One of my favourite theories to bore people with in the pub is that Apple should buy Brompton.
@cookie is right, bikes shouldn’t be hard to maintain. If you fit Marathon Plus tyres or similar then life gets much easier. Even then, you buy a bike, it probably doesn’t come with lights or a lock or a rack/basket. The UK bike industry (with a few honourable exceptions) hasn’t got the knack of a consumer friendly product.
But the opportunity is there for the taking. Bromptons are amazing city bikes, especially in electric form. And then you think - what company has experience in the consumer user experience, miniaturisation, lightweight metals, battery technology, and is getting into the mobility space? Plus also has a ready-to-go network of retail stores? Apple.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
What a lovely encouraging set of accounts. Advantages come with the extra life expectancy, and increased fitness when 70+. I think we are just starting on a cultural shift from cycling as leisure/lycra to normal clothes and normal journeys, but still with a long way to go, and (tbh) a culture war to win. Even my local hospital does not have secure cycle parking yet, and several staggered pedestrian crossings on the way there have such narrow pedestrian cages installed that a mobility scooter cannot pass through.
My current local activism is getting anti-cycling anti-wheeling barriers off rights of way, which force pedestrians and cyclists onto 'alternatives' which are narrow shared pavements often blocked by idiots with their cars, or sometimes busy roads.
It has to be approached through a pedestrian lens because cyclists have no legally-enforcible access rights unless their cycle is a disabled mobility aid. Fortunately there is an overlap. A friend has just issued a Letter Before Action to Derby City Council for an impassable 'anti-motorbike' chicane barrier on a gennel in Derby, which does not block motor bikes but does block her wheelchair; when you issue one of those they suddenly wake up and stop many years are evasion and waffle.
On @Cookie 's comments, without wanting to tell you the obvious, there are options like 8 or 11 or 14 speed speed hub gears that need very little maintenance (but if you buy a Rohloff you will know you have paid for it), and anti-puncture tyres with a kevlar layer to stop punctures. Around here I only ever get punctures in the sidewall when it is the trim-the-hawthorn-hedges season, as I run this type of tyre. Lots of options and more becoming available all the time.
Meanwhile Sir John Curtice tells Nick Robinson that the overnight results show the Tories are a long way behind, declining their vote by a greater margin than the opinion polls show...
Nobody can deny that it was a poor night but Uxbridge was unexpected, despite @HYUFD predictions, and for Sunak it must be a relief as he goes into recess
We are still 15 months away from a GE and events happen, including what happens in Scotland to the SNP
Hopefully Uxbridge will encourage Tory complacency. Brunel university being out of term will have helped them too.
What was the swing in Uxbridge? 6.7% from 2019. So if you apply that as UNS on electoral calculus on the new boundaries that gives you Lab largest party and 15 short of a majority. That’s without any SNP losses and no tactical voting.
So a Labour majority is quite possible even with Uxbridge-style swing.
Expectations management aside, the results seem objectively satisfying for Labour, as discussed here:
The Tories exploited ULEZ effectively but that's not a formula for national success, and the Selby and Somerton results are both landslide territory.
Absolutely Nick.
To be honest, when it first became apparent that there would be a by-election in Selby and Ainsty, it seemed to me to be a moot point whether Labour would even be the main challenger to the Tories. It seemed quite possible that the contest would be more reminiscent of North Shropshire, where Labour also started in a very weak 2nd place and was overtaken. The constituency boundaries are also markedly less favourable to Labour than those of the old Selby seat which John Grogan held, so the historical precedent is only of limited relevance. Obviously as things progressed in that campaign my perception and expectations changed, but it's still an astounding result for Labour to overturn a majority in excess of 20,000 in a semi-rural seat.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
I'm also a member of the Marathon Plus cult! I have had punctures, but they've either been internal (from the spoke poking through) or the sort of gash that, if it was on a person, would see you to A&E.
Schwalbe have good naming conventions, my mtb came with Nobby Nic and Magic Mary tyres
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Bike maintenance emporia are available you know. They will take your money & your bicycles & return a lovely fettled bicycle in return.
Well yes, but from what I can see they tend to be bloody expensive!
To be fair, there is a place in Sale which will maintain your bike for almost free and also teach you to do it. Solutions are available: mainly just be a man and learn some skills. My comment was more the point that I can see why people don't do it.
Sure, but anything that requires time is expensive. Either you pay in your own time or you pay someone else for their time. Somehow we happily accept that the car costs huge sums to keep running, but balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running!
A well fettled bicycle is a thing of joy & worth paying for if you don’t have the time to do it yourself imo.
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike, and b) that's far, far more, per mile, than I'm paying to keep a car running. Cycling should be a cheap way of getting about. But it isn't. This isn't anyone's fault - as you say, paying someone to do a job takes time. But I lament it nonetheless.
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
Put them in the washing machine on the "Drum Cleaning" cycle which is very hot. They will come out considerably more pliable and easier to fit. You'll also be able to do burglaries with impunity as you won't have any fingerprints left after handling the scalding hot rubber.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
You are talking s***e as usual.
As someone who does 30,000 miles a year I take no s*** from a Sunday driver. I can tell you my worst blackspots. M42 around Solihull. M6 Junction 9 to the M54, the entire M25., the Brynglas Tunnel. I wouldn't dream of driving in central London anymore, Birmingham, an hour from Bristol Street to the M5. I could go on all day. If one needs to make an appointment one cannot rely on the motorcar, and use a smart motorway and if there has been an accident one can be, one, two, three hours late.
It is not the golden age of motoring, that is long gone.
You make my point for me. There's a reason you drive 30k miles a year, its because driving works, and nothing else does.
If one needs to make an appointment, the only thing one can rely upon is the motorcar, in almost the entire country.
Yes traffic may be shit in a few places. Shit happens. I can tell you absolutely eg if there's an accident on the M6, or the M56, or the M62 it can lead to sudden gridlock in towns used as a ratrun to avoid the motorway traffic, or worse a motorway closure.
But despite that, its still by far the best option.
The private motorcar, is in almost all circumstances, like democracy. Its the worst option available - except for all other options that have yet been tried.
But I am telling you it doesn't work. There are too many cars on the road. Private motoring is unsustainable from the practical point of view.
It wasn't like this 50 years ago, although it has been getting considerably worse year on year over the last 40. We are at gridlock. It has to change.
You may enjoy the freedom of the open road from a traffic jam, but I don't.
Here's a novel solution - build more roads.
If roads are at capacity, build extra capacity. Same as any other transportation.
Build new motorways, new roads, wider roads, extra lanes, new bridges - whatever is required.
Yes there's extra people on the roads, that's because *drumroll* there's extra people in the country. We used to have 50 million people in the country, we now have 70 million, but where's the new motorway capacity that has been built to cope with the influx of extra people living here?
I don't enjoy traffic jams, but they're also quite often easy to avoid, especially if you can be flexible with your hours and with modern phones or satnavs giving traffic alerts it can still be quite possible to be driving at reasonable speeds and traffic jams are the exception not the norm for me.
But yes, something has to change, and that something is extra road capacity. Not magicking away cars with pixie dust and pushbikes.
More roads generate more traffic. The M25 is proof in point. And coming from the North West do you never use the series of car parks prefaced with M6. (60, 61, 62 etc, etc) it is chaos for most of the day? P.S. I'd love an M4 Southern Relief Road at Newport, but that would have busted the entire transport budget for Wales for the next five years.
We need to get about, but as someone who uses private transport all day every day, the private car is unsustainable.
"More roads generate more traffic" - great!
More traffic is a good thing. It's more transportation, more activity, more convenience, more business. Why oppose that?
More traffic spread over more roads is less traffic per road, not more, overall like a supermarket opening extra checkouts not forcing everyone through just one checkout.
The private car is only unsustainable if you haven't considered every other option which is even less sustainable.
They do though. See LA - massive highways, huge congestion. Compare with Venice - no roads, no congestion.
You have a weird zero-sum take on this that doesn't consider how infrastructure interacts with demand.
Another example you see all the time: "There are no cyclists on xx High Street - why are we wasting money on a cycle lane ". One if the main reasons why people don't cycle is a lack of safe provision.
Yes, his take is zero-sum. I agree with him that we should have been building more roads. But not that "build more roads" is the solution. American cities did "build more roads" and more roads and then more roads. And then started removing them because the more roads you build the more traffic you generate and the slower traffic gets.
As always a balance is needed. There are a stack of shovel-ready road schemes which the government should have funded as an economic driver. At the same time we need to be cutting traffic in towns and cities which means more bypasses and more traffic free zones.
Also, the more cars you have the more parking you need. American cities demolished so many blocks to make car lots they made the city downtowns ugly and windswept so, yes, it is easy to park there but, no, you don’t want to go and park there because it’s ugly and windswept
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Bicycles are also widely used for commuting. When I lived in Germany, I used to cycle 5 miles to work every day, unless the weather was particularly bad. As well as saving me money, this kept me fit and left more space on the roads for those who needed to use their cars.
I would commute by bicycle here in the UK, but it's simply too dangerous and unpleasant, so that's another car added to the rush-hour traffic.
The idea that bikes are inherently recreational rather than utility vehicles is quite silly. They ought to be a perfectly good way of making practical 2-10 mile journeys (like commutes). They can (like cars!) absolutely be recreational too.
I don’t think anyone is seriously suggesting replacing cars with bikes for long journeys. But most people don’t make long journeys that often.
Let’s be careful though, this thread carries an increasing risk of becoming about WFH.
The country is not setup for bikes and most people will not risk their lives dodging arsehole drivers. Not a hope of us being like Europeans whist our politicians are shit.
Neither was the Netherlands in the 60s - it took a lot of bold reforms and infrastructure against the run of public opinion.
You’re right about our politicians being shite though.
Bikes are semi situational though. The Netherlands has the great advantage of being flat.
There is untapped potential still in the UK on this front, but in some places you’re just not going to persuade as many people that they want to cycle up a giant hill every time they come home from work or the shops.
Plenty of flat places in the UK that could do much better with bikes. Manchester, Liverpool, plenty of London, loads of towns. We are way behind notably non-flat countries such as Spain, France and Italy when it comes to bike usage.
There aren't many cities in the country where the terrain is hilly enough to be a real barrier. Sheffield, Bristol, Plymouth - I don't think any others. Nottingham and Leeds undulate a bit but not enough to deter cycling. Personally I'd rather have a bit of up and down on my route - for me, my nearest hill of any sort at all is the Warburton Toll Bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal, which is 7 miles away.
The biggest lump I encounter is the bridge over the M60 by Sharston tip - though if I fancy pretending to be Tom Boonen I've got a lovely tiny steep cobbled hill by work in Jutland Street.
Bradford, especially to the west, is quite hilly.
Yes, I should have included Bradford.
I know exactly the two hills you mean! You barely notice the bridge by Sharston tip in the car: on a bike it's Les Alpes d'Gatley. And cycling down Jutland Street would be insane!
Yeah - up is fine (well, low gear and get mashing), down will rattle yer dentures out even if (as you should) you go down heavy on the brakes.
Swiss Hill in Alderley Edge is worth a look for a really quite challenging sharp cobbled climb. Watch out for (a) the Cheshire ATGNI crew in over their heads, and (b) slick stones after rain, which pose a real threat of involuntary de-biking.
One of my favourite theories to bore people with in the pub is that Apple should buy Brompton.
@cookie is right, bikes shouldn’t be hard to maintain. If you fit Marathon Plus tyres or similar then life gets much easier. Even then, you buy a bike, it probably doesn’t come with lights or a lock or a rack/basket. The UK bike industry (with a few honourable exceptions) hasn’t got the knack of a consumer friendly product.
But the opportunity is there for the taking. Bromptons are amazing city bikes, especially in electric form. And then you think - what company has experience in the consumer user experience, miniaturisation, lightweight metals, battery technology, and is getting into the mobility space? Plus also has a ready-to-go network of retail stores? Apple.
It’s possible to buy a bike that requires next to no maintenance, but it’ll cost: choose hub gears, belt drive, dynamo lights & kevlar belted tyres and you’ve got something that will last & last.
The price will make your eyes water though: none of this is mass market unfortunately.
I live in the UK's most congested city, Edinburgh, yet we have the the best public transport system in Scotland and the city is about as walkable as they come. Cycling is getting there. A small, rich minority cause congestion for everyone else.
There are very few reasons for driving here or in central London. But very large chunks of the population don't have this opportunity to make the switch. Public transport and walking cycling provision in our regional cities is pathetic - compare Liverpool to any French city. That has to come first.
What Khan and others need to do is to offer this carrot, and fast. We could have fully funded HS2 if we hadn't frozen fuel duty over the last few years. We need to explain that building more roads induces more demand, rather than sating it.
Inducing more demand is a good thing.
That's how you get economic growth. Greater aggregate demand.
You're in danger of becoming the kinetic equivalent of the telephone sanitisers in Hitchhiker's Guide. It may add to the growth figures but wastes energy on doing nothing very useful much of the time.
I think he's trying to hit every economic fallacy in the textbook.
It's strange how many people consider driving good for economic activity. It's a cost, space and time sink. The only thing you can buy out of a car window is a McDonald's. An Edinburgh tram has 250 customers on it - that's equivalent to a a traffic jam nearly a mile long.
