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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
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:
Thanks for posting this. I also read the judge's directions to the jury. Which includes:
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result).If you concluded that what took place was or may have been an accident, then you will find the defendant not guilty.If you were sure that what took place was not an accident but found that defendant was or may have been acting in self-defence, then you will find her not guilty."
I originally held the position that the verdict was wrong. But I had a lingering doubt that if the full video footage could be seen (as the jury had presumable seen it) rather than the shortened version - and if that showed Grey actually pushing the cyclist onto the road rather than belligerently gesticulating - then I would reverse my position. But it seems that a push was not clearly shown.
If I were on that jury I would have found her not guilty of manslaughter. I'm pretty sure of that.
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.
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.
That's what they uised to do when they built Euston, I think ... first, second and third class waitring rooms, or perhaps the latter were penned out in the open?
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.
That was a good one. Quite tricky.
There you go. Nailed it first time
National character exists. It is just your fastidious narrow minded left wing aversion to ANYTHING that might appear racist or Darwinian or whatever, that prevents you from accepting this obvious truth
I accept that actual racists, fascists, supremacists, etc take this truth about national character and warp it to evil ends. But that doesn’t mean the idea is fiction. It is not; it is real
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
A luxury spa hotel in a rural Leicestershire village has closed to guests and cancelled existing bookings so it can provide accommodation for 250 asylum seekers.
The Best Western Premier Yew Lodge Hotel in Kegworth - which includes a Marco Pierre White New York Italian restaurant - stopped taking reservations two weeks ago after bosses signed an 'exclusive use contract' with the Home Office to house refugees.
Mother-of-two Elisabeth Shepherd, 53, said locals were given 'no notice' about their arrival, and said that people were 'frightened, including myself'.
She said: 'A lot of the villagers use the resources at the hotel such as the gym, pool and restaurant and now we've haven't got anything here to use and will have to turn elsewhere for these facilities.
'People found out about the asylum seekers moving into the hotel because their gym memberships were instantly cancelled.'
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
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 feel slightly dirty, having just taken a taxi to Euston followed by a ride to the Midlands in a 2/3rds-empty train. If all this wanton destruction has been carried out for my convenience I really didn't need it. Will post-covid demand for train travel ever recover? If not, the entire premise of HS2 will turn out to be mistaken. There used to be three fast trains an hour to Birmingham, now there are only two and they are rarely, if ever, full.
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.
From my watching of the video and coming into it without any prior knowledge, the thing that sticks out to me is that the pedestrian keeps walking firmly forwards.
In a situation where I may be miffed because I am having to share the pavement or what have you, I might be annoyed about it but I’ll still slow/stop/move out of the way because it’s just common good sense. I don’t want to be involved in a collision and I don’t want the person coming towards me rightly or wrongly to be involved in a collision.
It seems to me like this was a situation that could easily have been avoided and the individual in question has to bear some culpability for the way that they reacted. I think I share the view of others on here that the sentence in question does appear to be rather harsh.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
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 cyclist wasn't behaving badly. The pedestrian was (in a rude, impolite, dimwit sense). But was this sufficient to warrant a manslaughter charge let alone a manslaughter conviction?
Look at the different opinions on here - Grey was very unlucky indeed to be in front of twelve jurors who were unanimous in their view.
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.
By the time it was demolished, all that lovely space has been built over, and it was just down a back street. 1938:
1961:
The main station had to go since it was far too small. Keeping the arch would have been nice, but its totemic status in conservation lore is rather odd.
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
Lineker's remarks were from a tweet on his personal account, not voiced to camera on Match of the Day.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
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.
By the time it was demolished, all that lovely space has been built over, and it was just down a back street. 1938:
1961:
The main station had to go since it was far too small. Keeping the arch would have been nice, but its totemic status in conservation lore is rather odd.
It seems to have triggered the building resentment at the demolition of the old by the forces of the new brutalism. Provided a seed for the new perception to crystallise almostt instantly.
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 feel slightly dirty, having just taken a taxi to Euston followed by a ride to the Midlands in a 2/3rds-empty train. If all this wanton destruction has been carried out for my convenience I really didn't need it. Will post-covid demand for train travel ever recover? If not, the entire premise of HS2 will turn out to be mistaken. There used to be three fast trains an hour to Birmingham, now there are only two and they are rarely, if ever, full.
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 cyclist wasn't behaving badly. The pedestrian was (in a rude, impolite, dimwit sense). But was this sufficient to warrant a manslaughter charge let alone a manslaughter conviction?
Look at the different opinions on here - Grey was very unlucky indeed to be in front of twelve jurors who were unanimous in their view.
Alternatively the jurors made their decision based on the law rather than their dislike of cyclists...
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
Lineker's remarks were from a tweet on his personal account, not voiced to camera on Match of the Day.
Which, according to the BBC social media rules, is irrelevant - I'm guessing in recognition of the fact that his status as a BBC presenter gets him followers.
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”
Genius
Wasn’t the “fat friend” thing when Brummell and the Prince Regent were in one of their fallouts, bumped into each other at a society shindig and Brummell asked the Prince’s companion “who’s your fat friend”?
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 cyclist wasn't behaving badly. The pedestrian was (in a rude, impolite, dimwit sense). But was this sufficient to warrant a manslaughter charge let alone a manslaughter conviction?
Look at the different opinions on here - Grey was very unlucky indeed to be in front of twelve jurors who were unanimous in their view.
Alternatively the jurors made their decision based on the law rather than their dislike of cyclists...
Jurors aren't supposed to do that. It's the judge who does that, at least in stating the law and summing up the evidence. Which is what is at issue here.
A luxury spa hotel in a rural Leicestershire village has closed to guests and cancelled existing bookings so it can provide accommodation for 250 asylum seekers.
The Best Western Premier Yew Lodge Hotel in Kegworth - which includes a Marco Pierre White New York Italian restaurant - stopped taking reservations two weeks ago after bosses signed an 'exclusive use contract' with the Home Office to house refugees.
Mother-of-two Elisabeth Shepherd, 53, said locals were given 'no notice' about their arrival, and said that people were 'frightened, including myself'.
She said: 'A lot of the villagers use the resources at the hotel such as the gym, pool and restaurant and now we've haven't got anything here to use and will have to turn elsewhere for these facilities.
'People found out about the asylum seekers moving into the hotel because their gym memberships were instantly cancelled.'
