Nothing like having a good rant about something you know nothing about.

We import 40% of our food? Oooh, shocking, terrible.

Householders throw away 15-20% of what they buy. More is lost through the supply chain.
We’re growing biofuels. We could stop that pretty sharpish
We eat a lot of meat. Hell, looking at a lot of us, we eat too much full stop.

Cut those sources of waste and we’d not be far off self sufficiency – if for some bizarre reason it were desirable.

+1 for Travelex. Competitive rates if you book in advance, and you can pick it up at the airport on the way.

18″ will be about right to a tad small. 16″ will be small. 182 has always seemed like the “Medium” Inbred to me.

Didn’t realise the hopes didn’t change price as you changed rim. Seems like a bit of a no-brainer to go for Flows. Are they about as strong as 521s?

He doesn’t seem to be at the minute – it says “Not for sale”.

Do I really need a 521? No idea. I just don’t like paying / travelling to the bike shop to have wheels trued. Add that they’re cheap, wide, strong and not that heavy.

The Labour party aren’t moaning because they have tried on several occasions to reform public sector pensions and retirement ages, but have always ended up folding.

It’s pretty simple – Unions a) give a lot of funding to the Labour party and b) have voting rights. This makes it extremely difficult for them to tackle the issue. Labour know (but don’t publicly say) that some kind of public sector pension reform is needed, and it might as well be someone else getting the blame for it.

because they don’t want to be seen to be sticking up for the public sector as the tory press have so successfully convinced everyone that the pensions need reforming.

😆 Or that.

About £2-300 a year I reckon.

Bike cost £400 (rigid Inbred when they were half price in 2005), spent around £200 on a set of Bombers & some Magura Julies.

The pads on the Julies just don’t wear out, and I’ve bought a second hand set of bombers for £60 or so off here in the meantime.

I’ve spent about £170 on wheels in 6 years, probably another £250 on tyres, grips, bars, a 36T chainring, an SLX mech, second chain and a bash.

But then I’ve still got a bike that’s worth a good £2-300 in bits quite happily.

The key things for me are:

a) Buying bombproof kit. Nobody ever broke an open bath Marzocchi, and I’m still on the same Octalink BB and cranks the bike came with.
b) DIY everything. There’s nothing on my bike that isn’t easily DIYable for a man in a shed.
c) Keep your chain clean and oiled. I have two chains, swap them round and keep them clean and oiled. My drivetrain is largely original and still in decent nick.
d) Don’t read magazines. Magazines have two customers – the reader, and the advertiser. I found that when I was reading magazines, I was far more tempted to buy random bits. Every other thing that’s reviewed is “must have”. It’s a load of bull.

Logical questions, no?

Seems fairly obvious to me – it’s basic arbitrage. If you see that as “profiteering” then you’ve got a problem with 90% of the businesses in existence.

I found IR3535 based stuff works well, and doesn’t eat plastics like DEET does. Decathlon’s own insect repellent is IR3535 based.

Cash in Lieu would be available on any claim I think, although we dealt almost exclusively with no fault claims, so I might be wrong.

You’d still have a claim on your insurance record, and as others have said, your insurance will almost certainly go up – you still have your NCD, but because you’ve claimed, you’re a worse risk, and the discount is taken off a bigger premium.

+1 for the Airbags. No end of small Renaults get written off after minor bumps because they’re full of airbags. The other major daft thing that will keep your car off the road is if the tailgate isn’t sealing properly. Apparently exhaust fumes can get back into the car – sounds very unlikely to me, but that was the line taken.

It would be worth knowing the type of car and level of damage to be honest.

Blimey, is don simon possessed by TJ?

I expect that if you buy a whole bike off here, there’s a very good chance of the parts being worth more than the whole.

I wouldn’t bother trying to buy individual bits to sell on unless they’re very cheap.

Red Bull is a marketing company that sells pop. The former UK CEO was on telly the other week – he said marketing was like a respirator for Red Bull – take the marketing away and you’re stuffed.

