9 hours ago, jonathan.agnew said:

Dragged ex's 2013 kalkhoff tasman, bent rear wheel, grinding 8 speed ndxus igh and stone dead battery out under rubbish at back of garage after what must have been storage without attention since 2016 few weeks ago. Astonishingly battery took full charge, igh adjusted, found all gears, dragged my 90kgs up steep long hill without sagging at all after truing. So much for conventional wisdom that chronological ageing kills all batteries. And ex had penchant for slowly torturing it up hills in highest gear, not eactly easy life. My hunch is cell quality makes all difference, had cinese kit that sagged after 6 months before

They really must stuff less nitroglycerin into the newer chemistries.

Wondering how long my six year old cheapo generic Amazon 36V 19.2A LG MH1 celled battery will last, excellent with a lot of road use so far, including two bad collisions. Although I haven't measured cell group balance for a year or three, according to my Aneng AN8008 DMM immediately after a couple of hour's balance charge after the charger LED went green, voltage is 42.07V. One of the cell groups must be ever so slightly hot. Tested the AN8008 using a calibration board a few years ago, it was pretty accurate (thanks @thelarkbox for suggesting I buy it). No I won't be splurging on a Fluke.

Might get around to buying one of those capacity tester gizmos during an AliExpress sale.

When should I be worrying about dendrites? I'll just keep using the thing until some significant change occurs.

Edited Tuesday at 02:443 days by guerney

On 09/05/2026 at 08:10, Tony1951 said:

Of course Starmer is 'toast', but the party will do EXACTLY the wrong thing.

The rebels need to reach 81, they are in the mid 70s at present. BBC political journos were giving Starmer days yesterday to make an announcement of his departure after his speech, then when more rebels got in touch, days became hours and by last night, hours became minutes.
So this morning, they are waiting at the door of No10 since dawn hoping to catch the big news which didn't come.
The truth is PLP does not have in their ranks someone with more nous and experience than Starmer.

Jess Philips' resignation letter says all about the caliber of Labour ministers:

Jess Phillips: Safeguarding minister's resignation letter in full - BBC News

The Telegraph had a feature today, profiling what a government under PM Rayner or PM Streeting would look like. I read it and it wasn't very complimentary to both.

The BBC political journos are pushing for a fight but will they get it? I guess not.

...

1 hour ago, Woosh said:

Jess Philips' resignation letter says all about the caliber of Labour ministers:

Jess Phillips: Safeguarding minister's resignation letter in full - BBC News

The Telegraph had a feature today, profiling what a government under PM Rayner or PM Streeting would look like. I read it and it wasn't very complimentary to both.

The BBC political journos are pushing for a fight but will they get it? I guess not.

Did I ever tell you that from 1995 to about 2000, I was a member of the Labour Party?

I was not active in politics, but after seeing the decline of the Conservatives at the end of the Thatcher government, I thought we needed serious change and I was (sadly) impressed by Blair's flair, and flourish, and thought he would do the right things.

He didn't.

Pretty soon he came up with the ludicrous ambition to send 50% of school leavers to University - without ever considering what they ought to study to make the economy fly. Masses and masses of them went to study soft subjects and 'ologies', that benefited no one - particularly not them.

Then he started charging them fees. Over time, under different governments, these became massive.

I had always taken the view that a country which does not invest in the education and training of its young is heading for decline, ignorance and ineffectual uselessness in economic terms, and on the world stage.

Charging fees struck me as a terrible mistake.

Worse still though was the fact that the policy was to be driven purely by what the young desired to take up. I thought that government needed to plan what the nations's needs were - what skills and talents the economy required. It needed to set targets for the numbers of places it ought to provide to deliver those skills, and that knowledge, and let competition among students fill those places, so that only the best, and most hard working, took up those places. That was how it was when I was 18.

Disaster lay ahead. What happened was that universities opened their doors with a blank sheet, and ill-advised youngsters signed up in their hundreds of thousands, for courses that would benefit no one - not the individuals concerned, nor the economy at large.

