Mark W

Imagine how good it could have been if they put any effort into it. Those rotors have movement between the braking surface and carrier, not something you want on a trials bike. "Crank SRAM Descendant 6K" There's a reason Inspired don't use the 6K alloy version of those cranks on trials bikes. "Chain KMC X11-93 Durable 11-speed chain with nickel-plated outer links. The precision-manufactured KMC Double X Bridge, combined with specially chamfered inner and outer plates, keep the chain running super-smooth and guarantee fast, clean gear changes." Sounds... ideal? "Chainguard Canyon GP0361-01 This chainguard keeps the chain securely on the chainring." In depth subject knowledge ahoy. Copied the Inspired tensioner system, but then decided to add a chain retention hoop on the jockey wheel, making it ballache to drop the chain off to take your wheel in and out, whilst adding no benefit? Sweet 36-click DT Swiss hub to go with it too. It just seems to me that the compromises in spec due to maximising profit margins/not understanding the discipline/not caring/a combination of these things mean that I'm not sure it's going to give a great experience to the end user. A lot of comments are mentioning how expensive it is, so paying a lot for a niche bike only to then have to immediately change parts on it (mainly the rotors) isn't really ideal, and probably won't help those riders new to trials stick with it. The 'good' thing is that judging from the claimed frame weight they've beefed it up quite a lot, so at least that might last and be a decent basis to upgrade on if you like the geo. It would have been better for trials if they'd used their size and resources to create a good quality, affordable, entry level bike rather than making a mediocre top-of-the-range-framekit-with-shit-build-kit. I get why they did - they've spent a lot on the moulds for the frame and fork for Fabio, so to try and recoup that cost they've punted some bikes out, it's just a pity that they apparently spent more time considering the paintjob than the parts they were going to put on it. Realistically I don't see any other brand getting into trials at this stage. It's almost impossible getting hold of their normal product lines, so rolling the dice with trials stuff now just isn't going to be worth it and might just be fully unworkable for them from a production capability stand-point. I expect that that's partially why Marin aren't doing anything more than that one-off frame for Duncan. Equally, I think most of them are getting into trials riders simply for marketing rather than wanting to support trials per se. Danny and Fabio both came with huge audiences already, so it's a goldmine for any brand that can get hold of that and then leverage it. If Danny decided to never ride a trials bike again, Santa Cruz wouldn't be too upset, and I expect it'd be the same for Fabio and Duncan with their respective sponsors too. It means fewer "Look at our rider ride in our office/warehouse/factory!" videos, but means they're just pushing bikes they can actually sell. EDIT: Only just realised in that big photo of the tensioner how properly budget they went with that. My my. Considering it costs more than the Inspired hanger + tensioner, that's insane. See also: £65 rear sprocket and spacers. £23.95 basic top cap and bolt.

Joacim can certainly ride a bike... this is probably one of my favourite videos from the past few years. Instantly got me keen to go riding. The filmer is Linus Pihlsgard for those interested

First response to that is a spade is a spade. Being anti-vax/anti-vaccination is being opposed to vaccinations. It doesn't specify which. People being less sheepish about using that term might give some people a wake-up call. Second response is that you can be two things at the same time. A lot of the arguments I see people making could basically have "covid" replaced with "MMR" and be fairly similar to the stereotypical anti-vax chat. I think the difference now is that while MMR or general anti-vax chat is more fringe, it's much more widespread for covid and people don't want to have to face up to the fact that some people they are friends with will hold views that should have "extreme connotations linked to [them]", or have a complete denial of what is actually happening in the world (referring again to my friend - who's vaccinated - maintaining that half the people who've been vaccinated are 'seriously ill'). It is what it is at this point though. My family and most of the people I'm closest to are all vaccinated, so from my/our POV they've got reduced risk of serious illness from covid which is the main thing for us. They're all healthy and well having had the vaccine, and the overwhelming data suggests that nothing is likely to change from that in terms of ill effects from the vaccine itself, especially given the time since they had their injections. EDIT: Should probably clarify that I would say vaccine hesitancy is different to being anti-vax, but the two generally use reasoning that makes it pretty clear which side of the line they fall on.