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
It is peculiar as it could not be confirmed in court that it was dual use. The Police were unable to say and if you read the Judge's summing up the point they do not say it definitely was. The Judges summing up is available on social media. I think the sentence perverse but the jurors heard the evidence and were directed by the judge so they found in line with that. This was a retrial as the first was inconclusive.
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 cyclist wasn't behaving badly. The pedestrian was (in a rude, impolite, dimwit sense). But was this sufficient to warrant a manslaughter charge let alone a manslaughter conviction?
Look at the different opinions on here - Grey was very unlucky indeed to be in front of twelve jurors who were unanimous in their view.
Alternatively the jurors made their decision based on the law rather than their dislike of cyclists...
Not sure what you mean - I said the cyclist wasn't behaving badly and am not in any way anti-cyclist (I am one). Maybe your post wasn't directed at me?
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
A luxury spa hotel in a rural Leicestershire village has closed to guests and cancelled existing bookings so it can provide accommodation for 250 asylum seekers.
The Best Western Premier Yew Lodge Hotel in Kegworth - which includes a Marco Pierre White New York Italian restaurant - stopped taking reservations two weeks ago after bosses signed an 'exclusive use contract' with the Home Office to house refugees.
Mother-of-two Elisabeth Shepherd, 53, said locals were given 'no notice' about their arrival, and said that people were 'frightened, including myself'.
She said: 'A lot of the villagers use the resources at the hotel such as the gym, pool and restaurant and now we've haven't got anything here to use and will have to turn elsewhere for these facilities.
'People found out about the asylum seekers moving into the hotel because their gym memberships were instantly cancelled.'
Possibly.
Perhaps a government obsessed with making cuts and low public sector pay has lost the capacity to cope when stretched.
Perhaps a government obsessed with media headlines, and seeking out traitors has not put enough effort into processing applications quickly and efficiently.
Perhaps a government staffed by incompetent ministers has lost track of what it is actually there for.
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
Lineker's remarks were from a tweet on his personal account, not voiced to camera on Match of the Day.
Which, according to the BBC social media rules, is irrelevant - I'm guessing in recognition of the fact that his status as a BBC presenter gets him followers.
Lineker is primarily famous as a footballer and not a BBC personality.
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.
This could apply for any group who get irrationally angry. For example FBPE bitter remainers tears would fill up every reservoir that is currently short of water due to lack of rain.
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 predict much SNP infighting, if she wins
Given that we will be getting a Labour Govt soon does it make sense for the SNP to flip and start attacking UK Govt from the right? I really don't think so.
It would mean abandoning their project to enlist da yoof and win a referendum after the oldies have died off. Is there really an alternative plan available?
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
Lineker's remarks were from a tweet on his personal account, not voiced to camera on Match of the Day.
Which, according to the BBC social media rules, is irrelevant - I'm guessing in recognition of the fact that his status as a BBC presenter gets him followers.
Lineker is primarily famous as a footballer and not a BBC personality.
I think it fair to say even if he was not MOTD presenter he would have a substantial twitter following.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
It is peculiar as it could not be confirmed in court that it was dual use. The Police were unable to say and if you read the Judge's summing up the point they do not say it definitely was. The Judges summing up is available on social media. I think the sentence perverse but the jurors heard the evidence and were directed by the judge so they found in line with that. This was a retrial as the first was inconclusive.
I think an appeal would succeed. The judge is wrong in his interpretation of the nature of the path and its width.
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
Lineker's remarks were from a tweet on his personal account, not voiced to camera on Match of the Day.
Which, according to the BBC social media rules, is irrelevant - I'm guessing in recognition of the fact that his status as a BBC presenter gets him followers.
Lineker is primarily famous as a footballer and not a BBC personality.
Not sure that's true for younger generations.
Anyway, Lineker expressing political opinions is fine and in line with other BBC personalities. What is unacceptable is the downplaying of the suffering of Jews in the 1930s at the hands of mass violence by comparisons to asylum restrictions. He shouldn't get fired for it, but he should be on notice.
On the topic of his tax affairs, why doesn't the BBC just have a policy of refusing to use freelancers for presenters on more than a million? They would all buckle.
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Or Jim "Big Break" Davidson – as I mentioned this morning. Presenter for a decade, with a side hustle in racist end of the pier standup.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
The path does look wider on that webpage - but oh, the obstructions. And the council confirming they can't find any legal confirmation it is a shared path.
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 feel slightly dirty, having just taken a taxi to Euston followed by a ride to the Midlands in a 2/3rds-empty train. If all this wanton destruction has been carried out for my convenience I really didn't need it. Will post-covid demand for train travel ever recover? If not, the entire premise of HS2 will turn out to be mistaken. There used to be three fast trains an hour to Birmingham, now there are only two and they are rarely, if ever, full.
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”
Genius
Wasn’t the “fat friend” thing when Brummell and the Prince Regent were in one of their fallouts, bumped into each other at a society shindig and Brummell asked the Prince’s companion “who’s your fat friend”?
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.
That was a good one. Quite tricky.
There you go. Nailed it first time
National character exists. It is just your fastidious narrow minded left wing aversion to ANYTHING that might appear racist or Darwinian or whatever, that prevents you from accepting this obvious truth
I accept that actual racists, fascists, supremacists, etc take this truth about national character and warp it to evil ends. But that doesn’t mean the idea is fiction. It is not; it is real
No, all fine. I'm saying that when personal human characteristics are ascribed to nations or peoples it is usually a nonsense when analysed. So, 'national character doesn't exist' (in this sense) is a pretty good default. You'll be closer to the truth applying this than in assuming it's a true and meaningful and important concept and using it liberally. Be very wary and precise with it - this is my message here.
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.
Real Times Trains is your friend!
He refuses to use a smartphone so he is not its friend.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
It is peculiar as it could not be confirmed in court that it was dual use. The Police were unable to say and if you read the Judge's summing up the point they do not say it definitely was. The Judges summing up is available on social media. I think the sentence perverse but the jurors heard the evidence and were directed by the judge so they found in line with that. This was a retrial as the first was inconclusive.
I think an appeal would succeed. The judge is wrong in his interpretation of the nature of the path and its width.
I think you are right. The path looked rather narrow to me as a cyclist. Admittedly only from the CCTV. The nature of the path being inconclusive as well.
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 cyclist wasn't behaving badly. The pedestrian was (in a rude, impolite, dimwit sense). But was this sufficient to warrant a manslaughter charge let alone a manslaughter conviction?
