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.
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.
Yes, you have to play at Lord’s
It’s the most famous cricket ground in the world and, apart from anything else, the opposition will feel cheated if they don’t get a game there. It’s a grand memory for any player, from anywhere
Also it’s a very pleasant 15 minute stroll from my flat
The Oval is the questionable location. London should sacrifice that occasionally, for Headingley (coz Headingley is always exciting and noisy)
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.
Double-down on the environmental measures in central London, without making life difficult for people living on the edge of the metropolis like Uxbridge where a car is still important.
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.
I wish people wouldn't conflate air pollution and climate change.
Diesel cars are, relative to petrol cars, far less bad in terms of CO2 emissions because they generally are far more fuel efficient in terms of mpg. Given the energy consumed in manufacturing any vehicle, it also makes sense in terms of CO2 and therefore climate change only to scrap vehicles when they start to become unreliable and disproportionately expensive to service.
Yet Khan's ULEZ scheme requires diesel vehicles to be disposed of 9 years earlier than petrol vehicles and includes a fiscal sweetener that actually encourages premature scrappage. So, effectively, the ULEZ scheme encourages Londoners to switch to compliant petrol vehicles and burn more CO2 than would otherwise be the case.
I agree with you in so far as I think that any Labour backsliding on climate change would lose Labour votes, but I don't think that the same can be said with regard to ULEZ at least in outer London.
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.
Yes, you have to play at Lord’s
It’s the most famous cricket ground in the world and, apart from anything else, the opposition will feel cheated if they don’t get a game there. It’s a grand memory for any player, from anywhere
Also it’s a very pleasant 15 minute stroll from my flat
The Oval is the questionable location. London should sacrifice that occasionally, for Headingley (coz Headingley is always exciting and noisy)
I struggle with these debates because they seem to deny basic maths. There are ten million people in London - more than Leeds metro (2.5m), Greater Manchester (3m) and Greater Nottingham (1m) put together.
The right wing fringe parties seem quite unable to match their showing in opinion polls in real elections, which is a minor piece of encouragement for the Conservatives.
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.)
Sounds a bit like buying a printer. Used to buy the £50-100 ones and consistently frustrated that they rarely worked when you wanted/needed them. So gave up with them until wfh and tried a £200 one, which works fine with no maintenance.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
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.
The public transport in your area must be unusually excellent, then. As someone who spent decades depending on public transport I think there's an element of 'devil you know' for many users; you don't realise how terrible it is until you have another choice.
I do not miss standing in the pouring rain or sub-zero temperatures for an hour because the bus randomly didn't show up. I do not miss having to pay for taxis to get to hospital appointments because it takes three busses and two hours to make a 20 mile trip. I do not miss having to carry bags of groceries a mile to the bus stop.
I'm glad I wasn't one of the people suddenly faced with losing their jobs when the local bus company announced it was withdrawing the service that links my village to the nearest town.
But that was the wake up call that forced me to invest in personal transportation in the form of a gorgeous retro-style motor scooter. And it's the best money I've ever spent. I can go anywhere I want, at any time, and save huge amounts of time and money - a hospital trip is 30 minutes and £1 worth of petrol, rather than two hours and £15 in fares.
I many ways it's even better than owning a car; much cheaper to run (120-ish mpg and £20 road tax), cuts through traffic, can park almost anywhere for nothing, and completely exempt from LEZ charges.
Any government that declares war on personal transportation (and I don't count bicycles in that, those are for exercise and only a minimally viable mode of transportation for most people) is going to find themselves contemplating that mistake from the opposition benches.
Vehicles need to get smaller and cleaner, but they are not going away even if public transport in this country by some miracle stops being terrible.
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.
Yes, you have to play at Lord’s
It’s the most famous cricket ground in the world and, apart from anything else, the opposition will feel cheated if they don’t get a game there. It’s a grand memory for any player, from anywhere
Also it’s a very pleasant 15 minute stroll from my flat
The Oval is the questionable location. London should sacrifice that occasionally, for Headingley (coz Headingley is always exciting and noisy)
I struggle with these debates because they seem to deny basic maths. There are ten million people in London - more than Leeds metro (2.5m), Greater Manchester (3m) and Greater Nottingham (1m) put together.
So actually two Tests in London undercooks it…
Yes there are a lot of people in London but it's tucked miles away in the far corner of the country. I don't mind the south having its fair share of cricket, but having ALL the cricket seems a bit rum. London ALWAYS gets two. Manchester sometimes doesn't get any. That said, cricket does better than most sports at spreading itself around and letting people from all over the country see it. And I approve of the decision to add extra test grounds to the roster.
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.)
Sounds a bit like buying a printer. Used to buy the £50-100 ones and consistently frustrated that they rarely worked when you wanted/needed them. So gave up with them until wfh and tried a £200 one, which works fine with no maintenance.
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.)
Sounds a bit like buying a printer. Used to buy the £50-100 ones and consistently frustrated that they rarely worked when you wanted/needed them. So gave up with them until wfh and tried a £200 one, which works fine with no maintenance.
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.
The other possibility is Starmer's say-nothing centralism risks shedding votes to the Greens (and the multitude of fringe candidates in Uxbridge yesterday). Labour's margin of defeat was less than the Green vote.
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.
I have never disassembled and reassembled a bicycle in thirty years of regular cycling. Doing so seems like asking for trouble to me!
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.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
Or on the edge of Southampton and a few miles from Portsmouth, to be fair. It has excellent transport to and from the station in Southampton and good parking near the site. Its a superb cricket ground.
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.)
Good analysis. And perhaps if I had spent approaching £1000 on a bike my assessment of what a bike gives me would shift. No-one seems to change from an expensive bike to a cheaper one.
You're in Timperley, IIRC? You've probably passed me on the canal (unless your cycling is so serious that the Bridgewater Canal path is an impediment to you rather than a facility!)
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The problem is nowadays there is so much one day cricket that it is difficult to fit in the test matches. This is why the series are squeezed and the opportunity for tourists to play counties has now gone.
I think ENG - AUS is the last remaining 5 match series? I may be wrong
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
I bought an old v large scale map of Manchester a few years ago. Tramlines everywhere in the 1930s.
I rather suspect ULEZ is the right policy, but there is/was something ostrich like about the response to complaints about it.
Similar to LTNs which are popular with most but definitely increase traffic on boundary roads and are hated by a sizeable minority.
ULEZ is unpopular because it hits everyday people with an unnecessary tax for transport they have to use - so it pisses them off.
Of course people favour low emissions. But they'd far rather the government help regulate and subsidie new vehicles to be cleaner, target only the dirtiest and worst offenders, and help them make a positive choice to switch.
This is classic Labour 'we know what's best for you' stuff, which is precisely what we'll get from them in national government.
Having said that, it seems the ULEZ does only target the dirtiest and worst offenders? I had a look and my thirteen year old petrol car would be ULEZ-compliant if I lived in London.
From the name ULEZ, and from the way both its proponents and its opponents speak you'd think it would mean charges for anyone driving a non-electric or at least non-hybrid car.
I think part of the problem is that the loudest ULEZ advocates are people who patently hate private transportation, so what they're projecting is what gets objected to, rather than the policy that actually exists.
Yes, quite possibly. That type of view is very common in the public sector, particularly by Mets who are central London based.