Perhaps my attitude to this comes from actually growing up in the countryside. It was amazing moving to a city and finding that thousands of people could spend their time having fun and spending money rather than driving for hours to get to the cinema in Inverness.
"Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand."
Our resident pirate’s celebration of the car fits this definition perfectly. Cars are utterly dependent on a system of societal support that everyone pays for, whether they are car users or not. Depending on the car for personal travel is a society-level choice, not an absolute.
The issue, politically, is that at the individual level, for many, it isn’t a choice. Given the pressure on housing supply in this country people have to live where the housing is: what other choice do they have? Barty is absolutely correct that this means that for a many, many (probably a bare majority?) of people in this country that means depending on the car for personal transport for their daily needs - work, pleasure, shopping etc etc. To not have access to a car is to be impoverished & reliant on the whims of others.
It matters not one jot that they would be happier & healthier if they used public transport & the bicycle. They can’t - the entire system that allows them to exist in society requires this portion of the population to have a car. There is no functional bus service & no cycling infrastructure that doesn’t put them directly in the way of 44 ton artics on narrow rural A roads.
Squaring this circle is a challenge & Uxbridge demonstrates how easy it is for a politician to use people’s dependence on the car as a political tool: Expect more of this culture war politics I guess?
Yes, expect more. More or less every bit of politics in a democracy is about the gap or gulf between what is good for me and what is good for nation/society/world.
A significant cultural change has occurred, reflected in things like political party membership, whereby social complexification and discohesion has discouraged communal/national rather than individual concerns.
Education is a nice example. Rawlsianism suggests comprehensive education for 100% of people is best overall. The moment there are individual alternatives, the model ceases to work. Social good and individual good are at odds.
But even on the right, there used to be a guardrail between "good for me creating good for us" and "good for me full stop". The difference between Thatcher's father and Thatcher's son.
It's certainly possible to be a rugged libertarian- I once worked with an utterly delightful individual who was basically Ron Swanson reimagined as a physics professor. But the trap on the right is to ignore the "what if everyone did this?" question. One person's freedom to drive a car is everyone else's congestion, that sort of thing. Is anyone doing any good thinking about that problem?
Just listening to JRM on R4 and it reminded me, thinking of his seat and the potential by election in Mid Beds, that hopefully Labour has learnt a lesson from these by elections re the swing to Lab & LDs.
If Labour fight Mid Beds hard the outcome is more likely to be a Tory hold. Just because you are in 2nd place does not make you the party with the best chance of winning if there is an anti Tory mood. Many Tories are more comfortable placing their protest vote with the LDs than Lab and the LDs are much, much, much better than Lab at by elections.
I don't believe that Lab can win seats like Mid Beds or JRMs seat. The LDs can, but not if Lab play a spoiler role.
Although more relevant to by elections it can impact seats in a GE and there is still a chance that Lab might need the LDs after the GE.
Mogg's seat was Labour between 1997 and 2010.
If Labour don't target it its effectively an admission they cannot win a majority.
It was a new seat in 2010 @another_richard. I don't know how it compares to the old seat(s), but realistically if there were a by election here who do you think the main challenger would be?
Mogg's NE Somerset is based on the old Wansdyke constituency.
It should be remembered that in 2017 Labour was 14k ahead of the LibDems in NE Somerset.
Do Labour think that Starmer is less popular than Corbyn (or Miliband or Brown) or that they're less ready for government ?
If not why would Labour give up now ?
I looked it after I made my post and concede @another_richard that being the old Wynsdyke seat my comment about it being a new seat (although true) was irrelevant.
I guess I am arguing on 'my gut feel' by putting this seat in the bucket of seats where only the LDs can dislodge the Tories even though they are behind Lab. Although JRM made a big point of identifying the Lab were his challengers and not the LDs which seemed a bit defensive to me.
I don't know, you have the cheek to use real evidence to argue with my gut feelings. What is PB coming to.
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike
I just threw up in my mouth a bit.
If I attempt a sprint triathlon next year, I'll need to get a decent racing bike (as opposed to my crummy Apollo mountain bike). The problem is, the road-racing bike world seems to be full of judgemental tossers making the world utterly inaccessible for anyone who doesn't want to be a peperami in lycra.
As others may have said, a footnote is the feeble showing of Reform/Reclaim when it comes to a crunch. L/LD mutual discipline held up well, but as expected Green voters ignored the progressive alliance stuff (their Uxbridge votes were enough to give the antiULEZ candidate victory, in fact) - in Somerton they were over 10%.
Loving the name of the Uxbridge Green candidate though!
And congrats on your 1% in S&A
The Uxbridge Green candidate was called Sarah Green, which confusingly is the same name as the LibDem winning candidate, and thus now MP, in the Chesham and Amersham by-election. Sarah Green, the LibDem, is of course part of the 20% of LibDem MPs called Sarah.
One of my favourite theories to bore people with in the pub is that Apple should buy Brompton.
@cookie is right, bikes shouldn’t be hard to maintain. If you fit Marathon Plus tyres or similar then life gets much easier. Even then, you buy a bike, it probably doesn’t come with lights or a lock or a rack/basket. The UK bike industry (with a few honourable exceptions) hasn’t got the knack of a consumer friendly product.
But the opportunity is there for the taking. Bromptons are amazing city bikes, especially in electric form. And then you think - what company has experience in the consumer user experience, miniaturisation, lightweight metals, battery technology, and is getting into the mobility space? Plus also has a ready-to-go network of retail stores? Apple.
It’s possible to buy a bike that requires next to no maintenance, but it’ll cost: choose hub gears, belt drive, dynamo lights & kevlar belted tyres and you’ve got something that will last & last.
The price will make your eyes water though: none of this is mass market unfortunately.
Yes, the sorts of people who need low maintenance bikes are also the sort of people who can't justify expensive bikes. Nor indeed the sort of people who know enough about bikes to know what would make a low-maintenance bike.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
WIthout turning PB into cyclo-question time, I'd say something different in the Schwalbe range for most ordinary cycles - Schwalbe Marathon Supremes are know as "tractor tyres" for a good reason, and are the normal choice for a heavy e-bike. I think you can probably ride them across drawing pins with impunity.
I ride a Boardman Hybrid, with a lightweight hidden long, thin E-Assist inside the frame (so I can avoid getting sweaty in normal clothes), and I run Marathon Supremes, which weigh half as much as a Marathon Plus and are happy with road and trail, except for lots of mud.
Bike maintenance emporia are available you know. They will take your money & your bicycles & return a lovely fettled bicycle in return.
Well yes, but from what I can see they tend to be bloody expensive!
My experience tends to be rather the opposite -- when I take my bike in for something the cost makes me wonder how they manage to stay in business and pay the rent at those hourly rates. (I suspect the market is pretty competitive around here -- there must be half a dozen cycle shops within a mile of here, and the one a hundred metres from my front door is both convenient and good.)
Congratulations to HYUFD for calling it right. Credit where its due, and I hope people followed him on his betting tips - I did not, I thought he was hopecasting and I was wrong and he was right. Well done. 👍
Yep. Earned myself a good dinner with his tip on Ux. thanks @HYUFD
Trains do get built in the south. The new DART that connects Luton Parkway to Luton Airport, for instance. It’s dreamy. It turns 25 minutes of bus hassle into a slick 5 minutes of rail shuttle
It also makes Luton an ideal airport for anyone in north London. 20-30 minutes from St Pancras
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
What a lovely encouraging set of accounts. Advantages come with the extra life expectancy, and increased fitness when 70+. I think we are just starting on a cultural shift from cycling as leisure/lycra to normal clothes and normal journeys, but still with a long way to go, and (tbh) a culture war to win. Even my local hospital does not have secure cycle parking yet, and several staggered pedestrian crossings on the way there have such narrow pedestrian cages installed that a mobility scooter cannot pass through.
My current local activism is getting anti-cycling anti-wheeling barriers off rights of way, which force pedestrians and cyclists onto 'alternatives' which are narrow shared pavements often blocked by idiots with their cars, or sometimes busy roads.
It has to be approached through a pedestrian lens because cyclists have no legally-enforcible access rights unless their cycle is a disabled mobility aid. Fortunately there is an overlap. A friend has just issued a Letter Before Action to Derby City Council for an impassable 'anti-motorbike' chicane barrier on a gennel in Derby, which does not block motor bikes but does block her wheelchair; when you issue one of those they suddenly wake up and stop many years are evasion and waffle.
On @Cookie 's comments, without wanting to tell you the obvious, there are options like 8 or 11 or 14 speed speed hub gears that need very little maintenance (but if you buy a Rohloff you will know you have paid for it), and anti-puncture tyres with a kevlar layer to stop punctures. Around here I only ever get punctures in the sidewall when it is the trim-the-hawthorn-hedges season, as I run this type of tyre. Lots of options and more becoming available all the time.
There are a lot of factors in maintenance. As @Dura_Ace said you do get what you pay for with bikes and the consumer expectation of price is lower than it ought to be, thanks to the proliferation of really terrible wheeled lumps in supermarkets and Argos at ludicrous prices.
Conversely, a lot of bikes for general use are a little overspecced, especially (but not only) in gearing. For recreation 20+ gears on a road bike make sense (kinda) but if you're leaning utility a five speed Sturmey Archer or Shimano hub gear will be a lot better value and waaaaay less maintenance. It's really the range of the gears that matters more than the number of increments betwixt.
I'd also spare a thought for the humble fixed-gear bike, now thankfully shorn of its hipster trappings. Fixed is a great way to ride, very low maintenance and not as bad as you might think for tackling slopes. You get much less top end speed as a sacrifice, but most of us aren't really looking for that. It's got a really liberating hop-on-and-go feel, and also gives you a decent workout with your legs necessarily in constant motion.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
You are talking s***e as usual.
As someone who does 30,000 miles a year I take no s*** from a Sunday driver. I can tell you my worst blackspots. M42 around Solihull. M6 Junction 9 to the M54, the entire M25., the Brynglas Tunnel. I wouldn't dream of driving in central London anymore, Birmingham, an hour from Bristol Street to the M5. I could go on all day. If one needs to make an appointment one cannot rely on the motorcar, and use a smart motorway and if there has been an accident one can be, one, two, three hours late.
It is not the golden age of motoring, that is long gone.
You make my point for me. There's a reason you drive 30k miles a year, its because driving works, and nothing else does.
If one needs to make an appointment, the only thing one can rely upon is the motorcar, in almost the entire country.
Yes traffic may be shit in a few places. Shit happens. I can tell you absolutely eg if there's an accident on the M6, or the M56, or the M62 it can lead to sudden gridlock in towns used as a ratrun to avoid the motorway traffic, or worse a motorway closure.
But despite that, its still by far the best option.
The private motorcar, is in almost all circumstances, like democracy. Its the worst option available - except for all other options that have yet been tried.
But I am telling you it doesn't work. There are too many cars on the road. Private motoring is unsustainable from the practical point of view.
It wasn't like this 50 years ago, although it has been getting considerably worse year on year over the last 40. We are at gridlock. It has to change.
You may enjoy the freedom of the open road from a traffic jam, but I don't.
Here's a novel solution - build more roads.
If roads are at capacity, build extra capacity. Same as any other transportation.
Build new motorways, new roads, wider roads, extra lanes, new bridges - whatever is required.
Yes there's extra people on the roads, that's because *drumroll* there's extra people in the country. We used to have 50 million people in the country, we now have 70 million, but where's the new motorway capacity that has been built to cope with the influx of extra people living here?
I don't enjoy traffic jams, but they're also quite often easy to avoid, especially if you can be flexible with your hours and with modern phones or satnavs giving traffic alerts it can still be quite possible to be driving at reasonable speeds and traffic jams are the exception not the norm for me.
But yes, something has to change, and that something is extra road capacity. Not magicking away cars with pixie dust and pushbikes.
More roads generate more traffic. The M25 is proof in point. And coming from the North West do you never use the series of car parks prefaced with M6. (60, 61, 62 etc, etc) it is chaos for most of the day? P.S. I'd love an M4 Southern Relief Road at Newport, but that would have busted the entire transport budget for Wales for the next five years.
We need to get about, but as someone who uses private transport all day every day, the private car is unsustainable.
"More roads generate more traffic" - great!
More traffic is a good thing. It's more transportation, more activity, more convenience, more business. Why oppose that?
More traffic spread over more roads is less traffic per road, not more, overall like a supermarket opening extra checkouts not forcing everyone through just one checkout.
The private car is only unsustainable if you haven't considered every other option which is even less sustainable.
They do though. See LA - massive highways, huge congestion. Compare with Venice - no roads, no congestion.
You have a weird zero-sum take on this that doesn't consider how infrastructure interacts with demand.
Another example you see all the time: "There are no cyclists on xx High Street - why are we wasting money on a cycle lane ". One if the main reasons why people don't cycle is a lack of safe provision.
Yes, his take is zero-sum. I agree with him that we should have been building more roads. But not that "build more roads" is the solution. American cities did "build more roads" and more roads and then more roads. And then started removing them because the more roads you build the more traffic you generate and the slower traffic gets.
As always a balance is needed. There are a stack of shovel-ready road schemes which the government should have funded as an economic driver. At the same time we need to be cutting traffic in towns and cities which means more bypasses and more traffic free zones.
