I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
1950-60s urban planners and 1950-60s architects, you will be amazed to hear
On the upside the grotesque destruction of Euston Arch (ordained by then PM Harold Macmillan, I believe) was so egregious and contentious it birthed the Preservation movements, which in turn led to Covent Garden being saved, and Whitehall, etc
The New Brutalism was invented to provide a good living for people who knew nothing about architecture along with the builders and surveyors on their payroll.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
The guidelines are interesting. There's certainly an argument that swiping towards the cyclist meets "where death was caused in the course of an unlawful act which involved an intention by the offender to cause harm (or recklessness as to whether harm would be caused) that falls between high and lower culpability"
The lower category D requires (only relevant part except possibly mental disorder/learning disability, which the judge argues against) "no intention by the offender to cause any harm and no obvious risk of anything more than minor harm"
There's clearly a danger of more than minor harm in causing a cyclist to swerve or fall over adjacent to a busy road (the emphasis on 'and' is in the guidelines, not added by me) so you fail cat D even before considering intention.
It looks to me like recklessness as to whether harm would be caused, as set out in C.
There's also apparently some weight put on a witness statement, in addition to what we saw. The bit about both having apparently coming to a halt is not apparent from the video footage.
I'm still a bit ambivalent about the sentencing, but I can't really argue with the logic.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
The booking hall at Euston was quite something, thouigh the station itself was pretty crappy, yes.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
The guidelines are interesting. There's certainly an argument that swiping towards the cyclist meets "where death was caused in the course of an unlawful act which involved an intention by the offender to cause harm (or recklessness as to whether harm would be caused) that falls between high and lower culpability"
The lower category D requires (only relevant part expect possibly mental disorder/learning disability, which the judge argues against) "no intention by the offender to cause any harm and no obvious risk of anything more than minor harm"
There's clearly a danger of more than minor harm in causing a cyclist to swerve or fall over adjacent to a busy road (the emphasis on 'and' is in the guidelines, not added by me) so you fail cat D even before considering intention.
It looks to me like recklessness as to whether harm would be caused, as set out in C.
There's also apparently some weight put on a witness statement, in addition to what we saw. The bit about both having apparently coming to a halt is not apparent from the video footage.
I'm still a bit ambivalent about the sentencing, but I can't really argue with the logic.
We still have this issue though that he said it was a shared space when according to reports the council and police were unsure whether it was - meaning it wasn't.
Whatever the result, or the logic, we still can't get round that.
So either he is wrong - and will get rinsed - or the reports are. In which case, fair enough.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
There is a common distinction in accounts of the old buiuldings as to the merits of the Arch and the station itself behind, which was pretty poor apart from the Booking Hall.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
There is a common distinction in accounts of the old buiuldings as to the merits of the Arch and the station itself behind, which was pretty poor apart from the Booking Hall.
The annoying thing is that when the station was rebuilt the arch was demolished as 'it couldn't be incorporated into existing plans' when in fact there was ample space for it and the planners just wanted to get rid of it on the grounds they were Cupid stunts.
"Redfield & Wilton Strategies – whose poll on Wednesday gave No a nine-point lead over Yes – was called out for consistently spelling both the Scottish Health Secretary and Scottish Secretary’s name wrongly, among other issues.
Pollster Mark McGeoghegan said the firm also failed to include a Yes/No crossbreak in the tables. This would normally allow a glimpse into perceptions among people who voted for or against independence in 2014, but is missing from the Redfield & Wilton polling.
McGeoghegan further criticised the listing of the term “transgenderism” as a political issue. He said that such loaded language should not be used in polling."
Mark is a pollster and strategic communications researcher in Glasgow. He voted No in 2014, but since 2016 has been a member of the Scottish National Party and campaigner for Scottish independence.
Interesting the Nat Onal didn't find time to mention his extracurricular activities when explaining his credentials, but I'm glad to learn that spelling 'Alister' 'Alistair' creates a nine point lead for 'No'. Mind you, I can see why Mr McG is so concerned about spelling when he's got a name that sounds like someone plunging a sink.
Racist today, are we? It's pronounced very easily, in fact.
Every bit as easy as "Cholmondley," "Slaithwaite," or "Worcestershire".
Well, there you are. So why mock the Irish? (I'm not a Gael, myself.)
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
The guidelines are interesting. There's certainly an argument that swiping towards the cyclist meets "where death was caused in the course of an unlawful act which involved an intention by the offender to cause harm (or recklessness as to whether harm would be caused) that falls between high and lower culpability"
The lower category D requires (only relevant part expect possibly mental disorder/learning disability, which the judge argues against) "no intention by the offender to cause any harm and no obvious risk of anything more than minor harm"
There's clearly a danger of more than minor harm in causing a cyclist to swerve or fall over adjacent to a busy road (the emphasis on 'and' is in the guidelines, not added by me) so you fail cat D even before considering intention.
It looks to me like recklessness as to whether harm would be caused, as set out in C.
There's also apparently some weight put on a witness statement, in addition to what we saw. The bit about both having apparently coming to a halt is not apparent from the video footage.
I'm still a bit ambivalent about the sentencing, but I can't really argue with the logic.
We still have this issue though that he said it was a shared space when according to reports the council and police were unsure whether it was - meaning it wasn't.
Whatever the result, or the logic, we still can't get round that.
So either he is wrong - and will get rinsed - or the reports are. In which case, fair enough.
Judge seemed to think it was shared.
I actually thought that section was the most thoughtful - both pedestrian and cyclist trying to avoid the dangerous road. The cyclist stopped on pavement/shared path when approaching pedestrian.
The cyclist came to a halt in front of pedestrian. Cyclist forced into road and killed.
The real enemy here is the lack of safe route for these two individuals.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
The guidelines are interesting. There's certainly an argument that swiping towards the cyclist meets "where death was caused in the course of an unlawful act which involved an intention by the offender to cause harm (or recklessness as to whether harm would be caused) that falls between high and lower culpability"
The lower category D requires (only relevant part expect possibly mental disorder/learning disability, which the judge argues against) "no intention by the offender to cause any harm and no obvious risk of anything more than minor harm"
There's clearly a danger of more than minor harm in causing a cyclist to swerve or fall over adjacent to a busy road (the emphasis on 'and' is in the guidelines, not added by me) so you fail cat D even before considering intention.
It looks to me like recklessness as to whether harm would be caused, as set out in C.
There's also apparently some weight put on a witness statement, in addition to what we saw. The bit about both having apparently coming to a halt is not apparent from the video footage.
I'm still a bit ambivalent about the sentencing, but I can't really argue with the logic.
We still have this issue though that he said it was a shared space when according to reports the council and police were unsure whether it was - meaning it wasn't.
Whatever the result, or the logic, we still can't get round that.
So either he is wrong - and will get rinsed - or the reports are. In which case, fair enough.
Yes, there's ambiguity in that - and I'd have a lot more sympathy with the pedestrian if it was simply a pedestrian pavement. But would it change the verdict if the cyclist was using the path illegally? Perhaps the cat D "in defence of self or other(s)" but that seems a bit of a stretch.
Could be a mitigating factor reducing sentence, though.
There's also the issue of de facto shared spaces, where everyone accepts the shared use (and many believe it official) even if it's not set out. There's a very short stretch of tarmac on my commute that links a dead end road to a split cycle/pedestrian path. No signs at either end to indicate cyclists dismount, it's good and wide (you could easily get a car down) so no one really seems to have an issue with only one pinch point of an anti-vehicle offset fence. I give way if there's a pedestrian (or indeed other cyclist) coming through, but it's pretty rare there's any possibility of conflict. I think it's a shared space, but there's no definitive signage.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
Do they rarely get punished when they cause a pedestrian's death? That seems unlikely.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
Compared to the shite that replaced it, though, it's far better.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
There is a common distinction in accounts of the old buiuldings as to the merits of the Arch and the station itself behind, which was pretty poor apart from the Booking Hall.
