Thus sounds wonderful…

I’d love to believe it’s true, but remember: parliament have to vote to rescind A50. That requires a motion to rescind, a vote, passing the Lords, etc. It would be all too easy to drift into a no-deal Brexit through inaction 🙁

This just isn’t a thing.

If Parliament do nothing, we get no deal.

True, but I strongly believe at some point a remain MP will blink and move to revoke A50. About the only thing the HoC is even vaguely united on is that No Deal is a Bad Thing. The problem isn’t passing the legislation to revoke A50, it’s getting someone to stick their head above the parapet. Neither a Tory nor Labour MP can do it without being crucified by the MSM, so it’s down to either a very brave backbencher or one of the LD / SNP / PC / Green MPs to get the ball rolling.

EDIT: this is already in the works!

I think we’re looking at no deal. Which would be no bad thing – it would give us all an opportunity to learn some valuable lessons about democracy, demagoggery and the dangers of letting people from public schools run our country.

I find this a very scary line of thinking. Brexiteers are already on the “it would have been fine if Remoaners hadn’t sabotaged the process” narrative, there is no way that this will come back to the Leave campaign being based on false hopes. Not a chance.
On top of that, if food prices rise at all, it’s going to hit those already impacted by austerity. People who are “just getting by” will end up dying. That’s not a price worth paying.

EDIT: I’m not keeping up-to-date, clearly! The Spelman/Dromey (Con/Lab) amendment being raised on Monday explicitly forces the government to revoke A50 rather than crash out with no deal. https://www.itv.com/news/2019-01-18/the-no-deal-vote-will-be-the-big-one-that-decides-if-may-survives/

I most like 1 but it’s politically impossible.

I’m not so sure. I think (hope!) that if someone tabled a motion to revoke A50, versus the options of May’s deal or No deal, the house would pass it. It would require Labour & Tory MPs to not be whipped, and a combination of “respect my constituents” plus “May ruined your dream” rhetoric, but I reckon there could be a majority in the HoC.

The ramifications would not be great in terms of confidence in the government (and potential resurgence in the right, inc UKIP), but at this point I think that’s arguably better than a No-deal exit.

So that’s the first three steps* that SNP, LibDems and Lucas see as essential…

1) rule out no deal
2) consider a second referendum
3) delay our exit

2&3 go hand in hand… can Labour get on board now?

Labour have been on board with 2&3 since the conference last year: they “support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”.

Hard for any politican to propose this and “keep support”, but it’s time someone led.

The Lib Dems have been “leading” with this position for the last year. Latest Yougov poll puts them at 11%. It’s a nice idea, but no-one is going to get into power with this stance. And you have to be in power to be able to actually enact any of your plans.

The six tests are a joke…

The tests may well be impossible to pass! But that’s kind of the point. They aren’t “Labour’s vision of what Labour would deliver if they were in a position to negotiate”; they are Labour holding the Tories accountable to what they claimed they would deliver on Brexit. It’s an attempt to make someone accountable to delivering all the dreams and unicorns that were promised.

Yes he’s now called for no deal to be categorically ruled out, up until last week official policy, or what there was of it, was all options.

Unfortunately, I think that had to be the case. Coming out in favour of remain or a second ref would have immediately taken the spotlight off the Tories and onto Labour in the form of MSM “Saboteur” headlines, and alienated large numbers of labour voters. It’s no good standing there and saying “we know best, we’re not leaving the EU” – I think that’s a large part of what caused the Leave majority in the first place.

I read this thread with interest as it’s good to see differing viewpoints (although obviously **** Brexit) but I really don’t know how people can persist with this “Corbyn is a Brexiteer” viewpoint.

He has criticisms of the EU, sure. But he also called last night for “no deal” to be ruled out. That’s not the actions of a hardline Brexiteer.

It also seems to be sowing further seeds of unity – the SNP have come out and publicly supported the same position. No, it’s not committing to a “People’s Vote” but it’s quite clearly leaving two options on the table – some sort of Deal or Rescind A50. May’s Deal has been binned off and there is very little time left to renegotiate, assuming May shifts on her red lines.

I’m not sure how you can say he isn’t uniting the opposition or holding the government to account. There is clear evidence that he is: biggest defeat in history, Labour’s six tests for the Brexit deal.

There is still some political manouevring required to keep the heartland Labour leavers onside, but IMO the line is being walked fairly well at the moment.

EDIT:

He’s following party policy to the letter, I think?

Yep, that’s my reading of it as well.

Erm.

1) assumes that the current crop of morons go pleading on all fours kissing every EuroMPs left nipple at the same topic me apologising profusely.

