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by Cugel
18 Feb 2024, 10:39am
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: UK Politics
Replies: 933
Views: 72487

Re: UK Politics

roubaixtuesday wrote: 16 Feb 2024, 5:15pm
Cugel wrote: 16 Feb 2024, 1:23pm Post removed by moderator for breach of Forum Guidelines.
Pre-emptive self redaction Mr Cudgel?
Possibly - or just heavy-handed and unthinking censorship that's fallen for the notion that criticising and being highly suspicious of the Israeli government is somehow being anti-semitic.

Still, you get to gloat that you're interlocutors can be silenced when you're challenged about your often rather parochial views, especially those bolstered by an accusation that your interlocutors are just bad conspiracy-pushing dafties. It's an easy get-out in any argument to classify your critics as merely bad people rather than to deal with the points made.

And my point wasn't that what you deem a mere daft conspiracy theory is right or true but merely that the evidence unearthed by various journalists is a legitimate basis for the speculation about possible Israeli government machinations.
by Cugel
16 Feb 2024, 1:23pm
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: UK Politics
Replies: 933
Views: 72487

Re: UK Politics

Post removed by moderator for breach of Forum Guidelines.
by Cugel
15 Feb 2024, 8:05am
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: Air Pollution - Will They Act Now?
Replies: 141
Views: 8194

Re: Air Pollution - Will They Act Now?

simonhill wrote: 15 Feb 2024, 4:38am My friend has had a multi fuel stoves for years. He swears by them. In current house it warms the whole house and he often has the gas central heating off. He's so committed that I wouldn't dare mention the downsides.

However he as a persistent low level cough. Had it checked out nothing wrong. A recent Which report said that even sealed stoves give out fumes, etc every time they are opened - and the opener is right next to the stove. I wonder if his cough is connected.

It seems the householders can be affected as much as people walking the streets.
An acquaintance of mine has a large Victorian terraced house in which he and his wife have gradually migrated to the cellar, as it costs a fortune to heat this house, which is anyway inclined to throw immense amounts of internal heat to the outside. The cellar is "tanked" and large, now a combined living, dining and cooking room.

He heats it with a wood burning stove, into which he feeds not just any old wood he can find but various chunks of particle board, MDF and other builder-waste, as he's a former building trades lad so has plenty of sources for such stuff.

He and his wife both have permanent and rather nasty coughs. They've chosen, though, to blame those on the internet router or probably the local telephone signals, as its much more convenient to read and believe mad conspiracy theories about 4G or 5G cancer-causing effects than give up the free-fuel stove. Neither have given up surfing mad interwebbery sites, anti-social media nutcase postings or the use of their personal prattle gizmos, mind.

Yes, seriously - this is what they truly believe and they'll qet very arsey if challenged about it. Its astonishing what humans will convince themselves of to avoid admitting to a more obvious truth that doesn't suit their immediate wants & needs.
by Cugel
14 Feb 2024, 8:21am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Cheap oil.
Replies: 82
Views: 4662

Re: Cheap oil.

cyclop wrote: 14 Feb 2024, 7:40am Now let me get this right.......has someone posted that people spend £ 400-00 on replacing worn cassette and chain ?...... :shock: If so,why ?A quick scan about finds ultegra chain + cassette for £150-00,surely good enough for 99% of us ?You could,no doubt,shave a few grams off for twice the price.
A major theme in this thread is that using cheap oil and the consequent fast-wearing of components that are cheap (and perhaps also nasty, especially when caked in gritty black oil) is overall cheaper than buying a bottle of much better chain lubricant. Two things seem awry here:

1) The drive train is always going to be filthy and inefficient.

2) The cheap & cheerful approach will generate a large wastage in chains and the toothed parts they run over.

It's often surprising how folk will justify their queer old preferences, eh? :-) Why go through large numbers of cheap chains and cassettes and chain rings (which will probably end up in a landfill) whilst having to put up with a filthy drivetrain and its leg tattoos as well as one that takes a significant portion of your pedalling energy just to warm it up and grind it down? Especially when a £25 bottle of summick good will last you tens or even hundreds of thousands of miles whilst similarly increasing the lifespan of your always very clean drivetrain components.
by Cugel
11 Feb 2024, 2:29pm
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: The staff of life - best served packaged?
Replies: 50
Views: 3319

Re: The staff of life - best served packaged?

briansnail wrote: 11 Feb 2024, 2:12pm
"British bread production has been industrialised to combine large, remote centres of production, plastic-wrapped loaves with a long shelf life, and an automated industrial baking process. The end result has a soft, pappy texture and little flavour"
We cyclists love our cream cakes.We love our beer and pubs and pit stops.You have to buy the beer anyway.To qualify for the much needed toilet stop.What other essential do we have in our cycling backpacks.? to fuel our competitive rides.

