What others have said – generally you see less than a third of your charge out rate. You also work on a chargeable time basis, which is a royal pain in the arse.

It's much like accounting or law in some ways – if you're picked out to be a partner / associate, then you'll be raking it in. There are a lot of people doing donkey work on average pay who'll be doing so for the rest of time.

In my book, when you're talking about getting on nearly double the price for something that's functionally the same, you need to see some big benefit. I can't really see that cartridge bearing hubs are that much better to be honest. I have a mix of both on my bike.

Cartridges are easy to swap, but cup and cone is very easy to service too, if a little messier, and a bag of ball bearings costs a quid from any LBS.

Ultimately you get some bling and save maybe 30-50g over a wheelset. I'd sooner spend the saving on something useful.

I recently went from rigid to suspension on my Inbred. My forks are only old 80mm Air bombers, the rigid forks were on-one steel ones. It is a lot faster over anything that's remotely rough. And a lot less tiring.

Combofix is the Daddy. Found stuff Malware Bytes, PrevX and MS SE couldn't.

By the time you've bought disk hubs and paid the labour (and probably for new spokes) then you'll almost have spent as much as a whole set of new wheels. I'd get new disc 24" wheels (cheap ones off ebay) and flog the old ones.

Thanks, I'll get in touch next week.

Genius. I've just knackered my £4 Aldi ones. Thanks muchly!

It's a huge area and wouldn't be too hard to move around unnoticed and cover a lot of ground.

When you hear about escape and evasion exercises done by the army, folks generally don't stay evaded for very long. Granted, the stakes are higher for Moat, but it would surprise me if he couldn't be found fairly easily if he were in the open, and they're looking in the right area.

right up until he gets in a car and drives off

Stop every MK3 Astra in the area then 😆 . Pretty much everything else requires housebreaking to get a set of keys, which isn't something I'd be doing if I were wanted.

I can't really see how he's still out and about. If he's sleeping in the woods, then a thermal imaging camera on a helicopter, a few landsharks and men should have him found pretty quickly.

On the other hand, if he's holed up in someone's house then they can do door to door. Rothbury isn't a big place as far as I can see.

Collection of cars (think Steve Perez style), decent house with land, a couple of dogs.

The house would be somewhere like the Barshams in Norfolk (easy to get to the sea or a town), but with some decent riding transplanted into the locality 😆

I'd want another house in somewherel ike Croatia or the Czech republic.

A yacht would be nice to have too. One with sails though, not a gin palace.

I'd be circuit racing and rallying as often as possible.

I'd want first dibs on booting both Blair and Brown in the balls too.

A bit of a bump…

Natural England / English Nature did issue guidelines on works around badger sets. As I remember, it was no closer than 50m with tracked earth moving machinery, 25m for a backhoe JCB and 10 metres for hand tools.

As you can probably guess by my use of the name English Nature, my knowledge isn't completely up to date.

However, the penalties for disturbing badgers are very high, and there are a lot of local conservation groups around who probably know where the sett is, and therefore that you've disturbed it. The crimes related to protected species include disturbance, which can be creating noise, digging etc. – literally anything that will disturb. Certainly building a trail that passes by a badger set would constitute disturbance – both in building and possibly in use.

To be honest, badger setts are so obvious you'd need to worry about a wide range of people shopping you – dog walkers, farmers etc., not just those in the know. It might not lead back to you, but it'd certainly result in some work to get the trails closed.

My advice would be to re-route the trail so that it passes no closer than 10m to a sett. It's not difficult to work out where they are, particularly once you've seen one, so my advice is to check there aren't other outlying setts nearby before you start digging again. You'll no doubt notice that they like to dig into the side of earth banks.

It definitely wasn't one of these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSFjhWw4DNo

Operation Credible Sport – a Hercules with approximately 47 rocket boosters to a) stop it and b) get it going again from the confines of a sport stadium in Iran.

Thanks toys, I've sent you an email.

