I’d do the same as NickC

I’m lucky enough I get out 4-5 times a week and mostly limit myself so I don’t lose weight or I’d be going longer and further.

time spent in the saddle is rarely wasted

or more explicitly

Thinking about doing something rather daft

It’s only daft if you don’t enjoy it…

Even if you don’t end up charity hoorah… or something else.

bikesandboots

Diligently posting Instagram stories every day though.

Not unite specific but yep… shows you where customer service lies in their hierarchy

POAH

They went from making nice stuff at a reasonable price to crap coatings and stupid prices.

Even ignoring the coatings I always felt like they went from being “probably as good as but significantly cheaper” to “probably as good as but not significantly cheaper”

TBH, not just them…

Edukator

what’s not to like? It’s not something people are bothered about unless their kid fancies a military career. I can’t think of anyone notable in recent history who went there

No I’m talking about the whole lot including ecole polytechnique… which have far too high a proportion of captains of industry, leadership of functionaires and politicians come from them and too many of the best academics…

I’m just pointing out that they still have this… like Ox-Bridge or Ivy League except run by the military.

And the Normans were Vikings 😉

Viking is a term for an activity … what you mean I think is the Normans were descended from Vikings

Not sure what this has got to do with the British tendancy to vote against ones own best interests. 🙂

one sec …

Molgrips

Anyway. Not sure if you are one of these people who blame farming for all the world’s evils (there was a popular history book arguing that wasn’t there?) but without farming we would only be able to support a small fraction of people alive today, and we would all basically be in the stone or bronze age still so.. yeah. Not only would we not be having this conversation but you also wouldn’t know any of the things you are talking about in it.

Farming is another activity… it’s not a sentient being that can be blamed.

we would all basically be in the stone or bronze age still so.

I’ll get to the population but non farming “Vikings” were masters of steel.. they sold their steel as far as Persia.

So yes of course the world would have a lower population but how is that a bad thing of itself?
As I’ve said, we are where we are… I’m simply linking the farming to requiring a class of sub-humans to till the earth for you to a system to control them. I’m aware we have tractors and combine harvesters today as well… we don’t need a whole class to work the land for the nobility

Let me jump back to Edukator…

Not sure what this has got to do with the British tendancy to vote against ones own best interests. 🙂

I haven’t said British, I’ve said English .. but it’s obviously affected the Welsh and Scots as well but it seems to me they tend to vote differently. However examine what you mean by “ones own best interests” … Does that mean financial or would voting for a fairer, more egalitarian way count or are we going back to genetics?

https://electionmaps.uk/parliament

I thought the Crown in England only levied a tax when it wanted to wage war?

As a specific direct tax ..but the rest of the feudal system was a funnel in terms of a whole set of taxes/obligations etc.
The Barons were ultimately pissed off in the run up to the Magna Carta because John wasn’t honouring his part of the system that provided their income. The majority of the Magna Carta is putting into writing the existing unwritten <<vassalage>> and telling John “you can’t just do what you want without our permission”.

The details how something was paid changed over time and from numbers of day’s service in fields to military service (that could also be paid separately as a financial scutage (a financial payment in lieu).

eg Inheritance Tax was formally introduced in 1290.. as a fee to transfer the <<socage>> but not called a tax but

So in short the system changed in detail and was no less complex that a tax specialist would understand today.. a couple of the terms you could google if you wanted ..

So in terms of “blame farming for all the world’s evils” – I’m just saying that having an agricultural system that fed the majority of the population and without which there would be famine in pre-mechanical times led again and again to a feudal style system of nobility and peasants.

As politecamera said.. we are post-agrarian now, FFS we have rockets going to the moon and planets etc. but what I am saying (that may well go against the EDUCATION) is that the feudal type system never ended.. it just adapted again.

It’s not a conspiracy .. the elite’s just want to keep hold of their power and wealth and our entire system and national psyche in ENGLAND is biased towards doffing our caps.

To take what Edukator said… about people voting against their best interests that isn’t something you see dominating in Scandinavia or to put it differently their “best interests” might be living in a nicer, more equal society even if they are financially slightly poorer. To some extent I think Scotland, Wales and France also tend more towards this.

To put that all into the original question … I think within this century the definition of what we could call 3rd world is going to change and those nations that still have a deeply unequal and divided populace are going to be at the bottom the the pile.

nickc

Ummm, I’m going to suggest that saying that the country that literally gave us the word for Earl as not being feudal is by some reckoning a revision of history.

If by ‘country’ you mean the hundreds of Jarldoms…
A Jarl could be challenged and removed .. every freeman and woman was a warrior/gatherer/farmer and they were not dependent on agriculture (key word dependent). i.e. They didn’t have a “class” of farmers and a “class” of warriors and a “class” only Jarls came from.. some were boat builders in addition but they were legally all the same only owing oaths.

or do you mean what is now Normandy?
Big difference (subtle as it might be) as the Normans (as stated above) adopted the Merovingian feudal system… were dependent on farming and hence had a class of farmers (peasants) who could NEVER be a Earl nor could any of their descendants EVER be an Earl.. and had to be kept in their place.

It is the keeping the entire class in their place (vasselage covering the entire structure) as much as the tenure that defines the feudal system whilst creating tax to flow in one direction only… the entire point was tax flowed towards the king and was shared through the nobility on the way for which the peasant was given the generous privilege of continuing to live.