Look at the different opinions on here - Grey was very unlucky indeed to be in front of twelve jurors who were unanimous in their view.
Alternatively the jurors made their decision based on the law rather than their dislike of cyclists...
Not sure what you mean - I said the cyclist wasn't behaving badly and am not in any way anti-cyclist (I am one). Maybe your post wasn't directed at me?
It wasn't. I was referring to the range of opinion that you referred to, much of which in my view stems from bias against cyclists. Reading the judgement makes me even more convinced that the verdict was correct and the sentence matched sentencing guidelines. Should she go to jail? Yes if we are considering it in line with usual sentencing. But I think we send too many people to jail, in general.
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
According to The Sun (yes, I know) they are backing Lineker and he won't be disciplined for it, never mind sacked.
The right decision of course – common sense has seemingly broke out.
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
Lineker's remarks were from a tweet on his personal account, not voiced to camera on Match of the Day.
Which, according to the BBC social media rules, is irrelevant - I'm guessing in recognition of the fact that his status as a BBC presenter gets him followers.
Lineker is primarily famous as a footballer and not a BBC personality.
For people of the older generations, perhaps. He's been the latter far longer than he was the former.
(And note: I didn't say he only gets followers because he's a BBC presenter.)
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 feel slightly dirty, having just taken a taxi to Euston followed by a ride to the Midlands in a 2/3rds-empty train. If all this wanton destruction has been carried out for my convenience I really didn't need it. Will post-covid demand for train travel ever recover? If not, the entire premise of HS2 will turn out to be mistaken. There used to be three fast trains an hour to Birmingham, now there are only two and they are rarely, if ever, full.
Yes, it’s a terrible mistake
Even at lower rates of commuting, capacity will fill up again at some point giving a million a year immigrants coming in.
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
Lineker's remarks were from a tweet on his personal account, not voiced to camera on Match of the Day.
Which, according to the BBC social media rules, is irrelevant - I'm guessing in recognition of the fact that his status as a BBC presenter gets him followers.
Lineker is primarily famous as a footballer and not a BBC personality.
I think it fair to say even if he was not MOTD presenter he would have a substantial twitter following.
Without expressing a view for or against the verdict I am curious on part of the summing up maybe a lawyer could enlighten me
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result)"
I thought I understood this then looked at the verdict
The pedestrian stayed in the centre The pedestrian shouted and flapped her arm
Now to me while rude and abusive neither seems to me to be an actual unlawful act
If she pushed the cyclist that would be an unlawful act however no one seems to be claiming she did.
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
According to The Sun (yes, I know) they are backing Lineker and he won't be disciplined for it, never mind sacked.
The right decision of course – common sense has seemingly broke out.
I’m not entirely sure the govt will be overly sad about the Lineker furore. For the majority of people who don’t really look at politics in any detail all they see is some fuss about Gary Lineker tweeting something about the govt being Nazis or something, they ask their friends what it’s all about or glance at the Sun or the Mail and see that he’s “whinging” about the govt trying to “stop the boats”. So a multi millionaire footballer to host is kicking off about the govt trying to stop and kick out illegals?
The government probably actually gets a net benefit.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
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 feel slightly dirty, having just taken a taxi to Euston followed by a ride to the Midlands in a 2/3rds-empty train. If all this wanton destruction has been carried out for my convenience I really didn't need it. Will post-covid demand for train travel ever recover? If not, the entire premise of HS2 will turn out to be mistaken. There used to be three fast trains an hour to Birmingham, now there are only two and they are rarely, if ever, full.
Yes, it’s a terrible mistake
Even at lower rates of commuting, capacity will fill up again at some point giving a million a year immigrants coming in.
Periodic reminder also that HS2 is about more than just providing high speed connectivity: it is also about freeing up capacity for higher frequencies of local and freight services.
Periodic reminder also that the HS2 business case weirdly massively understates the benefits, and does not count any benefits which are hard to monetise (such as the above i.e. freeing up capacity for local services; reliability benefits; regeneration benefits, etc.). Because treasury doesn't count that sort of 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:
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
It is peculiar as it could not be confirmed in court that it was dual use. The Police were unable to say and if you read the Judge's summing up the point they do not say it definitely was. The Judges summing up is available on social media. I think the sentence perverse but the jurors heard the evidence and were directed by the judge so they found in line with that. This was a retrial as the first was inconclusive.
I think an appeal would succeed. The judge is wrong in his interpretation of the nature of the path and its width.
I think you are right. The path looked rather narrow to me as a cyclist. Admittedly only from the CCTV. The nature of the path being inconclusive as well.
This is the point of impact from the direction the cyclist approached from (adjacent to the red railings outside the paved area). There would be plenty of space for a pedestrian and cyclist acting reasonably to pass each other safely - you can see a couple walking abreast and not taking up anywhere near the whole space, which appears - I know angles can be deceptive - to be at least as wide as a Renault Traffic. It looked much narrower on the CCTV.
There are some pretty bad pinch points further along in the same direction, but not here.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
It's not wide either; and just a few metres behind the incident there is a large narrowing.
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:
Thanks for posting this. I also read the judge's directions to the jury. Which includes:
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result).If you concluded that what took place was or may have been an accident, then you will find the defendant not guilty.If you were sure that what took place was not an accident but found that defendant was or may have been acting in self-defence, then you will find her not guilty."
I originally held the position that the verdict was wrong. But I had a lingering doubt that if the full video footage could be seen (as the jury had presumable seen it) rather than the shortened version - and if that showed Grey actually pushing the cyclist onto the road rather than belligerently gesticulating - then I would reverse my position. But it seems that a push was not clearly shown.
If I were on that jury I would have found her not guilty of manslaughter. I'm pretty sure of that.
Would you have had the stomach for the Henry Fonda grind down of the other eleven though?
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
It is peculiar as it could not be confirmed in court that it was dual use. The Police were unable to say and if you read the Judge's summing up the point they do not say it definitely was. The Judges summing up is available on social media. I think the sentence perverse but the jurors heard the evidence and were directed by the judge so they found in line with that. This was a retrial as the first was inconclusive.
I think an appeal would succeed. The judge is wrong in his interpretation of the nature of the path and its width.
FWIW Her lawyers are appealing the sentence, not the verdict.
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.
Real Times Trains is your friend!