Molgrips, it would depend. As I remember, you're an IT contractor. Is there some degree of novelty or innovation? Ultimately, it would depend on which definition of Entrepreneur I pick for the dissertation 😀

It would most likely involve a meeting of around 45 minutes to an hour, and a second meeting to confirm the accuracy of the findings.

I understand that time is money, so the interviews will be as short as is practical, and based on desk research so as to avoid wasting time by covering background information during the interview.

if there were a forumla for success everyone would do it.

To be fair, some elements of the entrepreneurial process has been codified. The key thing really is access to rarified information. That could be something like applying a technology to a problem it hasn't been used on before, or it could be as simple as realising that you can do what your employer is doing at a lower cost.

However, the thing that stops everyone from doing it is lack of opportunity, skill, and an unwillingness to take risks – to do entrepreneurship well takes a long time and a lot of research, before you even put any money up.

I don't run my own small business, but I can tell you that a lot of entrepreneurs start out in something related to what they did for a full time job.

Seriously, try it. It's amazing how much more tiring driving a noisy car is.

Is the value really dropping that much? Mondeos are standard rep mobiles and I'd be amazed if most don't do 20k a year.

Try it first. If I were commuting 120 miles a day there's no way in hell you'd get me doing it in anything smaller than a Golf.

Small cars often have poxy seats and nowhere near enough sound deadening.

I'd always go for a small petrol in a small car over a small diesel though – the derv is heavier (and a large proportion of the car's total weight in a small one), and costs more to repair. End result is you don't get big benefits from the derv, but you do get the chance of big repair bills (ie, Dual mass flywheels, fuel pumps).

As far as I can see, not many decent sized tents are really easy for 1 man to put up. If your existing tent is fairly easy to put up, I'd take a spare 6 pack of beers and bribe your neighbours into helping you put it up.

The metal bits fit onto the lock D, and they slot into the bracket, yes.

Be careful with those brackets – mine had ruined a decal on my bike when I took it off – they wriggle down the tube eventually.

It should be a case of erecting the centre dome, pegging that down and getting the pods done one by one. Shouldn't be hugely problematic once you've got the middle section pegged in.

I reckon an SLX medium cage will do you fine. And it's a lot cheaper to replace if you do mash it.

I'd also go for the SLX double front mech as it's shaped to match a 36T. Mine shifts far better than it has any right to on a 22/36 setup.

Then I'd spend the money I'd saved on parts that will make a difference to your speed – brakes, forks and tyres.

Outsourcing will only intensify – there is effectively a 6 billion labour pool which multinationals are free to use according to lowest cost.

There is and there isn't. Once you eliminate countries where the rule of law, education or infrastructure is poor (particularly ports), you rule out a fair few. As SE Asia gets richer, rising costs, combined with shipping costs and lead times (flexibility, cost of capital) will eliminate much of the advantage of producing there.

That is what we are saying – to get a decent finish requires a mitt/sponge.

Nope. You get a totally clean car by using TFR. You're left with a completely clean car, which can be dried and will look much the same as one washed by hand.

The thing is, TFR will also remove wax pretty quickly. Most people only ever use wash and wax though, so I'm sure you could get two spray bottles, do TFR then rinse, then spray on wax and rinse, even get by with a spray of wash and wax on a car that's not too dirty.

Again, this may or may not matter – if you have a car with decent paint that you intend to keep for 3 years or so, it'll probably bead pretty well (new paint beads with no wax) and paint doesn't really deteriorate these days.

All you chaps are obviously talking about some kind of joke pressure washer.

Ours will clean a car completely. Blast the worst muck off, spray with traffic film remover, pressure wash again. If you're fussy, blast the worst off, wash with a mitt and shampoo, and pressure wash again. Using TFR and a pressure washer will clean almost anything, no matter how mucky – tractors, lorries etc. without any real work.

It's simply a case of having a powerful enough pressure washer (most domestic ones aren't) and the right chemicals.