To take the sensu strictu “feudal period in England” (based on the legal definition) it spans 1066-1660
(Tenures abolition act 1660)
However the Angles and Saxons being more agrarian had already established their own feudal (wider sense) systems based on thegns and ealdormen with their class structure again reflecting the warrior/farmer (peasant) split…

Though similar it was subtly different but to all intents the Normans took over the systems of the Anglo Saxon Heptarchy

molgrips

Evil is religious concept

Mmmm no don’t think so. Secular moral philosophy exists.

Yes of course secular moral philosophy exists … but it is not tinged by a good/evil – god/devil perspective.
The etymology is one thing, yfel is old non scandanvian germanic (illr equates to bad in Old Norse) however it has been hijacked in modern English to equate to Christian beliefs.

I separate them because .. well because of the “why don’t atheists just murder and rape” question ??
To illustrate the difference… ???

Someone like Rees Mogg can truly believe the Grenville residents died because they are inferior sub-humans or to even suggest deposing the monarch is truly Evil because god appointed him…

I can think that is morally reprehensible… I don’t need the Devil or eternal damnation and all that christian stuff to come to that conclusion

I can’t honestly say that had I been the eldest child of a Monarch that I would have any different outlook on life; I tell myself I’d see the ridiculousness of it and bring about constitutional reform but I know I’d probably not. Rees-Mogg on the other hand would seem to revel in such a description and genuinely believe that his fortune (figuratively and financially) is because he is better than everyone else; I’m quite certain that had I been born into his life I would not be following his path.

Had you been brought up with them, attended their schools etc. you wouldn’t be you and they been brought up with you they wouldn’t be them.

Kind Charles could well be a ‘Tim nice but dim’ and Mogg some nasty criminal
and by way of illustration (despite my republican and atheist bias) had they been brought up with you Kind Charles wouldn’t believe god had pre-destined him to rule and Mogg wouldn’t think the Tim, nice but dim was.
If Mogg has been born in Saudi as a distant royal though then he’d probably believe that god had put the House of Saud where they are… and by corollary “Kind Charles” still seems to prefer the equality of the house of Saud over the unwashed of the UK.

You, me, and them … we are all products of our upbringing and where that fits in the unbroken line…

I’m not an expert on French History – are you suggesting that 18th Century France was third world?

Well by the standards of someone born in Bagdad in the Islamic Golden age the whole of Europe at the time was 3rd world…

A copy paste:
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/french-revolution/#:~:text=On%20July%2014%201789%20the,Bastille%20fortress%20(a%20prison).

On July 14 1789 the Paris mob, hungry due to a lack of food from poor harvests, upset at the conditions of their lives and annoyed with their King and Government, stormed the Bastille fortress (a prison).

OK… that “hungry due to lack of food from poor harvests” seemed like a gift to my earlier agriculture-:> famines but lets stick with “hungry” (I can do the French ones if you like but they won’t say hungry they will say “starving”)

Nous sommes en 1789, la famine guette et la colère gronde dans le peuple. Le royaume continue à engraisser la noblesse alors que le pays est en faillite ! La population affamée croule sous les impôts.

We are in 1789, famine lurks and anger rages among the people
The kingdom continues to fatten the nobility while the country is bankrupt
The hungry population is drowning in taxes

Does that not sound like a 3rd world country to you?

or that had there not been a revolution it would have become 3rd world?

Basically I’m saying because of French history with violent uprising against the Monarchy (Feudal system wider context) they have a different perspective. It’s not the same as a Scandinavian perspective who never really developed a “feudal system” (certainly nothing lasted unbroken for a millennia) but France is now sufficiently broken away from being a “feudal system” in the way French people think.

They are WAY less tolerant of governments and generally more open to taxes that they don’t FEEL are simply siphoned to the rich (to what extent they are correct is another matter)… and they are more than happy to go out on the streets and violently oppose the government.

It took them a while and a few goes… but they have mentally broken free of the continuous “feudal” system unbroken since the Frankish Merovingian empire.

It wasn’t easy they soon had an Emperor (and went through the add a extra layer phase as UK did with India).. then he got shut then they went back to Kings from 1815-48 until the wave of revolutions across Europe caught up and they had a 2nd republic .. and still not having fully learned they got Louis-Napoleon as President who in short order declared himself emperor again… went through the “go to war thing” and add another layer and got captured by the Prussians…

They end up in the 3rd Republic – divest power to a legislature (but still play the empire game) until 1948
bit of a coup with de gaulle and recent history stuff..

to repeat… it took a while and it wasn’t easy.. but they mentally have Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité as a national motto.
they don’t worship the president as appointed by god… they have their issues such as the dominance of the ecole militaire set up by Napoleon…and whilst they have a culture of “cadre” (officer class – > management from this) they have a stronger feeling of a waitress being someone doing a vocation (metier).

The last 2 translations are not literal…these are more perceptions.

intheborders

Brexit is being used to help remove the last vestiges of the post-war consensus – as I’ve said previously, it’s the vehicle not the destination and pretty sure if we go back in history we’ll find similar strategies were used when they succeeded in getting ordinary folk to shaft themselves & their children.

Well after every war, famine and plague there is always the labour shortage whilst those that survive .
I mentioned WW I and Flu earlier.. the labour started recognising it’s worth and Churchill had people machine gunned down coming out the the building he’d had set alight.

Reminds me of an old story.. of a Sultan with 3 sons (or could have been a Caliph) but it went something like:
He was old and had to decide who would be sultan when he died and he set them a task…
The oldest son was given an fez and sent to the sultan’s country house where he was to bring back 3 mice.
He returned to the palace with an empty hat .. as did the 2nd son…
The 3rd youngest son arrived back and delivered 3 mice to his father…
“How did you do that?” he asks his son
“Oh it’s easy” he said.. “I catch the mice then shake them about in the hat until they are senseless then every time they start to come around and gain their senses I shake the hat up again”
“How did you know to do that?” he asks his son
“I copied you father, you mistreat the peasants all the time and every time you see them start to get any sense so they may be dangerous to us you send in your troops and shake them up”

Well, hunting and gathering can’t support that many people per square km, which is why it became popular. It’s not some global conspiracy.

