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All communist states have, AFAIK, engaged in large scale human rights abuses.
So have all far right/fascist states, do you have any point apart from whataboutery?
No. ‘e don’t. Wot a surprise.
How about Cuba, though? A one party state but often found by various independent and disinterested observers to have, for example, the best health service in the world, despite the economic punishments arranged for the Cubans by the USA and other kleptocracies frustrated in their previous efforts to exploit the bejasus out of that nearby isle.
Gaw, even I have been successfully whatabouted!
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Perhaps Rich is actually rich, perhaps from renting or shareholding? If so, one can understand his liking for the Toryspiv, who are great supporters of all kinds of exploitation of other humans for vast profits. There are all kinds of satanic mills these days!
But perhaps not. Perhaps Rich is just another bog-standard member of the hoi-polloi like the rest of us. This makes his fannery of Toryspiv less easy to grasp but …. he may suffer from that seemingly installed-at-birth Bwitish meme from our greater memeplex of the Bwitish class system.
Toryspiv – just a better class of people. ( See the pinstripe suit, pearls & twinset and certificate of empathy-removal from one public skool or another). And they are so successful, innit! Lookit their wads of bung, rent & bribe.
Rich_cb wrote:
I stand by what I said earlier. If you think the current government is far right then you need to read a history book. You’ve created a label for the “Toryspivs” and you hold them responsible for multiple ills. I did enjoy “fraudulent elections” though, it was the point you went full tinfoil hat, I’m guessing we’ve never had a legitimate government by your definition?History – I recall the GCE O-level books they gave us in skool – how the Bwitish Empire was gweat and we gave the lucky creatures who begin at Calais oh so many advantages. In fact, we just robbed and killed them until Little Bwitain got too weak to prevent them chucking us out.
“History shall be kind to me, as I intend to write it”. Who said that, eh? 🙂 Personally I prefer the Foucault anaysis of how history is dreamt up and writ. Essentially, by the “winners”, composed of justifications for their often evil deeds and beliefs, many of which they also denied! Alternative histories of a less self-serving kind are available, you know. But you won’t like them. No.
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The in-group I refer to as Toryspivs have grouped themselves with no help from me. They clot together in a cabal rife with corrupt practices employing their ill-gotten political power. The policies, attitudes and beliefs giving rise to those “multiple ills” are not denied by Toryspiv. Indeed, they’re quite proud and boastful about them. See gutter press for details.
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Yes, I’d claim that any government having less than most of the votes in a general election but who were first past the post is illegitimate in a polity claiming to be democratic. The practice often, albeit not always, results in a minority government that most people didn’t vote for. In addition, the “opposition” is virtually pwerless so that the partisan first-past-the-posters serve only their own whims and those of their familiars.
And its a standing joke (a very dark one) that virtually no government formed in this way, other than perhaps that of Attlee, ever does what their manifesto for the election said they would do. Bare faced lies are the norm.
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We Blighters have lived in a compromised nation-state for decades, with only a very few occasions when politicians in power worked for everyone. When they did (Attlee again) the usual Tory tactic was to row back any good policies towards their fundamental strategic intent of taking matters back to their glorious C19th peak of exploitation of everyone and everything unto the death in one or another satanic mill.
They’re nearly there now, eh? Satanic mills, physical and metaphysical, are legion.
Rich_cb wrote:
They’re criminals. That’s a bit of a difference.Toryspiv effectively write the laws to suit themselves. Those laws that don’t suit or are unimportant to them in holding up their corrupt New Aristocracy edifice are ignored. Billions of pounds of taxpayer money is corruptly stolen but nothing happens. A few concerned old folk protest about the billions of taxpayer dosh subsidising the oil industry and new laws are writ to persecute them mercilessly.
Carspivs, meanwhile, maim and murder with gay abandon. Rapists are rife, especially within the police force. Toryspiv cronies steal billions.
In short, Toryspivs are criminals who’ve decriminalised themselves by employing their vast power to manipulate and corrupt the rule of law. The damage they’re doing is immense – so great that it probably going to end up killing us all in the next 20 or 30 years.
We’ll die of weather and oligarch.
Rich_cb wrote:
I’m not missing the point. You are. Throughout human history people have wanted an outgroup to hate.Here’s your problem in a nutshell, dear Rich – you assume that people who merely disagree with you or with people promoting damaging policies that you like are “hating”. The hating emotion is one generally felt by those totalitarian types I mentioned to you, based on their intolerance for anything not in their dogma. Opponents are all sub-human enemies.
Those of us who find your intolerance (and that of those you defend) intolerable are merely disagreeing with a stance that is damaging because it wants to destroy our fundamental political tradition of democracy. Most people dislike and disagree with (not hate) Toryspiv policies, not the Toryspivs themselves, who they tend to regard as just deranged.