The Euston rebuild could have kept the grand booking hall and rebuilt everything else. As so many other great terminal buildings have had done to them around the world. Happily Euston is one of few examples in the UK where we replaced shabby grandeur with whatthefuckisthis "modernism".
A contrasting example is in Dirty Leeds, where the art-deco booking hall and concourse survived for decades as exec parking and then a parcels depot before finally being refurbished to as-new condition and reopened.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
There is a common distinction in accounts of the old buiuldings as to the merits of the Arch and the station itself behind, which was pretty poor apart from the Booking Hall.
The annoying thing is that when the station was rebuilt the arch was demolished as 'it couldn't be incorporated into existing plans' when in fact there was ample space for it and the planners just wanted to get rid of it on the grounds they were Cupid stunts.
The little lodges to either side of the arch did survive. But that's like saying "sorry, we ate your Christmas dinner - here's a chipolata and a sprout'.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
The booking hall at Euston was quite something, thouigh the station itself was pretty crappy, yes.
This article confirms what you say. Imposing arch, monumental booking hall, ugly old station. So we brilliantly knocked down everything to make sure everything was ugly. Leveling Down. It’s what we’re good at
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
Chacun a son gout but
1. You’re an idiot
And
2. You’re wrong
And
3. Look what they replaced it with
In any case, those were built to look bloody permanent. Real fuck-you "we're here to stay" stuff. Like the Oxford Canal offices, only on a much larger scale. Confidence in the new company.
Not some local pub where you got the tickets over the bar, as in some of the early days of railways.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
Chacun a son gout but
1. You’re an idiot
And
2. You’re wrong
And
3. Look what they replaced it with
1. You have made this point before. I disagree with you, obviously, although my wife might have some sympathy with your view.
2. No you're wrong.
3. You may be on safer ground here, although I think the main internal space at Euston is quite nice. The approach to the station is horrible. The whole of Euston Road is horrible in fact.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
I bumped into Gary Lineker on Portland Place once
He is absolutely tiny. Quite astonishingly small, or at least gives that impression. OR I met someone exactly like him but weirdly miniaturized
On Twitter I claimed that I had met “Gary Lineker’s bonsai doppelgänger”, a phrase which still pleases me and which became an internet meme for about, ooh, thirty five minutes. Fame is so fleeting, as you say
GARY LINEKER’S BONSAI DOPPLEGANGER
Even typing it out is fun
They did a Peel session in '92.
Sounds like a Half Man Half Biscuit track.... Probably rhymed somewhere with Bernhard Langer.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
There is a common distinction in accounts of the old buiuldings as to the merits of the Arch and the station itself behind, which was pretty poor apart from the Booking Hall.
The Euston rebuild could have kept the grand booking hall and rebuilt everything else. As so many other great terminal buildings have had done to them around the world. Happily Euston is one of few examples in the UK where we replaced shabby grandeur with whatthefuckisthis "modernism".
A contrasting example is in Dirty Leeds, where the art-deco booking hall and concourse survived for decades as exec parking and then a parcels depot before finally being refurbished to as-new condition and reopened.
The USA has an even grislier record. There’s a whole Twitter sub-genre of “beautiful American train stations shamefully demolished” - usually replaced by car parks or worse
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
It all comes down to whether you believe, like the judge, that it was a shared-use path.
Not really. Whether the cyclist had a right to be there or not, the pedestrian's response was reckless and led to the cyclist's death. It would be like if I deliberately cycled into a pedestrian walking down a cycle lane rather than slowing down and alerting them to my presence.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
There is a common distinction in accounts of the old buiuldings as to the merits of the Arch and the station itself behind, which was pretty poor apart from the Booking Hall.
The annoying thing is that when the station was rebuilt the arch was demolished as 'it couldn't be incorporated into existing plans' when in fact there was ample space for it and the planners just wanted to get rid of it on the grounds they were Cupid stunts.
The little lodges to either side of the arch did survive. But that's like saying "sorry, we ate your Christmas dinner - here's a chipolata and a sprout'.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
Although of course if it is shared there's no excuse for shouting 'get off the fucking path.'
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
That relatively slim joirnalist in the video - and the cyclist could hardly get round her ...
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
Chacun a son gout but
1. You’re an idiot
And
2. You’re wrong
And
3. Look what they replaced it with
In any case, those were built to look bloody permanent. Real fuck-you "we're here to stay" stuff. Like the Oxford Canal offices, only on a much larger scale. Confidence in the new company.
Not some local pub where you got the tickets over the bar, as in some of the early days of railways.
Quite so. Euston Arch said “Wow you’re going on a journey, it might go all the way to the Highlands of Scotland, welcome on board!”
It is architecture as theatre, as something that adds to the drama and excitement of life, as well as being agreeable to look at. The modern Euston says, “oh FFS, I guess you’re here to take another shitty train? - whatever, it probably goes to Northampton, who cares”
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
Chacun a son gout but
1. You’re an idiot
And
2. You’re wrong
And
3. Look what they replaced it with
In any case, those were built to look bloody permanent. Real fuck-you "we're here to stay" stuff. Like the Oxford Canal offices, only on a much larger scale. Confidence in the new company.
Not some local pub where you got the tickets over the bar, as in some of the early days of railways.
Quite so. Euston Arch said “Wow you’re going on a journey, it might go all the way to the Highlands of Scotland, welcome on board!”
It is architecture as theatre, as something that adds to the drama and excitement of life, as well as being agreeable to look at. The modern Euston says, “oh FFS, I guess you’re here to take another shitty train? - whatever, it probably goes to Northampton, who cares”
Have we found a town beginning with N you like less than you do Newent?
I'm not sure what people mean by "individualistic political culture". Considering larger counties, both China and the USA have an extremely individualistic political culture, albeit in very different ways, reflecting their cultures more generally.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
Chacun a son gout but
1. You’re an idiot
And
2. You’re wrong
And
3. Look what they replaced it with
In any case, those were built to look bloody permanent. Real fuck-you "we're here to stay" stuff. Like the Oxford Canal offices, only on a much larger scale. Confidence in the new company.
Not some local pub where you got the tickets over the bar, as in some of the early days of railways.
Quite so. Euston Arch said “Wow you’re going on a journey, it might go all the way to the Highlands of Scotland, welcome on board!”
It is architecture as theatre, as something that adds to the drama and excitement of life, as well as being agreeable to look at. The modern Euston says, “oh FFS, I guess you’re here to take another shitty train? - whatever, it probably goes to Northampton, who cares”
At that time? Birmingham, more likely (would need to check the other companies). But then you could hop onto a coach to Liverpool and head on a steamer to Glasgow ...
I was going to say, it was the HS2 of its time - but after today's news ...
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
It all comes down to whether you believe, like the judge, that it was a shared-use path.
It seems almost irrelevant to me that the elderly lady was on a bicycle. She'd slowed almost to a stop and clearly presented no danger to the pedestrian. And even if it wasn't a shared-use path, cycling considerately on the pavement, especially by vulnerable people such as the very young or old, is generally tolerated by reasonable people. At the end of the day, one person's reckless actions caused the death of another, and that is manslaughter.
Having said that, the sentence does seem to me to have been a bit harsh. The pedestrian's actions may have been reckless, but I doubt that she properly appreciated the danger that she was putting the elderly cyclist in. And, contrary to what I read earlier, she did stop and try to give aid before leaving the scene.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
Although of course if it is shared there's no excuse for shouting 'get off the fucking path.'
