I have no idea how you’ve worked that out, I’ll be perfectly honest.

Price match promises ensure an extremely cheap flow of pricing information to the retailer (much of the time the consumer is alerting the retailer), allowing them to react quickly to competitor price cuts. This makes it fairly pointless for their competitors to cut prices.

Probably the starkest example of this is John Lewis – if House of Fraser or Debenhams ever discount, John Lewis match it tit for tat.

As for the likes of Specialized telling their IBDs what selling prices to use, the law is pretty strict on that subject – at most Specialized will conduct price audits and tell stores that the average price for a Rockhopper is currently £399, the average price for a Trek 3.0 or whatever is £395 etc.

Doing your own store price audits is rather more expensive than getting your customers to do it for you though…

Single biggest factor I have with recovery from exercise is whether I have any alcohol or not afterwards. Even a small amount of alcohol results in feeling far far worse the next day.

I’ve no problem with eating something proper afterwards as I’m normally ravenous.

If you believe the grim trigger strategy is applied day to day (and I expect it is by the larger operators like CRC), then price matching is bad for the consumer.

As an example, Merlin cycles and CRC may both sell the same set of Deore brakes. Merlin might be happy to sell them at £100 a set, whilst CRC already has them on sale at £120 a set.

But CRC operate a price match policy. If Merlin sell the brakes, pretty quickly CRC will be matching that price, and Merlin will have derived very little advantage from selling at the lower price. In the long run, they’d have probably been better off selling all their sets of brakes at £120.

The end result is that price matching discourages cutting prices, and encourages the stabilisation of prices.

You get an informal cartel where the consumer is acting to make sure every retailer gets the information they need.

I find tomtoms far easier to use than garmins,used to be ahead in terms of being able to cut out certain roads or go via certain points on the fly.

That said, I’d not buy another dedicated satnav unless I were doing mega mega miles to unknown destinations. Phones do a cracking job of it now, and are in many ways better – no need to know full addresses with google maps, just search for the restaurant or pub name, or just search for a supermarket or whatever.

My sisters dog is that sort of size. It ate a bar of Lindt 70% and it was totally fine…

You really struggle buying proper pre-made tapes these days. I briefly had a car with only a tape deck and buying tapes proved to be more or less impossible. That was probably 4 or 5 years ago.

If you can be bothered recording your own, Wilkos still sell blank tapes. Alternately, you can get those tapes on a wire that plug into a discman / ipod.

Ring around all the exhaust places. Kwik Fit have a terrible rep, and you do not want to Diy an exhaust.

No chance.

The Spread Eagle in Kirklington is alright, but it must be nearer to Newark than Mansfield.

I wouldn’t bother, unless you’re looking for something to spend cash on.

I doubt FM will ever be shut down as it’s just too useful due to three things: 1) the massive number of recievers in use and 2) the low power requirement of FM, 3) it’s reliable, with very little infrastructure compared to listening online etc.

As a result, all kinds of contingency plans will be screwed up if the government can’t rely on communicating with the masses by FM radio.

TheBunk, I did my haggling over the phone as an existing customer. I rang up and asked for a deal, they offered a fiver off Panther 31. Rang back and asked for a PAC code, they started ringing me a lot and offered me a tenner off panther 36. just be ready to cite a few others prices. And bear in mind that most operators will give about 25% off.

Don’t bother with the likes of phones 4u, had to haggle just to get a free s2 on panther 31, which I’d the standard on the orange website… Go direct to the operators, preferably on the phone as they’ll have the lowest costs rather than retail stores and you get distance seeking act rights.

Haggling.

I’ve got a galaxy s2 for 26 quid a month on orange panther 36 (should be 36 quid), 600 minutes, unlimited texts, 1 gig of data.

You can also get 25% off any tariff if your firm uses orange for their mobiles.

TBH those threads boggle me a bit. Too many dire warnings and “Aaah, you’ll be wanting the XY88TY” going on for me.

Are the Orange branded phones much different to Unbranded? A bit more googling suggests that some updates to the S2 have actually gone out on carrier branded handsets before the unbranded ones.

On the other hand, I could just worry about if Orange are dragging their feet when Ice Cream Sandwich comes out on the S2 and I’m potentially bricking a phone that’s depreciated for a few months…

Molgrips is pretty much right. You put crude oil into one end of a refinery, and the standard state is to get fairly set proportions of petrol, diesel, bitumen etc. out of the other end.

There are far more diesel vehicles on the road now, and so the refineries end up reworking some of the other substances into diesel to meet demand, and that costs money. So the price of diesel goes up.

I’ve been on the phone to Orange this afternoon and the cancellation is now showing on their system.

Cheers to all for the advice.

That’s pretty much my thinking. The store at present are saying that everything is cancelled. I’m more concerned by Orange’s attitude that it’s not really anything to do with them, when they’re the ones sending me texts about new contracts…

John Lewis do a fifty quid one. All their stuff is decent.

Failing that, get a second hand one for bugger all. They all work on the same principles, and the most basic and ancient machine will stitch things together well. The more expensive machines tend to have 500 patterns of stitch etc.

Is there some reason why you wouldn’t just stick up an aerial?

iPlayer is flash based I believe, and so HD could be choppy on an old PC.

The problem is, you’ve no way of knowing that an expensive one wouldn’t have died similarly.

And the fact that it was cheap means that less resources must have been used in making it :wink:

That’s not even a poor attempt at meta analysis.

Yep. I reckon you’d have to be slightly naive to buy a house with someone you weren’t married to. In the eyes of the law it’s a business arrangement, and fair or right doesn’t come into it.

Had both TM Lewin and Tyrwhitt shirts. The Lewins were un ironable and went back to the shop sharpish. Tyrwhitt non irons still need ironing, but it is at least very easy. Tyrwhitts also fit me far better. Both have a no quibble returns policy.

