I’m not as cynical as others and hope something good comes from this and fairly quickly. There are instances where inquiries have reported in reasonable time and with strong conclusions / recommendations e.g. Cullen report following Piper Alpha.

You appear to be conflating the criminal investigation being undertaken by the Met with the enquiry being chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick.

It’s not surprising that this would be an extremely expensive investigation. Even a complex fraud investigation is probably simpler and less costly (and major fraud investigations are undertaken by the SFO instead of the Met, precisely because they require specialist expertise and are expensive).

All the persons significantly involved in the design, specification and construction of Grenfell Tower will probably be interviewed. Their statements will be compared with one another and with a probably vast quantity of records held by the council and by the companies concerned. They won’t look just at who made the final decision to use that particular cladding, but at all the background that lead to that decision. For example, any prosecution is probably going to hinge on the interpretation of the Approved Code of Practice to the Building Regulations, specifically the bit that prohibited combustible insulation being used in external cladding, and whether the combustible ACM outer panels breached the Approved Code of Practice even though they were not performing the function of insulation.

Similarly, the foil faced insulation boards installed behind the ACM panels had passed a specific combustibility test which meant that they were permitted to be used by the Approved Code of Practice. Despite this, those panels burned in the fire (possibly because the test they passed failed to reflect real world conditions, e.g. the test would not have involved them being tested together with the combustible ACM panels to see how they performed synergistically).

All this will have to be considered in the investigation, and the Met may have to get its own testing done (=expensive) to present as evidence.

It’s not money well spent, except in so far as with all legislation there needs to be the threat of appropriate sanctions and punishment for criminal breaches, in order to deter others from similarly breaking the law. As with most things safety related, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and it would have been better if money had been spent before Grenfell on research, general reviews of the effectiveness and suitability of the Approved Code of Practice and the Building Regulations and of the enforcement regime (which would probably have identified a need to spend further money on improving elements of that system).

Have a look at Meera Sodha’s vegetarian recipes from ‘Fresh India’, e.g. matar paneer here and on her website[/url] (both vegetarian and otherwise).

there’s a 54cm Tripster going

It would help if you clarified what you mean by this (used/new, frame only/built up etc.). I presume from your post that you are not able to get a test ride or even sit on it to see how the size feels.

If it’s a used frame or complete bike (or a new built up bike), one of the things I would check is how much of the steerer had been cut off. In other words, if the stem has been slammed and the steerer cut so low that the stem cannot be raised and spacers inserted (up to the maximum of 30mm advised by Kinesis for its carbon forks), then given your height and your comment about not liking ‘the stretchy feeling of normal road bikes’ I would be wary of choosing a 54cm without a test ride.

That said, a stem with more rise would be another way to raise handlebar height if you could not insert (more) spacers. Moreover, you might prefer a 54cm because it also has a slightly shorter top tube than the next size up, and therefore the horizontal reach forward will be less for a given stem length.

We got thorougly soaked and quite cold yesterday on a 100km ride. Mrs Beener suffered with very cold hands.

It sounds like she suffered with very cold hands partly because her gloves were not as good as they could have been, but also because the rest of her and your clothing was not warm/waterproof enough. If her core is cold, she is probably still likely to suffer with cold hands even with the best gloves available. It sounds like you also need to think again about the rest of your clothing.

They have something like £14b under management, piddly little claim like this is not going to scratch the surface.

The ‘£14Bn under management’ is, I presume, not the NFUM’s, but rather the value of the investments and funds which they manage for their policyholders, i.e. pension funds, with profits life insurance policies etc. A £10M claim would not put the NFUM out of business, but if it is not significantly reduced by reinsurance, it will hurt, and if their reserves are not large enough, they might have to put up prices next year a bit more than planned.

They do have experience of aggregation losses… Actuaries do plan for this stuff.

All insurers have experience of aggregation losses, and they all get caught out from time to time by events which are unusual or inherently difficult – or even impossible – to predict/anticipate. It’s not really an actuarial function, and indeed an over reliance on statistics and statistical theory/modelling can lead insurers to fail to identify high severity/low probability large loss scenarios, which could have been identified by other methods.

