I love the concise, well stated arguments on the TUC site linked above:

The pension schemes are already sustainable

Well, that’s me told then, can’t argue with detail and figures like that. :roll:

One of my sister’s prefects at school was Paul McCartney’s step-sister.

When Mrs R was little she lived in the same road as the Panayiotou family and she used to play with their son Giorgios. It all went downhill for him when he changed his name to something a little less Greek.

The daughter of one of my former colleagues was at university with a nephew of Osama bin Laden.

But surely manufacturing of simple goods is always going to be unprofitable in this country, isn’t it?

Interesting article here on how some US businesses are finding it profitable to bring back offshored manufacturing – http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/in-early-2010-somewhere-high.ars

One of the points that comes out of it is that the real competition is between manual labour and automated manufacturing, hence the drive by governments to promoted supposedly higher added-value jobs in e.g. finance; the manual assembly line stuff isn’t compatible with the sort of lifestyle people aspire to in this country.

They benefitted from the support we provided to the sector

Questionable. There is an argument that says that they would have been better off if the non-viable banks had been wound down in an appropriately controlled way leaving the viable banks to divide up the market. That way the real losers would have been the shareholders in the badly run banks, which is as it should be.

It’s greedy, but as others have pointed out it’s really a matter for the shareholders. It was Bob Diamond who led the purchase of Lehmans Brothers in the fire sale which has generated a lot of Barclays recent profits, and he wasn’t in charge during the crisis in 2008 – that was John Varley.

If people really want to direct venom at someone how about Eric Daniels, who recently stood down as head of Lloyds-TSB with a £2M bonus. He’s the one who, along with Victor Bland, took a perfectly good bank and nearly destroyed it through the shotgun wedding with HBOS (Gordon Brown also claimed responsibility for that until he realised what a bad idea it was). This one is now largely owned by the government, so you really do have a justification in complaining about that although it doesn’t seem to have grabbed as many headlines.

Tricky call – mudguards or a face full of diluted dog-eggs. As I consider myself sane, on balance I go for the mudguards.

Haven’t tried any expensive ones but Ion Slides2PC is one to avoid – we bought one when they were cheap at Costco; it’s cheap but not very cheerful and with dreadful software, only recommended if low budget is your only criterion. My flat-bed scanner does a better job.

*no-one* forsaw the big rise back over the last 18 month

Plenty of people foresaw this, including certain politicians who were facing an election. Asset price inflation an expected consequence of printing money quantitative easing.

No, having both is more likely to cause problems than help.

Do they still make manual cars? How quaint, must be something they keep going for the third-world markets. :-)

My last two cars have been autos and it would seem like a regressive step to go back to manuals. Modern autos are very good and often more economical than the petrol equivalents. My previous car was a cvt and had lower CO2 and better performance than the petrol equivalent, and if asked it would pull away at junctions at the limits of the front tyres’ adhesion. Current car is RWD diesel auto and will just about do the same if you’re insistent with it although by default it tends to glide away.

Summer time doesn’t seem to be a problem but apparently winter is, so here’s my suggestion – move to European time in winter and BST in summer. That way we get the best of both worlds and [rant] I DON’T HAVE TO CHANGE ALL THOSE ****** CLOCKS TWICE A YEAR!!!!! [/rant]

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/the-first-of-the-lost-threads-the-picolax-classic

They can do automated monitoring e.g. filtering for porn/viruses but reading your emails is likely to put them in breach of data protection legislation – see ICO practice guides.

I recently retired my Marantz CD52 mkII to the loft, but only because our BD player seems to sound as good with CDs so it’s one less box/remote to accommodate – the technology seems to have caught up, previous DVD players were rubbish with CDs.

If you look at the inside of a modern CD player the mechanism often seems to be a cheap computer drive, the magic being in the DACs etc as others have said (plus the badge on the case – makes all the difference!). Anything anyone tells you about them “going off” is most likely Hi-Fi mumbo jumbo.

If she hasn’t already read it then try One Day by David Nicholls – seems to roughly follow your description and is equally readable by men. Currently in most top 10 fiction charts too so you should be able to get it cheap!

Edit: P.S. If I got Mrs R a ped egg for her birthday I’d probably find it shoved up an orifice it doesn’t really fit in. 8O

The irony is that the 4% inflation figure announced today doesn’t even include the cost of housing

I’m not sure irony is the right word – as I said in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way above if you include HPI in the inflation figures it would currently reduce it, not increase it. There must be a strong temptation for the government and BoE to use this as a political tool, as demonstrated by the way Merv started to talk about including HPI in the inflation target in 2007 when it would have got him out of writing a few letters. The time to include HPI in the inflation target is after prices have corrected, not now.

