Lucifah

If your boss can afford to have 3/4 of his workforce on holidays at the same time, you shouldn't worry about it at all!

Since we recently moved out of London, it made sense to have a car again, so I got myself a 2006 Audi A4 1.8T SE.

Have you tried here? http://www.jsaccessories.co.uk/stores/ilford http://www.jsaccessories.co.uk/stores/braintree Although not exactly Chelmsford, the Ilford store is right at the A12. Easy to find. Maybe give them a ring before hand to check which brands/sizes they have in store?

LOL, 20 quid. I know what I would be doing then: Fly to Hamburg, have a nice coffee with friends who live close to the airport, then buy as many cigarettes as I can carry and return to Blighty. For flights within EU you can't buy duty free, but taxed cigarettes there cost roughly 60% of what they cost here at the moment, and there's no limit to how much you bring as long as you can convince customs that it's for your own consumption. So this would be perfectly legal. And HMRC will get zero tax revenue from it. You can get return flights for as little as £29 if you shop around; probably cheaper when doing it regularly and booking well in advance. So you'll "break even" when you buy only two or three packs! (Time spent for the travel not included, of course.) Others will ask traveling relatives and friends to bring stuff. Again no tax income. Yet again others will resort to using a (then growing) black market. Again no tax income. Unlike the creeping price increases (which are intended to grab more tax revenue) it seems that such a price jump means: a) they haven't considered the consequences at all b) they are really worried about people's health rather than tax revenue I'm thinking option b) is not very likely.

Not that I really care about it too much, but Michael Ferage totally lost credibility in my eyes when riding the wave of public opinion that foreigners take away Brits' jobs on one hand, but then on the other hand his well-paid PA, who also happens to be his wife, is German. Challenged by the BBC, he said he did not find anybody else suitable for the job (PA). He struggled a lot when the BBC dude grilled him and wouldn't let go on that subject. Totally caught off guard, and showing once more that politicians (he's not the only one, granted) apply other rules to themselves than they want to sell to the public. As Xmister said: Nobody knows what they actually want. They are echoing the public opinions, which might get them some votes. But then? What are they actually going to do, or even representing? Who are those people?

Away from the sun - Three Doors Down

Had a rather nasty dental surgery last week, which kept me off the bike since. And we had some awesome weather here lately! Tomorrow I have to go abroad for a week or so to attend to family matters. When I come back, the bike's battery will probably be flat. Want to ride! FUUUCK IT!

+1 for internal sun visors. Flip it down with one finger when the sun comes out, release it with the press of a button when the clouds take over or you are going through tunnels or indeed, if it's getting gloomy.

Quite an interesting discussion actually. In Germany we (or now: they) have had smart motorways in many places for a hell of a long time. 15, maybe 20 years. When they introduced it, there was a huge political and public debate about it. But it worked. (German motorways are among the safest roads in the world, strangely, although most of them have huge stretches without any speed limit at all; and the national limit on motorways is: as fast as you see fit) Usually they close the hard shoulder for traffic if there isn't much traffic. And at night you rarely see it opened, even if there's dense traffic. But during rush hours or holidays or whenever the normal number of lanes isn't good enough, they'll open the hard shoulder as lane 1. Interestingly that always goes hand in hand with reducing the speed limit automatically. It sounds counter-intuitive but it works. Personally I have never heard of any accidents as a result of somebody not making it into the emergency bay. Certainly it hasn't happened very often. Now the stealth speed cams are a different matter. That's the norm in Germany. Camera warning signs are extremely rare, and usually require a local political debate before the council in charge will consider putting them up. By then the camera will have reached its break-even already. The reasoning has always been: You have to stick to speed limits. If you get caught on camera because you didn't know there was one, you were still the one driving too fast. (There are far fewer cameras in Germany, but you usually only see them when it's already too late. So unless you know the road inside out, you better stick to the limit + 10% tolerance or so + another few kph depending on how much you are able to spend ) Here, on the other hand, almost all cameras I have seen so far are orange and come with plenty of warning ahead. And there are tons of them. (On the A12 eastbound from here there are at least 5 on a 10 miles stretch. WTF!) Presumably people are used to that. I can see how they feel like being ripped off when cameras suddenly appear in places without warning. It does stink, because it's not really possible to sell that as a safety measure, if that has always been achieved with clearly visible cameras before. It does feel like an attempt to make some dosh.

Sorry to hear you had so much grief with the bike. When I saw this video the other day, I thought that guy surely is exaggerating by quite some margin, but maybe he wasn't... "> (Warning, it's probably only fun to watch if you do NOT own a Chinese bike...)

This might be interesting with regards to "blipping" throttle: "> Probably and old hat, but explained nicely.

Happy birthday! Don't be grumpy, Grumpy!

What exactly do you mean by that? Too fast? Running wide mid corner? Got yourself into hairy situations? Or just a case of "damn, I could have taken that bend much faster"? In which case, don't worry. That happens a lot, especially on unfamiliar roads, but it's not a race and margin for error isn't a bad thing at all.

Personally, I think coppers get a lot of unnecessary bashing in many forums (didn't notice it here though). After all they are humans and doing a job, which I wouldn't want to do, to be honest. Let's share some positive/funny/"got a away with it" encounters? I'll make a start: Today at a petrol station... I go in to pay for my 12 litres as a police rider appears at the pump next to my bike. He walks around my bike and has a very close look at it and at the tax disc holder while I'm paying. I thought "shit!" to myself, because I couldn't be bothered to replace the sample disc with the actual tax disc, thinking I may get away with it until October. So I walk out and greet him politely "Good afternoon, Sir! A lovely sunny day isn't it?" He returns the politeness and then gets straight to the point: "A very interesting bike you've got there. And an even more interesting tax disc!" "Busted," I think. Going all apologetic, I add: "I meant to put it in there. Lack of matching Allen Key, you know Sir. I've got the disc right here in my pocket with insurance etc, though." He doesn't say anything for a moment, then laughs: "Don't worry mate. We're doing away with tax discs anyway. I prefer harassing drivers. Have a good one." ...and he walks straight towards the car which pulled up at the pump behind me... Could have been that the copper had a good day, or the cager's exhaust noise caught his intention, or both. In any case... Phew!

If the photoshop work was part of your job, you can't legally deny them access to the pictures, as everything you create for/during work is technically their property. Whether those pictures are important enough to them to possibly go down the legal route, you know best. But if they are, you might cause yourself more trouble than it's really worth. Of course there's absolutely no rush in granting them access, but ultimately you should. Wouldn't want to taint your shiny new business venture with dirty mud wrestling, would you? Just throwing that out there, because a friend of mine burnt his fingers in a similar situation.