Also, the more cars you have the more parking you need. American cities demolished so many blocks to make car lots they made the city downtowns ugly and windswept so, yes, it is easy to park there but, no, you don’t want to go and park there because it’s ugly and windswept
Bike maintenance emporia are available you know. They will take your money & your bicycles & return a lovely fettled bicycle in return.
Well yes, but from what I can see they tend to be bloody expensive!
My experience tends to be rather the opposite -- when I take my bike in for something the cost makes me wonder how they manage to stay in business and pay the rent at those hourly rates. (I suspect the market is pretty competitive around here -- there must be half a dozen cycle shops within a mile of here, and the one a hundred metres from my front door is both convenient and good.)
I haven't used him, but there's a cycle repair guy who drives a van about the area, maintaining bikes for people. Apparently he's very good and fairly cheap. Last time I needed some work done, I rode my wobbly bike into a place in St Neots.
Labour should not backtrack on its environmental policies because of the result in Uxbridge, for two main reasons, in order of priority:
1. Measures to reduce air pollution in cities and, more generally, to tackle climate change are urgently needed. 2. Any backtracking would lead to a significant increase in the Green vote at the next GE, potentially losing Labour quite a few seats.
That's not to say that the implementation of schemes like ULEZ shouldn't be improved. But they shouldn't be abandoned.
Easier said than done once Uxbridge (a result which is going to grow and grow in significance) is taken into account.
Suppose (only slightly exaggerating) Labour's electoral campaign choice is between winning a General Election and saving Net Zero/children's lungs.
I think it is delusional to think there can't be serious choices along these lines.
The compromise (ask the LDs) is to tell everyone that the national strategy won't apply to them. Expect this.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Bicycles are also widely used for commuting. When I lived in Germany, I used to cycle 5 miles to work every day, unless the weather was particularly bad. As well as saving me money, this kept me fit and left more space on the roads for those who needed to use their cars.
I would commute by bicycle here in the UK, but it's simply too dangerous and unpleasant, so that's another car added to the rush-hour traffic.
The idea that bikes are inherently recreational rather than utility vehicles is quite silly. They ought to be a perfectly good way of making practical 2-10 mile journeys (like commutes). They can (like cars!) absolutely be recreational too.
I don’t think anyone is seriously suggesting replacing cars with bikes for long journeys. But most people don’t make long journeys that often.
Let’s be careful though, this thread carries an increasing risk of becoming about WFH.
The country is not setup for bikes and most people will not risk their lives dodging arsehole drivers. Not a hope of us being like Europeans whist our politicians are shit.
Neither was the Netherlands in the 60s - it took a lot of bold reforms and infrastructure against the run of public opinion.
You’re right about our politicians being shite though.
Bikes are semi situational though. The Netherlands has the great advantage of being flat.
There is untapped potential still in the UK on this front, but in some places you’re just not going to persuade as many people that they want to cycle up a giant hill every time they come home from work or the shops.
Plenty of flat places in the UK that could do much better with bikes. Manchester, Liverpool, plenty of London, loads of towns. We are way behind notably non-flat countries such as Spain, France and Italy when it comes to bike usage.
There aren't many cities in the country where the terrain is hilly enough to be a real barrier. Sheffield, Bristol, Plymouth - I don't think any others. Nottingham and Leeds undulate a bit but not enough to deter cycling. Personally I'd rather have a bit of up and down on my route - for me, my nearest hill of any sort at all is the Warburton Toll Bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal, which is 7 miles away.
The biggest lump I encounter is the bridge over the M60 by Sharston tip - though if I fancy pretending to be Tom Boonen I've got a lovely tiny steep cobbled hill by work in Jutland Street.
Bradford, especially to the west, is quite hilly.
Yes, I should have included Bradford.
I know exactly the two hills you mean! You barely notice the bridge by Sharston tip in the car: on a bike it's Les Alpes d'Gatley. And cycling down Jutland Street would be insane!
Yeah - up is fine (well, low gear and get mashing), down will rattle yer dentures out even if (as you should) you go down heavy on the brakes.
Swiss Hill in Alderley Edge is worth a look for a really quite challenging sharp cobbled climb. Watch out for (a) the Cheshire ATGNI crew in over their heads, and (b) slick stones after rain, which pose a real threat of involuntary de-biking.
I know where you mean. Never done that one, but I do like the climb up from the village to the edge. I was overtaken by a nine year old boy last time I went up there (in my defence, he had a much better bike for cycling, didn't have a large pack with a jumper and his lunch on his back, and wasn't 16 stone).
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
You are talking s***e as usual.
As someone who does 30,000 miles a year I take no s*** from a Sunday driver. I can tell you my worst blackspots. M42 around Solihull. M6 Junction 9 to the M54, the entire M25., the Brynglas Tunnel. I wouldn't dream of driving in central London anymore, Birmingham, an hour from Bristol Street to the M5. I could go on all day. If one needs to make an appointment one cannot rely on the motorcar, and use a smart motorway and if there has been an accident one can be, one, two, three hours late.
It is not the golden age of motoring, that is long gone.
You make my point for me. There's a reason you drive 30k miles a year, its because driving works, and nothing else does.
If one needs to make an appointment, the only thing one can rely upon is the motorcar, in almost the entire country.
Yes traffic may be shit in a few places. Shit happens. I can tell you absolutely eg if there's an accident on the M6, or the M56, or the M62 it can lead to sudden gridlock in towns used as a ratrun to avoid the motorway traffic, or worse a motorway closure.
But despite that, its still by far the best option.
The private motorcar, is in almost all circumstances, like democracy. Its the worst option available - except for all other options that have yet been tried.
But I am telling you it doesn't work. There are too many cars on the road. Private motoring is unsustainable from the practical point of view.
It wasn't like this 50 years ago, although it has been getting considerably worse year on year over the last 40. We are at gridlock. It has to change.
You may enjoy the freedom of the open road from a traffic jam, but I don't.
Here's a novel solution - build more roads.
If roads are at capacity, build extra capacity. Same as any other transportation.
Build new motorways, new roads, wider roads, extra lanes, new bridges - whatever is required.
Yes there's extra people on the roads, that's because *drumroll* there's extra people in the country. We used to have 50 million people in the country, we now have 70 million, but where's the new motorway capacity that has been built to cope with the influx of extra people living here?
I don't enjoy traffic jams, but they're also quite often easy to avoid, especially if you can be flexible with your hours and with modern phones or satnavs giving traffic alerts it can still be quite possible to be driving at reasonable speeds and traffic jams are the exception not the norm for me.
But yes, something has to change, and that something is extra road capacity. Not magicking away cars with pixie dust and pushbikes.
More roads generate more traffic. The M25 is proof in point. And coming from the North West do you never use the series of car parks prefaced with M6. (60, 61, 62 etc, etc) it is chaos for most of the day? P.S. I'd love an M4 Southern Relief Road at Newport, but that would have busted the entire transport budget for Wales for the next five years.
We need to get about, but as someone who uses private transport all day every day, the private car is unsustainable.
"More roads generate more traffic" - great!
More traffic is a good thing. It's more transportation, more activity, more convenience, more business. Why oppose that?
More traffic spread over more roads is less traffic per road, not more, overall like a supermarket opening extra checkouts not forcing everyone through just one checkout.
The private car is only unsustainable if you haven't considered every other option which is even less sustainable.
They do though. See LA - massive highways, huge congestion. Compare with Venice - no roads, no congestion.
You have a weird zero-sum take on this that doesn't consider how infrastructure interacts with demand.
Another example you see all the time: "There are no cyclists on xx High Street - why are we wasting money on a cycle lane ". One if the main reasons why people don't cycle is a lack of safe provision.
Yes, his take is zero-sum. I agree with him that we should have been building more roads. But not that "build more roads" is the solution. American cities did "build more roads" and more roads and then more roads. And then started removing them because the more roads you build the more traffic you generate and the slower traffic gets.
As always a balance is needed. There are a stack of shovel-ready road schemes which the government should have funded as an economic driver. At the same time we need to be cutting traffic in towns and cities which means more bypasses and more traffic free zones.
Also, the more cars you have the more parking you need. American cities demolished so many blocks to make car lots they made the city downtowns ugly and windswept so, yes, it is easy to park there but, no, you don’t want to go and park there because it’s ugly and windswept
Check the surrounds. Everyone will just be parking 2 minutes from that nice street. Rather than on the street
90% of America is built for the car and its very hard to unbuild
Also, Americans SAY they want pretty, walkable, European-style downtowns and cities but in practise they don’t. They are all like @BartholomewRoberts and addicted to the ease of the car. At least he admits it
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike
I just threw up in my mouth a bit.
If I attempt a sprint triathlon next year, I'll need to get a decent racing bike (as opposed to my crummy Apollo mountain bike). The problem is, the road-racing bike world seems to be full of judgemental tossers making the world utterly inaccessible for anyone who doesn't want to be a peperami in lycra.
reddit is good for this, has subreddits for 1001 different cycling sects, and r/BicyclingCirclejerk to deal with the people you mention
Congratulations to HYUFD for calling it right. Credit where its due, and I hope people followed him on his betting tips - I did not, I thought he was hopecasting and I was wrong and he was right. Well done. 👍
Yep. Earned myself a good dinner with his tip on Ux. thanks @HYUFD
Enjoy your dinner (and well done for following the tip), and well done @HYFUD especially, an excellent call.
One of my favourite theories to bore people with in the pub is that Apple should buy Brompton.
@cookie is right, bikes shouldn’t be hard to maintain. If you fit Marathon Plus tyres or similar then life gets much easier. Even then, you buy a bike, it probably doesn’t come with lights or a lock or a rack/basket. The UK bike industry (with a few honourable exceptions) hasn’t got the knack of a consumer friendly product.
But the opportunity is there for the taking. Bromptons are amazing city bikes, especially in electric form. And then you think - what company has experience in the consumer user experience, miniaturisation, lightweight metals, battery technology, and is getting into the mobility space? Plus also has a ready-to-go network of retail stores? Apple.
I have a couple of friends that swear by e-bikes. I confess I am sometimes tempted (having sold my car). I can’t be arsed cycling up to Highgate under my own steam. But a nice little motor to help? Mm
Trains do get built in the south. The new DART that connects Luton Parkway to Luton Airport, for instance. It’s dreamy. It turns 25 minutes of bus hassle into a slick 5 minutes of rail shuttle
It also makes Luton an ideal airport for anyone in north London. 20-30 minutes from St Pancras
No-one has ever before described a journey from one part of Luton to another part of Luton as 'dreamy'.
And the ideal airport with a scheduled daily service, truly dreamy, is the one on Barra.
Bike maintenance emporia are available you know. They will take your money & your bicycles & return a lovely fettled bicycle in return.
Well yes, but from what I can see they tend to be bloody expensive!
My experience tends to be rather the opposite -- when I take my bike in for something the cost makes me wonder how they manage to stay in business and pay the rent at those hourly rates. (I suspect the market is pretty competitive around here -- there must be half a dozen cycle shops within a mile of here, and the one a hundred metres from my front door is both convenient and good.)
I haven't used him, but there's a cycle repair guy who drives a van about the area, maintaining bikes for people. Apparently he's very good and fairly cheap. Last time I needed some work done, I rode my wobbly bike into a place in St Neots.
I had a weird mechanical issue on Hadrian's cycleway so I whatsapped a bike mechanic in a wee village at about 10pm. He popped out the pub, fixed the bike and restocked my inner tubes for £20.
Compare and contrast to a puncture and broken spring on my car. That took over a week to deal with and hundreds of pounds.
Labour should not backtrack on its environmental policies because of the result in Uxbridge, for two main reasons, in order of priority:
1. Measures to reduce air pollution in cities and, more generally, to tackle climate change are urgently needed. 2. Any backtracking would lead to a significant increase in the Green vote at the next GE, potentially losing Labour quite a few seats.
That's not to say that the implementation of schemes like ULEZ shouldn't be improved. But they shouldn't be abandoned.
Easier said than done once Uxbridge (a result which is going to grow and grow in significance) is taken into account.
Suppose (only slightly exaggerating) Labour's electoral campaign choice is between winning a General Election and saving Net Zero/children's lungs.
I think it is delusional to think there can't be serious choices along these lines.
The compromise (ask the LDs) is to tell everyone that the national strategy won't apply to them. Expect this.
Nah, plenty of compromises. Simple one, why is the ULEZ fee the same in the expanded area as the existing area?
There is far more pollution and congestion in the existing area. Drivers in the existing area tend to be businesses or richer in comparison to the expanded area. People have already budgeted for the costs in the existing area but these are new costs in the expanded area.
So make it £5 in the expanded area initially rather than £12.50......and you will win over enough of the naysayers to make the transition to your end goal both smoother and more likely to happen.
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike
I just threw up in my mouth a bit.
If I attempt a sprint triathlon next year, I'll need to get a decent racing bike (as opposed to my crummy Apollo mountain bike). The problem is, the road-racing bike world seems to be full of judgemental tossers making the world utterly inaccessible for anyone who doesn't want to be a peperami in lycra.
They shout the loudest, for sure. Just ignore all 'the rules' nonsense. When you're really fit you'll be leaving most of them in the dust while wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I still pedal in slip on Vans rather than cycling shoes.
