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The Krypton Factor

Ford Granada with 3 speed automatic gearbox.

The whole team plus a reserve being driven to a 7-a-side rugby match in this car...

'The business' - we have people in our company that use this in the context of 'The business expects that growth in Q4 will be....' People use this on their out of office / voicemail: 'I am on annual leave today and will return to the business tommorow....'

This would not be so bad but using 'The Business' takes longer than using our company name.

Hi Arvy,

I am a building manager and have come across this at different sites I have worked at. I have had a few thoughts, in no particular order....

Does your employer lease direct from JLL? The lease may not specifically mention bicycles, but may mention that only items connected with work may be brought in - you may even need the written permission from JLL to bring in non-work items.

What justification do they have? Bikes are not a fire risk (check your carpets, they will probably be rubber-backed tiles) - it is their storage that could be. Your office might be OK but do other tennants block stairwells / fire exits? If this is the case, they should address the individuals concerned.

Are they concerned about damage to the fabric of the building? How do you get your bike into the office? Is there any likelyhood of damage to the building when you bring it in?

If this is the case, you may wish to consider: 1. Sign a disclaimer stating that you will make good any damage to the building (beyond reasonable wear and tear) caused by bringing the bike in. 2. If they mention damage to your office, your employer will be hit by a delapidation fee when they move out which will cover bringing back the office to an 'as new' condition. Also, who manages the day-to-day maintenance of your office? If there are dirty marks on walls, can you / colleagues / handyman paint over these.

How do you normally bring the bike into the building? If it is through the main reception then their issue may be because of the image that this can give out. I cannot bring my bike into the building through the main reception, but I can bring it in through the loading bay - I can either lock it up in the basement or take it directly to my office via the goods lift.

In short, ask them to justify their position, making specific references to the Ts and Cs of the lease, and if this is vague, get them to provide specific examples of breaches of the lease / Health and Safety regulations and why they have chosen to bring in this 'blanket ban' for bikes.

Hope this helps.

Where I live we have a shared ariel for our appartment block and for a long time it's been fine. Recently though, especialy in the evenings, we've started to experience some break up of the picture which renders some programmes unwatchable (because it's diftal it means the programme freezes and skips a second or two). This is the same when I plug the TV directly into the ariel and bypass the PVR.

Not sure if anyone knows about these things but is the problem likely to be the ariel rather than say our equipment or the transmitter doesn't bother in the evenings? It seems to be worse on C4, ITV whereas BBC seem mostly fine.

Would the problem occurring in the evening indicate a specific problem? Before I write to the management I'd like to rule out a technical issue on my side.

Any thoughts would be appreciated...

I get this too, and it only started recently. You may be getting interference from wi-fi routers and will be more likely to happen in the evening when people are home from work. When this first started happening I noticed that someone had set up a wi-fi network in their flat above me, and the signal strength was very strong. I don't know if there is anything that can be done about it. I also get bad TV reception when my washing machine is on - I am thinking this is due to magnets.

I wanted to see PJ Harvey in Prague but Diwali got in the way. What set did she play?

I am interested in seeing Spiritualized in the spring - anyone interested???

I'm with Oz on this one. I think that we cyclists should all use the ASL box - problem is that lots of cyclists do not stay in the ASL boxes but either jump red lights or stop far in advance of the ASLs. This really does not help the case for cyclists !!!

On my ride to work this morning I was going up Holland Park Avenue, traffic was OK, as I got to one set of lights with an ASL there was a black VW Passat Minicab that had stopped halfway into in the ASL area in the right hand lane (2 lanes in each direction). Lights went green, and me / him / other traffic proceed to the next red light. At this light he was fully in the ASL area, and seemed to be rocking back and forwards - seemed to be either trying to race cyclists next to him (I was trackstanding and so were others), or he had poor clutch control. Anyway, after much revving / rocking the lights went green, we then all proceed onto Notting Hill Gate. At the next red light by The Gate Cinema he was fully in the ASL area again. I pulled in front of him and shouted 'That's a nice bike' at him. He wound down his windon and asked me to repeat what I said, which I did. The lights went green, we (me, him, other cyclists and motor vehicles) proceeded. At the next red light he stopped in the correct place, not in the ASL.

