From what I can see on the front of the Guardian (not going to wade through it), there's nothing there that's surprising.

EBC & SJS have both been around for ages. It was deffo a new site launch. Time to give up and have a shufti on ebay!

Oh by christ, +1 the above.

Don't get sticky traps, "humane" traps or any of that rubbish.

Get proper traps that kill outright by breaking the neck – that is a genuinely humane trap. Wild animals will do anything to get free, including pulling off their own feet. And you still have the problem of killing them. As for humane traps, the best I ever heard was someone catching housemice in Sheffield and releasing them up in the peak district. Surely it's pretty obvious what habitat they've adapted to from the hame? All you're doing is feeding up the local Kestrel population at best, and at worst, they'll be back in the house before you are.

Peanut butter is normally the badger's favourite!

Nutella as bait, maybe on a little bit of Ritz cracker / biscuit. Use miniscule amounts of bait and the type of trap with a bait cup, so they really have to get onto the trap to get it. That minimises the number of times you'll get up and find the bait mysteriously gone.

Place traps by the skirting board, put plenty down and keep trapping for a long time. My advice would be to leave traps down for a week or two after you catch the "last" mouse to be sure that you have cleared the house.

As has been said, really does depend on how much TV you watch.

And what programmes you watch. I find that a lot of the stuff I'm interested in gets tucked away at silly times in the schedule, and that if there's something good on at 9pm on one channel, there will almost certainly be a competing programme I also want to watch on another. Recording that kind of stuff very quickly gives you a lot of telly to watch.

We went for Sky specifically for the Sky+ box, but went for minimum monthly rate which includes stuff like Dave and Gold.

That is something that REALLY boils my piss. Dave is free on freeview, as is E4 and the like. Get the most basic Sky or Virgin package, and you realise that you have to pay for stuff you can get for free elsewhere. Bonkers.

I'm updating for a road bike for a mate, and was hoping of taking advantage of their "name your price" feature to try and get some levers and a load of cables at a bit of a discount. I'm not connected to any bike shop, living or dead. 😆

Sky and Virgin seem good for a few months, Sky having by far the better interface of the two. Virgin's so bad that I wouldn't have it. You soon realise the same stuff is coming around and around and around and around over and over again, particularly on the documentary channels.

A hell of a lot of the channel's content is bought in from the BBC and ITV – Discovery's motoring channel is still showing Deals on Wheels etc. The big deal in my view is that you get the really good stuff from HBO before anyone else, which might be worth the subscription for you.

The good stuff does, however, eventually find its way to terrestrial, but is often broadcast at terrible times. The Wire was on the BBC at stupid o'clock at night for example.

End result is, I find that with a PVR, I can record more decent stuff from Freeview than I have the time to watch.

Not tweeks either. It's doing my head in now! I seem to think they had a bit of a focus on eco-friendly bits. I may be entirely wrong, of course.

It's not that one. I think it must have been earlier than that post. I seem to remember the website being predominantly green.

I found Sharm fine on the food poisoning front, but we were careful with anti-bacterial alcohol spray stuff as even the money there is filthy. I'd not go again as the shopkeepers are absolutely infuriating. You can't walk along the street without being bothered, and you have to haggle for everything. And it seems to attract the kind of English tourists I hope to avoid – there was a huge woman in the queue to board the plane, carrying a plastic sandwich bag full of her own puke… And the food isn't much cop.

I understand Turkish shopkeepers are similar.

Surely Paris is an absolute no-brainer for a Honeymoon?

I think if I were wanting sun, sea and sand in September my first choice would be Fuerteventura, but the southern end of the island, not the north. The north, again, is full of English folk, plastic patio furniture, fried breakfasts and the X-factor. The south has a few naturist Germans (which most people seem to regard with the kind of horror I'd normally reserve for people in airport departure lounges with transparent plastic bags of vomit), but also far better restaurants and resorts. There aren't many private beaches, but equally there isn't any need for them – the beaches are enormous, and the place isn't crawling with street pedlars.

I would suspect that Cyprus & the Greek islands are going to be cheap at the moment, and whilst there may have been riots, they don't shoot tourists.

Surely someone must know!

The components are really pretty basic…

They are, but it's still stuff that's usefull off road. The guy I built the Orange up for had previously been riding an old Giant, with not quite as good a spec as the OP's bike. I bought it as an ex-hire bike from Sherwood Pines, rode it off road for a year or two, I sold it to him, and both he and his dad have been using it since. It's probably a 2002 or 2003 made bike.

The original Alivio mech is still fine! The only thing that wore out prematurely was the front mech, which was one of the early top pull, low band variety.

