You dont need building regs if it is installed by a HETAS qualified installer.

Thats what I mean. The Hetas guy supplies a certificate. If not I think you have to get somebody from the council to check it out?

You can’t call “Nice” biscuits dissapointing. They look rubbish, so the fact they tast rubbish fully meets expectations.

That sort of work needs building regs approval (or whatever its called). Presumably that cost includes the firm providing all the necessary certificates?

Tell him his cross bow is crap and show him how to make a better one?

Still have fond memories of my Dad showing me how to make a decent one when I was 8 or 9.

Been playing with home made bows and arrows ever since.

The boot is tiny and even with seats down and wheels off you would struggle to get a bike inside.

With wheels off and backseat down I can JUST fit a roadbike with full mudguards in the back of a 500. (the mudguards are the real pain).I would image the panda has more room in the back.

Although I would have though the best bet for the 4×4 would be a tow bar mounted rear rack.

My 1990 Panda was the only car I have ever regretted selling.

I had a newer one but its wasn’t quite the same.

I saw one of these in a garage last week and want one.But then I’d have to sell my 500.

I like small FIATS

Tried to order a component from Wiggle. They had to order it in, it took two weeks and never arrived.

Tried my new (to me) LBS. They had the part in stock and charged me the Wiggle price without having to haggle.

I shall be using them more in future.

•On-road or off-road navigation with preloaded Garmin Cycle Map

I wonder how good the map will be, and if you can load other maps.

Christmas 2011 I hit the threshold so started charging VAT and squirling away the money for payment to HMRC.

By the time in the new year I contacted them and filled in all the forms they gave me a VAT start date of March 1st. I assumed I would have to pay the 20% on sales from Christmas when I went over the threshold but they said I only need to start paying them from the 1st March.

Were you issuing invoices which had an amount described as “VAT” on them before you registered for VAT, or did you just up your prices by 20%? If the latter – no worries, but if the former, HMRC take dim view of people charging VAT and pocketing the money (or at least they used to).

Sales of Goods Act?

Surely the lady in question was providing a service?

Fifth year I’ve ridden it and really enjoyed every one. A real nice weekend away in a beautiful part of the world.

I understand they had about 300 pre-entries, and looking at the rider list abut 100 others turned up on the day.

I don’t know how many riders are needed to make it worth while, but it must take a hell of a lot of organising.

We have two rates of mileage. The higher one (45p) is paid when the only option is to use your own car, the lower rate (25p) when there is a cheaper option (pool car or public transport) but you choose to use your own car for whatever reason.

It might be worth your missus asking if something like this might apply to her.

The HONC doesn’t have any trouble selling out (and that’s even less of an “MTB route”)

I wonder if its just because Kington is a bit off the beaten track.

That’s a shame, always been one of my favourite rides.

A lot of the route was with landowners permission, so it not as if you can just turn up and ride it anytime you want.

There is no one type of CX bike. Some will be aimed at traditional CX racing, others might be designed more like rough-stuff tourers.

So question is what should I look for in CX bike handling?

If you want to race, presumably something light and sharp handling. Like a road (racing) bike but with mud clearance.

My toes rubbed on the front a lot when cornering too

Seems to be quite common now on all sorts of bikes. Presumably they make the front ends short to keep the handling sharp. Seems a bit like sloppy design (to me), but should only be a problem at slow speeds or if you want to fit mud guards.

Had mini-v style brakes which seemed really good

Be careful, I think some of these won’t work properly with road brake levers. Old fashioned high profile cantis don’t need as much cable pull to operate.

I find cantis work fine. I would go for disks on a new bike, but only because they cut down on rim wear.

Will it be backward compatible with current Xbox 360 games?

What’s a jar jack cougar?

Its what happened to his bottle of chilli sauce.

Its not unknown for businesses to deduct the cost of a uniform from a workers wage.

In these cases take home pay (ie after the deduction) has to be above National Minimum Wage rates.

I can see Uran taking lead now, he’ s obviously in brilliant form and the rest of the course suits him better.

I don’t know anything about Uran. Is he the sort of rider that can maintain that form over the next two weeks or the sort of rider that might only have a couple of good days in his legs?

Oh Bradley, those steep bits really don’t suit you me old mate.

He was still climbing stupidly fast. Just not as fast as the others.

And this is when he’s in the best condition he’s ever been in according to ‘the numbers’….

And if everyone else is in better condition, according to ‘the numbers’ they will beat him.

He’s 4th overall and managed a top ten finish on a hard day in the mountains. He’s not exactly doing badly, yet everyone slags him off.

Not really. International commerce continued during WW2 with Germany continuing to pay back loans to British banks

Slightly different. Todays situation is more like if Lanacaster Bombers were beign built by Krupps munitions works (they weren’t were they?)

Obviously things have moved on a bit in more recent years, now we have the single currency etc.

