There's no such thing as as healthy tan…

I'm fairly sure that the figures for skin cancer are inflated – something to do with dermatologists lobbying for non-cancerous melanomas to be included in the figures or some such.

Looks like a standard filter machine – 2 scoops (the scooper normally comes with the machine) + 2 "cups" worth of water makes 1 mug full of decent coffee.

I think he may have meant Golf estate.

A Golf boot is? Colour me surprised!

75 quid! I'd sooner make two cups worth of coffee and chuck half.

I personally just use a filter machine – dead easy to make one person's worth, and quick.

Look on the tyre websites – black circles, my-tyres etc. to get basic prices. Then ring around and get quotes for ones that are in your price range. I find that local independents generally beat the websites without being asked.

No, part worns aren't a great idea – tyres can be aged even if the tread's good, and the cost of fitting is quite high compared to the cost of a tyre these days.

Personally, I stick to names I've heard of and had good tyres from in the past – Uniroyal, Goodyear, Continental (although I find eco-contacts horrible).

However, tyres are an integral part of the suspension tuning, and so some that work really well on one model won't work well on another. So maybe go and hunt out a Megane forum for specific tyre advice.

Oh, and I'm guessing from your posting name that you may speak German – one of the big online tyre retailers links to ADAC and other german language review sites (there's surpringly little of this kind of stuff in English), so that may give you a good idea of what's good and what's not…

VW Golf. It's the SI unit of car.

Read the listing on CRC! It tells you so!

Kona Fire Mountain 2010.

To be fair, I have a mate who rides an old Giant – it's got some nice bits on it (LX Vees, XT levers etc), but ultimately it's not a great frame, with cheap forks, and a very basic wheelset, and mostly Alivio level kit.

He still manages to get round everything I do, and he doesn't have to do stupid amounts of maintenance as some would have you believe.

Pauls Cycles have some OKish stuff at £300 – the GT Outpost from last year has some vaguely decent bits on it. Alivio will stand up to off road use, but I'd not want tourney on an MTB.

Really though, he'll have to be lucky to land on a reasonable spec bike for £300 – it'll have to be a reduced old model. £400 is a more realistic figure.

On the other hand, if he doens't actually need a mountain bike, steer him towards a hybrid – they seem pretty good value to me, and you miss a lot of the stuff that makes cheap mountain bikes bad – namely heavy and rubbish forks.

this will never happen as too large a percentage of these are voters so this party would never get in power

Logic would dictate that, but in reality, turnout in deprived areas is very low.

try and think beyond me, del. i know it's hard, but try.

I'll spell this one out for you – people seem to dislike you to such an extent that they don't think you are trustworthy.

Total monthly outgoing including mortgage, council tax and all utilities £400 exact

Your mortgage must be small!

Be wary of that engine. IIRC that is a VAG one and in 2002 there were issues with the ignition coils. They fail very regularly, although it is covered under warranty until 100,000 miles or 10 years.

I'd be amazed if there are any 1.8Ts still with dodgy ignition coils. They're a damned good engine – plenty of people run them up to 300 brake.
I'd say it's rather less of a problem than say, DMFs on modern diesels or the BSI system on PSA group cars.

I'm currently a student, so my finances are out of the window.

As a rule, when I'm working, I don't buy stuff I can't afford, and I pay off my credit card every month. As I'm a student, it's become more along the lines of only buying things I absolutely need, and trying not to accumulate debt.

My bike is much the same as when I bought it 5 years ago, and by far the best thing I've ever done for my bike spending is to stop reading bike magazines. They are there to sell you things, pure and simple. In reality a new this or that isn't going to make you a better rider.

A lot of people seem to go shopping pretty regularly and cycle through clothes etc. quickly. I'm of the opposite school of thought – I'll only go to the shops if I absolutely have to, because I've worn stuff out.

Selling Royal Mail to its competitors would be stupid. There are big network externalities in running a postal service, so in theory it's a natural monopoly.

I think the thing that makes a lot of people hate bikers is the way they pass. Even fast cars will generally come and sit behind you, then pass. The majority of bikes are quick enough that they come up behind you rather faster than you're going, and sail straight by.

If you're not right on top of your observation, they're passing you before you've even seen them in your mirrors.

That said, I've had people not notice me in the car when I've been sat behind them and pulled out to overtake…

The insurance thing, as far as I can see, is a basic tax fiddle – you pay the insurers, they invest the money, you know the employee will die sooner or later, and you get your return. Obviously insurance payouts aren't taxed in the same way as capital gains, so there's a saving to be made for the firm if they invest in this way.

Be careful how you go picking up slow-worms – if you grab them by their back end, they'll drop their tails.

They're considerably smaller than adders and grass snakes, and you can tell them because the head is a completely different shape to a snake's head – it merges smoothly into the body. Colouration varies, but there are plenty of pictures on google.