Worse still - the policy actually devalued technical and industrial skills. There was no consideration that what we needed more of, was highly trained apprentices, so that companies such as Rolls Royce, BAE systems, and a host of other high value, real world enterprises, could find the right young people who could be brought on to become experts in growing, thriving, and profitable enterprises.

Of course companies such as the two that I mentioned, ran their own apprenticeships, but the numbers of talented young applying for such apprenticeships, collapsed across the manufacturing and industrial economy as a whole. This trend in the job aspirations of young people towards waste of time arts courses, just augmented the collapse of our manufacturing sector. We have a shortage of well qualified engineers, software developers and integrators of complex solutions, and at the same time, hordes of law graduates, psychology graduates, students of 'film studies', 'women's studies', forensic science (thousands more than can ever work in forensic science) and truly dreadful left wing grievance courses about 'the evils of empire', slavery', and other hobby horses of the hard left.

I 'went big' there on my objections to Blair and Labour's policy on higher education, but it was only one of many terrible errors he and Labour made.

Labour and I parted company pretty quickly. Our participation in the Iraq War, was a disaster brought on by Blair's hubris, and his deranged belief that God was guiding him. Then he made changes to our law and constitution, which have had awful consequences for our sovereignty, and for Parliament's ability to make law in the manifest interests of the people of this country.

The Human Rights Act (which must be repealed ASAP) prevents any parliament from making any law that is not fully in alignment with the rules and judicial decisions, made by a foreign court. No new law can even be proposed, unless it fits entirely under the heel of those foreign judges. That is what the Human Rights Act says.

Now - let me be clear - no one - and certainly not I, have any wish to deprive people of their human rights. The British in modern times, need no lessons in having respect for human rights. We lost half a million people in WW2, and bankrupted the country in defending human rights against murderous and truly 'fascist' regimes from Europe. I don't need to say more about the period when Europe was almost entirely under the jack boot of the German Reich, but we also saw other, rather less violent, but proper 'fascist' regimes, in Greece, until the 1970s, and in Spain, and in Portugal until about the same time.

When I say 'fascist', I mean proper fascist regimes. I am not using the term in the way the modern hard left accuse any moderate conservative person, of being a fascist'. They are ignorant oafs, and only deserve to be ignored. They could not define fascism if you asked them to do so. They don't know what it is.

We don't need a court in Stasbourg to ensure that the UK does not become a fascist state. We know about decency, and respect, and judging people on their character and behaviour, and not on colour, or religion, or gender, or age. It is what people do and what they believe in which makes them good or bad. We will still have human rights when the human rights act is repealed, and rewritten by a future government in OUR PARLIAMENT without regard to foreign courts and johnny come lately democracies.

Gone will be the days when our elected governments are upbraided and denounced by a European court and told that it is illegal under European law to deport a child abusing foreigner, who has organised the rape of young girls on an industrial scale. We will no longer be told that he must stay in Britain 'because it goes against his right to family life to send him back to where he came from.'

This ramble - and it is a ramble, just points out why I consider you are right to question the competence of government ministers in general. It does not only apply to Labour.

We saw the disastrous incompetence and dishonesty of many Conservative ones - AND their contempt for the electorate when they promised a commitment to certain policies and then unforgivably went the opposite way.

Suella Braverman when Home Secretary went to Sunac and demanded he do what he had promised and what he had stood for at the election - to cut inward migration to tens of thousands. He refused to support her and without his support, she was unable to do her job. She was soon fired by Sunac after she wrote an article pointing out that the Metropolitan Police were operating a biased policy against protests by people who were not left wing in their opinions.

This country is probably in the worst state I have seen it since Labour was in charge in 1975 when inflation hit 28%.

Edited Tuesday at 20:492 days by Tony1951

4 hours ago, Tony1951 said:

This country is probably in the worst state I have seen it since Labour was in charge in 1975 when inflation hit 28% per annum.

So what are the alternatives? Let the Epstein 's class billionaires like Trump run the country like a business?

Gilt Yields now at their highest since 1998.

During the Truss debacle - credited by Labour as a complete disaster they rose to 4.7%.

Borrowing costs in the UK soared. Labour accused her of, 'Breaking the UK economy'.

Yesterday, under Labour, they rose to 5.02%.

Thirty year Gilts are even higher.

