I understand the need for another lockdown to prevent the NHS from been overrun. This last 2 years messed up my mental health, it’s also had a significant impact on my physical health as I injured my arm early in lockdown but couldn’t get it fixed until Jan as my surgeon just wasn’t available for months I’ve gone from a sub 3 hour marathon runner to someone who can barely climb the stairs. Im pretty sure it’s had a irreversible impact on my one of my sons education. But there was no choice those lockdowns were unavoidable to save people lives until the vaccines were here.

But this new situation was completely avoidable, the majority of patients in hospital are unvaccinated and that will be the case with Omicron too, even though the vaccinated will still catch it. So more damage to businesses, more domestic abuse, more not seeing loved ones, more damage to the kids education if the schools have to close.

Maybe it’s time to protect the NHS by not treating people have chosen not to get vaccinated then there’s be no need for a lockdown as the NHS wouldn’t get overrun. Before anyone says we treat obsese folk or whatever someone eating a donut isn’t keeping my kids out of school. It’s these selfish twunts that are sabotaging it for everyone else and there has to be consequences. 80% of Covid patients in Adenbrookes are unvaccinated, I bet they’ll be happy to take rapidly developed antibody or antivirals, bet they won’t ask if there’s a microchip in the drugs that cost a fortune to keep them alive. Just let them die, because treating them will probably result in people that have done the right thing dying.

This isn’t really my view but it’s an opinion I have heard voiced more and more over the past few days folk are fed up and can’t face another lockdown.

80%

I have kids in year 8 and 9 and I had to look up CAT scores, our school clearly don’t use them to communicate progress with parents. My kids are reasonably sporty inside and even more so outside school but I couldn’t care less what their scores were for PE. I’m just proud of what they achieve.

Does anyone think that someone’s ability at sport could impact their GCSE choices. My daughter is the top set and she hangs out with some of the brightest girls in the year and she is the only one of her friends that does sport outside school.

Some good news some of the antibody treatments retain some efficacy against Omicron.( B.1.1.529 )

Linky

We were there in the summer but I was injured so We kept to easy trails. Going back at Easter can’t wait. There are loads of trials that are well marked and also there’s a great app check out Zona zero on the App Store. I suspect you’d want a guide or some local knowledge as there so many trails, to get the best if of your visit @Spekkie is the expert on the area.

I’ve had a M1 since last Christmas use it for Go pro editing and Logic and for that its been excellent. Only problem I had was with Chrome it was causing really bad memory leakage, I must have been one of the first to experience it at the time as there wasn’t much on the web about it. It seems it a common issue across an a number of programs.

I have FB as my running club and a gravel group I’m in runs through it. I blocked all but my closest friends from it now so my news feed is pretty barren. I do get drawn into facebook watch I’ve got to give that up.

I deleted nearly everybody from Twitter except a few bands or events like such as festivals that I like so that I don’t miss gigs or new releases. And Keeper of the peak of course

Its definitely one of the biggest in the world. I’m sure that if folk were working from another country for a long period of time it has become an issue.

But we all work a week here and there a few times a year in offices in other countries as we have teams that a split across the world.

No one has ever said to me or any of my colleagues don’t to do that for tax reasons. Therefore from a tax perspective I can’t see how working in the Paris office for a week can be any different from working in Morzine.

I’m not a line manager anymore, but I completely agree with the above and I’d have no problem where folk where working from so long as they delivered.

I’ve had calls to my HOD from his new second home in Perth and we’ve had some of my team dial in from Berlin and Tenerife recently. I’m going to work from Morzine at half term as I don’t ski, so I’ll be working from the apartment. Which will fine as the family will be in the slopes by the time I need to log on.

For a week who’s going tell the the tax authorities. Anyhow I don’t really understand how this works. Pre Covid I would regularly work for a week at our US or Swedish sites and loads of people do this. If this was a problem with tax, given I work for a big global company this would have come up. We don’t have the issue about inadvertently setting up an office in a country, as we have offices in pretty much every country in the world.