No drugs is the WRONG answer.Delicious BREAD sarnies cheese ,salami healthy veg.

Does anyone know? When scanning the supermarket aisles.Choice is a very very reasonable packaged whole meal loaf.(Believe me if your a cyclist wholemeal is the way to go).
Nip down to the bakery section.Carefully ignoring the cream cakes.There you have preservative free and hopefully quality grain bread.

Some people responded to a post on water.Big mistake.They are now appointed permanent consultants,So long as they do not expect to get paid.
So what is the verdict on the other world wide staple guys/ladies go for?. Freshly baked or the cheaper packaged bread.
****************************
I ride Brompton,Hetchins 531
Wots this!? Soopermurkets are selling us junkfud and UPF rather than nutritious viands of high quality!!? Who'd a thought it.

Happily there are still a few makers and sellers of real food. They can be hard to find in The Big City, where the hutched wage slaves are channelled to the grub-stores selling them the lowest quality stuff for the most possible profit. This is necessary to keep the slaves slaving and to keep the shareholders happy.

In the hinterlands, small enterprises still exist by making and selling real things, even food! But soon a venture capitalist will buy them up then "improve" them. Polystyrene bread for everyone and only £5 a loaf albeit the loaf will shrink every year as the price goes up by inflation + 10% for the new Fat Car with real human skin leather seats suitable for Fat Cats to recline upon as they run over slaves on their Walmart "bicycles".
by Cugel
11 Feb 2024, 2:19pm
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Water cyclists friend.Filter jugs?
Replies: 34
Views: 1973

Re: Water cyclists friend.Filter jugs?

531colin wrote: 11 Feb 2024, 1:42pm
Cugel wrote: 10 Feb 2024, 8:16am
simonhill wrote: 10 Feb 2024, 1:41am My first question would be - what is wrong with your tap water?
In this day & age, in broken Bwitain? Who knows - but it certainly seems a possibility that water quality from various taps has degraded over the past decade, along with everything else to do with the privatised criminals supposedly managing water supplies.

****************

When we moved house we were very lucky, I feel, to have a private water supply arrangement included in the new house. It comes from a deep underground river via bore hole and pump, with several filters along with an intense UV light taking out the various minerals, salts and any underground river bugs. Despite this quite intense filtration, it does leave enough minerals in the water so that it tastes very nice indeed.

This arrangement isn't as cheap as mains tap water would be, as the system is serviced once a year to replace the more complex filtration elements, along with our own monthly change of the main sediment filter. In addition, we have a full analysis done every couple of years to make sure that nothing untoward is escaping the filtration.

But I can foresee a time when such an arrangement will become necessary for everyone, at various scales, if drinking water is to remain safe for most. It's become increasingly obvious that not only are water companies degrading to the point that they're producing dangers as bad as killing whole rivers and making beaches unsafe to swim at but that the world in general is polluting water with all sorts of evil chemicals and microplastics.

I suppose a time will soon come when such mass pollution will overwhelm even the sort of water filtration system that we currently have. Forever chemicals and who knows what other micro-stuff can be extremely pervasive as well as extremely toxic.

But perhaps we'll all die of Putin or Gulf Stream failure before then. :-)
I imagine you don't have a shred of actual evidence to support that?

Its at least half a century since I worked for the Medical Research Council, but we had somebody who was certain he could improve the quality of the mains water coming to the unit, and installed filtration and UV irradiation much as you describe at the point of entry of the mains. There were more bacteria in the water after he had "improved" it than before. (We had bacteriology on site.) To remove minerals and/or salts (I would be fascinated to see your definitions of those 2 categories) requires stuff like activated charcoal and ion exchange resin; this is what is in water filter jug "filters" which have a "life" of a month. I would be interested to see real information on the filters in your system, which operate for a year. Does your system supply one house or several?
Ooooh - that's a big red post, innit! :-)

Well, you can call here at any time to test the water, the filters and so forth yoursen. I mean, you aren't going to trust the chaps who install those filters or the lab that does the water test every couple of years, are you? After all, this would interfere with your hard&fasts. And I would only lie to you anyway, like in that last post of mine, eh?