Toryspiv want to gaol those who protest their damaging policies but not those lawbreakers who support them. They’re also happy to make policy that will kill their various scapegoats (immigrants, the poor, et al). One supporter has just called for the killing of the London mayor. (He regrets doing so, because he got told off, not because he’s changed his tiny mind)
Yet I and others who find Toryspivery damaging and best stopped hate no one. I don’t hate the Toryspivs who are so damaging to us all. Even their policies and various acts don’t invoke feelings of hatred in me but rather feelings of fear and loathing, since they seem to be policies that are well on the road to fascism.
You deny the current Tory party is far right, yet they have many of the markers:
Powerful and continuing faux nationalism.
Disdain for the recognition of human rights.
Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
Control and suborning of the mass media.
Obsession with national security and borders.
Corporate power is protected no matter their damages and crimes.
Unions and other power rivals are suppressed.
Disdain for intellectuals and the arts.
Obsession with crime and punishment – but not for “friends”.
Rampant cronyism and corruption.
Fraudulent elections (aka first past the post system).
Attempts to subvert and suborn other agencies with power such as the judiciary.
Distain for the rule of law except as a means of suppressing political rivals, scapegoats and pariahs – but not their “friends”.
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Face it – you approve of proto-fascists and hate their opponents out of a basic stance of intolerance. Your mind is unable to understand any other attitude so you assume opponents are haters just like yourself. Happily, ’tis not so.
Rich_cb wrote:
So the correct outgroup to demonise is Conservatives? People like to put other people in outgroups, that’s always been the case. The left like to think that placing conservatives in an outgroup is somehow different. It isn’t, it’s the exact same phenomenon with the exact same ugly sentiment underlying it. If it wasn’t for ‘group X’ then life in this country would be so much better…The Conservative Party, especially the far right version we have nowadays, have always been the very innest of in-groups. They’re quintissentially The Establishment and, just latley, The New Aristocracy. They have far, far more power and influence than any other group in our society and have suborned many previously neutral institutions such as the BBC, the police and a whole host of other infrastructure services that used to be public services but are now private profit makers serving just a few.
The problem with what’s often called “the right” but is actually better named as “the totalitarians” is that they love certitude, loyalty, a binary view of everything as black or white, good or bad, them or us, true or false, etc.. They are intolerant of anything not approved by their dogma, whatever it might be.
The dogmas are many and various but all have the aspect of intolerance with an associated avid desire to condemn and punish that which is different from the dogma specifications. They can be “left wing” as well as “right wing” although there are quite a few left wing political traditions (socialists) that are tolerant but not so many of the right that are so. (Certain kinds of benign monarchies, such as that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, are exceptions to the right>tight>totalitarian tendency).
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Those of us who prefer tolerance have this dilemma, identified by may political theorists and philosophers, as in Popper’s “Paradox of tolerance”:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
If the tolerance-inclined tolerate totalitarians, tolerance as a political and social option disappears to be replaced by some totalitarian alternative: communist, fascist, theocracy, absolute monarchy, kleptocracy, military dictatorship or whatever.
Tighty righties inclined to condemn all who are not identical to themselves have to be resisted somehow. Give them enough power and any resistance to them becomes futile then impossible.
Tighty righties also need to grasp (although they really struggle with the notion) that opposition to, and criticism of, their often highly illogical and damaging dogmas is not intolerance but only opposition and criticism, a normal dialogue of any tolerant and open society in which a true politics (compromises arranged between competing and different interests) are arranged and ordered via resilient and dynamic shared institutions and infrastructures that are argued about and changed to adapt to new circumstances, as needed by the public at large – everyone, not just a tiny favoured class of new aristo businesses and shareholders.
It’s the simple stuff of modern democratic politics. But not liked by dogmatic folk who crave Truth & Certainty about all things, to the point that they’ll warp reality to get them, no matter how much damage they do.
Overnight road closures in Gloucester ‘make thousands of residents hostages in their own home’More than a mile stretch of road will be closed overnight while road works are underway on the A430 Secunda Way in Hempsted
David Bucknell said: “We are now faced with over three weeks of Secunda Way being closed each night. With little or no provision for 4,000 residents who will be made hostages in their own homes by highways.
“Hostages”! “In their own homes”!! Who is holding them there and what ransomes are being demanded? I imagine it will be carloons, unable to go out to murder cyclists and pedestrians so seeing if they can get some dosh from their neighbours to buy an even bigger SUV or perhaps just a better child-killer bumper for the front of their surburban tank.
Stockholm syndrome is bound to occur. Many of the hostages will already be minor or proto carloons themselves.