That said on the ULEZ the charge is stonking if you don't comply at £12.50 per day (£62.50 a week, if you just have a job to do) and doesn't discriminate at all.
Most commercial vehicles are exempt. Most cars are exempt.
Most is a weasel-word.
If 51% of cars are exempt, that doesn't help you much if you're in the 49% who are not.
If 95% of cars are exempt, then that's a completely different matter.
The truth is somewhere inbetween, but who knows where since nobody seems to want to debate this in a grown up manner on either side.
It is around 9 in 10 vehicles that are exempt - I don't think there is much dispute about that from either side. Presentationally one side quotes vehicles in the expanded zone per day (150-200k) and the other quotes vehicles that go into the zone over a year (750-800k). Both seem perfectly plausible to me.
But, everyone probably knows someone who's been hit and hit hard by it, and suspects they could be next because anti-car prejudice.
Not so much, which is why opposition peaks beforehand, then falls back as people realise they are unaffected and it was a lot of fuss about very little.
Its true in many walks of life though, if someone projects they want to go further on something but are doing something "moderate" then opponents will rally against it not just because they oppose the action currently being taken, but to say no to further action too. Reject this now, to prevent not just this but even worse down the line.
Its the slippery slope concept and its used in politics all the time.
EG I would have been perfectly content with Alternative Vote as an electoral system, it works great in Australia and its got the advantages of First Past the Post and not got the disadvantages of PR. But the proponents of the Yes side in the referendum were making arguments in favour of PR, not in favour of AV. So I voted no to AV, not because I wanted to avoid AV, but because I wanted to avoid PR, and that a yes to voting reform would have led to AV becoming something far worse and far more sinister like STV down the line.
I agree with you entirely although I worked on the basis that a move to AV would take the wind ut of PR advocates and so make it less likely. So I voted for AV both becaue I agreed with it and because I saw it as a way to prevent further moves to PR.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
15-minute towns with lots of cycling - that's what Britain used to be in the 1950s. It's a deeply conservative idea.
People complain about the death of their local high street, then protest when people suggest pedestrianisation and a pleasant public realm to encourage more footfall. Bizarre.
The right wing fringe parties seem quite unable to match their showing in opinion polls in real elections, which is a minor piece of encouragement for the Conservatives.
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.
The public transport in your area must be unusually excellent, then. As someone who spent decades depending on public transport I think there's an element of 'devil you know' for many users; you don't realise how terrible it is until you have another choice.
I do not miss standing in the pouring rain or sub-zero temperatures for an hour because the bus randomly didn't show up. I do not miss having to pay for taxis to get to hospital appointments because it takes three busses and two hours to make a 20 mile trip. I do not miss having to carry bags of groceries a mile to the bus stop.
I'm glad I wasn't one of the people suddenly faced with losing their jobs when the local bus company announced it was withdrawing the service that links my village to the nearest town.
But that was the wake up call that forced me to invest in personal transportation in the form of a gorgeous retro-style motor scooter. And it's the best money I've ever spent. I can go anywhere I want, at any time, and save huge amounts of time and money - a hospital trip is 30 minutes and £1 worth of petrol, rather than two hours and £15 in fares.
I many ways it's even better than owning a car; much cheaper to run (120-ish mpg and £20 road tax), cuts through traffic, can park almost anywhere for nothing, and completely exempt from LEZ charges.
Any government that declares war on personal transportation (and I don't count bicycles in that, those are for exercise and only a minimally viable mode of transportation for most people) is going to find themselves contemplating that mistake from the opposition benches.
Vehicles need to get smaller and cleaner, but they are not going away even if public transport in this country by some miracle stops being terrible.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
I bought an old v large scale map of Manchester a few years ago. Tramlines everywhere in the 1930s.
Yep. Trams are fab if done properly. They are even pretty good if done half heartedly but in that case you have to accept they will not get people off the roads to the extent the anti-car lobby want.
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.
Yes, you have to play at Lord’s
It’s the most famous cricket ground in the world and, apart from anything else, the opposition will feel cheated if they don’t get a game there. It’s a grand memory for any player, from anywhere
Also it’s a very pleasant 15 minute stroll from my flat
The Oval is the questionable location. London should sacrifice that occasionally, for Headingley (coz Headingley is always exciting and noisy)
I struggle with these debates because they seem to deny basic maths. There are ten million people in London - more than Leeds metro (2.5m), Greater Manchester (3m) and Greater Nottingham (1m) put together.
So actually two Tests in London undercooks it…
It is more the quality of the Tests than their location. The best matches that people remember for generations tend to be Headingley, Edgbaston and Trent Bridge, those have the best atmosphere too. Oval 2005 only because it gets the deciding Test. Lords, pah, rarely memorable and the worst crowd by far.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
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
The problem you have is that even in cities that do have a tram system the coverage is often poor. So in Nottingham when the system was introduced a decade ago they charged all the local firms £250 a year per parking space to pay for it.
Boots with 3000 spaces that would have been liable pointed out that the trams didn't run close to their factory and that many of their employees worked shift patterns that weren't served by the trams. They asked for discussions over the levy which would cost them £750,000 a year.
The council said no so Boots - whose factory straddled the city/county boundary - moved their car park from one end of the site to the other, moving it out of the city and avoiding the levy entirely
You can blame the Treasury for this kind of insanity.
We need a halfway house where local authorities can issue bonds in order to fund this kind of development, but (partially due to past LA stupidity) the Treasury is dead against relinquishing any control over the financial purse strings, which leaves LAs in the invidious position of having to somehow tax the local business population to pay for improvements.
(One might reasonably ask what is happening to the rest of the money being paid by local businesses to local government, but the vast majority of that is earmarked by central government mandates already. LAs have very little room for maneovre.)
Weirdly, it seems to have been perfectly possible for LAs to borrow vast sums to build shopping centres, but impossible for them to borrow to build railway or tram system. The ways of the Treasury are mysterious, opaque & seem designed to prevent any real development in this country.
Very good post. Although I am generally a moderate fan of Thatcher, what she did to local government was disastrous for both politics and development in this country.
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.
Take a photo every time you take a bit off, until you learn.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
15-minute towns with lots of cycling - that's what Britain used to be in the 1950s. It's a deeply conservative idea.
People complain about the death of their local high street, then protest when people suggest pedestrianisation and a pleasant public realm to encourage more footfall. Bizarre.
Cycling is a very conservative activity. It encourages self reliance, self improvement and reduces burden on the state. It is also a fertile ground for small business and innovation.
The Selby result is not nothing and definitely points away from a rusg toward "diesel for all" policies.
Selby doesn't have any sort of ULEZ as a local issue.
Almost nowhere does.
A lot more schemes of that sort are in the process of being introduced across the country.
So 20 seats? In exchange for alienating a bunch of people elsewhere who may not be greens but think air pollution is vaguely bad. Among whom will be lots of young families and older people who would be Tory considered.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
15-minute towns with lots of cycling - that's what Britain used to be in the 1950s. It's a deeply conservative idea.
People complain about the death of their local high street, then protest when people suggest pedestrianisation and a pleasant public realm to encourage more footfall. Bizarre.