A riding cyclist on a non-shared path? That is somewhat different.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
Here is a photograph - in an article criticising critics of the sentence.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
We're going to make ourselves a laughing stock. Build high speed rail from nowhere to nowhere that isn't high speed. At a gargantuan cost which France / Spain / Germany etc would have done at a fraction of the cost in half the time.
Global Britain at its finest!
The LA / SF high sped rail is still the global leader for total and utter f##k ups. The funding was even tied to the ability to run trains at speeds that aren't possible and that's before a whole load of totally pointless rerouting to go through towns that various vested interested demanded (but only slowed the main point of the line).
I wonder if there's something in the Anglosphere psyche that struggles with projects done for the collective good. Projects like HS2 inevitably mean that some people will be disadvantaged, even though you get a net advantage for the population as a whole. Perhaps Brits and Americans are less tolerant of personal disadvantage for the common good, and so great and expensive effort has to be made not to disadvantage anybody.
Or maybe our attraction to bumbling amateurs over bloodless professionals?
It's a bit too close to 'national character' musing for me though.
Would you say our attraction to bumbling amateurs over bloodless professionals is part of our national character? No, Feersum is exactly right. If you don't want to call it national character, call it political culture, because it's certainly the case that the Anglosphere is amongst the most individualistic political cultures in the world.
On a 'collectivist to individualist' spectrum is our socio-political culture here in 2023 further to the latter than most? Probably so. I wouldn't have too much of a problem with a statement like that.
Here in 2023, but also, I would also say that was true at any point in history over at least the last 400 years. Though I have put, what, three minutes thought into this so if you have counterexamples I will be interested to consider them.
Could be. Happy to nod it through anyway even if it's wrong. There are for sure distinctive attributes to different cultures, social, political and otherwise, some of them long lasting. The individualist v collectivist spectrum strikes me as a good example.
What I can't be having is adjectives like "stoical" or "violent" or "fun loving" or "lazy" being ascribed to nations or peoples. So, with this 'National Character' business, as with so much else, it all depends what you mean and how you phrase it. There are ok instances and not ok instances.
I could try and jump in each time somebody on here goes there (which is quite often) and say if it's ok or not if people would find that interesting and useful.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
Although of course if it is shared there's no excuse for shouting 'get off the fucking path.'
Sure, she was rude and unhelpful at best, I don't think anyone, at least on this site, thinks she was not. A prison sentence is out of line though in a few of our opinions.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
"This was, I think, a shared path for cyclists and pedestrians that allowed them to go around the busy ring road. The vital point is this: I am sure you knew cyclists used that path and you were not taken by surprise or in fear for your safety."
From that I read it as the judge saying it was a shared path "de facto" and that was more important than what the council intended but had not communicated clearly to either cyclists or pedestrians.
I don't have a problem with such conclusion, but am still very confused as to why the cyclist has right of way on a shared path.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
Edit: the council themselves don't know [edit] or won't confirm even if they do know. (from the linky which Ydoethur posted)
'In court, judge Sean Enright said the path was a shared cycleway, something the police nor Cambridgeshire County Council have confirmed, the council saying it is aware it is used by cyclists and "we are looking at this location to see if there is any work required to make things clearer".'
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
I think the shared path argument is a red herring in this case.
Someone above made a good point about cycle lanes (I would extend it to roads too).
If I hit and kill a pedestrian on a cycle lane while shouting at them to get out of it, I'd expect to be arrested and charged for something.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
Here is a photograph - in an article criticising critics of the sentence.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
How do you know it isn't shared use then? Also, on turning the handlebars 90 degrees, I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of bikes, but the front wheel is set at 90 degrees to the handlebars and is usually wider...
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
Chacun a son gout but
1. You’re an idiot
And
2. You’re wrong
And
3. Look what they replaced it with
In any case, those were built to look bloody permanent. Real fuck-you "we're here to stay" stuff. Like the Oxford Canal offices, only on a much larger scale. Confidence in the new company.
Not some local pub where you got the tickets over the bar, as in some of the early days of railways.
Quite so. Euston Arch said “Wow you’re going on a journey, it might go all the way to the Highlands of Scotland, welcome on board!”
It is architecture as theatre, as something that adds to the drama and excitement of life, as well as being agreeable to look at. The modern Euston says, “oh FFS, I guess you’re here to take another shitty train? - whatever, it probably goes to Northampton, who cares”
Have we found a town beginning with N you like less than you do Newent?
Will somebody make the case for Northampton?
Andybody?
Have to admit, I couldn't make a case for stopping there, even an hour. Unless it was to slow your ultimate arrival in Corby.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
Chacun a son gout but
1. You’re an idiot
And
2. You’re wrong
And
3. Look what they replaced it with
In any case, those were built to look bloody permanent. Real fuck-you "we're here to stay" stuff. Like the Oxford Canal offices, only on a much larger scale. Confidence in the new company.
Not some local pub where you got the tickets over the bar, as in some of the early days of railways.
Quite so. Euston Arch said “Wow you’re going on a journey, it might go all the way to the Highlands of Scotland, welcome on board!”
It is architecture as theatre, as something that adds to the drama and excitement of life, as well as being agreeable to look at. The modern Euston says, “oh FFS, I guess you’re here to take another shitty train? - whatever, it probably goes to Northampton, who cares”
Have we found a town beginning with N you like less than you do Newent?
Will somebody make the case for Northampton?
Andybody?
Have to admit, I couldn't make a case for stopping there, even an hour. Unless it was to slow your ultimate arrival in Corby.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Just looks heavy and out of proportion to its surroundings to me. Nothing especially interesting or imaginative about it either. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of neoclassical stuff - St Paul's perhaps the exception. Doesn't seem a huge loss to London.
Chacun a son gout but
1. You’re an idiot
And
2. You’re wrong
And
3. Look what they replaced it with
In any case, those were built to look bloody permanent. Real fuck-you "we're here to stay" stuff. Like the Oxford Canal offices, only on a much larger scale. Confidence in the new company.
Not some local pub where you got the tickets over the bar, as in some of the early days of railways.
Quite so. Euston Arch said “Wow you’re going on a journey, it might go all the way to the Highlands of Scotland, welcome on board!”
It is architecture as theatre, as something that adds to the drama and excitement of life, as well as being agreeable to look at. The modern Euston says, “oh FFS, I guess you’re here to take another shitty train? - whatever, it probably goes to Northampton, who cares”
Have we found a town beginning with N you like less than you do Newent?
Will somebody make the case for Northampton?
Andybody?
Have to admit, I couldn't make a case for stopping there, even an hour. Unless it was to slow your ultimate arrival in Corby.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
"This was, I think, a shared path for cyclists and pedestrians that allowed them to go around the busy ring road. The vital point is this: I am sure you knew cyclists used that path and you were not taken by surprise or in fear for your safety."
From that I read it as the judge saying it was a shared path "de facto" and that was more important than what the council intended but had not communicated clearly to either cyclists or pedestrians.
I don't have a problem with such conclusion, but am still very confused as to why the cyclist has right of way on a shared path.
Surely they don't under the Highway Code hierarchy.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
Although of course if it is shared there's no excuse for shouting 'get off the fucking path.'
Sure, she was rude and unhelpful at best, I don't think anyone, at least on this site, thinks she was not. A prison sentence is out of line though in a few of our opinions.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
I even more think it wrong after reading that. I saw no evidence from the CCTV that she hit the cyclist and she did offer assistance at the scene before others turned her away. I think this was a tragic accident - a vulnerable person on the bike in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
That's useful, thanks. It's a sad case for all concerned but I continue to think the verdict was right and the sentence reasonable.
