Why ever not?

try this…

😆

ETA – good for mtb excursions!!

Have you tried driving it differently?

Probably the same engine as my wife has in her Punto (1.4T 120bhp??).

mrsrkk01 gets about 35mpg – because it’s a lot of fun to rag. I’ll get 42+ easily…

I think cyclists are mad to do it in moving traffic

Why? – from a safety perspective?

The main road through the centre of Cardiff has been closed off, so my commute in now runs through Westgate Street, along with all the City Centre busses (lots of the bus stops have also been moved to this street).

So, its a solid line of traffic, either stationary or at walking pace, because 3 out of five vehicles is a bus, and they all want to drop off / pick up pasengers – and in normal street design excellence, the bus stops are “on-lane”.

You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a one way street. Occasional pulses of traffic in opposite direction are light controlled – so multi-choice cycling proficiency test…

Do you:

a) stay in the middle of your lane, stopped / slow and invisible because of the busses,

b) Filter on the left (no cycle lane and busses pulling in / out, passengers alighting), or:

c) Filter / overtake on the almost empty oncoming lane, occasionally pulling in to avoid oncoming traffic, and inspiring mass hatred from all the stationary drivers??

You can tell which one I go for 😉

Legal. acceptable and correct.

…

you can fail your motorcycle test for not filtering. – or so I have been told – failure to make normal progress

That’s always been my take on it.

Some drivers just hate cyclists and will use any excuse to have a pop…

Yep, for something that is legal / aceptable (why else would there be ASLs?), it really does wind drivers up…

You don’t give much away on the context of the orginal relationship (which may be intentional).

Was this a longer term / emotional committment / partners at the time (in which case perhaps you should follow up, if only for your own sake) or was it just a short relationship that never really went anywhere?

So it been sitting in my living room burning 80 watts for 23 hours a day

Wow. We get 24 of them each day here in Wales…. 😉

Poldice…only with less arsenic

Wouldn’t be too sure of that…

Poldice and Devon Great Consols were both leading producers of arsenic. IIRC there is a fairly well defined area of arsenic in the Poldice valley (white coloured spoil heap with no vegetation?).

Devon Great Consols was the biggest arsenic producer in Europe, and is reputed to have sustained the American civil war by means of it’s arsenic production.

The main lode at DGC was so wide that specially imported timber (from N America) was required for shoring

Christowkid..

Looked at the geochemical mobility of Fe, Cu, As, Pb and Zn in the Tamar Valley mining district as part of a Mining Geology masters.

I did a geochemical reconnaissance survey covering the Lynher and Tamar catchments from Luckett / Kelly Bray in the North to about Gawton in the south. Included the major mining areas in Luckett Valley, Redmoor, Kit Hill, Gunnislake, DGC, Bedford Consols, Drakewalls etc.

Then used the reconnaissance to do a detailed study of five areas including DGC and Gawton.

Subsequently done a lot of work on the mining in Devon and Cornwall, including a database of every mining site (& its likely geochemistry) in SW England for NRA. Worked on Wheal Jane and Geevor closures / flooding, and have done a lot since in the Carnon Valley…

… but have still seen nothing like the Gawton stream, anywhere.

Did my MSc thesis on that area, so know / knew it well. Gawton flue was one place you could get pretty pure arsenic crystals (As2O3?)

They aren’t Middleburn so they’ll be affordable.

Mmm, lusted after some RS7s for I don’t know how long (certainly 5+ years)

When the economy burned and the Yen / £ made Shimano so expensive I got cranks / rings off CRC for XT money 😀

Is there still a blue stream at the bottom. Familiar with this area long before mtbers dicovered it.

Arsenic in the slag heaps – I should say so 😆

Well they’re not Middleburns….

So yes, chunky, not pretty

Soul Food

Beeb web article

Goodness me – all the usual muppets commenting on the Beeb pages…

They really ought to run a 10mins slot on, say The One Show, to de-bunk some of these myths and add some reality to the debate 👿

Not one for a visit to the Airport

Haven’t checked the link, but how, exactly, does it tell the time??

cycling weakly

I really ought to subscribe 😳

I couldn’t slice bread for love nor money – until I started using a chainsaw as a teenager.

Amazing how that makes you concentrate on what you are doing. For me it was watching what the tip of the chainsaw blade was doing that made a difference to my bread sawing

Weight and riding based targets have not gone well for January 🙁

They don’t, generally, use chainsaws…

Did you even read my post?

This salary plus allowances idea you’ve got in your head is a load of crap

Yes, I did, but it’s in the mix with a whole load of other contradictory stuff.

Why are the media fixated on 40 something then?

Yes you should – you should have been paying 40% on the £1k.