The trouble is, people go shopping to buy stuff, and then they need to get that stuff home which is easiest with a car. That's why high streets lost out to shopping centres with massive car parks. By all means pedestrianise high streets but build a car park nearby. Of course, the recent explosion in online shopping and deliveries has altered the equation again.
The Selby result is not nothing and definitely points away from a rusg toward "diesel for all" policies.
Selby doesn't have any sort of ULEZ as a local issue.
Almost nowhere does.
A lot more schemes of that sort are in the process of being introduced across the country.
So 20 seats? In exchange for alienating a bunch of people elsewhere who may not be greens but think air pollution is vaguely bad. Among whom will be lots of young families and older people who would be Tory considered.
My comment was not an argument against them. Simply pointing out they are more widespread than you were implying in your post.
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.
If you put Marathon Pluses on it it could take more than half an hour . They are famously recalcitrant - not quite to the point of needing a hydraulic jack, but you need strong tyres levers.
My LBS (local bike shop) is about 10 minutes walk away, with Halfords 10 minutes the other side of that, and another LBS 15 minutes the other side of Halfords. And that's just in a decent sized market town.
I get a bike service for about 25 or 50 or 100 UKP depending how comprehensive. It's a decent setup.
I think see utility cycling increase as taxes are shifted to Electric Cars - by my judgement they need aournd £3k revenue per annum per electric vehicle (which still leaves private vehicles as the most heavily subsidised and least space efficient form of transport). Provided we start investing again in active travel facilities - as opposed to the current lot who cancelled almost all funding.
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.
I was astonished at just how flat the Netherlands was when I went there. I mean where I'm from, Coventry - people think of it as a flat city but there's definite ups and downs there. The Netherlands is just amazingly level.
It sure is.
Given that wherever else you go in Europe, you are sure to find Dutch camper vans, they should give them all a large orange bucket and tell them to bring a bucket of earth back whenever they go abroad. Over time they could make their country a bit higher and more undulating.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
I bought an old v large scale map of Manchester a few years ago. Tramlines everywhere in the 1930s.
Yep. Trams are fab if done properly. They are even pretty good if done half heartedly but in that case you have to accept they will not get people off the roads to the extent the anti-car lobby want.
Everywhere is different. I live 17 miles from my workplace, in a hilly part of the world. No doubt an electric assist bike would do wonders on the hills (including Brassknocker Hill, a steep assent of 105 m or so in just over half a mile.). I don't cycle this because I am afraid of dying on the road (the A36) - a non-dualed narrow Trunk road with huge traffic loads.
Why do I live where I do? Housing prices. We bought a 3 bed semi in 2005 for a price that would have bought a flat in Bath. Train to work takes well over the hour when adding in the walk to the station and the trip from the station to the Uni (bus is 10 mins, walk about 30, again up a huge hill). The car takes 25 - 30 minutes depending on traffic. Its an utter no-brainer. I Jan I will be joined by my son (on his way to nursery), making cycling even less of an option.
I despair of city dwellers (primarily Londoners) preaching about how no one needs cars etc. Come and live in the country and see what its like when the buses are every 4 hours, if at all, and a night out has to end by 9.30 or you need a taxi for 80 quid to get home.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
The fact it is near a KFC, Burger King AND McDonald’s has really clinched it, for me
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
I bought an old v large scale map of Manchester a few years ago. Tramlines everywhere in the 1930s.
The reason they were removed was not lack of demand for public transport, so much as it was thought that bus could do the job with less impact on the street and with more flexibility and reliability. Which stands to reason, really. And they did at first. Greater Manchester's bus network in the 60s was a thing to inspire awe from the perspective of today. Not just the routes, but the speed and reliability of the journeys (not nearly so much general traffic for them to get caught in today). The rise of mass car ownership both killed off the market for buses and also reduced the attractiveness of the bus (since they were now slower). A vicious circle ensued - reduced patronage led to reduced services, which led to reduced attractiveness, which led to reduced patronage...
What trams have over buses is 1) people like them more because they are more comfortable and a less jerky journey, and 2) because of the infrastructure necessary for them, people have more confidence in making long term life plans (where do I buy a house/base a business etc) on the basis of a tram route than a bus route.
Personally, I have a bit of a bugbear with trams doing the work of buses: only rarely is it a better option than simply giving buses better infrastructure and more priority, which is rather cheaper and more flexible. But it has to be MUCH better infrastructure to effectively compete - of the standard of the Leigh-Salford-Manchester busway.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
The Selby result is not nothing and definitely points away from a rusg toward "diesel for all" policies.
Selby doesn't have any sort of ULEZ as a local issue.
Almost nowhere does.
Selby is close to York which has a lot of environmental policies IIRC.
Well exactly, I think the idea that rural voters are unaware of net zero, and its implications for rural life, is implausible. I would suggest that Yorkshire and Hillingdon are conservative in different ways, one of which is more responsive to threat narratives.
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.
I have long coveted a Croix de Fer - Genesis make lovely bikes. Steel is an excellent material and as @El_Capitano notes it's a very versatile machine too. Get a good pace on the tarmac but equally hit the trails or haul panniers.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
15-minute towns with lots of cycling - that's what Britain used to be in the 1950s. It's a deeply conservative idea.
People complain about the death of their local high street, then protest when people suggest pedestrianisation and a pleasant public realm to encourage more footfall. Bizarre.
I broadly agree with your objectives but your message is completely self defeating. Listen and understand people's objections, don't dismiss them as bizarre. They are often easy to alleviate and if you get them on board, your end goal is far more likely to happen!
What was noticeable overnight was the talking heads advocating tactical voting disagreed as to which opposition party was best placed in Mid Beds should Nadine Dorries ever step down.
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
The problem you have is that even in cities that do have a tram system the coverage is often poor. So in Nottingham when the system was introduced a decade ago they charged all the local firms £250 a year per parking space to pay for it.
Boots with 3000 spaces that would have been liable pointed out that the trams didn't run close to their factory and that many of their employees worked shift patterns that weren't served by the trams. They asked for discussions over the levy which would cost them £750,000 a year.
The council said no so Boots - whose factory straddled the city/county boundary - moved their car park from one end of the site to the other, moving it out of the city and avoiding the levy entirely
You can blame the Treasury for this kind of insanity.
We need a halfway house where local authorities can issue bonds in order to fund this kind of development, but (partially due to past LA stupidity) the Treasury is dead against relinquishing any control over the financial purse strings, which leaves LAs in the invidious position of having to somehow tax the local business population to pay for improvements.
(One might reasonably ask what is happening to the rest of the money being paid by local businesses to local government, but the vast majority of that is earmarked by central government mandates already. LAs have very little room for maneovre.)
Weirdly, it seems to have been perfectly possible for LAs to borrow vast sums to build shopping centres, but impossible for them to borrow to build railway or tram system. The ways of the Treasury are mysterious, opaque & seem designed to prevent any real development in this country.
Very good post. Although I am generally a moderate fan of Thatcher, what she did to local government was disastrous for both politics and development in this country.
I am no fan (though not a hater, either), and absolutely agree with you on this.
And it's not even hindsight - there was considerable opposition to the policy of centralisation. But it was undercut one the one hand by the popularity of council house sales (with little attention paid to the resource grab by central government), and on the other by the incompetence and political idiocy of a few high profile Labour councils.
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.