The NFUM has almost certainly employed some of its people to assess its exposure and risk at the event, and it’s possible that they may have identified the accumulation of vehicle exposure in the car park. However, I am doubtful because a) it is very surprising that a car park fire should engulf the whole car park, b) the NFUM is a relatively small insurer without the in depth skills and experience of assessing and underwriting very large risks, and c) I know the latter because I have personal experience of the NFUM’s ability to assess and manage the risks it underwrote, and it was manifestly obvious they were not very competent when it came to large exposures.

But, if (say) they cover 700 cars at an average value of 15k (don’t forget there were horse boxes in there too) that’s only £10.5 Million. About the same as one decent size paralysis or mental impairment claim…

… there haven’t been many really big losses in the UK for a wee while so I’m sure that the insurers can afford it.

Interesting point about the possibility of the NFUM being the insurer of a lot of the vehicles. With regard to the analogy of the total cost being comparable to a single injury compensation claim, I suspect most insurers of the size of the NFUM will have a reinsurance policy which would cover a large proportion of any exceptionally large personal injury claim (like a bookmaker lays off a very large bet: it removes potential volatility from their business by ensuring it is not excessively vulnerable to a single large claim). However, I suspect the NFUM might not have reinsurance cover which would apply to this particular unusual event: an insurer would not anticipate so many of its policyholders’ cars being destroyed in a single fire. If so, the £xM hit will probably put a very large dent in their reserves/assets.

I am fairly certain that the claim for each car will be paid for by that car’s insurer, and they will not make a recovery from the insurer of the car in which the fire started. Consequently all the car owners will lose no claims discount. The fact that all those other car owners were not at fault for the fire is irrelevant: it’s a ‘no claim discount’, not a ‘no blame discount’. Similarly the insurers of the car park will not seek to recover their claim payment.

Any attempt to make a recovery would be extremely unlikely to succeed, since it would probably be necessary to prove that there was some identifiable negligence which caused the fire (the fact that a car did catch fire is not itself evidence of negligence). There would also be a requirement to show that the damge was reasonably foreseeable, i.e. it might be reasonably foreseeable that the cars immediately next to the one that started the fire would also catch fire, but it was not reasonably foreseeable that the fire would spread to the whole car park (as evidenced by the newsworthiness of this event: this is a very unusual event and the vast majority of car park fires only involve a small number of cars).

I was wondering about the structural integrity of the car park itself, too; heat that intense, with cold water being pumped onto the concrete is going to cause spalling, and likely other structural damage, surely their only option would be to level it and rebuild it? I can’t imagine it would be safe to just repair the damaged surfaces.

I agree this is going to be one of the most interesting things about the fire from the perspective of the fire safety industry. My suspicion is that although the fire looked severe, the structural integrity will remain and the car park will be repairable, i.e. the fire burned quickly and intensely, but there was not enough combustible material burning for long enough and hot enough to damage the structural integrity.

I’ve never been much impressed by the results from my breadmaker (a Panasonic SD253): the bread was usually OK, but not good enough to prompt me to use it regularly. I think the automation by the machine of the breadmaking processes is not going to give anywhere near as good a result as those that can be achieved by making the bread by hand with good technique (technique not just being the physical activity of kneading, but all the other factors which influence the results, e.g. timings for the prove/rise, correct oven temperature etc., i.e. skill based on knowledge and experience/practice).

Looking at the comments on Shipton Mill’s website recepie for GF flour, getting the technique right appears to be even more critical for GF flour, and it looks unlikely that a breadmaker would deliver satisfactory results.

Before spending money on a bread machine, I would spend £30 on a 16kg sack of Shipton Mill’s GF flour and have a go at making loaves by hand. It might take multiple attempts and failures to get it right, but the results will almost certainly be better than with a bread machine, and you will be better able then to decide whether the results justify carrying on baking by hand, or whether to buy one of the GF breads mentioned above.

I don’t see this with SS pans

I’m surprised (unless it had a thick aluminium disc base or was high quality tri-ply, in which case you would be comparing cast iron with aluminium, not with stainless steel).

So I’m making a shepherd’s pie right now in my LeC, and the filling is boiling in a ring around where the flame is. I thought I was not meant to have hotspots?

It’s all relative. The thickness of the cast iron combined with its poor conductivity will mean that more heat will reach the sides of the pan, but if the burner temperature is high enough of course you will get hot spots. It’s only really a problem if food catches and burns as a result of the hotspots.