Since ten percent of government spending is paying interest on borrowing - THIS MATTERS.

So what now?

The UK under Labour has to pay more to borrow money than the Greeks.

13 hours ago, Woosh said:

So what are the alternatives? Let the Epstein 's class billionaires like Trump run the country like a business?

I am attempting, unsuccessfully to understand how you think.

What possible connection to what I have said, leads you to think about Trump and Epstein and billionaires?

I wrote about the failings of past Labour and Conservative governments - their delusions, their grotesque errors and their failure to pay attention to the problems and views of ordinary people. How do you conclude that this means I want sexually perverted billionaires and a deranged lunatic American President to take over?

There are no such people running for government in the UK. There are no policies in manifestos which are remotely connected to such people or their views.

The post you wrote is rather like that old chestnut, 'When did you stop beating your wife?'

46 minutes ago, Tony1951 said:

Gilt Yields now at their highest since 1998.

During the Truss debacle - credited by Labour as a complete disaster they rose to 4.7%.

Borrowing costs in the UK soared. Labour accused her of, 'Breaking the UK economy'.

Yesterday, under Labour, they rose to 5.02%.

Thirty year Gilts are even higher.

Since ten percent of government spending is paying interest on borrowing - THIS MATTERS.

So what now?

that shows the ignorance of those MPs, their unions and the BBC political journos who put their personal ambition before the interest of the country. Instabilities cost us all. Either they don't care or they ignore the consequences. I hope they are exposed for their ambitions.

Parties have their own laws regarding leadership contests. There is no need for the BBC to get excited about dissent.

UK Treasury yields have dropped a little today since Starmer PM-ship seems to survive another day. Wes Streeting may make his move tomorrow. Along side him, there are also Yvette Cooper and Ed Miliband. Streeting is known for being naive, Cooper for her lack of charisma and you already know I am not a fan of Ed. If you think Starmer is bad, those 3 are worse. As for Rayner, just imagine how she would answer questions on behalf of the UK on the world stage.
I can understand that they get frustrated because Starmer woulkdn't want to borrow and spend more on welfare in view of high borrowing cost - but would they if they were PM? After covid, governments have much less discrditionary money to spend. If you want to spend more on welfare, you will have to get more people to take up jobs, increase low paid salaries to reduce welfare support, take some money from the richest fortunes. All of those measures have adverse consequences. What Labour should do is come clean on the economic consequences of brexit and come clean about what they'll do to lessen their impact.

1 hour ago, Tony1951 said:

What possible connection to what I have said, leads you to think about Trump and Epstein and billionaires?

I answered the point you made. You wrote this:

18 hours ago, Tony1951 said:

This country is probably in the worst state I have seen it since Labour was in charge in 1975 when inflation hit 28% per annum.

You said this country is in the worst state since 1975.
In France, we always thought then that the English was the sick man of Europe. They won the war and lost the peace so to speak.

So what would you do? If you vote for Reform, you'll have a British Trump, friendly to the billionaires business and media owners, let them make government policies and get even richer than they already are.

The point about Starmer is he's working for long term solutions. Nobody likes it because it's hard work and because we don't want more immigration, you'll need more Brits to take up job vacancies.

You guys are just so Naiive!

7 hours ago, Woosh said:

I answered the point you made. You wrote this:

18 hours ago, Tony1951 said:

This country is probably in the worst state I have seen it since Labour was in charge in 1975 when inflation hit 28% per annum.

You said this country is in the worst state since 1975.
In France, we always thought then that the English was the sick man of Europe. They won the war and lost the peace so to speak.

So what would you do? If you vote for Reform, you'll have a British Trump, friendly to the billionaires business and media owners, let them make government policies and get even richer than they already are.

The point about Starmer is he's working for long term solutions. Nobody likes it because it's hard work and because we don't want more immigration, you'll need more Brits to take up job vacancies.

The suggestion that Farage and Reform are some sort of analogue of Trump is just daft.