I've inherited my grandad's amateur cycling medals; he was putting out extraordinary times in the 1940s with a wooly vest on a steel bike with down tube shifters. The vast majority of performance is simple fitness, keeping your weight down and your bike in decent nick.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
I'm also a member of the Marathon Plus cult! I have had punctures, but they've either been internal (from the spoke poking through) or the sort of gash that, if it was on a person, would see you to A&E.
A +1 for Schwalbe Marathon types from me too. I've never had a puncture in them; I just wouldn't use anything else. Hydraulic brakes and a hub dynamo also help to reduce maintenance issues.
Bike maintenance emporia are available you know. They will take your money & your bicycles & return a lovely fettled bicycle in return.
Well yes, but from what I can see they tend to be bloody expensive!
My experience tends to be rather the opposite -- when I take my bike in for something the cost makes me wonder how they manage to stay in business and pay the rent at those hourly rates. (I suspect the market is pretty competitive around here -- there must be half a dozen cycle shops within a mile of here, and the one a hundred metres from my front door is both convenient and good.)
I haven't used him, but there's a cycle repair guy who drives a van about the area, maintaining bikes for people. Apparently he's very good and fairly cheap. Last time I needed some work done, I rode my wobbly bike into a place in St Neots.
I had a weird mechanical issue on Hadrian's cycleway so I whatsapped a bike mechanic in a wee village at about 10pm. He popped out the pub, fixed the bike and restocked my inner tubes for £20.
Compare and contrast to a puncture and broken spring on my car. That took over a week to deal with and hundreds of pounds.
Cumberland (as it newly is) and Northumberland are foreign countries. We do things differently here.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Bike maintenance emporia are available you know. They will take your money & your bicycles & return a lovely fettled bicycle in return.
Well yes, but from what I can see they tend to be bloody expensive!
To be fair, there is a place in Sale which will maintain your bike for almost free and also teach you to do it. Solutions are available: mainly just be a man and learn some skills. My comment was more the point that I can see why people don't do it.
Sure, but anything that requires time is expensive. Either you pay in your own time or you pay someone else for their time. Somehow we happily accept that the car costs huge sums to keep running, but balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running!
A well fettled bicycle is a thing of joy & worth paying for if you don’t have the time to do it yourself imo.
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike, and b) that's far, far more, per mile, than I'm paying to keep a car running. Cycling should be a cheap way of getting about. But it isn't. This isn't anyone's fault - as you say, paying someone to do a job takes time. But I lament it nonetheless.
A half-decent bike does not cost £200 new. A £200 bike is a pile of crap parts in loose formation. The problem with spending £200 is you get a terrible bicycle & then you think that this is what cycling is like.
A bike is an /effective/ way of getting about that is worth spending money on, especially if you use it as a commuter. Personally, I ride a bike every single day: it’s entirely rational for me to spend £1500 on a bike: it’ll pay itself back against any other transport option available to me inside a year. Even if you’re only comparing with the incremental fuel cost of making the same trip by car (never mind running costs) it still pays out in < 18 months & I get to where I’m going quicker & don’t need to find somewhere to park. (In fact, I spent a lot less than that because I’m a terrible cheapskate, but it would be entirely rational for me to have spent that much, that’s the point.)
It might not be rational for you to spend £1500, but do consider that £200 bikes are not worth the pain & that you’d get more utility out of a better bicycle. You’re spending the absolute minimum to get the worst bicycle on the market & doing that in any market is usually a bad idea.
Labour should not backtrack on its environmental policies because of the result in Uxbridge, for two main reasons, in order of priority:
1. Measures to reduce air pollution in cities and, more generally, to tackle climate change are urgently needed. 2. Any backtracking would lead to a significant increase in the Green vote at the next GE, potentially losing Labour quite a few seats.
That's not to say that the implementation of schemes like ULEZ shouldn't be improved. But they shouldn't be abandoned.
Easier said than done once Uxbridge (a result which is going to grow and grow in significance) is taken into account.
Suppose (only slightly exaggerating) Labour's electoral campaign choice is between winning a General Election and saving Net Zero/children's lungs.
I think it is delusional to think there can't be serious choices along these lines.
The compromise (ask the LDs) is to tell everyone that the national strategy won't apply to them. Expect this.
One question - which we will never know - is how much ULEZ played a part in the result and how much (as @HYFUD identified) was down the large percentage of Hindus voting for Sunak. The winning candidate is always going to emphasise the first one because the second one is politically unacceptable to mention but it may have played a larger part (Labour would have its own reasons for playing it down).
A bit more widely, I think these by-elections are a bit like a Rorschach test and you can interpret in different ways according to your views.
If you want a Labour Government, you can take the views of a @kinablu who says that Uxbridge was solely down to constituency-specific factors such as ULEZ (and maybe Hindus) and that Selby is the more representative call of what will happen.
But if you want to see value in the Tories, you could also argue the results show that, while Labour does well - ditto the LDs - when the voters want to give the Government a slap, they do not when voters have to think about real issues and their effects. In that case, it is likely that the Labour lead would sharply narrow in an election campaign when their policies are scrutinised (ditto the LDs).
Due to my politics, I veer more to the second but both are valid interpretations.
Trains do get built in the south. The new DART that connects Luton Parkway to Luton Airport, for instance. It’s dreamy. It turns 25 minutes of bus hassle into a slick 5 minutes of rail shuttle
It also makes Luton an ideal airport for anyone in north London. 20-30 minutes from St Pancras
On cycling, I have cycled pretty much my whole life. From student years in Bristol to cycling to work in London. Only ever had a couple of minor accidents (years ago) and never had my bike stolen. Husband the same - though he was knocked down and left unconscious with serious head injuries by some bastard who left the scene of the accident. Only a passing van driver who called an ambulance saved him from what could have been terminal.
Son recently bought a bike - he gets up early to go for a swim before work - and within 2 months had it stolen even though it was properly locked up in bike rack etc., The insurance has paid out and the lady dealing with the claim said that bike thefts have gone up massively since lockdown. Why? Who are these bastards stealing bikes?
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
I don't drive. Relying on public transport and others isn't a farce for me, and I don't live in a big city.
Labour should not backtrack on its environmental policies because of the result in Uxbridge, for two main reasons, in order of priority:
1. Measures to reduce air pollution in cities and, more generally, to tackle climate change are urgently needed. 2. Any backtracking would lead to a significant increase in the Green vote at the next GE, potentially losing Labour quite a few seats.
That's not to say that the implementation of schemes like ULEZ shouldn't be improved. But they shouldn't be abandoned.
Easier said than done once Uxbridge (a result which is going to grow and grow in significance) is taken into account.
Suppose (only slightly exaggerating) Labour's electoral campaign choice is between winning a General Election and saving Net Zero/children's lungs.
I think it is delusional to think there can't be serious choices along these lines.
The compromise (ask the LDs) is to tell everyone that the national strategy won't apply to them. Expect this.
One question - which we will never know - is how much ULEZ played a part in the result and how much (as @HYFUD identified) was down the large percentage of Hindus voting for Sunak. The winning candidate is always going to emphasise the first one because the second one is politically unacceptable to mention but it may have played a larger part (Labour would have its own reasons for playing it down).
A bit more widely, I think these by-elections are a bit like a Rorschach test and you can interpret in different ways according to your views.
If you want a Labour Government, you can take the views of a @kinablu who says that Uxbridge was solely down to constituency-specific factors such as ULEZ (and maybe Hindus) and that Selby is the more representative call of what will happen.
But if you want to see value in the Tories, you could also argue the results show that, while Labour does well - ditto the LDs - when the voters want to give the Government a slap, they do not when voters have to think about real issues and their effects. In that case, it is likely that the Labour lead would sharply narrow in an election campaign when their policies are scrutinised (ditto the LDs).
Due to my politics, I veer more to the second but both are valid interpretations.
There could be more reasons than ULEZ or the Hindu population. The Labour candidate was portrayed as a carpetbagger as he's currently a councillor in Camden. By-election voters love local candidates.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
I'm also a member of the Marathon Plus cult! I have had punctures, but they've either been internal (from the spoke poking through) or the sort of gash that, if it was on a person, would see you to A&E.
A +1 for Schwalbe Marathon types from me too. I've never had a puncture in them; I just wouldn't use anything else. Hydraulic brakes and a hub dynamo also help to reduce maintenance issues.
Hydraulic brakes can hard to fix if you're out in the sticks though. I think that is the rationale for some touring bikes sticking with mechanical. Also what you might want 1x drivetrain.
Whilst it's absolutely right and proper to quote swings from the previous elections of the same type, i.e. GE 19, again previous local elections in 2022 presaged these results reasonably well
If we quote the by-election swings using LE22 as a baseline they come out around:
National polling swing since LE22, about 7.5% Uxbridge swing Vs LE22 8% Selby swing since LE22, 11% Somerton swing since LE22, approx 9%
Perhaps ULEZ, rather than wider, longer standing Labour incumbency drag, only accounts for a couple of percent of lost swing, if that.
Whilst it's absolutely right and proper to quote swings from the previous elections of the same type, i.e. GE 19, again previous local elections in 2022 presaged these results reasonably well
If we quote the by-election swings using LE22 as a baseline they come out around:
National polling swing since LE22, about 7.5% Uxbridge swing Vs LE22 8% Selby swing since LE22, 11% Somerton swing since LE22, approx 9%
Perhaps ULEZ, rather than wider, longer standing Labour incumbency drag, only accounts for a couple of percent of lost swing, if that.
Also a chance that Bozo already had a negative personal drag in previous elections so the true Tory lead in the seat was underestimated.
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike
I just threw up in my mouth a bit.
If I attempt a sprint triathlon next year, I'll need to get a decent racing bike (as opposed to my crummy Apollo mountain bike). The problem is, the road-racing bike world seems to be full of judgemental tossers making the world utterly inaccessible for anyone who doesn't want to be a peperami in lycra.
Power meter or you're wasting your time. Also, tris are very, very druggy so "be professional" about it. Stack a couple of cycles of Nandrolone off the darkweb as a minimum.
I'm currently riding: Look 795 Blade RS (dry), Cannondale SuperSix Hi-Mod (wet) and a Whyte Gisburn (snow/ice).
On ULEZ and air quality, I do notice a significant difference when I come to London. The air quality is noticeably worse than where I live now and I feel it in my chest. All the problems I had previously with asthma and bronchitis have pretty much stopped since moving to the country. Admittedly I live in the arse end of nowhere near the sea but being outdoors in fresh clean air has done my lungs no end of good, even though I'm allergic to tree pollen.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
I'm also a member of the Marathon Plus cult! I have had punctures, but they've either been internal (from the spoke poking through) or the sort of gash that, if it was on a person, would see you to A&E.
A +1 for Schwalbe Marathon types from me too. I've never had a puncture in them; I just wouldn't use anything else. Hydraulic brakes and a hub dynamo also help to reduce maintenance issues.
Hydraulic brakes can hard to fix if you're out in the sticks though. I think that is the rationale for some touring bikes sticking with mechanical. Also what you might want 1x drivetrain.
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike
I just threw up in my mouth a bit.
If I attempt a sprint triathlon next year, I'll need to get a decent racing bike (as opposed to my crummy Apollo mountain bike). The problem is, the road-racing bike world seems to be full of judgemental tossers making the world utterly inaccessible for anyone who doesn't want to be a peperami in lycra.
Power meter or you're wasting your time. Also, tris are very, very druggy so "be professional" about it. Stack a couple of cycles of Nandrolone off the darkweb as a minimum.
I'm currently riding: Look 795 Blade RS (dry), Cannondale SuperSix Hi-Mod (wet) and a Whyte Gisburn (snow/ice).
I'm impressed you can ride all three of them at once while posting on PB. That's multitasking on a epic scale.
I'm currently trying to decide between a Genesis Croix de Fer, Sonder Santiago or Bombtrack Beyond. Anyone own one of these?
Steel is real.
I own a Croix de Fer. Lovely bike & it looks like they’ve got rid of the horrible brakes they put on the bottom of the range one last year & gone back to Spyre cable disk brakes which are dual piston not awful single sided things.
I did look at a Bombtrack when I was buying but, but it was out of my price comfort zone at the time. Looked like a really great bike though. The current Beyond 1 & Croix de Fer 10 look very similar actually, so it probably comes down to personal geometry preferences & price.
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
Make the Ashes series nine Tests long - five Men's Tests alternating with four Women's Tests - and you would have enough matches to hold Tests at Lord's (twice), Oval, Trent Bridge, Edgbaston, Headingley, Old Trafford, Sophia Gardens and the Rose Bowl.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Bike maintenance emporia are available you know. They will take your money & your bicycles & return a lovely fettled bicycle in return.
Well yes, but from what I can see they tend to be bloody expensive!
To be fair, there is a place in Sale which will maintain your bike for almost free and also teach you to do it. Solutions are available: mainly just be a man and learn some skills. My comment was more the point that I can see why people don't do it.
Sure, but anything that requires time is expensive. Either you pay in your own time or you pay someone else for their time. Somehow we happily accept that the car costs huge sums to keep running, but balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running!
A well fettled bicycle is a thing of joy & worth paying for if you don’t have the time to do it yourself imo.
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike, and b) that's far, far more, per mile, than I'm paying to keep a car running. Cycling should be a cheap way of getting about. But it isn't. This isn't anyone's fault - as you say, paying someone to do a job takes time. But I lament it nonetheless.