Not true. The UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50 and go back to exactly the same legal position it was in before invoking A50, including veto, rebates, etc. We will have burnt any/all goodwill, but we can recover to the same legal position.

Good luck getting any preferential treatment in future though!

I’ve been in the same position – in-place fracture on the left and full break on the right going OTB at Chicksands.

Best advice I can give is get a couple of waterproof cast guards so he can actually have a shower. It’s a massive pain trying to wash yourself when all you can do is stand and rotate and hope the water washes some smell off! I used Limbo I think, other options are available: https://limboproducts.co.uk/

In terms of what he’ll be able to do, it depends on where the cast goes up to. I was quite fortunate in that the casts stopped just below my knuckles, so I could still place my hands on a keyboard and type, use an Xbox controller, etc. The difficulty comes less from finger dexterity problems and more from not being able to rotate your wrist – he won’t be able to pour anything, for example. But he should still be able to use normal cutlery & eat normal food.

Hope he gets well soon – mine were 2 weeks for the left cast and 5 for the right, but I was back jumping the bike again after a couple of months. Although a few months after that I did break my collarbone… 😀

Given 72pc of his members don’t want Brexit, how can Labour Leadership justify a pro brexit stance?

“Party members” is not the same as “Labour voters”, HTH

Can’t comment on Nord VPN, but like MSP above I’m using ExpressVPN. Worked a treat streaming the C4 live F1 coverage in November last year from overseas, although I did have to turn off adblocker to view the stream as C4 appear to have closed all the workarounds to adblocking their site. I’ll put up with it for an hour or two of entertainment in an airport lounge though!

I’m back in again after last year’s complete failure to lost any weight. London Marathon is in 16 weeks so my stretch (HAHA) goal is 0.5kg a week and get down to 76ish for the race.

I’ve already had two biscuits this afternoon 🙁

^^ dazh has hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately there is still very little Labour can do about things, and the ERG can’t even get 48 letters together. There’s no way any of them will no-confidence their own party, even in the current state of affairs.

It’s all well and good for the Greens/SNP/LibDems to shout about no-confidence, because they aren’t actually interested in collapsing the government. If they can get Labour to attempt & fail at a no-confidence motion then Labour are backed into following their conference decision of backing a second referendum, which inevitably leads to cries of SABOTEUR from the likes of the Mail. Also bear in mind that we’ve pretty much passed the last point in time when a referendum could realistically be held and acted on before we exit the EU…

Tell me more.

OK! iCloud will duplicate your photos to your iCloud account (only over Wifi unless you explicitly tell it to use cellular data). Those photos are then automatically available on any other device signed into your iCloud account. Not very useful for me, but I can see how it might be handy.

The clever thing is that if your photo library on your phone gets too big, iCloud can be set to manage your photos to reduce their size. What this means is that only lower-res versions are stored on your phone. The full versions are available on iCloud and your other devices, so you still have the large versions available for printing / emaiing, but your phone doesn’t really need the big versions given it has such a small screen. Quite clever and very handy if you have enough iCloud storage space!

Lots of good things to think about here – thanks for the replies!

I am not currently using iCloud – I backup regularly to my desktop so thought I didn’t need it. I didn’t realise the cleverness about minimising photo storage space though, that’s quite useful and may alleviate my issues until September…

In terms of “what have I got on there” – 70-80GB of music, 20GB of photos, plus a pile of apps. I’m going through the backlog of photos and sorting / deleting the crap ones (how many gig photos turn out to be decent vs crap!?) but that’s still a work in progress…

IAny vote for a leave party is taken as a vote for the hardest brexit possible.

80% of people voted for a brexit party.

DO NOT VOTE FOR THEM.

Simply untrue. Labour are not “a brexit party, voting for the hardest brexit possible”. They are the opposition, with a large core of voters in Leave-voting areas. Coming out and saying “Brexit is ridiculous” 18 months ago would have led to cries of BETRAYAL from all over the press. IMO Labour are playing things tactically and trying to hold the Tories to account for a series of unmeetable Brexit promises, because that’s the only real option they have atm.

Voting for a “remain” party is no guarantee of stopping Brexit. Witness the Lib Dems – they have no power whatsoever, they choose to be absent for critical votes on Brexit, and will inevitably roll over for the Tories at the first sniff of power.

I’ve just upgraded from a 3-port to the bar end. It’s a bit of a faff to fit, but it’s SO much neater in use. Definitely worth the change if it isn’t much more expensive.

Sadly I’m now UP by 0.3kg from my original weight!! Shit week at work meant I was eating a lot of crap last week. Oh well, things are looking up this week and I’ve got a decent swim planned for this evening so maybe next week will be better?

