Cycling UK Forum

I hold onto the hope that the pollsters are all lying and Kamala Harris is in fact well in the lead.

If the polls are close, the PACs will pay for more polls and more TV advertising time, if Kamala is well ahead the gravy train stops

What most depresses me is that the human race with all it's intelligence and morality has made no progress. The same attrocities were happening 7000 years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... -neolithic

irc wrote: ↑24 Oct 2024, 9:22pm Having a laugh?

Not remotely. Blimey guys are you really that willing to see people shot in the head.

From a police insider I know that people of low self esteem often take jobs with the police to put themselves in a position where people have to do what they say in order to boost their flagging morale. For those with really low self esteem (who tend to be racist, mysoginist and homophobic because attacking vulnerable groups is an easy way feel better about yourself) having a gun or a big car helps even more.

So the most racist and insecure officers tend to end up as traffic cops or, even worse, as firearms officers. This is the recipie that gets people, gulity or innocent, shot in the head.

Without some control, this will get worse and worse, just look at what life is like across the pond.

Smash a car window and use a Taser, continue blocking him in until he gives up, shoot an arm or leg or non-lethal chest area, all are options. A single bullet to the head of a man not even carrying a gun is an assassination and a murder.

I said the same about the London bridge assassination.

Yup I'd suspect water somewhere. The RCD trip that took me longest to trace was from a cordless kettle with a tiny leak onto the base.

The RCD tripped in our new house when we first switched on a rarely used top-oven (it was very clean). The damp in an unused heating element can be enough to trip an RCD. We ran the oven at low temperature for an hour and the problem disappeared.

pwa wrote: ↑19 Oct 2024, 9:00am

Stradageek wrote: ↑19 Oct 2024, 8:41am With entrenched conflicts, peace can only be achieved when the stronger power backs down. I'd site, Northern Ireland and South Africa especially.

Israel, with US backing, is the stronger power. So unless Israel sues for peace (or is forced to by a world wide BDS programme) there will be no peace.

I don't believe that the Hamas/Iranian rhetoric about Israel's right to exist excludes a one state solution. I retain the belief that Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah are not the genocidal anti-semites they are made out to be, just opposed to the US funded aparthied, settler/colonialist regime currently governing Israel.

I think you underestimate the nastiness of Hamas. And if you want Israel to cease to exist, you ask for too much. It isn't going to happen.

I agree that a one state solution would need to retain an Israeli identity and I've no idea how you do that. However I think Israel has outdone Hamas on the nastiness stakes, snipers who have shot over 50 children in the head, using Palestinian captives stripped to their underwear as human shields in the front of Hummers and as canaries to check for booby traps in buildings and using dogs to rape male prisoners - all documented and mostly video'd, difficult to get much lower?

With entrenched conflicts, peace can only be achieved when the stronger power backs down. I'd site, Northern Ireland and South Africa especially.

Israel, with US backing, is the stronger power. So unless Israel sues for peace (or is forced to by a world wide BDS programme) there will be no peace.

I don't believe that the Hamas/Iranian rhetoric about Israel's right to exist excludes a one state solution. I retain the belief that Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah are not the genocidal anti-semites they are made out to be, just opposed to the US funded aparthied, settler/colonialist regime currently governing Israel.

The Palestinian activists I have engaged with recently all see the two state solution as dead. They favour a one state solution.

As I've said before the Arab and Jewish communities have lived together, not only in Palestine but across the reach of the Ottoman empire for centuries past. It must happen again. Truth and Reconcilliation in South Africa and peace in Northern Island give grounds for some hope.

What ires me most is that aid trucks start rolling into Gaza as soon as there is a threat of the US withdrawing support. It is therefore clear that Biden could stop the war TODAY by simply imposing an arms embargo.

Biden knows, I think, that such a move would ensure that the Democrats lose the presidency and Trump, in power, would back Israel to the hilt.

I do have a dream, however, that a morally challenged Kamala Harris wins the election and presuades Biden to back the BDS programme and stop the war. But would president Harris be prepared to sacrifice a second term as president in favour of world peace? And, more scarily, would that peace only last until the next election

I'm reading a compilation of interviews with Noam Chomsky, from 1989/90. I stumbled across this terrifying extract from an actual conversation between Noam Chomsky and newspaper editor:

'Well I once asked another editor I know at the Boston Globe why their coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict is so awful - and it is. He just laughed and said "How many Arab advertisers do you think we have?" That was the end of the conversation.

At this rate, no hope

My wife has a Woosh motor on the front of her Kettwiesel. She tends to climb in the lowest power so that I can keep up (I'm acoustic). We've tackled long 17% climbs with no problem on dry roads. On wet roads and loose surfaces there can be some wheel spin but the Kett front wheel is very lightly loaded so it was expected. Hill starts on loose surfaces can cause more wheel spin because the motor is driving flat out to try and hit the target speed for the relevant power setting.

The Kett wheels are 20", on a 700C DF bike I can't imagine wheel spin would be much of an issue

The USA has pioneered the 'preventative war' (may Dubya go down in infamy) and Israel is following Obama's intiative in murdering anyone from any country who they think may cause trouble.

But as the precedent has been set could we not have a UN assasination squad to take out any leader threatening to start a war?

Just an idea

mattheus wrote: ↑11 Oct 2024, 9:47am

Jon in Sweden wrote: ↑10 Oct 2024, 6:19pm
It's hard not to be cynical, but I just don't believe that there is any desire in the Israeli majority for a lasting peace.

THAT'S your concluding statement?!?

You think the man/woman on the Tel Aviv Omnibus wants to be at war?!?

Maybe not wanting to be at war but quite happy to preside over genocide. If you think I'm being unfair then watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqK3_n6pdDY

Even John Oliver was prepared to disappoint his audience by spending half an hour detailing the realities of the Israeli attitude to the ongoing genocide making his weekly programme unusually thin on jokes

Apologies for assuming you were a less experienced rider, I should have read more of the thread.

I've taken my BikeE on some seriously rough farm tracks but the level of concentration required rather detracts from the enjoyment of the countryside.

I'm thinking of wider tyres on my Speedmachine to cope with the 'mud-in-the-middle' Devon country lanes. I've been too used to the wide, clear lanes of Northamptonshire

Do enjoy but beware that off-road recumbent riding, whilst do-able is a tad more scary on a recumbent. You cannot use your body to balance and correct, it's all in the steering so you have keep moving. On the upside, if it all goes pear shaped it's not far to fall

The racist conservative party membership chose Truss over Sunak, I'd bet it'll go the same way again.