Cars normally get written off when repair + hire car costs hit 70-75% of the car’s book value. The %age depends on the exact insurer.

Whether to write off or not is determined by the assessor – the bodyshop give an estimate, and the assessor a) decides if the bodyshop is bumping up the bill and b) whether it’s economic to repair the car.

Several things to look out for:
1) Assessors are busy. Make sure the valuation takes into account all the options on your car, condition, mileage and whether it’s a higher powered TD / Turbo or not. A lot of the time they’ll just take the standard Glass’ price without punching in all the detail.

2) They are working for the insurer. As a rule, they’ll try and pay you around 75% of what Glass’ lists as their first offer. Use evidence to get the right price.

3) Glass’ guide is not the be all and end all. Some cars – RS Turbos, 309 Goodwoods, older Golf GTIs etc. are drastically undervalued by the price guides. An extreme example would be something like a tidy RS Turbo, which would do well to fetch a grand according to Glass’, but will easily change hands for £3k or so in the real world.

4) Autotrader / paper ads / owners club forum ads can be used as evidence to prove Glass’ wrong. For really rare stuff (ie, Yank, Jap imports), Autotrader will be their source of values. Ebay never used to be accepted as a source of values, as it’s an auction, and the motor trade thinks auction = trade sale.

5) Any import will have something like 10-20% knocked off the book price of a UK model.

6) If you own something that’s difficult to get parts for / old / lightly damaged, consider cash in lieu of repair.

JDM stuff (ie, Skyline GTRs) are pretty easily written off by the standard insurance process, as Nissan will tell you it’s a 12 week lead time for parts from Japan, the parts won’t be cheap, and then you add on 12 weeks of car hire for the insurer.

Old stuff can easily be written off by daft things like a pair of headlamps coming in at £400 from the dealer. See point 6 about cash in lieu of repair.

7) As for whether to claim or not, that hinges around one thing – was it your fault, and is it easy to prove it wasn’t? If it’s a cut and dried accident – someone ran into you, someone pulled out in front etc. then claim. If your car’s lightly damaged, you can go for Cash in Lieu and have a wedge to fix it AND keep your motor.

If it was your fault and the car’s driveable, I wouldn’t bother.

Edit: Re-read OP. You must tell the insurer that you’ve had an accident, you don’t need to claim, assuming the car is still roadworthy. It’s possible that it’s not worth bothering claiming, unless you have specific cover for this sort of circumstance.

The clauses which aim to prevent you from working for a competitor are unenforceable under most circumstances.

The majority of cases that have been successful (from the former employer’s point of view) have ended up being about stolen data – ie, contact lists, company reports, etc.

What you’re suggesting is an absolute no no.

Of course, there’s nothing to stop you going and finding out these contacts again after you leave – if you’re on decent terms with your customers I can’t see how you’d have any difficulty getting hold of them through their office’s switchboard.

Sounds like DSG to me!

Lots of things can go at any time and cost a lot – diesels have a couple more items that’s all.

Not really. Most cars have a cam belt, which will cost you £150 to change with the waterpump. Keep on top of that every 40/60k, and your basics – ie, oil and coolant, and a decent car isn’t likely to throw out big bills.

The difference is that it seems that the DMF WILL go sooner or later and it will be expensive to fix. Beyond that the fuel systems are pretty sensitive and you can expect to be spending more on brakes because diesel engines tend to be heavier.

I’d much sooner save on the purchase cost (£1-2K by the looks of Autotrader), and spend a extra few quid a week than play chicken with the flywheel.

I reckon you’d probably spend a tenner less a week on fuel.

That’s £500 a year with a couple of weeks off on holidays etc.

So, assuming all other things are equal, you’re looking at a payback time on the new car of around 20 years.

If it were me, I think I’d stick.

Diesel servicing costs are the same, except for when they’re not – I’d expect a derv of that age to have a Dual Mass Flywheel. DMFs break and cost a lot of wedge to fix.

Hammering it off from the lights at 6000 revs and slipping the clutch to get a good start.

Changing gear like your life depends on you going from 3rd to 4th in less than 1/10th of a second.

