Paul

same here, I'm glad I'm not alone

Not sure what all the hullabaloo is about, their property, their terms. If you don't like them go elsewhere. Simple as. As CC says it's good to see the fee is refundable against drinks rather than just food as it is in so many places.

as this boat has been found perhaps it is time to amend the title?

I think we're gonna need a bigger sofa.

careful Jeff, attempting to bring a note of levity to the situation can be harmful to your health! I thought it was funny. I guess there are those who find something to smile about, even in adversity, and those who enjoy being miserable. Make some room behind the sofa for me too please.

Spot on Bikertov, that is just what they should have done, OR left the cars in their on track order for the last lap. Very much it is, as is often the case, the precise wording and interpretation of them and how the rules were applied. Initially race control advised that lapped cars would not be allowed to overtake, this was displayed to teams on the timing screen and shown on the TV coverage Next Christian Horner was heard arguing with Michael Masi the race director who advised Horner that he was busy dealing with clearing the track, however the argument continued. Regulation 48.12 states that: If the clerk of the course considers it safe to do so, and the message "LAPPED CARS MAY NOW OVERTAKE" has been sent to all Competitors via the official messaging system, any cars that have been lapped by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car. What happened next was that Masi displayed a message only for those cars between Hamilton and Verstappen to pass, then a further message saying safety car ending. Regulation 48.12 goes on to say: Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap. There are two issues Mercedes are disputing here, that the last lapped car meaning all those lapped cars behind Verstappen were not allowed to overtake, there being nothing in the rules to allow some cars to overtake and that rather than ending the safety car at the end of the following lap they ended it at the end of the same lap on which lapped cars had overtaken, contrary to rule 48.12. Hopefully that answers your question Meantime, it was not that the rule was "changed" but, not for the first time this season a rule was not applied correctly. In dismissing Mercedes appeal Masi advised the team that once the "safety car ending" message has been displayed then regulation 48.13 obliges race control to end the safety car at the end of that lap. This is 48.13 in it's entirety When the clerk of the course decides it is safe to call in the safety car the message "SAFETY CAR IN THIS LAP" will be sent to all Competitors via the official messaging system and the car's orange lights will be extinguished. This will be the signal to the Competitors and drivers that it will be entering the pit lane at the end of that lap. At this point the first car in line behind the safety car may dictate the pace and, if necessary, fall more than ten car lengths behind it. In order to avoid the likelihood of accidents before the safety car returns to the pits, from the point at which the lights on the car are turned out drivers must proceed at a pace which involves no erratic acceleration or braking nor any other manoeuvre which is likely to endanger other drivers or impede the restart. As the safety car is approaching the pit entry the SC boards will be withdrawn and, other than on the last lap of the sprint qualifying session or the race, as the leader approaches the Line the yellow flags will be withdrawn and a green flag and/or green light panel will be displayed at the Line. Nowhere in that text does it oblige race control to end the safety car, in fact there have been numerous cases in the past, some quite recent where an on track incident has led to the "safety car in this lap" message being withdrawn and the safety car period extended. I am not a barrister, I am not qualified to determine legal argument but I have no doubt this will go before those that are, firstly at the FIA and then the CAS if still not resolved. Whatever my qualifications, or rather lack of them the wording seems quite clear to me, but you make up your own mind. In my eyes this word title is a farce, it's hollow. A statistic in the history book but totally without merit of any kind. It was not won, but awarded by the powers that be.