Helped out when Mum and I went to Manchester last September. We avoided the "Euston scrum"
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:
Thanks for posting this. I also read the judge's directions to the jury. Which includes:
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result).If you concluded that what took place was or may have been an accident, then you will find the defendant not guilty.If you were sure that what took place was not an accident but found that defendant was or may have been acting in self-defence, then you will find her not guilty."
I originally held the position that the verdict was wrong. But I had a lingering doubt that if the full video footage could be seen (as the jury had presumable seen it) rather than the shortened version - and if that showed Grey actually pushing the cyclist onto the road rather than belligerently gesticulating - then I would reverse my position. But it seems that a push was not clearly shown.
If I were on that jury I would have found her not guilty of manslaughter. I'm pretty sure of that.
Would you have had the stomach for the Henry Fonda grind down of the other eleven though?
I don't think I'd have needed to because the judge asked for a unanimous verdict and wouldn't have got 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?
"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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
Without expressing a view for or against the verdict I am curious on part of the summing up maybe a lawyer could enlighten me
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result)"
I thought I understood this then looked at the verdict
The pedestrian stayed in the centre The pedestrian shouted and flapped her arm
Now to me while rude and abusive neither seems to me to be an actual unlawful act
If she pushed the cyclist that would be an unlawful act however no one seems to be claiming she did.
I may have it very wrong, but the CCTV looked as if the cyclist came to a halt but kept both feet on the pedals, and lost her balance at that point. If she had put a foot down she may have been fine. Were her feet in clips?
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
It is peculiar as it could not be confirmed in court that it was dual use. The Police were unable to say and if you read the Judge's summing up the point they do not say it definitely was. The Judges summing up is available on social media. I think the sentence perverse but the jurors heard the evidence and were directed by the judge so they found in line with that. This was a retrial as the first was inconclusive.
I think an appeal would succeed. The judge is wrong in his interpretation of the nature of the path and its width.
FWIW Her lawyers are appealing the sentence, not the verdict.
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 feel slightly dirty, having just taken a taxi to Euston followed by a ride to the Midlands in a 2/3rds-empty train. If all this wanton destruction has been carried out for my convenience I really didn't need it. Will post-covid demand for train travel ever recover? If not, the entire premise of HS2 will turn out to be mistaken. There used to be three fast trains an hour to Birmingham, now there are only two and they are rarely, if ever, full.
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”
Genius
Wasn’t the “fat friend” thing when Brummell and the Prince Regent were in one of their fallouts, bumped into each other at a society shindig and Brummell asked the Prince’s companion “who’s your fat friend”?
An absolutely beautiful bit of snark.
Yes you’re right. Which is even better
BB also dressed in collars so fashionable that he could not move his head left or right but could only see straight ahead. He was, to all extents and purposes, a bit of a berk. Famous for being famous. Yet he remains one of a handful of regency celebrities anyone can still name. I bet he'd be delighted.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let the figure it out
I'm concluding that Grey was in front of a jury who to a man didn't like her, thought her rude, unsociable and bigoted, and deemed this sufficient to produce the verdict they did in response to the terrible tragedy. No allowance for intent (or lack of it). I hope I'm wrong. I think juries are terrifying things. Lap of the Gods stuff.
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.
This could apply for any group who get irrationally angry. For example FBPE bitter remainers tears would fill up every reservoir that is currently short of water due to lack of rain.
If we could get them to alternate between incandescent rage and tears, we could set up Newcombe atmospheric engine.
With the added advantage of keeping said group in stout boiler, surround by insulating bricks.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
Which would probably have avoided the tragedy in this case.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
It is peculiar as it could not be confirmed in court that it was dual use. The Police were unable to say and if you read the Judge's summing up the point they do not say it definitely was. The Judges summing up is available on social media. I think the sentence perverse but the jurors heard the evidence and were directed by the judge so they found in line with that. This was a retrial as the first was inconclusive.
I think an appeal would succeed. The judge is wrong in his interpretation of the nature of the path and its width.
I think you are right. The path looked rather narrow to me as a cyclist. Admittedly only from the CCTV. The nature of the path being inconclusive as well.
This is the point of impact from the direction the cyclist approached from (adjacent to the red railings outside the paved area). There would be plenty of space for a pedestrian and cyclist acting reasonably to pass each other safely - you can see a couple walking abreast and not taking up anywhere near the whole space, which appears - I know angles can be deceptive - to be at least as wide as a Renault Traffic. It looked much narrower on the CCTV.
There are some pretty bad pinch points further along in the same direction, but not here.
From the photo the path and the van look the same width to me. The path by the lampost where they would have crossed looks closer to 1.6m wide. I maintain the space for both to path safely is marginal and not something either should assume.
Without expressing a view for or against the verdict I am curious on part of the summing up maybe a lawyer could enlighten me
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result)"
I thought I understood this then looked at the verdict
The pedestrian stayed in the centre The pedestrian shouted and flapped her arm
Now to me while rude and abusive neither seems to me to be an actual unlawful act
If she pushed the cyclist that would be an unlawful act however no one seems to be claiming she did.
I may have it very wrong, but the CCTV looked as if the cyclist came to a halt but kept both feet on the pedals, and lost her balance at that point. If she had put a foot down she may have been fine. Were her feet in clips?
Which doesn't answer the question which is if manslaughter is "A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act"
What exactly was the unlawful act? From what is reported she shouted and flapped her arm
does this mean if I prance down my road screaming like a sodomized goat doing my famous seagull impression and a cyclist falls off their bike laughing and dies I am guilty of manslaughter?
Without expressing a view for or against the verdict I am curious on part of the summing up maybe a lawyer could enlighten me
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result)"
I thought I understood this then looked at the verdict
The pedestrian stayed in the centre The pedestrian shouted and flapped her arm
Now to me while rude and abusive neither seems to me to be an actual unlawful act
If she pushed the cyclist that would be an unlawful act however no one seems to be claiming she did.
I did read an account in which Grey apparently told police she believed she may have made contact.
If you shouted and waved aggressively at someone on a station platform and they tried to step back and fell off into the path of an oncoming train then I suspect the police and CPS would be similarly interested.
As noted, I'm still ambivalent on the sentence, notwithstanding the above.
ETA: Re contact, immediately after the video in this article and also in the article linked from there.
Without expressing a view for or against the verdict I am curious on part of the summing up maybe a lawyer could enlighten me
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result)"
I thought I understood this then looked at the verdict
The pedestrian stayed in the centre The pedestrian shouted and flapped her arm
Now to me while rude and abusive neither seems to me to be an actual unlawful act
If she pushed the cyclist that would be an unlawful act however no one seems to be claiming she did.