The public transport in your area must be unusually excellent, then. As someone who spent decades depending on public transport I think there's an element of 'devil you know' for many users; you don't realise how terrible it is until you have another choice.
I do not miss standing in the pouring rain or sub-zero temperatures for an hour because the bus randomly didn't show up. I do not miss having to pay for taxis to get to hospital appointments because it takes three busses and two hours to make a 20 mile trip. I do not miss having to carry bags of groceries a mile to the bus stop.
I'm glad I wasn't one of the people suddenly faced with losing their jobs when the local bus company announced it was withdrawing the service that links my village to the nearest town.
But that was the wake up call that forced me to invest in personal transportation in the form of a gorgeous retro-style motor scooter. And it's the best money I've ever spent. I can go anywhere I want, at any time, and save huge amounts of time and money - a hospital trip is 30 minutes and £1 worth of petrol, rather than two hours and £15 in fares.
I many ways it's even better than owning a car; much cheaper to run (120-ish mpg and £20 road tax), cuts through traffic, can park almost anywhere for nothing, and completely exempt from LEZ charges.
Any government that declares war on personal transportation (and I don't count bicycles in that, those are for exercise and only a minimally viable mode of transportation for most people) is going to find themselves contemplating that mistake from the opposition benches.
Vehicles need to get smaller and cleaner, but they are not going away even if public transport in this country by some miracle stops being terrible.
I wildly disagree with your second to last para, but agree with the last.
The mean commute in this country is ten miles & the median will be less than that (this stat is 0 bouded at the lower end & will be heavily skewed by long commutes at the top end).
I bet 25% of current car commuters are commuting three miles or less. That’s a distance you can easily commute by bike & even more easily by e-bike. Probably in less time than it takes to drive for the majority of those that switched.
There’s this weird thing in the discourse around transport that when someone like me says “a lot of trips could easily be done by bicycle” what gets heard is “everyone should travel by bicycle” & the response is made to the absolutist latter statement (what about people that can’t cycle / live too far away / etc etc etc) instead of to the incremental former.
I don’t know what to do about this: it seems that the emotional attachment to the car outweighs the actuality for many people & any suggestion that another form might work for others, even if it doesn’t work for them is met with outright hostility instead of constructive engagement. I imagine someone will be along in a minute to tell me why the lack of constructive engagement is all cyclist’s fault & we should be nicer to car drivers somehow though, just to prove my point.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
The fact it is near a KFC, Burger King AND McDonald’s has really clinched it, for me
Breakfast, lunch and dinner sorted to be fair. Just need a curry house or kebab when the pubs shut and all sorted.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
15-minute towns with lots of cycling - that's what Britain used to be in the 1950s. It's a deeply conservative idea.
People complain about the death of their local high street, then protest when people suggest pedestrianisation and a pleasant public realm to encourage more footfall. Bizarre.
Cycling is a very conservative activity. It encourages self reliance, self improvement and reduces burden on the state. It is also a fertile ground for small business and innovation.
And a surefire asset in gaining employment I believe.
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.)
Sounds a bit like buying a printer. Used to buy the £50-100 ones and consistently frustrated that they rarely worked when you wanted/needed them. So gave up with them until wfh and tried a £200 one, which works fine with no maintenance.
Printers are horrible things, inkjets in particular, which are designed for printing photos rather than general use, are expensive to keep running (razor blades business model) and get totally gummed up with lack of use.
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
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.
Yes, you have to play at Lord’s
It’s the most famous cricket ground in the world and, apart from anything else, the opposition will feel cheated if they don’t get a game there. It’s a grand memory for any player, from anywhere
Also it’s a very pleasant 15 minute stroll from my flat
The Oval is the questionable location. London should sacrifice that occasionally, for Headingley (coz Headingley is always exciting and noisy)
I struggle with these debates because they seem to deny basic maths. There are ten million people in London - more than Leeds metro (2.5m), Greater Manchester (3m) and Greater Nottingham (1m) put together.
So actually two Tests in London undercooks it…
Yes there are a lot of people in London but it's tucked miles away in the far corner of the country. I don't mind the south having its fair share of cricket, but having ALL the cricket seems a bit rum. London ALWAYS gets two. Manchester sometimes doesn't get any. That said, cricket does better than most sports at spreading itself around and letting people from all over the country see it. And I approve of the decision to add extra test grounds to the roster.
Well it doesn't get ALL the cricket does it? It gets two Tests. TWO out of five – for a population of 10m in the M25 and a further 10m+ within an easy train ride.
Northerners massively underestimate how many people live in London and the South East.
20-25 million people, depending where you draw the line –– almost half the population of England!!
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
The fact it is near a KFC, Burger King AND McDonald’s has really clinched it, for me
Ha! Exactly. Don't think the post had quite the effect the poster intended.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
15-minute towns with lots of cycling - that's what Britain used to be in the 1950s. It's a deeply conservative idea.
People complain about the death of their local high street, then protest when people suggest pedestrianisation and a pleasant public realm to encourage more footfall. Bizarre.
Cycling is a very conservative activity. It encourages self reliance, self improvement and reduces burden on the state. It is also a fertile ground for small business and innovation.
And a surefire asset in gaining employment I believe.
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.
If you put Marathon Pluses on it it could take more than half an hour . They are famously recalcitrant - not quite to the point of needing a hydraulic jack, but you need strong tyres levers.
My LBS (local bike shop) is about 10 minutes walk away, with Halfords 10 minutes the other side of that, and another LBS 15 minutes the other side of Halfords. And that's just in a decent sized market town.
I get a bike service for about 25 or 50 or 100 UKP depending how comprehensive. It's a decent setup.
I think see utility cycling increase as taxes are shifted to Electric Cars - by my judgement they need aournd £3k revenue per annum per electric vehicle (which still leaves private vehicles as the most heavily subsidised and least space efficient form of transport). Provided we start investing again in active travel facilities - as opposed to the current lot who cancelled almost all funding.
There’s a trick with Pluses (and other recalcitrant tyres) involving the use of cable ties to force the tyre into the centre well of the wheel. YouTube will inform.
(Doesn’t help much when / if you end up changing a tyre on the side of the road, but then a) hopefully you wont have to do that & b) who carries a Marathon as a spare tyre?)
SKS has done what many said was impossible, he achieved a swing on the level of Tony Blair, can anyone explain why this isn't a bigger deal?
I think team Starm is happy enough to have the media talking about ULEZ, I.e. Khan and Rees Mogg, rather than focusing too much on what exactly the upcoming thousand year centrist dad will do.
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.)
Sounds a bit like buying a printer. Used to buy the £50-100 ones and consistently frustrated that they rarely worked when you wanted/needed them. So gave up with them until wfh and tried a £200 one, which works fine with no maintenance.
Printers are horrible things, inkjets in particular, which are designed for printing photos rather than general use, are expensive to keep running (razor blades business model) and get totally gummed up with lack of use.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
The fact it is near a KFC, Burger King AND McDonald’s has really clinched it, for me
Breakfast, lunch and dinner sorted to be fair. Just need a curry house or kebab when the pubs shut and all sorted.
What was noticeable overnight was the talking heads advocating tactical voting disagreed as to which opposition party was best placed in Mid Beds should Nadine Dorries ever step down.
