Farmers are supposed to clean up the road, and they know it. No reason not to go for compo in my book.

Tis a steel frame. It's stupidly easy to re-arrange the rear end. Sheldon Brown will tell you how.

On the other hand, a framebuilder will have the jigs to know whether he's done enough spragging with 2×4, whereas you'll have to do it by eye 😆

When wrapping bar tape can be done in one go, and without taking more than an hour…

Would a Japanese import dodge road tax though? I seem to remember imports are classified under the old system – ie, bigger or smaller than a 1.6, so rather than £400 road tax it could be £175 or so.

Use Sheldon Brown's gear calculator. Going to 22/36 from 22/32/42 would mean that I lose the top two gears – ie, 42:11 and whatever's next to that. Not a big issue to me.

So, what's wrong with saying if she couldn't afford kids she shouldn't have had them, people need to have a bit of self-control, you shouldn't have kids then expect the state to look after them because you can't afford to, the country just cannot afford the bill, the country is skint, and it's not just the bankers fault, the government have to take some of the blame, Brown wasted the countries riches through years of profligate spending on the state benefits system, and if it takes 5 years of Tory government to bring down the welfare bill, well then so be it, 'cos Labour won't do it, and we will just end up like Greece.

She could well have afforded to have kids when she had her daughter, but any number of circumstances in the intervening 14 years could have reduced her household income.

Living wage is an interesting one. If companies are obliged to pay there staff a living wage then they may end up automating and/or moving to a cheaper country (we've already seen it with call centres and manufacturing going to India and China).

Maybe, maybe not. I can't help but feel that the prospect of outsourcing is used solely as a method of driving down pay (there are big problems with outsourcing for a business, that can outweigh the cost savings) – executive pay has risen massively in the West over the last 10-15 years, whilst the pay of everyone else has stayed fairly static. I don't see how that's fair or sensible.

None of the parties want to tackle that problem though.

I think when it does happen, it'll be a case of very slow price growth, at less than the rate of inflation, causing house prices to fall in real terms, but not in such a way as the average joe will notice or understand.

I used to mash through a set of V-brake pads in one ride if it was mucky out. I've had the same pads in my disc brakes for literally YEARS now, and had them bled once. They work fine, and I reckon they've paid for themselves in terms of money saved on pads and cables.

I'd be pushing the front wheel down into it, then rubbing my knackers against the back tyre.

Dell, using a deal from DMX dimension or whoever else is listing them.

Take earplugs. The French roads are made of different stuff to ours, and they're a lot noisier.

And it's a Punto – make sure the cooling system's OK, as they seem to like doing their headgaskets.

Are you doing it all in one sitting? And what Punto is it? A modern one will be pretty bearable, but the originals are nasty.

Small double walled boxes are essential for books. Almost all commercially used boxes are too big for carry books, and you end up with boxes that are half full, too heavy or breaking.

Just fork out for some from a box supplier.

There are loads of theories. One I've read is that there's not a great deal of water in a K-series cooling system, so you only have to lose a little to start having big problems. Which would also account for the fact that K's tend to be reliable in Lotus and Caterham applications but not in Rover / MG ones – your Lotus / Caterham owner is more likely to actually check there's water in the car.

Eat carefully, exercise a bit, don't drink, and it's pretty easy to lose a pound a week. I try to get 3 hours a week on a bike / an exercise bike (that's 3 hours of actual riding), and bit of other excercise thrown in (mainly weights, situps, rowing machine etc.). And when I exercise, I go for it, no half measures – time myself on the road bike, follow the same route and try to be faster each time.

My diet is fairly sensible – home made granola (porridge, honey, nuts) with fruit and yoghurt or toast for breakfasts, soup or a sandwich for lunch (always with some meat or fish in) and a dinner with some protein, fruit and veg, yoghurt or fromage frais for pud. In terms of snacks, no crisps or biscuits in the house, but stuff like 2 finger kit-kats, fun size bars etc. so you can have something sweet if you fancy it, without comsuming 300 kcals.

Alcohol is a fantastic thing to cut out, it's very easy to consume lots of calories in the form of drink without realising, and snacks almost always seem to follow.

Oh, and I drink loads of milk. There's no marg, and very little ready made stuff in my diet. Only real concession to diet food is light mayo. I'm never walking about the place starving hungry either.

I don't subscribe to any of this no carbs, no eating at night rubbish. I have plenty of carbs, plenty of protein but try to avoid fat – read the labels on stuff before I buy it. Fat is hugely dense in calories – one of those little packs of mayo you get in a pub is about 70kcal. Any sauce in a ready meal / chain pub meal is likely to be full of fat, vinegar , sugar and salt. I did a brief stint working in a food lab, and that is the recipe for anything that needs a long shelf life.

Nope. You don't need them on Steel frames. You can bend steel back and forth a lot before it breaks. You can't with aluminimium.

It's not groundbreaking stuff though. 5 years ago I remember being told that a) exercise & being outdoors is good for mental health and b) that hospital patients recover more quickly if they have a view of the outdoors or even a landscape painting / photo and c) that the landscapes people typically like most have hills, trees and water.

I don't see the point. When I put mine in my forks, I just knocked it in with a hammer. First time I got it hugely skewift, so I knocked it through and started again. I can see the appeal of having the proper tool, but you do it so rarely that the chances are that you'll have lost it by the time you need it again.

If you're not confident of your hammer wielding abilities, a screwdriver makes a good alternative to the proper tool…

Good point – the sponsorship covers it a little, but not as well as a specific question would have. Spesh certainly sponsor a lot of things, including films, as well as just having their name on people's backs.

Barker's shoes are good in my experience, and they have a similar send back to the factory / resole policy. That said, my formal shoes don't get much wear.