and hear his race director advise why it was not a good idea, and explain this more fully afterwards. It often happens that a driver wants to stop, or sometimes not want to stop when instructed but the driver does not have access to the full tactical picture, gaps, traffic etc. The pit wall will make the best decision they can given far more data than the driver has. Mercedes have not always got the tactics right this season but today they were spot on. Sadly your assessment of the turn six incident is also flawed. actually, no he didn't. At no point around that corner was either driver on the racing line but Hamilton was clearly closer to it. The evidence is here if you would like to look at it properly. The first image shows the entry to the corner with Hamilton clearly ahead. The racing line can be seen as a slightly lighter line on the track about two cars width outside of Hamilton who is moving across to defend the inside line. Verstappen is making a perfectly valid attempt to overtake on the inside. Image 2 show the cars on the apex, Hamilton has made the corner, he is turning it quite normally having left racing room on the apex for Verstappen who has not made the corner, you will see he has out braked himself and still heading straight on. I have zoomed this in to help you. Image three shows the result of Verstappen's error. Hamilton has had to turn out of the corner to avoid contact with the car inside him which has missed the corner. The final image shows the result of Verstappen's mistake, he just manages to maintain the track himself but has forced Hamilton off track on to the paint. A driver is required by the regulations to leave a car's width at all times until he has fully completed the overtake, clearly here Verstappen has not done so, more likely simply because he can't rather than a deliberate attempt to force Hamilton off. As Hamilton led prior to the incident then they were allowed to continue. Had Hamilton not managed to retain the lead then almost certainly Verstappen would have been penalized for forcing an opponent off track. Hopefully that has put you right on the incident.

to clarify a number of issues some more casual observers might be a little confused about. The incident on lap one did not require Hamilton to surrender the lead to Verstappen as he did not gain an advantage during the manoeuvre, he led the race prior to it, and he did not leave the track intentionally, he was forced to do so to avoid a collision with a car moving across on him, the sporting regulations are quite clear that in this case the driver does not need to concede a place. Once the virtual and subsequent full safety cars were employed Mercedes were in a no win position, they could not stop to change tyres, as the leading team if they had stopped then Verstappen would not have stopped and gained track position. The decision not to stop under the earlier virtual safety car was proving to be quite correct, Verstappen was not catching Hamilton anything like quickly enough to win the race until the crash which deployed the full safety car five laps from the end. Again Mercedes could not risk stopping Hamilton and allowing Verstappen to pass him at a time when it was by no means certain there would be another racing lap. Red Bull by comparison had nothing to lose and understandably rolled the dice. Mercedes would have done the same if the situations were reversed. Sorry scrumpy but your assessment of the pit strategy is totally wrong. The issue which may well haunt the FIA and see this rumble on in the courts for months to come is the manner in which the race was restarted. The rules say that lapped cars CAN be allowed to overtake, effectively unlap themselves but it does not say they must. Race control decided they would not clear the lapped cars meaning there were a number of lapped cars between Hamilton, leading the race and Verstappen who was second. Red Bull contested that decision and suddenly it was changed and ONLY the lapped cars between Hamilton and Verstappen were instructed to pass, clearing the way for Verstappen to pass Hamilton and win the title. There was no way given the difference in tyre compound and wear that Hamilton could defend the lead. The issue is that the regulations, and I have read them again before posting make no provision for SOME lapped cars to be cleared and not others. If all lapped cars had been told to clear the leader this would have needed another lap of safety car to achieve and the race would have ended behind it. This will be Mercedes argument in court, that the race control acted outside the regulations. Had the race restarted with the lapped cars still in place Verstappen might still have won the race, but also we will never know. Whatever the outcome in the courts the massive damage is to formula 1 itself. A huge wedge of distrust has been driven between the FIA and it's major team, between the FIA and it's (non Dutch) fans. I wonder if Liberty Media realise what harm has been done.

perhaps rather than ask if 2022 will be better than 2021, we should be asking "what can we do to make it better?"

