I wouldn't upset the apple cart. The rest of your colleagues didn't all shaft you and they could be a vital link to future work. You never know who you might come across in future and what level they have risen to.

I know how it feels to be laid off, but bite your lip and keep it professional. At the very least it will win you the sympathy vote from everyone (staff and customers) and may make your boss feel guilty about his incorrect decision. Any outbursts will just make them feel happy you are going. In a work situation, most people aren't good at empathy i'm afraid.

Whatever happens, I wish you a speedy resolution to your period of employment instability. Good people are rarely out of work, but only so long as they have a good network of contacts.

Good luck!!

I get that too, but sometimes coupled with a feeling that i have wind trapped in my throat/stomach.

Starts in a tooth, then the jaw, then down the neck and around the shoulder

Wonder if it is heart related.

Yep, the editing is not as good as it could be. In a recent episode, they were shooting a car hammering round their circuit. Did anyone spot how the registration number completely changed while the car was still moving? 😆

A cheeky chappy and great entertainer? Yes. Saw him Live at Milton Keynes Bowl, but not as good as I expected. Got the feeling he had become a bit of a has been (3 yrs ago now).
Great singer? Not particularly, but many of his songs are excellent.
Uber wealthy? Yes!
Annoying habit of playing the self effacing wounded swan? All day long and it's really boring now!

Sorry, but being so successful and playing the sympathy card REALLY gets up the old shnozz. 😆

I wouldn;t bother buying a fancy £500 printer! Find a local photographic shop with £30k's worth of printer and pay them a few quid each time you want an enlargement.

If you do buy a printer, expect lots of further expense on ink cartridges and some wasted materials.

It's good family entertainment, but they are definitely getting more puerile.

I suppose they made what was a rather dull format interesing, but it has become a bit samey.

Oh who cares.

Thanks for the advice!

I expect the retailers will swallow the increase on small value items because of the hassle of repricing, however it's not a 2.5% increase on the total value is it? It's more like 2.1%.

Anything under a hundred quid won't make much difference to the buyer.

It was a stupid tax cut which I don't think did anything to help the economy, just caused a massive headache for companies pricing goods and calculating their VAT.

Of course, according to Mr Darling's forecast, we were supposed to be in recovery by now, but the economy actually shrank by 5%. All but the most niaive could see that there would be no quick fix to this economic downturn. Another indication of the total twonk we have as a chancellor!

I would!

Briefly ventured out on foot yesterday and can confirm it's an absolute quagmire. All that sudden meltwater I suppose.

And I totally reject the argument that it's the fault of our society that forces an individual into taking drugs. Utter utter nonsense! If this was true, there would be vastly more drug users in this country. Being poor is not an excuse. There are many more poor people who get by.

I heard Michael Caine say today that there are 30,000 drug users on benefits in this country. Shameful!

What we need is for individuals to accept a lot more personal responsibility, instead of blaming someone/something else all the time!!!

have a look at young kids sleeping on the floor in a room with no furniture, and no presents at all, only thing they will get at xmas is a punch, or if a little less lucky a good shagging!

This sounds a bit dramatic, but it really is happening.

I know of a child who was re-homed and said to the foster carer, "Is this my bed?" Foster carer sas "yes", child says, "but it's dry and clean!"

I know of another case where the child didn't get fed except at school. Their clothes never got washed and the child was overjoyed to come to school each day. He was 6 years old and often left home alone.

And other cases of children covered in bruises.

In all these cases the parent/s were discovered to be drug addicts.

There are others I could mention, but frankly are too harrowing to even think about.

This problem exists everywhere now. I know people who deal with the consequences of drug taking. I was shocked and surprized how close to home this is and even exists in some pretty affluent areas. The worst thing for me are the effects it has on small children. Shameful stuff and truly heart wrenching!

Re-introducing the death penalty for drug dealing and trafficing would go a long way to ridding the streets of this toxic filth. We did away with capital punishment because convictions were/are sometimes unsafe. In other parts of the world, tolerance to drug dealing is zero. I expect their take is that thay'd rather rid themselves of the lowlife that pedal drugs, rather than rehabilitate. I think deterring this behaviour is a secondary matter. Harsh, but is it effective?

