Pah. 13? He's probably doing backflips on the jumps down his local woods.

And boasting about how every time he goes out riding with his uncle, he has a daft stack to get a load of free kit 😆

I'd try following him – you tend to go very slowly your first time on a trail. If you know the trail reasonably well, your slow probably seems hard to keep up with.

Does anyone with student kids fund them?

As someone who was fairly recently an undergrad student, I can tell you that it really, really varies.

As a rule, I'd say most people get their accommodation paid for by parents, and get some sort of an allowance as well. Others pay their way via student loans and part time jobs. Some can study, get good marks and work full time. But they must have less need to sleep / more will power than me. And it really varies by course – someone taking engineering has far less free time than someone doing cultural studies.

I suspect some of the people on here saying "Oooh, I had to scrape the ice off the inside of me cardboard box" etc. went to uni before fees and the abolition of student grants.

Good god. Are you all trying to out do each other on the extra curricular activities section of a job application or something?

Get a mortgage, a house and a dog.

I've seen a few of those programs and with 90% of these new weapons development being US in origin, I think they have a bit too much money to spend for deadly toys.

The US spend almost as much on defence as the entire rest of the world do.

Have you lot been played on 6 or something? I recognise the name.

Ball joint splitter might come in handy.

I can quite believe that there's something ridiculous going on where if they're supplied on prescription (to people who don't pay prescription charges presumably?) they're silly money.

Never mind the cost of the drugs, the cost of an appointment slot with a GP will be pretty high. I wouldn't be surprised if a 15 minute appointment cost north of £50 when looked at from an activity based costing perspective.

Eurofighter was built specifically as something that Europe would be able to look after. It's still got US bits in it.

Given what most UK defence projects cost, we could easily buy yank kit, pay them for all the spares and still be better off. Eurofighter is nigh on out of date, Merlin can't lift anything, and the SA80 was in service for years before we got a version made that worked well.

Development costs are a major part of the price of these things, so it makes sense to buy the kit from someone who's already spread those costs across the biggest defence budget in the world. The other option is to produce not quite as good kit, and then desperately flog it to India etc. to try and spread the sunk costs.

Not much. Centralise the rack (BMWs have the facility for this I believe, so you might as well), undo both TREs, knock out of the taper with a hammer / ball joint splitter, replace TREs, do tracking with the rack still centralised. I would expect that to come to about £100 for labour, maximum. I've done one in not much time at all before (hour or two tops), and I normally spend more time looking for my tools than working.

A bit more time if you can't centralise the rack as you'll want to get the TREs somewhere near right first time, so you'll be marking things and counting threads.

Unless BMW TREs are incredibly difficult to access / complex to change. But I doubt it.

Have a read of this, summarises things fairly well:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8253915.stm

It doesn't. However, 14 months is not a reasonable life for the TV, so it should be returnable under Sale of goods.

Where did you buy it from?

Stop landfill. Landfill tax costs a bomb, switch to MBT. Push the plants through the planning system and start saving some cash.

Stop publishing council "newspapers" which tell the public how wonderful the council are. There's no need.

Stop insisting that we build our own weapons systems. The average UK defence job costs the taxpayer an absolute fortune, and we often end up with naff / delayed kit. Just buy the kit the Americans are flogging.

Start properly working at getting people off drugs, and keeping them off drugs. Drug users cost society a fortune. Do this no matter what it takes, whether it's legalising the drugs or treating people until they can be useful members of society.

Employers, not employees. And anyone who doesn't think unions have power over their members is on a hiding to nothing – there might not be formal power, but in any group there is always a lot of informal and implicit power.

As for me having no idea what occurs in the public sector, I and my girlfriend have both seen the kind of situation I outlined first hand.

And you're coming out with straw man arguments all over the shop.

It seems very cheap for what it is. I know first hand that the Panasonic Lumix cameras are very good (28-280mm equivalent, IS etc.), but the cheapest TZ model is £150 or so.

TJ, please, for the sake of everyone else here, go and do a stint working for the private sector.

Contracts of employment and employment rights are radically different. Take the example of someone who isn't pulling their weight. Within the public sector, the tendency is to try and get them to go to another department. The problem is almost impossible to resolve in many public sector organisations, as sacking someone is very lengthy, and there's a huge incentive to stick around long after you're fed up with the job in the form of the pension. In the private sector, you'd be out the door pretty sharply.

I know you see the public sector as setting an example of how the private sector should treat it's employees, but from where I'm sitting, it looks very different. To me, it looks like unions have huge sway over public sector employers, and create a situation where their members are protected at the cost of everybody else.

Of course, your original question, which boils down to "What can make a significant dent in £150 billion" is unanswerable. £150bn is larger than most government departments. The only way to make a dent in it is to try and save what are individually quite small sums everywhere.

And the boyfriend will be contributing.

You'll either get your cash or your wish of a single daughter 😆

If you do put a decent amount of business Orange's way, pleading has to be worth a try. Does your entire house have Orange contracts?

