I’ve pulled up at a mobile cafe on a warm summer’s day before with 20 – 30 roadies hanging around outside and literally no one says hello or looks at you

If no-one in this scenario had bikes of any sort would you expect them all to recognise your presence?

I had a dram of my best malt last night to celebrate a court at last dealing firmly with eco law breakers.

I’m not sure you have enough to do.

Yeah, but then you’d have to have a debate about where to build the wall where ‘The North’ starts?

Some say Watford, Some say Gretna Green

I’d be happy with walling off Watford if that’s on the cards?

It’s ok everyone they’re here to save us from the echo chamber.

With the roads the state they are I can’t understand anyone persisting with a proper road bike unless they are genuinely racing the thing.

I have a nice gravel bike, and an even nicer road bike. For that reason, and for this reason

2 weeks in & I can’t believe I didn’t get one sooner – it’s capable enough on & off road for 80% of the riding round here.

the gravel bike is the one I choose like 70/80% of the time unless I’m being sociable and riding with the local roadie shop ride.

This thread IS a nice thing! It’s a civilised discussion about a contentious topic between people who disagree, but are respectful to the others.

Yes fair point.

This sort of speculation is why we can’t have nice things.

One of the guys on here runs a hosting company with good rates, i’ve used them for my email for quite a few years,  I know other forum members use them.

https://www.mythic-beasts.com/

I’m here to recommend this lot, use them both the company I work for and my own personal stuff. Transferring over was super straightforward, and the one time I’ve needed to use their support they were dead helpful.

Ernie, you’ve said yourself that you do it for jollies, please don’t try to pretend its some higher calling.

I think the problem is that grimep knows that he won’t be allowed to make his point in a more restraint and reasonable manner so he goes all out when he expresses his opposition.

That’s very charitable of you.

Talking of cars, the EU, and our hard fought and won freedom, I saw the other day that new EU cars will be fitted with automatic speed limiters. Does anyone have any clue whether that will affect the Greatest of Britains?

I’m still on a 26″ wheel Mk1 Soul. I fear I’m the cycling equivalent of Rees-Mogg.

Why, are you also making a reality tv show about your family?

Can I thank you both. And I’m glad the LibDem seat count ended up so high. I hope that compensates in some way for you having to vote tactically.

I would have voted Labour normally (had a great Labour MP when I was in Hammersmith), but here Lib Dem was the way to go so that’s what I did and now we have a Lib Dem MP! Hope that helps.

Overall though, this discussion puts me in mind of someone who has been starved for 14 years, and now that someone has turned up with some decent looking food, is complaining because they haven’t provided the correct sort of soup spoon. Why can’t we just enjoy that things are better without having to instantly try and tear it down?

I would also put a vote in for Mason Cycles for fancy steel and titanium options.

There are legal requirements over what an invoice should include btw so just check whatever template you use has them all.

As mentioned you can ignore the ‘VAT amount if applicable’ bit.

VAT can be safely ignored unless you intend to rapidly scale to the point where you’re turning over £85k or more a year.

The invoice isn’t for you, it’s a paper trail to make sure that money from her business (if that’s what’s paying you, rather than it just being a personal payment) isn’t just vanishing into thin air. As has been said it doesn’t need to be complicated.

I’m still down for the technocratic ‘pick qualified people who have relevant experience in the appropriate area’ approach.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good TJ.

Ideology or not, based on the Wikipedia explanation of Technocracy

Technocracy is a form of government in which the decision-makers are selected based on their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge

I think I could stand to have some of it in my life! Compared to say, a Transport Minister who doesn’t understand that you need ferries to run a ferry company.

1) stop selling council houses.

2) put proper tenant protection and fair rentals in place for the private secotor

3) give councils the money to build more property

4) Ban second home ownership that is NOT for long term rental ie holiday cottages – guts villages

5) make building on brownfield sites easier, make it harder on greenfield sites

6) The never ending escalation of house prices needs a serious correction. Dunno how to do this tho – perhaps a combination of property taxation and transaction taxation?

I like all these, but would also add proper leasehold reform/abolition in England and Wales.

(EDIT: not that I’m a big hitter either…)

Just noticed your ‘Contact Us’ page gives a page not found.

Is this just now standard behavior?

Yes apparently.

I’m sure there are many reasons why that a smart person could tell you, related to a breakdown in the societal contract exacerbated by increasing political divisions/covid or increased isolation and a consumerist ‘me’ driven mindset encouraged by advertising and online shopping etc. etc.

But what it comes down to is that for some reason, people seem to think that it’s ok to be a dick and/or aren’t even considering the impact of their actions on other people. Which is also being a dick.

