what is it that they're going to use the taxes on exactly?

In Nottingham, it's more tram lines. I do wonder how they've decided where they'll go though. A park and ride in Clifton seems a bit pointless – there's already a train station next to Clifton power station, and the A453 is enough of a nightmare that you wouldn't bother carrying on any further than you had to.

Certainly in Nottingham, it's not going to be a case of charging for on street parking etc. – they already do that.

What they're going to do is charge workplaces for providing their own car parking. It's a tax on parking spaces.

If businesses actually do move out of the city centre, I can see it changing Nottingham quite dramatically – lots of restaurants and bars will be reliant on lunch trade, as will lots of shops. Ultimately, if it goes the wrong way, it could end up like Sheffield, with a half closed city centre and most the decent restaurants out in the suburbs, and a big out of town shopping centre.

The above point on shift workers is an interesting one – it could make for a very regressive tax.

TBH it could be as simple as people posting on the old FS thread saying "I bought this, it arrived and was OK". The problem is that it needs to become the norm to be of any value – either mentioned STW classifieds rules or through a formal feedback system.

Ebay them on. It's a lot of aggro to get the cash back (you've effectively opted out of any paypal protection), Small claims etc. is a pain in the neck.

I suspect you'll get most of your money back if you go the Ebay route – it's not as if they're in majorly worse condition is it?

Personally, I can't be doing with the classifieds anymore. Seem to be plenty of chancers about.

To me, this sounds like a classic case of using Excel when you should be using Access.

Unless Excel's data querying tools have become MUCH better, you'll eventually want to find something out like which items are top sellers, and you'll realise that it's an absolute pain to do in Excel.

Torque settings are commonly dictated by how much force is needed to stretch the bolt a little, so as to provide maximum clamping force. The reading you'll get from a torque wrench for a given amount of stretch varies according to whether the bolt is going in dry, greased or with threadlock.

Granted in some applications (say, carbon bits being clamped), you're actually limited by how how much force the item can take, rather than the bolt.

Do them up with a screwdriver & use loctite. Torque settings would depend on the bolt, not the hub – try the brake manufacturer.

I've been on it a couple of times with the old style Citroen Despatch. They're pretty chilled – we explained we were using it as a car and got car rates for it etc. They're easily over 6 foot tall too.

A W124?

Senders can play up, and the whole thing is sometimes part of the fuel pickup from what I can remember of last time I had one apart (on some cars, at least).

Normally accessed by a circular hatch in the boot floor or under the back seat. I'd guess you have a problem with the pickup gauze blocking and a dodgy sender too. May be linked (ie, in the case of a combined item) or may be two seperate issues.

Just swap em / refuse them under the Distance Selling Act?

Swapping arms (they're not legs!) is very difficult on quality glasses, as the sprung hinge causes the thing you need to thread a screw through to retract as soon as you remove the arm.

On some really high end glasses (lindbergs, say), it just isn't going to happen. They're not manufactured like normal glasses – I'd be amazed if anyone but the factory could change arms on them.

WTF is this? I could just about setup a figure of 8 in Brio. By the time I have kids, the little swines will have monorails!

Visit any student town. Loads of places sell second hand bikes to them.

Ubuntu really isn't the optimal LiveCD to go for in this situation – it will work for just copying files, but it's not set up with all the repair tools. You ideally want something designed for the job – there's a list on Wikipedia.

There's less to download (the Ubuntu livecd includes the OS and a load of applications), and they have a load of tools specifically for fixing broken PCs.

As far as I know the recovery console tools are fairly basic? Format /mbr etc?

2 or 3 chains on one bike.

It does.

I have with white spirits, I wouldn't again – I've had chains rust whilst in white spirits. Best to clean with a jar of spirits / degreaser, then store oiled.

I personally also use a chain wear tool to see how things are going. I don't like splashing out for an entire drivetrain!

I'm amazed that anyone would still espouse getting rid of the dole. I could see how some people could arrive at their opinions before the credit crunch – getting work was very easy, and most middle class people had no experience of unemployment.

Post credit crunch, pretty much every profession going has had redundancies, and work is much harder to come by.

I've no time for people who play the system, but suggesting blanket removal of unemployment benefits is incredibly wrongheaded.

The XP disc is pretty unlikely to do anything. As far as I remember they go like this:
1) Check disk is formatted.
2) Run Checkdsk do a full disk scan.
3) Install windows

I reckon it'll say the disk isn't formatted. Do you have another PC at home which you can use to download and burn a LiveCD? If not, I'd do it at work before you go home for the weekend.

TBH Ton's like a mate's politically incorrect Dad. If you were having dinner at his house, it'd be chicken, just so he could ask you if you like leg or breast 😆

I reckon TJ is the heavyweight champion of STW.

He'll argue for the rest of time, has read every peer reviewed journal article ever produced, and seems to be on here every hour of the day and night.

You won't have had a full LiveCD with the PC. A live CD is a proper operating system on a CD – not an installation disk, the thing actually runs from the CD, with apps which are designed to handle half dead disks.

You may have the Dell recovery boot disk, which from what I can remember of it, is pretty basic – it's a "Press 1 to run diagnostics" type thing.

