Here's one with washable padding

I did wonder whether it would be much cheaper to buy a cyle helmet and get a pair of tune up earpads to fit. You wouldn't get the lining on a cycle helmet, but I don't think you really need it. You might have to get handy with a needle and cotton and bits of elastic/zips/velcro, or whatever.

£15 helmet

£30 Tune Up ear pads

£45 is cheap!

What have I started here? 😆

Has anyone got any photos of the guy?

Dino – Member

Why do you need one?
If you are only in piste and don't do park or pipe then I cannot see the point?
Snowbording yes piste sking no.

Are you telling me you can't injure your back on a piste???

EVERY person i've ever seen stretchered off, or helicoptered off was on piste. I've been skiing for 24 years and have seen plenty!

Back injury is not uncommon for skiers and wearing a back protector is a smart move.

I have a Ski specific Camelback which affords some protection, but not a great deal.

I have worn a helmet after being forced onto a huge slab of ice by a novice. I wasn't going very fast, but it was my fault because I hadn't been watching her properly. I'd assumed she was a better skier, but she turned unexpectedly and the resulting outcome was me nearly knocking myself out.

I sometimes ski fast, as much as 60mph on occasions, so I should be wearing back protection. I do this on empty pistes where I can see the well ahead, but it's still risky.

Accidents can happen anywhere, to anyone, with any equipment and wearing kit to mitigate injuries is a very wise move indeed!

How about a Ministry of Funny Walks appreciaciaton society?

Some will know how much I despise athe incompetent large percentage of 4×4 drivers, but there's one other category that makes them seem like good drivers. I am talking about a significant percentage of truck drivers. They have a misplaced belief that they have more of a right to be on our roads that anyone else and often bully and intimidate other road users. My experience is that they cause the majority of motorway accidents with their erratic and careless overtaking etc. Good truckers must be so frustrated at the idiots letting the side down. I by no means denigrate all truck drivers as some are highly professional. We need some sort of visible badging system for these guys to encourage the rest to aspire to their standards.

Yesterday, on a 110 mile stint, i was stuck behind one of these vehicles on a winding A road. It was 0c, but the salting on the road meant that the truck was throwing up lots of mucky spray imparing my visibility, meaning i had to constantly clear my windscreen. I could have hung back (which I often do when a vehicle is making reasonable and consistent progress), but the truck kept significantly altering it's speed for no apparent reason. None of this was particularly out of the ordinary, but what riled me was that he sped up considerably on all the sections where i had a chance of overtaking. Well I hear you say this is what any driver would do given that it is safe to increase your speed on a staight section, however 70mph in a big truck in freezing temperatures on such a road is just riddiculous and illegal! This was only when there weren't oncoming vehicles too.

Eventually i got past him and then on came his high beam because i had briefly sounded my horn as I'd passed him (in case he hadn't seen me). He then slowed back down on the straight section proving that he had been playing games with me and had put my safety at risk. Then, as a passing car approached he dipped his headlamps, but as it passed he put them back on! Utter idiot!

When we stopped at a set of lights in the next town, he pulled up sharp on my bumper. As we moved off, tailgated me.

ERRATIC STUPID FECKERS WITH SHORT FUSES SHOULD NOT BE PUT IN CONTROL OF SUCH LARGE HEAVY VEHICLES – PERIOD!

Indeed, you are missing out!

Classic FM is a good starting point.

I'd look at internet radio stations too.

Try Last FM when you have a few composers names. Type in Holst. Re – Holst, The Planet Suite is a goodun.

The problem with buying classical music is that you get umpteen recordings of the same piece. Some can be as old as the hills and many are quite mediocre. A good recording will blow you away, but i'm talking about listening on a proper hifi. Deutsche Grammophon have a good reputaion for quality recording as do some of the BBC's. It's a bit of a lottery getting it right. If you listen to web radio, you can sometimes get the label and pressing number.

coffeeking – Member

Jesus, your heating comes on when its 5 degrees out, that must cost a fortune!

Better than having water flood your home and ruin it's entire contents!

