Cobs.

What makes me chuckle about this subject are the religious people who will always warn of the 'dangers' of mediums, spiritualism, fortune telling etc., when it is just a different form of exactly the same thing.

I'm not religious, or a fan of religion. But generally priests, vicars, imams, rabbis etc. sincerely believe in what they do, do not charge by the hour, and are regulated to some extent by the religion they practice.

On the other hand, there's a good chance that a medium will be a charlaton on the look out for a mug.

So whilst there might not be the horrible spiritual dangers the religious types refer to, there are definitely other real risks.

Maybe getting on for a million an acre as development land with planning permission. Rather less as gardens.

I suspect the key issue will be how much your neighbours want to extend their gardens – if you can get together and buy equal shares on an amicable basis, it could go pretty cheaply. If one of you decides they want a bigger garden, then the price could escalate.

What's the deal with the whole "baggies for MTB" thing anyway? I've never seen the point.

I was referring to the political implications such as deregulation, etc. The money markets would have felt better if the Government in power would not implement any of the tighter regulations which appear to be on their way(after some watering down of course. :wink:)

Regulation is the big issue for the finance industry, but currency stability is an issue for the stock markets (if you're quoted in GBP and the pound drops, you're suddenly vulnerable to foreign takeover), for which we still need to keep the money markets happy.

Tron will you be my new best mate? Seriously, I thought I was the only person who was worried about PR for the same reasons you cite.

In all seriousness, I am surprised by how much people seem to misunderstand the basics of the situation we are in. There has been an absolute media blitz on these issues for a couple of years, and yet people seem to take a stock opinion lifted from either the Daily Mail or the Socialist Worker, with both sets centring on the idea of fat cats getting rich off our backs, rather than the real issues at hand.

I don't give a toss – I'm just repeating the earlier posters figures back at him to demonstrate it's a nonsensical argument.

My point was that, on average, it takes the least votes to elect a Labour MP, a few more to elect a Tory MP, and a LOT more to elect a Lib Dem MP. Go and do the sums, and you'll find that I'm right. I'm not refuting the fact that Lib Dem & Labour together have had more votes than the Conservatives.

30 seats per million votes, whilst the Tories got 28.7 and Liberals only got 9.3

So that's 39.3 seats per million *against* the tories, vs 28.7 for.

Sorry, but we're back to basic errors of arithmetic. The average number of seats for Labour / Lib Dem per million votes is ~ 20.45.

I think the point you may be trying to make is that the Lib Dems and Labour together got more votes than the Conservatives.

As for LB holding up everyone to ransom, that's a rather facile argument. Compare and contrast to the fact that the actual result with FPTP is decided in a bunch of marginals of something like 100,000 votes. That's what holds the election process up to ransom.

I disagree. As a rule, the party that gets the most votes gets the most seats, and forms the government. Ultimately marginals are extremely influential, but FPTP still does a reasonable job of putting the people who got the most votes in power.

Looking at past elections, we can say that Labour and the Tories will generally get something like a similar level of votes – within 10 percentage points of each other. It will then come down to the Lib Dems to choose who they like, particularly if we set a precedent by forming a coalition of losers now.

Governments gave away power and control a long time ago, and without international agreement to change that, no one countries administration effects them to any real effect.

You are wrong.

We still have near total control of fiscal (spending / tax) & monetary (interest rates) policy. The BoE is independent in name, but it's still paid for and set targets by the government.

I think Greece (which is in the Eurozone, and therefore has less control over monetary policy) provides a suitably vivid illustration of what lax fiscal policy can do for a country.

Ultimately, the issue of a hung parliament causing problems with the markets (ie, our credit rating and interest bill) boils down to fiscal policy. Everyone could see that Labour were deferring fiscal cuts until after the election, and that is why our ratings have stayed steady.

The issue is that people were expecting cuts ASAP after the election, and a hung parliament resulting in a weak coalition will not be able to decisively cut fiscal policy. This means that our outgoings will continue to outstrip our income, we will be seen as less likely to pay up, and Britain will move from borrowing on the equivalent of mortgages to credit cards and payday loans.

When I was looking for rims, the 5.1s had a very bad name compared to the 521s.

Other countries in Europe and beyond get on with PR, doesn't affect their markets. Perhaps why the money markets don't like the idea of PR in the UK is because they may not be able to make the kind of killings they have done in the past.

The "money markets" refers to the markets where borrowing is sold. If our credit rating is downgraded (ie, the money markets don't like us fannying around trying to get a coaltion government together), the lenders will make more money, not less, but we will all be poorer, because we'll be paying higher interest rates.