The sentence seemed on the harsh side to me, FWIW. The verdict was fair.
Compare with this - implicated in who knows how many deaths. As a matter of deliberate calculation for gain.
Executive Sentenced for Scheming to Flood Northeast With Opioids Laurence F. Doud III, who headed the Rochester Drug Cooperative, will serve more than two years for conspiring to funnel “staggering” amounts of narcotics to pill mills.
He also directed a criminal conspiracy to deceive the Drug Enforcement Administration and pump opioids into pharmacies throughout the Northeast, federal prosecutors said, despite knowing that retailers were diverting the drugs and supplying them to addicts...
This beggars belief: ...Lawyers for Mr. Doud had asked Judge George B. Daniels for a sentence without prison time, describing their client, who they said was appealing his conviction, as a pillar of his community who posed no threat to the public and had consistently helped others.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
How do you know it isn't shared use then? Also, on turning the handlebars 90 degrees, I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of bikes, but the front wheel is set at 90 degrees to the handlebars and is usually wider...
Pavements are assumed not to be shared use unless positively indicated as such. Else cyclists could ride on any pavement they liked.
I didn't say 90 degrees but to what anyone with any common sense would pick as the optimum angle.
We could heat significant numbers of homes if we could radiate the huge energy burn of raging trots and raging nationalists.
Install a CHP facility with one hall full of trots being shown that video, another hall full of FUKUK supporters being shown migrants on boats not drowning, a third hall full of Salmond supporters being shown the falling support for Yes.
Enough heat to warm us even on a cold and snowy day like today.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
I bumped into Gary Lineker on Portland Place once
He is absolutely tiny. Quite astonishingly small, or at least gives that impression. OR I met someone exactly like him but weirdly miniaturized
On Twitter I claimed that I had met “Gary Lineker’s bonsai doppelgänger”, a phrase which still pleases me and which became an internet meme for about, ooh, thirty five minutes. Fame is so fleeting, as you say
GARY LINEKER’S BONSAI DOPPLEGANGER
Even typing it out is fun
177.2cm, Google tells me. The 2mm insisted upon is a nice touch.
When was that measured though? We all shrink with age...
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
I think the shared path argument is a red herring in this case.
Someone above made a good point about cycle lanes (I would extend it to roads too).
If I hit and kill a pedestrian on a cycle lane while shouting at them to get out of it, I'd expect to be arrested and charged for something.
Yes but your hypothetical situation is made murkier by the Highway Code's recent changes giving priority to the more vulnerable road-user.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
I think the shared path argument is a red herring in this case.
Someone above made a good point about cycle lanes (I would extend it to roads too).
If I hit and kill a pedestrian on a cycle lane while shouting at them to get out of it, I'd expect to be arrested and charged for something.
Irrespective of that, it's basic sound practice to get the facts right in summing up in a court case. Something has possibly gone wrong here.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
The guidelines are interesting. There's certainly an argument that swiping towards the cyclist meets "where death was caused in the course of an unlawful act which involved an intention by the offender to cause harm (or recklessness as to whether harm would be caused) that falls between high and lower culpability"
The lower category D requires (only relevant part except possibly mental disorder/learning disability, which the judge argues against) "no intention by the offender to cause any harm and no obvious risk of anything more than minor harm"
There's clearly a danger of more than minor harm in causing a cyclist to swerve or fall over adjacent to a busy road (the emphasis on 'and' is in the guidelines, not added by me) so you fail cat D even before considering intention.
It looks to me like recklessness as to whether harm would be caused, as set out in C.
There's also apparently some weight put on a witness statement, in addition to what we saw. The bit about both having apparently coming to a halt is not apparent from the video footage.
I'm still a bit ambivalent about the sentencing, but I can't really argue with the logic.
Its not like eye witnesses are routinely wrong about what they saw...
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
I bumped into Gary Lineker on Portland Place once
He is absolutely tiny. Quite astonishingly small, or at least gives that impression. OR I met someone exactly like him but weirdly miniaturized
On Twitter I claimed that I had met “Gary Lineker’s bonsai doppelgänger”, a phrase which still pleases me and which became an internet meme for about, ooh, thirty five minutes. Fame is so fleeting, as you say
GARY LINEKER’S BONSAI DOPPLEGANGER
Even typing it out is fun
That would be a great name for a comedy musical act. A worthy successor to the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band.
Back on topic, which of the three SNP candidates can reverse this? I don’t believe any of them can
Kate Forbes *could* do so. Drop all the social engineering shit and focus on education, jobs and community. Get people feeling like Scotland is leading the way, and then bring back "and we could be even better if independent" which was largely the Salmond pitch.
Sturgeon is like a Labour council leader. Happy to preside over shittier and shittier services as long as she can then blame the Tories for the mess.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
Although of course if it is shared there's no excuse for shouting 'get off the fucking path.'
Sure, she was rude and unhelpful at best, I don't think anyone, at least on this site, thinks she was not. A prison sentence is out of line though in a few of our opinions.
"rude and unhelpful"... She killed somebody!
Maybe the witness testimony is particularly important, because yes she killed someone but it was a tragic accident caused partly by two people behaving badly and mostly by bad road design.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
How do you know it isn't shared use then? Also, on turning the handlebars 90 degrees, I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of bikes, but the front wheel is set at 90 degrees to the handlebars and is usually wider...
Pavements are assumed not to be shared use unless positively indicated as such. Else cyclists could ride on any pavement they liked.
I didn't say 90 degrees but to what anyone with any common sense would pick as the optimum angle.
There is no optimal angle. The width of a person standing next to a bike is always going to be greater than the width of a person sitting on the seat of a bike, which is simply the width of the bike.
We're going to make ourselves a laughing stock. Build high speed rail from nowhere to nowhere that isn't high speed. At a gargantuan cost which France / Spain / Germany etc would have done at a fraction of the cost in half the time.
Global Britain at its finest!
The LA / SF high sped rail is still the global leader for total and utter f##k ups. The funding was even tied to the ability to run trains at speeds that aren't possible and that's before a whole load of totally pointless rerouting to go through towns that various vested interested demanded (but only slowed the main point of the line).
I wonder if there's something in the Anglosphere psyche that struggles with projects done for the collective good. Projects like HS2 inevitably mean that some people will be disadvantaged, even though you get a net advantage for the population as a whole. Perhaps Brits and Americans are less tolerant of personal disadvantage for the common good, and so great and expensive effort has to be made not to disadvantage anybody.
Or maybe our attraction to bumbling amateurs over bloodless professionals?
It's a bit too close to 'national character' musing for me though.
Would you say our attraction to bumbling amateurs over bloodless professionals is part of our national character? No, Feersum is exactly right. If you don't want to call it national character, call it political culture, because it's certainly the case that the Anglosphere is amongst the most individualistic political cultures in the world.
On a 'collectivist to individualist' spectrum is our socio-political culture here in 2023 further to the latter than most? Probably so. I wouldn't have too much of a problem with a statement like that.
Here in 2023, but also, I would also say that was true at any point in history over at least the last 400 years. Though I have put, what, three minutes thought into this so if you have counterexamples I will be interested to consider them.
Could be. Happy to nod it through anyway even if it's wrong. There are for sure distinctive attributes to different cultures, social, political and otherwise, some of them long lasting. The individualist v collectivist spectrum strikes me as a good example.
What I can't be having is adjectives like "stoical" or "violent" or "fun loving" or "lazy" being ascribed to nations or peoples. So, with this 'National Character' business, as with so much else, it all depends what you mean and how you phrase it. There are ok instances and not ok instances.
I could try and jump in each time somebody on here goes there (which is quite often) and say if it's ok or not if people would find that interesting and useful.
