Having read Ti's last post, it's clear that not being an old gimmer makes all the difference. :lol:

We can argue over which particular brand of chips we benchmark against if you like. I went for McCain's homefries.

64:32, that way I can always just stick an 11T on the back if I feel like going for the land speed record.

Ok. Oven chips, to me, taste like cardboard. They are not an enjoyable thing to eat, and they are usually 5-6% fat. Lets assume a 100g portion size, you end up with 200 calories or so (google it if you don't agree).

New potatoes on the other hand taste nice, and contain as much fat as you want them to, because that's added in the form of butter. Say you add 5g of butter to a 100g portion of potatoes (5g is half of one of those packs of butter you get in cafeterias, and what I'd regard as quite a lot). You still only end up with 112 calories (because the new potatoes contain more water than the oven chips).

So I end up with something containing less fat and less calories, and fresh, rather than frozen. And I enjoy eating it.

As for weighing myself, I normally weigh myself on a Sunday, 2 days after my Friday gym session. If I'd lost 4lbs of water a month, I'm fairly sure I'd have died by now.

Well, where do we start?

RIP act, which overturned the burden of proof? And enabled near enough any government body to launch surveillance operations? Wholesale monitoring of internet and telecoms use?
Detention without charge?
One of the highest densities of CCTV cameras in the world?
Terrorism acts that are so broadly worded that almost anyone can be detained as a terrorist?
Repeated supression of legitimate political protest?

We are not yet living in North Korea, but thanks to the laws and systems the Labour goverment have set up, it wouldn't be very difficult to arrange.

One of the key things to me is that even if you feel that your day to day activities are not being curtailled by the government (I don't go on political protests for example), the government has enough information about a fair proportion of the population that they could blackmail them or destroy their lives if the need arose. Clicked on an "special interest" grumble site by accident once? Shagging someone who's not your wife? The government could quite easily find out, should they want to.

It's easy to bang on about some theoretical restrictions on your daily lives. What about the right to not be blown up? How would you sort that out Einstein?

Come off it. Islamic terrorism does not exist in the form or scale described in the media and by the government.

If it did, we'd be living in total chaos.

As a comparison, the IRA was riddled with informants, but still managed some form of attack, on average once a fortnight, for YEARS. And they often went for difficult targets, bumping off coppers, soldiers, barracks etc.

Tories:

Right to buy on council houses. Amazed that hasn't come up yet.
Smashed the unions to hell, which helped to make British industry competitive again.
The Big Bang. One of the key things that made London a finance hub, and whatever you think about bankers, they contribute a hell of a lot to UK GDP.
The veto.

Labour:
Freedom of Information act.
Free access to museums.
A lot of good intentioned policies which have been hung onto well beyond the point where they were obviously not functioning. Surestart for one (govt's own reports say it doesn't work!), and family tax credits for another. In my view, you shouldn't pay tax on the first £10k you earn, rather than have a method of claiming back tax that's so complicated that it reduces people to tears and gets the state involved in clawing back overpayments from the poorest people in society.

Then you have to consider how this weight loss is sustainable.

Exactly. It's easy for me to sustain a diet that consists of eating normal food cooked and selected carefully so as to avoid consuming daft numbers of calories, rather than unwittingly eating stuff with a lot of calories in it (ie, typical sausage roll is 600-700 calories, a lot of yogurts are knocking on 250kcal, the same as a tiramisu!), and 5-6 hours a week spent on exercise – a couple of hours during the week and a Sunday morning ride.

I can't see how it's sustainable to go on a diet where you eat 2 meals a day, no bread, no butter, no marge, no fried anything, no cake, no chocolate. That list precludes nearly all tasty food, almost all food that you can buy ready made (what on earth do you do if you need to get lunch out?), and sounds like a fad diet (and therefore less likely to be sustained change) to me.