To me, if the bike shifts OK and the wheels are alright, the place to spend money is the suspension and the brakes. Makes the biggest difference to speed and how the bike rides.

I'm not too sure about the "I built this 20lb bike off the classifieds for £100" brigade. Maybe if you've got some good spares knocking around already, and can devote a lot of time to trawling classifieds – if something's cheap, it goes very quickly.

A mate recently bought an Orange Gringo with a variety of good to gopping kit on it. The frame, bars, shifters, BB, headset, rear mech and seatpost were useable. Everything else wasn't. He took stripped it, and I sourced and fitted all the bits to make it back into a decent bike.

I bought the vast majority of the kit off here, at pretty good prices. I did get some new kit – Shimano cranks, new chain, new cables and new grips. Everything else was second hand. The build still ended up costing £200, and I've loaned a set of spare forks & a saddle to the mate. If I'd sourced everything but the frame off here, it would have cost about £290-£300, for a build that's a touch better everywhere than what's on that Giant. As I was sourcing a lot of second hand kit, I inevitably had a couple of headaches with stuff taking a while to turn up etc.

If I were in your position, I'd pull the bike to bits, sell the frame, headset & bottom bracket on ebay (seems to get better money than here), and buy a Dirty Jo or Handsomedog frame, transferring everything over. You'll probably get £30-40 back for your frame, be able to get a new frame for less than £80, plus £20-£30 for a new headset and bottom bracket from the bike shop.

The Handsomedog / Brand-X and Dirty Jo frames are all pretty similar, and are all pretty well regarded. Cheap, but not necessarily nasty. I'm agnostic about the idea of nice bits on an OK frame or OK bits on a nice frame.

That way, you get the pain in the neck / special tools jobs done by the bike shop, and a fairly hassle free build process. As time goes by, I'd buy a set of hydraulic disk brakes (Shimano, perhaps second hand for £50) and a better fork – I've no idea how good the Suntours are.

I'd not worry about 24 vs 27 speed – Alivio kit seems to last forever. I'd leave the change to 9 speed for when you break something, or change bikes. Bits are always a lot cheaper as parts of whole bikes than on their own.

North Norfolk coast. Wells Carnival is on during the first week of August.

Use a PVR?

I like the story about the blokes they caught cheating in the early TdFs.

They weren't using chemical enhancements, motors in their seat tubes, or illegal super aero positions. They were catching trains and getting lifts in cars 😆

Not all combat jackets are Goretex. The sellers tend to mention when they are. The non-gore ones can be nikwaxed or similar and made reasonably water proof though.

Anyhow, I have a jacket made of Goretex Paclite, and it's not really great for cycling (not really breathable enough). The best cycling jacket I ever had was a Howies 22 seconds, the key thing being that it wasn't waterproof, and therefore could get rid of your sweat quickly enough.

I'm getting quite tempted by the Montane featherlite – has anyone used one for riding?

I like yellow if it's overcast, brown or grey for sunny.

Any further offers beyond Spag Junction?

There's a bloke on here – LoCo, undercuts Mr Flooks and is an ex-Fox man I believe.

RQ's are pretty much exactly their stated size.

7.5 is the norm these days for "official" hours. I don't know of that many people who do manage to do their stated hours though.

Hence the need to make a decent fist of it. It needs to be rideable without having your hands tangled in a load of cables.

I have wondered if it's possible to bring the cables in under the bar tape part way along (maybe from under the drops?). I'm not really fussed about experimenting with it for ages though – aero brake levers aren't that dear…

I'd be amazed if the quick fit offer isn't a scam. Brake discs wear at a similar sort of rate to pads these days – you don't get several sets of pads to one set of discs on cars very often. So what will happen is that they'll (most likely truthfully) tell you that if they replace the pads on your car, the discs will wear below minimum thickness before the pads wear out. Which they will view as unacceptably unsafe. And recommend you have discs fitted. At several times the going rate.

Discs and pads is an hour to two hours work for a decent mechanic, depending if it's just fronts or front & rear.

Rear brakes on a car wear far more slowly than the fronts – as soon as there's any weight transfer the brake balancing valve stops almost all rear wheel braking effort. I wouldn't even consider changing your rear brakes unless the discs have become pitted / corroded.

Get a good idea of what the discs and pads are actually worth by looking for kits on Ebay. Mintex are decent, Brembo make the best discs by far. I'd only bother with Brembo if your car is heavy on its brakes and warps discs though. Add on £30-40 for an hour's labour (more if you're down south) and that's a fair price for swapping your pads and discs.

As other's have said, it's one of the easier DIY jobs on a car. People do get a bit funny about brakes, but disc brakes are so simple that you'd have to be some kind of special idiot to get it wrong. Rear discs can be more of a faff – that varies a lot car by car though. What car is it?