SFN fitting is easy. Put a bolt in it and use a hammer.

Cheap USB mp3 / CD head units are £60. Better ones are more. Sony headunits always sound rubbish to me, Pioneer ones always sound good.

The units with no CD option are not normally cheaper, as it's a bit of a niche option.

As price goes up, sound quality improves a bit (but not a lot, as all good headunits are designed to work with an external amplifier), bells and whistles increase, and ease of use improves. There's obviously an ease of use sweetspot in the mid-range where you have a good screen and good controls, but not so many things to control that it becomes impossible.

You can get the bluetooth built into the radio, and that would be what I'd go for – dialling via a scroll through list of your numbers on the radio screen is nicer than faffing with phone holders and the like.

Found one, but wrong year. Breakers would be my suggestion – there are a lot of websites that basically email several (hundred?) breakers in a kind of go-compare style, and they get back to you if they have the part.

Michael Moore would do a lot better if he wasn't an annoying arse. There were some good points made, but he reinforced the ridiculous concept that there is SOCIALISM and there is CAPITALISM and no grey area.

In reality it's possible to have a functioning market, a state safety net (ie, welfare programmes) and so on without having a bloke with a tash running the show and a parade every May Day. A lot of people don't seem to know that, particularly in the US.

Nobody's mentioned the most obvious thing yet – does your bike fit you?

Having your seat too low is the quickest route to knee pain I can think of.

Simplex is where it's at. Reaching back to the seat tube to change down into the granny gear is a faff though.

How can the govt put the brakes on housing?

By using a measure of inflation that takes into account the cost of housing, rather than CPI, a change which Gordon Brown instituted. The house price bubble would have driven inflation up, and the BoE would have increased interest rates to correct. End result is that house prices are managed as part of the inflation control system.

I think Gordon Brown famously said something about boom and bust, and how he'd beaten it.

There was this bloke called Kanute once…

Not totally true. Smart people generally become better off, and have smarter kids, therefore the majority of kids at good unis are from better off families.

Not totally true. Better off people are generally better at providing the environment required for education, buying books, speaking to their kids etc. and as a result, their kids do well in education.

One things for sure – if you do happen to take it to the local tip – put a hammer through the screen first, otherwise you'll see it at your local car boot sale within the week!

God forbid somebody should reuse something you've thrown away.

Put it outside with a notice saying "For Sale, £10". It'll get stolen pretty quickly, despite the fact that CRTs are pretty much worthless.

I haven't driven for years, but when I glance at the rev counter in cars when I'm getting a lift to a ride, I usually see 3000 rpm…

The v-tec is completely different to most other engines. They drive like rather ordinary engines at normal rev ranges, but when the v-tec switchover takes place, you're moved over to a race / rally style cam, with lots and lots of power at high revs.

Not really my cup of tea, but it's a great way of having a high power small capacity engine that you can actually live with day to day – if they were on the v-tec cam all the time, there'd be absolutely no low down power, terrible fuel consumption etc.

EU.

I think it'll fit you – I'm a bit slimmer than you and the XXL road jerseys aren't tight, so I would expect the MTB jerseys to have some breathing room.

Will an S2000 engine fit?

As for car engines not going over 8 grand, you've never driven a v-tec.

It works something like this:
0 to silly revs = Nissan Micra 1.0 style performance
silly revs to the limiter = OH MY GOD THE WORLD HAS SPEEDED UP.

Lidl ones are coming in this week.

Decathlon also do cheap jerseys all year round, but the really cheap ones are more of a roadie style.

is that the vtec engine? if so you're the first person in the world to have one fail..

No, the V-tec mechanism itself has never failed. The block may be scattered across the road, but the V-tec mechanism will still be hanging on, like a cockroach after the apocalypse.

You'll still need shims for the front mech and a new seatclamp.

Ok so Brown is responsible for the sub prime market collapse in America and the subsequent finaial meltdown because the FSA replaced the SIB in 1986 …thanks for sharing

Brown did preside over a massive increase in public and private debt, along with a huge housing bubble, and didn't put the brakes on. I think it's clear that we would all be far better off if we weren't a hugely indebted nation with a reliance on constantly rising house prices when the crisis hit.

You have got a point. The average drill is supposedly used for 12 minutes before it's chucked.

I'd still buy an SDS+, but then I've got a cheap cordless drill for banging screws in / drilling metal and wood, and a pillar drill for anything more heavy duty 😆

You'll almost certainly need shims for the front mech, and perhaps a new seatpost if the GT one isn't 27.2. Some alloy bikes to have 27.2 seatposts, but they're unusual.

521 is also lighter than a 321, and Mavic rate it for a tyre up to 2.5, whereas the 717 is supposed to have nothing bigger than a 2.1 on it.

A 719 is lighter still, and rated for 2.3, but of course it's also pricier.