Perhaps we should club together to buy these hostages some draughts or dominoes to pass the time? Can the paper lads get through to deliver their Daily Hysteria, Express Liar and other essential infotaintment-for-dafties? They must have something to do, the poor dears.
They might all be dead of immobility by now, or well on the way, glued into an armchair staring at the tele despite there being nothing on it worth watching. Forget the draughts and dominoes – send them all an exercise bike!
Thanks Cugel.When I press and hold any of the four shifting buttons, nothing happens. No lights come on or flash on the junction box. Should I be doing something differently here?
I have no idea how old the battery is. I don’t have one of those Shimano tube-plug tools either. My plan was to get this bike now and take it on holiday with me later this week, so I might have to get the LBS to take a look at it tomorrow. Starting to regret moving away from mechanical already!
If there’s no light when you press the brifter shifting parts, then the battery is either completely dead or there’s a bad connection somewhere. The red light on the charger coming on for 5 secs then no lght showing suggests a bad connection.
As you had the gears working previously, this also suggests its more likely that its a bad connection somewhere rather than a defunct battery. So, I’d get one of those Shimano connection tools toot sweet and check the wiring by disconnecting and reconnecting all the junctions, perhaps with a drop of anti-damp spray on each one.
It may be that you have a damaged wire. Have a careful look at all those that are exposed, especially where they might rub on something.
Another common fault is that the wire into something is getting pulled tight when the bike is ridden. For example, I have to wrap some insulation tape around the Di2 wire and the chainstay near where it enters the rear derailleur as otherwise it gets gradually pulled from somewhere in the frame and gradually goes tight. The insulation tape keeps the wire with some slack on the derailleur side so its not pulling at the connection.
To check the level of battery
To check the level of battery charge, you need to press and hold one of the brifter change-gear buttons/levers for at least half a second. Pressing the button on the junction box, as you seem to be doing, puts the changers in adjustment mode or (if pressed longer) reset mode. It doesn’t check the battery.
https://bettershifting.com/frequently-asked-questions/how-do-i-check-the-battery-charge-level/
It’s worth checking all the Di2 connections if the bike is second-hand but new to you. To make and break the connections you need to use the Shimano special tool as it’s very easy to mangle a connection if you try to make it or break it by hand and get the angle of insertion wrong or break a wire when yanking it out.
How old is the battery? They do eventually degrade then go phut, especially if they’ve been over-discharged, frozen for a long while or otherwise abused. Time and lots of charging cycles also degrades them.
One thing that improved massively over the years was the sealing on Shimano’s MTB hubs. The rear would always let in more filth on the freehub side. By the last few the rim would die before the front would need stripping.One thing that did annoy me was the move from the very sturdy 1/4 inch in the rear to the fiddly 3/16ths, and of course the need for a 14mm hex to replace the freehub. Plus I couldn’t adjust tightness with the spindle under tension with the fat pipe. Lighter and maybe stiffer but I saw more cons than pros.
Went Hope for the new front, sealeds have lasted a good 4 years of hard filthy commuting and riding.
Ha ha – I got a-one o’ them 14mm allen keys right at the bottom of the toolbox. Bearings and associated parts do seem mostly better now …. apart from the ones that ain’t. 🙂 I even like pressed-in BB bearings, me. On the other hand, one must possess special tools even more peculiar than a 14mm allen key.
I’m looking forward to the promised bearing nerd-fest. I’m so excited I have to go to the small room twice as often as usual! It might be me age and the 175Km up & doon the Welsh hills I done this week, mind.
This arternoon I took some jockey wheel apart for a clean/lube, just to get in the mood.
I have some ’70s Lambert hubs with cartridge bearings that run fine. Apart from this everything else of mine is cup and cone (Shimano, Zeus) that also run fine for the cycling I do; I’m probably not the best contributor for this one!Like you perhaps, I used cup & cone hubs in all sorts of wheels (and all sort of qualities) for decades. It’s a well-tried & tested design although, as well as needing good quality materials and detailed design aspects, the user needs to understand how they work to get them to run well and to keep them that way.
Shimano have only recently decided to forego cup & cone in some of their wheels in favour of the cartridge/sealed bearings.
A common user error, made by me for a few years until I leant better, is to apply too much or too little axial loading, both pre-loading with the lock nuts and/or the loading applied when tightening the quick release or the wheel nuts. It’s very easy to over-tighten and spend pedalling energy warming up and wearing the hub bearings rather than going down the road! Also easy to find you have a slack and wobbly wheel at a ride’s end, when the grease has settle down or migrated out of the bearing a bit.
Some cup & cone hubs were very well sealed from the elements whilst others were terrible. I still had, until recently, some wheels with Shimano 600 cup & cone bearings, protected by large rubber washers clasped over the hub ends. These have done many, many miles over nearly 40 years and only needed a grease top up once a decade, if that. They’re still going on someone else’s bike.