You then hear about the poverty stricken farmers in places like Afghanistan. Why can't they just grow food? What are their useless governments doing about it? We may not understand their culture, but if it's causing mayhem in our community we need to intervene. Our efforts there should be all about erradicating the opium trade. I'd buy into the war there if this was the justification, not the current implausible excuse (i'm still unsure why we are out there with our people getting killed).

Sure enough, drugs are a cause of a lot of misery for all, but I believe you have to tackle the issues that leads an individual to start using this stuff. This is the real crux of the matter.

Abusive and or neglectful parenting has a lot to do with producing a fresh crop of new users. If you have two or three generations of a family who haven't a clue, what chance have you got?

Then there are stupid people who have absolutely no self-control, who like taking crazy risks, but who have otherwise completely stable settled lives. I feel little sympathy for these hedonistic selfish types, but they fall victim just like all the rest.

I really have no idea how you fix this problem. Education clearly hasn't worked, nor a softly softly approach, neither has a firm one. Political correctness wouldn't allow a very robust intervention such as what I have suggested at the beginning of this post. Legalising and regulating doesn't work either. So we have deadlock while the problem spirals. Depressing!!

Anyone got any sensible ideas for a solution?

http://www.ultraleds.co.uk/ultimate-mr11-acdc-cool-white-bulb-p-1764.html

£7.82 and they claim it equals 18w halogen. Not anywhere near as bright as the Lumicycle upgrade, but I have tow lamps and for the money….

That's odd that tyre used to be the most puncture prone tyre within our little group.

oldgit, don't you mean punture reistant?

Are you using the standard wire version?

Yep, not really bothered with shelling out twice as much for kevlar bead instead of steel just to save a few grams.

Thanks to all for the advice. I thought tubeless tyres would be very expensive and difficult to repair/re-inflate if I got a flat. Like if the tyre came away from the rim, dirt prevented a reseal and I couldn't get enough puff from my pump to reflate etc.

Thorns! We don't have many snakes near me (but i did see a 3ft one once) 😉

Any curry, so long as it contains a decent amount of chili and a good blend of spices. Anything equal to, or above madras strength, but not quite as hot as a Phal. Thai green curry is great, but i think i prefer the Persian curries you get in your typical Indian restaurant – Tikka Dansak or Tikka Pathia. MMMMMMMM 😆

Fantastic thread!! I have often heard people with almost zero electronics knowledge argue in favour of the pricing of high output lights. The component prices are very low in comparison to the shelf price of an engineered system, but the mark up is such, that you have to have deep pockets or be very very enthused to take the plunge.

I have had three lots of halogen lights, my first set was acquired in 1998. I paid £75, but thought that was a bit steep at the time. Since then, firms like Lupine have driven prices into the stratosphere.

Just had a look at one of the beautifilly engineered lamps from my ageing Cateye ABS35 to see if there is enough room to facilitate one of these high power upgrades. I'm out of luck as the driver would never fit, plus the heatsink fins on the inside would make getting a thermal bridge to the body rather troublesome (if not impossible). Shame since I was once trained to MOD standards ans spent 2 years manufacturing electronics assemblys for things like weapon control systems on fighter aircraft.

I thought i'd see how much a set of lumicycle lights are and am shocked to find their halogen set ups are now £60 more than they were when I last looked (£200).

WHY ARE DECENT BIKE LIGHTS SO STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE? 👿

Awesome pics guys!

I drove the kids 10 miles to school this morning, hardly any snow on the roads at all (all country lanes and residential streets). Then drove over to St Albans on the A10 and M25 to see a mate. No snow, light traffic and thinking how so many people have once again been scared off by the hyped up TV reporting. However it was quite bizarre heading over the hill near the cathedral as the snow cover went from next to nothing to a good 8 inches! Now that's the sort of snow I like driving in! Shame it was only for a total of about 200 yards in a round trip of some 55 miles or so. 😆

I have two bikes, both with fairly large diameter rotors. I need these because I usually take a bike out to the Alps once a year. I've been using discs since '98 and have spent an inordinate amount of time experimenting with pads, alignment etc. Nothing seems to permanently fix these issues although my Hope M4s have behave very well for well over a year now.