What's a local/non-local brand?

Ragley are local, as they're UK based. The fact that you flog bikes all over the world or import from Taiwan & the USA doesn't really matter. So are Orange.

Nicolai and Specialized, on the other hand, are non-local. They are based outside the UK. It is something of an odd distinction given the way international business works these days, but that's what the essay question asks for.

Brant – would there be any possibility of you giving me a bit of info? Stuff like how many frame only sales VS full builds? My email on my profile is valid.

The lack of material to reference is interesting in itself. It suggests that the manufactureres marketing strategies are more below the line than above,

Agreed. There is some gen on bikebiz about forums/social networking & marketing. It used to be the case that the retailers would stock stuff that won group tests, and the customer would buy what the retailer stocked, so most of the marketing from manufacturers was aimed at the trade & press. Now it's more a case of the customer deciding what they want independently of the retailer, and the general trend across all products is that people are less inclined to pay attention to reviews, and more to word of mouth.

The project is a comparison of the marketing strategies of local and non-local brands. The difficulty is in finding stuff on mountain bikes that can be referenced, firm's marketing etc. so I'm doing a bit of my own research. If I'd picked an FMCG category then there'd be loads of data kicking around.

I'm amazed the survey has been up this long without someone who does MR for a living ripping holes in it 😆

Thanks for the correction, and thanks to everyone who's taken some time to do the survey!

I'd always try and get out of the way of the folks who are descending, just on the off chance that they're merely hanging onto their bike for grim death rather than actually in control of it.

Too many times. Once in the science lab at school – if you put 6V through your braces (the orthodontic kind), it hurts.

Once swapping a fan in a PSU, which for some reason I didn't think about disconnecting. Put my thumb tip across two contacts on the back of the IEC by accident.

Once from a toaster that was plugged in, but switched off at the wall.

The toaster and the braces were the worst – it seems to me that where you get a shock is as important as what the voltage is.

Cheers. I know it seems a bit odd, but it's part of a wider assignment on marketing strategy, which is a lot easier for me if I pick fairly different brands. If I went for Spesh & Boardman with Ragley and Cove, then I'd have a lot less to talk about 😯

Oh, and you don't actually need to have owned any of the bikes mentioned in order to take part – it's all about how you view the bikes / brand.

Laptops do well to last 3 years, 2 if you're unlucky. I'd personally go for the one that's smallest with a decent screen.

Swings and roundabouts, I like the vast majority of the public, don't have the background in economics to follow the slightly finer details and how they affect the future, and in fact if anyone knew them for sure there would be only one route out.

Our economics lecturer once showed us a graph of UK GDP over the past 50 years or so. Despite having tried pretty much every economic policy going, including some fairly deranged ones (price and measures in the 70s), there's an overall trend of growth.

I'd go for switch then. Usual starter mode method of dying is that the bendix gets clogged up, which is a coarse spiral drive that rams the starter against the flywheel, which means lots of spinning and no starting.

I assume the battery is OK? Because that'll mean no starter either, even with enough electrics to run the lamps, clocks etc.

Is the start spinning and not engaging, or not spinning at all?

http://reynoldstechnology.biz/our_materials_butted_tubing.php

If she's at uni, a 12" Netbook. Easier to move and cheaper to replace when it is inevitably stolen.

Here is a brief introduction to politics in the UK:

10 Labour party is elected
20 Labour party screw up the economy
30 People get sick of a screwed up economy
40 Tory party get elected
50 Tory party cut the deficit
60 People are seduced by the idea of increased spending and being nice.
70 Goto 10

I enjoyed Chris Evans in the afternoon, but can't be doing with him at all in the mornings on R2. I did like him when he was on R1 breakfasts back when I was a kid though. And Richard Allinson should get back to making bread.

For all intents and purposes (ie, a normal gun – pistol or rifle, no atomic artillery) then the same time. As others have said, the earth is near enough flat over the kind of distances we're talking.

Start getting silly and yes, you could fire an item into orbit from a gun, given a big enough gun.

I've got an Inbred from 2005 or so. I like the way it rides, but I've not ridden loads of bikes to compare with. What I can tell you is that the spec is very good for the price – the tubing is butted for each size of frame, so the larger frames aren't carrying a load of extra weight around. There's also masses of tyre clearance, and my chainstay has a (factory placed) dent to avoid chainsuck issues. It's pretty light for a steel frame too – I've got a 531 road frame in the shed, and that weighs in at almost 6lbs with forks and headset, so 5.5lbs for a mountain frame seems pretty good to me.

If I were buying now, I'd be tempted by the 456 simply because your choice of forks is a bit limited if you're looking for 100mm of travel.

I have worked in a vey tough school (had lowest GCSE attainment grades in England at that time) in a very socially deprived area and now work in a Comp in a nicer area.

Back in the day All Saints was considered as one of the better schools in the area (and may still be). However, that means it manages to hang around the national average level.

Personality types is fairly well debunked IMO. Hofstede's work on culture is interesting on a general level but I've not actually found it practical in working in mixed culture groups – muddling along is easier than going into things with a load of preconceptions.

How to Win Friends & Influence People is still extremely relevant and incredibly claptrap free compared to modern business literature.

It was posted the other day. I reckon it's a marketing ploy by the BMX firm, just like Police Lambos / Lotuses are.

They're both horrible. If that year of Citroen uses a BSI system (multiplexed electronics) then I'd avoid it, as it's unreliable and very costly to repair, with long wait times on the parts.

I'm fairly sure they're both 5 seaters – why not an estate car? Less horrible to drive.

Keep it down will you? I don't want to have to be there at the crack of Sparrow's Fart.