I could not agree more with ExSurveyor, that track is not fit for Formula 1 racing. It is just the type of event that Liberty Media swore they would move away from when they took over the sport. It had little to do with motor racing, from the organiser's stand point at least. Like the other Grands Prix in that part of the world it is all about prestige, international acceptance and big business. The fact that there are cars driving around a track is hardly even secondary and that is why we got that absolute joke. If Liberty Media have one iota of integrity then they will not sanction any return to Saudi Arabia until a safe racing environment can be assured. Sadly, it is becoming more apparent to me that they don't, that actually they are more controlling and manipulative even than the regime which went before, headed by Bernie Ecclestone. As for the race the best thing we can say is no one died, and on this occasion that is not a throw away remark, not some meaningless idiom. Despite Verstappen's best efforts Hamilton won the race. Sadly those "best efforts" were not confined to getting from lights to flag as quickly as possible but included a liberal sprinkling of what is becoming very questionable driving standards. To be blunt he is rapidly turning into a cheat, one which the governing body the FIA will not take in hand due to the unhealthy control that Helmut Marko and Dietrich Mateschitz seem able to exert over the sport with their threats of leaving F1 if decisions don't go their way and talk of forming a break away series. Formula 1 and the FIA have a long a chequered history of "surprising" decisions, of rulings apparently not equally applied to different competitors. For many years it was joked that FIA stood for "Ferrari International Assistance" such was the favouritism that marque seemed to enjoy in any decision making, especially of the disciplinary type. Now it seems to be Red Bull who are gaining that benefit. The decision not penalise Verstappen for forcing Hamilton off track in Brazil was without doubt the most bizarre I have seen in my fifty years of watching Formula 1. It was wrong, blatantly corrupt and to make things worse race control covered by the decision with pathetic reasoning that does not even abide by their own written rules. I just hope that we can see a good final race shoot out to decide the champion but with Max knowing that if Lewis does not finish then he will be champion I have grave concerns. I am also extremely uncomfortable knowing that Verstappen goes into the race with three team mates, whilst Hamilton has only one, and that a team mate who knows this will be his last race for Mercedes ahead of what has become an increasingly acrimonious split and the only thing I think Hamilton can rely on is his own brilliance.

thanks, that's certainly food for thought. I upgraded my laptop with a 240gb SSD some time ago. It has two sata HDD enclosures so the other runs a 1tb HDD which I use to store media and for a restore partition. I had thought about doing the same with Jim's desktop but might instead put a 1tb SSD in my laptop to run everything then keep the HDD as a back up drive. Then I can reuse the SSD that comes out of my laptop as a start up drive for Jim. The mobo has a list of supported processors on the website, so I can swap out his i3 3220 for an i5 2500k or an i7 2600k or 2700k. The i5 is often to be found for under £20 and using the cpubenchmark seems to offer 95% or more of the performance of the i7 which are notably more expensive, plus the i5 will run with the existing cooler whilst the i7 would mean a cooler swap too. If that website is to be believed the i5 quad core at 3300ghz is far superior to his current i3

I'm thinking of upgrading my son's desktop PC (again), but wonder if anyone with a greater understanding of these things than I have can tell me is it worth it? In short, will upgrades have enough effect to be worthwhile? It's an HP desktop used predominantly for minecraft, roblox etc but can be slow to boot. I'm thinking of upgrading the CPU from Intel Core i3 3220 (LGA1155 socket 0) to an early version i5 or i7 which are compatible and adding an SSD for the boot partition. This can be done for about £50 for the i5, a bit more for the i7. I have already upgraded the power supply (500w), ram (8gb DDR3) and graphics (nVidia gtx 560) for him over the years.

such extravagance, do you not dry them and refill them?

I tried that once, bought an "artisan" loaf, a kilo of carrots, a chicken and 2 cabbages and it cost me sixty quid. I barely had enough cash left to fill the range rover with diesel.

Have you tried googling? It's quick and easy and will enlighten you fully. Even the NT website now carries a warning about them. We have a big issue with them at our local country park, they are like seagulls on steroids and seem to have no fear of people.