Frost stats should come on only when it gets to freezing, not 5C

If politicians REALLY wanted to get us to significantly reduce our CO2 emissions, they would ban wasteful activities, not just tax them more!

They won't do this in a hurry because it affects economies and in turn, tax receipts.

Like killing the golden goose.

Graham S

So in your considered opinion the vast majoirty of the world's climate scientists and the world governments have agreed to this global deception because the UK is going to have an election soon and folk might not like taxes much???

I didn't even suggest that! You are twisting what I wrote.

Now Ernie, give me an actual figure for this "vast" majority of scientists. Do you have a figure for all the scientists who don't subscribe to this and who are scared they would loose their research budgets?

You must also bear in mind that politicians all round the globe are like ours. For one they aren't scientists! Many of them have no expertise, but rely on paid, so called "experts". Politicans mostly lie and cheat their way to power and then continue this once in office. Their arrogance knows no bounds and the longer they are there, the worse they get! In my life I have seen plenty of evidence to support this. They are self serving egotists who are arrogant enough to think we should bother to listen to them. They will act on the advice they receive, but frequently come up with solutions to problems that clearly demonstrates that they haven't understood the problem! In most cases however, they seem clever enough to raise money from their schemes. OH what a cynic I am!!!

Yes Ernie! China are going along with it because of international pressure (the countries that buy their goods are leaning on them), but it's only political rhetoric. I can't imagine they will really make significant changes.

anagallis_arvensis – Member

**** me some people who can seemingly manage to write in a coherant manner are actually completete retards with astounding levels of arrogance in thinking they understand more about something than people who have dedicated their lives to studying it.

Are you referring to yourself anagalliss_arvensis?

Get a grip – when has any government worried about taxing us?

Stealth tax = a tax they hope we won't notice, or one that we can see, but don't think will affect us much.

It's a form of deception IMHO and if they weren't worried about taxing us, stealth taxation would not exist.

I have a grip thank you very much AdamW!

Get a grip – when has any government worried about taxing us?

When a general election is looming??

What we should be worrying about is the continuing EXPLOSION in the world's population!!

To my knowledge, the only contry that has done anything about the problem is China. The Chinese government's "one child per couple" policy remains to this day. I know China have many human rights issues, but this is one that is for the good for the country and for the planet. Here in the developed world, the cost of living has kept population increase reasonably at bay.

Conversely, you have Bill Gates and Warren Buffett spending a huge sum of money attempting to erradicate Malaria in developing countries. I wholeheartedly understand the innate human desire to preserve life, however in this programme to really help these poor people, there should be a simultaneous education programme to get these people to change their cultural habit of having as many children as they possibly can!

We are definitely going to run out of food and fresh water before climate change wipes us out.

I remain unconvinced that our CO2 production has, or is having a significant effect on global warm,,, sorry, climate change. I do not dispute that the planet is warming, but with reference to winter times, there have been many more milder winters in the past. Back then, people spoke about the planet warming up. Now that it's bloody freezing, they are saying this is due to a sine wave and it's still global warming. Talk about destroying your own credibility! Utter tosh! I agree, a 3 year timescale is an irrelevance, infact 100 years is irrelevant if you want to be scientific about the matter. I was listening to teachers in the 1970's telling us about the problem. If we'd believed the reports about Amazonian deforestation, there would be no rain forest by now. This isn't a new problem, so why has it taken 40 years for governments to act on climate change?

Our ability to detect weather/climate has become far better in just the past decade or so, with the emergence of new technologies and the ease at which information is distributed to us. I also think the way news can travel so far and so quickly has had an impact on how we perceive the world. We now get in an instant, in full graphic detail, information about what the weather is doing to people all over the world.

I reckon so called extreme weather has actually been occurring for a very long time, but seeing as we have improved the ability to see more in recent years, it feels like the problem is getting worse. We can also be certain that the increase is due to the subject being on the political agenda! As any mathemetician will tell you, if you lookat a big enough sample, there will always be identifiable patterns. There is no doubt that there is political agenda and I cannot trust any internet article whose url ends with "dot gov"!! Scientists are not agreed on whether it's man who is causing the problem, only the ones receiving government grants do.