That said, I'd be interested to hear what you consider to be normal food. You mentioned oven chips earlier in the thread, and to me, they're a good example of what you shouldn't eat – they don't taste too good, and they're not that low in calories. You'd be better off having new potatoes with a smidge of butter on them.

Oil. The oil free ones generally seize up given enough time (I think they use teflon lined bores, which die after a while). They don't oil into the air at any kind of noticeable rate – you can paint with an oil compressor using a normal filter reg (which you'll need to get rid of water anyway) but you still need an oiler for air tools.

That said, it really depends on the duty cycle you're using it for. If you end up deciding to paint something with your oil free compressor, you may well kill it, but an oiled on will stand it better. They're generally about the same price.

It's an anamorphic ad that's been squashed into a 4:3 box by the thicko who uploaded it. It should be widescreen.

I'm not Ton by the way.

I admit it. You are right and I am wrong. I'm losing water and muscle every week rather than fat. The wattbike & weights down the gym are lying. My scales are wrong too.

I'm actually sat here typing this looking like a sultana that's been rubbed down with lurpak.

Ti29er, have you even read my post back on page 1? I can lose 1lb a week eating a fairly normal diet (very little chocolate, occasional "proper" desserts and just cooking low fat food / avoiding drink), whereas you're on the Gillian McKeith flavour free special to lose 1lb a month.

My point is that you can lose weight without making ridiculous changes to your diet. Most people simply do not read labels and end up eating high calorie foods without realising, rather than living on a diet of chips followed by fried breakfasts.

Incredible piece of selective quoting there. Did you even read second paragraph?

Do you have evidence for this or is it just someone/your opinion?

Have a look at: Sutherland, A. 1997 “Fiscal crises and Aggregate Demand: Can high public debt reverse the effects of fiscal policy?” Journal of Public Economics, Vol 65 No 1

I suspect if you have a root around there will have been some more research since that was published.

Oh, and as for bosses, top exec pay has increased massively in recent times, whilst worker's pay has struggled to keep up with inflation. Their pay won't suffer.

Basic economics says that if you raise taxes, you reduce growth.

Get more deeply into things, and you'll start to read about the multiplier effect. In normal circumstances, government spending has a disproportionate impact, £1 spent by HMG may work out creating £1.5 worth of difference to aggregate demand (ie, driving growth, multiplier is 1.5 in this case) as it trickles down. So you can bump start things along a bit by spending some cash.

However, in a situation like ours (ie, massive deficit), the multiplier can become less than 1, purely due to the fact that the population know that the spending must be paid for sooner or later. In other words, when you're up shit creek, government spending stimulates consumer saving to such an extent that you would have been better keeping the money in your pocket.

So I think it would be wisest to avoid raising tax (and therefore cut spending, as we're working in a deficit).

If you don't believe in the value of the expectations of the man in the street, I direct you to the independence of the BoE, and the effect that's had on inflation & interest rates. It's driven for a large part by consumer expectations of how well controlled inflation will be.

It looks like a nice version of an old fashioned army rucksack. I'd personally look out for second hand / army surplus kit on ebay. Only a matter of time before something similarly retro and invincibly made comes up for a few quid…

The old German army rucksacks are very much in that style FWIW.

And I'll second what quite a few others have said – I have all sorts of old clobber. It mostly goes out of fashion before it ever breaks.

Take the bricks down the tip in your boot?

This is subject to having a suitably sized wall.

None of them. Nothing below £100 can have the hardware required to make a decent touchscreen phone.

I find exercise much easier than dieting. That said, I'm not a massive fan of any typical "cut out" foods like pasties, pies, mars bars etc. which means that cutting a lot of calories is very difficult. And I quite enjoy exercising.

I have seen on the CCL website that you are offering a post-doctoral position in molecular modelling funded by the aeropath research programme.\\

I have all the of qualifications you are looking for in a successful candidate, so I would like to apply for this position and have the opportunity to work with your team.\\

I have the qualifications you are looking for in a successful candidate, and [this is where you can engage in a bit of supposition] believe I would be a good fit with your organisation.