It is purely the incubation period. All viruses have different incubation periods. A regular cold is approx. 1-3 days, AIDS is approx. 1-10 years. Evidence suggests with Covid-19 it's 2-14 days. The testing is done at two stages purely to see if you test positive at those times, and therefore counting back from either of those test dates (if you have it at the first date, it's possible you didn't get it from the contact they're getting in touch about) to work out who would need to be contact traced. I only raised the cancer thing before as your position on testing appeared to be "if it isn't perfect, we shouldn't do it". I have several family members who are alive now because their cancers were caught early through testing, so my point was more that although cancer testing isn't perfect, it can still save lives. I agree that the desire to keep people alive at all costs does cause compromises on quality of life, but again, it's a little baby/bathwater to lump them all in together. Again, also worth pointing out that covid 'problems' aren't just death. I know several people with long covid - you and I have a mutual friend who has been having issues with it for some time now - who were/are young, fit and healthy. It was and continues to be a shit time for them. Also worth noting that in the US, the Delta variant has caused a spike in younger people being admitted to hospital seriously ill. It's no guarantee that it's 'just' an old persons illness, and the more people who have it the more scope for mutations that can cause changes in the age ranges who could potentially be affected by it. But yeah, that's about it I guess. I think we both have fairly different views about this, and neither of them are going to change whatever Boris (or Mark Drakeford this side of the Severn Bridge) are going to do about it so we're in for the ride either way!

Cheers dude Have been impressed by it. Have to follow the upshift hints to get it to around that level which feels weird to do. It's super quiet in the cabin, and they want you to upshift it pretty early - always think it's bogging down, but it seems pretty happy to trundle along at low revs. Totally unrelated, but been listening to a bunch of different podcasts from different providers recently about autonomous cars. I'm not that interested in the technological side of it, the philosophical side has always been interesting, but a few I've listened to recently have been more about the practicalities of it. For example one was where someone hired a Waymo (Google's autonomous vehicle platform) to see what it was like. They decided to do some rudimentary tests in a car park to see how sensitive the sensors were to things being in its way on the road, like throwing a beach ball in front of it. The ultimate test was having someone step out in front of it. He initially ran along side the car and was able to make it alter its speed/course to give him a wide berth, and then naturally, when he stepped out in front of it, it did an emergency stop. Thing is, if they're programmed to stop instantly if someone steps out of it, that means that if you had a fairly high percentage of cars in a city being autonomous, it would be super easy for people to cause gridlock. If you know that cars around are always going to defer to pedestrians out of fear of knocking someone over, there's less incentive to play by the rules. The sensors/radars on cars will obviously be set to be pretty sensitive so if you're in the middle of London (so fairly slow moving traffic anyway), you could just walk out and not really give a shit because if you can see it's an autonomous car, it'll stop for you to avoid an accident. As soon as one person does that then traffic will either stop or significantly slow, meaning more people can then do the same because it effectively becomes safe to do so. It also suggests that it would be super easy to f**k with autonomous vehicles from doing their thing if you were so inclined. An extreme example obviously, but it did make me think about how things will actually play out. Going back to the philosophical side of it, even down to the decision of "who should the car sacrifice" people can't agree. I heard about a study where they polled people about whether an autonomous car should always protect the driver, even if it means sacrificing more people outside of the car, or sacrifice the driver if it protects the greater number of people. The majority said that it should be the latter. However, when asked whether they'd buy a car that sacrificed others to save the driver, or sacrifice the driver to save more lives, they all said the former. Is it up to car makers to decide, or should it be government level? The concept of insurance also changes pretty significantly too. If you're not actually driving the car, who should insure it for accidents? The company who sells the car? The company who made the software? The company who made the sensors? The owner? There was an interesting interview I heard with the CEO of Ford where he was saying that they are looking at it being a fundamental shift in the concept of car ownership, where most people in built up areas will never need to own a car again and that instead it'll be like a subscription service where you can just use any car you find, or more akin to the rental scooters that are in a lot of cities now. I can see that happening, but again it poses a lot more questions too... I guess I'd always assumed that autonomous cars would basically like-for-like replace cars in our lives as they do now (to an extent), but I can't really see how that would be possible, or even if that's really practical.

Yeah, the main post I saw that was stuck in my head had that phrase tagged on to a thing about how "half the adult population is seriously ill from taking the vaccine" amongst other 'interesting' claims. Especially interesting because they're double vaccinated themselves, but now say that they regret making that decision because they didn't have all the "facts". In their case, we're definitely talking more Trump-esque "alternative facts".