1. You could try lowering the heat a bit (and putting the lid back, unless you are seeking to boil off more of the liquid). This is supposed to be one of the benefits of cast iron, i.e. the temperature stability allows lower heat settings.

2. Try doing it with a stainless steel pan and see what the difference is.

That’s over 40cm and over 50 litres.

That’s a stock pot, which is obviously not going to fit in an oven anyway. The fact that you offer this as an example indicates the weakness of your argument.

none of the chefs I’ve worked with or employed bother with that overpriced lifestyleware

Similarly a wholly irrelevant ‘appeal to authority’. Casseroles are overwhelmingly used for domestic cooking, and the types of meals prepared in them are typically not suited to the demands of a commercial kitchen (speed, production of individual servings etc.).

Yeah, that basically backs up what I’m saying.

Not really, it explains why cast iron is particularly suited to casseroles and some types of frying/griddling (unlike stainless steel).

Plain cast iron I can appreciate for certain things, but that’s cos it’s cheap and doesn’t have a delicate finish. Le Creuset have taken a simple pan, given it a delicate coating and then charged 3x for it.

The vitreous enamel coating is not particularly delicate, although it would not be surprising if the coating on a poor quality copy was much less durable than on a Le Creuset or a good quality copy. As for the premium that the coating adds compared with bare cast iron, it seems to me that is the bare cast iron that is more often poor value for money, e.g. £120 for the Netherton Foundry casserole, which another poster recommended and which doesn’t even have any handles. If you look at the Staub production process in the video below, you can see what you are getting for your money, and as with bikes the economies of scale of mass production make the boutique small scale artisan manufacturer look poor value if they are offering an inferior product (as opposed to filling a niche by offering something different or better, e.g. custom sizing or geometry). As for what something is worth, if you are patient and do your research, you can pay a lot less than RRP. I have already suggested that the OP pay a visit to the outlet shops in Bicester: I bought a 26cm Staub casserole there a few years ago for only £56.

I try not to be overly sceptical on the whole but this is bollocks.

The mass and conductivity of your pans do affect what heat setting you use, but it makes no difference to the end result. Hotspots aren’t a problem, no matter what.

Have a read of what the author of this book says about the subject. The relevant bit is free to view using Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ function: scroll half way down down to ‘Essential Kitchen Gear’ and read as far as ‘How Buy and Care for a Wok’. The whole book is about taking a rigorous scientific/evidence/experiment based approach to cooking.

They’re called saucepans. You’ve seen plenty.

Not of the same size/volume as a medium or larger cast iron casserole. I’m sure you could achieve adequate results with a saucepan providing you chose one with a metal handle which could fit in the oven, but above a certain size/weight it’s going to be very much less than ideal, especially given that it only has a handle on one side, unlike the two handles on any decent casserole.

You can get rondeau pans which have two handles to allow them to be easily used inside the oven as well as on the hob, but they may be shallower than a casserole, and they are unlikely to be cheaper than a similarly sized cast iron casserole.

You won’t find many oval stainless pans… because it’s the wrong shape.

Depends what you are cooking. For something like chicken or leg of lamb, oval will likely be better.

overinflated price tag

I would agree that Le Creuset has been very effective in marketing its products and exploiting its brand and reputation to increase the price which the market will bear, but as others have noted you can buy copies from the likes of Sainsbury’s for a lot less.

At the end of the day, if the performance of cast iron casseroles was not actually that great compared with using a stainless steel saucepan or a slow cooker, then in the longer term sales of the products (and prices of the Le Creuset versions) would be likely to fall. So far, that hasn’t happened. A lot of people, many of them far better cooks than me and probably you, are happy to put their money where their mouth is and are happy with the results.

Cheap supermarket ones have that.

Indeed, which just shows that sometimes cheap and cheerful is excellent, providing it is reasonably well manufactured and a good design (in this case, a design copied from professional products where the emphasis is on performance and value for money, not superficial aesthetics).

Also cast iron is billed as being a slow heat conductor just as stainless is.

In cookware cast iron exploits this property to turn it into a strength, but for stainless steel cookware it is usually a weakness (albeit one that can often be compensated for by using aluminium in a thick disc base or in a tri-ply construction).

