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It may be a good thing to see how Reform run councils before the next general election. People always think that anyone can do better that the current bunch in Westminster until their party takes the reins.

Trump has until May 1st to stop the war in Iran. On that day, Congress will have to expressly authorise him to continue.

The Iran war has already cost a packet. At least 50 billion dollars for ammunitions, damaged equipment, fuels, wages. 200 billion extra funding for the military this year, 500 billion extra for 2027. There is little chance that Congress will vote for that.

Apparently the UAE has asked Trump for money to bail them out, otherwise, they will ask Xi. Hopefully, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait will do same. One silver lining of this war if Iran manages to get some war reparations like charging toll on hormuz, the world will have to come up with a scheme to force those responsible to pay reparation to civilian victims of collateral damages. That will surely deter any future attempts to start a new war.

Edited Thursday at 20:432 days by Woosh

On 23/04/2026 at 10:52, Woosh said:

It may be a good thing to see how Reform run councils before the next general election. People always think that anyone can do better that the current bunch in Westminster until their party takes the reins.

It won't tell us a lot about what REFORM would want to do actually.

Why?

Because the vast majority of what local government MUST DO is dictated by central government.

"In 2024/25, local authorities in England are spending an estimated 68.5% of their total revenue budget on mandated, demand-led services, primarily adult and children’s social care. This represents a significant increase from 53% in 2009/10, illustrating that statutory, high-cost services are increasingly crowding out discretionary local spending."

Edited Friday at 11:431 day by Tony1951

Remember Phil Shiner - the now disbarred crooked solicitor who paid Iraqi touts to go about in Iraq digging up accusations against British soldiers after the three hour Battle of Danny Boy. Soldiers, sent from the UK to maintain order in Iraq, by Blair's Labour government, were accused of having executed terrorist captives from the Iran backed and funded Mardi Army. In fact, the soldiers had been ambushed and attacked.

You probably know that Shiner's money grubbing pursuit of men resulted not only an inquiry which cost the taxpayer millions, but proved ultimately, that the claims were entirely false and that Shiner had pursued them recklessly offering money for accusations. Shiner is now disgraced and disbarred.

Well - here is the new revelation. Lord Hermer - the present Attorney General, and ennobled peer of the realm, put there by his chum Sir Keir Starmer, was up to his neck in advising Shiner how to pursue these cases.

Starmer and Hermer were colleagues at the same legal chambers at the time of the battle.

The Telegraph have the details of Hermer's involvement in pursuing this disgraceful legal case against the now exonerated soldiers.

Just another example of Starmer's' 'chum-ocracy' and his appalling judgement. Starmer boosted Mandelson's career because he was a Labour chum, and he boosted Hermer to the role of the most powerful legal position in the land based on the fact that they worked in the same legal practice Doughty Street Chambers in London during the mid 2000s.

Edited Friday at 19:421 day by Tony1951

I recently had a dinner at a pub in Durham called, 'The Honest Lawyer'.

The name sort of suggests this is an exception, doesn't it, else why mention it at all.

I do take that view myself. They seldom seem to add much to the smoothness of transactions and business, rather nit picking and causing massive rise in costs. I know for sure that a family member dealing with a property transaction lost several thousands in costs over incompetence and in my view deliberate malfeasance in creating problems which did not exist, but rapidly inflated the costs that the 'Dishonest lawyer' could claim.

Edited Friday at 16:061 day by Tony1951

1 hour ago, Tony1951 said:

I recently had a dinner at a pub in Durham called, 'The Honest Lawyer'.

The name sort of suggests this is an exception, doesn't it, else why mention it at all.

It's not an exception, that name is much more likely a joke, everyone knows there is no such thing!

appropos of nothing (really, but it is the anything thread), crooked laywers made me think of fatigue limit, didnt realise until recently aluminium doesnt have it, only steel), now the grin of racing downhill at 40 plus mph on a birdy (instead of a brompton) is tempered by thinking about all those microcracks waiting to faceplant me. Guess hydroforming aluminium must really be a lot cheaper than welding chromoly.

