I watched the programme and the debate afterwards. You can see where the greens went wrong when you see people like Monbiot trying to espouse their cause – he seemed to be totally devoid of facts or information but insisted on talking over people with a load of waffle knowing that the gullible have already made up their minds. FoE and Greenpeace seemed to manage to come up with reasonably sane people in comparison but the overall impression many will have come away with is “bunch of nutters”.

long term stock growth

There are those who say we won’t see much of this for a while, although I see that the US is printing money again which may help in the short term.

If you don’t know what you’re doing a tracker fund is probably the least likely to get you into trouble. FTSE100 if you want to play it safe or a far-East or emerging markets tracker if you get your kicks from gambling.

Depends what you’re doing with it. If you’re threading it somewhere where it’s hard to get at then it’s worth paying a couple of quid for something reasonably robust. Otherwise the 10p freebie that came with your DVD player is fine.

You could end up forcing the water in behind seals etc

Probably not as bad as forcing remnants of strong degreaser behind seals though.

I rode to the garage this afternoon to pick up my car after a service, getting the bike and myself covered in mud in the process; while I waited for the bill the garage offered to jetwash my bike and then dried it with an air line so I didn’t get the car dirty when I put it in the boot. After this abuse and all my years of using generic cleaning products I’m expecting to open the garage tomorrow to find a small pile of metallic oxides and some semi-dissolved plastic where my bike used to be.

Then again, it could still be ok. :wink:

look at the list of ingredients in shower gel, then look at washing up liquid

Surfactants, preservatives and various things to make it smell and look how you expect. I often take my bike helmet into the shower to wash it with a good dose of shower gel, might well take the bike too if Mrs R wasn’t around to see it… :-)

Edit:

Wash your hair with it I dare you!

I wouldn’t have a problem with doing that! Washing-up liquid isn’t some evil strong detergent, it’s made to be sufficiently mild that you can put your hands into a hot solution for a long time without causing you any harm. If you want a decent degreaser try dishwasher fluid – I wouldn’t wash my hair in that (or clean my bike with it)! :D

Do you shower in washing up liquid?

There’s probably no reason why you shouldn’t – apart from the smell it’s pretty similar to shower gel, with the exception that shower gel tends to have more salt to thicken it.

I sometimes use Muc-off, sometimes just wash the bike down with car shampoo when I’m cleaning the car, sometimes use Swarfega heavy duty degreaser (pH 12) and sometimes just use water and a £5 brush from B&Q. Can’t say I’ve noticed any significant difference in cleaning ability between them apart from the plain water, and my bike isn’t a pile of corrosion yet either.

Don’t move the clocks, move our work patterns.

Not necessarily as easy as it looks, amongst other things if you rely on public transport you’ll find all the trains go at the wrong times so timetables would have to change according to the time of year. I don’t actually see what the need is to have a different time in summer, choose a time that works for winter and stick with it all year.

Just found 3 cameras that need their time changing. At this rate I may get all the clocks right by spring in time to change them back again…

Edit: Make that 4 cameras – forgot about my helmet cam. :evil:

In 1989, it found the data agreed broadly with the earlier estimates.

In other words no reduction in casualties

On the other hand in 1998 it re-evaluated the data and concluded that “The estimates of the reduction in the number of deaths per year range between 104 and 138, depending upon the assumptions made. “. Probably shows that you can prove anything with statistics.

Last night I had to adjust 10 clocks, the central heating controller, room thermostat, microwave, oven, and washing machine. Today I’ve done the car, still haven’t reset my watches; at least the PC, TV, Freeview box, one of the clocks and my phone take care of it themselves. Can anybody come up with a sensible reason why we have to go through this apart from the fact that we’ve always done it (within our lifetimes)? Why not stay on one time all the time? Other countries manage it.

Incidentally, good report here showing how staying on BST in winter would save lives and money in Scotland – link –

During the 1968–71 experiment with BST, there were 11% fewer fatalities and serious injuries in England and Wales than would have been expected under the status quo. The overall reduction in Scotland was significantly greater at 17%, in spite of a small increase in casualties in the morning in northern Scotland

.