Trump is a deranged, narcissist, and a megalomaniac, who is probably suffering from some form of dementia. His whole life has seen him spoiled and pandered to, by people who are afraid to argue with him. He is nothing like the leader of Reform and in any case, Farage could never have the unfettered power that Trump has. The USA is quite exceptional in allowing the degree of personal power that it does its president. Generally, they are rational people and take advice. There are numerous instances of past presidents actually deliberately seeking out challenging, alternative viewpoints, just to ensure that the right decision could be made. Trump of course, will have none of this, and has surrounded himself with pandering lickspittles, who simply flatter him, and do as he says. No British PM could ever have that much unchallenged power. In that, he is like Putin, who will not tolerate questioning of his deranged agenda. His team lie to him, disguising the failure of his policy.

You suggest that Farage is like Trump.

How exactly?

He was born into a middle-class household and made money in commodity trading. I don't understand how anyone could make the comparison that you did. The two men are quite unalike in background and personality.

Edited Wednesday at 19:241 day by Tony1951

12 minutes ago, D8veh said:

You guys are just so Naiive!

Who?

Why?

How?

12 minutes ago, Tony1951 said:

Who?

Why?

How?

for argument's sake, youre both repeating mainstream narratives that are profoundly discredited. problem with farage is that he's a commodity trader. when he's not paying tribute to late ian watkins. he is, as far as i can tell, only about money, much like trump

https://metro.co.uk/video/nigel-farage-pays-tribute-pedophile-ian-watkins-falling-cameo-prank-3587359/

problem with starmer everybodys' strong suspicion he's the kind of guy who knew all one needed to know about mandelson before appointing him.

Edited Wednesday at 20:181 day by jonathan.agnew

sa

4 hours ago, Tony1951 said:

Who?

Why?

How?

Who - You and Woosh.

Why - Must be restricted vision or insufficient brain development. Unfortunately, yours are both terminal cases, so no point in looking for a cure. As Einstein said words to the effect that you can't solve a problem with the thinking that caused it.

How - One night your parents had a bit to drink and came home in high spirits. Do you need the rest?

6 hours ago, D8veh said:

sa

Who - You and Woosh.

Why - Must be restricted vision or insufficient brain development. Unfortunately, yours are both terminal cases, so no point in looking for a cure. As Einstein said words to the effect that you can't solve a problem with the thinking that caused it.

How - One night your parents had a bit to drink and came home in high spirits. Do you need the rest?

Blimey, and i thought i was bit harsh. To be fair, were all congenital side effects of nefarious nookie between marginally sentient bags of mutating genes.

11 hours ago, jonathan.agnew said:

problem with starmer everybodys' strong suspicion he's the kind of guy who knew all one needed to know about mandelson before appointing him.

Starmer is too clever for his own good, use Mandelson and discard him when he became toxic.

Labour voters see that and don't like it.

Perhaps they shoot their own foot.

7 hours ago, D8veh said:

sa

Who - You and Woosh.

Why - Must be restricted vision or insufficient brain development. Unfortunately, yours are both terminal cases, so no point in looking for a cure. As Einstein said words to the effect that you can't solve a problem with the thinking that caused it.

How - One night your parents had a bit to drink and came home in high spirits. Do you need the rest?

11 hours ago, Woosh said:

Starmer is too clever for his own good, use Mandelson and discard him when he became toxic.

Labour voters see that and don't like it.

Perhaps they shoot their own foot.

voters evidently see more than that. Brings to mind funny comment voter made re newly elected reform councillor who is also gay porn star ("don't care about the porn star business, it's the fact that he's supporting reform that's disgusting")

https://metro.co.uk/2026/05/14/newly-elected-reform-councillor-a-gay-porn-star-28366770/

18 hours ago, Tony1951 said:

so, let me get this straight. d8aveh is really saneagle&shut down threads that rattle his cage. gripping stuff. whodathunk this inocuous little corner of the www would have its own playground/lord of the flies dynamics, pecking order, bullying

Neil deGrasse Tyson - How to Greet an Alien with “Take Me to Your Leader”

2 hours ago, jonathan.agnew said:

so, let me get this straight. d8aveh is really saneagle&shut down threads that rattle his cage. gripping stuff. whodathunk this inocuous little corner of the www would have its own playground/lord of the flies dynamics, pecking order, bullying

Dave and flecc have done more for this forum than almost all of us.