More than happy with my Boardman ADV9.0.

A bit late to this but that is a tidy looking bike.

Do you re-read these books ?
Do they pay re-reading?

Absolutely yes to both. I’m re-reading them again now, but alternating between Discworld and non-Discworld books as I go.

Moving Pictures also features an actual student as a main character!

In defence of my choice of Moving Pictures, it’s the first one where Ridcully is in charge which is really when I think the UU crowd gets interesting beyond Rincewind and the Luggage.

If we’re allowed to dispense with the education relevance though, I’d suggest the City Watch arc instead.

Off that list I’d say Moving Pictures or The Last Continent are the best.

Just seen who’s in Stoma’s cabinet.

Yes it is truly awful that his cabinet is <checks notes> the least privately educated ever. The Eton -> Oxbridge pipeline has been the only thing standing between us and the grim darkness of everlasting chaos for hundreds of years!

I’m feeling pleasingly smug about having the Lib Dem sign outside my house now. Not that I contributed anything else (apart from my vote), but they were absolutely on it round here (Harpenden and Berkhamsted).

Don’t you tactical voters feel a bit eurghh afterwards?

No. I’m not aiming for perfect here, just better.

Another login page formatting issue here. Ipad with Firefox. Seems the fields are being presented but black on black visible so if you guess the spot it brings the keyboard up. Have switched to Chrome on same ipad for now, and issue doesn’t show.

Same, Firefox on Ubuntu.

in which case he might have been sitting in A+E waiting for a diagnosis/bed after all this time!

The NHS has many faults, and I’m not going I say it’s perfect having waited the best part of 6 weeks just for an x ray. However in my personal experience, if you turn up to a paediatric A&E with a small baby having difficulty breathing, the sense of urgency and service on display is reassuringly rapid.

You made the right decision in the moment, and that’s led to him being in the right place to get the best and most timely care available. You couldn’t have done anything else to improve the outcome.

Fingers crossed for you.

They want my grandson to stay in another day till tomorrow morning.l though that are happy with his progress. They have changed diagnosis to bronchiolitis possibly linked to asthma. I have no idea if that’s a “thing”

I can’t speak for the asthma component, but my oldest was in hospital for a few days when she was 11 months old or so for bronchiolitis. Not a good time, and we were at least able to go home easily and could let the NHS handle it. A couple of days of oxygen (no drip or anything I don’t think but I might just be blanking that as it was a few years ago now) and she got over it just fine.

I know that £1000 isn’t a small sum of money and this is easy for me to say on the other end of a computer screen, but if that’s all they end up paying for this then I’d call that a win and chalk it up to life experience/lessons learned.

I wish the best for your grandson, and that your son is doing ok as well. It’s a horrible feeling of helplessness mixed with expensive and complex admin.

But 5g coverage is crap,

Yeah but only because valiant values-oriented warriors keep destroying the towers. Otherwise you’d see all the normies shuffling around like vaccinated WHO controlled zombies being all woke and triggered everywhere like the bunch of snowflakes they are.

I managed to log back into my Nectar account and link it to my Sainsury’s account after years, and was pleased to see many thousands of points in there. I spent them all in Sainsbury’s and got 2.5 weeks odd of food shopping for a family of four for free, and given how expensive food shopping is these days I’d do it again.

We know the tories are buggered at this election.

And everyone knew we wouldn’t actually vote to leave the EU so didn’t bother voting yet here we are.

I guess I prefer the better safe than sorry approach to these things.

Voted this morning, Libdems..who have no chance really. Labour were the only ones who could have toppled the Tories here.

But Brexit, Gaza mean I will not vote Labour…. Just can’t do it. Starmer made the decision to pander to the **** vote, so he lost mine.

While I understand the principles at stake here, where I come unstuck is that in my head surely the pragmatic thing to do is to cast a vote with the most chance of unseating the Tories?

I find this interesting because there is a chance that sticking with principles in the short term may lead to worse longer term outcomes. If I’m not mistaken an example of this happening is Sarah Olney (Lib Dem, Richmond Park) being beaten by Zac Goldsmith by the narrowest of margins in the 2017 snap election, where if the relative handful of Labour voters had gone Lib Dem she’d have won again.

We didn’t even have the opportunity to freeze any embryos

It wasn’t our plan, but we had to delay implantation by a month or so for reasons I forget but I think related to a vaccination my other half didn’t apparently have. Or something.

We had 1 x level 5 and 2 x level 3s as I recall. Not that you can tell a difference between the level 5 and the level 3 now that they’re running around and causing trouble!