That isn't about PCR tests, that's about rapid tests. In the conclusion they mention that they were looking at them as possible alternatives to PCRs, or for when PCRs can't be done in a timely manner. The inaccuracy of rapid testing is why the self isolation stuff is typically based on results of PCR tests. PCR tests for viruses have been around for a long time and why they're described as the 'gold standard' for detection, it's the rapid tests like the lateral flow tests and so on that appear to be the less reliable ones in studies like the one you linked to. Those are only around because PCR testing takes longer to process due to the results being sent off to labs, and they wanted to try and find a quicker way to see if someone might have the virus or not. Can't work out how to do quotey stuff again, but related to "Is it that a virus is completely undetectable until it has incubated? Or is it that the current tests can't do that? And if they can't, why are we carrying out testing?" There will be a lower limit of viral load for a test to pick it up, but that's inevitable purely because of the nature of any testing for any illness/disease I'd assume? Whatever the lower threshold is, it's low enough to catch people who are asymptomatic, so I'd assume from that that it can be a fairly minimal amount. Just because there is that lower limit (whatever it may be), I don't really see why that means that we shouldn't do any testing at all? It became clear early in the pandemic that asymptomatic spreaders were driving infection rates, so even if it's people like that that are getting positive test results and finding that they need to isolate that still helps reduce spread. To look at it another way, breast cancer screening doesn't always work, so would you also advocate for not having any breast cancer screening? A lot of people aren't keen, some with fairly good reasons. As before, I'm not sold on the idea either.

It's essentially along those lines, yeah. I believe the app was more popular earlier in the pandemic, but now less so as so many people are being pinged as things reopen. There's been stories of employers (especially in hospitality) requesting their staff either uninstall it or disable it while they're at work to minimise the chances of them getting pinged and having to isolate. I downloaded it to see what it was like/how it worked, but uninstalled it afterwards as it seemed pretty shit, and also had quite a few people saying there were security concerns with it. I believe they may have been addressed now. EDIT: It's interesting seeing on social media how "I'm not anti-vax, but..." is the new "I'm not racist, but..." with some of the things people are coming out with. The cognitive dissonance involved in saying that other people who are against vaccinations are anti-vax, but they themselves, despite being against vaccinations, aren't anti-vax is really something. The clue is in the name.

Because the incubation period can be up to 10 days. "A negative test result means you probably didn't have COVID-19 at the time you took your test. However, it is possible to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 but not have enough virus in your body to be detected by the test. For example, this may happen if you recently became infected but you don’t have symptoms, yet." The WHO guidelines recommend a 14 days isolation period as there have been some cases where that period has been up to 14 days, but it seems governments are deciding that 10 is a more realistic/workable number. I'm not sure where you're getting that 50% accuracy thing for PCRs? The link you posted before was some random rapid test rather than the PCR test itself (which was used to verify the results of the rapid test they were referring to in that article).

If it was a "proper" tapered head tube (1.5" lower) then I'd agree, but the tapered standard Jitsie have used is unique to them and so you can only ever use Jitsie's forks with them. The same is true for the headset. To the OP, it's hard to say which is really best in terms of parts. Getting a fresh setup means that you're starting from scratch so you know that everything should work well, but if you've got a decent amount of good parts on your current bike to swap over then you may benefit from going for the Varial and upgrading it with the bits you have. You should be able to sell on any other parts you don't need to help bring down the cost of the bike overall, or improve the other bits on the bike to a similar standard to the Race bike.

Forgot to update this, but I have a giant silver limo on my drive now... Picked up that Passat that I linked to in this thread earlier on. The bodywork had a few scuffs here and there, but it's a well used 10 year old car so not entirely surprising. Everything else felt fine on it, and it had a few bonus features as a result of the previous owner installing an aftermarket Android setup instead of the standard VW console. I put about £35 or so of diesel in it in Preston, then drove back to Caerphilly. Did a bunch of random trips down here (shopping, runs to the tip, living the dream) as well as a couple of drives to nearby trail centres, and it was only after I'd had the car for a week I realised I hadn't had to put any more fuel in. Slight contrast to my MX5. This is the most I've spent on a car, and although it's relatively basic compared to a lot of cars out there it is nice to have a 'nice' car. Those VW peeps definitely put a lot of handy features into them. Fair play to the previous owners too, the interior was mint! It's just had the cambelt and water pump done which removes some concerns about it, and has just been serviced and MOTd so hopefully I won't have to do much to it over the next year or so at least. It's got a 15 month warranty on it which provides surprisingly decent cover (at least in print), so if there is anything major that pops up at least I may be covered for it to some extent.