Edit: Damn, just found 3 more phone handsets that need to be changed to GMT. :evil:

So does our display name now have to be the same as the login name? All my posts seem to have been renamed!

That’s right.

That’s going to make some of the existing threads look a bit odd where people have referred to the display name in subsequent posts. Don’t suppose it’s possible to change your login name?

I’m fixing the username issue now. It’s because of the previous ability to have a display name different to your username. Obviously people abused that but there is still fallout from it.

So does our display name now have to be the same as the login name? All my posts seem to have been renamed!

I quite like Tas which is in The Cut about 400m from the station – interesting Turkish food, slightly different from the norm. Otherwise as above – there’s plenty of more conventional places by the river or around the Vic(s).

Inspired by the posts on here I’ve downloaded the latest Wacom drivers and lo and behold my tablet now works like a pen tablet, pen-flicks and all, with no restarts or configuration needed. Not sure what benefits this gives me but it’s nice to have something on Windows that appears to just work without lots of fiddling!

It can be bad enough on relatively level XC trails when people are pushing on and then round a blind bend to find someone on the trail heading straight at them.

Can’t see that this should be a problem as you’re always going slowly enough to stop if you can’t see that loose dog or child on the trail, aren’t you? :wink:

Climber always has the right of way, same as driving. Only exception would be a dedicated downhill course or one-way trail in a trail centre.

I’m using one at the moment without any Wacom software; Vista sees it as a mouse.

I’ve installed it after Santander asked me to and after a bit of checking to make sure it’s legit. But like Cougar I can’t figure out what it’s doing; I can’t find any recognised security people who’ve looked into it in any detail and the “events” it claims to have captured don’t make a lot of sense. It seems to be harmless at the moment but if it doesn’t work properly then the way it’s plugged into the browser and apparently opened up various communications channels to servers makes it another vector for nasty stuff getting into your PC. I’m keeping a close eye on it, any problems and it goes.

On an income of £100k, you get to keep just over £65,000. Or just under £12,500 a month. That’s AFTER tax.

You obviously learned from the Gordon Brown school of economics.

Edit: Beaten to it.

damo – you look at it again – the gap between the UK and the other countries grew. Growth rates were lower. Indisputable.

That graph looks to me like actual GDP as opposed to real GDP so don’t mean much. Here’s real GDP growth, and if you can draw any meaningful conclusions from that apart from the fact that Germany does much better than us you’re doing very well.

Yes I hate those people who back up what they say with data/evidence. I much prefer people like you who just spout and an opinion, offer no evidence to support it and then mock those who do present evidence to counter your viewpoint

I assume this is a troll, given that your previous post implies a complete misunderstanding of the nature of a structural deficit. Given that, I suppose I’d better not rise to it…

The bin men’s strikes were just one visible part of the winter of discontent as I’m sure you know.

If it weren’t time for me to go to bed I’d stay and argue a bit more but life is too short.

My original point was that the winter of discontent was a particularly grim time, which you seem to be challenging. Remember, it was this mess that caused the Callaghan minority government to collapse and led to the subsequent conservative victory.

No, it’s a picture of the rubbish during the binmens strike. If that’s what the 2 weekly collections look like round your way then I guess the cuts have come early for you.

Edit: having just watched The Road on DVD I think maybe it does look a bit like the end of the world.

Many councils now collect every 2 weeks, so 4 weeks is hardly the end of the world.

Just wondering who remembers the strikes, 3 day week, rubbish collections building up etc etc.

3 day week was during the Heath government and the first miners strike. The rest was the winter of discontent in 1979 during the Callaghan government, and was a particularly dire time – that was when the rubbish collected in the streets and the morgues filled up.

We (sorry for the collective we – Thatcher) really shouldn’t have gone for the scorched earth / slash and burn approach to British manufacturing industry

This is not a defence of the policies of the Thatcher government, more of a myth-busting exercise; manufacturing output increased under Thatcher after a significant decline during the 70s. It flatlined during the last government (declined in real terms), probably because of the emphasis on financial services and public sector employment (and the increased use of borrowed money).

