ASBO.

No, seriously. Is the DSS paying his rent?

What time do I go to ChezVegas BMX track so as to avoid there being anyone else there? I'd prefer to fall off with as few onlookers as possible.

I'm not on a "worr, French cars are rubbish innit" trip. Seriously check out if that model of Clio still has the hilariously fragile UCH unit that was fitted to the older model.

MK5 GTIs are still decent money, so you'd be looking at a 100k car.

MK4s aren't in the same street as something like the Clio.

Most folks won't even know you're driving a CTR and not a Type S or whatever. It's not like a Cayenne or Q7, which might as well come from the factory with a sunstrip that reads "****"…

I'd go for the old Civic Type R over one of those. Or a 1.8T Polo with a chip. The electriconics in PSA group cars are worthless.

Or: What Surf Mat said.

There is no conspiracy, you can quite easily get hold of 7mm allen keys. I've got a set of 3/8th drive allen bits that run from something like 2-3mm to 12 or so.

So, has the patent/royalty to cane creek ended

It ends on the 29th. It's more or less admitting that you placed profits ahead of technical excellence. Really undermines his marketing in my view.

There's no good reason why we can't make things competitively. The Germans do a pretty good job if it, and they have similar living standards to us.

Talking about high skill this that and the other is all well and good, but you have to remember that intelligence follows a more or less normal distribution. We haven't all got the capability.

Given the state of this economy, could this happen over here…

No. Social housing effectively immobilises a fair proportion of the population.

Move a sucessfull business up there, give it big tax incentives to do so and give it a school, college, training facilities to train potential staff and then start a comunity thats got prospects.

I honestly don't know if that would be enough. I grew up in a town that fairly regularly gets ranked as the worst at everything – deprivation, education etc.

I think there would have to be serious cultural change to sort it out – people have to want to change, become educated, or for their children to be educated etc.

There are other fast estates – M5 estates have been around while.

Personally, if I had that kind of cash about, I'd buy whatever sports car I fancied – an Elise, a Boxster, an M3, whatever, and a "meh" car I can stick the bikes in. Or a hot hatch.

I can't really see the point of the Cayenne as a vehicle. For me it's up there with the AMG G-Wagen and wearing a gold chain with a diamond encrusted $ symbol.

I think a lot of the issue is down to the links between deprivation and educational attainment. It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario – does deprivation cause poor attainment, or does poor attainment cause deprivation?

I understand the argument, I'm just not sure how it stands up in the real world on the trails I ride. It feels to me like the sweetspot isn't up at 2.4".

Economies of Location come and go, and industries change.

A couple of examples:

Liverpool – it was once a very important port. But what's it for now?
Sheffield still produces loads of steel, but in a heavily automated fashion, so the Don Valley has very high unemployment.

We either have to face that these places are no longer massive centres of employment, and make people mobile, or seriously examine how we can create location economies, not just dish out a few grants for business startups, or build an Inland Revenue office / Govt call centre.

Most stuff that's factory polished is either anodised or lacquered – it dulls the finish a bit, but it at least stays the way it is. TBH DIYing an entire frame would be a massive pain, as would the upkeep.

You're using heavy, tractor like tyres.

Of course, the solution is to buy light tractor tyres with fragile beads from Schwalbe for £50 a pop 😆

TBH I wonder about the benefits of massive tyres. I've got some in the shed, and it's like pedalling a tractor. Schwalbe reckon wider tyres + lower pressures equal less rolling resistance, but I'm not sure.

Hopefully they'll get off their arses and sort out a decent high speed rail system in the near future. If you look at the oases of prosperity in the North, it's mainly places with a decent rail link to London.

I find that I tend to mash the back wheel up far more than I do the front, which seems only sensible given that's the end with suspension. The 521s and 521s are a lot tougher than the XC rims.

The 521 is way lighter than the 321 for a small increase in cost, and it's welded, rather than pinned. It's still fairly heavy compared to something like a 317 though.

A ZTR Flow is pricer than either a 521 or 317, but it's wider than the 521 and approaching the 317 for weight. I suspect they won't last as well as Mavics – no eyelets.

Just looking for the right idea.

I can recommend Ingenuity in Practice (book, available on Amazon, £6 or so) and Winsquared.co.uk

Ingenuity in Practice is has a very good methodology for coming up with ideas, and winsquared provides a good way of checking your business plan out. I was a little sceptical at first, but the method provided us with an idea that was potentially worth £shedloads, but unfortunately turned out to be a little too close to a patent application filed by HP 😆

Brentacre again. Always been cheaper than anyone else for me.