A half-decent bike does not cost £200 new. A £200 bike is a pile of crap parts in loose formation. The problem with spending £200 is you get a terrible bicycle & then you think that this is what cycling is like.
A bike is an /effective/ way of getting about that is worth spending money on, especially if you use it as a commuter. Personally, I ride a bike every single day: it’s entirely rational for me to spend £1500 on a bike: it’ll pay itself back against any other transport option available to me inside a year. Even if you’re only comparing with the incremental fuel cost of making the same trip by car (never mind running costs) it still pays out in < 18 months & I get to where I’m going quicker & don’t need to find somewhere to park. (In fact, I spent a lot less than that because I’m a terrible cheapskate, but it would be entirely rational for me to have spent that much, that’s the point.)
It might not be rational for you to spend £1500, but do consider that £200 bikes are not worth the pain & that you’d get more utility out of a better bicycle. You’re spending the absolute minimum to get the worst bicycle on the market & doing that in any market is usually a bad idea.
I don't agree. This is why people don't see cycling as accessible. I bought a Decathlon own brand bike (a Triban RC100) back in 2017 for about £250 after I came into a bit of money. This isn't an absolute minimum spend; there are plenty of cheaper bikes. It's served me for six years; I've cycled to work (6 miles) a couple of time a week on it, used it for around town cycling, done a semi-regular ten-miler on it, and a couple of times a year done some long-ish 40-60 milers on it. It's hard work going over steep hills in it, but how often do I do that? I moan about maintenance, but it's done me well. And I'd like a better bike, of course. But the amount I cycle doesn't justify paying vast amounts. The amount you save in tram fares you end up spending in getting it serviced. I can see that Dura_Ace's 10000km a year merits paying out a lot, but I don't fall into that category (very few people do). I'm actually planning on getting a better bike. Something in the £750-ish bracket, with panniers, with the hope of doing a few two-or three-day trips. My parents are going to give me half the cost as a birthday present. I'll try to get it through the cycle to work scheme. But I wouldn't be doing this if it was money I was spending on myself (i.e. not a present). And I certainly wouldn't be spending more. A £750 bike isn't twice as good a cycling experience as a £375 bike, and a £1500 bike isn't twice as good as a £750 bike. I take your point about false economies, but false economies are for things you need (like footwear) rather than things which are fun to have (like bikes). I've got three kids - the number of times a year I get a day to myself for a bike ride can be counted on the fingers of two hands.
My other worry about expensive bikes, is, as Cyclefree alluded to earlier, they get nicked. A friend of mine recently got his new multi-thousand pound bike nicked from the lock-up where he works - they managed to break into the 'secure' underground parking and use a power tool to cut through his expensive bike lock. And my last but one bike - which was worth virtually nothing - got nicked from the tram stop: again, they used cutting machinery to cut through the lock, clearly undeterred by CCTV.
Cycling ought to be cheap and accessible. I have no objection to the serious hobbyists spending thousands on it, but most people aren't like that (nor have that sort of money).
I'm thinking that headline is one of the great 'no shit Sherlock' moments.
Absolutely appalling to Taser a 95 year old. Everyone knows they can easily be taken down with a quick burst of pepper spray, and it's the humane and respectful alternative.
On cycling, I have cycled pretty much my whole life. From student years in Bristol to cycling to work in London. Only ever had a couple of minor accidents (years ago) and never had my bike stolen. Husband the same - though he was knocked down and left unconscious with serious head injuries by some bastard who left the scene of the accident. Only a passing van driver who called an ambulance saved him from what could have been terminal.
Son recently bought a bike - he gets up early to go for a swim before work - and within 2 months had it stolen even though it was properly locked up in bike rack etc., The insurance has paid out and the lady dealing with the claim said that bike thefts have gone up massively since lockdown. Why? Who are these bastards stealing bikes?
Because we do not fund the courts and police properly.
Trains do get built in the south. The new DART that connects Luton Parkway to Luton Airport, for instance. It’s dreamy. It turns 25 minutes of bus hassle into a slick 5 minutes of rail shuttle
It also makes Luton an ideal airport for anyone in north London. 20-30 minutes from St Pancras
It's a bit of a shithole though, not even a Wetherspoons.
And other transport is pretty crap. I can park on my mother's drive in Stevenage and get a service bus to the airport, however buses back to Stevenage stop early evening.
But for me it's less than an hour on the M3 and M25 and there is fairly cheap off-airport parking.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
I'm also a member of the Marathon Plus cult! I have had punctures, but they've either been internal (from the spoke poking through) or the sort of gash that, if it was on a person, would see you to A&E.
A +1 for Schwalbe Marathon types from me too. I've never had a puncture in them; I just wouldn't use anything else. Hydraulic brakes and a hub dynamo also help to reduce maintenance issues.
Hydraulic brakes can hard to fix if you're out in the sticks though. I think that is the rationale for some touring bikes sticking with mechanical. Also what you might want 1x drivetrain.
Hydraulic brakes can hard to fix if you're out in the sticks though. I think that is the rationale for some touring bikes sticking with mechanical. Also what you might want 1x drivetrain.
Hydraulic brakes don't really "fail" though. They can gradually become less effective due to shitty maintenance (not cleaning piston barrels when you fit new pads in particular) but I've never seen a catastrophic failure on the road but I have had and seen plenty of snapped brake cables.
I'm currently trying to decide between a Genesis Croix de Fer, Sonder Santiago or Bombtrack Beyond. Anyone own one of these?
Steel is real.
I own a Croix de Fer. Lovely bike & it looks like they’ve got rid of the horrible brakes they put on the bottom of the range one last year & gone back to Spyre cable disk brakes which are dual piston not awful single sided things.
I did look at a Bombtrack when I was buying but, but it was out of my price comfort zone at the time. Looked like a really great bike though. The current Beyond 1 & Croix de Fer 10 look very similar actually, so it probably comes down to personal geometry preferences & price.
i've gone full titanium. hip joints already made of it, so I reckon it's the obvious play for that "at one with the bike" thing.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
I'm also a member of the Marathon Plus cult! I have had punctures, but they've either been internal (from the spoke poking through) or the sort of gash that, if it was on a person, would see you to A&E.
A +1 for Schwalbe Marathon types from me too. I've never had a puncture in them; I just wouldn't use anything else. Hydraulic brakes and a hub dynamo also help to reduce maintenance issues.
Hydraulic brakes can hard to fix if you're out in the sticks though. I think that is the rationale for some touring bikes sticking with mechanical. Also what you might want 1x drivetrain.
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
Make the Ashes series nine Tests long - five Men's Tests alternating with four Women's Tests - and you would have enough matches to hold Tests at Lord's (twice), Oval, Trent Bridge, Edgbaston, Headingley, Old Trafford, Sophia Gardens and the Rose Bowl.
In the past ten years there have been just eight womens Tests. Not England only, across all teams. Longest series is 1 match.
Last 3 match series was in 1998. Last 4/5 match series 1985.
On ULEZ and air quality, I do notice a significant difference when I come to London. The air quality is noticeably worse than where I live now and I feel it in my chest. All the problems I had previously with asthma and bronchitis have pretty much stopped since moving to the country. Admittedly I live in the arse end of nowhere near the sea but being outdoors in fresh clean air has done my lungs no end of good, even though I'm allergic to tree pollen.
I'm no supporter of ULEZs, but I'm on board with the argument that air pollution is bad. My youngest had a permanent wheezy chest/rattly cough* pretty much from birth - until shortly after her fifth birthday, when it stopped pretty much when traffic came to a halt in April 2020. (Happily it hasn't subsequently returned).
Hydraulic brakes can hard to fix if you're out in the sticks though. I think that is the rationale for some touring bikes sticking with mechanical. Also what you might want 1x drivetrain.
Hydraulic brakes don't really "fail" though. They can gradually become less effective due to shitty maintenance (not cleaning piston barrels when you fit new pads in particular) but I've never seen a catastrophic failure on the road but I have had and seen plenty of snapped brake cables.
As a kid I went over the handlebars on a bike after a cable snap, lucky not to break my back (although I did that later off a Suzuki tbf).
But list year the (cheap) hydraulic disk brakes failed dramatically on my handcycle - a stone wedged in between the pad and the disc and ripped the front wheel out.
(Edit: Still would have happened with a cable disc brake, tbf.)
Trains do get built in the south. The new DART that connects Luton Parkway to Luton Airport, for instance. It’s dreamy. It turns 25 minutes of bus hassle into a slick 5 minutes of rail shuttle
It also makes Luton an ideal airport for anyone in north London. 20-30 minutes from St Pancras
No-one has ever before described a journey from one part of Luton to another part of Luton as 'dreamy'.
And the ideal airport with a scheduled daily service, truly dreamy, is the one on Barra.
I'm thinking that headline is one of the great 'no shit Sherlock' moments.
Absolutely appalling to Taser a 95 year old. Everyone knows they can easily be taken down with a quick burst of pepper spray, and it's the humane and respectful alternative.
I gather from a whole heap of anecdotage that the violent, elderly demented can be a very frightening handful, intent on not going gentle into that goodnight. When they are knifed up on top, a Taser is not as obvious a no-no to me as all that.
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
Make the Ashes series nine Tests long - five Men's Tests alternating with four Women's Tests - and you would have enough matches to hold Tests at Lord's (twice), Oval, Trent Bridge, Edgbaston, Headingley, Old Trafford, Sophia Gardens and the Rose Bowl.
In the past ten years there have been just eight womens Tests. Not England only, across all teams. Longest series is 1 match.
Last 3 match series was in 1998. Last 4/5 match series 1985.
The most recent Test, between England and Australia, was the first 5-day Test match that England have played for as long as I can remember, and the first at one of the Test grounds. So things do change and don't have to stay the same.
And, in any case, I'm calling for something more radical than a 4-match women's Test series. I'm calling for a combined Test series determined by the results of the matches between the men's and women's teams.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
As an aside on the last point, there's no shame in just paying someone to fit them, in which case you only have to do it zero times! My wife could probably wash the car herself but instead she just pays. Conversely not many people think about having to change the tyres to a different type when they buy a new car.
I think cycling maybe suffers a bit that it is still often somewhat dominated by enthusiasts which can off-putting to people who don't want to learn lots of stuff, but might be interested in an easier and cheaper way of getting from a to b.
I wonder if “anti car” policies are going to be the next “too many speed cameras”?
The speed camera thing really helped the Tories in local government elections 1997-2010, though didn’t break through at a national level.
The reality for many is they need a car, and it may very well be the case
One of the big gripes, on the news here, from people affected by the Newcastle/Gateshead equivalent of ULEZ is thr lack of the promised grants to change their vehicles to less polluting ones.
Just as when Gateshead introduced their anti car measures with regards to closing off Askew Road feeding into the Tyne Bridge, there was no carrot. They said they were not going to expand any Park and rides as they didn't have the money. It was all stick and no carrot which is what really led to the scale of the opposition.
The only person I have ever seen in real life, and not on the local news when they round up half a dozen local cycling enthusiasts, cycling on Askew road is me.
Traffic calming measures by Newcastle Council in Jesmond have not gone down too well with many, including the businesses affected, as these have been put in largely with minimal consulation and with the help of active travel lobbyists
15 minutes cities and low traffic neigbourhoods are fine. All makes sense. But it needs to be done collaboratively not just by imposition, Some will always object but many on the fence or mild doubters are able to be brought onside.
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
Absolutely. And don't get me started on rugby test matches ...
While we're at it, lets break Wembley's monopoly over international football. Do you remember that golden period when Wembley was being redeveloped and the England football team was peripatetic? I have nothing against sport being played in London, but it's perverse to play quite so much down in one distant corner of the country.
Surprised by the scale of Lab win in S&A - that single poll with 12pp lead was about right. So, lost my late bet on Con. I did also have a late bet on Con on Uxbridge, following discussion here, so up a bit overall. I didn't have anything on S&F as there seemed no value there.
Somerset and Frome was so nailed-on that arguably any price was value. (No, me neither.)
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
Make the Ashes series nine Tests long - five Men's Tests alternating with four Women's Tests - and you would have enough matches to hold Tests at Lord's (twice), Oval, Trent Bridge, Edgbaston, Headingley, Old Trafford, Sophia Gardens and the Rose Bowl.
In the past ten years there have been just eight womens Tests. Not England only, across all teams. Longest series is 1 match.
Last 3 match series was in 1998. Last 4/5 match series 1985.
The most recent Test, between England and Australia, was the first 5-day Test match that England have played for as long as I can remember, and the first at one of the Test grounds. So things do change and don't have to stay the same.
And, in any case, I'm calling for something more radical than a 4-match women's Test series. I'm calling for a combined Test series determined by the results of the matches between the men's and women's teams.
Yeah, just not sure it fits. I love Test cricket but if you were inventing a sport today, you wouldn't go for Test cricket. Womens Test cricket essentially needs to be re-invented to exist as a mainstream international sport. And outside of England and possibly Australia you just won't get the funding, interest or scheduling for it ahead of ODI and T20. If it is only England and Australia every 4 years then it is not going to work either.
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
Absolutely. And don't get me started on rugby test matches ...
While we're at it, lets break Wembley's monopoly over international football. Do you remember that golden period when Wembley was being redeveloped and the England football team was peripatetic? I have nothing against sport being played in London, but it's perverse to play quite so much down in one distant corner of the country.
