Hywel

Plenty of love for Parkway Drive, played with 'em twice in my old band. Good dudes... Unearth rip-offs but tidy boys

Yorkshire Tea, and this; ">

Brother Ali last month in Bristol. Not sure when the next one will be... probably Wu Tang Clan in Newport in a couple of weeks unless something else takes my fancy in the meantime! Muse are excellent live, not 100% "my thing" really but I was mighty pleased when I saw 'em in Cardiff.

Guy'll do it. http://www.tvthrong.co.uk/files/u1670/Guy%20Martin.jpg

Im not a civil lawyer. And i still disagree. If something is underpriced, and the sale is completed, then yes you are entitled to the goods at this price, howveer the price wasnt given at all, its completely been missed out, therefore no money has been given for it, so the item would not deem to have been sold. And hywel wasnt talking about you buddie, was on about this situation. I fully agree! Ah no problem.

Surely leasing one is only worth while if you're not going over the allowed mileage etc? Also i may be wrong but if leasing is the same as PCP then a loan works out cheaper - at least in the example i saw recently it did. PCP is a deal where a chunk of the OTR price is offset into the future, giving you a guaranteed value for your vehicle after 3 years, so you only borrow the other potion, giving you far lower monthly payments over the three year term than normal HP. After three year you can a) pay off the fixed value to own the bike outright, b) re-finance the residual value to continue paying monthly instalments on the same bike, c) use the bike as a deposit/part-ex for a new machine or d) hand the bike back and walk away - especially useful if for some reason the market for your particular vehicle has taken a dive and you're sitting on negative equity. This deal has a suggested mileage. Leasing is just a contracted term where you essentially pay for the depreciation of a vehicle every month while someone else always owns it. It has certain benefits for businesses with regards to tax apparently so it's almost exclusively used for company cars etc rather than private individuals. This has a very strict mileage limit set into the contract. Hire Purchase is just your bog-standard "finance" where 100% of the OTR price is split into monthly payments over a term of up to 60 months, and you own the bike at the end of it. No mileage limit. Interest rates always vary from bike to bike, financial product to financial product but as far as I know bank loans aren't really the way to go... they're less 'consumer friendly' and you get into worse trouble if it all goes tit shaped.

You sure can, but it IS illegal. Imagine if you bought a car with outstanding finance attached to it... the bloke says "yeah mate I'll clear that in the morning for you". Two months later a repossession agency comes 'round to collect your car, which unbeknownst to you isn't technically your car, leaving you without the vehicle or the money you paid for it. That's what the law tries to prevent.

Be a bit careful, I've heard of some dealerships presenting Hire Purchase as a "personal loan" to make it seem more palatable. The problem with this; the outstanding finance is still strictly attributed to the vehicle rather than the individual, making it illegal to sell the car with an outstanding settlement figure attached to it. If you arranged the borrowing through the dealership, via BlackHorse or something, I'd be quite surprised if it was a straight up loan and you legally owned the car. A way to have a look is to HPI check your car. If it shows outstanding finance, you shouldn't sell it before it's sorted.

In my example though, the item has been paid for in full... the cashier asks for £35 pounds, he/she gets £35 pounds and the customer gets a receipt. Nothing deliberately sneaky is being done and no one is being misled.

Absolutely, and it probably does make you a better person than me Regarding theft; in my opinion... Deliberately trying to dupe a self service checkout = theft Deliberately walking out of the store with concealed item I haven't paid for = theft Handing something to a cashier I think is 50 pounds, the cashier saying "that'll be 35 pounds please", then debiting my card for £35 whilst I keep schtum = arguably immoral, but not theft. Like I said, if it was some small independent business, I'd definitely be sure to pay the correct amount, but a huge supermarket chain undercharging me by a tenner... that's just the universe giving me a 'high-five'. Thanks Universe. Not theft, but fraudhttp://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z28/Colin_the_bear/busted_cop.gif If a cashier asks me to pay a certain amount of money for a certain item, accepts the money and sends me on my way, am I legally obligated to dispute the price and insist on paying more than is asked of me? I don't think so. If, some time after paying for something, I notice that I was undercharged by a relatively insignificant amount, will I get in trouble with the law for not tripping over myself trying to put it right? Nawww. Obviously if I was hundreds or thousands of pounds up after a blunder made by someone or I'd mistakenly walked out of the shop with something having not made any transaction for it at all, I'd absolutely go back and point it out, but if I notice 15 quid off a Nando's on the receipt as I jump into a car with the takeaway bag on my lap; no panic. To be serious, I am joking about the 'hard lessons' etc only because I've screwed up in the past and learned them myself. It's only ever happened in my favour twice in my whole life; whilst I was a broke student... it wasn't some kind of on-going scam