I also had a set of rather expensive Campag Croce D’Aune wheels with fancy deep rims et al, bought about 1988 I think. They had no weather protection at all and seemed to have ball bearings and races made of the softest steel available. If used in the wet and not taken apart and regreased within 30 minutes, they would rust like mad. And grit got in there very easily too.
They had a small hole with a circlip covering it in the centre of the hub axle, to pump grease in until it oozed from the bearings at each end. Doing this helped keep water out for a little while but also created a vast drag on the bearings unless ultra thin grease was used, for the few miles that it lasted before somehow evaporating (slowly running out the bearings on to the road, I suspect).
I admit that I prefer cartridge/sealed bearings these days. They too can have axial loading requirements but the better wheel makers seem to build in the necessary features to semi-automate this. Press the bearings fully and squarely into the hub with the central inner sleeve in place and the axial loads, from inside and outside the bearing, are set.
But some are not as well designed as that, I hear.
Do bicycles talk …. and to
Do bicycles talk …. and to one another!? I nivver knew. What do they discuss? Mine haven’t said a word to me – although they can make complaining noises if I don’t feed them grease, oil and attention.
“This one on me’s an eejit – he just missed jamming me front wheel in that drain cover with the slots goin’ the wrong way.”
“Cuh, that’s nuthin. Mine can’t change the gears without a clash-clatter and he’s pedallin’ at 51rpm. Me cranks are killin’ me.”
“Let’s throw them both in a ditch.”
Is that bicycle AI that’s got loose, then? A bicycle AI gizmo is surely The Next Big Thing.
Eee – If only Ah’d known this
Eee – If only Ah’d known this afore Ah went oot on the ride that turned me into a dried husk i’ the gutter ‘cos it were a bit warm ‘n Ah didn’t sup at summick wet! Too late now.
I did hear somewhere that you could sup yer owe wee-wee, in a sort of perpetual hydration machine fashion …. but it may just have been a-one o’ them Yorkshire jokes. Ben will know.
Mind, Ah might try kicking off (me clothes) before downing 500L, like Ben does. I used to do this about 11:30pm in Lancaster town centre after too many Pelicans in The Water Witch, in me younger days, but they take you off to a cold cell for the night with a copper’s helmet over yer bits.
You don’t get something for nothing you know!Ha ha – that’s the very definition of charity.
Some charities are trooly-so – all those doing stuff via the charity do so for others and for no reward or return other than the pleasure (and perhaps kudos) of doing so. If you “help” someone for pay, you’re just working …. in a business (HelpRus: £29 an hour; limited service; no guarantees).
This is the age when anything
This is the age when anything for sale is worth what you can get someone to pay for it. The notion of a “fair exchange” of £N for a certain amount of materials and the work to make it into a thing is very old hat.
This gives rise, sadly, to the immense advertsing and PR machines designed to persuade us that a particular thing is worth far more than we might have decided it was worth without the advert glamour-spells. Much of the adverts and PR are complete lies, as the so-called advertsing standards authority is rather a sham so the naughty liars get away with it.
For details of the general degrading effects of this way of establishing worth, price etc. in cycling stuff, see websites such as those of Hambini and Zero Friction Cycling. Both have discovered hugely expensive items that are complete dross; or less expensive items sold by the million that tell outright lies about what they can do but can’t.
On the other hand, some services retain a labour-price as the basis of their cost. That’s quite a good model – as long as the quality of the labour is not dross or lack of competance dressed up as expertise when it isn’t. The common Blighter term for that sort of price-raising spell is “cowboys”.
It would help if we went Teutonic and had many more hard & fast rules and laws about who can claim to have this or that skill. £25 per hour to fix my bike? Show me your certificate proving skill level and competance. No cert, no thanks.
Perhaps a worthy cause, but .
Perhaps a worthy cause, but ….
I’ve always found it s bit strange that people are asked to sponsor you for going out on an enjoyable bike ride. Also, if you believe in the value of the charity involved, why not just bung them some dosh yourself, direct. That’s what me and t’ladywife do.
It feels a bit like emotional blackmail to be asked to sponsor a bike ride enjoyer in support of a charity you may know nothing of and might not anyway want to support. Not so much when its by a website request but very awkward when its face to face.
In contributing to many charities, over the decades, I’ve often been dismayed to dicover that the rascals are not a charity but a business, with 95% going in salaries or “overheads” and the like to bureaucrats, PR reps, collection agencies, CEOs …. and 5% to those supposedly the beneficiaries of the charity. (Not saying this is the case here – I’ve no idea what they do or how). These days, I check most carefully the organisations purporting to be charities. So many just ain’t.