Something to note with getting them on/off - making sure you push the bead fully into the rim well makes a massive difference to how easy it is to get a tyre on or off. All my bikes are tubeless with inserts so doing anything with them is faff, but on the same tyre setup I went from snapping a tyre lever to almost being able to put them on by hand simply by pushing the tyre bead across and into the rim well. It reduces the tension around the rest of the bead so it makes it much easier to pop the last bit of the bead over. If you're at a point where you're trying to pop the last bit of the bead over and you end up doing that thing where you start basically chasing that last bit of bead around the rim, you need to push the bead into the rim well elsewhere. I was on a mountain bike ride last week and there were a couple of guys struggling to re-fit a "tight" tyre having had to replace a tube. They were using metal tyre levers and a wide array of swearwords, but when I gave the tyre a squeeze around the rest of it and got it into the well, the last bit popped on easily by hand. It's insane how much of a difference it makes, and is something I wish I'd known way earlier in my life! The profile of Spank rims means you don't get quite as pronounced a benefit (because of the Oohbah profile), but if you get it into the little dips to the side of the 'bead bite' setup, it gives you more slack.

The incubation period of the virus is estimated to be between 2 to 10 days* from being in contact with it. Extreme example, but if you got pinged by the app in the morning, then had a PCR in the afternoon and tested negative, you could still have the virus in your system. That's why they recommend having two PCR tests during self isolation - one at day 2 (if it's positive at that point, they would then contact trace people you'd been around) and one towards the end of the isolation period to double check if you do/don't have it. It was frustrating as shit being in self isolation knowing in all likelihood we didn't have it, but because of that difference in incubation periods in different people it's just how it is. For most people it takes 2-5 days, so our second test could well have come back positive. Either way, we didn't know for sure so we had to wait it out. If everyone who was supposed to self isolate did, the virus would have died down way earlier. You can't spread a virus if you aren't around other people. *It was initially thought to be 14 days in the early days of the pandemic which is why self isolation used to be for 14 days, rather than 10.

Just measure the inner diameter of your steerer. You need a starnut 1-3mm wider than that.

It's been used for various things since 1989 - it's not quite the instant new wonderdrug that the mRNA vaccines are being portrayed as. Not that I'm saying it's the same thing, but that was exactly the line of response people used when seatbelt laws were brought in in the UK. That was the biggest argument against it, but the second was people saying that they felt that they could be more dangerous in the event of a crash. Just on the vaccination passport thing, the concept of requiring vaccinations for travel to certain countries is nothing new, and hasn't been for decades. Again, not saying they're the same thing, but it isn't some new plot - it was and is standard in many countries for various diseases. In terms of this whole idea of it being some huge overarching plot to enslave us all, it just doesn't add up. The government haven't even been able to build a railway line they've spent billions of £s on and dedicated over a decade to. They seem to be f**king inept at most things, and largely populated by opportunistic people who happen to have either been born with the right name, have enough money in the family or went to the right schools. It's just another example of Hanlon's Razor to me - "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". It's a massive public health crisis, and unfortunately the people we have in power are f**king inept at dealing with most things, let alone the largest public health crisis in our lifetimes. I don't agree with Boris on many things, but I do when he said that Matt Hancock is "totally f**king hopeless". It's not really surprising that we haven't got a great track record of dealing with it with people like Johnson, Hancock and Cummings playing substantial roles in how things are done. Just by way of a comparison, I think it's generally acknowledged New Zealand smashed the shit out of dealing with the virus (although even there people called for their PM to resign for her handling of it because they said that it was an over-reach). They have a smaller population so naturally it's easier, but the early and decisive steps they took stopped it in its tracks. Just look at the system they created for paying workers in businesses that were forced to close temporarily - not hard, but something the UK government totally f**ked, and continues to totally f**k. We could have done so much more in the early days of the pandemic but politically it was viewed as too damaging so we didn't, and everything from those decisions has cascaded and led us to where we are today. If they hadn't kept the borders fully open as long as they did, we'd have had fewer cases. If they'd enforced isolation/quarantine for arriving travellers months earlier than they did, we'd have fewer cases. I mean they said they were specifically protecting care homes, then forced them to accept a load of patients from hospitals without even testing people. There have been so many mis-steps along the way that mean we're in the shit situation we're in now, and that's why I just don't believe it's some Machiavellian plot. Just to be clear as well, I don't particularly agree with the vaccine passport idea. I don't really have much of an issues with the vaccines themselves (they were given a massive headstart in terms of creating a vaccine by getting the gene sequencing for the virus back in January 2020 so they knew what they were dealing with, and to me it just shows what's possible when pharma and governments all exclusively turn their focus on one problem and then throw unlimited time and cash at it), but I can see why not everyone would want to get involved. I'd definitely put it in a different category to masking/social distancing. While I don't think vaccinations should be mandatory, I can see why masking/distancing was/is in some places as those are simple, proven, effective, non-harmful ways of limiting spread that some people weren't willing to do until it was turned into a law. There was that chat before it was turned into law that it required people to just "use their common sense", but that clearly doesn't work. To use a local example, during lockdown a minibus full of mixed households from Cheltenham turned up at Storey Arms to walk up the Brecon Beacons. "Common sense" wasn't at play there. You f**k yourself on the Beacons, mountain rescue has to come and get you (not an uncommon thing there), that then immediately means you've got X amount of other people on that rescue team potentially exposed to it who then have to isolate until they're tested, while their close contacts will also have to isolate. That's just one possible aspect of it that could lead to causing issues for others. A lot of people don't seem capable of thinking of anyone or anything beyond themselves, and this sort of situation isn't one that gets resolved with that kind of thinking.

