My gf ordered some for me – had forgotten all about them until now.

(I have dealt with Jo in past with no probs, not overly worried but some comms would be nice)

Velo Ecosse have had very good prices on Conti tyres for quite a few years now, had quite a few road tyres for significantly less than Wiggle/ CRC prices. All genuine aftermarket boxed/ labelled-up tyres too.

Autumn = Game On.

Smoked pheasant breasts and venison steaks here tonight.

Last weekend had partridge.

Bloody love game. So tasty and not at all expensive.

We buy from a licensed game dealer so all is well. Wonder why more people don’t do game.

Was down at Drumlanrig today, was riding really well (though I may be one of the few people to come off because I didn’t slide out on a root I thought I would slip on!).

You can park up at the castle any time (within reason – I think people do live there as well!) and ride from there. If there’s anyone there to take your money it’s well worth the £2 out-of-season parking charge.

I have an RBS Royalties Gold (same as NatWest Advantage Gold).

Travel insurance is well worth the £12.95 a month alone – travel has a £50 annual supplement for hazardous activities including MTB holidays and works about about the same as a Snowcard joint policy which was about £200.

Phone insurance seems grand (covers iPhones and similar – Orange care was about a tenner a month alone and didn’t seem as good) and the home emergency cover sorted things out no hassle when we had a burst central heating pipe a wee while ago.

The travel service is apparently very good if you do “normal” holidays and I guess if you use the rest then it all helps.

I find RBS pretty good as a retail customer, never had any problems with them. If you will actually use the benefits instead of paying for things separately then I reckon it is worth it, otherwise it is a waste of money.

I’d know all of mine a mile off, apart from road bike which is stock apart from tyres, (wider) bars and saddle.

No. It would simply indicate that they are not all being used every day and as there is no requirement to do so……

Well, it could indicate that, but it could equally indicate my hypothesis. I guess HMRC must be thinking that there’s something funny going on…

bassspine I like your optimism, but when the govt are scrabbling around for every penny of tax revenue they can get and have increased the funding for anti-avoidance and anti-evasion teams then it’s not going to be about checking whether everyone who got a bike has space in a shelter and a nice big locker….

I’m clearly overestimating the intelligence of the average STW forum dweller… 🙂

Say 100 people take a bike on bike to work, but only 10 spaces for bikes then wouldn’t that suggest that most bikes aren’t being used for commuting?

So next thing HMRC come in, does an audit, asks a few questions, find that a significant proportion of the users have bought bikes never used for commuting.

So unless you can demonstrate you have been commuting on the bike then bang goes your tax relief and you get a tax bill for £300 on your “bargin” £1k hardtail.

CRC do (or did) Lefty wheels. If you want to go pimp/ factory, Mavic do a Lefty version of at least one of the Crossmax wheelsets.

Yep, in 4 years and probably about 6,000 miles I’ve spent very little on mine. Replaced bars and saddle pretty soon to get the fit right and I’ve replaced brake pads a couple of times, gone through a few tyres and put a new chain and cassette on at the start of the summer. It just seems to keep on working and things just don’t wear out like they do on an MTB.

We canned Peebles Ridge in favour of long lie, Sunday papers, shops and couple of hours on the road in the afternoonon the strength of a Steve Peat tweet.

Sounds like a good call.

Nespresso is great. I bought one in August after a lot of thinking about what to get – stayed in a holiday place with one and was hooked. It is really convenient and makes very, very good coffee – seems wrong to me that something that easy can consistently make coffee that good. Sure, it’s not the cheapest or most involving way to do things but for me it’s ideal – to be honest I’m more interested in the outcome than the process.

Some people don’t like it because it does takes the art away from making espresso and puts you in the hands of Nestle for all your bean needs, but with about 15 different blends it’s hard to see how I’d tire of the choices available to me, and I don’t think Nestle will dinghy it any time soon.

I’m sure if someone had the balls (and money) to get some lawyers on the case and take it to court it would have legs.

Do you even know what you’re talking about? I’m sure it wouldn’t even get past the First Tier Tribunal.

The legislation always said “market value”. 5% is clearly not market value.