Given house prices have risen by 15
% since last March. Most 2nd houses would liable for CGT unless they were worth less than about 90k now if bought before lockdown. Unless I’m missing something.

I had a look at the Tusker scheme the other day and they seem to be pocketing most of the tax relief. They set the net price so that it’s about the same as Carnow but including insurance etc but there’s no way what they offer is worth the difference between the gross and net price. I was looking at etron and the gross price was about 1050 a month which is about 400 more than Carnow. However it is still the cheapest way to get one. Just winds me up as we have no choice but to use them.

I had a zero allowance tax code at the beginning of the year, i just went on to the tax account and update my predicted taxable earnings and they assigned the correct tax code by my next months pay and was refunded the overpayments in my pay packet.

I fitted one to my Galaxy and have one on the Caravelle that replaced it never removed either in 14 years. Just get a permanent one and save some cash.

We walked to birth of our three kids but the hospital insisted we drove home. Some excuse to ensure we had the right baby seat. I should have said we didn’t have a car.

There was no fact of the day and definitely no encore they played Seamonsters straight through rather than mix it up. The second half was a mixture of crowd pleasers and two new songs which sounded very Bizzaro era but were very loud, you’ll see.

@theotherjohv saw them last week in Chester at the Live Rooms (great little venue) and they were great. I like the new songs and they played really loud, I took a metalhead friend with me and he loved it and Slayer is his usual thing.

Choose Chester as Manchester gig was the day after seeing the Jesus and Mary Chain and I’m too old for drive up to two gigs in a row. I went more out of curiosity than every been a big fan. I enjoyed it but I would go see them again.

I can’t recommend the one blade, I had one of the top the range ones and never got on with it plus the blades are expensive. I picked up one of the Philips 3000 as above for about the price of a single one blade and used it for three years. I treated myself to the 5000 this year as it has a longer guard, as well as the short one but I don’t think its any better than the 3000 for stubble.

I’ve got a 40t one I’m just about fit to my commuter. There’s loads on Amazon up to 52t not steel though.

We’ve extended our house 3 times. Once to do the loft 13 years ago, then a small side extension and knocking through to make a open plan kitchen dinner about 11 years ago and then we quadrupled the size of the living room and added some extra storage space which we finished this year. I doubt we will get the money back on these as were at what anyone would pay for a semi our street and it would have probably made financial sense to move to a detached house. But we love where we live and would have struggled to get something detached like what we have in the area plus moving is a massive pain in the arse, but so is building.

We won’t lose money as house prices have risen but we won’t get it would have been worth if we’d left it plus what we’ve spent but it’s a home not an investment. People are happy to throw money at cars which lose money and you spend a lot more time in your house than you do a car.

The house now works for us as a family and is a nice place to be in which is the most important thing.

@countzero if you watch the beginning of the video there’s a absolutely gorgeous replica of Tomacs bike he then builds the Gravel bike as a tribute to that bike using modern components.

Someone asked about 12 speed road cassettes a few weeks ago and apparently there are some close ratio cassettes on Aliexpress.

This came up on my YouTube feed this morning. He builds one out of a canyon 29er. Still only standard gravel gears though.

Happens all the time on this forum ask a question about bikes your lucky to get ten responses ask one about Toasters, cars or coffee machines and you’ll be inundated.

Just go ride even if it’s 1 hour. I get in that mindset sometimes if it’s not a longride it’s not worth doing. I’m sat here with a knackered knee limited to 30 mins gentle spin on the wattbike I’d love to get out even it’s just down the the local cycle path.

Regardless of what he has done in the past, using the p word to describe a work colleague is absolutely appalling and then to cover it up as banter is even worse.

This situation has really angered me. In a former role I managed probably the most ethnically diverse teams you could imagine and count many of old team as friends. If this has happened in my company they’d be booted instantly.

The fact he’s made racist comment suddenly doesn’t excuse the horrendous racism within Yorkshire cricket club.