Because cast iron cookware is cast, it is invariably thick and the products have a high thermal mass. That and the slow heat conduction means less likelihood of hot spots when used on a hob and of catching and burning the food, and very stable cooking temperatures (at the cost of low responsiveness to changing the heat input). Because of its high thermal mass, it is very good for high temperature frying/griddling of meat (because it holds so much heat energy, the temperature of the pan surface will not significantly drop [=’a bad thing’] when meat at room temperature is placed on it).

If stainless steel were used to make similarly thick/heavy cookware in the same way by casting, it would exhibit similar performance to cast iron, but I imagine that such products would be far more expensive than Le Creuset etc. and would simply not be commercially viable.

I had considered cast iron griddles, etc.

From the videos on YouTube, the re-seasoning looked pretty smoky, best done outdoors on a bbq.

Again, Le Creuset and Staub especially make cast iron griddles and frying pans with an enamel coating which does not require seasoning. If you want to use a cast iron pan (enamelled or not) for cooking eggs, then it would need seasoning to produce a non-stick coating, but that is not necessary for frying meat etc.

Why not?

Stainless is a poor heat conductor, and there is probably a higher risk of burning the food/hot spots than with thick cast iron (which will act a bit like a heat sink and spread the heat away from the part directly over the burner on a hob. The properties of stainless mean it’s fine for just boiling a liquid (although if it’s poor quality with a thin base, the base will probably be prone to warping), but otherwise it works better in the sort of Tri-Ply pans that Tefal and some other manufacturers make, where the stainless is clad around a layer of aluminium (which is a better heat conductor). Some professional cookware manufacturers have a very thick disc of aluminium on the base of their stainless pans, to achieve the same thing.

The fact that you don’t see many stainless casserole dishes compared with cast iron suggests that they are not very suitable for that function (I don’t think I’ve ever seen an oval stainless casserole).

Apart from weight, the key weakness of cast iron is its brittle nature: drop it and it will probably break, unless you cushion its fall by dropping it onto your foot. It also does not like sudden extreme changes in temperature. It’s good practice to heat it up gradually, and don’t take it off the hob and plunge it straight into a washing up bowl: allow it to cool first.

If you stain the light interior enamel of a Le Creuset, I have read very successful reports of cleaning them with biological washing powder. As for staining stainless steel, I would suggest something like Oven Pride or Oven Mate (rather than sandpaper 😯 ).

http://netherton-foundry.co.uk/

Not cheap but will last forever!

Their products do not have a vitreous enamel coating. The frying pans might be very good, since they can be seasoned instead, but I suspect they would not be very good casseroles: acidic sauces would react with the iron and taint the dish, they would probably inevitably rust (and so not last very long, never mind ‘forever’), and the wooden knobs would probably not survive prolonged use in an oven.

With regard to those commenting on whether weight of the casserole is or is not an issue for them or their spouse/partner, to state the bleeding obvious casseroles come in a large range of sizes, and the weights of different sizes when full undoubtedly vary hugely. It’s meaningless to say that the weight is or is not a problem for you, without stating the actual approximate weight of your full casserole (and its size, which will limit the weight).

As to the quality or otherwise of the copies made by the likes of Ikea and Sainsbury’s, they are relatively simple products, so I would have expected that providing there is generally good basic quality control in the manufacturing process (quality of iron and pour [no imperfections/large air bubbles], reasonable thickness of iron, good enamel coating), then they should last as long as – and perform as well as – Le Creuset. It may not be possible to judge the manufacturing QC of a copy just by looking at the finished article in the shop, but if it fails quickly due to a defect, you should be able to return it to retailers like Ikea.

Do you want espresso or prefer it to the results from your french press? If yes, then an espresso machine is what you need (unless you would be happy instead with the results from a moka pot).

However, if you are planning to use the machine to make americanos, I would suggest you consider instead other methods for making long black coffee, e.g. filter such as Chemex, V60 or Aeropress.

With regard to reduced faff, grinding beans and pouring water to make filter coffee is not much trouble, and disposing of the grinds is easier than with a french press: just lift out the filter cone or fire out the puck and filter from the Aeropress into the bin. Bean to cup machines will potentially offer less faff unless/until they develop a fault or require servicing/maintenance. Routine descaling is likely to be very simple, but anything more than that is likely to be more problematic.