It’s not retrospective as when you enter into the cycle to work scheme you are entering into a contract for the loan of a cycle; the tax and NI savings come from this loan contract and the scheme would not qualify if there was a guaranteed purchase at the end of the scheme.

Even the 25% figure seems low to me – a hard ridden, undermaintained commuter might be worth that but a year old bike that has been looked after should be worth a lot more.

IMO, the “plan c” of an extended loan is the best solution in the meantime, and for the scheme to continue to be worthwhile the loan payments should reflect 75% of the cost of the bike rather than 100% as normal.

This is all down to an HMRC clarification of the meaning of “market value”. Frankly the “typically 5%” was ridiculous and always likely to be clamped down upon.

ITEPA 2003 s.244 is explained here:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/EIM21664.htm

The effects of transferring the cycle to the employee are here:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/EIM21667.htm
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/EIM21667a.htm

Given that a lot of the people who got a £1k hardtail for general riding rather than commuting should never have benefited from the scheme in the first place (as the bike is not used mainly for “qualifying journeys”), I don’t think that group have much to complain about.

acjim – if LBS charm doesn’t work, drop me a mail with a postal address and I’ll send you a couple of spoke cups if I can find them (I think I’ve kept a knackered X3.1 UST rim I kept for this purpose).

Speedcity wheels use the same setup as Crossmax and mavic UST rims. The outer wall of the rim has a threaded hole in it; the spoke and nipple sit inside a “nut” that screws into this hole in the rim from the outside.

If the “nut” bit has cracked or split then it can be replaced – just a case of getting a new “nut”, however if the nut is OK but has come away from the rim then I doubt it can be repaired (I’ve had both problems with some of the original X3.1 UST rims).

Don’t know how easy it is to get hold of the threaded nut things, but wheels certainly aren’t dead if that is the problem.

Good pics stuartie_c, looks like a grand trip.

I got snowed on yesterday afternoon out in West Lothian, near Tarbrax, on road bike. Wet splatty snow but still (just) snow rather than sleet. Would have taken pics but I’d been out in pissing rain for 2 hours and fixed one puncture so hands were so cold I could barely work the gears – flying a camera would have been out of the question!

Ochils had a good dusting today but from what I could see the NW side of the Pentlands weren’t at all white.

bacon rolls and mugs of tea – CHECK
1 hour from door in autumn sunshine on CX bike – CHECK
through to the Weege, whizz round Evans and bag some lovely new winter gloves without holes in fingers – CHECK
bro-out-law’s 40th lunch – CHECK
home before nieces/ nephews got to the tired/ screaming/ tantrum stage – CHECK
gin and tonic – CHECK
smoked fish chowder and spicy grilled prawns – CHECK
nice glass of white – CHECK

Just going to spoil it now and do the washing up and the get iron out for next week. Still, some wine left and James May’s Man Lab on TV so not a disaster

MrSynthpop – Member

Hopefully the taxmans next step will be to stop drivers getting free parking through work which is also a benefit in kind and would cut down on the number of twunts on the road while I ride in – the last time we looked at it in our place of work it caused uproar as many seemed to feel free city centre parking was a human right.

If I had free workplace parking, I wouldn’t bank on it lasting.

Cash-strapped govt + cash cow on which they can dump the admin onto employers + possibility of calling it a “green tax”.

Reckon it will be gone by 2012 – probably tax people on value of the parking based on local commercial parking operations so anyone with a city centre space will get @rseraped but will be negligible/ nil for rural businesses.

3 hours a day? Seriously? Where was she starting and finishing? I just can’t see how it can regularly take her twice as long as it takes me at worst…

Wow – can’t believe this one is still going!

I drive in about once a week. Takes me about 25 mins/ half an hour to get from Riccarton to Castle Terrace via Calder Road and West Approach Road, maybe 20-25 mins if I’m in for 0830 instead of 0900. Worst ever was about 45 mins when the Gorgie Road/ Balgreen Junction was shut by roadworks – that’s still dramatically less than the “hour or more” made up FACT that TJ quoted.

That said, cycling that takes about 20 mins by the same route (though Gorgie Road instead of WAR as no cycling on that).