Apart from the usual metropolitan bias I think part of the issue is recouping the costs of redevelopment. One wonders how other countries manage to have regional stadia.
What nobody seems to be mentioning when it comes to #Uxbridge is that the Tory candidate ran on an anti-ULEZ expansion ticket when it was actually Grant Shapps who made the ULEZ expansion a requirement of the TFL funding agreement. Doublespeak.
The Tories are con artists, Labour failed to mention this loudly.
Labour appeared to have no answer on the ulez question, with the candidate talking vaguely of postponement. What is the point of Starmer seeking advice from Mandelson and Blair if they could not see this coming?
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
As an aside on the last point, there's no shame in just paying someone to fit them, in which case you only have to do it zero times! My wife could probably wash the car herself but instead she just pays. Conversely not many people think about having to change the tyres to a different type when they buy a new car.
I think cycling maybe suffers a bit that it is still often somewhat dominated by enthusiasts which can off-putting to people who don't want to learn lots of stuff, but might be interested in an easier and cheaper way of getting from a to b.
You've put my point a lot more succinctly with that final paragraph!
An additional point: I feel quite a degree of shame over my mechanical inadequacy. I ought to be able to dissassemble, clean and reassessmble a bike, but fear I would just be left with a useless pile of parts. I can change a tire, but it takes me about half an hour and a lot of swearing. I feel 100% confident that if I were more mechanically adept and confident I would be a keener cyclist. This must be how people whose reading and writing is poor must feel trying to function in a world in which reading and writing are required.
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
As this is only one series, your post is somewhat hyperbolic. Why shouldn't Southampton have an Ashes test in 2027? Lords is iconic, is essentially the home of world cricket. I think there is more a case re the Oval. Its not as if there won't be test cricket in 2024, 2025, 2026, 2028, 2029, 2030 north of Nottingham.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
As an aside on the last point, there's no shame in just paying someone to fit them, in which case you only have to do it zero times! My wife could probably wash the car herself but instead she just pays. Conversely not many people think about having to change the tyres to a different type when they buy a new car.
I think cycling maybe suffers a bit that it is still often somewhat dominated by enthusiasts which can off-putting to people who don't want to learn lots of stuff, but might be interested in an easier and cheaper way of getting from a to b.
You've put my point a lot more succinctly with that final paragraph!
An additional point: I feel quite a degree of shame over my mechanical inadequacy. I ought to be able to dissassemble, clean and reassessmble a bike, but fear I would just be left with a useless pile of parts. I can change a tire, but it takes me about half an hour and a lot of swearing. I feel 100% confident that if I were more mechanically adept and confident I would be a keener cyclist. This must be how people whose reading and writing is poor must feel trying to function in a world in which reading and writing are required.
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
One of the problems is that they dropped the number of tests played for the Ashes in England from 6 to 5 a few years ago. They should put it up to 6 again in my opinion.
It’s possible the people of Uxbridge don’t give that much of a fuck about ULEZ - they just don’t like Labour, especially Starmer
I’d be mildly heartened by last night if I were a Tory activist
All is not lost. Not quite
They may restrict Labour to a NOM govt which proves shambolic and ineffectual as it tries to govern with the LDs and Nats, then Starmer goes to the people with his zero charisma - and the Tories are back in
I must inform you that things did not go well, and therefore this is not the next PM of the United Kingdom.
Things did go well, Shirley? For the country, if not for Lozza.
The pic looks like something from SS-GB.
Fuxsake - wannabe fascist has his Union flag upside down.
Don't think so - it's hanging from a sloping flagpole such that we see the back, or whatever vexillologists call the reverse side.
Edit: or have I got muddled?
Fox's flagpole tells us, but apparently not Fox, which way up it should be. The problem with the union flag is that without that context, say when athletes drape flags over their shoulders, the flag's asymmetry means it looks upside down from either the one side or the other.
I wonder if “anti car” policies are going to be the next “too many speed cameras”?
The speed camera thing really helped the Tories in local government elections 1997-2010, though didn’t break through at a national level.
The reality for many is they need a car, and it may very well be the case
One of the big gripes, on the news here, from people affected by the Newcastle/Gateshead equivalent of ULEZ is thr lack of the promised grants to change their vehicles to less polluting ones.
Just as when Gateshead introduced their anti car measures with regards to closing off Askew Road feeding into the Tyne Bridge, there was no carrot. They said they were not going to expand any Park and rides as they didn't have the money. It was all stick and no carrot which is what really led to the scale of the opposition.
The only person I have ever seen in real life, and not on the local news when they round up half a dozen local cycling enthusiasts, cycling on Askew road is me.
Traffic calming measures by Newcastle Council in Jesmond have not gone down too well with many, including the businesses affected, as these have been put in largely with minimal consulation and with the help of active travel lobbyists
15 minutes cities and low traffic neigbourhoods are fine. All makes sense. But it needs to be done collaboratively not just by imposition, Some will always object but many on the fence or mild doubters are able to be brought onside.
Yes, what’s driving opposition is the lack of proper consultation with those affected - as opposed to campaign groups in favour of the changes. Too many of these schemes are all stick and no carrot.
If you want a 15-minute city, build a new one rather than imposing measures on existing cities.
I live in the UK's most congested city, Edinburgh, yet we have the the best public transport system in Scotland and the city is about as walkable as they come. Cycling is getting there. A small, rich minority cause congestion for everyone else.
There are very few reasons for driving here or in central London. But very large chunks of the population don't have this opportunity to make the switch. Public transport and walking cycling provision in our regional cities is pathetic - compare Liverpool to any French city. That has to come first.
What Khan and others need to do is to offer this carrot, and fast. We could have fully funded HS2 if we hadn't frozen fuel duty over the last few years. We need to explain that building more roads induces more demand, rather than sating it.
Inducing more demand is a good thing.
That's how you get economic growth. Greater aggregate demand.
You're in danger of becoming the kinetic equivalent of the telephone sanitisers in Hitchhiker's Guide. It may add to the growth figures but wastes energy on doing nothing very useful much of the time.
I think he's trying to hit every economic fallacy in the textbook.
It's strange how many people consider driving good for economic activity. It's a cost, space and time sink. The only thing you can buy out of a car window is a McDonald's. An Edinburgh tram has 250 customers on it - that's equivalent to a a traffic jam nearly a mile long.
Perhaps my attitude to this comes from actually growing up in the countryside. It was amazing moving to a city and finding that thousands of people could spend their time having fun and spending money rather than driving for hours to get to the cinema in Inverness.
Oh great, now we are onto use trams as a solution.
There are a grand total of zero trams in my town, nor any demand for them. So which invisible tram should I magic up with my pixie dust?
Yes cities can be different. But most of the country IS NOT IN A CITY.
A large majority of people (80%) DO LIVE IN CITIES
I'm thinking that headline is one of the great 'no shit Sherlock' moments.
Absolutely appalling to Taser a 95 year old. Everyone knows they can easily be taken down with a quick burst of pepper spray, and it's the humane and respectful alternative.
I gather from a whole heap of anecdotage that the violent, elderly demented can be a very frightening handful, intent on not going gentle into that goodnight. When they are knifed up on top, a Taser is not as obvious a no-no to me as all that.
The reason it's an obvious no-no is, surely, that the risk of killing or seriously injuring the 95 year old through use of the Taser is much, much higher than it is with a 25 year old. That's before you even consider the other side of the equation of threat posed by the 25 year old versus the 95 year old.
That isn't to say that a senior citizen wielding a knife isn't a serious matter, or likely to put those around in fear. But the simple risk of killing them with a Taser must, surely, take its use out of the equation.
Well it’s dry at Old Trafford, and the players are coming out.
What do we think, try and get to 500 before lunch in 20/20 style, then put them in 180 or 200 behind, while dodging the showers this afternoon?
I just put my Uxbridge winnings (£10 at 12 = £110) on England scoring 500 in this innings at 2.2 with Betfair Exchange. Should get me from £10 to around £230 in a few hours.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Schwalbe marathon plus tyres are pretty much puncture-proof - I've had them on a few bikes and never managed to get a pucnture through one. Slight hit on rolling resistance compared to a specialist tyre, but not much. I switched to them on my road bike for commute after a number of punctures and saw no reduction in speed (replacing the Specialized ones that came with the bike which were, in all fairness, probably nothing special).
Not super cheap and a bit of a bugger to fit them, but at least you only have to do it once!
As an aside on the last point, there's no shame in just paying someone to fit them, in which case you only have to do it zero times! My wife could probably wash the car herself but instead she just pays. Conversely not many people think about having to change the tyres to a different type when they buy a new car.
I think cycling maybe suffers a bit that it is still often somewhat dominated by enthusiasts which can off-putting to people who don't want to learn lots of stuff, but might be interested in an easier and cheaper way of getting from a to b.
You've put my point a lot more succinctly with that final paragraph!
An additional point: I feel quite a degree of shame over my mechanical inadequacy. I ought to be able to dissassemble, clean and reassessmble a bike, but fear I would just be left with a useless pile of parts. I can change a tire, but it takes me about half an hour and a lot of swearing. I feel 100% confident that if I were more mechanically adept and confident I would be a keener cyclist. This must be how people whose reading and writing is poor must feel trying to function in a world in which reading and writing are required.
Bike maintenance is very well served by youtube.
Yes, and it's entirely my responsiblity. I'm not blaming anyone for my technical ineptitude. I just find it slightly intimidating to learn as an adult.
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike, and b) that's far, far more, per mile, than I'm paying to keep a car running. Cycling should be a cheap way of getting about. But it isn't. This isn't anyone's fault - as you say, paying someone to do a job takes time. But I lament it nonetheless.
A half-decent bike does not cost £200 new. A £200 bike is a pile of crap parts in loose formation. The problem with spending £200 is you get a terrible bicycle & then you think that this is what cycling is like.
A bike is an /effective/ way of getting about that is worth spending money on, especially if you use it as a commuter. Personally, I ride a bike every single day: it’s entirely rational for me to spend £1500 on a bike: it’ll pay itself back against any other transport option available to me inside a year. Even if you’re only comparing with the incremental fuel cost of making the same trip by car (never mind running costs) it still pays out in < 18 months & I get to where I’m going quicker & don’t need to find somewhere to park. (In fact, I spent a lot less than that because I’m a terrible cheapskate, but it would be entirely rational for me to have spent that much, that’s the point.)
It might not be rational for you to spend £1500, but do consider that £200 bikes are not worth the pain & that you’d get more utility out of a better bicycle. You’re spending the absolute minimum to get the worst bicycle on the market & doing that in any market is usually a bad idea.
I don't agree. This is why people don't see cycling as accessible. I bought a Decathlon own brand bike (a Triban RC100) back in 2017 for about £250 after I came into a bit of money. This isn't an absolute minimum spend; there are plenty of cheaper bikes. It's served me for six years; I've cycled to work (6 miles) a couple of time a week on it, used it for around town cycling, done a semi-regular ten-miler on it, and a couple of times a year done some long-ish 40-60 milers on it. It's hard work going over steep hills in it, but how often do I do that? I moan about maintenance, but it's done me well.
I feel that the "don't buy a cheap bike shaped object" argument often gets linked seamlessly into "and spend a *lot* more" rather than "so spend a bit more", so I tend to agree with you. But I would note that the bike you have was (a) already 50 quid more than that initial 200 figure (i.e. +25%) and (b) was bought 6 years of inflation ago, so would be over 300 quid today. I do think "don't pay 200 quid, go for something about 300-350 quid" is more justifiable.
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
As this is only one series, your post is somewhat hyperbolic. Why shouldn't Southampton have an Ashes test in 2027? Lords is iconic, is essentially the home of world cricket. I think there is more a case re the Oval. Its not as if there won't be test cricket in 2024, 2025, 2026, 2028, 2029, 2030 north of Nottingham.
Dont mind Southampton having a test at all. I don't think Lords and Oval should both be guaranteed the best ones though, despite living here.
I live in the UK's most congested city, Edinburgh, yet we have the the best public transport system in Scotland and the city is about as walkable as they come. Cycling is getting there. A small, rich minority cause congestion for everyone else.
There are very few reasons for driving here or in central London. But very large chunks of the population don't have this opportunity to make the switch. Public transport and walking cycling provision in our regional cities is pathetic - compare Liverpool to any French city. That has to come first.
What Khan and others need to do is to offer this carrot, and fast. We could have fully funded HS2 if we hadn't frozen fuel duty over the last few years. We need to explain that building more roads induces more demand, rather than sating it.
Inducing more demand is a good thing.
That's how you get economic growth. Greater aggregate demand.
You're in danger of becoming the kinetic equivalent of the telephone sanitisers in Hitchhiker's Guide. It may add to the growth figures but wastes energy on doing nothing very useful much of the time.
I think he's trying to hit every economic fallacy in the textbook.
It's strange how many people consider driving good for economic activity. It's a cost, space and time sink. The only thing you can buy out of a car window is a McDonald's. An Edinburgh tram has 250 customers on it - that's equivalent to a a traffic jam nearly a mile long.
Perhaps my attitude to this comes from actually growing up in the countryside. It was amazing moving to a city and finding that thousands of people could spend their time having fun and spending money rather than driving for hours to get to the cinema in Inverness.
Oh great, now we are onto use trams as a solution.
There are a grand total of zero trams in my town, nor any demand for them. So which invisible tram should I magic up with my pixie dust?