No, no - better to trust the water supply companies, who make those vast profits 'cos they're so good at water management. All that stuff about dying rivers and floaters at the beach is just them wokeries moaning or summick.
by Cugel
11 Feb 2024, 2:12pm
Forum: Electrically assisted pedal cycles
Topic: Should electric bikes go faster
Replies: 96
Views: 5626

Re: Should electric bikes go faster

Nearholmer wrote: 11 Feb 2024, 10:04am
The answer here seems to be, "But shared paths".

The solution to that issue is to ban bikes from pedestrian paths, including the non-motored kind of cyclists
We’ve been round this track before, possibly several times, and I’ve previously invited you over to come and look at how shared use paths work in practice, in MK specifically, but I can show you lots of others.

They are not, as you seem to assume, all those rubbishy “pavements with blue signs”, and the idea of banning all bikes from them simply because a few e-bikers want go-faster-without-effort stripes is frankly bonkers, one of the most cycling-defeating ideas I’ve heard in a very long time.

This is the sort of thing you’re proposing to ban bikes from:

IMG_3146.jpeg


If someone can come up with a practical, workable in the real world of fallible human beings, way of protecting sharing on shared paths, then there might be a discussion worth having. But so far, in none en of these repeated discussions has anyone risen to that challenge.
I am proposing a solution to shared path issues: don't have shared paths.

Pedestrian and cyclist modes don't mix well. (Those contentious speed differentials, not to mention the nature of children, dogs and grans afoot). So unmix them. If you want to have cycle paths as well as ped paths, roads and bridleways, so be it - although I fail to see any justification for building dedicated cycle paths everywhere, at huge expense, when the roads are highly suitable for cycling and would be even more so if even the existing laws were properly applied to dangerous motorists.

Cyclists and cars can easily mix, if drivers drive properly rather than as a lot of them do, like 5 year olds in dodgem cars. So take the 5 year olds out of their dodgems and cycling on the roads will once more be safe, with no inconvenience to anyone.
by Cugel
11 Feb 2024, 9:10am
Forum: Electrically assisted pedal cycles
Topic: Should electric bikes go faster
Replies: 96
Views: 5626

Re: Should electric bikes go faster

Since cyclists without motors can ride at any speed they can themselves produce the power for, which speeds are often at 20mph and above, why would it be a problem for e-bikes (real ones, limited to 250 watts motor power) to have their motor-on limit at 20 mph? It would surely make cycling on the roads safer, as the slower you go on a road with motorised traffic, the more vulnerable you are because of the increased speed differential between car and bike and because many drivers become frustrated then dangerous when slowed to "crawling speed".

The answer here seems to be, "But shared paths".

The solution to that issue is to ban bikes from pedestrian paths, including the non-motored kind of cyclists. Personally I saw far, far more incidents between peds and bikes without motors on such paths. The problem is the the inconsiderate nature of many cyclists. It won't make any difference if its a 20 mph e-biker or a 25 mph club rider come wannabee racer-fool on their unpowered blinger.

To improve the situation even more, police the roads for loony motorists, who cause a vast amount of damage and death compared to e-bikes or any bikes. This will encourage cyclists on to the roads (which also tend to go where cyclists want to go, unlike shared paths).

To make it ideal, severely limit (automatically) the power and speed of motorised vehicles, especially private cars and delivery vans. A speed limit of 20 mph seems appropriate for such large and heavy vehicles so often badly driven by the inept. :-)
by Cugel
10 Feb 2024, 8:16am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Water cyclists friend.Filter jugs?
Replies: 34
Views: 1973

Re: Water cyclists friend.Filter jugs?

simonhill wrote: 10 Feb 2024, 1:41am My first question would be - what is wrong with your tap water?
In this day & age, in broken Bwitain? Who knows - but it certainly seems a possibility that water quality from various taps has degraded over the past decade, along with everything else to do with the privatised criminals supposedly managing water supplies.

****************

When we moved house we were very lucky, I feel, to have a private water supply arrangement included in the new house. It comes from a deep underground river via bore hole and pump, with several filters along with an intense UV light taking out the various minerals, salts and any underground river bugs. Despite this quite intense filtration, it does leave enough minerals in the water so that it tastes very nice indeed.

This arrangement isn't as cheap as mains tap water would be, as the system is serviced once a year to replace the more complex filtration elements, along with our own monthly change of the main sediment filter. In addition, we have a full analysis done every couple of years to make sure that nothing untoward is escaping the filtration.

But I can foresee a time when such an arrangement will become necessary for everyone, at various scales, if drinking water is to remain safe for most. It's become increasingly obvious that not only are water companies degrading to the point that they're producing dangers as bad as killing whole rivers and making beaches unsafe to swim at but that the world in general is polluting water with all sorts of evil chemicals and microplastics.