That poll showing Lab in front in the seat, would totally screw a by-election. They’re not going to soft-pedal when they think they can win there.
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.
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.
If you put Marathon Pluses on it it could take more than half an hour . They are famously recalcitrant - not quite to the point of needing a hydraulic jack, but you need strong tyres levers.
My LBS (local bike shop) is about 10 minutes walk away, with Halfords 10 minutes the other side of that, and another LBS 15 minutes the other side of Halfords. And that's just in a decent sized market town.
I get a bike service for about 25 or 50 or 100 UKP depending how comprehensive. It's a decent setup.
I think see utility cycling increase as taxes are shifted to Electric Cars - by my judgement they need aournd £3k revenue per annum per electric vehicle (which still leaves private vehicles as the most heavily subsidised and least space efficient form of transport). Provided we start investing again in active travel facilities - as opposed to the current lot who cancelled almost all funding.
I've broken crappy placcy levers on the marathon plus. Metal ones or, for proper people, strong spoons are necessary.
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
This kind of one-sided left-bashing annoys me. Farage too thinks he is just talking common sense about uncontroversial ideas about sovereignty and control, when in reality he's an ethnic supremacist in the contemporary Russian tradition, spreading fear of Turks and Africans to get hours on the BBC.
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!
Modern disc brakes reduce the maintenance as well as being more reliable and effective. For the gearing/drivetrain, both my bikes have Rohloff Speedhubs, which are virtually maintenance and adjustment free - just ask Mark Beaumont who circumnavigated the world using one.
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.
I have never disassembled and reassembled a bicycle in thirty years of regular cycling. Doing so seems like asking for trouble to me!
I did trash a wheel trying to take gears off it and opening the freewheel instead, sending the bearings rolling away and gathering dust. Damn thing didn't turn at all after that.
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.
The public transport in your area must be unusually excellent, then. As someone who spent decades depending on public transport I think there's an element of 'devil you know' for many users; you don't realise how terrible it is until you have another choice.
I do not miss standing in the pouring rain or sub-zero temperatures for an hour because the bus randomly didn't show up. I do not miss having to pay for taxis to get to hospital appointments because it takes three busses and two hours to make a 20 mile trip. I do not miss having to carry bags of groceries a mile to the bus stop.
I'm glad I wasn't one of the people suddenly faced with losing their jobs when the local bus company announced it was withdrawing the service that links my village to the nearest town.
But that was the wake up call that forced me to invest in personal transportation in the form of a gorgeous retro-style motor scooter. And it's the best money I've ever spent. I can go anywhere I want, at any time, and save huge amounts of time and money - a hospital trip is 30 minutes and £1 worth of petrol, rather than two hours and £15 in fares.
I many ways it's even better than owning a car; much cheaper to run (120-ish mpg and £20 road tax), cuts through traffic, can park almost anywhere for nothing, and completely exempt from LEZ charges.
Any government that declares war on personal transportation (and I don't count bicycles in that, those are for exercise and only a minimally viable mode of transportation for most people) is going to find themselves contemplating that mistake from the opposition benches.
Vehicles need to get smaller and cleaner, but they are not going away even if public transport in this country by some miracle stops being terrible.
I wildly disagree with your second to last para, but agree with the last.
The mean commute in this country is ten miles & the median will be less than that (this stat is 0 bouded at the lower end & will be heavily skewed by long commutes at the top end).
I bet 25% of current car commuters are commuting three miles or less. That’s a distance you can easily commute by bike & even more easily by e-bike. Probably in less time than it takes to drive for the majority of those that switched.
There’s this weird thing in the discourse around transport that when someone like me says “a lot of trips could easily be done by bicycle” what gets heard is “everyone should travel by bicycle” & the response is made to the absolutist latter statement (what about people that can’t cycle / live too far away / etc etc etc) instead of to the incremental former.
I don’t know what to do about this: it seems that the emotional attachment to the car outweighs the actuality for many people & any suggestion that another form might work for others, even if it doesn’t work for them is met with outright hostility instead of constructive engagement. I imagine someone will be along in a minute to tell me why the lack of constructive engagement is all cyclist’s fault & we should be nicer to car drivers somehow though, just to prove my point.
Many people might be happy cycling to work in general, but still want the option to drive in when it rains or is cold.
What comes across from policymakers and activist groups, is that they hate cars and would ban them given half a chance, and that they are specifically against the autonomy and freedom afforded by personal transport.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
Agree about Trent Bridge. Just a lovely venue.
But you walk out of Lords and you can be in a Michelin starred restaurant in about 7 minutes. Or a Primrose Hill gastropub
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.
The public transport in your area must be unusually excellent, then. As someone who spent decades depending on public transport I think there's an element of 'devil you know' for many users; you don't realise how terrible it is until you have another choice.
I do not miss standing in the pouring rain or sub-zero temperatures for an hour because the bus randomly didn't show up. I do not miss having to pay for taxis to get to hospital appointments because it takes three busses and two hours to make a 20 mile trip. I do not miss having to carry bags of groceries a mile to the bus stop.
I'm glad I wasn't one of the people suddenly faced with losing their jobs when the local bus company announced it was withdrawing the service that links my village to the nearest town.
But that was the wake up call that forced me to invest in personal transportation in the form of a gorgeous retro-style motor scooter. And it's the best money I've ever spent. I can go anywhere I want, at any time, and save huge amounts of time and money - a hospital trip is 30 minutes and £1 worth of petrol, rather than two hours and £15 in fares.
I many ways it's even better than owning a car; much cheaper to run (120-ish mpg and £20 road tax), cuts through traffic, can park almost anywhere for nothing, and completely exempt from LEZ charges.
Any government that declares war on personal transportation (and I don't count bicycles in that, those are for exercise and only a minimally viable mode of transportation for most people) is going to find themselves contemplating that mistake from the opposition benches.
Vehicles need to get smaller and cleaner, but they are not going away even if public transport in this country by some miracle stops being terrible.
I wildly disagree with your second to last para, but agree with the last.
The mean commute in this country is ten miles & the median will be less than that (this stat is 0 bouded at the lower end & will be heavily skewed by long commutes at the top end).
I bet 25% of current car commuters are commuting three miles or less. That’s a distance you can easily commute by bike & even more easily by e-bike. Probably in less time than it takes to drive for the majority of those that switched.
There’s this weird thing in the discourse around transport that when someone like me says “a lot of trips could easily be done by bicycle” what gets heard is “everyone should travel by bicycle” & the response is made to the absolutist latter statement (what about people that can’t cycle / live too far away / etc etc etc) instead of to the incremental former.
I don’t know what to do about this: it seems that the emotional attachment to the car outweighs the actuality for many people & any suggestion that another form might work for others, even if it doesn’t work for them is met with outright hostility instead of constructive engagement. I imagine someone will be along in a minute to tell me why the lack of constructive engagement is all cyclist’s fault & we should be nicer to car drivers somehow though, just to prove my point.
In the absence of Sunil: Here in my car I feel safest of all I can lock all my doors It's the only way to live - in cars
New MP Keir Mather was born on 29th January 1998, 5 days earlier than England cricketer Zak Crawley. Useless fact of the day. First MP to be born after Blair's 1997 landslide.
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.
This is silly. Every existing city used to be a fifteen minute city - they all had to be!