If you google, there are a few lists of words that are good for this sort of thing – you don't have qualifications, you achieved them, and so on.

"I feel strongly that" would be correct, if you were writing about feelings.

You either know that you have the qualifications (ie, they list a person spec) so you state that, or you suspect / believe you have the qualifications. In which case you try and make it sound as strong as possible, avoiding using words like "believe" and "feel".

Don't eat junk, fried food, never eat bread, no marg', butter, chocolate, no booze, no cake et al, simple and very effective. No eating after 5pm. No take aways (1 a month maybe).

I've never bought butter or marg' in my life. I don't like chocolate. Fried food can better be done in the oven (chips etc), cook from frech where possible, I have 2 meals a day + maybe a banana. There's nothing amiss here.

You're tapped.

The French are generally in quite decent physical shape and eat good food. There is no need to resort to this kind of oddness in order to lose a bit of weight. Particularly not at the rate of 1lb a month.

Either you have the wrong end of the stick as to what constitutes fried (ie, do you mean fried as in placed in a frying pan with some oil or butter, or deep fried?), or you eat a very odd diet and must be a complete pain in the arse at a restaurant.

All that to lose a pound a month? I can quite easily lose a pound a week by making sure I do some midweek exercise as well as my sunday bike ride, and by avoiding eating real rubbish.

No fried food rules out steak for a start, unless you're going to be some kind of gopping Gillian McKeith style pervert and ruin it under the grill.

Has anyone tried the Decathlon hydration packs?

Well, the other week I gave my mate the pair of Panaracer Cinders that came on my Inbred when it was new. Probably 4 or 5 years old.

Not done a great deal of riding in a fair portion of that time, but the only major wear had happened on the back tyre which had gone a bit sharktoothy where the knobs had slipped on climbs. The front had just worn fairly evenly, down to the indents in the centre knobblies, and the red sidewalls had turned pink. Still fairly serviceable though (turned the back one round on my mate's bike)! They've been ridden all over – rocky stuff in the peaks and sandy / muddy stuff in trail centres.

Someone, anyone?

I'm a touch taller than you but my inside leg is a little shorter. I have an 18" and fit on it quite happily, but I'd also fit on a 20" I reckon. The inbred feels really long compared to other 18" bikes I've ridden.

All the inbreds have short headtubes, so to be comfy I've found I need something like a 10 degree stem and 2 inch risers, or a high rise stem and mid rise bars. Or a big stack of spacers under the stem, but that looks odd and means you need to have forks with a long steerer. Or a 100mm fork to lift the front end a bit.

This has been covered very recently. If I recall correctly, the seatpost should reach below the junction between toptube and seat tube.

Another point I should have chucked in is to read the labels on everything. Most pre-packed & takeaway currys are pretty bad, but a lot of curry sauces in jars are pretty low in fat and tasty (some of Mr Grosman's ones for example), so you can have a healthy meal without denying yourself or starting cooking dinner 2 hours in advance.

If you do that you can eat a fairly normal diet, avoiding the horrors of diet foods and still lose weight.

It doesn't really matter. Just get one that works with the sources you have and is cheap. A few years ago there were some LCD tellys with horrible pictures (ie, universal bright orange fleshtones), but now they're much of a muchness. You very rarely sit there going "ooh, Doc Martin would be far more enjoyable if the colours were a bit more vibrant and the blacks were a bit deeper".

A few big things I've found to help.

1) Get the wife / whoever you live with in on it with you. It's a lot easier to not eat rubbish if your house isn't full of chocolate digestives.

2) Worst thing people ever do is announce "I'm giving up food / fags / beer" and the first topic of conversation anyone ever has with you is the thing you're giving up. Just eat less and do it on the quiet.