Absolutely, and it probably does make you a better person than me Regarding theft; in my opinion... Deliberately trying to dupe a self service checkout = theft Deliberately walking out of the store with concealed item I haven't paid for = theft Handing something to a cashier I think is 50 pounds, the cashier saying "that'll be 35 pounds please", then debiting my card for £35 whilst I keep schtum = arguably immoral, but not theft. Like I said, if it was some small independent business, I'd definitely be sure to pay the correct amount, but a huge supermarket chain undercharging me by a tenner... that's just the universe giving me a 'high-five'. Thanks Universe.

At least your morals are there! : What can I say... the best lessons are learned the hard way! I wouldn't every intentionally rip someone off or steal, but if a person does their job incorrectly and the situation starts to unravel in my favour, I'm not exactly going to deny myself a rare spot of pure luck! Also, I've been there, made those mistakes and paid for them in past jobs. Funnily enough it doesn't tend to happen these days!

A similar thing has happened to me twice semi-recently. Quite a while ago I bought 3 new Xbox360 games from Asda, tallied it up in my head; £100 odd quid. Paid for em, bumped into a mate outside, chatted for 15 minutes, jumped in the car and looked at the receipt.... £40.99! She'd messed it up somehow, unless the stickers on them were wrong... unlikely. I got the hell outta Dodge. About 10 months ago in Nando's with some friends and my ex. I had a "free whole chicken" thanks to their loyalty scheme, so between two of us we ordered a few sides and a couple of beers, it came to £18 odd, but instead of typing "one, eight, zero, zero" to make £18 on the card machine, he must have typed "one, eight, zero" which made £1.80 and handed me the machine. I paid the £1.80, set off with a huge mountain of food and beer, noticed the mistake then got the hell outta Dodge. Are you seeing a theme? If it was Mister Jones on the corner of the road, struggling to keep his independent hardware store afloat, I'd totally point out his mistake and pay up. I don't feel bad for giant hyper-expanding global companies when they make little mistakes which leave me better off though. Saying that I'd be surprised if Asda or Nando's took the hit... I bet they made the offending members of staff make up the difference, but policy like that ain't my problem. It'll teach 'em to not make mistakes with other people's money anyway!!

I've never done a trackday, and I really really want to do one very soon, but I know people who've done both of these things. Track day seems to be a great day out, learning a few new skills and taking a sportsbike to the very limit of it's potential has gotta give you a grin. Lots of the people I know who've jumped out of planes have said that the first time literally changed their lives forever, for the better. It kinda makes you look at everything differently... if you think about it, it is one of the most surreal and mental things you can possibly do. I say JUMP.

Totally, that evil all-seeing eye thing on the Gabalfa flyover was an accident waiting to happen!

Nice, my friend pretty much lost his hearing in one ear at a Motorhead show... he was stood side-on right by the stacks, the daft bugger. Enjoy it!

This weather!!!! I hate it. Get up for work, look out of window; http://www.collective-evolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/sunny-day.jpg "aww ace" I jump on my bike in my jeans, get to the bottom of my street, turn left on to the main road and look over in the general direction of Cardiff to pretty much see this; http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9oNXC0qCuJ4/T28yyomxdcI/AAAAAAAAA3A/mLyhLMXj864/s1600/Mordor.jpg 0.5 miles later I'm soaked through. It keeps happening the other way round too... I'll quite often arrive at work on a pristine spring morning looking like I'm about to tackle Everest.

Buy a bin. Literally, any cheap bin. Solved... no more poo on the hands.