I'm not sure that's the right way around? LH was adamant that staying out was the correct call, the team were equally adamant he should come in. Mercedes have not got all of their strategy decisions right recently, in fact in the last couple of years since the death of Niki Lauda there has been more than one occasion where it seemed at the time that the call being made was just plain wrong, and so it was on Sunday. It's easy to be wise with the gift of hindsight but even at the time the decision to pit Hamilton for new intermediate tyres felt wrong. It was determined by data of course, but not just actual data, a good degree of extrapolation is involved - guesswork to you and me. I wonder how much the loss of Lauda's steadying influence, his sense of race craft and feel for the situation at hand is being missed in the MB garage. Computers and statistics seem to have total control now and sometimes they lie to you. Lauda used to be the man to spot that, I wonder who, if anyone does that now? When I used to race saloon cars and single make series if a pit stop was not mandated you always weighed the potential gain versus the cost. In Sunday's scenario the scale was tipped strongly to the side of cost. After the race Toto Wolf claimed that the change was necessary as Hamilton would be caught anyway. Really? The times prior to Hamilton's stop didn't not bear that out. Leclerc was not catching anything like quickly enough to close the gap by the end of the race and he himself was being caught (and was eventually passed) by Perez. Mercedes did have the data on the tyre to know it could last the race distance from the set Hamilton used for 50 laps last year at the same event. The decision not to stop earlier was fair enough. Everyone expected a dry line to appear, in fact it was doing so well before the end of the race but there were too many wet areas on track still for slicks to become an option. Hamilton's only chance of winning the race was to be the one driver who stopped just as the slick window opened. Sadly it never did but he was driving a fine rearguard to protect what he had, until the pit stop. We will never know how it might have played out if Hamilton had not stopped but I strongly believe he would have hung on to finish third. The pit stop condemned him to fifth, and with the early cycle deg and graining the new inters were suffering he was lucky not to lose more places. It robbed him f the chance to at least try and defend the position(s) on track.

The Suez Crisis could relate to both the 50's and 70's shortages, both were caused by the then ongoing Arab-Israeli wars, though the term Suez Crisis is more commonly associated with the 1956/7 shortages. I'm glad to say that I am not old enough to remember the first of those, but certainly can the second and the one big difference I notice this time is the attitude. Very interesting to read floydraser's post which suggest perhaps attitudes are not as different as I might have believed. I don't do much social media now, facebook is the only one I use and that increasingly sparingly. I'm afraid it is increasingly a platform for the dissemination of hatred and vitriol or simply a demonstration of what a self centered, egocentric bunch of good for nothing layabouts that many in this country have become. I do subscribe to a couple of "spotted" groups, or at least did until this morning but have become increasingly disenchanted with them. When first created they were very useful and carried lots of helpful community posts, such as "set of keys found in whatever street and handed in at the post office" or "can anyone recommend a good window cleaner" but sadly these have been swamped by people firing abuse at each other. The latest has come with the fuel crisis, and everyone stating their claims as to why they should have fuel ahead of everyone else. If I hear the phrase "key worker" one more time I swear I am going to erupt. So many people have weaseled there way in to "key worker" classification it would be easier and quicker to identify those of us who are not (and proud not to be) "key workers". We are treated to post after post stating "I'm a key worker, I don't have time to queue for fuel". I work 11 hours a day as an internet technician making sure your broadband stays up so everyone can work from home. I doubt you work longer yet I am can find time to queue for fuel, so can you. A lady I know very well in the village who tells everyone that will listen that she is a "key worker". She works one day a week from home as an administrator for a local care provider checking bills and receipts are correct before they go off to the accountants. She enjoys a blue light card with the discounts that affords. Throughout the pandemic she has used it to avoid queues at supermarkets. In my book a key worker is a Doctor, Nurse or someone who drives something with a blue light on it. The rest of us are all mucking in as best we can doing whatever we do to keep the country going. I appreciate that is an old fashioned outlook now. The worst I have seen to date is "the petrol station in the village has put petrol up 5p a litre, I simply can't afford all these increases. Milk has gone up too and they blame the cost of delivery, I have to buy lots of milk because my little Chardonnay won't drink anything else. Prices are going up my my universal credit is going down this month" ....... sent from my Samsung Galaxy Zip3 5G ...... Simply hitting the like button to the lady who replied "If you can afford a £1000+ for a mobile phone 5p on a litre f fuel should be nothing to you, and if "Chardonnay" is thirsty give her water like we used to drink. She'll start drinking it when she realises there is nothing else." Needless to say I am no longer member of either group!