Week after that will be bad again though, I’m going skiing and we’re catered so there might be some booze involved. I’ve come back 4kg heavier on a previous trip so we’ll see how it goes 🙂

Congratulations to everyone who’s doing better than me though! I think that’s the majority of the thread?!?

Yep, you only need one cable from the amp to the TV for ARC: https://www.cnet.com/news/what-is-audio-return-channel-arc/

Might not fix everything immediately but I’d be to sort that out before troubleshooting any further. One question – is your amp ARC enabled?

Interested in this thread too! My XC70 needs a new set of tyres (it came with a hodgepodge of four tyres by three different manufacturers) and thinking about the CrossClimates as a good all-year round option. As boblo says, the extra £60 for better wet grip and no other downside sounds great if it’s true 😉

I’m in! Got down to 77kg in the summer pre-IM but it all went wrong and I’m back up to 82kg. Need to get back down again!

Not worth polishing up if it’s going to be a wet weather commuter – 2″ road tyres and guards. Some trekking type bars might be a good idea – I really liked them on this, which was a small and low for me already.

Now this – this I like. Couple of Marathon Pluses, and I’m all set, with potential to add guards / rack / bars if I like the way it’s working! What bars do you have on that one – by the looks of it a lot of moustache bars need road-sized levers (~ 23mm clamp) rather than MTB ones (~22mm clamp)?

I’m not sure who’s buying a trisuit without a chamois, but the two suits and tri shorts I have definitely do have a chamois in them. I wouldn’t be doing 180km on a TT bike without one!

Saying that – they are definitely more minimal (i.e. less padding) than a regular pair of roadie shorts. You might also find that padding is in a slightly different area – some trisuits move the padding around to account for a different position on the saddle compared to a regular road position.

If sleeveless is a problem, there are plenty of tri suits coming out nowadays with short sleeves to help prevent sunburn on longer courses.

Trisuits also tend to have a couple of smaller pockets in the back – not jersey sized, but enough for a couple of gels / bars if you need them.

Thanks for the input everyone! It’s a 19″ FWIW, “XC sized” when I bought it and definitely was too big for me. It’d work alright now as a pub bike, but I don’t really need one in London (live next to a 24-hr tube line, plus night buses etc).

I’ve owned it from new – it was my first real MTB – but I’m just a bit sad it’s sat in the shed. I recently sold my first proper MTB, a’99 Kona Chute and didn’t feel bad at all – the lad I sold it to seemed made up with it!

I think I might bring it back and polish it up, then if I’m not feeling it as a wet-weather commuter pop it up on retrobike. It’s not a high-end model like a Kula; I think it was only one model up from the bottom-of the range Hahanna, with a choice of P2 or shonky suspension forks. Hopefully someone can make good use of it if I don’t 🙂

No actual advice but high five to the 1998 version of you. Sweet Kona with the classic upgrades of DX brakes, Bel Air seat and (most pointless of all) Panaracer Fire XC tyres.

Also the Edge – Lancaster?

1998 me says thanks. Although the brakes are Avid Arch Rival 50s… and Fire XCs were the bomb! Also the forks are non-standard – they were an “upgrade” from the original P2s (D’OH). Indy XCs with the “long travel” kit to hit 63mm of travel 😆

The Edge – same chain I think, but the Chester branch was my local. We used to hang round there all the time, I’m sure the staff were sick of us 😀

OT-ish (and slightly cynical), but: anyone know if they’ll be shifting bikes on the cheap? I’m still after a Niner Apex RLT, looks like a very versatile ride. And the white/orange paint job is lush 🙂

We are so **** 😯

this may sound like satire but is apparently the actual truth https://t.co/JWWhkUniSh pic.twitter.com/SKK6kQ7dZY

— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) October 26, 2017

Real news like the CBI sales index taking a nosedive?

UK cbi retail sales index just fell off a cliff pic.twitter.com/q98qsGbGWk

— Jonathan Ferro (@FerroTV) October 26, 2017

Sooooo… I’m considering joining the Zwift-ness over winter. What’s the concensus on a decent turbo?

I’ve got £300-400 to spend. Previously had a Kinetic Rock n Roll and loved the ride quality, but the new smart units are a) expensive, b) not ANT+ compatible. So they’ll work with Zwift, but won’t report data to my Garmin.

Two options I’m looking at atm are 1) just get a Rock n Roll “smart” and sort the resistance manually via the gears, or 2) find some more cash for a second hand Wahoo Kickr or similar.

What would the hive mind do? Any experience of non-smart trainers on Zwift?

As many others, I used to play – more Space Marine (giant robits!!) but a smattering of WH40K, Bloodbowl, Man O’War…

Still have a pile of models and manuals in my parents attic. I don’t play anymore but have been enjoying the recent GW madness, and the fluff is still great. I used to genuinely enjoy the fluff as a teenager; as an adult it’s hilarious.