I may have it very wrong, but the CCTV looked as if the cyclist came to a halt but kept both feet on the pedals, and lost her balance at that point. If she had put a foot down she may have been fine. Were her feet in clips?
Which doesn't answer the question which is if manslaughter is "A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act"
What exactly was the unlawful act? From what is reported she shouted and flapped her arm
does this mean if I prance down my road screaming like a sodomized goat doing my famous seagull impression and a cyclist falls off their bike laughing and dies I am guilty of manslaughter?
That is my question also. Surely manslaughter or not depends on the nature of the action?
Did she just shout and flap her arms? Did she obstruct the cyclists path to force them into the traffic?
Without expressing a view for or against the verdict I am curious on part of the summing up maybe a lawyer could enlighten me
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result)"
I thought I understood this then looked at the verdict
The pedestrian stayed in the centre The pedestrian shouted and flapped her arm
Now to me while rude and abusive neither seems to me to be an actual unlawful act
If she pushed the cyclist that would be an unlawful act however no one seems to be claiming she did.
I may have it very wrong, but the CCTV looked as if the cyclist came to a halt but kept both feet on the pedals, and lost her balance at that point. If she had put a foot down she may have been fine. Were her feet in clips?
Which doesn't answer the question which is if manslaughter is "A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act"
What exactly was the unlawful act? From what is reported she shouted and flapped her arm
does this mean if I prance down my road screaming like a sodomized goat doing my famous seagull impression and a cyclist falls off their bike laughing and dies I am guilty of manslaughter?
As you say, if she pushed then there is the unlawful act. Otherwise, 'threatening behaviour'? Seems a stretch to me.
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:
Thanks for posting this. I also read the judge's directions to the jury. Which includes:
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result).If you concluded that what took place was or may have been an accident, then you will find the defendant not guilty.If you were sure that what took place was not an accident but found that defendant was or may have been acting in self-defence, then you will find her not guilty."
I originally held the position that the verdict was wrong. But I had a lingering doubt that if the full video footage could be seen (as the jury had presumable seen it) rather than the shortened version - and if that showed Grey actually pushing the cyclist onto the road rather than belligerently gesticulating - then I would reverse my position. But it seems that a push was not clearly shown.
If I were on that jury I would have found her not guilty of manslaughter. I'm pretty sure of that.
Would you have had the stomach for the Henry Fonda grind down of the other eleven though?
I don't think I'd have needed to because the judge asked for a unanimous verdict and wouldn't have got it.
That wouldn't be easy, though, if all the other jurors were for guilty. What would one truly do in such a situation? Interesting to find out.
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.
By the time it was demolished, all that lovely space has been built over, and it was just down a back street. 1938:
1961:
The main station had to go since it was far too small. Keeping the arch would have been nice, but its totemic status in conservation lore is rather odd.
The site is now well into the platforms at Euston; ISTR it's position is marked on the platforms.
Its demolition may well have been a cornerstone on the burgeoning 1960s architectural heritage movement, that helped save St Pancras via Betjeman.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
They don't. Not without certified scale rules at the actual location. Perspective and camera lenses are funny things.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
Well you would think so but too many times we have both moved either left or right and the ones I refer to are the lycra louts mainly who are going far too fast to stop if you both move the same way.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
Worth pointing out that anything in the HC that says "should" is not underwritten by law. That would need the wording "must".
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:
Thanks for posting this. I also read the judge's directions to the jury. Which includes:
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result).If you concluded that what took place was or may have been an accident, then you will find the defendant not guilty.If you were sure that what took place was not an accident but found that defendant was or may have been acting in self-defence, then you will find her not guilty."
I originally held the position that the verdict was wrong. But I had a lingering doubt that if the full video footage could be seen (as the jury had presumable seen it) rather than the shortened version - and if that showed Grey actually pushing the cyclist onto the road rather than belligerently gesticulating - then I would reverse my position. But it seems that a push was not clearly shown.
If I were on that jury I would have found her not guilty of manslaughter. I'm pretty sure of that.
Would you have had the stomach for the Henry Fonda grind down of the other eleven though?
I don't think I'd have needed to because the judge asked for a unanimous verdict and wouldn't have got it.
That wouldn't be easy, though, if all the other jurors were for guilty. What would one truly do in such a situation? Interesting to find out.
No problem with being a single not guilty hold out if I thought I was correct even if meant a long delay. Unless it was during the World Cup or a close Ashes test perhaps.....
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
Worth pointing out that anything in the HC that says "should" is not underwritten by law. That would need the wording "must".
So cyclists don't have to respect pedestrians' safety either, presumably?
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
Worth pointing out that anything in the HC that says "should" is not underwritten by law. That would need the wording "must".
Yep - and this is causing lots of confusion for giving way at side roads. I think they should change that to "must" urgently because very few people (pedestrians or drivers) are going by 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?
"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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
Worth pointing out that anything in the HC that says "should" is not underwritten by law. That would need the wording "must".
"The Highway Code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules!"
Yes, quite. These were all - I think - not manslaughter charges though. It was the decision to go after Grey for manslaughter which I seriously question.
I don't like the CCTV footage aspect either - what would have happened if there was no footage? A rhetorical question - the driver of the car would likely have been blamed.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
Again, we come back to the cyclist had no standing at all on the path. It was not a shared space. The judge is clearly wrong on this point, because if it is not marked as shared, or delineated as shared by the local authority (and it clearly wasn't either) it is deemed to be pedestrian only, and anyone who cycles on it actually commits an offence punishable by a fine.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
It is peculiar as it could not be confirmed in court that it was dual use. The Police were unable to say and if you read the Judge's summing up the point they do not say it definitely was. The Judges summing up is available on social media. I think the sentence perverse but the jurors heard the evidence and were directed by the judge so they found in line with that. This was a retrial as the first was inconclusive.
I think an appeal would succeed. The judge is wrong in his interpretation of the nature of the path and its width.
FWIW Her lawyers are appealing the sentence, not the verdict.
One might wonder how well she has been served by her lawyers overall...
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
Worth pointing out that anything in the HC that says "should" is not underwritten by law. That would need the wording "must".
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
Well you would think so but too many times we have both moved either left or right and the ones I refer to are the lycra louts mainly who are going far too fast to stop if you both move the same way.