We gave up on anything that didn’t fit Thatcher’s economic model

Shipbuilding is another industry that had been in decline for many years before Thatcher. The biggest declines were in the 60s and 70s leading up to nationalisation in 1977 and a concentration on naval ships. If you really want to find an industry where investment was needed but not delivered have a look at IT, which was emerging as an industry in the 70s and 80s, we had world leaders and have now thrown it away. But we’re going a bit OT…

working communities that had given nothing but full hearted support to Britain throughout the decades

The few people I knew who worked in mining generally hated it and only did it for the money. But hey, why not perpetuate the myth. :roll:

TJ – like I said, I’m not defending how it was done. Personally I consider sending people down pits to dig coal as very similar to sending children down chimneys to clean them – in this day and age we should treat people better. Unfortunately a whole mythology has been created about the noble miners which tends to prevent people from looking at the issue objectively.

The coal industry was viable

Not in the form it was in the 1980s, and had been in decline for a long time before that –

I’m not defending how it was done, but something needed to be done. Ideally there would have been a managed decline of an industry that kills workers and is an environmental disaster; it’s unfortunate that you got people like Thatcher and Scargill at the same time – it was always going to be the workers that suffered when you had 2 sides that wouldn’t back down.

Try your local B&Q – 3W warm white GU10s about £18. Seem to be the same colour light as a halogen, and I’d guess about equivalent to or slightly brighter than 25W comparing it to the other lights we have in our bathroom. Can’t find them on the B&Q web site though, you have to go to a shop.

Edit – now only £14.48 on the web site – I’m sure I paid £18 last week!

Nice location, not some prefab monstrosity

You have in my opinion just described Flaine in France,

Flaine has to be the worst prefab monstrosity in France. Only place I’ve been back to and regretted it. Some reasonable skiing but that doesn’t make up for the resort making your local Asda look like an architectural gem. Also no apre-ski to speak of.

Some of the Austrian resorts are greatly improved recently. Have you thought about St Anton (not nearly as bad for lager louts as you might think – they all go to Solden) or Lech/Zurs which share the same ski area? Or Obergurgl – small but very pretty and with a ski area out of proportion to the size of the village hence uncrowded slopes and untracked off-piste.

I’d be somewhat pissed if I’d bought a wind turbine that didn’t work.

I think he said it would cost 40K for one that did work, but like most domestic turbines I suspect it was there as a statement saying “look at me, I’m eco” rather than a practical power source so it probably served its purpose.

I liked the house, particularly the big garage, but I’m not sure I could live with the sloping ceiling going down below head-height. I also wonder with some of these houses how well they’ll age – it looks great now but in a couple of decades maybe that won’t be the case and someone will knock it down and build the next great thing – which is far from eco.

very ‘white’ light, and not very bright

I’ve just put in a fairly cheap B&Q mains 3W one and it’s the same colour light as a halogen bulb and very bright. Don’t think you can dim it though.

Hmmm.. however I spin it I don’t think I can really blame the Tories for increased life expectancies. Could have a good go at Brown for dipping his claws in my pension fund against all advice though.

based on today’s stock market performance and life expectancy

It’s the life expectancy that’s the killer. My own pension is forecast to pay out little more than a tenth of what the best projection said when I started it. The fund isn’t that much smaller than forecast but the annuity rates are a fraction of what people thought they would be 20 years ago.

My current plan is to get an incurable disease, take out an annuity and then use my retirement to develop a cure. Nothing can go wrong… :-)

To counter the old classics I give you those old codgers Back Door Slam:

MSE, and if that isn’t good enough for you then stop going to those dodgy sites!

Now if they could only make it fly as well.. :-)

wasn’t the jets to be used to power electric motors

According to Jaguar’s blurb it has electric motors driving all 4 wheels powered by a LiIon battery, and the turbines charge the batteries when necessary. Like a Prius but 780bhp and 0-60 in 3.4s so a bit faster off the line.

”The turbine engines, essentially small jets, have been developed by British company Bladon Jets which says that it’s found a way to produce gas turbines that are lighter, less polluting and lower cost than engines commonly used in today’s cars.”

But probably photoshopped to make it look better. They look pretty neat – look at the picture next to a pencil on the manufacturer’s site[/url].