I’ve banned him for life

I wouldn’t want to belong to a forum that would have me as a member.

This is a sweeping assertion, but I suspect that the OP and everyone else on this thread is failing to focus on what really matters, which is not what sources of energy we should be using for heat etc., and in what proportions, but rather that as a society we need to reduce consumption of all energy sources and vastly improve improve the energy efficiency of our homes and workplaces.

Unfortunately that is potentially much more difficult to achieve than installing a new woodburner or any other form of heating.

there’s not a lot wrong with 19mm for most uses

According to this thread on the Cycling UK forum, the newer 19mm wide version of the Open Pro rim has a relatively thin braking surface, which might be less than ideal for a commuter. Apparently the previous version of the Open Pro, which is 15mm wide (and presumably has a thicker braking surface), is still available, but has been renamed Open Pro C.

Staub is another french manufacturer which is comparable to Le Creuset, and the main difference between the two is that the Staub interiors are black enamel, unlike the light enamel of Le Creuset (light enamel means it’s possibly easier to monitor the extent of browning of meat, but also has a reputation of eventually/sometimes staining, about which you can find many comments and suggested cures on the internet). Chasseur is another french brand which is less well known.

Both Le Creuset and Staub’s owner, Zwilling J A Henckels, have outlet shops at Bicester village, and the discounts on Staub there can be very good, but it’s pot luck what will be in stock, especially what may be heavily discounted (both seconds and perfect items).

That said, you need above all to decide first what type, size and shape of casserole you need/want. It doesn’t matter how much of a bargain price a casserole is, if it’s not really suitable for the dishes you want to cook. If you really need a 27cm oval casserole because that is the right size for a chicken for your family, then anything else much smaller or larger, or a round or shallow casserole instead of oval, no matter how cheap, may be a waste of money.

The ones I have enjoyed most when eaten on their own as a snack are the nocellara variety, which I find have a creamy lemony flavour.

Sentenced today:

– Suspended eight-month prison sentence
– 250 hours of unpaid work
– Disqualified from driving for three years.

When you see a ‘barista’ in a coffee shop, typically one of the big chains, using a spoon to hold back or spoon out the froth, that is likely to be an indicator that they are

…making a cappuccino? [/quote]

I don’t make cappuccinos nowadays myself, but my understanding is that using a spoon to drag out or hold back foam is indicative of poor steaming technique and/or equipment (using excessively large jugs for bucket sized drinks). Even when I used to make a cappuccino using the steam arm of a Magimix Nespresso machine, I never found it necessary to spoon the foam.

At the end of the day, these things are more indicators rather than decisive factors in whether the drink will be good, in the same way that a bottomless portafilter can visually expose poor barista technique (and for that reason is also a good barista training tool).

Ultimately taste is the only criterion, but I think the big chains and mediocre independents rely on milk to cover up the sometimes very poor quality of their espresso.

Below is an example of a bad espresso pour with a bottomless portafilter – it will taste absolutely disgusting. However, there would not be the same visual indicators if a traditional spouted portafilter were used, and drowning the resulting espresso in milk will dilute and to some extent mask the horrible taste. I think a lot of coffee shops get away with making and selling such poor quality milk based coffee drinks because a large percentage of customers have never had really good espresso – or very good espresso based milk drinks – to use as a reference.

My domestic steam wand isn’t up to the job. Them’s the breaks unfortunately.

Have you investigated whether you can change the steam wand (or the tip)? I think a lot of domestic machines are supplied with a tip which is really designed for commercial machines which have a lot more steaming power, and so the tip has large(ish) holes. A tip with smaller holes (and possibly only one or two holes instead of the usual four), makes it much easier to steam milk with a lower powered domestic machine, and it also slows the steaming process down, making it easier to control and achieve the results you want, e.g. microfoam.

The likes of Bella Barista sell replacement wands and tips, and it might be worth doing some googling of coffee forums to see if anyone who has the same machine as you has found that replacing the steam tip or wand has improved the steaming performance. (You may not be limited to using only tips made/supplied by your machine manufacturer, since the threads are often the same for the different brands.)