I’ll jump in. “The United States of America is violent”
I believe that is valid
The USA is more violent than any other rich western nation, and it is more violent in multiple ways. And this is part of its national character, because of its history, and the violence can be seen down to an individual level
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
It all comes down to whether you believe, like the judge, that it was a shared-use path.
It seems almost irrelevant to me that the elderly lady was on a bicycle. She'd slowed almost to a stop and clearly presented no danger to the pedestrian. And even if it wasn't a shared-use path, cycling considerately on the pavement, especially by vulnerable people such as the very young or old, is generally tolerated by reasonable people. At the end of the day, one person's reckless actions caused the death of another, and that is manslaughter.
Having said that, the sentence does seem to me to have been a bit harsh. The pedestrian's actions may have been reckless, but I doubt that she properly appreciated the danger that she was putting the elderly cyclist in. And, contrary to what I read earlier, she did stop and try to give aid before leaving the scene.
Yes, to the extent I was surprised it was more by the sentence than the verdict.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
How do you know it isn't shared use then? Also, on turning the handlebars 90 degrees, I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of bikes, but the front wheel is set at 90 degrees to the handlebars and is usually wider...
Pavements are assumed not to be shared use unless positively indicated as such. Else cyclists could ride on any pavement they liked.
I didn't say 90 degrees but to what anyone with any common sense would pick as the optimum angle.
There is no optimal angle. The width of a person standing next to a bike is always going to be greater than the width of a person sitting on the seat of a bike, which is simply the width of the bike.
Only true ifg the bike is upright. The bike can be tilted by someone styanding beside it.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
I think the shared path argument is a red herring in this case.
Someone above made a good point about cycle lanes (I would extend it to roads too).
If I hit and kill a pedestrian on a cycle lane while shouting at them to get out of it, I'd expect to be arrested and charged for something.
True, but in a sense that makes this more concerning.
Because if the judge has wilfully misdirected the jury, not only will the sentence be quashed but the killer is likely to get compensation.
Injustice on injustice.
Incidentally, 2.4 metres is slightly narrower than the maximum permitted width of a heavy lorry (2.55m).
So either that's an astonishing typo in the report - which is possible - or the judge made a crass error - which is also possible - or he was out to convict and inflict a maximum sentence regardless of the law or the facts - which is unacceptable.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
The guidelines are interesting. There's certainly an argument that swiping towards the cyclist meets "where death was caused in the course of an unlawful act which involved an intention by the offender to cause harm (or recklessness as to whether harm would be caused) that falls between high and lower culpability"
The lower category D requires (only relevant part expect possibly mental disorder/learning disability, which the judge argues against) "no intention by the offender to cause any harm and no obvious risk of anything more than minor harm"
There's clearly a danger of more than minor harm in causing a cyclist to swerve or fall over adjacent to a busy road (the emphasis on 'and' is in the guidelines, not added by me) so you fail cat D even before considering intention.
It looks to me like recklessness as to whether harm would be caused, as set out in C.
There's also apparently some weight put on a witness statement, in addition to what we saw. The bit about both having apparently coming to a halt is not apparent from the video footage.
I'm still a bit ambivalent about the sentencing, but I can't really argue with the logic.
We still have this issue though that he said it was a shared space when according to reports the council and police were unsure whether it was - meaning it wasn't.
Whatever the result, or the logic, we still can't get round that.
So either he is wrong - and will get rinsed - or the reports are. In which case, fair enough.
Judge seemed to think it was shared.
I actually thought that section was the most thoughtful - both pedestrian and cyclist trying to avoid the dangerous road. The cyclist stopped on pavement/shared path when approaching pedestrian.
The cyclist came to a halt in front of pedestrian. Cyclist forced into road and killed.
The real enemy here is the lack of safe route for these two individuals.
That doesn't tally with the CCTV though - she wasn't 'forced' into the road, she lost control of her bike. I think an appeal may well succeed, even if over the shared nature of the route (not clear).
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
"This was, I think, a shared path for cyclists and pedestrians that allowed them to go around the busy ring road. The vital point is this: I am sure you knew cyclists used that path and you were not taken by surprise or in fear for your safety."
From that I read it as the judge saying it was a shared path "de facto" and that was more important than what the council intended but had not communicated clearly to either cyclists or pedestrians.
I don't have a problem with such conclusion, but am still very confused as to why the cyclist has right of way on a shared path.
It's a bi-directional path, so I don't so how right of way comes into it. All traffic, whether pedestrian or cyclist, would be expected to accommodate traffic coming in the opposite direction, i.e. to allow it to pass on one side, rather than occupying the centre of the path.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
I bumped into Gary Lineker on Portland Place once
He is absolutely tiny. Quite astonishingly small, or at least gives that impression. OR I met someone exactly like him but weirdly miniaturized
On Twitter I claimed that I had met “Gary Lineker’s bonsai doppelgänger”, a phrase which still pleases me and which became an internet meme for about, ooh, thirty five minutes. Fame is so fleeting, as you say
GARY LINEKER’S BONSAI DOPPLEGANGER
Even typing it out is fun
177.2cm, Google tells me. The 2mm insisted upon is a nice touch.
When was that measured though? We all shrink with age...
At a guess, someone read in an old Panini album that Gary Lineker stands 5 feet, 9 and 3/4 inches, and then converted it to metric because reasons and metric is lovely and that's where the .2 came from.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
I think the shared path argument is a red herring in this case.
Someone above made a good point about cycle lanes (I would extend it to roads too).
If I hit and kill a pedestrian on a cycle lane while shouting at them to get out of it, I'd expect to be arrested and charged for something.
True, but in a sense that makes this more concerning.
Because if the judge has wilfully misdirected the jury, not only will the sentence be quashed but the killer is likely to get compensation.
Injustice on injustice.
Incidentally, 2.4 metres is slightly narrower than the maximum permitted width of a heavy lorry (2.55m).
So either that's an astonishing typo in the report - which is possible - or the judge made a crass error - which is also possible - or he was out to convict and inflict a maximum sentence regardless of the law or the facts - which is unacceptable.
Or someone else made an error when producing or passing on the info tbf to His Honour.
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
Nearly all of that “ugliness” was pollution, however. By the 1950s the Euston Arch had endured 110 years of London smog and soot and it had never been cleaned. Like the Parthenon but dipped in ash
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
I find that rather sinister, not totally sure why.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
"This was, I think, a shared path for cyclists and pedestrians that allowed them to go around the busy ring road. The vital point is this: I am sure you knew cyclists used that path and you were not taken by surprise or in fear for your safety."
From that I read it as the judge saying it was a shared path "de facto" and that was more important than what the council intended but had not communicated clearly to either cyclists or pedestrians.
I don't have a problem with such conclusion, but am still very confused as to why the cyclist has right of way on a shared path.
It's a bi-directional path, so I don't so how right of way comes into it. All traffic, whether pedestrian or cyclist, would be expected to accommodate traffic coming in the opposite direction, i.e. to allow it to pass on one side, rather than occupying the centre of the path.
My interpretation of it, looking at the video, and also the BBC journalist being passed at the same spot by a different cyclist, is that by the lampost there is not sufficient room for them both to pass each other safely.
So one of them has to "give way". The judge clearly thinks it should be the pedestrian who should have stopped and criticises her for not doing so. I would have thought it should be the cyclist.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
I think the shared path argument is a red herring in this case.
Someone above made a good point about cycle lanes (I would extend it to roads too).
If I hit and kill a pedestrian on a cycle lane while shouting at them to get out of it, I'd expect to be arrested and charged for something.
True, but in a sense that makes this more concerning.