SKULLS EVERYWHERE! Who are the goodies? Who are the baddies? Who knows! The “goodies” spaceships have giant 1-mile high skulls on the front of them. Every image in the codexes involves some sort of “battle pile” of spacemans shooting off-camera, almost certainly NOT in the direction they’re looking.

It’s bananas and I love it 😀

Thanks for the input all! Especially this bit:

As a note, in the end it was cheaper to replace the lower link in its entirety than to replace the bearings one at a time

AARGH. I hate this level of waste, but it’s probably the best option. I think the next thing is to pull the frame apart and see exactly which bearings are notched / not smooth, and see how little I can get away with 😀

Leftfield thought – could you just get the frame repaired in the UK? I’ve had one frame repaired to a high standard, including colour-matched paintwork and logos.

Ideally you could get Intense to cover the cost, but even if you didn’t – would you be willing to pay a couple of hundred quid to get back the bike you want to be riding, rather than some other Intense fullsus that you have to resell?

FTR I’m not saying that this is a good reflection of Intense customer service, just that it’s a (non-ideal!) option 🙂

Thanks for the input so far! Hadn’t thought about pedals not spinning… I’ll try that, it’s easy enough to swap them out for a spare pair so worth a go.

Shock bush should be good – it’s only 6 months old and came with new hardware from TFT – but I’ll double check.

Failing that I might have to check the bearings in the linkage. I don’t know when they were last changed so no harm in swapping the whole lot out, I think it’s only ~£40 or so for a full set. Probably save that option till last though!

I’m really looking forward to seeing that smug grin wiped off Dany’s face when she finds out she isn’t actually the “rightful heir” to the throne. Bet she won’t be so willing to bend the knee then, will she?

There’s dragons, zombies, children of the forest and giants but some how it’s silly when someone swims 200m in armour.

I’ll tell you what’s silly – they aren’t even dragons, they’re WYVERNS 😈

New GoT is out, that’s as good a reason as any to post this one…

“parasitic oscillations” – what a load of guff!!

^^ this. I’ve voted Labour but we all know that hope just leads to despair, so I’m going to turn in early and put off the heavy drinking until Friday 🙁

Just back now, thought it was great 🙂

The ending was a little obvious, but they did pull you back and forth on it quite well I thought. Agree that the action sequence 2/3 of the way through was a bit overdone, but overall I really enjoyed it. Not a mellow movie at all though, it’s going to take me 30 minutes to calm down!

[keeping thing deliberately vague to avoid spoilers…]

Oh yeah – and having watched _all_ the trailers and analysis beforehand, I really enjoyed the scene change 1/3 of the way through. Watching it fresh you’d find out later what everything was, but with prior knowledge the change of scene had my jaw on the flaw, absolutely gobsmacked (in a good way)!!

I stuck a Float X2 on my Carbine (140mm). Got it from TFT so didn’t have to think about tuning it particularly. Rides fantastically if you ride in a more “aggro” manner than a Float DPS or RP23 is set up to handle.

Probably overkill, but then I run Float 36s with a 20mm axle on my hardtail and think that’s perfectly warranted 😈

Thanks for the replies so far! Current front runners are

1) rigifix bolts directly through the single top mount on the rack
2) a batten secured by multiple rigifix bolts / molly bolts, then mount the rack to that

I think I’ll probably try #1 and if that doesn’t hold, go for #2. The “single bolt hole at the top” on this rack is not a great piece of design TBH – it focuses all the shear force through a single point!

@bails I don’t really mind what it looks like – I can always paint over battens or plywood – but leaning towards two battens rather than a full sheet of ply

@stumpyjon I pulled the old plastic anchor from the drywall and it looks like brick to me – is there any well to tell brick vs interior brick? It was quite the effort to drill into when I was sticking the plastic anchor in! House (well, flat) is 1960s/70s, ex-local authority build.

^^^ Aaargh that one is just painful to watch! He really should be spending more time getting comfy on the smaller one, “shitting yourself” is not a good state of mind to be in when trying a new drop! 😯

Also that save at 1:18 in the video above is outstanding, love the reaction from the crowd 😀

Cutting cable outers too short, why always me…

My standard one – I’ve done this at least twice – is to thread a new inner into the outer cable which needs cutting to length (to make sure it’s as short as possible, but not too short) , then work out how much outer I need to trim. Then – of course – forget to pull out the inner, so I snop right through the outer AND INNER at the same time, so now I’ve got a perfect-length outer cable and an inner cable that’s about 2 inches short 😳