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
I bought an old v large scale map of Manchester a few years ago. Tramlines everywhere in the 1930s.
The reason they were removed was not lack of demand for public transport, so much as it was thought that bus could do the job with less impact on the street and with more flexibility and reliability. Which stands to reason, really. And they did at first. Greater Manchester's bus network in the 60s was a thing to inspire awe from the perspective of today. Not just the routes, but the speed and reliability of the journeys (not nearly so much general traffic for them to get caught in today). The rise of mass car ownership both killed off the market for buses and also reduced the attractiveness of the bus (since they were now slower). A vicious circle ensued - reduced patronage led to reduced services, which led to reduced attractiveness, which led to reduced patronage...
What trams have over buses is 1) people like them more because they are more comfortable and a less jerky journey, and 2) because of the infrastructure necessary for them, people have more confidence in making long term life plans (where do I buy a house/base a business etc) on the basis of a tram route than a bus route.
Personally, I have a bit of a bugbear with trams doing the work of buses: only rarely is it a better option than simply giving buses better infrastructure and more priority, which is rather cheaper and more flexible. But it has to be MUCH better infrastructure to effectively compete - of the standard of the Leigh-Salford-Manchester busway.
There's a cultural thing too - bus still has lower cruiser vibes in a way trams don't
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
This kind of one-sided left-bashing annoys me. Farage too thinks he is just talking common sense about uncontroversial ideas about sovereignty and control, when in reality he's an ethnic supremacist in the contemporary Russian tradition, spreading fear of Turks and Africans to get hours on the BBC.
Separate to his right to a bank account. Being a twat should not be a bar to having a bank account. Indeed even fraud or money laundering cannot be a bar to having a bank account if we are serious in going cashless, although obviously those could be heavily controlled for people with previous.
SKS has done what many said was impossible, he achieved a swing on the level of Tony Blair, can anyone explain why this isn't a bigger deal?
Crap expectations management means they now look like losers.
I am not hugely interested in how they look, just how this isn't a bigger deal on a political betting site.
It confirms that the polls are correct, Labour is miles and miles ahead - and indeed is actually on par now with just before 1997.
It is difficult to see how KS will not be the greatest leader of the Labour Party in recent history, beyond Blair.
Well it means they are not all that good at politics. A great story has been overshadowed. Not a good sign going into the next year when more scrutiny will be on them.
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.
I was astonished at just how flat the Netherlands was when I went there. I mean where I'm from, Coventry - people think of it as a flat city but there's definite ups and downs there. The Netherlands is just amazingly level.
Interesting though (and I'm not disagreeing btw!) that the premier bike race in the Netherlands (Amstel Gold, one of the Classic one dayers) is actually pretty hilly; it's categorised as an 'Ardennes Classic' even though it is obviously not in the Ardennes. Limburg, the region it's held in, is quite un-Dutch in its lumpiness.
The Netherlands is flat, but it has winds which take the place of hills.
It's quite ironic that a typical Dutch town-bike known as an "Omafiets" - a Grandma Bike - is a copy of an English 'roadster' bike from around 1900.
It is characterised by an enclosed chain, a sit-up-and-beg seating position, a robust cargo rack, usually dynamo lights, a step-through frame, often a skirt guard on the back wheel, and often coaster brakes (you pedal backwards) and a built in wheel lock (so a thief has to carry it).
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.
The public transport in your area must be unusually excellent, then. As someone who spent decades depending on public transport I think there's an element of 'devil you know' for many users; you don't realise how terrible it is until you have another choice.
I do not miss standing in the pouring rain or sub-zero temperatures for an hour because the bus randomly didn't show up. I do not miss having to pay for taxis to get to hospital appointments because it takes three busses and two hours to make a 20 mile trip. I do not miss having to carry bags of groceries a mile to the bus stop.
I'm glad I wasn't one of the people suddenly faced with losing their jobs when the local bus company announced it was withdrawing the service that links my village to the nearest town.
But that was the wake up call that forced me to invest in personal transportation in the form of a gorgeous retro-style motor scooter. And it's the best money I've ever spent. I can go anywhere I want, at any time, and save huge amounts of time and money - a hospital trip is 30 minutes and £1 worth of petrol, rather than two hours and £15 in fares.
I many ways it's even better than owning a car; much cheaper to run (120-ish mpg and £20 road tax), cuts through traffic, can park almost anywhere for nothing, and completely exempt from LEZ charges.
Any government that declares war on personal transportation (and I don't count bicycles in that, those are for exercise and only a minimally viable mode of transportation for most people) is going to find themselves contemplating that mistake from the opposition benches.
Vehicles need to get smaller and cleaner, but they are not going away even if public transport in this country by some miracle stops being terrible.
I wildly disagree with your second to last para, but agree with the last.
The mean commute in this country is ten miles & the median will be less than that (this stat is 0 bouded at the lower end & will be heavily skewed by long commutes at the top end).
I bet 25% of current car commuters are commuting three miles or less. That’s a distance you can easily commute by bike & even more easily by e-bike. Probably in less time than it takes to drive for the majority of those that switched.
There’s this weird thing in the discourse around transport that when someone like me says “a lot of trips could easily be done by bicycle” what gets heard is “everyone should travel by bicycle” & the response is made to the absolutist latter statement (what about people that can’t cycle / live too far away / etc etc etc) instead of to the incremental former.
I don’t know what to do about this: it seems that the emotional attachment to the car outweighs the actuality for many people & any suggestion that another form might work for others, even if it doesn’t work for them is met with outright hostility instead of constructive engagement. I imagine someone will be along in a minute to tell me why the lack of constructive engagement is all cyclist’s fault & we should be nicer to car drivers somehow though, just to prove my point.
The problem is, we almost all need to drive sometimes. And so we buy a car. And because we have therefore already shelled out the largest part of the cost of driving, we drive when other modes might be better.
If the cost of motoring was the same, but was structured with no initial outlay or monthly cost for ownership, but we paid per mile travelled or time spent in the vehicle, we would make very different choices.
For a lot of two car families (like mine), we would almost certainly be better off with one car and the ability to easily hire a second on those occasions when we need more than one at once. But inertia keeps us where we are (not least, it should be said, the inertia that it is easy to replace one car with another, but quite hard to dip in and out of car ownership).
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
Agree about Trent Bridge. Just a lovely venue.
But you walk out of Lords and you can be in a Michelin starred restaurant in about 7 minutes. Or a Primrose Hill gastropub
Lords is proper posh
If you want a Michelin starred restaurant after a day at the Test you haven't been drinking properly.
SKS has done what many said was impossible, he achieved a swing on the level of Tony Blair, can anyone explain why this isn't a bigger deal?
a) by-elections don't really matter b) he lost one where he was expected to win c) Starmer hasn't achieved anything - the government by its incompetence, and a healthy dose of bad luck, has lost support, and Labour were the only party with a serious chance of unseating them in Selby. In Somerset, the LibDems were the beneficiaries.
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
This kind of one-sided left-bashing annoys me. Farage too thinks he is just talking common sense about uncontroversial ideas about sovereignty and control, when in reality he's an ethnic supremacist in the contemporary Russian tradition, spreading fear of Turks and Africans to get hours on the BBC.