Be careful how you go with any Installation / recovery CD you have. You could well be prompted with "Your hard drive appears not to be formatted, would you like to format it?".

I don't mean to sound funny, but you're asking fairly basic questions – if there is data worth £££ on the disk, consult a professional. If there's just stuff you'd like to still have, get a LiveCD and try to copy the data onto an external hard drive first, working in order of important stuff first.

I personally wouldn't trust a hard drive that had started acting oddly – it could last ages, it could last a month, but with the cost of hard drives now, you might as well replace it. It's too much of a pain when they do go wrong.

A LiveCD is an entire operating system on a CD, often Linux based. You run the computer from that, and recover the data from the hard drive. Despite being Linux based, there are plenty that are simple to use – point and click interface etc.

Parted Magic is one I've used in the past – it's specifically for messing about with partitions. There may be better rescue ones available though.

If you have properly important stuff, I'd be inclined to boot with a LiveCD, see if you can get any data off without trying to fix anything, then consider paying someone who knows if you can't.

You should be able to boot with a livecd and fix the partition table / pull the data off.

It's designed for massive forks. It'll be very wrong with rigid forks and drop bars.

A pompino, however, is designed for exactly this sort of thing.

Am I missing something here

Exactly. Assuming having an extra pint of milk in his 2l bottle at home won't cause the milk to go sour before it's all used, there is very little advantage to buying a special milk container.

The difference between a pint bought singularly and a pint bought as part of a large pack is perhaps 2 or 3 pence. Even assuming the guy works 50 weeks of the year and the difference is as large as 5 pence, he'll only have cost himself £1.50 over a year by just buying a pint bottle.

Any bottle with a reasonable chance of keeping the milk in will cost around a fiver, and the OP gives himself the job of decanting milk and washing the bottle regularly. And he has to buy a special STW sanctioned boutique bottle brush, to go with said bottle.

Can we have the OP sectioned?

Enough with the ropey analogies already! Bar tape is an item which is pretty much universal – it should fit any handlebars that can be considered normal.

It's more akin to buying a universal car seat cover, then finding out it won't fit the seats of a Ford Mondeo.

I can't see why On-one would put two bolts in each fork leg, except to attach brake bosses!

Boggo forks that came with an inbred will be 190mm steerer and around 430 axle to crown if memory serves.

don't the compressors generally push less air than a good track pump?

Assuming you don't have horrendous hoses, no. You'll easily get >15CFM down the hose, as the tank is full of compressed air. Narrowbore hoses do rob flow rate though

If you're running through air faster than the compressor can compress it, you're limited by the capacity of the compressor (ie, the actual pumping part). That's an issue you get when spray painting, power sanding etc. Not one you should ever encounter with a bicycle tyre.

25L tank at 100PSI, bike tyre running at maybe 60 max? Gives about 40l of air at 60psi I think…

Just buy a plastic pint bottle of milk every week. The only bottles that definitely won't leak in your bag are expensive, and you'll eventually not wash it out well enough, and it'll stink.

Blimey, Graphic Designers are cheap! Or they get a lot more of the hourly rate to themselves.

Ebeneezer Goode by the Shamen?

Spam? Surely it's just a bad joke from a circular?

NINE POUNDS?

Ikea for cheap kitchen bits – chopping boards, pots, pans, glasses etc.

John Lewis & supermarkets for appliances. Some cheap stuff is fine – microwaves for example, but I've never found a cheap toaster that can actually evenly toast.

JL are very good as they price match others, and only sell decent quality stuff.

Is this going to end up like the stupid headset question thread?

Surely this thread is more a case of "Who's had the best plastic surgery"?

Only person who I can think of who's gotten better as time's gone by is Lily Allen. She's lost some weight, worked out how to do her hair and make up and has become about 37 times more attractive.

Sounds about right. There's no come back with a private sale no matter what anyhow. Might be worth writing private sale on there…

Being as you're all so fond of old gimmers.

Hay is long grass, straw is what's left once you've threshed grain.

There's also a tend towards consolidation, leading to "flying farms" where machinery is all kept at once central location then will go out to work on different farms on rotation. Which is odd, as a farm will be empty for ages, then suddenly full of machinery as the entire place is harvested or cultivated in one hit. It can also mean you need to transport produce about the place more.

SCRAPHEAP?

FIXED?

SAY IT AIN'T SO!

As for Total Wipeout, it's a load of toss. You want to go on Sasuke, that's a real man's gameshow.

A lot of people on here really seem to misunderstand how the Sale of Goods Act works.

Two things that apply here:

Problems are the retailers responsibility. They can take it up with the supplier, but the contract is between customer and retailer.

Goods should be fit for purpose. It doesn't matter if they're the cheapest item in the range, they should be able to do the job they're sold for.

This episode makes me wonder what CRC are thinking. As Charlie says, it's not worth your while to sell rubbish. The law is designed to protect the customer from substandard goods, so a retailer doesn't have a leg to stand on if they sell them.

taking time out before starting an MSc

On at least 3 occasions over the next year, you are going to wonder "Why the hell did I decide to do this?".