Of course the voting would be completely different under PR but as the conservatives hint at by their opposition to it, it's not really in their favour as they have traditionally won a much higher number of seats for their slice of the overall vote than the other parties.

Labour have been getting more seats per vote than the Tories and have been for years – this time round, Labour got approx. 30 seats per million votes, whilst the Tories got 28.7 and Liberals only got 9.3. The reason Labour are happy to go with PR is that they think the Liberals will always be happy to get into bed with them.

PR would mean that the Liberals would have this "king maker" role pretty much every election, giving them disproportionate power over government policy.

To me, the Liberals and Labour are very different – Labour is borne out of old school Socialism, hence the ID cards, heavy terrorist legislation and an urge to tell us all how to live our lives, and to take and give as they please (tax credits).

On the other hand, there's a strong classical Liberal element to the Lib Dems, hence their policies covering things like scrapping ID cards, not taxing anyone earning under 10K, and an emphasis on civil liberties.

Whilst they're both obstensibly "left wing", I don't think Left VS Right is a useful narrative anymore. A lot of the above Lib Dem policies align better with ideas which have been floated by small state Tories (civil liberties, flat tax etc.).

PR is fantastic. Every party has a list, with the order that people will get bunged into Parliament in. So if a party gets 23% of the vote, the top 23% of that party's list gets in.

This means that even very small minority parties are fairly likely to get seats. So you'd have Nick Griffin, Nigel Farage and Kilroy Silk in parliament.

It also means that you can't vote someone out. An MP's corrupt, doesn't do any work, been fiddling his expenses, or he's Robert Kilroy Silk? Well, if he's mates with (or is) the party leader, then you're stuffed.

The other issue is that it takes the European countries which use PR an average of 40 days to form a government, and once they are formed, they can crumble, because practically every government has to be a coalition. It looks like it'll take us less than a week, and people are already going berserk, with the money markets sniffing around the idea of downgrading our credit rating.

Oh, and factor in that 50% of the population need to be taught what a percentage is so that they can begin to understand the concept of PR.

There is no reason at all why electricity, gas, water, and the banks, can't be nationalised so that their mindbogglingly profits can used for the benefit of everyone.

I don't know if you've noticed, but our government is pretty hard up. I'm also not sure if the utlities would be selling (being as they have a licence to make money out of a natural monopoly), and usually takeovers happen at a good premium.

The reason we have people on poor wages in the UK is that we have free trade with the rest of the world – effectively we've done a deal whereby the rest of the world works to catch up with us, and our wages stand still.

As for training, you're effectively describing supply side economics. Which Gordon Brown has been doing these last 13 years.

Ultimately, you're not talking about social democracy, you're talking about something much more akin to the way warsaw pact economies worked, with self sufficiency and central control.

Suresignal provides a local signal using your broadband. I think Voda are the only people in the UK to have the tech.

And why look at the scale of England? Westminster governs the UK.

Because if we're going to argue about fair electoral systems, you have to mention the elephant in the room, which is that Scotland and Wales have their own assemblies, but still elect MPs to Westminster who have voting rights over things that don't affect their own constituents.

A 4.6 per cent difference

Go back to school and ask them to teach you percentages again. It's a 4.6 percentage point difference, but 24.3% percent difference.

sorry meant 15 million voted lib or lab
10 million voted con

so if lib/lab pact is made clegg could easily ask for pmship

They voted for Labour or the Liberals though. They didn't vote for a LabLib coalition. I know I'd consider voting Liberal, but certainly not Labour.

You should also note that the tories got more votes than elected Tony Blair in 2005, and almost as many as he did in 2001.

1955 is the last time there was an election where the winner got more votes than the two losers by the way.

Well, excuse them for wanting to keep their jobs.

I'd like to see a fair few of them out on their ear, or made to do some work. Having worked in both, I can say that there's a great deal of mickey taking in the public sector.

15 million votes for lib dems

10 million voted tory

How the hell do you work that out? The BBC says 36.1% of the Vote went to the Tories, 29% to Labour, 23% Lib Dems, Wikipedia says 10.6M, 8.6M and 6.8M respectively.

More Stalin.

Nope, this is a nice frame:

Note the drilled drop outs:

Still not convinced: I look on this type of spending as morally similar to spending money on beer. Tastes great, nice at the time, but ultimately you're basically wasting your money – it's not like you get anything to keep (other than maybe bruises / STDs / a Las Vegas wife) out of it. But, as long as your not spending more than you have, as long as you don't need alcohol to keep you going – what's the problem? So someone (in my case, a brewery, in another's case, a medium) makes money out of me? Who cares?