I don't think Farage thought he was talking common sense. Or rather, I don't think he thought he was just reinforcing a self-evident truth because he had fought for 20+ years to achieve what he finally achieved and hence knew that there were plenty of people and institutions against him.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Its in a beautiful location right next to a golf course, on match days they have so many places to buy drinks/food etc located around the ground that you do not need to go anywhere else. It has a great atmosphere and is a fabulous cricket ground. It lacks parking close by but they are sorting that over the next 2 years. Its also 3 minutes from where I live!
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
This kind of one-sided left-bashing annoys me. Farage too thinks he is just talking common sense about uncontroversial ideas about sovereignty and control, when in reality he's an ethnic supremacist in the contemporary Russian tradition, spreading fear of Turks and Africans to get hours on the BBC.
Separate to his right to a bank account. Being a twat should not be a bar to having a bank account. Indeed even fraud or money laundering cannot be a bar to having a bank account if we are serious in going cashless, although obviously those could be heavily controlled for people with previous.
We should have a legal right to a bank account.
He's been offered a bank account. Just not with coutts
SKS has done what many said was impossible, he achieved a swing on the level of Tony Blair, can anyone explain why this isn't a bigger deal?
a) by-elections don't really matter b) he lost one where he was expected to win c) Starmer hasn't achieved anything - the government by its incompetence, and a healthy dose of bad luck, has lost support, and Labour were the only party with a serious chance of unseating them in Selby. In Somerset, the LibDems were the beneficiaries.
I assume you wrote the same thing when Johnson won a by-election too.
I think you're wrong, a swing on this level means a lot.
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
This kind of one-sided left-bashing annoys me. Farage too thinks he is just talking common sense about uncontroversial ideas about sovereignty and control, when in reality he's an ethnic supremacist in the contemporary Russian tradition, spreading fear of Turks and Africans to get hours on the BBC.
Separate to his right to a bank account. Being a twat should not be a bar to having a bank account. Indeed even fraud or money laundering cannot be a bar to having a bank account if we are serious in going cashless, although obviously those could be heavily controlled for people with previous.
We should have a legal right to a bank account.
Which comes back to some interesting interactions between public and private. In a number of areas private companies, in effect, gatekeeper chunks of modern life. What if ISPs start running a blacklist they share?
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
The fact it is near a KFC, Burger King AND McDonald’s has really clinched it, for me
Breakfast, lunch and dinner sorted to be fair. Just need a curry house or kebab when the pubs shut and all sorted.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
New MP Keir Mather was born on 29th January 1998, 5 days earlier than England cricketer Zak Crawley. Useless fact of the day. First MP to be born after Blair's 1997 landslide.
Just seen that he is/was public affairs advisor at the CBI. And very young too, as you point out.
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
This kind of one-sided left-bashing annoys me. Farage too thinks he is just talking common sense about uncontroversial ideas about sovereignty and control, when in reality he's an ethnic supremacist in the contemporary Russian tradition, spreading fear of Turks and Africans to get hours on the BBC.
Separate to his right to a bank account. Being a twat should not be a bar to having a bank account. Indeed even fraud or money laundering cannot be a bar to having a bank account if we are serious in going cashless, although obviously those could be heavily controlled for people with previous.
We should have a legal right to a bank account.
He's been offered a bank account. Just not with coutts
Essentially we are finding out the extent to which exclusive businesses like Coutts can exclude and discriminate on non-protected grounds - political expression being very much non-protected.
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
This kind of one-sided left-bashing annoys me. Farage too thinks he is just talking common sense about uncontroversial ideas about sovereignty and control, when in reality he's an ethnic supremacist in the contemporary Russian tradition, spreading fear of Turks and Africans to get hours on the BBC.
Separate to his right to a bank account. Being a twat should not be a bar to having a bank account. Indeed even fraud or money laundering cannot be a bar to having a bank account if we are serious in going cashless, although obviously those could be heavily controlled for people with previous.
We should have a legal right to a bank account.
He's been offered a bank account. Just not with coutts
Yes, by getting front page coverage and embarrassing them. Unsurprisingly this is not available to most of the unbanked.
Dissociate justified dislike of Farage, with unjustified ignoring the problem of banks closing accounts without explanation.
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
This kind of one-sided left-bashing annoys me. Farage too thinks he is just talking common sense about uncontroversial ideas about sovereignty and control, when in reality he's an ethnic supremacist in the contemporary Russian tradition, spreading fear of Turks and Africans to get hours on the BBC.
What does the contemporary Russian tradition have to do with it? Russia is a mulitethnic empire and this is something that Putin often empahsises.
Comments
It’s the most famous cricket ground in the world and, apart from anything else, the opposition will feel cheated if they don’t get a game there. It’s a grand memory for any player, from anywhere
Also it’s a very pleasant 15 minute stroll from my flat
The Oval is the questionable location. London should sacrifice that occasionally, for Headingley (coz Headingley is always exciting and noisy)
Diesel cars are, relative to petrol cars, far less bad in terms of CO2 emissions because they generally are far more fuel efficient in terms of mpg. Given the energy consumed in manufacturing any vehicle, it also makes sense in terms of CO2 and therefore climate change only to scrap vehicles when they start to become unreliable and disproportionately expensive to service.
Yet Khan's ULEZ scheme requires diesel vehicles to be disposed of 9 years earlier than petrol vehicles and includes a fiscal sweetener that actually encourages premature scrappage. So, effectively, the ULEZ scheme encourages Londoners to switch to compliant petrol vehicles and burn more CO2 than would otherwise be the case.
I agree with you in so far as I think that any Labour backsliding on climate change would lose Labour votes, but I don't think that the same can be said with regard to ULEZ at least in outer London.
However if AUS can get a breakthrough with the new ball we could be wrapped up. Or the new ball could mean we score quicker!
So actually two Tests in London undercooks it…
They can be again, if we choose to make them so. The current social contract is not set in stone, it is the consequence of decisions made by both national & local level planners & individual choices. Both are open to change - it’s the worst kind of mulish conservatism that says that the current way of doing things is the only option.
I do not miss standing in the pouring rain or sub-zero temperatures for an hour because the bus randomly didn't show up. I do not miss having to pay for taxis to get to hospital appointments because it takes three busses and two hours to make a 20 mile trip. I do not miss having to carry bags of groceries a mile to the bus stop.
I'm glad I wasn't one of the people suddenly faced with losing their jobs when the local bus company announced it was withdrawing the service that links my village to the nearest town.
But that was the wake up call that forced me to invest in personal transportation in the form of a gorgeous retro-style motor scooter. And it's the best money I've ever spent. I can go anywhere I want, at any time, and save huge amounts of time and money - a hospital trip is 30 minutes and £1 worth of petrol, rather than two hours and £15 in fares.
I many ways it's even better than owning a car; much cheaper to run (120-ish mpg and £20 road tax), cuts through traffic, can park almost anywhere for nothing, and completely exempt from LEZ charges.
Any government that declares war on personal transportation (and I don't count bicycles in that, those are for exercise and only a minimally viable mode of transportation for most people) is going to find themselves contemplating that mistake from the opposition benches.
Vehicles need to get smaller and cleaner, but they are not going away even if public transport in this country by some miracle stops being terrible.
