At this rate, Labour is going to end up supporting AV just to get seats next election.

Wait, that’s not a bad outcome…

It’s a well-known tune.

“How much will it cost to do this internally?”
‘£50 million, and we’d need to commit to staff to maintain it. But then we’d own it, and it would be about as financially efficient as possible’
“OK, this big company says they can do a basic version for £49m, and with the first year of support for free”
‘That won’t even do half of it. And they’ll just ramp the cost up later’
“No, this is a good plan, we should use the free market to efficiently do these things”

The project then becomes £330m once the private company quotes up including all the essentials that weren’t in the original quote, but the wheels are already turning, so it happens

Carrots and sticks.
The carrots society expects are under-provided, so removal can’t be used as a persuader.
So we end up spending money on more sticks.

This was my query: Are these meetings butter-up luncheons?
Or simply a minister attending meetings that are part of their job.

I don’t understand the fuss.
When my family’s estate was threatened, we sold the eastern farm to that fellow from the club, and it all worked out swimmingly.
This is no different, we just need to pull up our bootstraps, and stop whinging about “chilling effects on journalism”.

Now please excuse me, mummy needs a brace of pheasants by lunchtime.

“This is good for the economy. Now here is a middle-aged white man explaining why it’s bad for Rachel Reaves”

Why does it feel like every UK govt.'s response to any struggling public good is “Well, there is a nice man here offering to buy it, and we don’t want to spend any money, so he’s going to have it”.

Sounds like an unviable business that is throwing worse loans after bad, and needs nationalising a decade ago.
But what do I know: I’m just a schmuck who’s water bill just went up by a third.

The monarch has power to do a lot of things. In practice, that power would get removed the instant they deviated from the script.

Sorry for the slow reply. I’m not sure if you’re even still trying to sell!
Yes, selling posts might be a little problematic.
As if we let one usual member who happens to be selling something to advertise, I’ll probably end up with a modqueue full of adverts from people running a drop-shipping operation, and people saying “but you let that guy do it”.

Lets maybe have a little trial: As you’ve got a sensible reason for selling, I wouldn’t object to a one-off post with details, your region, and maybe a link to whatever ebay sale you do.

I’ve heard Rever .co reccomended for bikers, and that has nav sharing.

Car wise, the closest I’ve used is Glympse, which lets you share a map with current location, planned route, and ETA.

OSMAnd (my preferred app) does some level of location sharing, but I don’t think it does navigation sharing.

I’ve been doing this for a few years now.

What I have learned that helps a lot for the garden not ending up completely mad:

• Mow at a higher height earlier in the year, but consistently.
  This allows the smaller shoots of grass to establish.
  Which in turn means that when you finally chop after May, you’re left with relatively even grass.
  Rather than chopping down fewer very long pieces of grass, and finding lots of under-grown gaps.

• Stop mowing the edges in April, and possibly pick one patch to leave un-mown until august. I normally do a corner.
  The next year, you’d never know.

• Try to ID weeds that start growing, and hand-remove if required. Myself, I try to keep the Bindweed and Virginia Creeper in check.
  I leave dandelions alone. There is another weed I’ve never got around to ID’ing, but I leave it alone now, and the bees love it.

• Keep them mower blades sharp. It helps prevent the grass getting ripped out of the ground when you do mow.

I will second OsmAnd. You need to use the paid version from the app store to use CarPlay, but personally I really like it, and use it regularly.

Offline maps are important to me, and it’ll happily route me even when there is no signal.

The only downside is, it’s only as detailed as OSM (which in all honesty, is often better than gmaps. Plus you can easily contribute things that are missing)

£10/y or £40/perpetual for the version that activates CarPlay (and gives you regular offline map downloads, as the free version only gives you 8 before you have to either pay or side load).

And honestly, I’m not that mad that it’s chargeable. They make a good free product based on OSM, I don’t mind chipping them a tenner.

In that vein, I’d be interested to see if someone could Inkscape it into an SVG with embedded text.

Though I have no idea how many vectors would be needed to make the image similar enough.

It amazes me that I was allowed to pass my test in a micra, then be fully qualified to drive everything up to a LWB van, or a range rover.

I found a right hand mirror on my bike sticking out actually did a lot to give me more space.
Someone I know fitted a big (plastic) spiky looking thing at the end of a handlebar, which served the same purpose.

I started looking into non-carplay/auto big-screen head units when I bought mine, and kinda hit a wall on it.
They’re either really old, and windows CE, or shitty android based ones from alibaba.

As much as I hate putting myself into a system that depends on my phone, I don’t hate androidauto/carplay based systems. They just kinda…work.

If you just want a basic head unit (single din), the name brands are, honestly, much of a muchness.
They all use very similar 4x50w (iirc, 22w rms) output amplifiers.
The only real options are number of pre-outs (for connecting subwoofers, or other amplifiers), and whether or not it has a CD drive.

Replace the cabin filter (10 minute job) with a carbon activated one. I find it makes a big difference on longer drives, otherwise my nose/throat are awful.
Don’t worry about the ticking sound the engine makes when it’s cold, that’s normal.
Check what the tyres are like (age from the DOT code, and tread).
When you’re feeling flush, I recommend getting all-season tyres, Goodyear Vector 4 have served me well.
Upgrading the speakers is not difficult, and makes a big difference. (At least under 50mph, lol). The door speakers need to be under a certain depth, or the windows won’t go down.
If you want CarPlay/Android auto, the fitting kit for a standard 2-din unit is about £25, and a half-decent unit is about £200 (Sony xav-3250).

Imo, it’s well worth getting some good cleaning supplies.
A good shampoo to get it clean (I like megiuars gold class), then a sealant to keep it clean longer (meguiars ultimate sealant wax, comes with applicators too).
Wash with the two bucket method, and a couple of microfibre mitts.

Get a dashcam as soon as you can reasonably afford one, and set it up.
I like the Viofo A129 duo, it’s basically invisible behind the mirror.
Halfords have this one on special if you don’t want to spend that much:

On the actual driving side, once you’ve had a bit of time getting used to driving, buy yourself a copy of Roadcraft, and have a good read through of the advanced techniques, particularly IPSGA, the Car Control system, and limit points.
Learn to drive defensively, and you’ll avoid a lot of sticky situations entirely, rather than having to suddenly do things.
Sometimes, you just have to let dickhead drivers be dickheads: You may be in the right, but if you crash you’re both in an accident.

With the right investment into production automation, and classifying energy generation as a national security factor, I could see us building our own at prices that make sense.
The real kicker I guess is going to be the supply of rare earths required.

On the plus side, you can often position your cup in the often un-mixed stream to get more syrup.

We’ll be sending Charlie round to give people a lecture on the importance of the arts, while munching on Duchy Original biscuits.