I would go for Fire 8 HD in the Black Friday sale usually around £50 fire 7 is really slow. If Apple Music has an android app install google play on the tablet use Amazon fire toolbox automate the who process I’ve used it and works really well.

Through choice I live in a medium-sized town, close (1K) to the town centre, where everything is 10 minutes walk, work is a 10-minute bike ride, kids walk to school, and kids after school sports are all within 1/2 mile from the house and now we both work predominantly from home. This makes a massive difference to our carbon footprint even with an SUV hence its low emissions (25K miles in 5 years), compared to if we lived a few miles further out with EV, as every journey would have to be driven.

The kids have friends that live up in the peak, it’s over 1 hour round trip to school, football training, shopping, etc. For many of them, it’s a 10 mile round trip for a pint of milk. Living out there is a lifestyle choice for most of them with a massive environmental impact. On the other hand, I grew in the suburbs of Leeds again you had to drive to go anywhere unless you were going into the city centre or as public transport around the city was dreadful, it was great getting into Leeds ( i know because we didn’t have a car). For me, town planning has to be more sustainable.

From my house, we can manage everything if we wanted on foot or by bike this is a deliberate choice and we’ve built our lifestyle around this. It also maximises our free time as we are not spending huge chunks of the day in cars. These things are not black and white, it’s easy to point figures as I said I think the best option for the environment, which actually costs me money, is to keep the SUV as it delays another car being created for probably another 9-10 years rather than getting an EV which will sit on the drive.

From my house:

Boys football training 50m
The nearest pub, the garage where a car is serviced, van hire, timber yard, chippy 100m.
Hospital, Coop convenience store, park for kids to play in, primary school 500m
Sainsbury’s, Dance studio ( we are there several times a night) 700m
B & Q, Halfords, town centre, favourite pub 1k
Train, Station Aldi (where do most of my shopping) 1.2K
Kids high school and kids home football ground, swimming pool 1.6K
Work 4K

We have an SUV and looking at our emissions we generate about 1.7 tonnes of CO2 per year. We don’t do a lot of miles in it now as our circumstances have changed.

As used prices have risen so much and there is no equivalent model on sale at the moment, I could sell it and easily pay off the loan we have for it and have reasonable excess.

I can also lease an electric car through work as I’m higher rate tax payer the equivalent payment to our current car would allow me £600 per month that should get a nice electric car.

So i could be better off have lower emissions and lower fuel bill and have a nice new car. However I’d create at least 20 tonnes of CO2 in make the switch by creating a new car. So although its financially for me to switch it makes no sense environmentally to change unless I’m missing something.

So do i deserve my tires let down for doing the right thing even though it’s costing me money, if our mileage were higher it would be different.

I’m old fat knacker and I can put out 500w for a few minutes on a climb if I was on an ebike on turbo that wound be 750w. I’m not sure that average rambler is going to differentiate between that and thus guy with his throttle. Once e-bike were permitted the cat was out the bag. I rather this that some of the folk I see ragging around town at 30mpg plus on hub motor conversions.

This was posted this week and still an active thread

So, I did an E-Bike Conversion.

This intercontinental ballistic missile only contains 0.1% plutonium what harm could do

My coffeee only has 0.01% cyanide in it that should be fineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Well they arrived today, I had a quick swig from my bottle and it tasted fine nothing special . I prefer peaty malts but it will do for sitting in a hip flask when get back to bikepacking and being drunk a sip a month.

I couldn’t agree more about getting a good physio, due to another injury which he specialized in, I have access to the former head physio of a top premiership football team. I decided initially to go to the main physio practice in town for this injury, I saw two physios one misdiagnosed me, leading to a six-week delay in me getting surgery and the second really tried to put me off getting surgery. I decided to get a scan and see what was going on so I could make an informed choice. I went back to my original physio even though i have to travel to see him.

If the physio gets out an ultrasound or generic exercise sheet I say run (or hobble) a mile. If they assess you and give you a bespoke challenging rehab plan you are probably in the right place.