Lay all your kit out the night before, and tell your bird that you're doing XYZ in the morning. That way there's no excuse.

Decathlon were selling an ultralight tent for £60 recently. Don't know if the offer's still on.

It's top of the head stuff. I'm up to my arse in a business master's, and did a massive business planning exercise earlier in the year 😯

doing something loads already do but better cheaper is usually the best route.

There goes a man who's not studied business 😀 . Altering prices has a hugely disproportionate effect on profits. Not a viable proposition for small business who can't exploit economies of scale.

That kind of scenario planning is so easy to do now with the likes of Excel (ie, profit margins at various prices) that you'd be insane not to do plenty of it.

Oh, and if you know any students, go and buy them a pint. Near enough every uni has access to Mintel, and the better ones will have Euromonitor and Keynote.

Chippy sprung to mind as they tend to have reasonable (gross) profit ratios – often c.50%. Then it's just down to turnover….

Fair enough. If you're thinking of doing it, you probably know rather more about it than I do. 😆

I reckon quality and consistency will see you ahead of much of the pack in the food trade. The consistency is the difficult bit – everyone knows a takeaway or restaurant that goes downhill for 2 weeks of the year when the owner's on holiday – I'd try and study how the big chains and franchises go about it.

And another thing, go Ltd if you can. You stand more chance of keeping your house!

What do you do at the minute, OMITN?

I'd personally look to do something I had experience in, and something I could sell on easily when I'd had enough. It's difficult to scale something like a chip shop (ie, you can only open whole shops, whereas with other businesses you can just move to bigger premises). And you need to get scale to get a saleable business – most sole traders ARE the business, and it's worthless without them.

The majority of successful entrepreneurs start businesses related to their current work.

I know a guy whose Dad made an absolute killing selling light bulbs for instruments & the lights dentists and surgeons use. He'd been doing more or less the same thing as an employee, and realised he could do it better.

I'd agree with Surf Mat's sentiment about not necessarily doing something unique. There are a whole packages of problems with starting out in a new field, and the concept of first mover advantage is rather overblown.

What Houns said. Think about it – if there's enough electricity to ionise air / turn the air into plasma, there's no problem for it to go through you, the bike or whatever, then ionise another 6 inches of air to get around the tyres…

It's done as an HTML email I believe. Insert then Picture should do it in outlook express.

The tools to decide to deal with someone or not to are already in place; look at posting history and membership status, and then always get full contact details before money changes hands.

It would be lovely if that were the case. As I've said above, I've had problems with people who meet everyone's criteria of what makes a good seller. The problem is, it is no guarantee.

A feedback system of whatever kind, would be a massive improvement. I think I've suggested the same idea as TJ in the past, but the issue is that it relies on a critical mass of people leaving feedback to become effective. Probably the best way to ensure that is by mentioning it in the classifieds rules.

Got the stats to back that up?

And the descent into googling, quoting articles and general bitterness begins 😆

I do it, mainly so that I don't get squeezed into the gutter by cars.

Just don't go eating anything planted in roadside flower beds. There are plenty of edible plants that do a good job of pulling lead up out of the soil…

but who would manage / monitor it?

Why would it need to be managed or monitored?

If Surf-Mat's feedback thread is suddenly filled with "I bought some forks off Mat but the forcefield of awesomeness zapped and killed my chihuahua" then it can be reported to the mods. I seriously doubt the mods read 10% of the drivel that's spouted on here, and instead rely on the reporting system.

High speed rough ground is so different on a full sus that it's unreal. On the other hand, full sus would be boring as hell for most of my riding – it feels like sitting in a comfy car, not mountain biking 😆

So basically all you can do it drive it away from the test centre to a place of repair and drive it back to the test centre.

As I understand it, an MOT cert cannot be invalidated, so even though there's an MOT failure sheet, so long as the car is roadworthy, and an old cert is still in date, you should be within the law.

However, I am not a lawyer, so last time my car failed an MOT, I fixed it the same day (Saturday), drove it on Sunday, and got it retested on 6am Monday, even though I had another week or so on the old certificate. My view was that I was pretty unlikely to run into any police on a Sunday, and the car was roadworthy as I'd fixed it. But I wasn't keen to take any more chances than that!

I would say it's roadworthy, and chances are you'll get away with it. However, there are lots of MOT stations offering decent service these days – one local to me lets you make appointments online, and does MOTs between 6am and 11pm.

I'd go for the earliest retest you can get. Odd offences like driving with no MOT, no insurance etc. can make a massive difference to insurance premiums – often more than drink driving charges.