Quite why you view every hint of anything that may suggest the wealthy don’t wish to give up their wealth as a conspiracy is ironic.
I’m not claiming hunter gathering can support the same population density… as I say, we are where we are.
I’m pointing out a possible mechanism for the class structure/caste system and why some cultures it is ingrained so deeply.

Your posts sound like you’ve read one book with an anti-capitalist agenda and have memorised it.

Nothing of the sort .. just lots of history.
I have nothing specifically against capitalism per-se… I was starting postulating why some countries/cultures redistribute wealth better or worse than others.

The thing is, Marie Antoinette wasn’t actually evil, she was just naive and uninformed. Just like most Tories, I’d say. Wilfully so in some cases, but still.

Evil is religious concept… something both Marie Antoinette and Rees-Mogg subscribe(ed) to.
A religion that has adapted but ultimately I believe that Rees-Mogg believes with his entire being that King Chuck is put in place by god… just as he believes the people that died in Grenfell died because they are inferior and can’t think for themselves.

When Rees-Mogg say’s

“I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building.”

I really believe he truly believes those people are simply sub-human to him… He’s not saying it to be nasty/evil…

Public apology aside… what do you think he tells Rees-Sprog (his son)? I’m betting its something like “its a tragedy but these people aren’t like you and me… “… and that he truly believes this just as his father and grandfather that they are born to rule and the dirty unwashed masses need people like them.

That’s not the tragedy really, its the number of little people that think he’s correct and his ilk are meant to rule us.

poly

Scotland seems far more out of this than England… but is that due to it’s history or is it genetic? I’d argue strongly that it’s historical…

don’t kid yourself. Scotland is built on a foundation of inequality and serving the land owning masters. free movement of people within the U.K. means there’s plenty of Scot’s south of the border (who aren’t exactly leading the charge in resetting the balance of power) and proportionally even more English north of the border (and consequently children who are not 100% scottish) – it’s certainly not genetic.

I don’t really think it is genetic, just chucking that in as a alternative.
Nor am I saying Scotland is perfect ;) just pointing out they seem to have a different (on average) approach to or acceptance of taxation.

Personally I think it is a mix of real and imagined “someone to blame in England” (some real some not but that doesn’t matter) but also because they never had a dominant agrarian culture*** (I’ll explain later why) They were also more than happy to selectively jump in on the “wider feudalism” in terms of for example “fighting for the empire”

Most people in Scotland, or indeed England couldn’t explain fuedalism to you, never mind rationalise it.

That is hardly surprising though as our entire culture is the product of normalisation of servitude in what is essentially a feudal system. Technically Feudal England began in 1066 and ended in 1660 (after a long period of adaption) but that’s ignoring what feudal is vs legal definitions.
Call it a feudal system or come up with another name but the mechanics changed but not the system.

It was popular for a while (late 19C) to describe late middle age England as “bastard feudalism” but the model goes back as far as agriculture and has evolved independently in multiple forms that all amount to the same thing, that being how do a small number of people dominate another and get them to accept a lesser status and be thankful for it.

any suggestion that that description is the definition of third world is ridiculous and frankly insulting to the other human beings living in genuine low income countries. Anyone who had ever been to one – even as a tourist would know that the U.K. is about as far removed from the third world as you can get.

That is because you have been bred for generations as livestock to be thankful for the crumbs thrown from the masters table. You have been educated to know your place and be thankful for it.
I think to a large extent we have forgotten what we have given up.

It’s whichever bullet point I posted earlier basically says … access to food is controlled by your betters by doing what they tell you. It’s how that wealth is distributed and what it is measured in that matters isn’t it?

I’ve lived and worked in a lot of countries and wealth is measured very differently. Even in one country like Malaysia (not that poor but a good illustration) the ethnic Malays, Chinese and Indians all define “wealth” differently..
When I lived in Libya many “poor” people were wealthier to them living in tents and thought they would be poorer living in the free housing the government built for them with running clean water.

All the “poorest” countries I lived and worked in were poor because of the distribution of wealth and or forced changes to their traditional way of life (including war which is a product of the wider feudalism)

So the agriculture bit … **

Every culture that has ever depended on agriculture develops a system similar to or the wider feudalism…
They are forced to become static, they need storage of grains/seeds and sooner or later ploughs .. meat becomes something the elite can eat and the peasants/lower castes (to use the Hindu equivalent of feudal) either get on special occasions or not at all.

sooner or later they get taken over by a numerically inferior force of physically fitter and healthier people who then need to keep them in their place and stop them banding together and control them through the famines (which are a part of settling down) – and if you don’t mind the odd famine and the lower classes dying back then you can support a larger population and a standing army then you can invade the neighbours and so on, subjugate them and get them producing more grain for you and just keep expanding, take more land and have more people farm it.

The serfs are accustomed to paying tax that is filtered so the majority finds its way to the elite be that directly or because “Covid PPE contracts”. (expand that yourself – but mates given contracts etc. or the percentage of money goes into the NHS vs gets paid to the workers etc)

Why that bit matters in 2023 ….

No hunter gatherer tribe on earth has ever messed up their environment and food / water … it’s always the farmers.
We are where we are… and whatever the conclusions of the UK feeding itself (using chemicals or whatever) was we certainly can’t do that today.

