So queenie gets to send a hand delivered letter to a tennis player in New York without any problems, but when a letter for her lad comes from New York it all seems so difficult.

Kermit the frog on commentary?

I’m not sure if this correct or not, she was 17 years old when the alleged happened in the UK- legal age of consent in the UK is 16 years old.

41 year old Royal has sex with 17 year old after plying her with vodka, nothing to see here then, move along.

Yes, serial number is on the back of the original box which arrived. Daughter’s birthday today so will pick this up tomorrow. Thanks for the advice and if I get any joy I’ll post up.

why funds?

Funds are also less stressful IMHO. I’ve got about 5% of my portfolio in shares and 95% in funds but I spend more time and energy monitoring my shares than funds. On days when the shares go up happy days and when they go down I get annoyed. But with the funds its meh on both good days and bad days.

@Tired is there any more news about when Provent is likely to be rolled out? I saw your post a few pages ago and I was diagnosed with CLL in December and I’ve just taken an antibody test (waves at @juanking) which unsurprisingly shows I have no antibodies after chemo (<0.4 U/ml). I caught Covid back in December and also double jabbed so was hoping to be one of the few in my situation that had antibodies but unfortunately not. I’ll get the booster jab as soon as its available and then do another test 4 weeks later to check the levels of antibodies

I think he’s putting the money that would normally go to paying off the credit card into PB, then cashing in when the 0% expires.

3 months in after investing near maximum. I’ve done a spreadsheet to track progress and so far I’m on for 1.97% return on current run rate. I expect this figure to tail off as we go through the months.

Thanks again for the info guys. I’m going with the one that z1ppy called out.

We’ve got a 52kw ID4 coming but very likely will only ever use it for local stuff and charge at home for the above reason.

Isn’t that where a PHEV fits? Mrs S has had hers for around 2 months and only used 1/2 tank of petrol. Ok she has to plug it in more often than a full EV but we’ve fitted a weatherproof 3 pin plug socket on the outside of the garage to make that task easy.

Good point. I did see a picture of a stand with some old drop bars in the clamp and therefore giving you 2 load points on the frame when you hook it on. Anyone else use this type of setup?

Thanks for the feedback guys, and of course the usual STW humour! I’m not really into spannering and more likely to stick it in the LBS for other than simple stuff and cleaning so I think I’ll go budget but definitely 3 legs.

Nice plate at llandegla today. No points for guessing what it was on.

T35LAX

M pet KW but yes.

I’m in hybrid mode ;-)

Shouldn’t the question be, does the more aggressive regen result in a better mpg?

Watched it on a long haul flight back when they had a few film channels, all on continuous loop so no stop, start, rewind etc. Nodded off just before the end and woke up as the credits were rolling. What the hell was in the briefcase I wondered so watched the whole film again to find out.

Have you never heard of cognitive biases or how brains work then? Much easier to appeal to system 1 thinking than system 2 thinking, sadly. See populists everywhere.

I wasn’t aware of cognitive dissonance until earlier today but perhaps we should just type ‘cognitive dissonance’ as a response when the hard of thinking pop up with their theories as I’m sure they will be curious enough to go off and research it.

“Festinger argued that some people would inevitably resolve dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe.’ – Sounds about right

Full on anti vaxxers are probably a lost cause.

Yep, for a really scary look into this world take a look at The Anti-Vax Conspiracy on Channel 4.

Andrew Wakefield, remember him from the MMR vaccine controversy? Well, all his Christmases have come at once with Covid and he’s busy making a fortune in the US (where else) on the back of this. And the other Christmas present he gets is to shack up with Elle McPherson.

Interesting that tennis and golf were self funded which I’m all in favour of. I’m guessing all the top players, coaches and support staff are very well rewarded compared to their peers in other sport.

Still can’t get my head around how equestrian gets £12m for what is an elitist sport.

Classy from the German Modern Pentathlon coach, punching the horse from yesterday.

Reminds me of the time a horse bit Mrs S on the head as she was bent over so she punched it in the mouth. Mind, that horse the German pentathlete was trying to ride is probably at the glue factory by now.

Icarus on Netflix is worth a watch if you want to find out more about the state sponsored doping going on in Russia.

Sheesh, what a lottery modern pentathlon is. The poor German was well in the lead coming into the show jumping and drew the equine equivalent of Kevin the Teenager out of the hat. Complete nightmare and had to retire as did the other contestant who rode the same horse. Apparently you get 20 minutes after the draw to get to know the horse then 5 practice fences before the real thing. Brutal if you pick a duffer.

Kinesis Range flatbar is worth a look Binners. I picked up one for Mrs S from Alf Jones between Chester and Wrexham. It uses the Fazua drive system so is only 15kg for the medium so not a massive lump. In fact I took it out this morning for a blast around the Cheshire lanes and also onto the fireroads in Delamere so it ticks all the boxes for both on and off-road riding. Review here to give you a better idea but it is a sponsored ad so treat with a pinch of salt.