Given the difference between school holidays and normal rush hour, I think I can safely say volume of traffic is the main problems. Even Fridays are generally easier than the rest of the week, presumably because people who work less than 5 days won’t do a Friday and more people get public transport so they can go for a scoop after work.

RestlessNative – Member

If you saw a corporate wage slave wandering aimlessly like a zombie towards his office in Edinburgh Park that’d be me, such a clinically depressing place business parks are

What bike you on and I’ll shout duuuuuuuuuuuuuude if I ever see you

Toffee Apple red Cannondale cyclocross bike. I don’t often cut through Edinburgh Park – usually go past RBS in the A8 as I work in centre of town. This was the first time since the path from Gogar Station Road reopened (it was shut at the railway bridge for ages) and they have built a tram line across where I remembered my cut-through was in the meantime so got a bit misplaced.

I suspect the owners of PRST1s decided they would no longer spend the equivalent of the GDP of a small African country on bearings and abandoned them for something that wasn’t just a good idea in theory.

At 8.45 in the morning? Unlikely…

By the way I think dudemuter is a new word.

Dudemuter on Google

1) It does not integrate with Waverley – that is true, but given the site of Waverley it’s not really surprising.

2) It does not integrate with Haymarket. Total BS. The tram stop is right outside and next to the station. To take it into the station you’d need to build two more platforms. Platform 0 and the carpark are apparently earmarked for high speed rail so that’s not practical, and there is every chance that the station will be expanded to include the tram lines in the medium term.

See the map on page 2 of this http://www.haymarketinterchange.com/img/thebasecase.pdf

3) It doesn’t go to the airport. Again, BS. The stop is going to be alongside the coach stops and multistorey carpark. Which end of the tram you’re on will probably make a significant difference to distance to the terminal door. Given the distance out to the extremes of the terminal the walk from the tram is going to be nothing. Speculation only, but nothing to stop the airport expanding towards the tram station in future is there? And if the tram stop was closer (though hard to see how much closer it could go) that might limit options.

4) Rail link. How many people would, get the train to the airport from outside Edinburgh? Given the paucity of services in early morning and late evening it’s not going to be much good for the business market, and for leisure travellers it will almost always be cheaper and less hassle to drive. Nice idea, but unnecessary and uneconomic IMO.

5) Paris. You’ve clearly never been to Charles de Gaulle. It’s a total disaster zone. If that’s your example of an integrated transport network then I really do despair.

Playing with fireworks is probably an important part of learning why safety warnings exist and learning you’re not indestructible (see also putting aerosols in fires, putting “empty” propane canisters on camping stoves) but even by Embra Ned standards I thought letting off a banger in a tunnel was quite daft.

Paul – not me, I’ve not fallen off my crosser round that way since I tried to ride some steps with one hand on the drops and one on the tops. For reasons I don’t need to go into, it didn’t end well.

But it is a start, and better than the current state.

Anyway no point arguing TJ, I think the trams will be pretty handy for getting me out of Leith if I ever have the misfortune to end up there, or getting to airport.

You clearly think the current plan is underambitous and they should have gone for something even bigger and more expensive, so we’ll never agree.

I can easily beat the Airlink bus from West End of Princess Street to the end of the airport road on the A8. Usually pass one or two on my commute, and I could save a few mins by using the Gogar roundabout or underpass but I doubt I’d live too long. Takes quite a few mins getting from the Gyle side of the A8 to the cycle path on the north side of the road at Maybury, round the tram depot works and back over the RBS bridge and onto the south side again.

I bet the tram will be quicker than me regardless, which is an improvement.

“I don’t care what the practical considerations are”

That says it all.

When you start with a city built on volcanic hills so there’s lots of steep gradients and you can’t tunnel at all easily, the railway line runs through the middle in a deep trench and the whole thing is a World Heritage Site then I guess the options for integrating transport are pretty limited.

TJ – Waverley is already packed and the St Andrews Square stop is 5 mins walk away from Waverley anyway. Waverley is stuck between Castle Rock and Princess Street/ Gardens so no space to expand, and only 4 lines go into Waverley from the west and more would encroach on the Gardens and mean digging some fairly serious tunnels so unlikely to happen. If most people can make the trip down some steps (as they do now), and there is a viable option for the less able then what’s not to like?