I'd be putting the for sale signs on her car. £2k is essentially an unpayable debt for a 19 year old if they're going to uni.

I've also seen a few people who repeatedly run up big lines of credit and then go back to their parents, who pay it off, and the cycle continues. Be very careful. At 19, if I'd ran up a £600 phone bill, I'd have not used the phone at all until I got back home. Everyone knows roaming is expensive, everyone knows about skype.

"I think I might get rid of the CB for something more modern".

Keep the Bindit in your mate's garage for the meantime…

There's a guy on eBay from Israel. He sends over derailleur hangers surprisingly quickly and cheaply.

The uni spots centres tend to have a Physio on staff, and he'll be twiddling his thumbs at this time of year…

Use a cheaper tool next time, so the tool lets go before the lockring does? 😆

You'll not knock it off with a hammer and chisel if the proper tool wouldn't shift it.

I'd be looking to find a garage or engineering firm who could weld a cheap 1/2" drive socket to the lockring and remove it that way.

You need a compressor with a tank to push air quickly enough to seat the tyre. Or CO2

Another option would be some kind of pressure vessel – an old car tyre say, and a hose with a schraeder connector on each end.

The last thing we need is the likes of Wildlife Trusts running LNRs and NNRs. I've seen some truly shocking WT written management plans.

That said, I can't see why any charity would really want to buy LNRs and NNRs. They're not generally like trail centres, where you can charge large numbers of people £3 to park. And if they do become that, most of their value will be destroyed by disturbance.

You are aware there should be a 3mm or so gap between the top of the stem and the top of the steerer?

There are very few stems that short – there's a Sunline one, but it's oversize.

Granted, the likes of Russia (or anyone with ICBMs and the tech to make a warhead that was EMP focussed) could do it.

But, and this is a big but, if the Russians are launching missiles, we've probably got more to worry about than just EMP (for a start, the US wouldn't know it was an EMP only attack, and would be likely to launch a nuclear counter attack), and the programme was seriously selling this as some sort of terr'rist threat.

Remember that when you're asked "Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?", the correct answer is "Sat in your chair" or "Being your boss".

In all seriousness, stuff like "What key things do you expect me to achieve in X months?" is probably about as good as it gets, unless they do something considerably differently to everyone else, and you can ask about that – often these small differences are a big deal within the firm.

But if I were you, I'd be thinking about what competency questions I'd be asked, and try to prep answers.

"Please tell me about a time when you single handedly saved 200 orphans from certain death."

"Please tell me about a time when you led a team to victory in an international sporting event."

That's the kind of stuff they like asking on application forms, so why not ask a bit back? 😆

Inside diameter of a standard threaded 1" fork is around 22-23mm. Outside should be around 25mm – ie, an inch.

The inside diameter of a 1 1/8" inch fork should be around 25mm. Outside diameter is about 28mm.

The above info is on the link I gave you…

I point you to Sheldon Brown:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gloss_st-z.html#stem

It sounds like your flexstem is designed for 1 1/8" forks.

Change the stem or the bars. A stem extender is a bit of a ropey setup and adds a fair bit of weight.

Too hot. The upside is, if you go out on the booze and puke all over your hotel room, the hotel staff often assume they've given you food poisoning, rather than that you can't take your ale.

Didn't Adrian Mole wear swimming trunks instead of pants for PE in order to avoid this kind of thing?

I bet you're one of those people you bump into on holiday, and bang on about avoiding some resort or another because there are NAKED GERMANS ON THE BEACH.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, as have many of my friends.

As an example, you often get started as an admin assistant, but as soon as people realise that you're capable, the role will grow. Temp to perm is something I've seen & heard of offered on many occasions as a carrot on a stick, but never heard of actually happening. Pay rises are uncommon. Summary dismissal and trampling of employment rights is fairly common.

There tend to be two kinds of organisations which take on temps – Public sector, unwilling to take on perm staff because they can't get rid of perms with bad attitudes, and private sector, who are unwilling to take on perm staff because they're terrible employers with massive staff turnover.

Things may be better with some agencies, and in some sectors of the market, but the above seems to be par for the course.

The way roles grow can be useful – I've got a mate with a master's degree who's getting experience that's very relevant to what he wants to do. But, he's getting paid admin assistant rates for what should be a £20-25k perm job.

I'd not be putting my hand in my pocket for anyone who bought a car off me. I'd be bloody furious if I sold someone a car at below the going rate and they started coming back with faults.

It's a private sale – everyone knows there is no warranty or comeback on a private sale unless the item is not as described.

On-one are selling off their chromo forks for £40 a pop.

TBH you could just get £50-£100 worth of old Raleigh racer / tourer. Get used to downtube shifters, fit dual pivot brakes and you're in business.

The mouse gestures add-ons are naff. So I use Firefox.

How would you use the bald rear tyre method? I'm getting images of last week's Shooting Stars with the knickers mounted to a bicycle wheel…

An acquaintance is a magistrate and regularly tells the private parking people to naff off. I'm not sure on what the grounds.