1 hour ago, Woosh said:

Dave and flecc have done more for this forum than almost all of us.

Now you see Whoosh, this deference (after being insulted) rather underscores my point (about a pecking order). On the plus side, this is my final post, dont have much use for illiberal playgrounds or small time napoleons.

39 minutes ago, jonathan.agnew said:

Now you see Whoosh, this deference (after being insulted) rather underscores my point (about a pecking order). On the plus side, this is my final post, dont have much use for illiberal playgrounds or small time napoleons.

You should see beyond his sometimes acerbic blah blah which has absolutely not swayed me. Dave helped me in practical ways more than once. In the early days, he posted his own tests of my first crank drive bike. He made 'tough love' comments about my kits. I did home work after reading them here. I made money with gold and silver after reading his comments. I don't do things his way but he forced me to do better.It's difficult to find someone more highly competent on e-bikes to talk to.

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by Woosh

An interesting result for those who like to imagine little green men with technological civilisations....

Universe Today

We've Been Listening for Ten Years. Here's What We Heard

For ten years, astronomers at UCLA have been pointing one of the world's most powerful radio telescopes at the stars and listening. Not for pulsars or gas clouds, or the hiss of the cosmic microwave b

The big problem with SETI and listening to the radio spectrum, as a proof that we are not the only intelligent species in the universe, is that if an alien civilisation had pointed its own radio detection apparatus at the solar system and the Earth, even as recently as 1890, they would have had the same result that UCLA has had - no signals.

Their conclusion, had they used our SETI criteria, would have been, 'There is no intelligent life there around that star.'

What?

The Victorians were not an intelligent civilisation? The Romans? Ancient Egypt?

Mankind would have been undetectable using the SETI approach, really right up until about the 1920s with the advent of Long Wave radio stations, or perhaps later when high power transmissions from television stations got going and became commonplace.

From the 1950s to the analogue switch off, the local TV transmitter around here, was blasting out half a megawatt of TV signal, pretty much 24/7, or at least from 6AM to midnight. There were around 80 of major transmitters operating in the UK around the year 2000, 45 of them at above 200 kilowatts.

But that kind of radio emission was only operating at those levels for about 50 years and already, digital transmissions are at far lower energy and would consequently be much harder to find from far away. Will we still be using UHF to transmit TV in ten years time? I suspect not. WE will all be streaming TV on cable or low power 5g or some such method.

So - I think the underlying methodology of SETI is interesting, but flawed.

It assumes too much about what alien civilisations, if they exist at all, would do. It depends on a kind of technology that humans have only very recently adopted and operated and one which is likely to have a brief shelf life.

The SETI approach is doomed to failure, absent some very lucky break, because the designers backed an outside chance that aliens would be just like we were in the twentieth century.

Intelligent apes of our species have been here for maybe a quarter of a million years, and there were sophisticated civilisations for at least the last ten thousand years.

A distant SETI programme looking this way, would have discovered none of them.

1 hour ago, jonathan.agnew said:

Now you see Whoosh, this deference (after being insulted) rather underscores my point (about a pecking order). On the plus side, this is my final post, dont have much use for illiberal playgrounds or small time napoleons.

I would not consider the remarks insulting though they are ad hominem and not addressing the issues he objects to. It would be far better to comment about what he thinks we got wrong.

Woosh is correct in saying that Dave has contributed massively to the forum, because he is an acknowledged expert in analysing and fixing the problems with electric bikes, and he is also generous with his time, responding, usually patiently, to the often ill-described problems people bring to the forum. I have said so many times.

Since he has felt able to freely express his criticism of me - and rudely - though I don't really care about that, and actually found the post funny, I will say this:

Dave is an expert in electric bikes and some other things, but seems to think he is also an expert in most everything else too, and he patently is not. He is prone to believing in a variety of conspiracy theories and has often engaged with me in a quite assertive manner on topics he is uninformed about, such as radio communications and medical matters such as vaccines. To be fair, he is not alone in that, and we can forgive him for it. He is stubborn and opinionated, but so am I.

I quite like him, though when he strays from his own area of expertise, I rarely agree with anything he says.