Bargain corner

Was in my local Aldi this morning and saw they had paddock stands reduced to £19.99. I'd been thinking of buying one as the Yamaha hasn't got a centre stand, so thought that I'd give one a try at that price.

Opened the box and this is what you get:

Two 'loops' (for different widths for front and rear use), two 'arms', rollers, height adjusters, two lifting ends, and some nuts and bolts. There's also some instructions.
It all goes together easily enough. It's fairly cheaply made, but seems robust enough. The flat lifting ends (top left of picture), are actually made of some plastic/nylon material, but seemOK. The forked lifting ends (right side of picture, below loop) are supposed to fit to the bottom of your forks and will fit the Yamaha reasonably, but not the Skorpion or the Honda.
Wheeled the Yamaha out, adjusted the height and width of the lifting ends, and the bike goes onto the stand very easily and safely.

Bike is very secure on the stand, but the Yamaha has a particular problem.

Due to the cool, racing style, 'banana' swing arm, the only place you can lift the bike from is below the spindle, which makes it impossible to remove!
I lifted the Skorpion just to show how you can postion the stand on a bike with a more sensible swing arm

Verdict: worth the money if you're only going to be using it occasionally. If you're likely to need to use a paddock stand more often, or have a heavy bike, it would probably be better (and safer) to buy a higher quality stand.
Changing between front and rear use requires removing two nuts and bolts, changing the loops, and refitting the bolts. As these stands are very cheap I'm seriously thinking of buying another one and keeping one for the front and one for the rear to avoid having to keep changing. I'll make some new lifting ends to suit the Yamaha swing arm and the Skorpion forks (The Honda is light enough to not need a stand), but I'm fairly happy with my purchase.

Also in Aldi were fabric motocyle jackets for £50. To be honest, I didn't think they were worth the money and people like Hein Gericke would have something better for the price. There were also some garish full face helmets reduced to £19.99. I imagine they pass some sort of safety test, but they were really shoddy and looked like they would fall apart fairly quickly.