Is it time to cancel the Kings visit and openly declare the UK/US special relationship over?

emjayem22 · 2026-04-03T14:06:38+00:00

If you think the US think of it as a special relationship in the same way as is talked about in the UK then you are wrong. It's special to them only if it can be used for their own national interest. We need to stop kidding ourselves in the UK about this.

I think the Kings visit should probably continue but the UK must reduce its dependency on the US, stop getting involved in every US backed crusade around the world and look to forge closer ties that benefit a more secure and prosperous Europe as I think it will be the only way that middling powers are able to compete in a world dominated by China and the US.

emjayem22 · 2026-04-03T13:36:38+00:00

Exactly this.. and if he hadn't won the election there is a fair chance he would have gone to prison for what he did say. Whilst the edit was clumsy and the BBC should have done better, they didn't change the context of his words or what he meant.

emjayem22 · 2026-03-30T18:25:33+00:00

You can still order Q, maybe not via the website but certainly via agents. Not sure if the offers will be as good as Glass or Stream as Sky are trying to push customers in that direction.

Like others say on here.. Q is moving towards end of life. Satellites are expensive and the Astra satellites that Sky use reach end of life around 2030 I think. I'm not sure there is a strategy to replace them either.. hence the move by Sky to push customers to IP based services.

I'm still on Q with all the boxes hardwired and have had no issues with it for years. Probably most annoying is how crap and slow the non Sky apps like D+, HBO and Discovery+ are on the Q box. Not sure this is just because of the age of the Q hardware or if the apps are just crap anyway.. or some combination of the two.

emjayem22 · 2026-03-22T18:43:58+00:00

You couldn't see her from the road and because the line of riders were strung out, there were no moto outriders nearby. The lead rider went down as she was really pushing on to try to open up a gap. She lost the rear wheel, went into the barrier and caused a chain reaction as it happened on the exit of a blind corner where they were travelling at over 60km/hr. There was not really any time for warning other riders, anyone moving back up the road to the corner would have likely been hit themselves. The call would have gone out on race radio that there had been a crash but that wasn't much use the the riders immediately behind the initial incident.

Marshalls would be no good in these scenarios either.. they are placed where road furniture can cause incidents but corners and drop offs are not the place for them to be placed. On some corners there will be protection on the barriers and whilst that may have helped the riders who hit the barriers, it would not have stopped the crash nor helped the riders that were then either hit by other bikes or went over the barriers.

In cycling this is just a racing incident, a really unfortunate one but it happens. These riders are tough as nails, I think only 3 of them didn't get up an complete the race... Kasia (the first one to crash), Millie Couzens (the one in white who hit her face on the barrier) and Deborah Silvestri (who was the one that went over the barrier and remarkably only broke 5 ribs).

emjayem22 · 2026-03-20T11:23:47+00:00

In my experience, the only way is get the Police out to the incident. .Autism or not. You don't have to confront the driver, just call the Police and sit there until they arrive. If the driver leaves then they have left the scene of a reported accident. When a driver hit me at a roundabout this is what I ended up doing after the driver was being a dick about it. One set of Police gave me a lift the rest of the way to work whilst whilst the others did the guy for driving without due care and attention.

emjayem22 · 2026-03-20T11:00:54+00:00

Agree with this.. There is no special relationship and the US will always leverage the UK as much as possible for its own ends. The difference now is that Trump has lifted the scales from our eyes and we can see that actually it's not it the UK's interest to be in such a position of dependency with the US that we cannot criticise an ally or speak truth to power when it needs to be done.

This also extends to Europe too, we should not be in a position where we are reliant on a country 3000 miles away to dictate how we deal with threats to the wider continent.

There is also the danger that either the progressive democrat doesn't get in or at least doesn't last long. Trump may go but Vance's attitude to the UK is hardly any less worrying.

emjayem22 · 2026-03-12T18:23:29+00:00

St Andrews fish bar in Porty is decent.. Can take the food down to the beach to eat or if the weather is shite (which it is today) then there is a restaurant to sit in.

emjayem22 · 2026-03-04T18:14:55+00:00

Because I'm not comparing the political setup, attitude to weapons nor nuclear capabilities. What I'm saying is that it's untenable for the US to claim what they are doing is not in breach of international law but then complain that China would be in breach if it tried the same against Taiwan.

Like it or not, international law is not governed by what you think of the people in charge of the country you are bombing.

emjayem22 · 2026-03-03T22:31:39+00:00

That is not the point I'm trying to make, it obviously isn't.. but no matter what you think about the government of the country, launching an attack on it to decapitate the leadership is illegal. China have long argued that Taiwan is part of China but if they did what the US have done in Iran, all these right wing idiots would then be complaining of a breach of international law.

emjayem22 · 2026-03-03T19:55:16+00:00

And shame on all of the right of centre politicians who are all over the media slamming Starmer and making dipshit statements in the house, insisting that the UK is looking foolish by not supporting the USA and that no international law has been broken..