Because if the judge has wilfully misdirected the jury, not only will the sentence be quashed but the killer is likely to get compensation.
Injustice on injustice.
Incidentally, 2.4 metres is slightly narrower than the maximum permitted width of a heavy lorry (2.55m).
So either that's an astonishing typo in the report - which is possible - or the judge made a crass error - which is also possible - or he was out to convict and inflict a maximum sentence regardless of the law or the facts - which is unacceptable.
Or someone else made an error when producing or passing on the info tbf to His Honour.
Indeed possible.
Although you would have hoped that a judge would have access to these images, and enough functioning brain cells to think 'hang on, that doesn't look right.'
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
Although of course if it is shared there's no excuse for shouting 'get off the fucking path.'
Sure, she was rude and unhelpful at best, I don't think anyone, at least on this site, thinks she was not. A prison sentence is out of line though in a few of our opinions.
"rude and unhelpful"... She killed somebody!
Maybe the witness testimony is particularly important, because yes she killed someone but it was a tragic accident caused partly by two people behaving badly and mostly by bad road design.
In what way was the lady on the bicycle behaving badly? She'd slowed almost to a halt in order to allow the pedestrian to move to one side so they could pass one another. She was certainly behaving a lot better than the cyclist who whizzed past the journalist in the report!
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
Although of course if it is shared there's no excuse for shouting 'get off the fucking path.'
Sure, she was rude and unhelpful at best, I don't think anyone, at least on this site, thinks she was not. A prison sentence is out of line though in a few of our opinions.
"rude and unhelpful"... She killed somebody!
Maybe the witness testimony is particularly important, because yes she killed someone but it was a tragic accident caused partly by two people behaving badly and mostly by bad road design.
How did the cyclist behave badly? She was cycling at a reasonable speed on a path she believed with good reason to be dual use, as an elderly woman avoiding a busy road, and slowed on approaching the pedestrian, on a path with space for them to pass safely. I agree that bad road design is a factor but as a cyclist and pedestrian that's almost a given, we all have to behave reasonably in the shitty circumstances created by urban planners' kow tow to motorists. The pedestrian didn't do that - she was completely unreasonable and by acting beligerantly she killed the cyclist and traumatised the innocent driver. Should she go to jail? People go there for a lot less.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
Who is Beau Brummel?
When I was a young whippersnapper I thought he was the man in the shop we bought our school blazers from as his name was on the label on the inside. Mind you I used to think that Leonard Parkin was actually inside the tv reading the news so explains a lot maybe.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
How do you know it isn't shared use then? Also, on turning the handlebars 90 degrees, I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of bikes, but the front wheel is set at 90 degrees to the handlebars and is usually wider...
Pavements are assumed not to be shared use unless positively indicated as such. Else cyclists could ride on any pavement they liked.
I didn't say 90 degrees but to what anyone with any common sense would pick as the optimum angle.
There is no optimal angle. The width of a person standing next to a bike is always going to be greater than the width of a person sitting on the seat of a bike, which is simply the width of the bike.
Only true ifg the bike is upright. The bike can be tilted by someone styanding beside it.
I feel like maybe you've never seen a bike or at least never pushed one.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
I bumped into Gary Lineker on Portland Place once
He is absolutely tiny. Quite astonishingly small, or at least gives that impression. OR I met someone exactly like him but weirdly miniaturized
On Twitter I claimed that I had met “Gary Lineker’s bonsai doppelgänger”, a phrase which still pleases me and which became an internet meme for about, ooh, thirty five minutes. Fame is so fleeting, as you say
GARY LINEKER’S BONSAI DOPPLEGANGER
Even typing it out is fun
177.2cm, Google tells me. The 2mm insisted upon is a nice touch.
When was that measured though? We all shrink with age...
At a guess, someone read in an old Panini album that Gary Lineker stands 5 feet, 9 and 3/4 inches, and then converted it to metric because reasons and metric is lovely and that's where the .2 came from.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
Who is Beau Brummel?
When I was a young whippersnapper I thought he was the man in the shop we bought our school blazers from as his name was on the label on the inside. Mind you I used to think that Leonard Parkin was actually inside the tv reading the news so explains a lot maybe.
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
How do you know it isn't shared use then? Also, on turning the handlebars 90 degrees, I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of bikes, but the front wheel is set at 90 degrees to the handlebars and is usually wider...
Pavements are assumed not to be shared use unless positively indicated as such. Else cyclists could ride on any pavement they liked.
I didn't say 90 degrees but to what anyone with any common sense would pick as the optimum angle.
There is no optimal angle. The width of a person standing next to a bike is always going to be greater than the width of a person sitting on the seat of a bike, which is simply the width of the bike.
Only true ifg the bike is upright. The bike can be tilted by someone styanding beside it.
I feel like maybe you've never seen a bike or at least never pushed one.
*Standing* - you know, politely to let someone go past. Then you move to one side and carry on.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
Who is Beau Brummel?
Regency gent (a bit like Beau Nash in Bath) - the arbiter of social life in Regency England. Imagine @TSE but with class
I'm loathe to restart the cycling fracas we had a few days ago, but the sentencing remarks have been published in relation to the pedestrian v elderly cyclist thing:
My instinctive view is that the verdict is right but the punishment harsh.
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
"You resented the presence of an oncoming cyclist. The footage shows you shouting aggressively and waving your left arm. You do not stop, slow down or move to one side. You are territorial about the pavement and not worried for your own safety. After careful thought, I concluded these actions are not explained by your disabilities."
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
If the cyclist had dismounted and pushed her bike there would have been even less space to pass of course.
Not so. Bike could go in the gutter, or the cyclist could stop and wait with the handlebars turned.
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
The bike went into the gutter, where it was hit by a passing car. The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
Yet how did the judge know it was shared, if plod couldn't tell him?
"This was, I think, a shared path for cyclists and pedestrians that allowed them to go around the busy ring road. The vital point is this: I am sure you knew cyclists used that path and you were not taken by surprise or in fear for your safety."
From that I read it as the judge saying it was a shared path "de facto" and that was more important than what the council intended but had not communicated clearly to either cyclists or pedestrians.
I don't have a problem with such conclusion, but am still very confused as to why the cyclist has right of way on a shared path.
It's a bi-directional path, so I don't so how right of way comes into it. All traffic, whether pedestrian or cyclist, would be expected to accommodate traffic coming in the opposite direction, i.e. to allow it to pass on one side, rather than occupying the centre of the path.
My interpretation of it, looking at the video, and also the BBC journalist being passed at the same spot by a different cyclist, is that by the lampost there is not sufficient room for them both to pass each other safely.
So one of them has to "give way". The judge clearly thinks it should be the pedestrian who should have stopped and criticises her for not doing so. I would have thought it should be the cyclist.
I think it's plausible that the path is 1.4m wide. Totally unscientifically that looks about right. However, the lamppost must knock 30cm off it.
I very much hope that's a typo in the report, and not an error by the judge, but if it is a typo it was a strange thing for him to imply that there was ample room for both of them if the pedestrian had moved over. A metre to metre and a half wide path is narrow.
Back on topic, which of the three SNP candidates can reverse this? I don’t believe any of them can
Kate Forbes *could* do so. Drop all the social engineering shit and focus on education, jobs and community. Get people feeling like Scotland is leading the way, and then bring back "and we could be even better if independent" which was largely the Salmond pitch.
Sturgeon is like a Labour council leader. Happy to preside over shittier and shittier services as long as she can then blame the Tories for the mess.