Some claim ^^ we can adapt to it (I’m not saying we can’t but I think that’s fanciful) but what we can’t do is adapt to it (using whatever) and still make sure the elites get most of it.
Do you for a minute think that people like Rees-Mogg or the good King Chuckie are any different to Marie Antionette?
In your heart do you think he really thinks you are human as he is or some dirt he’d wipe off his shoe or that he wouldn’t sit sipping a nice wine and feeding his dog steak whilst watching a lower class human actually die of starvation?

bails

There’s a very, very big difference between “helmet = bad” and “helmet compulsion = bad”.

I think these threads so often go a certain way because the people disagreeing with one another are actually arguing for/against different things.

I’m still missing the more fundamental question of why anyone thinks they have a right to legislate over some safety thing someone chooses of their own violation that doesn’t affect them

Identify stone please for my boy.

Not from the photo… and it can be slag as mentioned but really depends how much you want to indulge the lad. Doesn’t seem like he’s stopping ay time soon… perhaps more interesting if is is flint or obsidian is how it got there… it *could* be flint that was carried there by Palaeolithic people and flaked off a tool whilst it was being made.

On the other side the hydrothermal mineralisation that formed the blue john could make it local and interesting.

It’s a conchoidal fracture …

You can try scratching it .. and get the hardness,
You can try scratching a tile back and get the streak…

etc. but its ultimately a question of if you want to encourage the interest and how far I reckon?

DrJ

No, my possibly gnomic posting was to say that tinkering at the edges with taxes in 2023 will not address a fundamental inequality resulting from centuries of privilege.

This is the total underlying cause and to an extent why France or Scandinavia have different support on taxation in its wider form.

There is a historical context goes back long before the Normans and 1066 and to the first empires that has never been broken in most specifically England) though the Normans make a good example.

At its core is how a elite hierarchy maintain their power over overwhelming masses and that can be traced back to the Akkadian empire we know mainly through later Sumerian texts.

It’s a fairly consistent pattern where a tribe of warriors exert their dominance over larger numbers of farmers who then control the supply of food through taxation of the farmers whilst simultaneously using the food to feed an army to subvert the farmers and building religions that support their dominance of keeping everyone in their place whilst usually (if not always) creating a middle class to simultaneously give something to aspire to and collect their taxes.

The details of this model change over time and on occasion one ruling elite has been replaced by another but this is deeply rooted in our history and national psyche.
You can see the same in the Marian reforms of Rome or the Ptolemaic dynasty or Octavius/Augustus making Egypt a colony under direct control of the empire. More recently you’ll see this in European Empires where existing class systems were made legally enforced such as India (itself a relict of a feudal system of invaders) or created such as Rwanda – This didn’t supplant the feudal system, it just added extra layers of people with darker skin at the bottom.

In the case of Scandinavia they never really had this… everyone was a warrior and anyone could challenge a Jarl in single combat (at least theoretically)… yet when they arrived in Normandy they copied the Merovingian model of a feudal system that was already in place in England for them to supplant the Saxons feudal system.

The English love to con themselves the Magna Carta was anything but the Baron’s re-exerting their feudal rights… or that Cromwell did anything different under the guise of Protestantism but this is fundamental to the unbroken continuation of the feudal system in England .. direct quote apparently that Cromwell realised “he was one of God’s Chosen” and Wat Tyler’s Rebellion simply reinforced “the natural order” of the elites.

WW I and Spanish flu changed the details of the dynamic but not the big picture… and unsurprisingly after WW II the colonies started to realise they were able to throw off the yoke yet many of them (most) just (re)implemented their own feudal type system the British had supplanted.

We still have a King who is appointed by his god…. and we still have the Rees-Mogg’s who see the threats of the populace they regard (IMHO as far as I can see) as semi-humans. (Too stupid/subservient to disobey a fire-crew telling them not to leave a burning tower for example) but now we lost a whole layer of the subservient the rest of us are down in the serf status with our elevated serf apologists and the money and power still has to flow upwards because that is the system we have had for millennia and because that is what children are told through the education system now so many of us have thrown off religion or at least put it into some context….

We see the media today mainly promogulating the “if you are subservient and know your place and non violent” agenda OR “the non violence agenda” depending if they want to see “no change” or “progressive change” and holding up Ghandi who was non violent but supported the caste system as some sort of hero.

He doubtless had deep beliefs in the caste system but equally I think he realised it was the only way to keep the masses subservient and its taken India a long 1/2C to even start to make real inroads.

To go back to the original question as to if the UK is becoming a 3rd world country then I feel the definition in 2023 has as much to do with the feudal system and shaking it free

Scotland seems far more out of this than England… but is that due to it’s history or is it genetic? I’d argue strongly that it’s historical…

Kamakazie

Protected rider status is there solely for the benefit of the big teams who (I expect) fund the majority of the sport.

Fund what though? It’s obviously not the prize money…

Pinkbike

One of the big rumours going into the off-season about the changes coming to World Cups next year was the potential increase of team fees to $20,000. With the latest round of the information from the UCI this has turned out to be pretty accurate. Following the announcement of Enduro reaching World Cup status and the rule changes for downhill next year, it looks like the rumour of team fees rising are true.

While the headline-grabbing figure of €23,000 will only be for Elite MTB Teams competing in all three formats, the annual registration fees have risen for every type of team. An Elite Team riding in one format will see an increase from €3,500 in 2022 to €11,000 next year, while a two-format team increases from €6,000 to €18,000.

The price rises for next year have not just affected the Elite Teams as the MTB Team fees have also risen with double the cost compared to 2022.