I suppose a time will soon come when such mass pollution will overwhelm even the sort of water filtration system that we currently have. Forever chemicals and who knows what other micro-stuff can be extremely pervasive as well as extremely toxic.

But perhaps we'll all die of Putin or Gulf Stream failure before then. :-)
by Cugel
9 Feb 2024, 12:11pm
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: Fixing a non-working front derailleur
Replies: 73
Views: 3373

Re: Fixing a non-working front derailleur

ChrisButch wrote: 7 Feb 2024, 5:49pm
Cugel wrote: 6 Feb 2024, 3:00pm
ChrisButch wrote: 5 Feb 2024, 8:07pm
I think that rather misses the point. It's perfectly reasonable for a potential bike owner not to want to acquire those minimal skills. Whether or not she could relatively easily acquire them is beside the point. It's perfectly reasonable to expect there to be on the market a bike that satisfies the four conditions I mentioned in my earlier post upthread - a bike which would not require even those minimal skills of its owner. Such bikes were once readily available and relatively cheap. That they no longer exist is one of the disincentives to cycling, and one of the main reasons those persuaded to give cycling a try soon give up, at the inevitable first mechanical problem.
Well, it's no doubt possible to make a black box of a bike rather like the black box of an iThing (that white shade they make them is a lie) which works very nicely until it doesn't and then joins its pals in the landfill.

On the other hand, we could all change out ways for the better*, even if it does get a bit more demanding.

* Although wary of the notion of "better" with its assumption that everything can and should be put into The Great Hierarchy of Relative Worth, I'll here define "better" in this context as "a method of making, owning and using things that keeps them repairable forever". Not a popular notion these days, I know, as the black boxes are so "convenient" (until their landfill exudations give you cancer via the tap water, air or even the cucumbers they grew on top of the full fills).
When the OP bought her bike, these questions might never have arisen had this, and the many like it, still been available:
Image
Where did all them funny bloke-hats go, eh? I wonder if them blokes fixed their own hat after it flopped or became misshapen after a heavy shower or a pressing from their own personage after they left it on their cafe seat to go for a jimmy riddle then returned to drop heavily into their seat as the pud had come, commandeering their eyes in an exclusive fashion when they saw the cherries under the custard?

PS I recall them seats, which were made with special raised seams of hard, to rub your nether raw whilst putting holes in yer serge trews.
by Cugel
9 Feb 2024, 12:05pm
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: Wisdom more important than intelligence?
Replies: 30
Views: 1564

Re: Wisdom more important than intelligence?

cycle tramp wrote: 8 Feb 2024, 10:11pm ...intelligence will spend time developing a pen which can write upside down, underwater and in zero gravity

Wisdom will use a pencil
The truly wise will realise that there's little point in writing anything whilst underwater. Anyway, I've always found my pencil case digs in a bit when I swim, surf or otherwise plunge beneath the waves. I imagine its the same in outer space, where breathing will be the first problem, for which a note (in pencil or ink) will not summon an oxygen tank in time.

PS What is "upside down" when in space?
by Cugel
9 Feb 2024, 12:00pm
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: Vapes:Cyclists to ban or not to ban?
Replies: 23
Views: 1148

Re: Vapes:Cyclists to ban or not to ban?

djnotts wrote: 9 Feb 2024, 7:49am "Vapes and children" is simply an easy, headline grabbing, way of projecting a "we care" image. All the stats about children and teens welfare, from dentistry to detention in care facilities, show a complete abandonment of our youngsters.
Standard diversionary tactic, so popular with the Tories in particular.
Total irrelevance in the wider picture.
Just because the corrupt and venal Toryspiv encourage a hundred other vices, from grog to gambling to persecuting the off-white folk for fun to sugaring teeth but withholding a dentist doesn't mean that the evils of vaping should be ignored. The vapes are a definite constituent of the total Grate Bwitish Rot syndrome that's turning the whole place into a gangrenous soon-to-be-corpse.
by Cugel
9 Feb 2024, 11:55am
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: Vapes:Cyclists to ban or not to ban?
Replies: 23
Views: 1148

Re: Vapes:Cyclists to ban or not to ban?

mattheus wrote: 9 Feb 2024, 9:49am
cycle tramp wrote: 8 Feb 2024, 6:20am
Nearholmer wrote: 7 Feb 2024, 10:40pm There’s no case on earth for disposable vapes. They’re a blasted menace in littering terms
In much the same way as the plastic four, and six beer can ties, broken glass beer bottles and beer cans are.