Yes, I agree with most of this
She “could” - but the inverted commas are key. She “could” do it, out of all of them, but I very much doubt her party would let her. Surgeon has led the SNP to the left on multiple issues and the MPs and MSPs will not tolerate Forbes being so obviously on the right. Especially as she has no magic formula to get a referendum
I can’t believe they cut down all the trees at Euston
They were the only things that made the bleakness tolerable. They did it to “move a taxi rank” for HS2
Now look at it
Compared to the magnificence of St. Pancras, or Liverpool Street, you have to ask yourself, who turned Euston into something less appealing than a gents’ toilet in rural Turkey?
The station it replaced was kind of horrible too (from photographs and accounts I've read, never saw it IRL obvs). Certainly no St Pancras, or even Kings Cross. Even the much lamented arch was just your basic Victorian grandiosity. I don't mind Euston once you're inside. Piazzas don't really work here though, we lack the weather or light for it. Better to have big light internal spaces or a park.
“Basic Victorian Grandiosity” is about seven trillion times better than the shite we have now
Maybe. Having heard a lot about the Euston arch and being naturally inclined towards Victoria railway stations I was surprised when I first saw a picture of it, at how ugly it was. And people complained about how dark and dingy the original Euston was. I quite like the main concourse at Euston, but being an East Coast guy it's not a station I've used often, mostly for the sleeper.
It's the station I have to use every time I visit London. I'm sick to death with the so-called "Euston scrum", which is when they announce the platform about 5 minutes before the train is about to leave, and hundreds of people have to run to catch the train.
We're going to make ourselves a laughing stock. Build high speed rail from nowhere to nowhere that isn't high speed. At a gargantuan cost which France / Spain / Germany etc would have done at a fraction of the cost in half the time.
Global Britain at its finest!
The LA / SF high sped rail is still the global leader for total and utter f##k ups. The funding was even tied to the ability to run trains at speeds that aren't possible and that's before a whole load of totally pointless rerouting to go through towns that various vested interested demanded (but only slowed the main point of the line).
I wonder if there's something in the Anglosphere psyche that struggles with projects done for the collective good. Projects like HS2 inevitably mean that some people will be disadvantaged, even though you get a net advantage for the population as a whole. Perhaps Brits and Americans are less tolerant of personal disadvantage for the common good, and so great and expensive effort has to be made not to disadvantage anybody.
Or maybe our attraction to bumbling amateurs over bloodless professionals?
It's a bit too close to 'national character' musing for me though.
Would you say our attraction to bumbling amateurs over bloodless professionals is part of our national character? No, Feersum is exactly right. If you don't want to call it national character, call it political culture, because it's certainly the case that the Anglosphere is amongst the most individualistic political cultures in the world.
On a 'collectivist to individualist' spectrum is our socio-political culture here in 2023 further to the latter than most? Probably so. I wouldn't have too much of a problem with a statement like that.
Here in 2023, but also, I would also say that was true at any point in history over at least the last 400 years. Though I have put, what, three minutes thought into this so if you have counterexamples I will be interested to consider them.
Could be. Happy to nod it through anyway even if it's wrong. There are for sure distinctive attributes to different cultures, social, political and otherwise, some of them long lasting. The individualist v collectivist spectrum strikes me as a good example.
What I can't be having is adjectives like "stoical" or "violent" or "fun loving" or "lazy" being ascribed to nations or peoples. So, with this 'National Character' business, as with so much else, it all depends what you mean and how you phrase it. There are ok instances and not ok instances.
I could try and jump in each time somebody on here goes there (which is quite often) and say if it's ok or not if people would find that interesting and useful.
I’ll jump in. “The United States of America is violent”
I believe that is valid
The USA is more violent than any other rich western nation, and it is more violent in multiple ways. And this is part of its national character, because of its history, and the violence can be seen down to an individual level
The USA is a violent place and has been for centuries. This is fine. (although all is relative) - one can then go on to discuss why.
The American national character is violent. This is not so fine - since it's a rewrite of Americans are prone to violence.
The BBC find themselves in a lose lose situation now.
They either back Linekar and face down government ire or they sack him and are seen to be doing the government’s bidding.
Lots of heads hitting desks in Broadcasting House right about now I’d think.
Gary Lineker is the latest in a list of public figures whose name PBers find it impossible to spell.
See also, Sue "Fifty Shades Of" Gray, Angela "Red" Rayner, Owen "Badger" Paterson, Sir Keir "Royale" Starmer........
It's a form of sport - taking the piss out of their temporary celebrity status by getting their name wrong...
All celebrity is temporary - everyone but a handful of oddities (Beau Brummell, for example) fade from memory within less than a century.
But Lineker isn't doing too badly, as he's into at least his fourth decade of public recognition (even by those like me who don't give a damn about football).
Who is Beau Brummel?
Regency gent (a bit like Beau Nash in Bath) - the arbiter of social life in Regency England. Imagine @TSE but with class
Wonderful story of someone visiting Beau Brummell in his rooms in Bath, as he was being dressed by his valet. The floor was strewn with cravats as his valet tried to tie another cravat around Brummell’s neck
The friend pointed to the dozens of cravats and said “what are all these?”
Brummell replied: “These, Sir, are our failures”
Brummell also used to introduce the Regent King George as “my fat friend”
Comments
That might be explained by my experience of the casual disregard motorists give to cyclists and pedestrians in Edinburgh, and the astonishing number of road casualties that result. They rarely get punished, so this pedestrian getting 3 years seems unfair.
@AlastairMeeks
The Free Speech Union has been very quiet today. Extraordinary, given you'd have thought the day's news would have been four square in their remit.
It's almost as if the Free Speech Union is nothing to do with free speech.
"where death was caused in the course of an unlawful act which involved an intention by the offender to cause harm (or recklessness as to whether harm would be caused) that falls between high and lower culpability"
The lower category D requires (only relevant part except possibly mental disorder/learning disability, which the judge argues against)
"no intention by the offender to cause any harm and no obvious risk of anything more than minor harm"
There's clearly a danger of more than minor harm in causing a cyclist to swerve or fall over adjacent to a busy road (the emphasis on 'and' is in the guidelines, not added by me) so you fail cat D even before considering intention.
It looks to me like recklessness as to whether harm would be caused, as set out in C.
There's also apparently some weight put on a witness statement, in addition to what we saw. The bit about both having apparently coming to a halt is not apparent from the video footage.
I'm still a bit ambivalent about the sentencing, but I can't really argue with the logic.
Here it is in its original Doric glory. Beautiful
Whatever the result, or the logic, we still can't get round that.
So either he is wrong - and will get rinsed - or the reports are. In which case, fair enough.
This country can do nothing.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/government-expected-to-confirm-hs2-delays-to-cut-costs-report/ar-AA18pdm0?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=8a6a2cc705f14f4a9f2b0bed66268c37&ei=12
Actually I can cope with Trellick Tower. Sometimes
It has at least a monumentality, due to its sheer size
And thanks btw for doing the digging.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Birmingham_Curzon_Street_railway_station.jpg
1. You’re an idiot
And
2. You’re wrong
And
3. Look what they replaced it with
I actually thought that section was the most thoughtful - both pedestrian and cyclist trying to avoid the dangerous road. The cyclist stopped on pavement/shared path when approaching pedestrian.
The cyclist came to a halt in front of pedestrian. Cyclist forced into road and killed.
The real enemy here is the lack of safe route for these two individuals.
Could be a mitigating factor reducing sentence, though.
There's also the issue of de facto shared spaces, where everyone accepts the shared use (and many believe it official) even if it's not set out. There's a very short stretch of tarmac on my commute that links a dead end road to a split cycle/pedestrian path. No signs at either end to indicate cyclists dismount, it's good and wide (you could easily get a car down) so no one really seems to have an issue with only one pinch point of an anti-vehicle offset fence. I give way if there's a pedestrian (or indeed other cyclist) coming through, but it's pretty rare there's any possibility of conflict. I think it's a shared space, but there's no definitive signage.
