A lot of people do, well they turn more right wing/Tory voting around age 50. A lot of that is selfishness and greed…

I was brought up in a house with Tory voting parents, joined the military and am ashamed to say, voted the same way they did in my first GE. Then as I aged I stopped being such a selfish prick and started thinking about others; and as a result my voting preferences changed.

Eventually when I left the military I joined the Labour Party and, 12 years later, am still a card carrying member and a nursing rep for Unison.

I’m sure a few folks who remember me from the old STW forum might recall my shamefully right of centre contributions to political threads in those days. I am so glad I grew out of that.

So what silly backset will we have behind Boris’ next speech… Nurses…

I’d rather crap in my hands and clap than turn up for a photoshoot with that festering anal fistula.

Isn’t it about now that unpopular Tory PMs look for a country to go to war with, to take everyone’s attention off how crap they are?

I think he is doing a fantastic job…of damaging his own party and making it more and more likely they will become damaged goods in any future GE. He needs to hang around a bit longer to ensure he has really wrecked them.

Unfortunately though, by remaining in post, he is also damaging the country.

@Perchypanther – Something like this?

Vegetable carcasses arranged in a macabre pastiche to the Sedlec Ossuary.

It’s a mainstream product in a mainstream outlet

It’s not like they are trying to flog dildos or drugs

Very much this.

Can’t see the issue myself. Looks good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes

How is this even remotely relevant?

It is a sign of just how far to the right British politics has lurched when Corbyn’s policies, which would be considered very centre left in Northern European countries, are being called “Communist” by political illiterates such as yourself.

Perhaps you’d find more support for your comments in the Daily Express comments section?

Eat a lot of Semtex, do we?

I’ve never eaten it but I have heated up water with it (well PE-4, the plastic explosive used by HM Forces).

It has quite a stable and sustained burn when lit and we had a load of PE-4 but had run out of hexi blocks so, when a brew was required, we improvised.

It’s pretty shocking the amount of Dihydrogen Monoxide that is found in food these days. It is a travesty that a chemical that can accelerate corrosion and cause someone to suffocate is in such widespread use.

Wake up sheeple, ban DHMO now!

On the other hand – is a skate park a refuge for teenagers to escape grumpy old men like me telling them what to do

Pretty much this.

As others have said, try and go at a different time if you are worried about their colourful language.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/us-school-is-rebuilt-with-bulletproof-barriers-and-curved-corridors-to-protect-against-mass-a4220231.html

I would be happy with a private system with compulsion – insurers don’t get to choose who they insure.

But high risk patients attract higher premiums, and as there is a correlation between poverty and poor health those high premiums become a means to ‘choose’ who they insure, ie; the poor and ill get excluded by circumstances.

My sister-in-law is an Emergency Trauma Nurse in Detroit and when I was a student I managed to arrange a placement to work with her over there, so have seen how the costs stack up (and the workload place on staff just accounting for it) in the US. Long story short, the costs vary massively dependant upon reason for admission, if it’s an emergency or planned admission, who your HMO is, who the hospital provider is and which state you are in. Overall though it’s all significantly more expensive than the UK, shockingly so in some instances.

For instance, if you are unlucky enough to require admission to an ITU (where I work) with Sepsis a rough ballpark figure per day, bed alone, is $4k-$8k. Admission day costs for an ITU pt at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit were (back in 2011) approximately $40k, with subsequent days falling to about $24k. If you are unfortunate enough to require CRRT (dialysis) that starts at $2.4k per day, plus the costs of consumables.

To give you an idea of how expensive even seemingly minor item are (after all, you have to pay for everything during your stay) a ‘urinary hygiene kit’ (urine bottle/bed pan) is about $37.

I did a rough calculation earlier and if the pt I’m looking after today was a pt at the Henry Ford in Detroit they would already have racked up a bill of more than $180k after 6 days. Whilst that may be covered by insurance, as a poorly-controlled Type 2 Diabetic with a history of cardiac problems, they may not be able to afford insurance.

As for the high costs in the US being down to high staff wages, this isn’t a given. The average wages of hospital staff vary hugely depending upon which state the staff live in, with wages in Florida, California and the NE states being generally among the highest, with wages in southern states and the midwest being among the lowest. The high cost of healthcare in the US is driven more by excessive amounts of ‘middlemen’ (HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, specialist services) and liability insurance.

Don’t get me wrong though, the US healthcare system if fantastic, but only if you can afford it. The NHS may have its faults but when you turn up in ED we’re not bothered about how much money you have. If we were to lose the NHS it would be a travesty and a huge amount of the population would likely find themselves priced out of any alternatives.

Gimp suit?

Not quite a gimp suit but in the same ballpark (possibly NSFW)

Lifestyle

Another piece of pointless plastic.