In any case, we tend to learn and adapt to whatever kit we have, so I would expect that you are getting the best results for your particular machine. I think if my own machine could not produce microfoam, I would probably make much better cappucino drinks than I currently do.

With the frothy stuff skimmed off the top as it’s poured.

Oh dear, and you were doing so well up to that point ( 😉 ). There should be no ‘skimming off of the frothy stuff’, especially not for microfoam. The main reason I chose the particular video in my post above was because it shows fairly well what microfoam looks like and how it is produced. It takes a little bit of skill to make, and the steam wands (or the steam wand tip) on some (i.e. domestic) espresso machines may not be suited to making microfoam (or may make it much more difficult to achieve).

When you see a ‘barista’ in a coffee shop, typically one of the big chains, using a spoon to hold back or spoon out the froth, that is likely to be an indicator that they are not making great coffee (because they lack the skills and probably also the right equipment [as well as using probably poor or mediocre quality beans], e.g. steaming jugs for bucket sized drinks instead of the small jugs like those in the video).

How does one make a flat white then? If I ever have coffee out it’s always a costa flat white so would be great to make my own.

Although the video below is american, it’s a good illustration of how to make a flat white. My recollection of the Costa flat white was that it was better than their drinks with more milk (e.g. cappucino), but it still contained too much milk (as is obvious from the much larger cups they use for a flat white than a good independent coffee shop). Less milk means a stronger drink and also makes it harder to get away with using a bad espresso shot and poor quality or over roasted beans.

You should not find it difficult to produce a better flat white (or espresso or cappucino) than Costa’s, but that’s a relatively low bar. I would suggest you try the flat whites and espresso in one or two good local independents to give yourself a better idea of the benchmark to aim for when making your own at home.

it’ll strain the relationship between you and the other person so I guess it depends how much you like them.

If the other person takes offence about possibly now having to face the consequences of his bad driving in the form of having to pay more next year for his motor insurance, then the relationship was not worth trying to save anyway.

I’m assuming the OP has suffered significant injuries, which it sounds like he has (and as kerley’s experience shows, sometimes what on the face of it may seem only a minor injury can have significant long term or life long effects). Someone who expects you simply to put up with such injuries caused by them without seeking compensation via their insurance is not an acquaintanceship or friendship worth having.

Assuming that your injuries are severe enough that you want or need to make a claim for the pain, inconvenience (e.g. not being able to enjoy normal leisure activities, not being able to drive) and/or loss of earnings if applicable, then:

Tell the car driver that the hospital initially failed to spot the fractures and your injuries are much worse, and that HE should notify his insurers of the accident (assuming he has not already done so).

This doesn’t commit you to making a claim, but he needs to tell his insurers because they will not be happy about not being informed before, and delaying telling them further may make things worse for him (not you*).

If you do decide to claim for the injuries, you’ll need to see about getting advice (do you have legal expenses insurance on your household insurance policy, or are you a CTC/Cycling UK member?).

* Because third party liability cover is the element of motor insurance which is legally compulsory, the insurer cannot decline to pay for your injuries because their policyholder failed to notify them of the accident promptly (they may be unlikely however to pay retrospectively for the damage to his car because of the delay).

To add to the comments above:

OP, how long before numbness sets in?

about 30 mins…

As MrBlobby implies, it’s more likely to be a problem on a turbo (or at least happen after a shorter period of riding compared with on the road), because when riding on the road you will be frequently – if not constantly – moving about on the saddle without even realising it, and probably occasionally getting out of the saddle, both varying and relieving the pressure on the area, all of which is likely either to prevent it happening or at least delay it. Getting your position ‘right’ will help, but if you ride on the turbo in the same position without any moving about whatsoever on the saddle (or without getting out of the saddle briefly), even in the ideal position for you, then I would not be surprised if it happens.

If you are doing constant steady efforts on the turbo, with no variation in intensity, then that is going to mean that you will tend to stay in the same position and not make the sort of occasional – even small – movements that will relieve the pressure. If you are not already doing so, I would suggest you introduce variations in intensity, e.g. intervals (long and/or short). That will likely help you to keep changing position, i.e. on the drops or hoods for the hard effort, and during the recovery phases on the tops or even sat up (no-handed) plus maybe a short period out of the saddle.