Climate change is cyclical and global warming has happend thousands of years before we had the capability to burn and waste so much precious fossil fuel. I DO NOT advocate pointless waste, I believe in conserving as much energy as possible. It's not difficult to get your consumption down if you put vanity to one side, and act smart in your home, with your movements and when you shop. Having no job and no money makes the task a great deal easier as reducing all consumption and travel comes with the territory (if you are smart enough to live by your means).

Listening to scientific programmes, one detects plenty of evidence that we are in a cycle over which we have very little control. Throughout my life I have heard how only 300 years ago, the climate was much warmer in Britain, some 100-150 years before the industrial revolution. One programme I listened to talked about how, thousands of years ago due to a warmer climate, sea levels were 6-7m higher than they are now. 6-7m???

My advice, continue to conserve energy, but don't buy into this climate change political meddling, it's just another source of stealth taxation!

Did someone complain about the Facebook entry? I get "Sorry, this Profile is currently unavailable." when I click on the link.

Sure! Just say yes or no.

Nice with the Alfine hub. Was thinking of building a similar geared bike. A cyclocross frame, but with a set of 29er forks, flat bars and shimano disc brakes. Just coz it would be random.

Cover your eyes, foot down and hope for the best.

Hoorah!! The BBC won't be endlessly banging on about the snow now that they have a "news" story! 😆

My little 4×4 Fiat Panda causes many stares as it takes snowy roads in it's stride. Swiss police use them!

This just proves that you don't need a huge "cock mobile" to get around when conditions are bad.

Winter tyres on most cars would help enormously. Snow chains are £30 and I keep a set in my boot just in case. I still haven't used these ones yet.

25 years ago i went out in the snow my RS2000 to just see how it performed and to learn some snow driving skills. Being rearwheel drive with wide tyres that had little tread, it had me sliding around all over the place. I got very little traction on inclines and it took a fair bit of skill to control. Conversely, my sister had one of those early Peugeots, you know, the one's that had been severely beaten by the ugly stick. Well I drove that and it handled snowy conditions with ease. I put it down to the fact that it's spindly little tyres and weight over the driving wheels ensured a much more positive connection with the road surface.

As all these big 4WD's have fashionable wide road tyres, i can fully understand why they are rubbish in the snow, but the main issue is with the drivers. A large 4WD attracts the sort of person who is not at one with their machine. As is almost exclusively the case, the large 4WD owner makes a bold statement. It says "I'm a daft, incompetent, self-centred, egotistical cock"! 😆

Not "au fait" with the latest tech, however I have one regret when buying technology: Buying bleeding edge!

I once spent in excess of £1500 on a 733Mhz Pentium with 30Gb and 512Mb RAM. It came with a good Sony 17" CRT monitor and had a TV card. I recently sold the £220 monitor for around £20 and kept the base unit. The current base unit value is also around £20, but I just can't bring myself to throw it away.

I have bought several PC's since and all have been just adequate for my needs, but still relatively expensive compared to today's mid to low range equipment.

I shall never buy an all singing all dancing specced machine as the lesson learned with almost all my early purchases is that I should have a) bought a lower spec and b) older technology.

Diana Krall, Renee Olsted, Diane Schurr

Hahahah 😆

Brrrrr i'm freezin! 😯

Headteachers can only close a school with the approval of the local authority.

Simply not true! (I should know, my wife is a headteacher)

Schools are closed by the local authority – NOT by teachers!!

Sorry, that's incorrect, it's the head teacher's decision.

Don't blame teachers or the head, blame councils!!

Why are schools closed when there's the first sign of snow? That's easy!

Headteachers, just like any other person, switch on their TVs in the morning only to be bombarded with frothy emotive comments from ligthweight overpaid journalists, who'll bang on all day about a problem that actually doesn't exist. Journalists whip everyone up into an uneccessary panic. Shame on them!