Maybe the thief thought the dentist had left their shiny unused $10000 Santa Cruz mtb in the office…?

Keep up. Its unused e-bikes these days.

Lol – From my experience A&E and Police think everything comes to us.

Nah, A&E thinks everything goes to the Medical Admissions Unit. It even has a name, “triage via admission”.

A busy admissions unit is apparently a suitable ‘place of safety’ for a MH pt having an episode.

Any local fetishists looking to set up a ‘medical play’ room?

Good luck to him.

Of course the good thing about being a Social Worker is that you get to palm off any outstanding work you have left on a Friday afternoon to A&E or the police

😉

Didn’t ‘The Badger Thread’ appear about the same time that a few people flounced off to create their own anti-STW forum?

All we need now is Hora to make an appearance, asking inane questions about the next Ellsworth/Santa Cruz frame he is thinking of buying…

a Steel FS frame isn’t for me

Avoiding the hassle of driving and parking. Even on a Sunday night it’ll be a pain around Islington.

It also gives you a bit of time post gig to chill out a little before driving again.

Despite having lived in London for most of my early life, and knowing many rat runs and cheeky places to park, I don’t drive in for gigs. Just not worth the hassle.

Drive to somewhere on the Tube network, park up there and get the Tube in.

Given where you’re staying somewhere on either the Piccadilly, District or Metropolitan would probably be your best bet.

Can’t you just fit some of these to any FS frame?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07NVHJZRW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_R3NyDbB5FCFVT

I’m a fan of Cotic but this seems to be a question that has an easier answer than looking for specific frame designs.

So TJ. Your superstar purchase history is? People want to know how relevant your opinions are?

Neil superstar

Woah tiger.

I’ve brought stuff from you recently which I’m pretty happy with, but it still appears to me that you come across as a complete numpty when you decide to respond to anything but the most glowing of praise. Perhaps being ‘customer facing’ just isn’t your thing?

The negativity around Superstar Components isn’t always someone else’s fault.

Yes, you sound like an incredibly intolerant ****.

For full disclosure, I own a not-so-fetid-not-so-sex-filled-sex-pond.

There was of course that most excellent bit of legislation from the late 80’s spawned from the Poll Tax or raves IIRC whereby gatherings of 3 or more people were to be deemed illegal and very much subject to police interference.

Just invoke that one.

It was 1994 (Criminal Justice Act) and would probably require said gathered cyclists to be listening to ‘repetitive beats’ whilst in attendance.

Those haters from years ago will never change…

Actually you’re quite wrong.

I was one of those “haters” as you say, when they first hit the market many of their products were pretty poor, especially their brake pads, and they rightly took a lot of stick.

Wind forward all these years and, having recently returned to mtbing after a break of quite a few years, I decided to give Superstar another try. I haven’t had a problem with any of the items I’ve brought and am glad to see them doing well

Sometime ‘haters’ have a point and if companies approach such criticism constructively, using it as impetus to improve their products and service, then said criticism has had a positive outcome.

Yes there will always be a few folks won’t alter their opinions regardless of new evidence but that is true of everything, not just bicycle component sales.

Luckily I work with quite a few Southern Europeans and as a consequence am picking up a fair amount of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.

You could try this though…

given that despite a supposed loving god evil clearly exists and given the actions of many in the organised churches its clear and obvious to me that there is no god.

Ah but they (Christians) have an answer for that.

Free will, living in a ‘broken’ world and (of course) suffering brings people closer to god.

If there was a god and that was their ‘belief’ then, in human terms, they would be considered some sort of psychopath and/or a complete sadist.

Labour aren’t the remain party I support.

Ignorant numpties like me don’t know what they stand for.

FTFY.

The Liberal Democrats are a remain party.

They have a funny way of going about it.

Rational thought is based around evidence and facts. Faith is by definition irrational

And that is why it is ultimately pointless trying to debate religion with those who ‘believe’. Its not a level playing field when one side gets to play the “you wouldn’t understand because you have to have faith” card.

sootyandjim – is it the wonkywing?

That’s not its official name.

LeeW – Northrop Tacit Blue.

Easy.

Gannet AEW.3.

Rather than piss money up the wall on HS2 a fraction of that money could (should) be used to upgrade the Midland Main Line (MML), a route that HS2 pretty much follows out of London.

The MML has been the poor relation to both the WCML and ECML for years, with the cancellation of the planned electrification being the latest snub. Instead the London end was ‘upgraded’ for Thameslink trains, with the ridiculous situation that those slow, stopping trains now take priority over the Intercity services.

There is also the issue of congestion at St Pancras, with the MML services squeezed into the seeming afterthought of platforms 1-4, which throttles any attempts to improve service frequency.