There is no criticism of vaping which can't be equally applied to the alcohol industry.
It's extremely easy to make/distribute/serve alcohol whilst avoiding these problems.

(My personal preference is drinking direct from whisky casks - no glass required, if no-one is looking.)
Perhaps one can buy a drip feed for feeding the stuff directly into the bludsteem? Wards for this could be set up (a bit like them Limehouse opium parlours) with a factory at the back for processing the flow of pickled dedders emerging, so they could be minced up and fed to the pigs, making an exotic flavour of bacon for purchase by the 0.1% (brewery and distillery owners, for example).
by Cugel
9 Feb 2024, 11:52am
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: Vapes:Cyclists to ban or not to ban?
Replies: 23
Views: 1148

Re: Vapes:Cyclists to ban or not to ban?

cycle tramp wrote: 7 Feb 2024, 10:08pm
pjclinch wrote: 6 Feb 2024, 3:48pm I don't see it as a particularly cycling-centric question.
an attempt by a forum member to make our current prime minister seem less of a trouser spanner than he actually is...

..well it hasn't worked... he is still an utter trouser spanner.
The etymology of "trouser spanner" would be a fine orthogonal wander from the main theme of this post. I suppose one can look it up on the interwebbery, like all else, but I'm more interested in the semantics contained in the head of a user of this (and other such) phrase.

Another tangent from the utterly boring (because of the obvious answer) question on vape banning might be the OP's opinion about "the nanny state". If ever there was a time for a large and ferocious nanny - perhaps a relative of Arnie from Austria with similar build - to step in to the nursery to dish out various smackings, spankings, restrictions, lectures and groundings of the various stupid little bully children doing a Lord of the Flies ..... well, its reet quick-now and hurry up nanny!

I could be a nanny, me. I'd enjoy putting on a starched white uniform with a big daft hat then chastising the likes of Pishi, Bokum and all the other little Toryspiv flies. A big swatter might be needed. SWAT SWAT SWAT and then a long detention whilst they write 1000 line: "I must not lie, cheat and murder-rob the common folk but instead be a good boy or girl until I grow up" in their own blud with a blunt goose feather. (Start again if you make a blot).
by Cugel
6 Feb 2024, 3:14pm
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: A sport of collaboration and selflessness ?
Replies: 5
Views: 354

Re: A sport of collaboration and selflessness ?

pwa wrote: 6 Feb 2024, 10:52am My kind of recreational cycling has never really been about sport. The nearest I got to racing was Audax, which just asks you to take on rides that you find a challenge. If you choose to try to get ahead of the person in front, that's your choice, but nobody is going to call you the winner at the end.

And that sort of cycling has its equivalents in the world of hiking, where people can take on challenges without being competitive. And if someone has problems along the way, others will pause to assist. The feeling that we are all in this activity together, and will watch out for each other, is part of what draws us to it in the first place.

I hate the "dog-eat-dog" approach to sport, or life in general, and I reject it. Professional sport, even professional cycling, makes me switch the TV off. It is just people taking games too seriously and ignoring what really matters. It is sport missing the point of sport. If they aren't playing for fun, they aren't playing, and I'm just not interested.
Professional "sport" isn't really a sport at all but rather a circus. The skills are high. The audience are passive but hope for the excitement of a fall or a death. They can have their favourites, who they like to frst praise then bring down for real or imagined failures & faults.

I've taken part in various of the sporting varieties of cycling and greatly enjoyed them all. But, as perhaps that G article intimates, the sports of cycling at the lower amateur levels are definitely about taking part, with winning only of appeal to a tiny minority, who are useful to the rest as a sort of live rabbit in a dog race. We chased those habitual winners but rarely caught them. We were very pleased just to have completed the chase, especially if we nearly caught the rabbit near the end.

Many sports used to be local, almost street-level activities, sometimes made slightly more formal via local or works clubs and the like. The vast majority of participants took part for the process rather than the outcome, even if the outcome mattered to one or two participants and their friends & relatives. Those days have gone, really. Most sport now at the amateur level (what's left of it) seeks to emulate the antics of the professional circus performers. Even pseudo cycling sports such as those so-called sportives tend to contain large numbers of inept wannabees pretending to be Cav or Wig or whoever is the latest sleb circus performer.

Sad, really. I often recall, with great pleasure, the races of my younger days, on bikes that didn't cost two months wages, with folk who adhered to the notion that its how you play the game rather than whether you're The Winnah! After all, there can only be one winner so might as well enjoy being a not-the-winner too.