Yes and no - it's still relatively low risk to most people even if it is more contagious, so I was thinking more along the lines of a variant that has a significantly higher risk of serious illness/death across more age bands. The delta variant isn't ideal, but it could definitely be worse.

It'd be interesting to know how much of it is people's level of risk tolerance changing, and that leading to an increase in situations for people to get exposure to the virus? What I mean by that is I'm assuming people who are getting vaccinated now are probably more likely to have adhered to the lockdown rules when they were first implemented, so it's whether you've got this cohort of people who have been less exposed to the virus in general who are now being given more freedom and consequently there being a greater pool of people who were less likely to have had it before now getting the risk of exposure to it? Worded it like shit, but basically I'm guessing people who were having illegal raves last year are unlikely to be getting vaccinated, whereas the people who were shut in their houses for most of last year will probably be more likely to get the vaccine. Ultimately the only way out of this is some form of herd immunity, so whatever the ratio of vaccinated people is to people who have got antibodies/whatever from having already had covid it doesn't really matter too much. At least the whole 'flattening the curve' thing last year will have reduced the chances of a mutation happening earlier along that could have led to it being a much worse illness than it already is/can be. Know a few people down here who are +/- 10yrs of my age who have had long covid despite being previously healthy and it sounds like dogshit. That's not even including those who've lost family members, etc. How relatively indiscriminate it is is the weird thing too. Obviously older people are more susceptible to death/serious illness from it, but just within my friendship circles down here there are a lot of people I wouldn't have expected to really be at risk of any serious complications who have been somewhat f**ked by it. EDIT: Just read that link you posted Ads - guess it kind of covers what I was asking up there further into the article: ZOE study leader Professor Tim Spector said overall the data suggested incidence rates were starting to plateau. But he added: ‘In the UK, new cases in vaccinated people are still going up and will soon outpace unvaccinated cases. ‘This is probably because we’re running out of unvaccinated susceptible people to infect as more and more people get the vaccine. ‘Whilst the figures look worrying, it’s important to highlight that vaccines have massively reduced severe infections and post-vaccination Covid is a much milder disease for most people. The main concern is now the risk of long Covid.’ Sounds like we're getting to that herd immunity point now. Hopefully there's not some dick of a variant to come along and f**k it all up.

Worth noting that those two are generally a trade-off. For trials stuff you typically want to have your weight centred further forward on the bike, but for streety stuff you want it further back. Usually one side has to suffer a little for the other, so it's probably going to boil down to what you want the bike to be better at. If you want it streety, a shorter/higher setup will work best but that will compromise the trialsy-ness of it. Longer/lower will be better for trialsy stuff, but it'll make streety stuff harder. As Ross says, practise and getting used to the technique required for the bike will help most in the long run, but playing with bar roll and stacker height can dial things in.