The prize money for race results has not changed. XC and DH Elite wins remain at €3,750. Enduro has now been added to the prize money chart, with an Elite win netting €1,000. There is a parity for the overall wins between XC, XCC, DH and Enduro.

Then you have event sponsors .. payment from a resort for using it in summer etc. etc. and payment from the media/events company and you just need some marshals and trail builders to work for free or next to free.

A lot of people paying in…. and practically sod all coming out…

of course it is. It has been for years in reality. It’s the World Cup. The best in the world. It’s not supposed to be for everyone.

That answers the second part to some extent.
“How are they even meant to get there… in terms of paying for races to win points or physically travelling there without a sponsor?”

The problem is that no one wants to invest in feeder series to allow juniors to prove themselves. You have the IXS series in Europe but what else.

I think you need to keep taking that backwards all the way to grass roots… no-one who isn’t sponsored can even really afford to go through the ranks… and its not then the “best of the best” but the most charismatic or attractive and most willing to lie for their sponsors.

Anyone who is sponsored is professional by definition. They are being paid in cash or in kind to represent the sponsors brand

Ultimately by that definition getting 10% off some new grips etc. and I’m being a bit extreme but to illustrate that’s not going to pay for a BC event entry, let alone travel and stuff. “We’ll give you a great deal on a frame” etc. isn’t really much better.

An American but
https://www.vitalmtb.com/features/cost-racing-world-cup-downhill-europe-american-privateer

That’s just prize money. Being a professional sports person is about what you can offer sponsors rather than prize money. If the riders are viewable by more people they are able to attract more and better sponsor. Guess who I have seen more footage of from the last race? Kade, he didn’t even make the finals but seen load of footage of his tuck and t bogs.

I can’t even recognise a sport in what you wrote.
I don’t even know where to start … is the WC now only for professional sponsored riders?
How are they even meant to get there… in terms of paying for races to win points or physically travelling there without a sponsor?

If it is no longer a sport but a business (like football, american football etc.) then surely the participants should be allowed their own sponsors not have the UCI tell them who they can and can’t have or make them sign away their sponsorship income in a bigger UCI deal (e.g. GoPro) and drop the pretence this is about being the best or fastest rider.

Is that what you are proposing? Seriously?

F-in be more French…..

The French got their freedom and citizenship by violent action.
It’s what our species do and have always done

Hmm what you’re proposing isn’t exactly what happened. Plus that was a thousand years ago, things are a little different now.

and before the Normans ??

Also, even if it did happen the same that doesn’t mean it was the right course of action then or now.

1000 years later we are still doing as our masters tell us.. we still are property of a monarch who’s ancestors took charge through violence and living off the scraps they throw under their table then fighting amongst ourselves over the scraps.
Things are a little different because our schools and religions have taught generations to be submissive.

What’s particularly appalling about the situation is the level of apathy and cynical acceptance. If such violence and destitution, as well as the general nuisance of day-to-day reality in post-Brexit Tory Britain was implemented by an occupying force, surely you would see widescale disobedience and resistance, but because it is conducted by strange-looking men in expensive costumes with funny accents, it’s mostly met with at best a collective sigh, but at worst, public demand for more of it, as though the body corpus demanded a second dose of the poison to cure the effects of the first.

No we wouldn’t … we have had humanity driven out of us through forced education and religion.
The UK couldn’t do what Ukraine is doing because our masters want a breed of subservient subjects and natural law to disappear. The aristocracy fears violent uprising by the masses so we are taught violence is bad, unless they sanction it.

There is a reason we have tanks stockpiled outside London ready to put down the masses but we couldn’t stockpile PPE.

To all intents we are like the Hindu Caste system where those defining things that make us human are taken away.
In modern English we have sheep (something the peasants look after) and mutton (something the French speaking aristocracy eat or may throw scraps to the peasants)
In Welsh we have defaid and cig dafad

We can compare the 6 characteristics in the description of the caste system by Ghurye (copy and paste from wikipedia)
With a little latitude these all fit UK society… and hardly surprising it was the British that codified these into law.
We can pretend all we like that peaceful subjugation means we all get a equal chance if we just play the game and do as we are told and keep spreading the lies.

We can all pretend otherwise but accepting this is no different to the class traitor who maoned about being denied a peerage by posh boys.

Ghurye offered what he thought was a definition that could be applied across India, although he acknowledged that there were regional variations on the general theme. His model definition for caste included the following six characteristics:[34]

Segmentation of society into groups whose membership was determined by birth.[35]

A hierarchical system wherein generally the Brahmins were at the head of the hierarchy, but this hierarchy was disputed in some cases. In various linguistic areas, hundreds of castes had a gradation generally acknowledged by everyone.[36]
Restrictions on feeding and social intercourse, with minute rules on the kind of food and drink that upper castes could accept from lower castes. There was a great diversity in these rules, and lower castes generally accepted food from upper castes.[37]

Segregation, where individual castes lived together, the dominant caste living in the center and other castes living on the periphery.[38] There were restrictions on the use of water wells or streets by one caste on another: an upper-caste Brahmin might not be permitted to use the street of a lower-caste group, while a caste considered impure might not be permitted to draw water from a well used by members of other castes.[39]

Occupation, generally inherited.[40] Lack of unrestricted choice of profession, caste members restricted their own members from taking up certain professions they considered degrading. This characteristic of caste was missing from large parts of India, stated Ghurye, and in these regions all four castes (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras) did agriculture labour or became warriors in large numbers.[41]

Endogamy, restrictions on marrying a person outside caste, but in some situations hypergamy allowed.[42] Far less rigidity on inter-marriage between different sub-castes than between members of different castes in some regions, while in some endogamy within a sub-caste was the principal feature of caste-society.[43]

Genesis 20:21-22 … obviously birds are real because God created them on the fifth day

Edukator

I would argue that the UK could feed itself if there wasn’t so much waste at every level, enough to feed 30 million with the supermarkets being the main culprits. Then there’s the appalling way people eat which is one of the main strains on the health service.