If standard cut shirts fit you ok, Debenhams Osborne shirts are good and are often on sale for 15 to 20 quid a piece.

There’s a firm in the West Midlands that sell batteries online. If you look on Google Shopping they’ll be one of the cheaper ones. I got a 4 year warranty Ka battery for 40 quid, came next day.

Can’t see why I wouldn’t buy the cheapest at that, nobodies giving out more than 4 year warranties, and it’s not underspecced. Check the CCA figure and Ah are as good as the standard battery.

The first step is to adjust all the clearances right down.

The next is to clean everything up, GT85 on the pivots, clean the pads up with detergent and some fine sandpaper, then do the same with the rims. New cables if needed.

If that doesn’t sort it, try different pads. And if that doesn’t work, get better brake calipers.

Total thread from the dead:

My Bombers have got PM brakes, so no problems in that regard. As for easier to change frames, what I mean is that if I’ve got some adjustable travel forks already, I’ve got a far wider choice of cheap / second hand stuff to look at. If I haven’t, I’ll find a frame I fancy and need to get forks at the same time.

I could have probably phrased my first post more clearly. The main things I’m wanting to know are-
[*]Can I run U-turn forks at reduced travel on a permanent basis, or is it a hill climbing feature?[/*]
[*]What does poploc do?[/*]
[*]Is motion control considerably better than the damping in my Bombers?[/*]
[*]What forks have decent damping? What’s the brand name for it? What’s the technology? Are we looking at shim stacks, seperate high and low speed circuits or what?[/*]

I’ve got a rough idea on the technical side of things from reading up on pushbike and car dampers online, but everyone seems to have their own brand name for everything rather than calling a spade a spade. As I don’t read the mags much, I’ve no clue what any of the labels mean…

I’ve got this one:

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_storeId_10001_catalogId_10151_productId_162491_langId_-1_categoryId_255214

It’s full of car tools, and it’s fine. Wouldn’t ever go back to a big toolbox full of stuff floating around.

Slanket bad, Poncho good:

Degrees in Holland are cheap and often taught in English.

That said, I’d not gripe about the fees too much – as I understand it, the majority will never pay them back anyway, so it works out cheaper than the old system…

Bump for the daytime lot!

The revolution one from Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op – it’s up for £7 at the moment.

I find I tend to break them by standing on them, so I buy cheap ones.

I’ve also done the powerlink and white spirit and all the rest of it, but at the end of the day, it’s more of a faff to take the chain off, and life’s too short.

It drags the stalks up to the cutting bar and keeps them in place. The cutting bar is like a giant one sided hedge trimmer. Without it you’d just flatten the crop.

It also varies by crop – sweetcorn / maize ones are rather different.

I’m not sure it’s worth bothering with the bargain phones and sim only setup unless you really really need the freedom.

The above San Fran deal works out at £13.50 a month over 2 years, assuming you go on the basic £10 GiffGaff deal.

You can get a HTC Desire S on 2 year contracts for that sort of money, and you don’t need to mess about rooting it and invalidating your 2 year warranty. And a Desire S is the better phone.

I suspect you could probably get away with a bloke’s saddle of the appropriate width. The Spesh gent’s MTB ones tend not to have holes, just grooves.

I’d be inclined to get a set of second hand Renault ones from someone who’s upgrading to a set of Carlos Fandangos.

http://youtu.be/nqqZ28m8uCo

Some apps are cheaper on Android – Angry Birds can be had for free as an example.

That’s not very important unless you expect to buy hundreds of apps. The big difference between say, a Galaxy S2 and the iPhone 4S in terms of running costs is the up front and contract cost.

A quick look at a couple of mobile phone deal sites suggests that I can get:

A Galaxy S2 for £179.99 up front, on a £15.32 line rental, 24 month contract. £537 is your total cost over 2 years.

An iPhone 4S for £169.99 up front, on a £30 line rental, 24 month contract. £889 is your cost for 2 years.

Both on the same contract – 300 minutes, 300 texts, 500 megs of data.

Even guessing that the iPhone can be sold for a hundred quid more than the Samsung at the end of the contract, it’s still going to be a lot dearer.

They need a lot of exercise, are often a total pain in the neck, and like killing things.

Hate him. Smugger than Huge Fern Whitstable, but without the saving grace of having grown everything on the plate.

Patents can be had pretty cheaply – I think the figure of £500 was given to me a couple of years ago, from someone who had recently patented a product.

iDave is 100% right on the ability to defend the patent being important.

If you’ve got a decent product, you need to launch in such a way that it’s difficult for imitators to screw you over. You need to be able to work up to a decent scale very quickly, and offer something the rip off merchants can’t.

I’d suggest you take a look at the VRIO framework to evaluate your product and skills before you start spending £££s.

Looks like a reasonable enough solution, but I’ve not seen a reducer like that in a DIY store – most domestic copper pipe is 22mm I think (not a plumber!).

You might find a brass hose connector in roughly the right size – a commercial one, not a domestic one…

Use =Left / =Right / =Mid / =len to split it up if the order number and line number are in the same field.

I’d go for TSY’s Remove Duplicates.

If you need to do it regularly, record a quick macro. I think recording Ctrl-A for select current table won’t work properly, so read this (point 19):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291308

-Edit – repeating an item to fill blanks as per your original suggestion is a surprisingly large pain in the arse. If you can avoid it, do. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt…

I seem to remember that there was a study that said there was no measurable difference between “fighting” and just accepting that you’re ill and it could go either way.

I think it’s probably a media / charity driven narrative – a picture of an ill looking person and a story about their brave battle sells papers / raises donations.