I have no sympathy at all with "lycra louts" or similarly inconsiderate cyclists. If they cause accidents, they should have the book thrown at them. This was a 77-year-old lady, though, who was cycling at walking pace. She was no lycra lout.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
Worth pointing out that anything in the HC that says "should" is not underwritten by law. That would need the wording "must".
So cyclists don't have to respect pedestrians' safety either, presumably?
It's left to their good nature. In which any sane pedestrian has no faith at all.
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
Without expressing a view for or against the verdict I am curious on part of the summing up maybe a lawyer could enlighten me
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result)"
I thought I understood this then looked at the verdict
The pedestrian stayed in the centre The pedestrian shouted and flapped her arm
Now to me while rude and abusive neither seems to me to be an actual unlawful act
If she pushed the cyclist that would be an unlawful act however no one seems to be claiming she did.
I may have it very wrong, but the CCTV looked as if the cyclist came to a halt but kept both feet on the pedals, and lost her balance at that point. If she had put a foot down she may have been fine. Were her feet in clips?
Which doesn't answer the question which is if manslaughter is "A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act"
What exactly was the unlawful act? From what is reported she shouted and flapped her arm
does this mean if I prance down my road screaming like a sodomized goat doing my famous seagull impression and a cyclist falls off their bike laughing and dies I am guilty of manslaughter?
I know it's Wikipedia but maybe this sheds some light on it:
Involuntary manslaughter arises where the accused did not intend to cause death or serious injury but caused the death of another through recklessness or criminal negligence. For these purposes, recklessness is defined as a blatant disregard for the dangers of a particular situation.
After a discussion with @HYUFD this morning, I thought I should try and get more evidence around movement in 2019 voters to see what effect Rishi is having over the past 4 months.
Short answer - nil, very little churn.
I have used the most recent polling data from Techne, PeoplePolling, Omnisis, YouGov and Redfield & Wilton, and compared with the polling data from each firm for the first week in November, just after Rishi became PM. I have averaged out the data from those 5 polling companies.
I did not include Deltapoll as their polling data is a bit threadbare and does not include don't knows which I think is important.
The only small movement in 2019 Conservative voters is an increase in Reform switchers and fewer don't knows, probably return back to Conservatives who have improved their retention.
Hardly any movement for 2019 Labour voters.
For 2019 Lib Dem voters, a reduction in Labour and Green switchers but an increase in don't knows and improved Lib Dem retention.
No sign at all of an increase of 2019 Lib Dem voters going Conservative.
The average of the headline polling figures also show little movement, a slight dip in Labour and an increase in Green and Reform voters.
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”
Genius
Wasn’t the “fat friend” thing when Brummell and the Prince Regent were in one of their fallouts, bumped into each other at a society shindig and Brummell asked the Prince’s companion “who’s your fat friend”?
An absolutely beautiful bit of snark.
I prefer the story of Tim Sainsbury bumping into Nicholas Soames in Westminster. Soames was dressed in tweed and Sainsbury asked him: "Going ratting Soames?" to which Soames replied: "Fancy being told what to wear by your grocer."
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
Lineker's remarks were from a tweet on his personal account, not voiced to camera on Match of the Day.
Which, according to the BBC social media rules, is irrelevant - I'm guessing in recognition of the fact that his status as a BBC presenter gets him followers.
Lineker is primarily famous as a footballer and not a BBC personality.
Not sure that's true for younger generations.
Anyway, Lineker expressing political opinions is fine and in line with other BBC personalities. What is unacceptable is the downplaying of the suffering of Jews in the 1930s at the hands of mass violence by comparisons to asylum restrictions. He shouldn't get fired for it, but he should be on notice.
On the topic of his tax affairs, why doesn't the BBC just have a policy of refusing to use freelancers for presenters on more than a million? They would all buckle.
Regarding the tweet, aiui Lineker explicitly compared the language but I'd agree Nazi comparisons are probably best avoided.
The tax problem is the other way round. The BBC encouraged (or even forced) presenters to become freelance.
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.
But the cyclist had given way, to the extent that one needs to give way on a bi-directional path; she'd slowed right down and moved to the side so that they could pass one another safely. The pedestrian, on the other hand, insisted on occupying the centre of the path and deliberately and unnecessarily obstructed the cyclist, causing her to lose control.
I guess this is where we see it differently. If she had done as you said, I fail to see how she ended up in the road without being pushed, in which case the sentence would be too light. She had not slowed with sufficient control for a safe pass. The pedestrian could have helped make it a safe pass, but it looks to me like the cyclist expected the pedestrian to do so.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
The Highway Code says cyclists should give way to pedestrians:-
Rule 62 ... Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2 ... Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
Those pictures make absolutely clear that a pedestrian and cyclist riding at a slow speed can easily pass in opposite directions with no danger to each other as long as neither occupies the centre of the path. It is not a narrow path.
Which is irrelevant there is nothing in the highway code that says pedestrians have to move from the centre of the path for oncoming cyclists. Is it polite to absolutely but there is no should or must about it.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
They will go around you on whatever the opposite side is to the direction you go in. It's not rocket science.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
Worth pointing out that anything in the HC that says "should" is not underwritten by law. That would need the wording "must".
So cyclists don't have to respect pedestrians' safety either, presumably?
Works both ways. The HC revisions of a year ago sets up contradictions between classes or road user. But 'should' is the word used all ways in these instances. The HC is more a good practice guide than a legal text.
Yes, quite. These were all - I think - not manslaughter charges though. It was the decision to go after Grey for manslaughter which I seriously question.
I don't like the CCTV footage aspect either - what would have happened if there was no footage? A rhetorical question - the driver of the car would likely have been blamed.
I think the reason we have dangerous driving/careless driving laws is because people would refuse to convict drivers of manslaughter. Apparently the same does not apply to pedestrians.
Hence all the judges letting drivers off for killing people. It usually gets punted down to careless driving. It's a psychological condition.
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.
Has he got the boot yet?
The BBC must wish the Lineker row would just go away. If he does get the push, then people will be all over Andrew Neil, Alan Sugar and anyone else who has ever been on the BBC and expressed views stridently, but did not come to fame via their BBC work. And as others have pointed out, now the BBC is run by card-carrying Conservatives.
Bollocks.its just enforcing it's impartiality as it ought to have done. Just think back to how the luvvies were guzzling champers when Blair won in 97. If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
Lineker's remarks were from a tweet on his personal account, not voiced to camera on Match of the Day.