Perhaps .(probably not and not in a way without turning the UK into a big factory farm) but the UK couldn’t feed itself for a lot longer than supermarkets have been a thing.
Quite how much of that was through choice or bad management is debateable so I’m not sure when I’d put a cut-off but pre-WWII we were already dependent on importing food and the population has exploded since.

Don’t want to turn this into another MMT thread but you appear to be of the view that money is finite and pegged to real resources. It’s not. If we want to spend 10bn on a hospital building programme accessing the money to do that is not a problem. The barrier is whether there is sufficient slack in the economy to meet the demand that 10bn spend will generate. That’s called economic growth, which is usually understood to be a good thing. The reason economic growth is currently stagnant is because the govt is not spending.

A “sovereign nation” can do whatever it wants with it’s fake money but a nation with a negative balance of trade that cannot meet it’s own population’s requirements is not sovereign it must pay for goods in something with a value to whoever is selling.

The UK has to buy food from outside the UK… it isn’t something over which we have an option because we don’t have the capacity to grow enough to feed our population.

If we were an island rich in resources we could use conch shells… and if noone wanted to sell us luxury goods in exchange we could just do without luxury goods but food isn’t something we can just do without.

we are not becoming one of the poorest nations on earth. Anyone who thinks so is clearly uneducated about how the vast majority of people on this planet live. “poverty” in the UK for a single person means a weekly income of £227 per week

molgrips

wo things:

– Actual cash sums for income aren’t a good indicator of economic security and happiness. That comes from discretionary spending ability. £227 a week is no good if rent is £200 a week. But even if rent of £50 is available, that’s no good if it’s a shit flat in a shit area where you fear for you safety.

– The MEAN wealth is not the issue here, it’s the distribution of that wealth.

This ^^^ I’d go further and say “money” as such in absolute terms has nothing to do with it.

This exactly. There’s a lot of moaning about the roads and references to the third world. This betrays unbelieveable privilege and total lack of self-awareness by middle accounts receiveable managers at specialist glass distributors in Norwich whose greatest pain in life is that they hit a pothole two months ago in their second hand Korean SUV.

The UK has a massive (per capita), very safe, technologically advanced road network in which 99%+ is perfectly good to travel on at speed. It’s a million miles away from the position in most developing countries.

If we exclude nations at war and those FUBAR from corruption beyond the UK then we are near the bottom in real terms because we prioritise spending money on (for example) roads over (for example) feeding kids.

It’s the distribution of and priorities of that wealth/resources makes us poor as a nation.

I’ve lived in developing nations with mostly little more than cart tracks where ‘major highways’ have massive fissures but everyone who wanted has a house, food and access to clean water.

dazh

We’re not overspending. We are very much under-spending. There is not a finite amount of money which we can use to spend on public services and infrastructure.

So which country do you suggest we invade to steal their resources?
Or do you just subscribe to a belief system with unicorns and horns of plenty?

The biggest council in the country has just declared itself bankrupt. 20 more are said to be on the brink of doing the same

I can’t see why the press are even bothering to focus on Birmingham..
Budget gap of £87m and population 1.15M people is small change.
Our council owes £1.12 Billion and growing (£2.1B next year) with a population of 100,000

FFS we owe an order of magnitude more in absolute terms let alone per capita.

High school geography tells us why comparing single indicators (GDP p/c in this case) is misleading. If you look at the HDI rankings the UK is above the USA as a whole.

Ultimately GDP/cap is not only misleading but highly damaging over any time period in any state with a balance of payments deficit.

Ultimately we are over spending as a country but like my council on things we don’t actually need living in a fantasy shaped by special interest groups…and people who are looking for quick profit and or nepotism.

Take a typical STW moan about cycle paths.. drain covers and such.
Why doesn’t my 2.4″ DD with sealant suffer the same fate as these people demand .. ??
Could it be they need to ride a bike suitable for the cycle paths not demand to make cycle paths somewhere to ride their bike with skinny tyres? If it takes a bit longer then set off earlier ???

Don’t misunderstand if we had an infinite amount of money and resources by all means spend some of this excess money on better cyclepaths… but with the roads in the state they are it’s demanding something the majority would rather see elsewhere.

The same can be said of the NHS… it has simultaneously expanded to cater to special interests whilst cutting out the majority on basic healthcare and made paying over the market price for anything but its actual staff an art form.
Not that these are not all good causes with infinite money.. but why are the NHS for example paying for IVF when it can’t afford life saving operations and people are dying on waiting lists.
Non of these “wouldn’t it be nice” services are individually to blame, rather it is each of these chipping away at the basic services.

All this is underlain by the continued lie that “We are rich because of our GDP” … spending money you don’t have on luxuries doesn’t make anyone rich.
I started off mentioning my council debt and nepotism.
We have I think 12 of these statues now… £12-14,000 each apparently and their only purpose is to line the pockets of the artist who is a family member of one of the former councillors and for them to get their kickbacks. Their unintended purpose being to scare children and even many adults… but this by a council that makes the debt of Birmingham look like small change and to add insult to injury we the council tax payers pay for the council to pay an advertising agency (I’m sure they are family/friends) another £110,00 a year to tell those who don’t want them they “need to be taught how to appreciate art” or should move elsewhere if they don’t like it.