I find two things apart from caliper alignment which contribute to this occasional irritating noise, which comes mostly from the rear rotor :

1) It happens a little going along in a straight line on road, but not offroad. I reckon this is due to vibration cuased by the knobbly tyres when ridden on hard tarmac.
Usually when going around bends, but is worse on road than off. I put this down to lateral play in my hubs and a bit of flex in the wheel. I have bog standard Shimano and Diatech hubs. The Diatechs make less racket than the Shimanos, but then the Shimano hubs are pretty worn and are entry level (M575s – no seal version of the Deore hub – not recommended!). I have adjusted the cones on both wheels, but these are as tight as they should be.

Smaller rotors would mitigate the problem. When I get a spare bit of cash, one of these bikes will get a full rebuild and i'll spec a much smaller rotor. This'll be my everyday UK bike as pretty much any rotor size will work in the relatively flat lands of the SE.

I have often wondered if the uber expensive Chris King hubs would solve my problem, but the ridiculous cost of buying and maintenaning thse puts me right off.

Council staff love to spend your money inefficiently and without proper checks and balances. The reason for this is simple; they have no business savvy, they have no natural predators to their organisation, just a captive audience of rate payers who WILL have to cough up come what may! They make no allowances for the pressures we are all under in this recession. It's a Tax and spend mentality with no regard for the welfare of the "golden goose" – the council tax payers! The service we get back just gets worse and worse to boot.

The Labour government are the masters of this sort of profligacy. I recently listened to a programme on R4 about the rise of certain council bosses to positions in national government, some even made it to high office. This public spending frenzy therefore comes as no surprize!

Seems like Brown is hell bent on bankrupting the country now that he knows he's loosing power in a few months time. He'll leave a monumental mess that his successors will have great difficulty correcting. This will make the worthy successors unjustly very unpopular. It's almost like an exact opposite to the way the Labour party benefitted from the great shape the country was in when they came to power. All due to the conservatives (as unpopular as they may have been pre-Tony Blair's premiership).

Did Labour really commit us tax payers to giving billions of pounds worth of overseas aid to help developing countrys develop green practices? (£8Bn) Did they agree to let the EU subsidy we used to get lapse, even though we are the worst hit country by the banking debacle and due to labour's own profligate public spending policy?

Judging by last week's pre-budget report, Mr Darling and Mr Brown clearly think the way to control this massive mounting debt with yet further spending! It's set to hit £1.4 Trillion pounds, a bill more than the one we ran up fighting the second world war! You can't keep employing council workers to get us out of recseeion. It's like using batteries to run a generator to recharge the same batteries – inefficiency will result in eventual failure. You produce nothing but waste.

Socialist ideals may be honourable in theory, but in the real world they don't work because they typically reward those who don't contribute and who are irresponsible. They disproportionately penalise the wealth creators and financially responsible individuals.

Also, it is patently unjust towards every British citizen (let alone those who foot the tax bills), by allowing destitute people to rock up from elsewhere in the world, to sign on and take advantage lavish benefits for which they have not paid a penny! Humanitarian ideals are honourable, but a soft system like ours just gets abused. We have enough enduring local problems to deal with before we take on the responsibilities of failed governments in other parts of the world.

With such ridiculous imbablances in benefits and what is fair, sensationalist headlines will abound and quite rightly so. Well done to any journalist who brings this to the attention of the British public!

Councils should exist to serve a local economy. Business and weath creation is what must come first, services second. If that economy is failing, the council services should be downscaled, just like any other business.

Rowan Williams could do with giving it a rest too! Always controversial, but then hey, that's the stupidity of trying to steer a course set out by an obscure bunch of rules contained in an ancient storybook! Here's the latest twaddle he's got himself embroiled in. I haven't forgotten the stupid things he said about Sharia Law.