I asked this a few months ago as I tore mine at the beginning of July, I had the surgery two weeks ago, mine was bad I couldn’t really walk more than 1k and was been kept awake by the pain most nights. The surgeon says the loose flap was folded over and would never have settled down itself. My physio thinks it’s gone well and the level of swelling is as good as it could be. However I’m still in a lot of pain more than before surgery and I’m limping when I walk, but I think that is down to bruising and scar tissue from the op.

Knee arthroscopy to repair torn meniscus/cartidge

We’ve done the ferry to either Bilboa or Santander 8 out of the past 10 summers. Used the two day ferry for the first time this year, which was great as you arrive in Spain early morning and can push on a long way, we arrived in Ainsa Mid-afternoon with a couple of hours lunch in Pamplona. It saves a night in a hotel which is a nightmare with 6/7 bikes on the van. The only problem was for the first time the sea was really rough so we had 36 hours of people vomiting. Mrs pants had to spend most of the journey laid down.

It hasn’t put us off we are doing the same for Easter and heading back to Ainsa.

This thread is great, I’ve booked next years hols and the Mrs has always wanted to do the Picos, so I’ll bookmarking this for 2023.

I’m a pro-vac and have argued in the streets with anti vac protesters.

This action is predicated on the assumption that the vaccine has a significant impact on the spreading of the virus and I’m not sure it does I’m sure TiRed would be able to comment on that.

The best way to protect the vulnerable is to ensure a comprehensive booster program, I suspect that this is a smokescreen to divert the narrative away from the fact that is not going as well as it should. By next April this wave will have passed, we may have prophylactic antibody treatments for those who can’t get vaccinated and a number of oral antivirals that are looking very promising. It will be a different world so im not even sure if it makes a difference now it will then.

A few ago my son caught covid at school and before was he symptomatic he managed to infect 11 people out of the 13 people in an afternoon, all the 7 adults were vaccinated. Only me and a his 83 year old diabetic great uncle who has had a booster didn’t catch it, a year ago we’d have worry that he’d survive. But everyone including his grandparents had nothing but a sniffle. That’s the success of the vaccine not preventing transmission.

Written in parallel to Devbrix post above.

@matt_outandabout I used the Plymouth ferry for the first time this year and it seemed to take a lot longer to clear the port than from Portsmouth and that wasn’t due to Covid but rather the capacity in the port for the ferry.

I had those Electrons with a Ring 1w 50 lumen headtorch strapped to my helmet. I thinking about this on the headtorch thread the other day when someone was saying that a 450 lumen headtorch wasn’t bright enough to run off road despite being brighter (and much cheaper) than the Hope HID which was the dogs when it came out.

I’see what I kept after mrs trashed ours. I cut it down to a single rack so I need the first arm looks like I still have the 3rd long arm and I think I have the 2 to 4 connector. Ill see if I can get the long arm off tomorrow when it’s light.

Edit found the 2-4 it’s in mint condition.looks like I’ve got the bits you don’t need but happy to send to anyone that needs them for postage

I think it looks great and proper bargain too. Never been a great fan on e-bikes but I can see me going down that way when I’m a bit older. I like the idea you could put these on a mtb and a gravel bike and just swap the battery pack across, saving a chunk of cash.

I’m currently building a more off-road focussed gravel bike without drops, on my last bike I used some Alpkit Confucius bars I had in my spares box with some really old bar ends the bike shop gave me positioned exactly where the hoods on where on my GT grade. It worked really well until I crashed and destroyed them.

I’ll never forget it, we were coming off High Street in the pouring rain it was freezing. There must have been something wrong with my pump or really cheap tubes as they just kept breaking off when I tried to release the pump head. My mates were in stitches as my wife had washed my backpack and not rinsed it properly. The more I pumped each tube up the more I foamed up. By the end I looked like I’d been in an Ibeza pool party. Switched to Schrader after that until 26 inch disappeared and new bikes come with Presta.