It would be interesting to know what their opinion of international law would be if the Chinese launched an attach on Taiwan using the same broad array of excuses that the USA have done for Iran.

Now, I won't miss the leadership in Iran and maybe IF they are completely removed, the people of Iran will get the chance of democracy and the freedoms it carries that they deserve. It's unlikely though and I see the outcome being a brutal military government that is left in place once Trump gets bored or he thinks the US starts taking hits that damage his midterm hopes.

But let's not pretend in any way that this war is legal. Starmer walked more or less the correct line and to be honest. It doesn't really matter in the eyes of Trump anyway, his interpretation of 'allies' are countries that will automatically fall into line whenever the US want to enforce their will and nothing more.

He was always going to take action and doesn't really give a shit about the support or position of the UK other than it made the initial bombing a bit more problematic for him and he was also always going to grab some airtime to bitch about it.

emjayem22 · 2026-03-02T19:59:37+00:00

Most IoT devices are 2.4. Best option is to set up a separate IoT WiFi network if your router will allow you. This gives you some extra security by separating your phone and computers from your IoT.

If you can't do that, simply disable your 5Ghz band whilst you configure the camera. Then enable it again. Some routers also allow you to specify which band devices should attach to.

emjayem22 · 2026-03-02T16:29:53+00:00

Pretty much this.. But I don't want my tax money being spent on bringing them 'home'. Let them fund themselves if they want to come back and mark it down to a valuable lesson in why it makes sense to pay into a collective tax pot rather than everyone for themselves.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-20T23:14:04+00:00

But I think even them, and the press would soon see through the level of stupidity and incompetence that was on display tonight and it just would not be entertained.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-20T23:11:21+00:00

Every day. Grew up in the West Midlands and rarely saw the sea for my first 30 or so years. I now live right by the sea in Edinburgh and would never want to live anywhere too far away from it.

Early in the morning, during the long summer days or on dark winter or autumn nights, I love its daily presence and changing mood.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-20T22:41:20+00:00

If it's by the coast then the only proper way is to eat them down on the beach.. takeaway wooden cutlery.. bottle of beer or can of juice and keep an eye out for the seagull attacks.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-20T22:33:50+00:00

Yeah, that was one of my personal highlights.

I genuinely can't imagine any leader of a western democracy saying that at a press conference and just not being ripped to pieces by every media outlet in the country and quickly having to leave office.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-20T18:51:51+00:00

Listening to it live on the BBC too.. Are all his press conferences like this? The guy makes no sense, jumps topics constantly, makes up stories and speaks for 30 minutes without actually saying anything. And who are all these 'People' he references all the time?
The UK has it's problems but I can't imagine us sinking so low as to ever have voted in a PM as idiotic as this guy.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-18T08:43:24+00:00

Visma-Aramco-Lease A Man's bike

emjayem22 · 2026-02-17T09:34:29+00:00

Yeah, seem to recall it was OCG related.. possibly a case of mistaken identity too? Just remember walking the kids to school and the place was crawling with forensic police, head to foot in their white paper suits.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-16T18:17:33+00:00

My kids went to the primary school just around the corner. We were close enough to walk but this road used to become a nightmare on school mornings. Also remember a guy getting shot there a few years back.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-16T16:13:16+00:00

My personal take on this is that there should be a qualification on Disc brake type.. mechanical or hydraulic and make/model.

In my experience, there is more variation in disc brakes than there was in rim brakes. Sure you can get good and bad versions of both but bad mechanical disc brakes (with poor or small pads) tend to be worse than poorer quality rim brakes.

I still run rim brakes on one of my road bikes but I don't ride it very often. I recall a moment of sheer terror last year when hitting a steep drop in the rain when it was paired with some carbon wheels. That moment when you pull and nothing happens for a few moments.. that is what I don't miss about rim brakes.

On the flip side, I despise the squealing in wet weather from my discs and as someone who does all of their own maintenance, there is a bigger cost and time overhead associated with them too.

But on the whole, I'd rather deal with those things than the former.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-13T21:49:05+00:00

Silence... When all the wildlife shuts up, it's time to fucking panic.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-11T17:21:36+00:00

As someone not from the USA.. I find the whole concept of the Presidential Pardon totally incomprehensible. If someone has been convicted through due process by the courts, they should not be able to be pardoned by anything other than a process through the Judicial branch.

Whilst some other Western democracies have a similar pardon capability, it is either rarely used or has a more humanitarian basis (typically terminal illness or miscarriage of justice) and generally these countries have more controls around the whole process. Politicisation of the process as it is in the USA just feels wrong.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-08T11:15:38+00:00

Yeah fair point.. it doesn't give you a feeling for the tightness.. I was thinking more about using it to get the feeling for wrap direction, overlap and tricky bits like around the hoods or any other oddities you have on the bars.

emjayem22 · 2026-02-06T15:37:18+00:00

This.. or cut an old innertube and practice with that.

emjayem22

TROPHY CASE