1 hour ago, jonathan.agnew said:

appropos of nothing (really, but it is the anything thread), crooked laywers made me think of fatigue limit, didnt realise until recently aluminium doesnt have it, only steel), now the grin of racing downhill at 40 plus mph on a birdy (instead of a brompton) is tempered by thinking about all those microcracks waiting to faceplant me. Guess hydroforming aluminium must really be a lot cheaper than welding chromoly.

Who wants to live forever anyway? But your post did get me searching for my bike's exact frame in steel again, sadly it appears to be an unobtanium alloy. I've spotted it fleetingly once or twice on ebay over the past six years, always too damned far away with no delivery offered. Some even had 135mm wide rear dropouts, which might be of interest to kinky hub drive types to slide one easily into with groans of ecstasy or whatever.

Edited Friday at 22:111 day by guerney

What kind of bike is it?

Titanium is lovely and has fatgue limit (if only lightspeed made folders). I just dont get on with brompton geometry, titanium or not, am too europhile for dahon, an old birdy is just great (as folders go), except for fear of liquid lunches forever instead of not living forever

8 hours ago, jonathan.agnew said:

appropos of nothing (really, but it is the anything thread), crooked laywers made me think of fatigue limit, didnt realise until recently aluminium doesnt have it, only steel), now the grin of racing downhill at 40 plus mph on a birdy (instead of a brompton) is tempered by thinking about all those microcracks waiting to faceplant me. Guess hydroforming aluminium must really be a lot cheaper than welding chromoly.

Forty miles an hour on a Brompton?

It must be a steep hill you are thinking of.

Also - mine is so twitchy that I think my own trembling would bring on a fatal death-weave.

I do like my Brompton when I get time to ride it in Newcastle, but it probably doesn't get to go faster than about 17 miles an hour. After that - only the mad, or suicidal are onboard.

Edited yesterday at 05:451 day by Tony1951

Bromptons were engineered for the tiny fold, and the fact that it rides reasonably well was probably a pleasant surprise.

I'd be quite interested to test ride the twenty inch version. I expect its handling is a lot less frisky.

An electric, twenty inch version might be very nice, but there is no way I would pay the silly money that they cost.

My amazingly cheap 20 inch Argos bike cured me of paying the £3500 price. For that, I got a 6 moth old Royal Enfield Classic 350 with 63 miles on the clock and in perfect showroom condition. There is absolutely no comparison between the user value of that and an electric Brompton.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/quBoeRhptfKKD1G98

23 minutes ago, Tony1951 said:

For that, I got a 6 moth old Royal Enfield Classic 350 with 63 miles on the clock and in perfect showroom condition. There is absolutely no comparison between the user value of that and an electric Brompton.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/quBoeRhptfKKD1G98

Nice one, even got the 2 small side lights on the nacelle, love it! How are they these days for oil leaks, Ive seen a few twins around (Interceptors I think?) that had no oil under them when parked! Back in the day I was very much a BSA man (DBD34 Gold Star with lots of Eddie Dow cafe racer stuff on it) but I did own two British made Enfields a 250 Crusader and a Meteor Minor (500 Twin), very very solid unburstable bikes but oh both pissed out oil from everywhere.

Edited 22 hours ago22 hr by JoeCrow

6 hours ago, jonathan.agnew said:

What kind of bike is it?

Titanium is lovely and has fatgue limit (if only lightspeed made folders). I just dont get on with brompton geometry, titanium or not, am too europhile for dahon, an old birdy is just great (as folders go), except for fear of liquid lunches forever instead of not living forever

Nothing special, just an old Dahon Helips P8 from 2006 - it was the only bike I had to hand for conversion during lockdown when I wanted to avoid occupying the same space and breathing the same air as coughing zombie hordes in metal boxes on wheels. The steel framed Dahon impulse has the same central triangular frame design with the reinforcement bar above the hinge, the SRAM DualDrive version reportedly has 135mm rear dropouts, the others don't. That form factor lasted a long time for Dahon, was a feature of their heavy on the magnesium and titanium (parts, not frame. Frame was a limited edition aluminium alloy) ultralight 7.6kg SL anniversary edition. Those are even rarer and too rich for my blood.