Which, according to the BBC social media rules, is irrelevant - I'm guessing in recognition of the fact that his status as a BBC presenter gets him followers.
Lineker is primarily famous as a footballer and not a BBC personality.
Not sure that's true for younger generations.
Anyway, Lineker expressing political opinions is fine and in line with other BBC personalities. What is unacceptable is the downplaying of the suffering of Jews in the 1930s at the hands of mass violence by comparisons to asylum restrictions. He shouldn't get fired for it, but he should be on notice.
On the topic of his tax affairs, why doesn't the BBC just have a policy of refusing to use freelancers for presenters on more than a million? They would all buckle.
We've been through this. It is the language of the nazis, by creating an "other" and calling those who don't agree with this othering "traitors".
The new act is not the action of the nazis, it is the language.
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 feel slightly dirty, having just taken a taxi to Euston followed by a ride to the Midlands in a 2/3rds-empty train. If all this wanton destruction has been carried out for my convenience I really didn't need it. Will post-covid demand for train travel ever recover? If not, the entire premise of HS2 will turn out to be mistaken. There used to be three fast trains an hour to Birmingham, now there are only two and they are rarely, if ever, full.
Yes, it’s a terrible mistake
Even at lower rates of commuting, capacity will fill up again at some point giving a million a year immigrants coming in.
Periodic reminder also that HS2 is about more than just providing high speed connectivity: it is also about freeing up capacity for higher frequencies of local and freight services.
Periodic reminder also that the HS2 business case weirdly massively understates the benefits, and does not count any benefits which are hard to monetise (such as the above i.e. freeing up capacity for local services; reliability benefits; regeneration benefits, etc.). Because treasury doesn't count that sort of thing.
As you note, the primary purpose is to allow more commuter trains into London, benefiting London and the South East.
IIRC, The business case was bollocks, because it assumed that people traveling to London for business meetings cannot work on the train.
Yes, quite. These were all - I think - not manslaughter charges though. It was the decision to go after Grey for manslaughter which I seriously question.
I don't like the CCTV footage aspect either - what would have happened if there was no footage? A rhetorical question - the driver of the car would likely have been blamed.
I think the reason we have dangerous driving/careless driving laws is because people would refuse to convict drivers of manslaughter. Apparently the same does not apply to pedestrians.
Hence all the judges letting drivers off for killing people. It usually gets punted down to careless driving. It's a psychological condition.
Comments
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result).If you concluded that what took place was or may have been an accident, then you will find the defendant not guilty.If you were sure that what took place was not an accident but found that defendant was or may have been acting in self-defence, then you will find her not guilty."
I originally held the position that the verdict was wrong. But I had a lingering doubt that if the full video footage could be seen (as the jury had presumable seen it) rather than the shortened version - and if that showed Grey actually pushing the cyclist onto the road rather than belligerently gesticulating - then I would reverse my position. But it seems that a push was not clearly shown.
If I were on that jury I would have found her not guilty of manslaughter. I'm pretty sure of that.
National character exists. It is just your fastidious narrow minded left wing aversion to ANYTHING that might appear racist or Darwinian or whatever, that prevents you from accepting this obvious truth
I accept that actual racists, fascists, supremacists, etc take this truth about national character and warp it to evil ends. But that doesn’t mean the idea is fiction. It is not; it is real
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11839153/Luxury-spa-hotel-closed-guests-used-house-250-asylum-seekers.html
A luxury spa hotel in a rural Leicestershire village has closed to guests and cancelled existing bookings so it can provide accommodation for 250 asylum seekers.
The Best Western Premier Yew Lodge Hotel in Kegworth - which includes a Marco Pierre White New York Italian restaurant - stopped taking reservations two weeks ago after bosses signed an 'exclusive use contract' with the Home Office to house refugees.
Mother-of-two Elisabeth Shepherd, 53, said locals were given 'no notice' about their arrival, and said that people were 'frightened, including myself'.
She said: 'A lot of the villagers use the resources at the hotel such as the gym, pool and restaurant and now we've haven't got anything here to use and will have to turn elsewhere for these facilities.
'People found out about the asylum seekers moving into the hotel because their gym memberships were instantly cancelled.'
If Lineker gets the boot, it will be no more than he deserves. He has after all been warned.. he is in the last chance saloon.
In a situation where I may be miffed because I am having to share the pavement or what have you, I might be annoyed about it but I’ll still slow/stop/move out of the way because it’s just common good sense. I don’t want to be involved in a collision and I don’t want the person coming towards me rightly or wrongly to be involved in a collision.
It seems to me like this was a situation that could easily have been avoided and the individual in question has to bear some culpability for the way that they reacted. I think I share the view of others on here that the sentence in question does appear to be rather harsh.
Now, cyclists may choose to use pavements despite that in certain circumstances. You do. I do. I imagine every other cyclist does. But we're there on sufferance and we are the ones who have to adjust for pedestrians. Not the other way around.
The pedestrian may have been unpleasant but was within her rights to not give way.
Where that argument could and should break down is in flapping her hand at the cyclist this person scared (presumably) the victim into thinking she was being assaulted so she tried to take evasive action, which led to her death, and then manslaughter becomes plausible. But that isn't the argument that was used, and the ones that were used don't stand up to scrutiny.
The whole thing is peculiar. I think it as much as anything else suggests the judge isn't very good.
Look at the different opinions on here - Grey was very unlucky indeed to be in front of twelve jurors who were unanimous in their view.
1961:
The main station had to go since it was far too small. Keeping the arch would have been nice, but its totemic status in conservation lore is rather odd.
Mega lolz.
As a driver I have no right to expect a cyclist to make my driving easier and have to be prepared for them doing things that I don't think likely. I think a cyclist has a similar duty passing a pedestrian on a pavement.
An absolutely beautiful bit of snark.
Rule 62
...
Some cycle tracks shared with pedestrians will not be separated by such a feature. On such shared use routes, you should always take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary (see Rule H2).
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82
Rule H2
...
Cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared use cycle tracks
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/introduction#ruleh2
Of course, the Highway Code has been changed since this incident, but then so has the signage on that path.
https://www.cambsnews.co.uk/news/huntingdon-sign-doubt-raises-question-mark-over-manslaughter-verdict/8173/
Perhaps a government obsessed with media headlines, and seeking out traitors has not put enough effort into processing applications quickly and efficiently.
