So thats cleared up then Labour/Blair/Brown didn't de-regulate the banks then

Nulab spin machine won't die will it. Try this – how-gordon-brown-failed-the-banking-test

"Under Gordon Brown’s early stewardship of the Treasury, back in 1997, responsibility for banking regulation was taken from the Bank of England – its brief was reduced to setting interest rates and “maintaining financial stability” – and handed to the financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority. The result was a three-way power split, making it hard to know who has overall responsibility for UK banking. When Tory MP Michael Fallon asked who was in charge during the crisis, Bank of England governor Mervyn King replied lamely: “What do you mean by ‘in charge’?” Callum McCarthy, the head of the FSA, which did nothing to prevent Northern Rock rapidly building its high-risk mortgage business, did eventually pop up on the BBC after the Treasury had intervened, only to dismiss anxious consumers as “irrational”. Overall, as The Observer concluded, the crisis made “the City’s top policemen look like the Keystone Cops”"

I get the impression that some of the "extra" stuff on line is stuff you used to get with the print versions but don't any more. So if I buy the Times on Saturday (the only day I used to buy it) it's now thinner so I've stopped buying it. I still buy the Sunday Times but if that gets much thinner as well I'll give it up and buy another paper and console myself that at least I'm paying less to Murdoch. Reading it on-line is just not the same somehow, I really don't want to sit down and eat my breakfast in front of a computer.

'cos he didn't. Bank deregulation was years before he was in government

Now now, let's be fair to Gordon – he messed up bank regulation just like everything else, and in a rare case of reality he even admitted it, albeit somewhat after the event.

Got one last year for Mrs R, turns out I ride it more than her for going round to the shops etc. As above, heavy but loads of fun and a very smooth ride because of the flex.

I'm 6' with 34" inside leg if that helps, she's 5'7" and it's fine for both of us. Even got a basket on the front for carrying the newspaper! Would be a bit crap off-road though, things bounce out too easily. :-)

+1 for Memory Map, seems to work well and has real OS maps stored on the phone and can also download new areas on the fly via WiFi, 3G etc.

Anybody know what i alter to improve this?

Try reducing the Vector Timescale in the GPS settings.

SJS cycles? Think they're mostly XT and probably not XTR though.

Any USB 2.0 drive should do. I use a 320GB WD MyBook with Time Machine and it just works but looks a bit naff. Use a 1TB LaCie with the PC which looks pretty but is not so good at power management, also have a 1TB Hitachi SimpleDrive which is better at power management and looks a bit more Mac-like.

with HD coming in there are new models due

…with Tesco upseting the market with its pricing apparently:

http://wotsat.techradar.com/news/fetch-tv-launches-freeview-hd-smartbox-03-06-10

although I gather early versions are pretty buggy. We don't get Freeview HD until 2011, by which time most of the bugs will be sorted out and SD PVRs will be given away free with packets of cornflakes…

DO NOT use car disc brake cleaner. It has rust inhibitors in it

I suspect this is an urban myth put about to sell more expensive bike products, especially as it's also sold as a general purpose degreaser and in some cases a clutch cleaner. I've just sprayed some on some glass and let it eveporate and there's nothing visible left. Any disc brake cleaner manufacturers on here? Anyway, use IPA if you're worried.

In the unlikely event that you need to clean your discs (e.g. if you got oil on them) Halfords bog standard car disc brake cleaner is cheaper and IPA is even cheaper and more effective IME.

You should be able to access the pump rotor in the sump by removing a plastic cover. Try spinning it by hand – it's like a fish-tank pump driven by a magnet so it should feel "lumpy" when you turn it. Usual caveat is to watch out in case it's got a piece of broken glass jamming it.

Edit: I may be wrong there, that may just be the drain pump, not the recirculation pump…

UK government annual income approx £521 Billion
UK government annual incomeexpenditure approx £684 Billion

I think that's what you meant to say…

Postie just delivered mine, haven't read it yet but the cover looks pretty! :-)

the idea was to take money stashed away in pension pots and put it back into the economy so that finances look healthier

Not entirely true. Pension funds were seen to have too much of an influence on the economy and there's nothing governments dislike more than someone else having power. They were also causing assett inflation because they were finding it hard to find places to put their huge surpluses – pension fund art collections etc. I personally disagree with what Lawson did on placing limits on pension fund surpluses but there were some points in its favour. Contrast with Brown's raids which took place when the funds were not in surplus and needed every help they could get, and which were done against advice from the Treasury and Blair's advisors.

And then people blame the Socialists!

I haven't seen anyone blaming the socialists. I blame the Blair/Brown governments, which is something completely different IMHO.

They did a lot more than just increase NI – think about the raids on pensions etc (one of Brown's biggest legacies is his oversight of the destruction of a pensions system that was the envy of the world), "green" taxes etc. But it's all been stealth taxes, not the headline stuff that might threaten re-election.

the cock up that the previous Government made was continuation of the Thatcherite policies all endorsed by UK voter

Not bad, nearly 2 pages before someone blames Thatcher. :roll:

Thatcher was last in power 20 years ago. The Major government left the country's economics in good shape. Blair/Brown have had 13 years to screw things up. And still it's Thatchers fault. Unbelievable.

did they lie?

Not entirely – they did the spend bit but didn't go far enough with the taxing to cover the spending. If they had then people would have wised up earlier.

the fact that actually bailing out the banks and responding to the global economic breakdown 'caused' this situation, not an overspending public sector of Labour

The problem the government is trying to solve is the deficit, which is how much more it spends than it gets in in taxes. This is nothing to do with bailing out the banks – as others on this forum have pointed out, bailing out the banks may end up with the government making a profit and reducing the debt (but not the deficit).