I dunno, its very difficult to pick a fight with your neighbour when they own half your defence industry, your utilitiues and your transport infrastructure.

So, European cooperation and integration has to be just about economics does it?

Feel free to suggest other reasons why we should stay or should go.

EU originally set up to prevent another war in Europe?

Panaracer Pasela?

I doubt if most politicians really understand what they mean by “leaving the EU”. Its a lot more complicated than just in/out.

Are they suggesting we carefully unpick 40 years worth of legislation? Which bits do we keep and which bits do we throw out? Do we just keep it all unchanged?

Road time trials also have handicap prizes. Its some complicated formula based on riders previous best times over the distance.

Obviously couldn’t be done on any ride incorporating bridleways :wink:

Some road races are run as handicaps. And quite a lot of track leagues include handicap races.

Being crap never seemed to give me much of an advantage in either :-)

I think we need little bit of perspective about Wiggins “poor” descending

Wiggins lost about a minute on that descent yesterday, with Astana taking all sorts of risks to drop him. On the flat both Astana AND Garmin were going full bore to try and keep the gap, but Sky just rode straight up to them.

Wiggins looked quite comfortable at the foot of the last climb and it was hesjedal that went out the back.

Result was that Garmin shot themselves in the foot, Nibali hasn’t gained any time when racing to his strengths and Wiggins is being written off as a contender.

Not sure how Wiggins can gain time on Nibali without a long TT, but his position is pretty good.

MS are faced with competition from Apple, so they need to respond

Been using Windows 8 on a desktop for about two months now. I find the whole user interface so awkward that I’m actually contemplating getting an iMAC instead!

Eating cholesterol rich foods has very little impact on the cholesterol levels in your body – Fact!.

This isn’t exactly a secret that the drug companies don’t want you to know. Its probably the first thing your doctor will tell you.

Most cholesterol is manufactured in your liver and Statins (I believe) work by inhibiting liver function. Sounds a bit scary, but I suppose you have to weigh up the relative risks.

Do you know if there is a family history of high cholesterol/blood pressure?

Might be worth persuading relatives to get their levels checked and finding out what your recent ancestors died of.

A genetic cause needs to be treated diffrently than one cause by bad diet.

For what you get, Asgard sheds seem quite reasonably priced.

They’re not impregnable, but probably harder to break into than most peoples houses.

I’m another one who misses his analouge dish.

My “broadband” is crap so is there anyway to get Europsort through a satellite dish without going for a Sky package?

(I don’t mind paying for Eurosport, just not all the other Sky channels I’ll never watch)

I’d like to see Wiggins catch up with Froome in the time trials and then meander along just behind him taking pictures and munching on snacks. maybe wave at people.

Or Froome getting to a mountain top so far ahead of Wiggins that he stops to buy an ice cream :-)

It has to be easy to ride slowly, otherwise beginners would crash, and never ride again.

I teach beginners.

What you need are a lot of technical features close together on a trail where its hard to build up much speed. So when they fall of, they don’t hurt themselves.

I used to use a bit called (I think) “New England Switchbacks” It had a steep down, a drop off (with chicken run), a bermy section and a loose granny ring climb, all in about half a mile. But apparently there is some rare lichen there so its been closed :-(

jairaj – I wasn’t really talking about the blue route. I know thats meant to be fairly easy.

I mean ALL the new sections taken together. Its seems to be either berms or jumps, which are fine taken at whatever pace you feel comfortable at.

Its suppose my mixed feelings are because last weekend, I rode 14 miles there with no dabs, no falls and only one involuntary dismount(and that was on the black bit). I’m a slow crap rider and it just doesn’t seem right that a route should provide no challenge unless you ride fast.

What are these jumps like though? I’ve been over the ones at Llandegla

From memory there are only four sections in 14 miles (two on the blue and two on the red). If you know what you are doing I’m sure they are no problem. Although if you’re not careful, I think the second bit on the red route (where the pink bridge used to be) has the potential for something to go seriously wrong. If you are in to that sort of thing, best to try it once then go back up for a proper go.

EDIT: just checked the route map. Its section 25 – 26

If you’re not going to ride it properly

Sorry, I didn’t realise there was a “proper” way. Will I be laughed at because i like to keep my wheels on the ground?

Trying to do the jumps is the challenge

Not for me it isn’t.

and provides the rush

I’m quite happy rushless thank you.

OK, Am I the only saddo that is going to keep displaying the last couple of years permits – just in case I get a chance to strike up a “I used to ride here before it was famous” type conversation?

Ridden all the new routes a few times and I can’t make up my mind about them.

The trails are great fun to ride fast. But unless you like jumping over those table tops (or doubles or whatever they are called) there is nothing on the new trails that you have to really worry about (apart from loosing speed before the jumpy bits).

So quite often the new routes feel like a cross between a velodrome and a theme park ride. Seems very odd to me.

And somebody ought to get a burger van at the red/blue meeting point – they could end up making a fortune