I was amazed by this - I gave him a big thumbs up and shouted 'cheers mate' at him. He actually smiled back at me.

Hopefully he learned his lesson, and now knows the error of his ways. Or he could get back in his car tommorow and be a complete wanker. Part of me is thinking that if we could all do this, and also stop some cyclists from driving like twats, the roads would be so much better.

Ride safe, Rich.

surprised the PSCO's took an interest TBH. But you did the right thing in getting them questioned a bit more, another side of the argument is that uninsured/unregistered drivers are involved in x% of incidents every year, I pay everything correctly to run a car, but I could put money on it being an uninsured/unregistered driver that runs into me/a friend/family etc.

One of the PCSOs mentioned that he was a cyclist.
I have a car also - I am very aware that a bog proportion of my insurance contributes towards accidents caused by drivers without insurance. It also means that when a driver shouts at me 'you should not be on the road as you do not pay road tax' I can shout at them 'I do pay road tax like you, but this does not mean that I have the right to drive like a cunt'.

• yes I realise that there is not road tax but vehicle excise duty, and that this is emissions based, but this is hard to convey to the general motoring retards that are out there......
  

Considering the outrage that RLJing cyclists are greeted with (even when there no peds around), this seems a bit rich. Not excusing any RLJing btw.

The reasons why I reported her were because 1. she obviously didn't see someone crossing and a bike stationary at a zebra crossing. 2. afterwards she swerved into the bus / bike lane but then swerved back into the car lane (sorry, didn't mention this before). 3. Her husband said that she wasn't allowed to drive over here - if he said that she wasn't a very good driver then I wouldn't have bothered but this was quite specific about not being allowed.

I would really hate for someone (ped, cyclist or another vehicle) to be hit by this lady who shoud not be on the road (either legally or due to lack of driving skills).

I don't RLJ*. I prefer the interval training !!!

• cannot afford whatever the fine is at the moment !!!
  

Had a good result tonight. I was cycling home through Chiswich, and was getting towards a zebra crossing and spotted a lady with a push-chair waiting. I stopped to let her cross, and had been stationary for a few seconds, but from behind me a car just carried on, narrowly missing me and forcing the lady to pull back onto the pavement.

Anyway, after this the lady crossed and just seemed a bit annoyed, as I was too. The traffic was quite bad, so I easily caught up with the offending car. I shouted from the passenger side 'do you know what you did there?' The male passenger and female driver were arguing and did not hear me and so I shouted again but louder. The man put his window down and said 'Sorry, but my wife is not allowed to drive over here.' There were 2 PCSOs walking along, so I walked over to them and said what had happened and that I thought that there might be someone driving without the correct licence. The waved the car into the bus lane and asked the driver to get out.

Both the occupants got out, and I explained really calmly what had happened - the lady said that her husband was joking about her not being allowed to drive. I told the PCSOs that I had witnessed dangerous driving, that she had narrowly missed both me and a lady with a push chair. The PCSOs called to proper police officers who were on the scene within 2 mins. They took the driver and her husband a few meters along the pavement and I stayed with the PCSOs. I overheard the police officers asking the couple to provide some details to them - at this point the lady became really irate, and was shouting at the police and also at me, saying that she hadn't hurt anyone. I did not reply, but asked the PCSOs if they could check to see if the lady had a valid driving licence. He said that this is what was happening at the moment, and that this is why the lady was irate. They asked me to leave the scene, as it was being percieved as being antagonistic. I would report the near miss if I wanted to, but the police officers were dealing with the driver. I got back on my bike and started to cycle away, I heard the lady shouting 'I hope you are happy with yourself' and 'I didn't hurt anyone, you should not have done this'.

I had the feeling that she really should not have been driving due to her reaction, and if this is the case am very happy that she has been caught and is being dealt with. Even if she did have a licence (and also insurance / tax / mot) I feel glad that she was inconvenienced for at least 10 mins, if not more, due to her impatience. If the lady with the push chair had crossed just a few seconds earlier then we may have had 1 or more serious injuries, or even worse, take place.