Yes cities can be different. But most of the country IS NOT IN A CITY.
A large majority of people (80%) DO LIVE IN CITIES
AND THEY SHOULD ALL HAVE A TRAM
ONE TRAM EACH. AND AN OWL
A large majority of people do live in cities And they should all have a tram One tram each. And an owl
We have a winner in the Poems on the Underground competition.
Well it’s dry at Old Trafford, and the players are coming out.
What do we think, try and get to 500 before lunch in 20/20 style, then put them in 180 or 200 behind, while dodging the showers this afternoon?
I just put my Uxbridge winnings (£10 at 12 = £110) on England scoring 500 in this innings at 2.2 with Betfair Exchange. Should get me from £10 to around £230 in a few hours.
Well it’s dry at Old Trafford, and the players are coming out.
What do we think, try and get to 500 before lunch in 20/20 style, then put them in 180 or 200 behind, while dodging the showers this afternoon?
I just put my Uxbridge winnings (£10 at 12 = £110) on England scoring 500 in this innings at 2.2 with Betfair Exchange. Should get me from £10 to around £230 in a few hours.
On ULEZ and air quality, I do notice a significant difference when I come to London. The air quality is noticeably worse than where I live now and I feel it in my chest. All the problems I had previously with asthma and bronchitis have pretty much stopped since moving to the country. Admittedly I live in the arse end of nowhere near the sea but being outdoors in fresh clean air has done my lungs no end of good, even though I'm allergic to tree pollen.
When you blow your nose in London you find out that the pollution is worse than everywhere else.
No Ashes tests north of Nottingham until 2031 is not acceptable. Sacrilege but Lords and the Oval need to join in the rotations.
As this is only one series, your post is somewhat hyperbolic. Why shouldn't Southampton have an Ashes test in 2027? Lords is iconic, is essentially the home of world cricket. I think there is more a case re the Oval. Its not as if there won't be test cricket in 2024, 2025, 2026, 2028, 2029, 2030 north of Nottingham.
Dont mind Southampton having a test at all. I don't think Lords and Oval should both be guaranteed the best ones though, despite living here.
I agree with you about the Oval, but Lords is the home of cricket and seen as that by touring sides. Its actually a pretty poor venue for England in terms of results, but it needs to be in the series.
I'm currently trying to decide between a Genesis Croix de Fer, Sonder Santiago or Bombtrack Beyond. Anyone own one of these?
Yes! I own a Croix de Fer - it's been my "proper bike" for about 10 years now. Absolute beauty of a bike. You can tour on it and get the miles in, or throw it down bridleways if you see an interesting signpost - I did the Hell of the North Cotswolds on it one year. Works fine for everyday journeys too though I usually have the folder or the cargo bike for that.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Driving a bicycle can be very practical for a very large number of journeys. Not every journey, but I'm not a dogmatist who would propose one mode of transport is suitable for every journey.
Here in West Cork I'm finding driving is a lot easier than I ever found it anywhere in Britain. Where the population density is low a car comes into its own. But we visited Bath recently, using public transport when we were there this time - on a previous visit we'd driven, and in any sort of reasonably-sized urban area, using a car becomes nightmarish, and there are much better options.
My recommendation to you is to drive to the West of Ireland for a holiday. Experience the freedom of driving on roads where the worst traffic you have to worry about is an occasional tractor, or herd of cows. Then take yourself off for a holiday somewhere with good cycling infrastructure - some European city - and enjoy the freedom of being able to explore a city by bicycle, without having to battle the hassle of urban driving.
I think it would give you a broader perspective. You have a very narrow focus on car driving, and cannot imagine anything different.
When we were in Valencia, my son commented on the number of middle-aged women riding bicycles in normal clothes, obviously simply using a bike to get from A to B. Having grown up in the UK, it was something of a novelty to him that bikes could actually be used as practical transport by a wide range of people and not just for recreation by sporty types.
I remember chatting with a Danish colleague who had just bought an e-bike. I said “but isn’t that a cheat, surely the point of riding the bike to work is to get more exercise?” And he looked at me confused and said “the point of a bike is to get from a to b, isn’t it?”
for me, as I cycle to work when I can, it is both, It does not have to be one or the other.
I have an e-cargo bike. I have had 4 small children in it - more than I've ever had in a car. Alternatively several people can ride their own bicycles! I know this is a very difficult solution to think of. I can fit a hell of a lot of shopping in it. For journeys up to 5 km it's easily quicker and more convenient than a car, also for most journeys up to 8km or more. Admittedly I live in a city (as do millions of others). For someone to think a bicycle is only for leisure is pretty bizarre.
As is believing that because more electric cars are coming in the future that means there are no environmental problems.
Same here. We live in a small rural town. Last year I bought an e-cargo bike. Since then I think I’ve driven the car three times in the whole year, and the bike pretty much every day on the school run (6 miles there and back on hilly Cotswold roads). The bike is cheaper, faster and all round more convenient. We almost certainly won’t replace the car when it dies.
The main thing holding cycling back in Britain is lack of proper infrastructure. It’s slowly being built in inner cities and is creeping out to the suburbs and occasional peri-urban/rural clusters. There was a really interesting (and largely unreported) development in south Oxfordshire this week where councillors turned down their own council’s fully funded £300m relief road plan, largely on the basis that building more roads just leads to more traffic. Given the demographic there is an opportunity to do something new and much less car centric there instead.
I have a bike and enjoy cycling. A 6 mile cycle to work is as good a way of getting there as any. When I only have one or two things to get at the shops, a bike is as easy as a car. I do not however enjoy cycle maintenance. It's bad enough having to maintain my own bike, but as the man of the house I am apparently responsible for the condition of everybody's bikes. I don't understand why bikes are so much less reliable than cars. You can drive a car for a year, or 10,000 miles, without even thinking of needing a service. Bikes need a service roughly every 500 miles. And I think in 30 years of driving, or about 300,000 miles, I have only ever had three or four punctures. I get at least two punctures a year on my bike. Granted it's a much easier job to fix a puncture on a bike than a car, but it's still a pain in the arse. We have five bikes in the shed, and at least three of them have flat tyres. Any journey out as a family is necessarily prefixed by a good hour or so's cycle maintenance. As I said, I like cycling, and use a bike quite well. But I can see why people don't.
Bike maintenance emporia are available you know. They will take your money & your bicycles & return a lovely fettled bicycle in return.
Well yes, but from what I can see they tend to be bloody expensive!
To be fair, there is a place in Sale which will maintain your bike for almost free and also teach you to do it. Solutions are available: mainly just be a man and learn some skills. My comment was more the point that I can see why people don't do it.
Sure, but anything that requires time is expensive. Either you pay in your own time or you pay someone else for their time. Somehow we happily accept that the car costs huge sums to keep running, but balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running!
A well fettled bicycle is a thing of joy & worth paying for if you don’t have the time to do it yourself imo.
I balk at paying £100 to keep a bike running because a) that's half the cost of a half-decent bike, and b) that's far, far more, per mile, than I'm paying to keep a car running. Cycling should be a cheap way of getting about. But it isn't. This isn't anyone's fault - as you say, paying someone to do a job takes time. But I lament it nonetheless.
A half-decent bike does not cost £200 new. A £200 bike is a pile of crap parts in loose formation. The problem with spending £200 is you get a terrible bicycle & then you think that this is what cycling is like.
A bike is an /effective/ way of getting about that is worth spending money on, especially if you use it as a commuter. Personally, I ride a bike every single day: it’s entirely rational for me to spend £1500 on a bike: it’ll pay itself back against any other transport option available to me inside a year. Even if you’re only comparing with the incremental fuel cost of making the same trip by car (never mind running costs) it still pays out in < 18 months & I get to where I’m going quicker & don’t need to find somewhere to park. (In fact, I spent a lot less than that because I’m a terrible cheapskate, but it would be entirely rational for me to have spent that much, that’s the point.)
It might not be rational for you to spend £1500, but do consider that £200 bikes are not worth the pain & that you’d get more utility out of a better bicycle. You’re spending the absolute minimum to get the worst bicycle on the market & doing that in any market is usually a bad idea.
I don't agree. This is why people don't see cycling as accessible. I bought a Decathlon own brand bike (a Triban RC100) back in 2017 for about £250 after I came into a bit of money. This isn't an absolute minimum spend; there are plenty of cheaper bikes. It's served me for six years; I've cycled to work (6 miles) a couple of time a week on it, used it for around town cycling, done a semi-regular ten-miler on it, and a couple of times a year done some long-ish 40-60 milers on it. It's hard work going over steep hills in it, but how often do I do that? I moan about maintenance, but it's done me well. And I'd like a better bike, of course. But the amount I cycle doesn't justify paying vast amounts. The amount you save in tram fares you end up spending in getting it serviced. I can see that Dura_Ace's 10000km a year merits paying out a lot, but I don't fall into that category (very few people do). I'm actually planning on getting a better bike. Something in the £750-ish bracket, with panniers, with the hope of doing a few two-or three-day trips. My parents are going to give me half the cost as a birthday present. I'll try to get it through the cycle to work scheme. But I wouldn't be doing this if it was money I was spending on myself (i.e. not a present). And I certainly wouldn't be spending more. A £750 bike isn't twice as good a cycling experience as a £375 bike, and a £1500 bike isn't twice as good as a £750 bike. I take your point about false economies, but false economies are for things you need (like footwear) rather than things which are fun to have (like bikes). I've got three kids - the number of times a year I get a day to myself for a bike ride can be counted on the fingers of two hands.
My other worry about expensive bikes, is, as Cyclefree alluded to earlier, they get nicked. A friend of mine recently got his new multi-thousand pound bike nicked from the lock-up where he works - they managed to break into the 'secure' underground parking and use a power tool to cut through his expensive bike lock. And my last but one bike - which was worth virtually nothing - got nicked from the tram stop: again, they used cutting machinery to cut through the lock, clearly undeterred by CCTV.
Cycling ought to be cheap and accessible. I have no objection to the serious hobbyists spending thousands on it, but most people aren't like that (nor have that sort of money).
I’m not saying you have to spend that much, I’m saying that, for many people, the value they get wildly exceeds the cost & it’s worth spending more for the improvements in utility they get for the extra expenditure. You regard a bicycle as “something that’s fun to have”, a toy. For me, a bike is a integral part of my life which I use daily & would be measurably poorer without. My utility curve is different to yours.
I also think people think bikes “ought to be cheap” because they devalue what bikes actually give you - rapid transit wherever you like within something like a ten mile radius of home that’s faster than any other method of transport (except mopeds?) & devalue the cost of their time spent keeping a cheap bike running.
Obviously if you don’t use that utility, then your utility curve will be different but a £200 bike is not the most rewarding part of the price/utility curve to be for anyone imo - you spend so much time fiddling with cheap parts to get them to work right that you’d have been better off spending the extra on something that worked right & stayed right in the first place.
(Honestly, I am as bad at this as anyone else - the last bike I acquired cost me £50 and then another £175 in parts & I didn’t count how many hours getting it back up to scratch again.)
Well it’s dry at Old Trafford, and the players are coming out.
What do we think, try and get to 500 before lunch in 20/20 style, then put them in 180 or 200 behind, while dodging the showers this afternoon?
Yes, my approach from this excellent platform would be: - an over or two to get their eyes in - go absolutely ballistic with the old ball - five overs or so more cautious to start to see off the new ball - go absolutely ballistic again.
That takes England to anywhere from 460 all out to 550-4 by lunch, which ranges from very good to great. Then declare at lunch. If they're still sub-500 but with wickets in hand after lunch I'd take another few overs to welly it about, but no more batting today than that!
Comments
Should have shown a shot of him as Palmerston.
@cookie is right, bikes shouldn’t be hard to maintain. If you fit Marathon Plus tyres or similar then life gets much easier. Even then, you buy a bike, it probably doesn’t come with lights or a lock or a rack/basket. The UK bike industry (with a few honourable exceptions) hasn’t got the knack of a consumer friendly product.
But the opportunity is there for the taking. Bromptons are amazing city bikes, especially in electric form. And then you think - what company has experience in the consumer user experience, miniaturisation, lightweight metals, battery technology, and is getting into the mobility space? Plus also has a ready-to-go network of retail stores? Apple.
My current local activism is getting anti-cycling anti-wheeling barriers off rights of way, which force pedestrians and cyclists onto 'alternatives' which are narrow shared pavements often blocked by idiots with their cars, or sometimes busy roads.
It has to be approached through a pedestrian lens because cyclists have no legally-enforcible access rights unless their cycle is a disabled mobility aid. Fortunately there is an overlap. A friend has just issued a Letter Before Action to Derby City Council for an impassable 'anti-motorbike' chicane barrier on a gennel in Derby, which does not block motor bikes but does block her wheelchair; when you issue one of those they suddenly wake up and stop many years are evasion and waffle.
On @Cookie 's comments, without wanting to tell you the obvious, there are options like 8 or 11 or 14 speed speed hub gears that need very little maintenance (but if you buy a Rohloff you will know you have paid for it), and anti-puncture tyres with a kevlar layer to stop punctures. Around here I only ever get punctures in the sidewall when it is the trim-the-hawthorn-hedges season, as I run this type of tyre. Lots of options and more becoming available all the time.
