgh TJ ;-) )

The book is a classic – not so sure about the film. Try Brazil instead.

Benign dictatorship is quite clearly a superior form of government.

No it's not.

The old record holder, Roger and Out, tasted foul IMHO, it was like treacle.

And isn't freeze distilling cheating?

This happened with some mates of mine at uni, they ended up getting fined and all falling out and not speaking for years. Genius.

OK, so who's going to own up to chucking plastic wrappers and drinks bottles and (most oddly) beer cans around while out mountain biking? The guy insists he's seen this, and the drinks bottles in the hedgerow line has been used before I think.

Certainly it's not something I've ever seen, nor can I understand how it would happen – a can of lager is something I'm very unlikely to put in my backpack (though a pint of Lord Marples at the Cricket Inn might go down well after Blacka Moor), and my drinks bottle definitely doesn't get thrown away each ride.

Does this happen, or is the guy mistaking local yoofs from Totley for 'mountain bikers'?

His blogspot ratings just tripled though…

Obviously this is just a blog written by some git and if you disagree write your own half formed thoughts on wordpress instead of here and see if anyone cares. But…

There is something about the speed at which a cyclist travels and the fact he invariably and of necessity is looking at the ground in front of him. This singles him out from the walker whose pace is slower allowing him to look all round as he's walking thereby feeling more related to the country he's going through. Too often the cyclist unless he stops sees little of his surroundings which tends to disconnect him from where he is. This doesn't apply on a tarmac track or road, where normally the ground is smooth and consistent. A horse rider is not constrained in the same way. The horse itself looks after most of the decisions about where to put its feet.

I can't help thinking here he's missed a trick. i can't be the only person to have walked, run, and cycled around that area, and there's something zen like about the connection between the trail/land and yourself/bike that you feel when mountain biking that you just don't when walking. The idea you 'see more' when walking is nonsense – you might see different things, but that's not the same as saying you see less. He virtually says it himself, but then misses the point. Durr…

ernie – homeopathy isn't a "belief", it's a con. Simple.

At least the big western drug companies over charge ill people for shit that works – homeopathologicalmentalists steal money from ill people for shit that is worse than placebo. F****** W***** is what they are.

I can't be bothered to read all of this but the idea that people are defending homeopathists fills me with revulsion. Almost as much as the fact that the NHS gives them money. That I paid tax toward.

So where's the proof of that then ?………I can't see many expressing their intolerance towards criticism of their beliefs on this thread.

Homeopathisticopaths have been quite vocal and indeed quite litigious toward people who have quite reasonably and correctly pointed out that they are shysters and quacks who knowingly rip people off and deliberately sow misunderstanding of medicine and science for their own financial gain.

I used to have to brake with my toe and keep the engine going with my heel (left foot on the clutch) on my Fiat 127 at junctions if the engine was cold so it didn't cut out (choke didn't alway keep sufficient revs going).

There was a similar media scare in the 70s about Audis in the US, turned out the problem was simply the brake and accelerator pedals were closer together than on most US made automatics, and fat Americans were planting their great big feet over both pedals when trying to do emergency stops.

It's just the media hyping things out of all proportion yet again.

Lots of interior practices use vectorworks and render stuff in something like cinema 4d.

ajc – I shouldn't care, since I don't really work in this sector any more, but in your opinion why would vectorworks users not use renderworks for renders rather than exporting to a separate package like cinema4d?

Pesky Mancunians renaming the M62 and M63 the M60 and then using it as a local ring road…