Accelerating and braking so hard that your engine oil gets above 120 degrees and your brakes start smoking.

Hammering it from stone cold.

Shouting “Watch this” to the passenger.

Left foot braking & handbrake turns on your daily commute.

What’s normal really depends on the car – an S2000 feels like a Nissan Micra 1.0 up to something daft like 7000rpm and then all hell breaks loose. On the other hand, some older VW engines are tuned to be torquey, and redline at 6000 revs or so. Revving them beyond 4000 revs or so feels fairly pointless, as the sweet spot for quick driving is between 3 and 4000 rpm.

The thing is, most cars are designed in the last 30 years will stand being hammered flat out. As an example, we took our ancient Golf to France a while ago – we covered thousands of miles, and the car spent hours sat at 4000rpm in 40 degree heat. It didn’t even use any oil. Unless you’re really willfully abusing things, you’re not going to break the powertrain.

The major exceptions to this are things like Ford Kas, which come with 1950s rubbish under the bonnet, and will be pretty hammered by 60-70k.

Henry. Reliable as, work well, and clean to empty.

The Dyson might remove half of your carpet and some dust you didn’t know was there, but you’ll breathe most of it in when you empty it. And then you’ll have to spend a small fortune on filters.

We had a ZX, which is mechanically pretty similar – same as a 306 or Xsara. No hydraulic suspension.

Electrics were a bit ropey – only 5 fuses or so for the whole car, clocks worked as and when they felt like it. It was galvanised but failed it’s MOT on rust in the seam in front of the petrol tank, under the rear seats. Seam sealing seems pretty poor – brush on stuff rather than the thick squirted in stuff VW use. General build quality was poor – sunroof leaked, things rattled.

The old 1.9D (XUD I think) is steady but will last forever.

TBH I’d look for something else – I bought the ZX for naff all with full service history, an interor that stank of fags and dogs, and not a great deal of miles on the clock. We ended up scrapping it at something ridiculous like 85k because it wasn’t worth fixing.

I’d go for MK1 Focus or late MK3 Golf if you want something with a reasonable “image” for a grand. If you really don’t give a monkeys about image, you can get a Daewoo Lanos for bugger all with very few miles. Interior is typical far eastern economy car horror, but you tend to get aircon and the mechanicals are Vauxhall based.

The Bombers are stupidly easy to service – it’s easily DIYable and a decent bike shop should be up to it. They also last forever.

That said, I’d guess the frame and wheels aren’t disc brake capable, and to be honest, I’d not go back to V brakes now. You can literally fit and forget good disc brakes (ie, Shimano & Magura) – nothing to do but change pads relatively rarely.

No idea if the frame is decent by today’s standards or not – the appearance of FS frames has changed enormously over the last 10 years, but I don’t know how different the underlying tech is.

So how do we solve the bigger problem of under 25s maiming people?

It’s very different problem.

Young drivers still have a lot to learn, and most will eventually become average drivers of an average risk.

Once someone’s body & mind has deteriorated through age, they’re very unlikely to improve.

Add in a bit of basic economics – ie, young people are far more likely to be working, and need a car to do so, and you can see how wildly different the two situations are.

My uncle used to have a shop in a little precinct, with parking to the front of the shops. There were two occasions that I know of when old folks in automatics drove through the front of one of the shops by accident.

I’d personally go for mandatory re-tests and Doctors being able to instigate licence revocation. It’s very easy to say “Stop driving if you’re impaired”, but most impaired people don’t perceive that they are.

It’s a bit like if you find out you need glasses when you go for your first sight test, or when you get a new prescription. The deterioration is generally so slow that you never notice it.

That’s completely out of order. Bang in a paypal dispute.

I’m not sure if “getting on with life” will help much. My new bash guard came in the post the other day – I got the bike out and put it into the workstand, and the next day my ribs were thrashing.

I suspect I need to rest it as much as possible, but it’s bloody annoying – almost anything physical aggravates it.

Horatio – heard a lot of stories about MK4 Golfs wanting to follow the camber of the road, and it seems to just be the way they are.