A contrasting example is in Dirty Leeds, where the art-deco booking hall and concourse survived for decades as exec parking and then a parcels depot before finally being refurbished to as-new condition and reopened.
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5267982,-0.1323745,3a,75y,350.17h,91.06t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1skN8-cJtqmPQZnp759TSX6Q!2e0!6shttps://streetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com/v1/thumbnail?panoid=kN8-cJtqmPQZnp759TSX6Q&cb_client=maps_sv.tactile.gps&w=203&h=100&yaw=320.73764&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i16384!8i8192
https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/pictures-show-amazing-old-style-22061495
She has right of way even if a shared path, she never had a duty to stop or move to one side.
"The path at the point of collision 2.4 metres wide."
Her lawyers should be fact checking this one, it seems extremelely unlikely from the video provided. Indeed if that was the case the cyclist could have gone the non road side of her comfortably.
It all comes down to whether you believe, like the judge, that it was a shared-use path.
Not some local pub where you got the tickets over the bar, as in some of the early days of railways.
2. No you're wrong.
3. You may be on safer ground here, although I think the main internal space at Euston is quite nice. The approach to the station is horrible. The whole of Euston Road is horrible in fact.
Honestly, this shit could turn me into an eco-loon
It is architecture as theatre, as something that adds to the drama and excitement of life, as well as being agreeable to look at. The modern Euston says, “oh FFS, I guess you’re here to take another shitty train? - whatever, it probably goes to Northampton, who cares”
The key issue is again whether it really was shared issue.
Plod wouldn't say.
Why didn't the defence ask for the town council to confirm it and to check the signage? 250m away, one of us said.
https://twitter.com/Agitate4Change/status/1633836059141488646
I was going to say, it was the HS2 of its time - but after today's news ...
Having said that, the sentence does seem to me to have been a bit harsh. The pedestrian's actions may have been reckless, but I doubt that she properly appreciated the danger that she was putting the elderly cyclist in. And, contrary to what I read earlier, she did stop and try to give aid before leaving the scene.
The key issue is that an old lady was killed by someone else's belligerence. Whether the space was shared or not is second order, and in any case the judge said it was, and it seems like the cyclist would have ample reason to think it was (sign indicating shared usage a couple of minutes down the road, and there was no subsequent sign telling cyclists to use the road).
https://road.cc/content/news/spectator-writers-column-about-cyclists-draws-criticism-299763
It is clearly narrower than the waist high fence next to it is tall.
If it is 2.4 metres wide, I am King Faisal of Arabia.
So we have the judge being wrong about the width of the path, and wrong about it being a shared space.
I don't think you have to be a raging anti-cycling activist to feel that this is not great.
What I can't be having is adjectives like "stoical" or "violent" or "fun loving" or "lazy" being ascribed to nations or peoples. So, with this 'National Character' business, as with so much else, it all depends what you mean and how you phrase it. There are ok instances and not ok instances.
I could try and jump in each time somebody on here goes there (which is quite often) and say if it's ok or not if people would find that interesting and useful.
From that I read it as the judge saying it was a shared path "de facto" and that was more important than what the council intended but had not communicated clearly to either cyclists or pedestrians.
I don't have a problem with such conclusion, but am still very confused as to why the cyclist has right of way on a shared path.
'In court, judge Sean Enright said the path was a shared cycleway, something the police nor Cambridgeshire County Council have confirmed, the council saying it is aware it is used by cyclists and "we are looking at this location to see if there is any work required to make things clearer".'
https://road.cc/content/news/spectator-writers-column-about-cyclists-draws-criticism-299763
Someone above made a good point about cycle lanes (I would extend it to roads too).
If I hit and kill a pedestrian on a cycle lane while shouting at them to get out of it, I'd expect to be arrested and charged for something.
Also, on turning the handlebars 90 degrees, I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of bikes, but the front wheel is set at 90 degrees to the handlebars and is usually wider...
Andybody?
Have to admit, I couldn't make a case for stopping there, even an hour. Unless it was to slow your ultimate arrival in Corby.
Compare with this - implicated in who knows how many deaths. As a matter of deliberate calculation for gain.
Executive Sentenced for Scheming to Flood Northeast With Opioids
Laurence F. Doud III, who headed the Rochester Drug Cooperative, will serve more than two years for conspiring to funnel “staggering” amounts of narcotics to pill mills.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/nyregion/doud-opioids-pharmaceutical-executive-sentenced.html
...In his quarter century as chief executive of Rochester Drug Cooperative Inc., Laurence F. Doud III made the distributor the country’s seventh-largest wholesaler, sending stock dividends to record highs as revenue topped $1 billion.
He also directed a criminal conspiracy to deceive the Drug Enforcement Administration and pump opioids into pharmacies throughout the Northeast, federal prosecutors said, despite knowing that retailers were diverting the drugs and supplying them to addicts...
This beggars belief:
...Lawyers for Mr. Doud had asked Judge George B. Daniels for a sentence without prison time, describing their client, who they said was appealing his conviction, as a pillar of his community who posed no threat to the public and had consistently helped others.
I didn't say 90 degrees but to what anyone with any common sense would pick as the optimum angle.
Install a CHP facility with one hall full of trots being shown that video, another hall full of FUKUK supporters being shown migrants on boats not drowning, a third hall full of Salmond supporters being shown the falling support for Yes.
Enough heat to warm us even on a cold and snowy day like today.
Sturgeon is like a Labour council leader. Happy to preside over shittier and shittier services as long as she can then blame the Tories for the mess.
I believe that is valid
The USA is more violent than any other rich western nation, and it is more violent in multiple ways. And this is part of its national character, because of its history, and the violence can be seen down to an individual level
Because if the judge has wilfully misdirected the jury, not only will the sentence be quashed but the killer is likely to get compensation.
Injustice on injustice.
Incidentally, 2.4 metres is slightly narrower than the maximum permitted width of a heavy lorry (2.55m).
So either that's an astonishing typo in the report - which is possible - or the judge made a crass error - which is also possible - or he was out to convict and inflict a maximum sentence regardless of the law or the facts - which is unacceptable.
So one of them has to "give way". The judge clearly thinks it should be the pedestrian who should have stopped and criticises her for not doing so. I would have thought it should be the cyclist.
Although you would have hoped that a judge would have access to these images, and enough functioning brain cells to think 'hang on, that doesn't look right.'
I agree that bad road design is a factor but as a cyclist and pedestrian that's almost a given, we all have to behave reasonably in the shitty circumstances created by urban planners' kow tow to motorists. The pedestrian didn't do that - she was completely unreasonable and by acting beligerantly she killed the cyclist and traumatised the innocent driver. Should she go to jail? People go there for a lot less.
Imagine @TSE but with class
I very much hope that's a typo in the report, and not an error by the judge, but if it is a typo it was a strange thing for him to imply that there was ample room for both of them if the pedestrian had moved over. A metre to metre and a half wide path is narrow.
She “could” - but the inverted commas are key. She “could” do it, out of all of them, but I very much doubt her party would let her. Surgeon has led the SNP to the left on multiple issues and the MPs and MSPs will not tolerate Forbes being so obviously on the right. Especially as she has no magic formula to get a referendum
I predict much SNP infighting, if she wins
The American national character is violent. This is not so fine - since it's a rewrite of Americans are prone to violence.
That was a good one. Quite tricky.
The friend pointed to the dozens of cravats and said “what are all these?”
Brummell replied: “These, Sir, are our failures”
Brummell also used to introduce the Regent King George as “my fat friend”
Genius