Fenwicks FS10 is amazing for cleaning alloy wheels too.

When will the madness stop?

When the developing world reaches something approaching our quality of life. The fact is that manufacturing will continue to move around the world, often with these off shore plants upping their game and winning work from plants in home nations.

I seem to remember that HP have all their accounts done in the Phillipines (similar / same accounting rules as the US) and that their Singapore operation started as an assembly plant but gradually developed R&D skills. There are two results – increased profits and a stick with which to beat staff. Exec pay is generally linked to profits, and worker pay can be driven down. So it is.

As soon as it becomes uneconomic to keep moving to the lowest cost places, we'll see worker's wages rising.

I reckon you’d get better overall fuel economy out of a 2.0”TDi” that just about a 1.6/1.4 “FSi” engined equivalent

Quite possibly, but over their life, Diesels can chuck out some horrible unexpected bills. I'd not have another for that reason.

I'd not have an Audi. As others have said, you get a fairly standard VAG platform with rock hard suspension and a nice interior. To me the clear new choices if you want something that sort of size are the MK6 GTI, MK3 Scirroco or a 3 series.

I'd not say BMW and Audi are in the same class simply because BMWs have rear wheel drive, which makes a big difference. And BMW have fantastic engines – power and economy, rather than just economy.

However, you clearly have very different priorities to me if you're considering a 1.6 TDI A3. It'll be slow, and if I had it, it'd be thirsty because it'd be going flat out in order to make a bit of progress. To me, a car has to be reliable, drive well, and as for the interior, I want good seats and switches where I can reach them. So long as the interior isn't made of recycled CD boxes, I'm happy.

Just buy some handlebars that are comfy. If you must be niche as, fit some horrible grips or handlebar tassles.

A car, tax and insurance. I'd probably just scrape a car a grand now though – thanks to Peter and Gordon all the decent £500 cars have disappeared. Labour are always helping the poor out 😆

I'd look somewhere else. The idea of joining a union or telling them it's not on generally doesn't work in the private sector. For that sort of thing to be effective, you need a unionised workforce, not one bloke in a union.

Obviously, find something else before you leave. It's grim out there at the moment.

I'd not worry about being in the job for a short period of time – you have a good reason to leave and you're not starting out in life, so your CV will prove that you're not a slacker.

I'd be interested (as much as I'm interested in riding anywhere abroad – I can't afford it at the moment), but I'd want to know what access was like. Not everwhere treats national parks and nature reserves the way we do, with people being allowed to wander around willy nilly.

I've no idea what George Michaels got nicked for. However, of course cottaging is not good behaviour. It's soliciting sex with strangers who aren't neccessarily interested, in a context that doesn't imply that they're interested.

The heterosexual equivalent would be to walk down the street asking every girl you liked if she wanted a quick knee trembler. It's simply not done.

I've no problem with people having casual sex if that's their thing, but it isn't right to do it, or arrange it, in public places.

Old people and mobiles is problematic in my experience. They turn them off except for when they want to make a call, they use them so irregularly that the PAYG sims are de-activated etc.

They often think things that we would regard as utterly bonkers – that recieving calls costs money for example.

In principle, I can see a phone like that working well, but the biggest problems are with the user, not the kit. I'd recommend sitting and having a serious conversation about how you use it, what everything costs etc.

Factor it. You'll lose a % but you'll most likely get more than you will on your own.

I'm sure some factors are more successful than others and don't give explicit details of their methods to their clients.

The emissions kit may vary, but the important things should be the same – tolerances, bearing sizes and torque settings.

There have been some articles on engine building in PPC magazine – you can download them from their website I think.

Cyclocrossers also tend to have fixings for Cantis / Vee brakes whilst your road bike frame will have fixings for caliper brakes.

I suspect there will be a Bentley manual from the US.

Ultimately, all V-tec engines will be similar, with variations on a theme. I'd look for hooky copies of the workshop CDs on eBay.