My view is that people who are prepared to believe this claptrap, and then go to the effort of seeking out a medium may not be in a great mental state. That's fine if the medium says "So and so's happy where they are and they want you to go on with your life", but could be incredibly destructive if the medium says "So and so's never forgiven you for XY&Z". The medium then holds a massive amount of power over their client, either to screw their mind up or to relieve them of cash.

For that reason, I think going to a medium can be a hugely risky business for some people. I'd be amazed if it isn't a method used for recruitment by cults.

Hell, I'd sooner people went and took up religion, and I'm a lifelong atheist.

There are a few firms that do custom printed hi-vis jackets online. Google!

EN521s are an ounce lighter than 321s. But flows are 2 ounces lighter than 521s.

Is HTII lighter than octalink by much margin? Certainly the old hollowtech Deores aren't excessively heavy according to the weight weenie listings…

i suppose all you goody goody's dont steal pens either, or print off trail maps on company paper!
get a life ffs!

Not a case of being a goody goody, more one of not exposing oneself to massive risk for a small gain.

Tron – you would be surprised.

I wouldn't. I've had ground anchors out of the floor after a few moments work with a pry bar, and after a few moments with an allen key (those ball bearings aren't as hard to remove as the makers would have you believe), I've lost the keys to cable locks and cut through them pretty sharpish, and there are good reasons why any commercial user of padlocks will very often house them in a heavy metal tube or other protector.

So I view security purely on the basis that you are making your stuff harder to nick, not impossible to nick. There's simply no such thing as impossible to nick, but the scum will tend to go and lift easier things.

Garage doors are very flimsy. I'd be putting in a bolt down ground anchor and using a decent chain, and maybe a £10 shed alarm or alarmed padlock.

I certainly wouldn't assume that someone who can get through a garage door will have the kit to get through a chain and ground anchor.

The thing is what does this woman get out of it, i mean she is bascially taking the p*ss basically out of two sane (they were before this event) people.

A lot. Your charlatans are usually in it for the money, but for those who genuinely believe they're mediums, there are social rewards. As you said, your mate's brother had never bothered speaking to the old bat from up the road before, but now he thinks she's got magical powers and may well be popping in for the odd cup of tea in the future.

From the point of view of an old person who lives alone, a bit of social contact is worth a lot.

Got caught up in a bit of an explosion last week

And we wonder why foreignors think we're reserved.

Guesswork again. There's even a website that'll guess any item you're thinking of, given the opportunity to ask you 20 questions.

A person can see you face to face and has rather more processing power available than a computer.

To be honest, I class it with those people who have dogs that can do sums, which later turn out not to be able to do sums without the owner present. At worst they're total charlatans, at best they're terribly misguided.

A mate had Junior Ts on a trailstar for a bit. The head tube remained intact!

A lot of cars just use a bar to link both arms together. Bolt one to both wiper arms near the pivot, so that one motor drives both?

LR must have had a demon designer to make changing a wiper motor a dash out job…

Stupid risk to take in my book. Could easily be a sackable offence.

So why buy gold then ?

Because people love buying stuff that's at a record high. Look at houses 😆

But more seriously, because the wider instability in the world doesn't seem to be going away, and because the pound is sinking.

but i require 330mm…..

Hacksaw.

Aaah, those two blokes in the assay office – right up there with Blanchflower in my book.

I suspect the correct explanation is this:

Gold prices are at a record high.
Gold is always in demand during times of economic uncertainty.
We've got a hung parliament during the middle of a recession – that's about as uncertain as it gets.

Whoever forms the next government will have to cut like hell, and to my mind the real screw up here is Labour, who've held off cuts in order to maintain popularity in the run up to the general election.

They already are. CRC have them.

A lass I'm at uni with did a blind taste test as part of some research for an essay.

The results were that for some stuff, people thought the Aldi gear was Waitrose, and generally couldn't tell what shop stuff had come from by the taste and quality.

Parma ham was the major exception, with people fingering Aldi as being the cheapy.

I thought that myself – if he hadn't hit the cyclist, he'd have hit the Audi. A lot of old gimmers simply shouldn't be driving without some serious re-education in the rules of roundabouts.

One of the comics has a feature on Steve Peat's bike. 3 Ti brake disc bolts per wheel, no dust seals or grease on any of the bearings, just oil.