The airport link will be great – it’s linked to the terminal undercover, and will be closer to the airport entrance than the distance from security to the new end of the terminal (Gates 12 upwards), and will hopefully get quite a lot of taxis off the road.

Even if it only runs from Princess St to Ingliston and the Airport it will be fine by me.

Yep, short walk on covered walkway from terminal at airport, so no further than most other airport rail links.

There is to be an interchange at Haymarket that will tie it into the rail network – not perfect but I guess having Waverley in a big hole below street level made linking into that too difficult/ expensive.

Yeah, cos I wouldn’t have been on the WoL at all. No place for slick tyres this time of year (apart from the tunnel, which is tarmaced).

The UK tax legislation is a pile of A5 books printed in small type (6 point, at a guess) on “bible” style thin paper but still is a stack of books about a foot tall. Probably about 3/4 of that is corporate tax in one form or another. Start looking cross-border and it becomes massively complex as you have tax laws of 2 or more countries. On top of that there is Revenue Practice, Manuals and a heap of Case Law.

We’ll probably never know the ins and outs of the Vodafone/ Mannesman acquisition (I’d be surprised if anyone – Revenue, Vodafone or any advisors – now wholly understands how it was supposed to work at the time. Even if it was superbly well documented it’ll be too complex for any team to unpick all of the work done at the time 8 years down the line.)

As for the other stuff in the article, Vodafone would have to have a prudent provision for any possible settlement in their accounts. It’s quite common for this to be a lot less than the final settlement. Basically they would have filed their returns based on a favourable interpretation, but in the accounts based their tax on a less favourable one – the difference is the “provision”. This has to be prudent, so more towards worst case scenario than the filing position and that will be why they have settled for less than their provision. HMRC take little notice of accounts provisions when looking at contentious issues as they generally recognise that the accounting standards require you to do things in a certain way that is somewhat divorced from the technical arguements they are having with you.

India – Vodafone seem to be saying they did things in line with established practice and Indian tax authorities are going back on this. Also, in the UK a company won’t have to pay tax until issue is settled (though the underpayment will carry interest) – in normal circumstances you would never get a demand to pay HMRC’s calculated tax on a disputed issue upfront, for example. All very messy.

And George Osbourne will have got involved as Vodafone is a large British plc and it is largely in the government’s interest that it does well and thrives.

Yep, LD1100 = Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

For streetlit roads I’d edge towards the Cateye Holy Hand Grenade thing. Very visible from front, back and side. The bracket isn’t great – mine bounced out as the retainer broke, the one on my Roadrat it’s now glued in with No More Nails so can’t take it off without unscrewing the bracket (though that’s a minor hardship I guess). Good that you can have one row on constant and one on flash too.

The Exposure Flare is very good indeed, amazingly tiny and bright, sort of casts a pool of light behind you on unlit roads and the flash mode is a constant light with a bright pulse every second which I think is very visible. Decent side vis, and about the size of a champagne cork and weighs alomst nowt. Can’t say much about battery life as not had it long enough, but I have the rechargeable so reckon charging up once a week will see me right.

The Mars 3 is OK but mine doesn’t seem very waterproof – seems to let rain and spray in very easily. Fortunately it still works but seems to only go on constant mode and eat batteries even quicker than normal.

Don’t know about rack mounting for any of them, sorry…

My girlfriend asked me to kiss her where it stinks.
I drove her to Dundee.
That’s not what she meant.

More seriously, it was a dump in mid-late 90s when I formed my impression of it (was at St Andrews University so nearest big city), grew up near Middlesborough and Stockton so I know a dump when I see one.

Last time I was there (May this year) I found it was massively improved. Real positive vibe about the place, great Italian restaurant and some nice pubs. It’s a reasonably large town surrounded by lots of great countrysides and coastline. Like much of Central Scotland it’s very mixed but definitely on the up.

Go and have a look and see what you think.

I’m glad it’s proper dark now too.

The low sun (yes, unlikely as it sounds we’ve had that) and twilight seem much worse than real darkness both when riding and driving.

Tonight’s torrential rain was not appreciated though. No sir.