That said, cricket does better than most sports at spreading itself around and letting people from all over the country see it. And I approve of the decision to add extra test grounds to the roster.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston
Lords
Trent Bridge
Old Trafford
Headingley
The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
You're in Timperley, IIRC? You've probably passed me on the canal (unless your cycling is so serious that the Bridgewater Canal path is an impediment to you rather than a facility!)
I think ENG - AUS is the last remaining 5 match series? I may be wrong
Well done on your win in Uxbridge 👍
People complain about the death of their local high street, then protest when people suggest pedestrianisation and a pleasant public realm to encourage more footfall. Bizarre.
Gives you the sequence as well.
My LBS (local bike shop) is about 10 minutes walk away, with Halfords 10 minutes the other side of that, and another LBS 15 minutes the other side of Halfords. And that's just in a decent sized market town.
I get a bike service for about 25 or 50 or 100 UKP depending how comprehensive. It's a decent setup.
I think see utility cycling increase as taxes are shifted to Electric Cars - by my judgement they need aournd £3k revenue per annum per electric vehicle (which still leaves private vehicles as the most heavily subsidised and least space efficient form of transport). Provided we start investing again in active travel facilities - as opposed to the current lot who cancelled almost all funding.
Given that wherever else you go in Europe, you are sure to find Dutch camper vans, they should give them all a large orange bucket and tell them to bring a bucket of earth back whenever they go abroad. Over time they could make their country a bit higher and more undulating.
Why do I live where I do? Housing prices. We bought a 3 bed semi in 2005 for a price that would have bought a flat in Bath. Train to work takes well over the hour when adding in the walk to the station and the trip from the station to the Uni (bus is 10 mins, walk about 30, again up a huge hill). The car takes 25 - 30 minutes depending on traffic. Its an utter no-brainer. I Jan I will be joined by my son (on his way to nursery), making cycling even less of an option.
I despair of city dwellers (primarily Londoners) preaching about how no one needs cars etc. Come and live in the country and see what its like when the buses are every 4 hours, if at all, and a night out has to end by 9.30 or you need a taxi for 80 quid to get home.
The rise of mass car ownership both killed off the market for buses and also reduced the attractiveness of the bus (since they were now slower). A vicious circle ensued - reduced patronage led to reduced services, which led to reduced attractiveness, which led to reduced patronage...
What trams have over buses is 1) people like them more because they are more comfortable and a less jerky journey, and 2) because of the infrastructure necessary for them, people have more confidence in making long term life plans (where do I buy a house/base a business etc) on the basis of a tram route than a bus route.
Personally, I have a bit of a bugbear with trams doing the work of buses: only rarely is it a better option than simply giving buses better infrastructure and more priority, which is rather cheaper and more flexible. But it has to be MUCH better infrastructure to effectively compete - of the standard of the Leigh-Salford-Manchester busway.
And it's not even hindsight - there was considerable opposition to the policy of centralisation. But it was undercut one the one hand by the popularity of council house sales (with little attention paid to the resource grab by central government), and on the other by the incompetence and political idiocy of a few high profile Labour councils.
The mean commute in this country is ten miles & the median will be less than that (this stat is 0 bouded at the lower end & will be heavily skewed by long commutes at the top end).
I bet 25% of current car commuters are commuting three miles or less. That’s a distance you can easily commute by bike & even more easily by e-bike. Probably in less time than it takes to drive for the majority of those that switched.
There’s this weird thing in the discourse around transport that when someone like me says “a lot of trips could easily be done by bicycle” what gets heard is “everyone should travel by bicycle” & the response is made to the absolutist latter statement (what about people that can’t cycle / live too far away / etc etc etc) instead of to the incremental former.
I don’t know what to do about this: it seems that the emotional attachment to the car outweighs the actuality for many people & any suggestion that another form might work for others, even if it doesn’t work for them is met with outright hostility instead of constructive engagement. I imagine someone will be along in a minute to tell me why the lack of constructive engagement is all cyclist’s fault & we should be nicer to car drivers somehow though, just to prove my point.
A Laserjet, on the other hand, will keep running pretty much forever, but is more expensive to buy.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-laserjet-pro-mfp-4101fdw-printer
On the other hand, a good bike (someone mentioned an electric Brompton above), costs more than my car, and I don’t see where the money goes.
"The problem is that these are ideologies that fail to realise they are ideologies. To many of their proponents, it is just a matter of being kind, doing good, keeping on the right side of history, and making life better for more people. Their virtue is self-evident, so anyone who opposes them is a creature of vice and must be resisted. And thus we find ourselves in a strange place, where the nice people are coercing us into becoming more like them.
I should be happy about this. I am a Guardian-reading, Remain-voting, lockdown-supporting, double-Covid-vax-boosted Anglican who defends the BBC and wore masks more often than was strictly required during the pandemic. But it is hard to ignore the stirrings of a certain polite and cuddly totalitarianism (it would obviously laugh at the word and create mocking memes, rather than reflect upon itself meaningfully)."
https://unherd.com/2023/07/how-coutts-destroyed-capitalism/
Northerners massively underestimate how many people live in London and the South East.
20-25 million people, depending where you draw the line –– almost half the population of England!!
But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
Agree about Trent Bridge. Just a lovely venue.
(Doesn’t help much when / if you end up changing a tyre on the side of the road, but then a) hopefully you wont have to do that & b) who carries a Marathon as a spare tyre?)
Car taxation in London is extremely regressive. The poorer you are, the more you pay. Drive a 90k car and pay nothing.
Regressive taxation is not popular. File that under water is wet.
If you bought a brand new electric car I'd guess it would cost a bit more than a Brompton.
It confirms that the polls are correct, Labour is miles and miles ahead - and indeed is actually on par now with just before 1997.
It is difficult to see how KS will not be the greatest leader of the Labour Party in recent history, beyond Blair.
What comes across from policymakers and activist groups, is that they hate cars and would ban them given half a chance, and that they are specifically against the autonomy and freedom afforded by personal transport.
Lords is proper posh
Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live - in cars
We should have a legal right to a bank account.
It's quite ironic that a typical Dutch town-bike known as an "Omafiets" - a Grandma Bike - is a copy of an English 'roadster' bike from around 1900.
It is characterised by an enclosed chain, a sit-up-and-beg seating position, a robust cargo rack, usually dynamo lights, a step-through frame, often a skirt guard on the back wheel, and often coaster brakes (you pedal backwards) and a built in wheel lock (so a thief has to carry it).
Cargo bikes were also popular here before 1900.
If the cost of motoring was the same, but was structured with no initial outlay or monthly cost for ownership, but we paid per mile travelled or time spent in the vehicle, we would make very different choices.
For a lot of two car families (like mine), we would almost certainly be better off with one car and the ability to easily hire a second on those occasions when we need more than one at once. But inertia keeps us where we are (not least, it should be said, the inertia that it is easy to replace one car with another, but quite hard to dip in and out of car ownership).
b) he lost one where he was expected to win
c) Starmer hasn't achieved anything - the government by its incompetence, and a healthy dose of bad luck, has lost support, and Labour were the only party with a serious chance of unseating them in Selby. In Somerset, the LibDems were the beneficiaries.
I think you're wrong, a swing on this level means a lot.
Dissociate justified dislike of Farage, with unjustified ignoring the problem of banks closing accounts without explanation.