A Dr of Theology eh! Just goes to show that being an Oxbridge academic doesn't mean you are that clever. In fact, my experience of academics is that they lack a good dose of common sense and practicality. Frankly I have no idea why anyone takes any notice of them, especially religious academics. Well, anyone with such high intelligence who studied a subject like theology would surely realise after all that time and effort, that religion is just a control mechanism and a big lie!

Oh dear, i'm going off topic, sorry!

You have issues re; hammers BoardinBob, but yes she is rather annoying.

get an electric one – Dualit – £60

I vote this as the most pointless stw thread this year!

The reason for the delay is to keep you captive in the airport until you have spent lots of money.

Serves you right for buying overpriced, un maintainable fashion items! It staggers me as to why people are prepared to pay more than double just to have Apple emblazoned on their PC or PMPs! Why they would choose an OS that has limited support, limited and expensive software. Or the incovenience of only one media player to syncronise their PMP with. You can't even swap a friggin battery!

Up to 12 hrs before the auction ends if there are bids, any time if there aren't.

I'd expect the cost of a day's van hire and a driver's wages.

Amanda Holden

Matt Allwright and Dan Penteado on Rogue Traders are a pain too.

What about Wossy Woss?

There's dozens of 'em!

Richard Madely
Robert Peston
Piers Morgan
Edwina Curry
Lorraine Kelly
Vanessa Feltz

Anyone who appears on Loose Women. Undoubtedly THE most annoying TV programme currently aired on TV IMHO.

I bet it's those halogen dichroic lamps sohala is having trouble with. They seem to pop every few weeks – useless!

CFL's are pretty good and cheap to run, but LEDs are the future as they last many time longer than anything else. The current silly prices make them uneconomic for now and have they limited output for current fitting replacements (such as GU10s).

Best go for a good quality branded lamp if you want longevity.

I believe X-Factor is genuinely for the very young and the older generation. People inbetween don't really care about it. Of course, anyone into real music whatever their age would see it for what it is – a slick marketing opportunity for the likes of Cowell. An opportunity to wheel out old stars looking for a boost and to punt last year's winners new material. The record companies who fill our record stores with mediocre music sung by marketable, but good singers. Bland, but acceptable.

All's fine by me, i've got more than enough real music to listen to and know where to get new stuff.

X-Factor is a fun show, nothing to do with music, but entertainment. Like Top Gear has nothing to do with cars these days. Just a bit of fun.

I believe X-Factor is genuinely for the very young and the older generation. People inbetween don't really care about it. Of course, anyone into real music whatever their age would see it for what it is – a slick marketing opportunity for the likes of Cowell. An opportunity to wheel out old stars looking for a boost and to punt last year's winners new material. The record companies who fill our record stores with mediocre music sung by marketable, but good singers. Bland, but acceptable.

Alls fine by me, i've got more than enough real music to listen to and know where to get new stuff.

X-Factor is a fun show, nothing to do with music, but entertainment. Like Top Gear has nothing to do with cars these days. Just a bit of fun.

Sorry druidh, you need to factor in tht we're not all astronomy literate. Looking up in which direction?

There's no pub!

I didn't mean gay as in homosexual (have absolutely no problems with sexual orientation).

The headline was a bit attention grabbing fun and all meant in the best possible taste!

I blame ppl who twist language into trendy slang! 😆

I've got AAX, luvley! Need an 18" China and a 19" crash/ride (if anyone's got some going spare). Need to be in tidy nick.

Would luv a Roland TD20 too.

As far as my ears are concerned, the only good thing Linn ever made was the Sondek. Their speakers are particularly unimpressive. Some say they are analyical in character, i'd just say thin, bass light and quite unatural, but that's just my opinion. 😉

Sugden A series make a most sumptous almost live natural sound, but refined and controlled. Expensive and need to be partnered well – think efficient speakers. If i am ever loaded enough to afford this and before my ears start filtering out half the sonic spectrum.

Roksan Caspian is a superb amp.

Audiolab 8000s is a close second, but slightly less musical than the Roksan. Quite unlike earlier Audiolab stuff which tended towards being a bit thin and dry, bit like Linn I spose.