The headteacher, scared by the notion that members of staff may not be able to get to work without risk of death, injury, or hypothermia, playing by the litigation fearing (welcoming) local authority policy, he/she has to play uber safe. The school is closed and millions of pounds is wasted on people not getting to work because they have to look after their kids.

Solution: Sweep away the pathetic news reporting one finds on channels like News 24 and then sit down with the council bosses and suggest a different approach to litigation – as in the private sector, fight a case, don't roll over.

Local authorities are happy to payout council tax payer's money because there's plenty more where that came from!! If councils had to generate business and didn't have money coming to them come what may, they'd understand it's value and would therefore do everything they can to hang on to the stuff.

All religion sucks!

Cheers Jedi! I called them, they have no 5mm, but were very helpful. They can do the conversion bits for £6 a brake plus £1 a foot for the hose. Looks like i'll be upgrading both brakes now. I expect the 5mm will be slightly better performing. Might as well go the whole hog and replace all the seals while i'm at it.

4wd's are great IF 4WD is actually needed and if they are in the right hands.

Unfortunately most are owned by "poof poser cocks" who have little, or no driving ability. These people are stupid enough to put their vanity in front of the profligacy of consuming four times as much fossil fuel as is neccessary, just so they can mince round our urban streets. The little people who insist on rubbing everyone's noses in it. BTW I'm not a supporter of the idea that we are messing up our environment by burning too much CO2, but don't deny that the climate is changing. I just can't see the point in needlessly wasting a finite precious resource! Owning a gas guzzling car purely for vanity reasons is the height of selfishness and social irresponsibility!

These oversized vehicles are also a threat to everyone else's safety considering their size and because they are driven by incompetent safety unconcious self-deluded egomaniacs!

I say introduce a new law requiring prospective owners to produce unrefutable proof that such a vehicle is essential to them. Successful applicants would then have to take a test to prove that they can handle such a big car, that they fully understand the implications of driving at speed in a very heavy vehicle with such a high centre of gravity and that they can perform simple tasks like parking the damn thing.

superstar_opponents – Member

Why the funk can't these total nutjobs grow the **** up, calm down and leave us alone? Their religion is not better than anyone else's, they are not right, we've done nothing to them (well, we hadn't…) and they should just leave it out. Somehow I doubt their "god" would agree that mindlessly killing people is a one way ticket to heavan.

Stoopid middle eastern/african muslim crackpots.

But waging war in Afghanistan is preventing stuff like this because this is where all the trouble originates, or so our government keep saying! I still don't know why our men are dying out there, perhaps we just went along with what George Bush Junior wanted and now his repalacement's.

Did this known suspect come from Afghanistan? No! Did he have anything to do with Afghanistan whatsoever? No! Were there warnings about him before he flew? Yes – even from the boy's father! Was he on numerous security authorities' databases? Yes!

The problem here is that airports in places like Africa don't have the same level of security as we do here in Britain. In Europe (outside the UK), security is far more lax (it's always been that way in my experience).

The current security levels we have here are adequate, we just need to get the rest of the world to toe the line and do the same.

This flight didn't even stop in this country, so why are our politicians coming up with suggestions for pointless changes to aircraft security?

The only thing Britain needs to do is ensure that there are no publicly, or privately funded establishments that condone radical religious teachings! If they find any, shut then down and prosecute the owners. Force them to sell up and the proceeds can go toward Victims of Crime compensation schemes!

Personally, I think any religious belief is a load of irrational nonsense anyway.

I think you are higly likely to wreck your snow chains driving on a cattle grid!

Snow chains are intended for use only on a good bed of snow, all other surfaces will damage them including tarmac with black ice.

how anyone can be executed in this day and age for trafficking drugs is absolutely beyond me.

Rape, Murder, you could possibly convince me but trafficking drugs? Really?

Erm, this penalty is the norm in many countries. We live in softly softly Britain, where a criminal's human rights come before those of their victim(s), so this seems harsh and extreme.