As to stem length, if the bike is staying on the turbo for the winter and you think it’s possibly too long, then I would consider getting a much shorter very cheap basic stem (not just 10mm shorter, but 20mm, 30mm or even more). While the bike is on the turbo, you don’t need to worry about too short a stem affecting the handling. With very cheap stems, it’s easier (and not too costly) to start with a very short one, and if you feel it’s too short, you can get a slightly longer one. If you are overweight and have a bit of a stomach, then you might find that it gets in the way of leaning forward in your ideal position, but if/when you get slimmer this can change. Obviously raising the stem is another option to tweak your position (flip the stem or get one with more rise if the steerer has been cut too short to allow more spacers under the stem).

Another option might be the specialist anatomic saddles like ISM[/url].

As to getting your position right, if you are new to road riding then a bike fit might be a good idea, but in the meantime an advantage of a static turbo is that it does make it a bit easier to experiment with getting your preferred position by yourself. You could get a mate to look at you on the turbo and see if he thinks your position looks right/uncomfortable (or put a mirror against a wall to see yourself).

As to the right way to set up the bike, the argument that an article should be disregarded simply because it is 20 years old is daft: the human body has not evolved into a different shape in the last 20 or 100 years.

Cycling is “a marriage between the somewhat adaptable human body and a somewhat adjustable machine” – there is unlikely to be an absolutely correct position or set up for anyone. Even if you get a position you are happy with now, you could find that you need to change it later due to increased or reduced fitness (e.g. greater/less flexibility, less or more of a stomach, less or more bodyweight [=less or more pressure on the perineum]).

You might find this article written by the people at Spa Cycles to be useful.

I rode that junction about 3 hours before the victim. very hard to see how that wouldn’t be dangerous driving imo. lots of visibility there. wonder what the charge would have been if he’d hit a car and killed another motorist.

it has genuinely shook me up a bit and I’ve ridden much much less this year, now I have kids I worry about leaving them orphaned through no fault of my own.

I sympathise greatly.

Ironically I suspect that a cyclist would be better able than a driver to be able to see and anticipate that the car was not slowing down – sufficiently or at all – and brake/swerve. I am not suggesting that the cyclist who was killed was in any way at fault, simply noting that on a bike you can often have better awareness of cars – e.g. hearing engine noise and judging speed etc. (i.e. heightened senses triggered by the potential threat the cars represent) – and more reaction time than other car drivers encased in their own metal bubble travelling twice as fast.

However, I increasingly find such increased awareness to be a curse rather than a blessing: hearing a car behind me on quiet country roads like the one in the accident instantly makes me concerned about where the car is, how far away, what its speed is etc., prompting multiple shoulder checks as it gets closer to me. It feels as though just to try to stay reasonably safe I need to exercise a level of constant vigilance that verges on paranoia about other road users, which spoils the experience of riding on what should be very safe country roads.

The most reasonable proposal is the use of driving test critera: driving faults equating to inconsiderate driving, serious faults equating to careless driving and dangerous faults equating to dangerous driving…

Naturally, driving examiners are (in theory at least) trained to adhere to a standardised set of criteria, meaning that not only do you have an objective set of measures, but you also have a ready-made pool of expert witnesses.

It’s an interesting point which I had not thought about, but logically in such cases there should always be expert witnesses who make the case for whether or not it was dangerous driving (depending upon whether they are a witness for the defence or prosecution). The jury members should not be effectively encouraged to be their own expert witnesses in the absence of proper expert witness evidence, because inevitably they will each use their own varying driving standards and experience as the reference. In the same way, a prosecution under work related health and safety legislation would always involve expert witnesses: it would never be left up to the jury to decide in the absence of such evidence whether a negligent act or omission met the threshold for a conviction. In other words the jury should evaluate the (possibly conflicting) expert evidence, which will help them to avoid judging the action by their own – very possibly low or misinformed – standards.

According to this article[/url] there was another cyclist killed at that location in 2012.

It seems that a lot of (probably local) drivers are used to driving across that junction without slowing down. It’s not heavily trafficked, and I can imagine it’s very easy for a bad driver to get in the habit of not checking properly when approaching and crossing the junction, because it’s rare that another car will be on the other road and necessitate slowing or stopping. The suggestion in the article that it be altered to a staggered junction seems a good one: the dozy idiots who drive through the junction without checking properly and slowing down are just as likely to drive into a car as a cyclist.

