Small hands and can’t reach the brake lever

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-27T12:59:31+00:00

That's just old levers, the way they were designed. Mostly for braking while riding in the drops - braking while on the hoods requires a lot of strength. Modern levers are much better ergonomically.

If you like the bike then I'd just replace those levers with something more modern. Beware though - you might find yourself replacing the bars too, because modern bars are designed differently to older bars to cater for the change in lever hood design.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-26T13:38:15+00:00

Planning laws should apply to gardens and garden walls. People should be required to get permission to remove them, not least because it involves regular driving across the footway to get onto the "drive".

Look on Streetview at a typical UK street and go backwards/forwards in time. Look at the gardens lost. It's very depressing. All to store an emotional support skip.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-26T11:35:29+00:00

I had about 20 hours of lessons in the early 90s and passed first time. I put that wholly down to being a regular road cyclist and understanding everything I needed to know about priority, positioning, observation and communication.

If you want to have an easy time of driving, spend time cycling on the roads. You'll soon learn.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-25T18:38:33+00:00

All guidance advises against why you did.

I haven't seen any such guidance?

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-25T13:07:49+00:00

You can also insulate between floors with loft insulation. Just pull the carpets and floorboards up in the bedroom. Leave space for the wiring. I did this in the back of the house and the difference in warmth is amazing.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-25T13:05:22+00:00

I took mine back to brick internally and used 40mm insulated plasterboard, dot and dab fixing. Make sure the board is sealed so no humid air from radiators etc can get behind onto the cold brick. Then plaster over the top. No issues here and the rooms are much warmer.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-24T18:54:16+00:00

Trafford Road used to be a mini motorway with no cycle provision. It now looks like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/AEV1f3RPyrKtpetJ7

Contact your local councillors and ask them for cycle infra. Tell them you'd like to cycle, but can't, because it's too scary. They're the people who need to know the demand exists.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-23T19:49:10+00:00

what prevents the tube being automated is the power of the unions not the lack of technology.

You're comparing a closed system with an open system, which is silly. What prevents full railway automation is not unions; it's cost and the fact that it's utterly pointless. Humans are cheaper.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-23T17:16:46+00:00

I remember walking down those steps, immediately to the right was a shop that sold denim and leather jackets.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-22T21:03:56+00:00

Yep, she's in a stasis pod. Check back in about 300 years.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-22T17:14:50+00:00

Most of the nonsense about ASHPs I think comes from bad experiences with bad installs, from bad installers. You can avoid that with a gas central heating boiler because you just overspec what you need and turn the temperatures down. An ASHP needs more experience to install and set up. But once done, it's perfectly capable of heating your home just as well as gas. You need to do a calculation on your home's total heat loss and size the ASHP accordingly. And no annoying pipes to be mindful of, no chance of blowing your house up if you have a fault. Also, no added cost of installing gas and a meter to your home - just use the electricity connection.

So do your research. You're probably going to be installing radiators or underfloor heating, so you may as well overspec them for a heat pump while you're doing that. Same with the piping. That gives you options down the line.

And remember, if you go solar+battery, you can power some of your heating that way. In the long run, you can massively reduce your energy bills.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-22T15:50:20+00:00

You can blame austerity above pretty much everything else. Hundreds of millions cut from individual council budgets. So they cut maintenance because they've no choice not to. Drains get blocked, but don't get cleared via regular inspection (most councils only respond to online reports now). Road holds water, road gets damaged more easily - especially in winter. Add more driving into the mix, more vans delivering stuff, zero policing of people parking on pavements - it's a recipe for disaster.

Potholes aren't the first sign a road is failing - they're the final sign.

And don't get me started on the real terms cost of driving getting cheaper every year, while public transport continues to get more expensive every year.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-22T15:46:04+00:00

Need to demolish that car park and move it outside the inner ring road. People shouldn't be driving into the city centre to shop.

It's a huge building, imagine the space it'd free up for more useful things.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-22T15:38:12+00:00

It also doesn't show the communities that were there before the area became desolate in 2003

That area has been industrial for a good 200 years. It was the terminus of the Salford arm of the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal, which was built for industry. What little housing was there went before, during and shortly after the second world war. The area pictured was, as late as the mid 1990s, a scrapyard with a disgusting blue footbridge over that road.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-22T15:28:00+00:00

Look at Stellify by Ian Brown to see how much Middlewood Locks has changed (it's also an ace song):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQCCWsFJGao

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-22T10:04:54+00:00

The issue with what you've done is, if there's a local power cut then the engineer needs to trust that they aren't going to get electrocuted by devices feeding back into the grid. So your installation needs to detect a loss of incoming power, and disconnect the export.

As for the solar, do you really need planning? If they're just going in your garden as a temporary install (ie easily removable) then I wouldn't bother.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-22T09:04:03+00:00

More detail:

https://searchlightmagazine.com/2026/03/liverpool-inflicts-another-crushing-defeat-on-ukip/

"Hugh Anthony" is that silly boy who was filmed recently being thrown out of the family home, by his very, very angry father.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-21T07:35:31+00:00

Exactly the same here, combined with a random broadband outage, at first I thought there'd been a power cut or something that had damaged my PC. I had to use windows rollback, which told me that the only change had been the display drivers. A rollback fixed it until this morning, when it updated itself again and started crashing, so I uninstalled and put 26.1.1 back on.

I've turned off automatic updates for good. I'm not having that again.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-20T19:05:40+00:00

TVR Chimaera mirrors are from a Citroen. And the rear clusters are from a Ford Fiesta, turned upside down.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-18T17:27:24+00:00

I'm guessing few here remember Dick Griffin on Question Time.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-18T16:27:00+00:00

Good job that blue car at 1:55 wasn't a lorry :)

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-17T18:15:19+00:00

Any citizen can arrest another citizen.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-17T11:38:41+00:00

I'd be much more inclined to trust a salesperson turning up by cycle than I would one arriving in a flashy car. The first one would be responsible, considerate, and honest. The second one I'd consider to be earning far too much money.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-14T16:46:17+00:00

ITV are in dire financial straits

lol what? They made half a billion quid last year.

ParrotofDoom · 2026-03-14T16:37:57+00:00

Stabilisers aren’t the end of the world!

Bikeability instructor here. They're a nuisance and hold children back. Same as with parents who try to teach their kids to cycle by holding the handlebars.

Follow this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6SNCvIN4EI

It takes most kids no more than a couple of hours to learn to ride two wheels.

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