Even if these were in any way nice they are at best a luxury and the poor shouldn’t be being forced to pay for luxuries for the rich.

Scale that up and that is exactly why we are becoming one of the poorest nations on earth.

chrismac

Yet he turns up to ride hardline to help a company sell more drinks. He is always moaning about money yet is clearly doing very well from the sport. His company made £111k according to his latest accounts 2022 filings at companies house and £67k in 2021. Not bad for riding a bike

It’s bloody terrible for someone at his level… Compare that to a football player.

The average salary for a Premier League player moved to over £3 million per year according to the Global Sports Salary Survey in late 2019. The average weekly pay for a first-team Premier League squad player is up over £60,000 per week, an increase of over £10,000 in just a couple of seasons.

Remember that is salary vs his total earnings if he was only declaring prize money/salary he’d not even reach a tax threshold and after expenses he’d be negative because he’s not just “riding a bike”.

What the UCI are doing is taking away his other earnings… I’m pretty sure he’s not sponsored by Red Bull or Monster either

Just FYI but far more cobalt is used in the refining of petrol and diesel than ever went into EV batteries, which are trending towards cobalt-free anyway.

It’s not only cobalt though is it.. and REE are to use the environmentalists favourite term non-renewable. Last time I looked the EV’s like Teslas have plastics from hydrocarbons for example.
I’m not saying that’s good or bad, I’m pointing out there is no meaningful equivalence scale.

However the real point is “better for the environment” is just a “marketing term” that is often misused to mislead people who don’t know the correct questions to ask because it can be simultaneously good locally and bad globally or good for greater crested grebe’s and bad for people.

Epsom hospital (which is out in the sticks ) to St George’s (which is in urban Tooting and a a major hospital) 54 minutes, again tfl.

google maps is telling me 1hr but in the ballpark vs 30 mins by car though you also did the in/out of London thing as well.

One of the reasons for asking that is if you were a hospital porter or nurse that originally worked at Epsom and ended up working at St George’s (as they are part of the same trust) starting or finishing a shift at some unholy hour you are pretty screwed… or simply a patient turns up at one and gets sent to the other – it doesn’t seem beyond the realms of some sort of planning to actually have a shuttle bus between them …

Ernielynch

I use meaningless marketing terms because I am not chemist/internal combustion engine designer.

I know you aren’t and neither are most people.. yet they keep getting told “better for the environment”

Haven’t you also used the same term, ie, “euro 6 diesel engine”?

Well that’s a “standard” … but fair point.
The point really is “better in what way” and that better in one way can be worse in another way.

Typically the issue is a matter of where/when and what/who and there is no simple formula and “environmentalists” and especially those selling products will try and use this to deceive you….

A simple example is say global climate change vs local air quality vs pollution in a far away place
Climate change will mainly or at least the worse affects will be in other countries where people have different passports or whatever) and the added CO2 from ULEZ will only have a small DIRECT affect but more likely a huge indirect affect as if a rich nation like the UK demonstrates it cares more about it’s local population than tens or hundreds of millions of people dying elsewhere

We can reduce our local pollution in some ways by increasing pollution elsewhere (usually a developing nation) such as mining for EV batteries.. not to mention general pollution mining to make new cars then transporting raw and intermediate materials around the world.

Not really specific to ULEZ but more generally there are also those who really don’t care about humans either at all or are just more worried about their pet (ironic) term of Pandas or Lesser Crested Grebe’s.

Ultimately the biggest and most pressing global issue for human life by far is climate change.
I’ll assume you are more worried about people than lesser crested grebe’s and you don’t value a UK passport life above others.

The simplest way to modify your question is to ask something like “what short term effect will this have on climate change directly or indirectly” rather than get given broad answers about “the environment”.

London has the best transport infrastructure in the UK. 90% of everywhere else is rather rubbish.

Inner London does, it’s absolutely pants out at the edges (unless you want to go into inner London)
Try working out how to get between 2 of the London hospitals now inside ULEZ by public transport…

It would be great if the riders could get together and tell the UCI, Discovery etc to jog on, but I just can’t see it happening. They are clearly not happy – now loads of criticism of the new format is coming out after what seemed to be a three line whip not to speak out.

Yeah if you see the podcast with Bernard he seems genuinely upset that the riders union lost traction. (more resigned perhaps??)

Is it a daft question to ask if someone else just did a DH WC and got 80% or so of the riders with decent prize money, let them keep GoPro footage etc for their sponsors and provide medical insurance etc. would anyone care about the UCI event they call WC?

I mean, I did wonder if we were getting screwed because bikes… I’ve got various epoxies in the garage, but no idea if they’re any good for this application.

The slower drying ones are best from experience… I also take a week doing a scratch… let each layer go properly hard before sanding down and don’t try and do too much in one layer.

Sadly have to agree with Bernard..(in a ride companion podcast). faster tracks for bigger and more spectacular crashes and injuries = better TV with no compensation for the riders and their other means of finance progressively removed.

When the bloke rides Hardline after that crash say’s that you have to stop and think! (Don’t you?)

superstarcomponents

Well ive been watching all the stuff they are dumping for below manufacturing cost to get sales and wondering when they are going to run out or go pop? Im sure their new owners have very deep pockets to keep pouring money in a hole. Shafting all the shops who sell nukeproof is going to be doing them long term harm in that respect.

Sounds very much like the Starbucks business strategy where they undercut local competition at a loss until there is no competition.