So, should have made a difference of somewhere in the order of %30-50/month? Felt like 200-300/month

2013? – need to drop the threshold to exclude more folks from CB

Cynics would also say that as salaries have slowed, less are getting captured each year by incremental pay rises – so time to incrementally drop the threshold…

Why?

If you earn over the threshold, you pay 40% on the element that is over the threshold. It is what it is

But if I was, say 1k or so over the threshold, I shouldn’t have been paying anything at 40%. My salary at that employer was never > threshold + allowances. Even if I should have been taxed at 40%, the proportion of my overall income taxed at 40% should have been negligible…

This is prompting me to dig out old payslips and look at in more detail.

Rally Stig in the rally stages…

I would hold open auditions for Dancing On Ice in the back of a C-130, fly it out over the ocean, open the back door and go into a steep climb.

Repeat until Heat and Hello have nobody left to write about.

As much as I detest reality TV, this one really could fly

This is retrospective – not related to the proposed / impending changes. Just that being in the news again has triggered the same questions… (along with the ongoing news of PAYE computers errors)

the threshold for when you pay 40% is the £30K odd + your allowances,

Salray at the time < threshold + allowances, but > threshold on its own
So I spent 5 years paying higher tax rate than I should have? At the time I asked employer and IR / HMRC to review – never got any tax back 🙁

If you’ve been paying 40% on the lot because you were just over the threshold then you’ve been quite seriously diddled.

Not on the lot, but it felt like I was being fleeced

Missing the point – designate an appropriate island first

Rockall?

response to predicted future demand

No chance of choosing a new company motor from watching Top Gear …

Cold meat, bread, pickles. Crumpets toasted on the fire as a treat

Paranoia iq an easy adjective to use with “Stalin”! But, yes, not as outlandish as it might seem from our modern perspective. There were plenty in power here and in Germany that would have been sympathetic to rolling the Soviet Union back to it’s own Borders. Of course, the Germans were materially destroyed and the UK materially and financially dependent on the US

Occasionally very entertaining. Hoping the new series will improve….

Does need a few more cars that mere mortals can aspire to.
Is it just me – but I suspect cars like the 205GTi, Golf MkII 16v, Clio Williams etc wouldn’t even be mentioned….

Of course, the discovery of the concentration camps made this untenable in the eyes of the world

Was it not the vastness? If the Germans had consolidated along a defensible boundary the outcome might have been a different iron curtain, further to the east.

There was a widely held view that if Hitler was deposed, then the German high command could broker a separate peace with the western allies. Stalin was paranoid this would result in an Anglo-German alliance fighting against Communism… The yanks and soviets were suspicious of Churchill’s “imperialist” motives

BD’s thesis is pretty much what Hitler expected. The German military were unprepared for war with Britain in 39, because they didn’t expect it to happen. The Germans then and now see stronger cultural and societal ties / values than perhaps we see looking the other way. The English, after all, are bastardised Germans 😉

With Britain defeated or neutral there would have been no strategic bombing campaign, and no materially costly Uboat war

Ex ballet dancer was saying that Portman did well but had too fat an arse to be convincing as a ballet dancer !!!

Company is in the process of changing lease provider at the mo, so no decision to make right now. MOT bill for 4 tyres, exhaust, pads & discs has left me gutted – and it will be insurance time in a month or two…

Thinking of passat sized estate or premium hatch. Diesel for tax / fuel costs, needs to be nice to drive / nice to be in…

Bluemotion Passat or Golf sound near the mark. Tick most boxes, but bland???

(mind you, don’t know what’s on the list yet)

rate your company pays for private mileage first

You can’t get paid a “rate” for your private mileage, surely… Some companies pay for fuel, so effectively your private mileage is covered by their fuel payments.

Where ever I’ve worked, for using your personal vehicle on work, you either get paid:

a) 40p per mile as allowed under tax allowances
b) a fuel rate of somewhere between 7p and 12p per mile – with the balance to 40p being claimed back from HMRC up to the stated mileage limit (10000?), then balance to 25p/mile.

For a company vehicle you should be able to claim back the fuel cost rate – ie 7-12p depending on car, fuel, engine size, company policy…

Unless, of course, work pays for all fuel -but I believe that is adifferent tax regime again???

Yes, agree that the manufacturers have got their heads around the carbon based tax thresholds (whether they be road fund, EU taxes or UK BIK) and now produce engines that are stunningly efficient on the test cycle…

That’s one of the things tempting me back. The newer motors are much more efficient, and fuel prices are only going one way.

I currently run a 4 year old S-Max – pretty much the perfect vehicle for us, spacious, kit car capable, efficient, good to drive even. But not sure how long to keep it. Tyres are criminally expensive.

My company mileage is not massive, and traditionally wouldn’t be in clear cut company car bracket. Just that I’ve got round to thinking that the traditional recent choices might have changed.

Everyone will say Anthem…