Bellend Sebastian

What's your budget? £160 or so will buy you a decent budget phone, a pay monthly SIM that will suit all but the heaviest users for about a tenner a month

Some fairly scary numbers in here about what you need to live on in retirement: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68222807

Oh no that's sad https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/laurence-fox-loses-libel-case-high-court-b2486600.html

I tell you what we need. A George Monbiot opinion piece from The Guardian on why he thinks people vote for Trump. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/29/donald-trump-americans-us-culture-republican It's interesting, if nothing else. If you run with the thinking it might explain all sorts of things

Everyone with a union flag in their social bio is getting their letter first, regardless of age

Would replica kits be more or less expensive if victory is achieved?

I find EE pretty good for coverage and I think their customer service is excellent when you can actually get through. I'm also well disposed to them at the minute as I've got full fibre broadband with them now which is cheaper than what I had before AND they've randomly given me back the infinite mobile data I used to enjoy except this time it's not a mistake. The only thing that annoys me is that three years into having 5G phones I've picked up a 5G signal for about 10 minutes in Martinshaw Woods near the motorway despite living in a supposedly strong 5G area, and they don't have a clue why this is

For anyone furious about that bloke being sent to a secure hospital indefinitely, my Missus has worked with a fair few people that have done spells in both those and prison, and apparently they always say that they would much rather be in the latter

"Check out my website, it's well f**king futile"

8 x 42. I read a few things that suggested that this was a bit of a "sweet spot" in terms of magnification, field of view, ease of holding steady etc. It's all a bit of a leap into the unknown with an online purchase as there's nowhere around here where you could actually try them or any alternatives

Mine must be sub entry level then, they're costing me £120. I went from never wanting a pair in my life to deciding I simply must have some after trying to look at the pesky waxwings that have been causing a stir amongst people that like this sort of thing round these parts. I've just discovered that the glorified shoe cupboard and understairs storage we want for our hallway is going to cost about two and a half grand so quite glad I skimped on the binoculars to be honest

You can spend 350 quid on them, easy. No, of course I haven't, but I spent over a hundred purely because we've got a cheap pair that are so crap there was no point in them even being manufactured. In other news, I can heartily recommend LED flexible strip lighting, which I put up at my lad's request in his room just after Christmas. That is, if you want to make a room look like an early 2000s idea of a high end night club and put on a light show that will interfere with your brain enough to stop you sleeping for hours. Can be Alexa/Google home activated as well, if that sort of thing is important to you. Seriously impressive though, even if you're not a 12 year old boy

Well they've got a roof prism, and are fully multi-coated and have BAK4 lenses which if you're into optics (which I wasn't until about 3 days ago) is some serious shizzle. I don't know what any of that stuff means

I'll tell you when I wear the pair I bought as replacements for my current ones in about four years' time

I've ordered some binoculars. Does that count? And yes, I will use them to look at birds. Great big, lovely birds

What we learn from threads like these is who we should kill and eat first for morale purposes in a survival situation

Not so much annoyed me but scared me: driving back from Birmingham yesterday evening. I'm used to a bit of buffeting when driving in the motorway when it's windy but this was like the car being shoved forcefully to the side by a giant hand without warning. There seemed to be far less HGVs than there usually are but a couple of times I could see their drivers having a right battle to keep control of them, they were snaking all over the shop. Fortunately most people were driving pretty carefully, but I was very glad to get home

That's NOT a bad thing! One of the best things you can do as part of your training is to occasionally just go to the biggest hill you can find and run up and down it, even if you can't manage that for long. I used to get it a lot in my first couple of years of running but then it stopped and has never come back, so it can be beaten I'm guessing the data set for rowing is smaller and more skewed to the serious participants. The running times look plausible to me, because I've known enough runners and been involved in enough events to have a certain amount of "data" in my head, but for any other discipline I wouldn't have a clue

Massage the heck out of your calves. I know that's not where it hurts but it did really help me

If you met someone in the pub that talked to you in the way that the Mail addresses its readers you'd leave, and I would say that's true of Daily Mail readers so why they accept this bollocks in print I've no idea. This, from a couple of days ago, was incredible:

I think for any "non runner", that's very good, because let's be honest most people cannot run 10k without stopping. I'm not sure where this site gets its data but as the figure for a "beginner" in your age bracket is about what you did and a good time for an "intermediate" runner in my age range (well old) enis eerily close to my PB, maybe it's a decent guide. https://runninglevel.com/running-times/10k-times I'd say that getting to a point where you can run 9 minute miles (so around 55-56 minutes for a 10k) is relatively easy and doesn't take loads of training if you're not in terrible shape. Going beyond this takes a bit more effort. I'd be careful not to overdo it. Sounds like you've got to 10k pretty quickly, so I'd keep your runs inside this distance for now - building up distance too quickly increases the risk of injury

I'm prepared to consider all undergarment options if they reduce the Mickey Drip risk because frankly that's one of my main challenges at the minute

I mean the uniforms can be quite flattering but nearly everything else about it is bad

U-Boats

Surprise jump in inflation in UK not helping UK either. I agree, it's not shaping up to be a calm year is it?