Think of the wider society, the kids of working class families growing up with the pollution in outer London. Policy should be set to help them, not everything should be about protecting the wealth of retired folk.

No, air quality in the Yorkshire Dales (for example) is not the same problem as it is in Hemel Hempstead, or the GLA.

Neither is air quality an issue in many of the outlying areas of Greater London it’s been extended to or many of the completely rural roads over moors administratively inside Greater Manchester.

I have no reason to believe that a euro 6 diesel engine is any worse for the environment than a petrol engine. I assume that they would be banned if they were. Are you telling me that they are?

If you continue using meaningless marketing terms in a question how do you expect a meaningful answer?
A diesel produces more NoX and less CO2 so the former might kill a few local people vs the latter killing hundreds of millions of non local people…
The limits are here… ULEZ is Euro 4 petrol and Euro 6 diesel non of these address the CO2 (CO is carbon monoxide)
So a Euro 6 diesel produces the same max NoX but 1/2 the carbon monoxide of the petrol and produces considerably less CO2 on a longer journey. CO2 is measured across a whole manufacturer and they can trade between them.

EV’s in urban environments produce around 1/2 the particulate matter (PM) of either ICE but it’s not necessarily the better 1/2 (brakes and tyres) for people.

Had they brought in ULEZ with Euro 5 it has less NoX (but euro 5 is already low) and lots of older diesels would have been exempt. (January 2011 on vs September 2015) but ALL the diesels produce less CO2/unit of power than the latest petrol…
but the CO2 is not immediately killing people on our Island… rather people in areas more affected by climate change.

Source AA

Euro 4 emission limits (petrol)
CO – 1.0 g/km
HC – 0.10 g/km
NOx – 0.08
PM – no limit

Euro 4 emission limits (diesel)
CO – 0.50 g/km
HC+ NOx – 0.30 g/km
NOx – 0.25 g/km
PM – 0.025 g/km

Euro 5 emission limits (petrol)
CO – 1.0 g/km
HC – 0.10 g/km
NOx – 0.06 g/km
PM – 0.005 g/km (direct injection only)

Euro 5 emission limits (diesel)
CO – 0.50 g/km
HC+ NOx – 0.23 g/km
NOx – 0.18 g/km
PM – 0.005 g/km
PM – 6.0×10 ^11/km

Euro 6 emission limits (petrol)
CO – 1.0 g/km
HC – 0.10 g/km
NOx – 0.06 g/km
PM – 0.005 g/km (direct injection only)
PM – 6.0×10 ^11/km (direct injection only)

Euro 6 emission limits (diesel)
CO – 0.50 g/km
HC+ NOx – 0.17 g/km
NOx – 0.08 g/km
PM – 0.005 g/km
PM – 6.0×10 ^11/km

I don’t understand how encouraging people to scrap perfectly good cars and buy a new one to avoid paying the ULEZ charge is supposed to be good for the environment.

good for the environment is a marketing term… it means nothing or whatever someone wants it to mean.
Specifically though what is good for air quality is not the same as good for climate change.

I’m guessing my Portuguese driving licence won’t be a problem with car hire?

Check with your hire company… it is in reverse you need to take a specific form. I think this is basically for the car hire firms though rather than legal

Molgrips

A lot of people change jobs more often than they change houses, because they can and they often need to. Moving is expensive and difficult, and can be very disruptive if you have kids. Changing jobs much less so – and sometimes it’s essential. You lose one job, or you can’t stand it any more, and you have to find something else quickly. And whilst you might try to find something with public transport, it doesn’t always work out.

Ultimately the poorest change jobs mostly because they have to.
ULEZ specifically targets the poorest in and around outer London.

ULEZ claims a very high percentage of cars are already exempt… (like the 3.5L landrover Khan drives) so its fairly obviously those who are driving older cars who can’t afford anything else to drive to their minimum wage job who are going to be hit most.

As an exercise take a look at the map and note how many hospitals they managed to include.
It’s not going to make any difference to the consultant driving their Tesla in from their garage but the nurses and porters who already get charged to park at work for the pleasure of anti-social shifts without public transport.

While I do agree – I think we will all be poorer long term if/when the full impact of climate change kicks in.

Exactly why we shouldn’t be doing ULEZ… as it has nothing to do with climate change. (at least not in any good way)

You can usually have a pretty good guess once its out if the olive has more life left.
As Kramer say’s its just going to leak not catastrophic failure…

If that fails crack the olive (or score with a blade then crack) leaving the barb in place…
If you do have to fit a new hose I try and make the path somewhat inefficient to give a bit of leeway later.
With banjo fittings sticking them at an angle rather than shortest possible path will see you through a couple of cuts.

Most modern stuff is about marginal gains anyway, and as long as the old version wasn’t duff, most of us aren’t riding close enough to the limit to notice the difference IMV.

A decent, well maintained fork feels a lot better than a 3wk old new ‘bottom of the range’ one to me.
I’ve not ridden a charger 3 yet (or even taken one apart) but it would take a huge performance gain to convince me it’s better than a 2.1 in terms of cost to own. Specifically the IFP is a potential failure and sticking holes in the top to bleed excess oil just seems like a dirt ingress port to me.

Are they actually making a loss or are they declaring a loss for tax purposes thats the important question.

They seem to have made sure its a real loss by the website redesign (I use design in its loosest context)
It’s almost like the design brief was to alienate as many loyal customers as possible whilst making it indecipherable for the new ones.

You sit down on more climbs on an ebike than one without assistance. So a more comfortable and balanced climbing position in the saddle really matters. Saddle position helps with that.

“Aero position” has nothing to do with it.

We seem to be in violent agreement… ???