Danes should be DQ just for their front rider being a complete dick

Probably a bit harsh to DQ the team but certainly a case for banning the rider who caused the crash from the final.

4x£25

Probably been done on other threads but if you are a Sky customer you can get Discovery+ free for 12 months and watch all the events either live or stream later. Mrs S found this out as she wanted to follow the equestrian events.

jamj1974
Different circumstances to you – as really ebikes let me ride normally again – can only ride very short, flat distances without assistance.

Sorry to hear that jam. I’ve just come off the back of a tough chemo regime and told not to push myself for a few months so I bough a Kinesis Range (e-adventure) and loving it. I either ride road with 50psi in the 44mm tyres or head into Delamere forest and ride mainly fireroads at 30psi. I just ride to a HR of 130 on my Garmin and adjust the level of assistance depending on the steepness of the climb.

I’ll hopefully be doing a couple of laps of Llandegla Blue next week.

The upcoming Cupra alternative to the ID3 is a bit of a looker. Not much to beat compared to the ID3 though.

link

PHEVs are an “engineering solution” so that automakers can economically continue producing cars with ever-tighter Euro emissions regulations, and will result in the vast majority of new cars in the near future lugging around a heavy and useless pile of electronics, using an over-stressed small petrol engine. Change my mind!

Can’t disagree. Mrs S picked up the nearly new Countryman PHEV on Friday and its just under 300kg heavier than the equivalent petrol version. But, she loves it and as we all know a happy wife=a happy life.

Although she did get a bit of a shock when she taxed it and it cost her £480 as the list price new was over £40k – for a mini FFS!

Paris-Roubaix scheduled for October 3rd. That would be a hell of a double.

“Pseudo-anonymised” is bullshit. It’s either anonymous or it isn’t.

Not quite. My understanding is the data elements that can identify a person will be tokenised e.g. changing my NHS number of 1234 to WXYZ using some clever hashing algo, after all the 3rd party consumers have to have some kind of unique identifier to piece together events for a patient over time. In theory the ‘good side’ will have access to the token management system for things like adding/deleting data records and the ‘dark side’ will have access to a meaningless token that still allows them to uniquely identify a set of related events. My worry is that the token management system will be abused in the future.

You cannot do this. Once your data is shared thats it. You cannot withdraw the consent.

They have caved in on this now and said that it will offer patients the option to opt out at any stage, with historic data being deleted even if it had been uploaded.

But it sounds a bit like trying to put a genie back into a bottle.

The data is held centrally for ‘users’ to run queries against rather than get copies of the entire dataset, but in practice there is nothing to stop you running a query that can extract the entire contents and can be done very easily and I’m guessing often. I’d like to know how this type of behaviour will be monitored.

Gels and the like get into your system quickly. a packet of jelly babies is much cheaper and basically pure glucose so a good emergency fuel

Yep, but we all know that if we have stuff like jelly babies around the house they’ll either get munched by the kids or yourself, but you aren’t going to feel peckish and nip out to the garage to chow down on a gel :-)

I’m not a great fan of SIS gels but I had one at the Kingston stop on the Ride London 100 and it got me to the finish without any trouble including the kicker up into Wimbledon. Before Kingston I was struggling, so having a gel for emergency use is probably a good idea on a long ride.

Were they behind screens?

Kind of. But still pointing directly at me with no screen protection when handing over the til receipt, plus they angle towards you when scanning certain items and pushing it through.

Just been to Sainsburys Chester and the percentage of customers wearing masks was higher than the staff. Out of the 4 checkout operators around me only 1 had a mask on.

People still buying on the dip? Pretty big dip if so, but still plenty of profit for people who got in early. Anyone who bought Bitcoin at ~$60k must be sweating.

I don’t think they just chew through the battery then start on the ICE unless you ask them to.

yep, “makes the Countryman PHEV the first rear-wheel-drive MINI when in ‘Max eDrive’ mode, which allows all-electric driving at speeds up to 78mph. Auto eDrive prioritises battery power below 50mph, but acts more like a hybrid, with the petrol engine chiming in for bursts of acceleration. There’s also a setting to favour the petrol engine and save battery power, coming in handy if you plan to visit an urban area later in your trip.”

I’ll take a look at the Captur, thanks

Thanks guys. Battery range was increased by 50% in 2020 so makes it a bit easier to live with.

Any views or alternatives for a Mini Countryman PHEV? Not looking at PCP or company car as Mrs S is retired but she still enjoys her driving. She took the 2.0 petrol out for a test drive and nearly pulled the trigger on that one but I’ve got her interested in the PHEV as it will give her as much ‘fun’ as the 2.0 petrol and 90% of her journeys will suit the 30-40 mile battery range. Also need room in the back for a dog.