One of the issues for haulage companies since Brexit is that unscrupulous employers are finding it more difficult, if not impossible to engage continental drivers at rates well below the minimum wage by classing them as self employed and paying piece rates, no holiday or sick pay, no pension contributions. I spent two years working for a logistics company driving 3.5t vans and we had a steady string of eastern european Class 1 drivers come to us to drive vans, who had been earning as little as £3 an hour working as "self employed" drivers for big, well known haulage companies.

that would be a valid argument if the UK economy was behind that of similar countries, but actually it is not which clearly demonstrates that the UK economy is not suffering dramatically because of Brexit. Of course it will have some impact, but we expected that, didn't we?

The biggest issue is 6kg bottles, used by caravans and motor homes, this has then fed down to the smaller sizes. Larger bottles tend to be OK as these will not usually fit in caravan lockers. You can find 6kg bottles on the likes of fleabay et al, and I have seen them sell in excess of £200 empty. There are a number of refillable gas bottles, safefill, gaslight, gasit, and gaslow to name a few and these tend to retail between £150 - £200 for the 6 - 11kg sizes but you stand more chance of buying a unicorn at present, I haven't seen one of these in stock anywhere for months. Again they crop up on ebay but beware if buying one, they hae a finite life span depending on the make of 10 or 12 years after which they need retesting and re-certification which is not cheap. Many on ebay are coming to the end of their life. Calor say they can exchange existing bottles at their depots but are not offering new contracts to people without a bottle.

Sadly, no longer. I can fully understand the reluctance to employ a "boom or bust" spending policy but I do wonder what is happening to the finances at Norwich, where is all the money going? I'm not a Norwich fan, you probably know that but have always had a soft spot for them because of my affinity with Norfolk so hopefully I can raise this from a balanced perspective? In 2015/16 Norwich finished 19th, relegated from the prem and received 67.1m in 2016/17 they received a "parachute" payment (for recently relegated clubs) of 40.9m in 2017/18 they received a "parachute" payment (for recently relegated clubs) of 34m In 2020 the Canaries finished 20th and last in the Premier League and received a payment from the Premier League of £94.5m, an increase of 87.4m from the 7.1m they received from the Football League the previous season. During that same time they have made a nett profit from player transfers of £42.3m The club declares no debt other than a 0.25m shareholder loan from Delia, so it can''t be that. The 2020/21 accounts as published by the EDP suggest an income of just under £120m, with 75% of that spent on the wage bill. That is ludicrous. By comparison Liverpool's current wage bill is around £130m, Arsenal £99m, Spurs less than £80m and Leicester City under £55m. Look at the other two promoted teams last year, Watford have a wage bill of £30m and Brentford just £13m. So Norwich have a wage bill of £90m, I'd like to know who is getting all of that. You are dead right Heron, but it has nothing to do with the fixture list.

South is easy. With the demise of the Locks it has to be Ferry House at Surlingham by some distance, North I would have to decide between The Bridge Inn, Acle, The Recruiting Sergeant or The Nelson's Head though I have not been to the latter recently. As for most visited then The Bridge Inn and Ferry House, I go to the places I like most. Being as we are land based visitors now and not tethered to those places accessible by water an honourable mention must also go to the Sailor's Home at Kessingland and the Three Horseshoes at North Cove, both favoured watering holes. Precisely, just as that pretentious place with the glass front will always be the Woods End Tavern, though sadly those days have gone.

not a fan of puff pastry sausage rolls, has to be flaky for me. If you're buying then you can't get much better than Greggs though the frozen ones available via a well known frozen food supermarket are not the same as those you buy in the shops.