As others have said, you want a proper 4 wheel alignment check, and if the car’s not brand new, I’d look at having it checked on a jig to make sure all the subframes are where they should be, and that the body is straight.

If the car’s got out of line suspension, you can get all kinds of odd handling traits. As an example, if castor is different from left to right, you effectively have a shorter wheelbase on one side to the other. And castor increases the camber angle as you steer, which helps the car to turn. If it’s out, you will get odd handling.

I’ll see if the LBS quote me happy tomorrow morning.

Do Hope front hubs burst / break axles or is that just the rears?

Someone must have some idea! Am I going to shoot myself in the foot by going down the QR only hub route?

Surely there must be at least one already in Worksop or Carlton?

Try not to let it get you down and try to get into banging out CVs as quick as you can.

When I was made redundant, I was quite relieved – the job had long and very irregular hours. After a while, I wasn’t so relieved…

In my experience, the job centre was the worst part of the whole thing, and if you do anything to avoid signing on, do.

Every time road brakes come up, someone says “You haven’t got the contact patch to use more power”.

Basic physics will tell you that the contact patch has very little bearing on grip. The equation is F = uN

F is the force generated (ie, grip),
u is the coefficient of friction (ie, how grippy the tyre is)
N is the force between the two surfaces.

Differences in ultimate grip will result from different tyre compounds (ie, higher coefficient of friction), but contact patch is fairly irrelevant.

As for the brakes, assuming they’re dual pivots, you should be able to pull up pretty sharpish. Pad clearance needs to be VERY slim for them to work well, make sure all the contact surfaces are clean and that the cables are decent.

Bump for the daytime crowd!

(The ones at £30 with free post have gone, but there are still plenty knocking around a £29.99 + post)…

Group exercises – 15 minutes to bang out a presentation on a subject etc. Normally there’ll be some face to face competency interviews & possibly your standard SHL maths & comprehension tests. Key thing is avoid being the knob who talks over everyone else. If you can calm down the knob who talks over everyone else, you’ll do well 😉

Any website / book / careers dept guidance on assessment centres should let you know what to expect. In fact, googling “aldi assessment centre” will give you an exact run down pretty quickly.

Once you’re past the selection stages, I understand you get £40k, an Audi and a hundred hour week.

I’ve tried umpteen methods over time. As far as I can see, regular cleaning makes a big difference, the exact method of cleaning doesn’t make that much.

So I just use whatever chain cleaning machine I can get my hands on – just bought the £4 Lidl one.

Chain cleaning machines aren’t much faff, so you actually bother cleaning and lubing the chain regularly. Immersing everything in Jizer and getting everything clean, drying it all then getting it oiled is probably better, but it’s such a faff I very rarely do it.

I’d pick them up, then place a few notices up asking for the owner to get in touch with me. I’d then hand over the kit to the police as evidence to support a prosecution for littering.

Doesn’t matter if it’s £13 or £130 in my book – if you sell someone something, it should be what you said it was.

With the best will in the world, everyone makes a mistake from time to time, and the right thing to do is put your hands up and fix it. Taking your chances and selling the parts on Ebay is the last resort once you’ve worked out that you’ve been deliberately scammed and there’s zero chance of getting your cash back from the seller.

Ultimately the win-win here is that Ian turns up, and gives the OP his cash back. The buyer’s story then becomes “I bought something, it was wrong, but it was an honest mistake, and I got my cash back promptly” rather than “I bought something, it was wrong, I got abused by a bunch of the seller’s mates, and had to sell the kit on Ebay”. And Ian gets to maintain an untarnished reputation.

Depends on the head teacher. My mum was a head, qualified up to the eyeballs and with a track record of turning around failing schools.

Her view is generally that a holiday is easily more educational than a couple of weeks of school.

Others will have an inflated idea of what two week’s schooling actually results in, and will tell you to FRO.

They run a franchise business model as far as I know, so you’re going to get variable quality.

There are lots of “smart repair” businesses about, just shop around for someone who can show you good work or is recommended.