Titanium moulton:

https://www.moultonbuzz.com/2022/06/one-off-titanium-moulton/

6 hours ago, jonathan.agnew said:

fear of liquid lunches forever instead of not living forever

My downhill jawguarded helmet has saved my head and jaw at least twice so far - it's a good thing that the recently deceased @soundwave talked me into buying one. Also keeps my ears warm in winter, has good airflow for summer, a GoPro Hero 7 Black flight recorder is permanently fixed to the jawguard, in case I need to sue someone for their house post-collision. Can't have too many houses.

2 hours ago, Tony1951 said:

I do like my Brompton when I get time to ride it in Newcastle, but it probably doesn't get to go faster than about 17 miles an hour. After that - only the mad, or suicidal are onboard.

Really? How crap. That's completely put me off. My bike prefers going fast, rock solid at 40mph+. Rides almost like a real bike at high speeds. Twitchiness when going slow took a little getting used to.

Edited 20 hours ago20 hr by guerney

3 hours ago, JoeCrow said:

Nice one, even got the 2 small side lights on the nacelle, love it! How are they these days for oil leaks, Ive seen a few twins around (Interceptors I think?) that had no oil under them when parked! Back in the day I was very much a BSA man (DBD34 Gold Star with lots of Eddie Dow cafe racer stuff on it) but I did own two British made Enfields a 250 Crusader and a Meteor Minor (500 Twin), very very solid unburstable bikes but oh both pissed out oil from everywhere.

I had BSAs back at the beginning of the seventies, but not that esoteric stuff you had. Mine were a ten year old c15, two really, because I picked up a spare one 6 years younger, for £5 as a non runner, and I cannibalised that one as I gradually ruined the other one. In the end, there was so much of the 1966 bike on my 1960 frame, that I swapped the frames and sold it as a 1966 bike which it was. It was the very opposite end of the BSA spectrum to your God Star. I also had an A10 Gold Flash combination for about 18 months, but by the end of 1973, I had a Morris Minor 850 car and I sold the two wheelers.

As for the new Royal Enfields. They are as you likely know, now an Indian company, owned by Eicher, and the new bikes have modern engines which are designed to hark back to the original pedigree, mostly because the Indians loved the old ones. In reality they are modern, overhead cam engines with tight cases, no oil leaks, good lubrication systems, and in the case of the singles, like mine, they have balance shafts which keep them smooth, but leave just enough nostalgic vibes and thump thump characteristics in the exhaust note to let you think you might be riding one of the old 1948, long stroke singles that they made for about fifty years continually. You can still buy those ones if you look. They don't cost a lot and there were millions of them made. Royal Enfield in India made a million bikes last year I think.

https://www.royalenfield.com/uk/en/home/

Review:

Edited 20 hours ago20 hr by Tony1951

4 hours ago, Tony1951 said:

Bromptons were engineered for the tiny fold, and the fact that it rides reasonably well was probably a pleasant surprise.

I'd be quite interested to test ride the twenty inch version. I expect its handling is a lot less frisky.

An electric, twenty inch version might be very nice, but there is no way I would pay the silly money that they cost.

My amazingly cheap 20 inch Argos bike cured me of paying the £3500 price. For that, I got a 6 moth old Royal Enfield Classic 350 with 63 miles on the clock and in perfect showroom condition. There is absolutely no comparison between the user value of that and an electric Brompton.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/quBoeRhptfKKD1G98

Bizarrely Brompton's been struggling financially since covid,

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/brompton-reports-gbp2m-loss-and-drop-in-sales-in-year-of-balanced-outcomes

Dont get it (must have eyewatering profit margins), but wouldnt mind trying 20 either

2 hours ago, guerney said:

Nothing special, just an old Dahon Helips P8 from 2006 - it was the only bike I had to hand for conversion during lockdown when I wanted to avoid occupying the same space and breathing the same air as coughing zombie hordes in metal boxes on wheels. The steel framed Dahon impulse has the same central triangular frame design with the reinforcement bar above the hinge, the SRAM DualDrive version reportedly has 135mm rear dropouts, the others don't. That form factor lasted a long time for Dahon, was a feature of their heavy on the magnesium and titanium (parts, not frame. Frame was a limited edition aluminium alloy) ultralight 7.6kg SL anniversary edition. Those are even rarer and too rich for my blood.

Titanium moulton:

https://www.moultonbuzz.com/2022/06/one-off-titanium-moulton/

My downhill jawguarded helmet has saved my head and jaw at least twice so far - it's a good thing that the recently deceased @soundwave talked me into buying one. Also keeps my ears warm in winter, has good airflow for summer, a GoPro Hero 7 Black flight recorder is permanently fixed to the jawguard, in case I need to sue someone for their house post-collision. Can't have too many houses.

Really? How crap. That's completely put me off. My bike prefers going fast, rock solid at 40mph+. Rides almost like a real bike at high speeds. Twitchiness when going slow took a little getting used to.

Coinscidentally have sram dualdrive on the old birdy - love it, light, almost rohloff range, largely cheap components you could replace anywhere in world.

Yonks ago had dahon espresso - light & surpisingly fast for folder, so i whacked big apples on and gave it a hundred plus miles a week commuting, at which it promptly disintegrated. But it was good while it lasted. Tbe birdy's good, but i was overtaken by chatting lycra wearing middle aged blokes on cheap racers while going as fast as possible on cafe run minutes ago. Cheap ebay titanium racer beckons i think.

Snag with full face helmet in my pretend gentrified neck of the overpriced woods is that the local crack dealer could confuse me with competition

Edited 19 hours ago19 hr by jonathan.agnew

4 minutes ago, jonathan.agnew said:

Bizarrely Brompton's been struggling financially since covid,

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/brompton-reports-gbp2m-loss-and-drop-in-sales-in-year-of-balanced-outcomes

Dont get it (must have eyewatering profit margins), but wouldnt mind trying 20 either

The article says that the turnover fell by 1% and sales fell by 7.5%, so the prices have gone up as have the costs.

I expect most of that is the same problem that has afflicted much of UK business - they've been 'Raynered' and 'Reevesed'.

Wages were shoved up, NI was shoved up, and if you take on a worker, you pretty much can't get rid of them from day one, no matter how dreadful they turned out to be (short of being an absolute beast who justifies a gross misconduct dismissal.

If you hammer businesses like that - and I only mentioned some of the cost raising issues that were imposed by Labour, you shouldn't be surprised if they end up struggling or failing altogether. This has been especially an issue in the hospitality sector.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/_rDXwUohj4c

Who can still think that Trump is not totally irrational, completely bonkers and probably suffering from some kind of psychotic dementia.

Worse still - in his complete insanity, he has been empowered by his position to surround himself with evil fixers - henchmen really, like Hegseth.

The whole of the administration is packed with amoral yes men who will stop at nothing to keep on doing what the lunatic wants.

Earlier there were people here who defended Trump. I wonder if they are having second thoughts now.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Tony1951

47 minutes ago, Tony1951 said:

Who can still think that Trump is not totally irrational, completely bonkers and probably suffering from some kind of psychotic dementia.

Worse still - in his complete insanity, he has been empowered by his position to surround himself with evil fixers - henchmen really, like Hegseth.

The whole of the administration is packed with amoral yes men who will stop at nothing to keep on doing what the lunatic wants.

Earlier there were people here who defended Trump. I wonder if they are having second thoughts now.

Voters will have to learn from this. It's not like they didn't know the man before they voted for him in 2024.

For me, the danger is if you voted for someone who thinks laws don't apply to POTUS then there is the risk that the new POTUS really think he is the law and becomes a dictator.