The deficit has gone up as a result of unrealistic forecasts of economic growth (I believe someone thought they had ended boom and bust, when in reality they had created one of the longest booms ever which is now followed by the inevitable big bust), which is why the independent forecasting body is a good idea. Despite the boom the government ran a deficit from 2002 onwards to fund increased public spending, i.e. they spent money we didn't have having convinced themselves and others that they had pulled off an economic miracle. Which was just hubris IMHO.

Edit: Boriselbrus, you got in just before me, but I trump you with a graph!! :-)

If the pawls are knackered it should be obvious when you get the thing apart. Either the pawls will have lost their sharp ends or the ratchet has worn. But most likely if the whole thing's loose it's just that you've got some dirt in that's jamming them up and stopping them from working correctly. Have a look at Hope's diagram so that you know what to expect when you take it apart (don't lose the springs), clean it all up and hopefully it will magically work again – mine did!

i'll be doing all three

Four bearings in an XC rear hub, probably worth changing them all while you've got it in bits even though the non-drive-side one seems to last forever.

Most likely to be the bearings. Easy to replace – instructions on the Hope web site, and lots of threads on here about which bearings to use!

Could be lots of things. Check your cranks. I had the same symptom last week; a few miles later my left crank fell off. :?

I didn't say it was cost-effective! :-) Some of the XT ones are £4.99 so it may just be worth it – I've done it with £9.98 worth of sprockets and it seems to be ok but if you can get a cheap cassette I'd go with that.

Various people sell the smaller sprockets separately – e.g. try St Johns St Cycles.

Yes you got it – the previous tory government

I assume this is a troll, or an attempt to win the prize for being the first in the thread to blame Thatcher. But I'm bored so I'll rise – the rise of the amateur landlord has been very much a Blair/Brown phenomenon and the OP's problems can hardly be blamed on the previous Tory government – that was 13 years ago ffs, you might as well blame William Pitt the Younger. Good article explaining some of how we got into this mess here – "This shows a government more than happy to benefit from the feel good effect of rising house prices yet unconcerned about reigning in the negative social consequences".

Easy guide to putting in decking with list of tools required: Wickes decking guide

Good luck! :-)

I used to ride without gloves until a mechanical failure caused me to fall off on tarmac leading to a painful hour picking gravel out of my palm with forceps. After that I went to fingerless gloves but have been using full-fingered since last year when an unexpected encounter with a bramble led to a trip to A&E to have the end of my thumb stuck back on. It's always the things you least expect that get you :?

Seems like a PCB prob?

May equally be gunked pipes stopping the water from circulating round the machine. Have a look at this – link.

Our Hotpoint-that's-really-a-Bosch dishwasher stopped working this week, I found this an excellent source of information on how to fix it, including the secrets of putting it back together once I'd disassembled it :oops:

If you're using Vista, use Windows Firewall – it's as good as anything else and won't mess up Vista as much as some of the others.

I had Bose on my last car (Audi A4). Awesome system but you could only really appreciate it at the sort of volumes that make your ears hurt – so ok on the motorway but not a good idea in town if you want to be able to hear traffic/sirens/people hurling abuse at you etc.

Very selective interpretation there. So you're saying that during the worst worldwide financial crisis of at least the last 30 years the figures are about the same as under Thatcher's reign? What were they in 2008 before the crash? What's the trend right now?

Also I said industry/manufacturing not just manufacturing.

Trend under nulab has been largely flat, with a recent drop which we can put down to the "global" crisis. Thatcher years show a drop for 2 years followed by a consistent rise to above where it started. If I knew how to post an Excel graph I'd show you the details.

Figures are for manufacturing industries, If I added in others then the trend would be similar, except for mining and quarrying which has been in decline since 1953 but strangely also increased during the Thatcher years (I didn't expect that!).

she destroyed virtually all of our industry/manufacturing

ONS figures – manufacturing output index seasonally adjusted –

Thatcher comes in – 86.6
Thatcher goes – 91.9

c.f. Nulab come in – 97.6
Now – 90.2.

a lib-lab coalition has 52.0%

A rather spurious figure. I don't recall any lib-lab coalition candidates on my polling form. Just because labour got 29% and liberals 23% doesn't mean that a lib-lab coalition got 52%. You might as well say that 59% supported a conservative-liberal coalition or 65% supported a conservative-labour coalition or 88% supported a conservative-labour-liberal coalition.

Not convinced that Labour will really go for PR either whatever they've said – after all, it means the permanent end of overall control for them as well as for the Tories and they have more to lose given their relative proportion of the vote.

He'll resign later this morning, I reckon

Not convinced that he'll have got the message but I suspect there'll be a Downfall moment going on in No 10 right now.

He's still hanging on – no sign of him leaving No 10 yet, even though Clegg has now said that the Tories should be trying to form the government. I suspect the SAS will have to go in and smoke him out eventually.

the waste involved in taxing people and then giving them their money back as benefits

A cynic would say that this process makes it look to the recipient more as though they are dependent on the government, whereas the alternative of not taking the money makes it look to them as though they are managing despite the government. Some governments may therefore prefer the current approach.

None of the parties want to tackle that problem though.

Clegg did tackle this almost sensibly in a session this week – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lNRJU7TVwM. But in general it's gone in the "too hard" bucket for all the parties (as shown by the waffle in the last TV debate) – deflating house prices is not a vote winner, it's another tough thing that the next government will have to sort out.