The efficacy of the vaccine is against serious illness/death, rather than stopping people getting it at all from my understanding of it. I knew of a few people who were double dosed who subsequently got covid, and it made me question it a bit so I did a bit of reading/listening. I'd assumed that the whole point of the vaccine was to stop you getting it at all, but it seems that it's partially to do that but also limit the effects of it. Basically, if it makes you less ill it makes it harder for you to transmit the virus. It seems like viral load is one of the factors that dictates how ill people get from it, so if people with the virus are putting out less of it (technical terms) then other people are less likely to catch it. In terms of the vaccine reducing serious illness, the US is a pretty good example of this where you compare hospitalisation stats in different states with their vaccination stats. There's a bit on that here. EDIT: Forgot to say - went to a wedding on Monday. Was the day restrictions were lifted, so things were somewhat back to normal. 80-90 guests - for the ceremony (which was still done outside, although could have been inside), the seats were packed into the space so tightly that they touched side-to-side, and I could only just get my knees in behind the seat in front of me. Similarly, we were all mixed up on the seating plans for the wedding breakfast, so we were all in there pretty much elbow to elbow with strangers. Certainly had a weird feeling to it all after over a year of not really being in that close proximity to people.

"Horner: "Unacceptable" for F1 team bosses to be allowed to lobby stewards" The same Christian Horner who was 'lobbying stewards' this weekend (his excuse was because Masi told Toto to speak to them), and has done plenty of times in the past. Drive To Survive was interesting in the way that it portrayed Christian vs. Toto as the guy who was winning everything, and the guy who came in and started winning everything. Obviously they're looking for ways of presenting story arcs and narratives for that show, but it does seem kind of true that there is that resentment that Toto swooped in and stopped Christian being the golden child. EDIT: That story keeps on giving: “I saw Toto, who was lobbying the stewards, and I heard he was going there to do it, so I went to make sure that our view was represented,” explained Horner about why he was spotted at the stewards. “I don't think it's right that a team principal should be able to go and lobby the stewards. They should be locked away so that they're not influenced. “For me, it was unacceptable that he had gone up there to lobby the stewards. I wanted to make sure that there was a balanced opinion given, rather than trying to influence pressure on the stewards to make a menial sentence.” Of course you did, Christian. In the same way that you kept going over to Geri Haliwell's place while you were married to tell her that you were a big fan of the Spice Girls.

It's already been sold for a while now, and the cash has been flowing freely - the Tories opened vastly more of the NHS up to privatisation in 2012 and plenty of money has gone to sketchy companies who outbid for services/contracts then totally failed to deliver. They even get paid when they subsequently lose contracts, e.g. Serco getting £15m for losing a contract*. The money is in those contracts, so the overall 'value' of the NHS doesn't really make much difference to them - making the NHS look worse is typically better as they can come in and promise to improve things and 'make them more efficient' which also partially explains the Tories deliberately underfunding the NHS for so long. That's why there are now private companies running full hospitals themselves now, under the umbrella of the NHS. Pretty sweet way to make sure that you can get all the additional contracts for that hospital, as well as get involved with the cottage industry of 'management consultants' making serious money there. Ultimately, those who want to get rich from it already are. That's why it's all the more frustrating knowing there were so many people out there clapping for the NHS who will happily vote Conservative again. No doubt they'll be using some of this as cover to try and get more cash out of the system, but I think that's more them being opportunistic f**ks rather than anything else. It's been their modus operandi for decades. *Serco have f**ked up plenty of government contracts, and have done again with parts of the Test & Trace system. They keep getting contracts though. Can't think why... "Serco’s chief executive is Rupert Soames, the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill and the brother of former Conservative MP, Sir Nicholas Soames. Health minister Edward Argar MP was formerly a lobbyist for Serco and is now the MP for Charnwood in Leicestershire." EDIT: Forgot to say, but the booster thing will certainly be happening - Pfizer have already been pushing for that in the US, and have also quadrupled the price of the doses for booster shots. Nice of them. They seem to be angling it more for people who would have been in the shielding category here though, as I believe they are in the US. Just adding it as another shot people need to receive like they do with the flu jab every year is a pretty quiet/simple/easy way of raking more cash in without having to f**k about too much getting other people to have it. There's always another disaster or problem to capitalise on on the horizon for them either way...