Get your old BB, grind the threads off on a few points – at a right angle to the threads.

ie, if these are the threads:

//////////////

Then grind a groove in from left to right.

Grease it up and use it as a tap. It won't be as good as a proper tap, but it'll be close enough, and crucially it will have a) some room for detritus and b) sharp edges.

Mine get a smidge of grease. I find slipping is usually down to the clamp, or a problem like an oversized frame / undersize post.

John Lewis are good at everything they do as a rule, but often stuff is made as a slightly different model so their price match rules can be worked around.

You can haggle at Sleepmasters…

I would suggest going and asking on a motorbike forum. They suffer from kit being pinched even more than we do.

You don't use scotchlocks and you don't use solder on vehicle wiring. Scotchlocks are rubbish, and soldered joints fail due to vibration.

The proper way to do vehicle wiring is with non-insulated crimps (pre-insulated ones rarely crimp properly), and cable tie everything down as often as you can. Wrap all the wires up in PVC sleeving if they're outside, non-sticky looming tape if they're inside.

Go and buy one of these kits:

http://www.vehicle-wiring-products.eu/VWP-onlinestore/terminalsnonins/noninskits.php

Or ring them, tell you what you're doing and ask them to send you what you need (ie, a bunch of terminals and a tool to match).

It is a bit more hassle, but it's a lot better than having to get back under the car and work on manky old scotchlocks, or having the lights fail on your trailer.

Straddle wire is the biggest influence on how well Cantis work – it's a reducing rate linkage as it gets pulled up.

The thing is, even when there is good cheap kit out there, it doesn't seem to shift in bucketloads. You only have to look at the Carrera thread to see how hooked up a lot of people are by brand.

About 20, maybe 30. A mate and I each ordered the biggest box of Nuggets they do – think it's 24. It's a lot harder to get through than you'd think. We'd both given up before the box was empty.

nah, not at all. there would always be a company with no real marketing activity but a credible product / reasoning for it that would undermine them.

Oh aye? An example I can think of: On-one Reetard bars were 275g and about £30. Branded bars with the same kind of spec were a fair bit more wedge. I don't remember hearing of everyone stampeding to buy them over Eastons or Protapers.

I'm firmly in the "rest of us" camp – I have 521 back wheel so that I don't have to pay anyone to true it 😆

I know of a bloke who has all his family park their cars up on the road outside. He then goes and parks their cars for them in the garage!

As for reversing in the driving test, a hell of a lot of instructors will teach something along the lines of "When their back wheel passes your windscreen pillar, start turning the wheel". As a result, a lot of people learn how to maneuvre one car by rote, rather than actually develop some spatial awareness and skill.

Plus cycling is becoming 'Fashionable' in the worst way

God forbid cycling becomes something ordinary people do in ordinary clothes in order to get about the place.

More cyclists is always good in my view. Drivers who don't cycle are more conditioned to expect cyclists, and there are more drivers who do cycle.

Economies of scale would suggest that bikes will eventually become cheaper as volume increases. We might even be able to buy an attractive 8 speed hub geared utility bike for a decent price, rather than spending a mint on a Pashley.

I do think that marketing is what holds up prices to a massive extent in bikes. There's a huge information assymmetry between the buyers and sellers, so they can spout any old bull and we, and often, the specialist press just soak it up.

I also agree that bike prices are daft. How come the old Octalink Deore cranks were hollowtech, and the current ones aren't? How come so many people are using BBs that don't last?

OK. I've signed up a 5 and one of my mates has signed up another 5.

If you're not one of the following people, you've not been signed up:

Psychle, Yoshimi, Dancake, Ayatollah Khomeini, nbt, Stompy, LapSteel, Toons, Mamadirt & Moses

Nothing stopping anyone else from using the sign up box on the front of the On-one page.

I examine stuff as soon as I get it. That way, if it's not right, you can start a paypal dispute whilst there's still come hope of the money still being in the seller's account.

I'd photograph the problem areas and see if the seller will provide a refund, or a partial refund to fund a repair. I've been done once on classifieds, and it's the only way to go, unless you live nearby. If you don't want to fix it, flog it on ebay and view it as a lesson learned.

When I come to sell stuff, I always clean it up, give it a look over and make sure it's functional. That way I know what I've sold is sound, and where I stand if the buyer comes back to me, so the timeframe wouldn't really matter. On the other hand, if the seller took the brakes off and chucked them straight in the post, then he might have no idea of the faults.

I weighed mine, they're a smidge under 630g on my scales.

In a word, yes.