Which junction is it ?

Ipley Crossroads

are the sightlines really bad ?

If my Google Streetview link has worked, you can see that you could hardly wish for better sight lines.

I appreciate that Dangerous Driving might be difficult to prove without witness evidence etc., but in this case it looks self evident that he drove across the road in breach of the multiple give way signs. Whether he did not see, notice or ‘ignored’ the cyclist seems beside the point to point to me: this was such a severe and unmitigated piece of bad driving that it is the very definition in layman’s terms of what should be considered dangerous driving, rather than simply careless.

I don’t drink americanos, but the general rule of thumb is that cafetieres produce a ‘muddier’, potentially stronger/harsher brew compared to the ‘cleaner’ cup from filter coffee, and I would expect an americano to be more like filter coffee than cafetiere. The fact that you like a lighter roast, makes me think that you should try it filtered, because I think the flavours of a light roast stand out better in filter coffee.

A few points you might want to consider:

– Filters and cafetieres are reliable, easy, inexpensive and fuss free methods for consistently producing good long black coffee. They are hard to get wrong, and are also a good way of experiencing the benefit from spending money on a grinder and freshly roasted beans.

– In contrast, espresso can be difficult to get right, sometimes very difficult. Dialling in the grinder for a different blend (or simply a new batch) as well as getting the dose and tamp right can be difficult enough on their own (and waste a lot of coffee in the process), but sometimes even when you think you’ve everything right you still get a bad (disgusting) shot. In other words, there are a lot of variables which make espresso a poor choice if you want a long black. The only reason why shops sell americanos rather than filter is because they already have an expensive espresso machine and grinder dialled in for espresso, to which they can add water to produce an americano very quickly compared with filter.

– If you prefer lighter roasts but your wife wants a dark roast (not uncommon, since milk is used to dilute/mask the bitter taste of many dark roasts and bad espresso shots) then that is going to be even trickier to do with an espresso machine. Bear in mind that when a shop offers a choice of espresso blends they will have a separate grinder for each. When I’ve ordered the guest blend in a good shop, I’ve seen the barista have to make multiple shots and threw them away to dial in the grinder of the (less frequently ordered) guest blend, before they were satisfied with the result and served it to me.

– If your wife likes drinks with large ratios of milk, like latte, then I would suggest an Aeropress or moka pot and a milk frothing device, and spending the bulk of your money on a good grinder and fresh beans. For filter, Aeropress and cafetiere, it’s fairly easy to adjust a grinder to give the preferred/necessary variation in coarseness and to swap between different blends.

This is espresso […]

This isn’t

agree bad question

Rubbish. The question is ‘How do you like your espresso?’, and the drinks are all* espresso based types of coffee.

* With the possibly technical exception of ristretto, which is an espresso pour but cut short.

The question could just as easily have been ‘How do you like your whisky?’, and it would be patently absurd to tell someone who likes a drop of water, ginger ale, soda water, or another mixer with their whisky, that ‘they are not drinking whisky’.

More importantly, you have both completely failed to spot the glaring omission of ‘Corretto’ from the list of options, which is obviously the ‘correct’ ( 😉 ) answer.

We have this one, but I think the design is dangerous…

There are two independent lock barrels, so if you deadlock it from the inside (to stop the hand through glass scenario) you can’t then get out without a key and opening it from the outside (to come in) doesn’t unlock the inside handle. Fire escape risk IMO.

You don’t have to use the dealocking function all the time. Arguably you want the higher security when your home is unattended, and obviously it is not an increased fire risk then. When you are at home, you can choose not to deadlock it or you could deadlock it but leave the key in the lock on the inside.

Incidentally it would be a good idea to check your household contents insurance policy document and see what requirements it makes about locks. It might only require that all locks are put into effective operation when the house is left unattended, but it might also specify that the door locks are to a minimum standard, e.g. BS3621, which models 84 and 85 do not meet.

According to the Yale website, both the 85 deadlatch[/url] and the 84 nightlatch[/url] are supplied with the same Yale model 1109 cylinder, which suggests you should be able to use your existing cylinder and keys.

I would be careful to get one with the same backset and finish, which should allow you to use the existing staple.

However IANAL.