Masi touched on this after the race - they specifically don't look at the full impact that an incident has had as it would basically make it impossible to find a penalty that 'fits' that isn't totally arbitrary. As an example, if that happened on the first race of the season, the overall impact would be totally different to if it was the title decider at the end of the season. Similarly if it was for P19 rather than P1. That's why they tend to have categories/groupings for incidents and they get penalised within those parameters. Means it isn't perfect, but it's probably the lesser of two evils. There were passes there last year too, and have been before. Lewis could/should have been a little tighter ideally, but it seemed Max properly gave it a turn in and wasn't going to give a huge amount of room either. That's his style though - he's known for being aggressive and essentially using his reputation to make people pull out of moves as they know that he won't back down from it, but that has it's limits. If you're in a title fight, the person fighting you can't just yield every time, and it's also not like it's a right that other drivers have to yield simply because they know you won't. To be fair to Lewis, he had no idea that Max was in hospital until a bit after the race. He asked if he was OK and was told that Max was out of the car - generally speaking the cars are so safe now that if there are any serious injuries they'd know about it straight away. I don't think it's unreasonable for him to have expected that Max would have been fine. His reaction to being told Max was in hospital certainly looks like he is genuinely surprised by it. I'd also imagine after you've just spent a race driving as hard as you can to try and overcome a sizeable deficit to win your home grand prix you'd probably be operating exclusively on adrenaline by the time you do cross the line, so wouldn't be thinking of the 'optics' of a situation (especially when you're under the assumption everyone else is fine).

So had my second Pfizer dose on Monday. Think the first nurse I had must have been raging or something and just slammed that needle into my arm - this time I barely even felt the injection at all. Had a bit of a dead/heavy arm feeling the day after and some minor aches, but nothing really too bad. Was hitting up the paracetamol pre-emptively to try and nip anything in the bud, but aside from a bit of fatigue it's been fine. That could also be house moving megastress and a lack of sleep talking though. Has been pleasantly surprising though, was expecting it to be much worse. Nic had her's today so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out for her.

They said "from checking online it has no outstanding recalls", so it's been done, but they didn't say or find out when... My system for getting my Arcade in it is absolutely dialled and works a treat, but alas, chonky tyres and 27.5" wheels don't play ball. Otherwise I'd probably keep hold of it, although it's starting to get some annoying niggly little bits that are making it progressively less fun/confidence inspiring to drive. Cheers again dude! Much along the lines of what I was thinking really. Had found some of those older 1.9s online condition wise they weren't as good (unsurprisingly) and had a decent chunk more mileage on them. I'm aware they can do some ridiculous mileage if looked after well, but starting off 60k more than that 2011 one is... yeah... The price difference isn't really good enough to offset the potential faff involved with an older, more worn out car really. Assuming you didn't have any MOT issues with the EGR remap on the go?

The Mk2.5 has a narrower passenger area than the Mk1, so it pretty much straight up doesn't fit unfortunately. Tried a few permutations and didn't get anywhere. Cheers for all the info, Tom! Appreciate it. Take it in your opinion that model is still worth going with even in light of those issues, or are they a bit of a deal-breaker? Had a gander at EGR remaps, but couldn't find any actual pricing anywhere. Don't suppose you've got any idea how much I'd be looking for that realistically? Had been looking at the pre-facelift ones too, but thought that spending a bit extra to get a newer model might be worthwhile. Take it that's not necessarily the case then, or are there issues with the B6 that mean that it's six of one/half a dozen of the other? I'd heard a lot about clutch issues on those, but I don't know how much of that is the same way that if you speak to most people about a lot of diesel cars there'll be clutch issues. I had been looking into a Ford estate of some sort a while ago and all the chat about them was the woes of dual mass flywheel clutches and fuel injectors... Just had a look online and found this great example of corporate speak. It sounds like there's essentially a 2 year warranty that they're calling a 'Trust Building Measure' if the car that's had the work done is serviced at the right intervals and is under 160,000 miles. The car I'm looking at has FSH which is a start - I've asked the sellers if it's got mention of that EA198 recall in the car history at all. It seems it's been looked after properly so I'm guessing it has. We'll see...