Perhaps a government staffed by incompetent ministers has lost track of what it is actually there for.
It would mean abandoning their project to enlist da yoof and win a referendum after the oldies have died off. Is there really an alternative plan available?
Anyway, Lineker expressing political opinions is fine and in line with other BBC personalities. What is unacceptable is the downplaying of the suffering of Jews in the 1930s at the hands of mass violence by comparisons to asylum restrictions. He shouldn't get fired for it, but he should be on notice.
On the topic of his tax affairs, why doesn't the BBC just have a policy of refusing to use freelancers for presenters on more than a million? They would all buckle.
The right decision of course – common sense has seemingly broke out.
(And note: I didn't say he only gets followers because he's a BBC presenter.)
"A person commits manslaughter is he/she does an unlawful act that a sane and reasonable person would realise would inevitably expose another person to the risk of some harm ( and that other person dies as a result)"
I thought I understood this then looked at the verdict
The pedestrian stayed in the centre
The pedestrian shouted and flapped her arm
Now to me while rude and abusive neither seems to me to be an actual unlawful act
If she pushed the cyclist that would be an unlawful act however no one seems to be claiming she did.
Free Auriol Grey.
Lock up Gary Lineker.
The government probably actually gets a net benefit.
Periodic reminder also that the HS2 business case weirdly massively understates the benefits, and does not count any benefits which are hard to monetise (such as the above i.e. freeing up capacity for local services; reliability benefits; regeneration benefits, etc.). Because treasury doesn't count that sort of thing.
There are some pretty bad pinch points further along in the same direction, but not here.
The judge's comments seem very odd to me.
I don't move out the centre if I have one of the lycra louts pedalling towards me because I have no idea which way they are likely to try and go round me so I just stop dead and let them figure it out
On banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re-entering the UK
Support: 50%
Oppose: 36%
via
@YouGov
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1633850377794916355?s=20
He was, to all extents and purposes, a bit of a berk. Famous for being famous.
Yet he remains one of a handful of regency celebrities anyone can still name. I bet he'd be delighted.
With the added advantage of keeping said group in stout boiler, surround by insulating bricks.
From the photo the path and the van look the same width to me. The path by the lampost where they would have crossed looks closer to 1.6m wide. I maintain the space for both to path safely is marginal and not something either should assume.
What exactly was the unlawful act?
From what is reported she shouted and flapped her arm
does this mean if I prance down my road screaming like a sodomized goat doing my famous seagull impression and a cyclist falls off their bike laughing and dies I am guilty of manslaughter?
https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/summary-what-offences-may-be-committed-if-someone-shouted-or-approached-another-person
I did read an account in which Grey apparently told police she believed she may have made contact.
If you shouted and waved aggressively at someone on a station platform and they tried to step back and fell off into the path of an oncoming train then I suspect the police and CPS would be similarly interested.
As noted, I'm still ambivalent on the sentence, notwithstanding the above.
ETA: Re contact, immediately after the video in this article and also in the article linked from there.
Did she just shout and flap her arms?
Did she obstruct the cyclists path to force them into the traffic?
Its demolition may well have been a cornerstone on the burgeoning 1960s architectural heritage movement, that helped save St Pancras via Betjeman.
Highway Code rule 13 for pedestrians: "... Some routes shared with cyclists will not be separated by such a feature allowing cyclists and pedestrians to share the same space. Cyclists should respect your safety (see Rule 62) but you should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them. Always remain aware of your environment and avoid unnecessary distractions."
https://road.cc/content/news/driver-who-rammed-teenage-cyclist-bike-avoids-jail-299641
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/range-rover-driver-who-inexplicably-24313829
https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/19412807.careless-trucker-fatal-carlisle-accident-spared-jail/
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/courts/co-down-lorry-driver-spared-jail-over-cyclists-road-death/1933707919.html
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/driver-careless-driving-killing-cyclist-spared-jail-sentence-367136
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/nhs-cambridgeshire-police-cambridge-children-paul-b2215306.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8700943/Porsche-driver-53-spared-jail-killing-cyclist-lost-control-50-000-car.html
https://metro.co.uk/2018/06/08/driver-20-spared-jail-for-killing-cyclist-while-overtaking-7616488/
https://www.rotherhamadvertiser.co.uk/news/view,hit-and-run-driver-spared-jail_43329.htm
https://road.cc/content/news/careless-driver-avoids-jail-killing-cyclist-296857
https://road.cc/content/news/suspended-sentence-careless-driver-287767
https://www.semafor.com/article/03/09/2023/as-biden-tacks-right-on-crime-and-immigration-some-democrats-feel-cut-out-of-the-picture
And Lineker might want to keep away from lamp-posts....
I don't like the CCTV footage aspect either - what would have happened if there was no footage? A rhetorical question - the driver of the car would likely have been blamed.
https://cycling.today/fixie-cyclist-jailed-for-18-months-over-death-of-pedestrian/
Involuntary manslaughter arises where the accused did not intend to cause death or serious injury but caused the death of another through recklessness or criminal negligence. For these purposes, recklessness is defined as a blatant disregard for the dangers of a particular situation.
Short answer - nil, very little churn.
I have used the most recent polling data from Techne, PeoplePolling, Omnisis, YouGov and Redfield & Wilton, and compared with the polling data from each firm for the first week in November, just after Rishi became PM. I have averaged out the data from those 5 polling companies.
I did not include Deltapoll as their polling data is a bit threadbare and does not include don't knows which I think is important.
The only small movement in 2019 Conservative voters is an increase in Reform switchers and fewer don't knows, probably return back to Conservatives who have improved their retention.
Hardly any movement for 2019 Labour voters.
For 2019 Lib Dem voters, a reduction in Labour and Green switchers but an increase in don't knows and improved Lib Dem retention.
No sign at all of an increase of 2019 Lib Dem voters going Conservative.
The average of the headline polling figures also show little movement, a slight dip in Labour and an increase in Green and Reform voters.
The tax problem is the other way round. The BBC encouraged (or even forced) presenters to become freelance.
Hence all the judges letting drivers off for killing people. It usually gets punted down to careless driving. It's a psychological condition.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/17/motonormativity-britons-more-accepting-driving-related-risk
The new act is not the action of the nazis, it is the language.
IIRC, The business case was bollocks, because it assumed that people traveling to London for business meetings cannot work on the train.
Maybe her lawyers should argue this as part of the appeal?