Edit : Beaten to it!

a rise now would only do more damage to a weak housing market

There’s the solution – do what Brown should have done and include house prices in the official inflation figures and everything balances out! I’m an economic genious, Ed Balls has got nothing on me. :-)

Some retired folk are amongst the wealthiest in our society

True, Fred Goodwin springs to mind. But then many of the poorest in our society are also retired folk. If you’re stuck in rented accommodation with a state pension and modest savings then the combination of low interest rates and high inflation is dire. But then these people are largely invisible and forgotten about.

They are not negative but very low/nil.

Negative taking into account inflation. I’m not sure any savings accounts are currently paying positive returns.

the effect on asset values would probably be a fall

There are some good arguments for getting house prices down now, rather than having the bubble hang over the economy for a long period. Would be painful for some, though.

Who have paid off their house,and still have 200k in the bank…not excatly on th epoverty line though is it.

No, but plenty of old people are suffering from negative returns on any savings and they are also amongst those who suffer most from high inflation. Even a few £ makes a difference to a lot of people.

Lots of guides/instructions on the internet e.g. http://www.mbr.co.uk/advice/workshop/mbr_advice_article_276645.html. I seem to recall needing some considerable force to get the bearings off when I did it, and new axles seem to be out of stock at the moment so be careful.

then felt bad about it

The only reason to feel bad is if you didn’t keep them occupied for long enough. Some good ways to keep them busy here – http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/ive-got-one-of-those-computer-scammers-on-the-line-right-now

I would buy a skiing specific one. They are very different

I use a RED Trace for skiing which is apparently also certified for cycling and skateboarding. Never used it for cycling but the earpads come off which is great for hot skiing days!

Edit: I think some of the POC helmets are dual purpose as well – seriously good kit, I’ve got some of their armour for riding which has also been used for skiing!

Pyrennes ski resorts have the best snow at the moment

Was ski touring in the Barege area the week before last; fortunately there was a fresh fall 2 weeks ago whithout which there would have been a lot of walking. Pistes were in good condition in Barege/La Mongie/Luz-Ardiden with little ice and the weather was fantastic but off-piste was getting heavy. I recall sitting in the cafe at the base at Gavarnie after climbing one of the peaks nearby and commenting that any British beginner or intermediate would have loved the conditions. But they really need more snow.

It hasn’t been the same since they stopped offering you a Guinness after you donated IMHO. Some namby-pamby rules about not letting woozy people drink and then drive home; it’s health and safety gone mad, I tell you…

the constant left-right wing blinded **** for tat

But it’s not really left-right, it’s big government versus small government which people now see as synonymous with left-right even though they’re different things. It seems to me that it’s big government that tends to cause economic problems, not necessarily left-wing (or right wing) policies. In reality all 3 main parties are in the centre in the grand scheme of things.

FSA BB is the same crank diameter as Shimano – I’m using MegaExo cranks with a generic HT2 BB and it works fine.

Yes, with the exception that the bearings are made out of compressed rust. At least, that’s what mine looked like after a couple of wet rides.

Transitions by Iain Banks

One worth sticking with IMHO, although maybe it’s more one for Iain M Banks fans rather than his Iain Banks persona.

This started off well but turned out to be truly rubbish, it’s as though he changed his mind what on what he was writing part way through:

http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=eyewear+outlet+oakley+seconds&hl=en&aq=f

Discount code doesn’t seem to work any more though… :(

Removed by the apostrophe police?

But you’d think Leo would have realised if the body wasn’t Harry. After all, he’s a pathologist and the killer looked as though he had a completely different body shape. I expect Harry isn’t dead, the cliffhanger for me is how they explain it.

it does not seem too hard to work out what is nice and what is not nice from a cows [or other animals] point of view up to a pont

It seems quite hard to me, but then I’m not an animal behaviourist. The anthropomorphic view would say that they’d be happiest gamboling in the sunny green fields, but the ancestors of cows and chickens would probably have existed in herds or flocks for safety so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if their preferred environment was to be crammed together somewhere safe.

I think you need to re-pot them. We planted some Tesco basil outside in a tub last summer and it did really well – much better than the little pots of herbs we bought at the garden centre for twice the price.

I don’t think it’s the problem some people make it out to be. Most of the woods I ride in are already privately owned. I try to avoid the nearest FC one because the open access policies have led to it being overcrowded and a dog’s toilet.

I believe traditionally they’re nailed in, but I’ve used gap-filling adhesive and they seem to be fine. It also allows you to keep the skirting board reasonably flat when the wall isn’t.

Even the giants get assimilated. First flight I did was with TWA, now I think absorbed into American Airlines. My main memory apart from the free booze was tucking in to my hot meal to find it still frozen in the middle.

Flew a couple of years ago with North West Airlines in a particularly shonky plane, now absorbed into Delta. I also have a load of Continental frequent flier miles that will probably become useless now that they’ve been absorbed by United Airlines.

Rio, who was trying to sit on the keyboard when I was thinking up a name.

I’ve used something similar from Halfords – it worked until I next cleaned the rear window. YMMV.