Gosh, that was a long rant.....

Oh, I was just thinking that the cunt chef James Martin who creates recipes for the BBC is a cunt chef that creates recipes for the BBC. etc....

enter james martin is a cunt into google, lfgss comes up but lots of others also think he is one too

Most people searching for James Martin would not be searching for 'James Martin is a cunt' but might be searching for 'James Martin recipes'.

I wonder if there was any way that we could influence a google search to reflect this fact???

Oh, I think that James cunt Martin cunt recipes are really cunty.

Is good that you are OK. As Prancer says, make sure that the bike is checked out and you get it put back to the original condition. were any clothes / shoes / anything else damaged? I remember getting knocked off my bike and thought that nothing was damaged - bike and clothing were fine. When I got to work I got my keys out of my shorts pocket only to find that my car key, which was on the same keyring as home / office keys, was destroyed. This cost me 140 quid to replace.... Ask for payment for everything, but don't go overboard as he may then go through insurance who may want receipts.

The best cake is definitely malt loaf. I don't like currants / raisins / sultanas, but strangely seem to really like buttered malt loaf.

Next best would be flapjacks, although I have never bought a flapjack that tasted nice - home baking FTW.

WTF is going on in the 'We buy any car dot com' adverts - people singing / rapping / saying 'I just sold my car quick quick' - and then pointing to the car that is still on their driveway. Either you haven't sold it or the we buy any car dot com business model, whereby they buy your car but you still have access to it, is pretty shit - unless of course you have sold your car to them and are still driving around in it..... in fact, I might try to sell them my car and try to keep access to it.

So does that mean that by reading the memes page we are paedophiles?
Not really knowing what level 2 on that scale is to be honest....

There is nothing wrong with wanting a bike as an ornament. However, I think that bikes can fall into 2 categories:
1: The bike is a tool for a specific job, such as commuting, MTBing, cyclocrossing etc. You use the bike for this purpose regardless of what impact it has on the asthetics - ie. scratched paint.
2: A trophy bike, which you keep in very good condition, it could be any kind of bike - eg. retro track bike. This bike would be only ever ridden outside in the dry, cleaned and polished after every ride.

Unfortunately all my bikes are 'tools' and I would really like a 'trophy' bike at some point. Unfortunately I have 5 bikes in a studio flat, so this will not happen any time soon...

Nandos food - don't know if this has been mentioned yet though.

'lock-on' type grips - for people who can't fit normal grips properly?

I have burned 11250 kcal, apparently this is 38 cakes, which makes 1 cake 296 kcal - these are big cakes !!! Where can I buy them from?

Thanks tommy. My son did his triathlon at Dorney today - yes it is very flat and will be a bit boring for me next week, but I am doing this one as I didn't get into the Windsor triathlon.

The children's triathlon was very competitive today, and it was the parents who were the most competitive. We sam ome dads shouting at their sons / daughters, making their 8 year olds cry - this seemed so wrong to me, and was not a good introduction to the sport from them. My son came 6th in the 13 / 14 year old 'fun' category. There were about 60 in his race, he was about 40th after the swim, but 10th after the cycle and passed a few more people to come in 6th. the boy that came first was fantastic, he put a good few minutes distance between him and the others.

It has been a poor weekend for cycling for me - I managed a trip to parents place and to shops etc on saturday, and today my son did his triathlon - I managed to cycle to swimming pool (for me to pracrice) and back this morning, and then to pub in Chertsey and back this evening, so got 22 miles in.

this coming week will not be very good for mileage either - I am doing a triathlon on Sunday, so will be resting from thurs to sat. Still, if weather is good tommorow I may extend my regular commute in the evening, which is already 18 miles !!!

Anyway, who did big miles this weekend? some of the team must have done a few as we are now first !!!

Thanks soperRiva

Oh, my son is doing the children's triathlon at Dorney this Sunday - has anyone here got any kids taking part in it?