I can't understand how people can think this crime isn't as serious as rape and murder, because where drugs are concerned, rape and murder is much more likely. Drugs cause all sorts of crime and they benefit nobody but the lowlife making money from them. Severe penalties are therefore entirely appropriate!

If everyone realized the extent of the damage and mysery drugs cause in our own country, i'm sure there would be universal condemnation and support for a very robust response to people pedalling and trafficing drugs. (see the Heroin Laced with Cyanide thread)

I think this was a diplomatic disaster for China, but there won't be any sanctions because big business has too much invested in the far east.

I feel very sorry for the man's family and friends!

dmiller – Member

Perhaps the piracy is not the main issue? Perhaps if more is done to help the area in general piracy would cease to be an issue?

Personally if I had no money, no food and no prospects but a fast boat and access to weaponry I doubt I would make a difference choice than the pirates…

A wet liberal Guardian reader comment!

So these African authorities haven't had a penny of aid from the developed world that was all spunked away on limousines, expensive luxury goods etc? How many times will we write off debt to these countries who's corrupt authorities do nothing to help sort out their own nation's problems?

Thats why i applaud britain in their dealings in these matters. You cannot and must not ever pay the ransom otherwise you are condoning and prolonging others suffering.

Do you applaud the british military ship that stood by while pirates took Paul and Rachel Chandler hostage?

The initial news report was that the boat was missing. They allegedly spent two day looking for the craft according to the news put out by whoever decides what we get to hear. Do you applaud that?

So, our authorities allowed the kidnap to happen, but worse than this, they covered up what really happened. Now the couple face an uncertain future no thanks to the "applauded" British dealings in these matters!

I expect this will go the same way for the Chandlers as it did for that British man in China this morning.

It's true, that in a high end system, MP3 does take something away from the experience. Notably a lot of high end detail and spatial effect. To mitigate this loss, for streaming, I use a high MP3 bit rate of 320kbps. I chose this over FLAC or Ogg Vorbis because support for these more highly acclaimed audio formats is limited (I hate having to rip my entire CD collection over and over!).

Frankly, another big problem is getting a device with a decent enough audio stage and power supply. This probably has a bigger impact on the audio performance than compression issues.

Forget iPod as a music source, they simply don't cut it. They are built to a price and are not engineered to supply an input to anything of quality. (no offence to all those who are delighted with theirs, but until you have a few grand's worth of proper hifi, you just won't hear the difference).

Some sort of NAS/Streamer setup will give the best results, or a media PC of course. Squeezebox players are pretty good, but still are a bit flaky on their power supplies. Some firms offer high end component upgrades for these, but they cost a disproportianate amount and I haven't heard a modified one to know if it's worth the spend. The Squeezebox Transporter is their flagship high end streamer, but it costs over £1200. It does have a quality DAC and could be used as a preamp for other devices, accepting digital inputs.

The Pocorn Hour C200 looks like an exciting option. I hope to add one of these to my network along with a device capable og capturing off air broadcasts.

I expect at some point I shall embrace Windows 7 Media Player and build a sleek, silent HTPC (Home Theatre PC). Taking this route, one can tailor the quality of components. The choice of options and quality is considerable. I've avoided this route to date because I hoped to build a system out of dedicated A/V hardware (I find these tend to do what it says on the tin and the UI experience is effortless in comparison to a PC which has to remain pernamently booted to be of any real use).

This whole subject is going through a pretty rapid evolution, so I started small and cheap. I'll take the plunge when the superior technology takes hold (but it definitely won't be anything offered by Apple Corporation).

Sounds like you need to do a bit of house keeping on your pc first.

Go to http://www.ccleaner.com and download their free app.
clears out old rubbish and there's a registry checker.

Run a disk cleanup through Windows disk management too.

Then reboot and see if your machine is still stable.

Google your iTouch/blue screen issue.

Maybe your anti-virus need an update, or you need to kill off some uneccessary startup programs.

Did you change anti-virus programs recently?

Next time it blue screens (if it does), write down the error codes and google them as well.

Good luck!