3) Take packed lunches to work. Big packed lunches. Have something like a two finger kitkat or a packet of skips so you don't feel totally short changed (both approx 100kcal – mmm. Kitkat or Special K bar, not a hard choice). Or some of last night's dinner to nuke.

4) Pack up drinking as much as you can. It's a really easy way to cut calorie intake without really noticing it in the form of hunger.

I'd also stop worrying about the sprog. They arrive, eat, shit and sleep, and really couldn't give a monkeys about what colour the "nursery" walls are, what toys they have and whether you're using disposable nappies or not. Main thing is not to drop them on their heads.

The driving test is difficult these days. I'd also say that how quickly you pass it is generally not an indicator of how competent a driver you end up being. I reckon I learned as much in my first few weeks of solo driving than you ever do in driving lessons.

The idea that your ability to process what's going on around you and apply it isn't something you can learn is complete bunk. It's been proven on many occasions that someone who has a few yeras of driving under their belt reacts considerably faster than someone who recently passed. Why on earth do you think insurance premiums get cheaper as you get older, despite the fact that all your faculties start deteriorating in your twenties?

Adenoids on: It's PANHARD rod.

Obvious answer seems to be to swap the car for one with an engine capacity of just over 2 litres, pushing you into the 14p band :lol:

Amazed that nobody's posted this.

It's fairly easy, just follow the colour coding:
Red to red,
Black to black,
Blue to bits.

Well, the OP doesn't state whether he's running a company car or his own.

Anyway, as soon as fuel goes over £1.07 / litre, if you're doing 45mpg you're spending over 11p a mile. I never found 45mpg to be a particularly realistic figure in my diesel unless I was very careful how I drove – 60mph on the motorway and masses of anticipation.

And stuff shopping around for fuel unless it's work's time…

11p a mile doesn't cover it. You obviously didn't do your sums when you took the job.

11p a mile just about covers the fuel if derv prices are a little lower and you manage 45mpg, but completely omits the increased depreciatation, maintenance and insurance costs, and the fact that your car choice becomes limited to stuff that's suited to munching miles, eliminating little cheap to run cars.

Think more like 20p a mile to run a 3+ year old second hand Mondeo car, and a lot more to run something that's fairly new.

I have a 2.4 RQ on an on-one reetard and a 2.35 Fat Albert on a 521. I would say that they're prety much the same size – the Fat Albert looks a little looks bigger, but it's on a wider rim. That said, I like the Rubber Queen more than the Fat Albert (FA seems more like a rear tyre tread pattern to me, and didn't give a great deal of confidence in the front end when I rode it), but the Fat Albert is the older type, not the Carlos Fandango model.

It's one thing to mistakenly shoot people who appear to be armed when viewed via a grainy gunsight camera system. It's a mistake, but it's something I can understand.

What I really don't like is "They're picking up the bodies in a bongo van, permission to engage". To me, that's as bad as shooting an ambulance, which would be a massive incident in news / diplomatic terms. The vehicle may not be an ambulance with a red cross / crescent painted on the side, but this is Iraq we're talking about, not the western world where we have the luxury of infrastructure and a half decent ambulance service.

Pink.

It isn't tubeless, but the tyres been on and off enough times for me to know that it's not a cock up with the tube. I've tried soapy water on the bead and blowing them up hard, blowing them up soft then squidging them about etc.

The tyre is seating perfectly as far as I can tell – the rim grip strip is in the same position all the way around (within +-1mm by eye), but it's not straight. I'm sure the bead on this one has stretched as well, as both tyres were very hard work to get on, but this one is now as loose as a Panaracer and can be pushed on and off the rim very easily by hand.

I've turned the tyre round, and it's still wobbly, but it's not catching the front mech. Hopefully I'll get a chance to wear the tread a bit before I bin it!

As for my contract being with the shop and not with Schwalbe, that's true. They should still answer emails, even if it's to say "We made a naff batch a while ago" or "Not our job, speak to the retailer".