Just don't do what a friend of mine did at a mate's wedding. Genuinely brilliant guy but basically he thought the speech would all somehow flow from his subconscious and his freestyle genius would charm the crowd and bring in big laughs... in other words he didn't prepare at all. It went something like; "Uhhh, here's to James and Sophie.... they look ridiculously happy, I wish them... um..... all the best for their life together in Australia, I've known Jay for all of my adult life and we've become best friends so I'll miss the guy, but he's head over heels and Sophie is awesome so yeah.... raise a glass everyone, to the happy couple. Cheers" It was literally over in about 30 seconds and didn't contain even an attempt at entertaining the small crowd. The bride's mum (who'd travelled from Australia) had a look on her face like she'd swallowed a wasp. So, not having any first hand experience myself, my only advice can be to actually think of something to say before hand

There isn't going to be a fuel crisis. Mr Cameron has already made a right cock of himself, he's created a semi-crisis by having officials publicly tell people to brim their vehicles and "fill jerry cans" when there is no shortage, no strike plans, just a few grumbles from the union. To me this suggests he's either a) totally incompetent or b) trying to manipulate the public for some reason. Either answer is pretty terrifying. I'd like to think that the good people of Great Britain are smart enough to realise what a giant dildo our collective government has been, and I bet Cameron knows damn well that another 'fuel crisis' caused by either strike action or hysteria would be political suicide. He wont let it happen, but if it does happen, I'll get some popcorn and a beer to watch DC's snotty little lizard/toddler face get egged on live TV!

I really quite like how no-nonsense the French government are! No official in this country would ever dream of making such a challenging statement on record. I have no sympathy for this Mohamed Merah, but I do feel pretty sorry for his father. He found out that his son had murdered innocent people on a couple of separate occasions in a calculated/deliberate way, and then heard that he was killed in a stand off with police... all in a very short space of time. Obviously "suing France" is a totally laughable idea, but the poor guy is trying to come to terms with a lot of crazy stuff. I'd be loosing my mind!

Don't be goaded into keeping up with faster riders on technical twisty roads. If you have doubts about an overtake or feel too tense to ride smoothly, just back off and enjoy the ride or stop for a cuppa before carrying on at your own pace! I commute daily by bike and don't often ride for the sake of riding but I took my new Kawa out for a blast around Abergavenny - Brecon - Builth Wells on Sunday seeing as the weather was so bangin'. There were plenty of nutters out and once or twice I found myself keeping up with really quite fast power rangers and suddenly realising that I was not enjoying the pace at all. Once I'd let them slip off into the distance and slowed down a bit I was having a blast in no time!

I don't believe MCN 99.99% of the time but that's just dumb, I wouldn't call cheap accessories like tank protectors, rear huggers, rad covers, crash protection & screens etc "mods"... they're things that do not affect the bike in any way other than make it easier to clean and a bit more practical and comfortable in the real world. Aftermarket exhaust systems, altered gearing, engine tuning, performance/lightweight replacement parts do qualify because they tend to affect the handling and performance which might understandably be of interest to an insurance company. Feels like they're trying to improve their margins by catching people out who would never think to declare stuff which is just common sense to have on an every-day bike. Imagine how far this could really go; "Hello Bennetts, I'm using handlebar muffs today and I'm putting a pinlock in my lid" "oh dear mate, that'll be an extra £80 modification fee please or else we'll void your policy... by the way, do you use a tank bag?". "yep" "make it £150 then"

I spent my entire childhood riding skateboards. I was quite techy and good at flip tricks up, down and over smaller obstacles... but as all my mates got better, they started doing monster rails/stair sets so I eventually delegated myself to 'crew photographer/video expert' to avoid the embarrassment of standing around with a board and being too wimpy to try the same stuff my pals were doing. I bought a skateboard (Blueprint) two summers ago and I occasionally go and join some old buddies for a blast but I like my legs/ankles/wrists/arms to remain un-broken so I tend to not bother so much these days.

Terrible news, Simoncelli was among my favourite MotoGP riders, old school and totally kept me on the edge of my seat all the time. Just saw the footage of the crash, very nasty. Safety kit has come a long way, but that's just not a survivable accident whichever way you look at it really.