To be honest, when it first became apparent that there would be a by-election in Selby and Ainsty, it seemed to me to be a moot point whether Labour would even be the main challenger to the Tories. It seemed quite possible that the contest would be more reminiscent of North Shropshire, where Labour also started in a very weak 2nd place and was overtaken. The constituency boundaries are also markedly less favourable to Labour than those of the old Selby seat which John Grogan held, so the historical precedent is only of limited relevance. Obviously as things progressed in that campaign my perception and expectations changed, but it's still an astounding result for Labour to overturn a majority in excess of 20,000 in a semi-rural seat.
Cycling should be a cheap way of getting about. But it isn't. This isn't anyone's fault - as you say, paying someone to do a job takes time. But I lament it nonetheless.
https://twitter.com/Cobylefko/status/1682029080538136579
Swiss Hill in Alderley Edge is worth a look for a really quite challenging sharp cobbled climb. Watch out for (a) the Cheshire ATGNI crew in over their heads, and (b) slick stones after rain, which pose a real threat of involuntary de-biking.
The price will make your eyes water though: none of this is mass market unfortunately.
It's certainly possible to be a rugged libertarian- I once worked with an utterly delightful individual who was basically Ron Swanson reimagined as a physics professor. But the trap on the right is to ignore the "what if everyone did this?" question. One person's freedom to drive a car is everyone else's congestion, that sort of thing. Is anyone doing any good thinking about that problem?
I guess I am arguing on 'my gut feel' by putting this seat in the bucket of seats where only the LDs can dislodge the Tories even though they are behind Lab. Although JRM made a big point of identifying the Lab were his challengers and not the LDs which seemed a bit defensive to me.
I don't know, you have the cheek to use real evidence to argue with my gut feelings. What is PB coming to.
I ride a Boardman Hybrid, with a lightweight hidden long, thin E-Assist inside the frame (so I can avoid getting sweaty in normal clothes), and I run Marathon Supremes, which weigh half as much as a Marathon Plus and are happy with road and trail, except for lots of mud.
It also makes Luton an ideal airport for anyone in north London. 20-30 minutes from St Pancras
Conversely, a lot of bikes for general use are a little overspecced, especially (but not only) in gearing. For recreation 20+ gears on a road bike make sense (kinda) but if you're leaning utility a five speed Sturmey Archer or Shimano hub gear will be a lot better value and waaaaay less maintenance. It's really the range of the gears that matters more than the number of increments betwixt.
I'd also spare a thought for the humble fixed-gear bike, now thankfully shorn of its hipster trappings. Fixed is a great way to ride, very low maintenance and not as bad as you might think for tackling slopes. You get much less top end speed as a sacrifice, but most of us aren't really looking for that. It's got a really liberating hop-on-and-go feel, and also gives you a decent workout with your legs necessarily in constant motion.
Seriously enough to have fewer cars and more other stuff?
Suppose (only slightly exaggerating) Labour's electoral campaign choice is between winning a General Election and saving Net Zero/children's lungs.
I think it is delusional to think there can't be serious choices along these lines.
The compromise (ask the LDs) is to tell everyone that the national strategy won't apply to them. Expect this.
90% of America is built for the car and its very hard to unbuild
Also, Americans SAY they want pretty, walkable, European-style downtowns and cities but in practise they don’t. They are all like @BartholomewRoberts and addicted to the ease of the car. At least he admits it
I have a couple of friends that swear by e-bikes. I confess I am sometimes tempted (having sold my car). I can’t be arsed cycling up to Highgate under my own steam. But a nice little motor to help? Mm
And the ideal airport with a scheduled daily service, truly dreamy, is the one on Barra.
https://www.hial.co.uk/barra-airport
Compare and contrast to a puncture and broken spring on my car. That took over a week to deal with and hundreds of pounds.
There is far more pollution and congestion in the existing area.
Drivers in the existing area tend to be businesses or richer in comparison to the expanded area.
People have already budgeted for the costs in the existing area but these are new costs in the expanded area.
So make it £5 in the expanded area initially rather than £12.50......and you will win over enough of the naysayers to make the transition to your end goal both smoother and more likely to happen.
I've inherited my grandad's amateur cycling medals; he was putting out extraordinary times in the 1940s with a wooly vest on a steel bike with down tube shifters. The vast majority of performance is simple fitness, keeping your weight down and your bike in decent nick.
A bike is an /effective/ way of getting about that is worth spending money on, especially if you use it as a commuter.
Personally, I ride a bike every single day: it’s entirely rational for me to spend £1500 on a bike: it’ll pay itself back against any other transport option available to me inside a year. Even if you’re only comparing with the incremental fuel cost of making the same trip by car (never mind running costs) it still pays out in < 18 months & I get to where I’m going quicker & don’t need to find somewhere to park. (In fact, I spent a lot less than that because I’m a terrible cheapskate, but it would be entirely rational for me to have spent that much, that’s the point.)
It might not be rational for you to spend £1500, but do consider that £200 bikes are not worth the pain & that you’d get more utility out of a better bicycle. You’re spending the absolute minimum to get the worst bicycle on the market & doing that in any market is usually a bad idea.
The speed camera thing really helped the Tories in local government elections 1997-2010, though didn’t break through at a national level.
A bit more widely, I think these by-elections are a bit like a Rorschach test and you can interpret in different ways according to your views.
If you want a Labour Government, you can take the views of a @kinablu who says that Uxbridge was solely down to constituency-specific factors such as ULEZ (and maybe Hindus) and that Selby is the more representative call of what will happen.
But if you want to see value in the Tories, you could also argue the results show that, while Labour does well - ditto the LDs - when the voters want to give the Government a slap, they do not when voters have to think about real issues and their effects. In that case, it is likely that the Labour lead would sharply narrow in an election campaign when their policies are scrutinised (ditto the LDs).
Due to my politics, I veer more to the second but both are valid interpretations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3eMyjyZ6Aw
Son recently bought a bike - he gets up early to go for a swim before work - and within 2 months had it stolen even though it was properly locked up in bike rack etc., The insurance has paid out and the lady dealing with the claim said that bike thefts have gone up massively since lockdown. Why? Who are these bastards stealing bikes?
Whilst it's absolutely right and proper to quote swings from the previous elections of the same type, i.e. GE 19, again previous local elections in 2022 presaged these results reasonably well
If we quote the by-election swings using LE22 as a baseline they come out around:
National polling swing since LE22, about 7.5%
Uxbridge swing Vs LE22 8%
Selby swing since LE22, 11%
Somerton swing since LE22, approx 9%
Perhaps ULEZ, rather than wider, longer standing Labour incumbency drag, only accounts for a couple of percent of lost swing, if that.
I'm currently riding: Look 795 Blade RS (dry), Cannondale SuperSix Hi-Mod (wet) and a Whyte Gisburn (snow/ice).
Not quite what you are after, but looks to me a very tempting price for steel and high-end retro brakes and drivechain.
Clare Nowland: Tasering of 95-year-old 'grossly disproportionate' - police
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-66229582
I'm thinking that headline is one of the great 'no shit Sherlock' moments.
I did look at a Bombtrack when I was buying but, but it was out of my price comfort zone at the time. Looked like a really great bike though. The current Beyond 1 & Croix de Fer 10 look very similar actually, so it probably comes down to personal geometry preferences & price.
I bought a Decathlon own brand bike (a Triban RC100) back in 2017 for about £250 after I came into a bit of money. This isn't an absolute minimum spend; there are plenty of cheaper bikes. It's served me for six years; I've cycled to work (6 miles) a couple of time a week on it, used it for around town cycling, done a semi-regular ten-miler on it, and a couple of times a year done some long-ish 40-60 milers on it. It's hard work going over steep hills in it, but how often do I do that? I moan about maintenance, but it's done me well.
And I'd like a better bike, of course. But the amount I cycle doesn't justify paying vast amounts. The amount you save in tram fares you end up spending in getting it serviced. I can see that Dura_Ace's 10000km a year merits paying out a lot, but I don't fall into that category (very few people do).
I'm actually planning on getting a better bike. Something in the £750-ish bracket, with panniers, with the hope of doing a few two-or three-day trips. My parents are going to give me half the cost as a birthday present. I'll try to get it through the cycle to work scheme. But I wouldn't be doing this if it was money I was spending on myself (i.e. not a present). And I certainly wouldn't be spending more. A £750 bike isn't twice as good a cycling experience as a £375 bike, and a £1500 bike isn't twice as good as a £750 bike. I take your point about false economies, but false economies are for things you need (like footwear) rather than things which are fun to have (like bikes). I've got three kids - the number of times a year I get a day to myself for a bike ride can be counted on the fingers of two hands.
My other worry about expensive bikes, is, as Cyclefree alluded to earlier, they get nicked. A friend of mine recently got his new multi-thousand pound bike nicked from the lock-up where he works - they managed to break into the 'secure' underground parking and use a power tool to cut through his expensive bike lock. And my last but one bike - which was worth virtually nothing - got nicked from the tram stop: again, they used cutting machinery to cut through the lock, clearly undeterred by CCTV.
Cycling ought to be cheap and accessible. I have no objection to the serious hobbyists spending thousands on it, but most people aren't like that (nor have that sort of money).
And other transport is pretty crap. I can park on my mother's drive in Stevenage and get a service bus to the airport, however buses back to Stevenage stop early evening.
But for me it's less than an hour on the M3 and M25 and there is fairly cheap off-airport parking.
Great for Audax, probably not so great for anything else?
Last 3 match series was in 1998. Last 4/5 match series 1985.
But list year the (cheap) hydraulic disk brakes failed dramatically on my handcycle - a stone wedged in between the pad and the disc and ripped the front wheel out.
(Edit: Still would have happened with a cable disc brake, tbf.)
What do we think, try and get to 500 before lunch in 20/20 style, then put them in 180 or 200 behind, while dodging the showers this afternoon?
Compared to that the DART is, indeed, dreamy. Verging on orgasmic
And, in any case, I'm calling for something more radical than a 4-match women's Test series. I'm calling for a combined Test series determined by the results of the matches between the men's and women's teams.
Could also be all out for 440/450
I think cycling maybe suffers a bit that it is still often somewhat dominated by enthusiasts which can off-putting to people who don't want to learn lots of stuff, but might be interested in an easier and cheaper way of getting from a to b.
One of the big gripes, on the news here, from people affected by the Newcastle/Gateshead equivalent of ULEZ is thr lack of the promised grants to change their vehicles to less polluting ones.
Just as when Gateshead introduced their anti car measures with regards to closing off Askew Road feeding into the Tyne Bridge, there was no carrot. They said they were not going to expand any Park and rides as they didn't have the money. It was all stick and no carrot which is what really led to the scale of the opposition.
The only person I have ever seen in real life, and not on the local news when they round up half a dozen local cycling enthusiasts, cycling on Askew road is me.
Traffic calming measures by Newcastle Council in Jesmond have not gone down too well with many, including the businesses affected, as these have been put in largely with minimal consulation and with the help of active travel lobbyists
15 minutes cities and low traffic neigbourhoods are fine. All makes sense. But it needs to be done collaboratively not just by imposition, Some will always object but many on the fence or mild doubters are able to be brought onside.
An additional point: I feel quite a degree of shame over my mechanical inadequacy. I ought to be able to dissassemble, clean and reassessmble a bike, but fear I would just be left with a useless pile of parts. I can change a tire, but it takes me about half an hour and a lot of swearing. I feel 100% confident that if I were more mechanically adept and confident I would be a keener cyclist. This must be how people whose reading and writing is poor must feel trying to function in a world in which reading and writing are required.
Its not as if there won't be test cricket in 2024, 2025, 2026, 2028, 2029, 2030 north of Nottingham.
Funding it won't be a problem if it's as popular as the Elizabeth Line.
I’d be mildly heartened by last night if I were a Tory activist
All is not lost. Not quite
They may restrict Labour to a NOM govt which proves shambolic and ineffectual as it tries to govern with the LDs and Nats, then Starmer goes to the people with his zero charisma - and the Tories are back in
If you want a 15-minute city, build a new one rather than imposing measures on existing cities.
That isn't to say that a senior citizen wielding a knife isn't a serious matter, or likely to put those around in fear. But the simple risk of killing them with a Taser must, surely, take its use out of the equation.
And they should all have a tram
One tram each. And an owl
We have a winner in the Poems on the Underground competition.
I also think people think bikes “ought to be cheap” because they devalue what bikes actually give you - rapid transit wherever you like within something like a ten mile radius of home that’s faster than any other method of transport (except mopeds?) & devalue the cost of their time spent keeping a cheap bike running.
Obviously if you don’t use that utility, then your utility curve will be different but a £200 bike is not the most rewarding part of the price/utility curve to be for anyone imo - you spend so much time fiddling with cheap parts to get them to work right that you’d have been better off spending the extra on something that worked right & stayed right in the first place.
(Honestly, I am as bad at this as anyone else - the last bike I acquired cost me £50 and then another £175 in parts & I didn’t count how many hours getting it back up to scratch again.)
- an over or two to get their eyes in
- go absolutely ballistic with the old ball
- five overs or so more cautious to start to see off the new ball
- go absolutely ballistic again.
That takes England to anywhere from 460 all out to 550-4 by lunch, which ranges from very good to great. Then declare at lunch. If they're still sub-500 but with wickets in hand after lunch I'd take another few overs to welly it about, but no more batting today than that!