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!
I like the Rose Bowl. It's extremely well designed and a beautiful location.
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.
I will concede that. And that's why I think the whole taxation of cars/vehicles needs to be inverted.
1) Abolish fuel duty - it hurts the rural economy 2) Introduce congestion charging in all built up areas to replace the revenue 3) VED replaced by an axle-weight tax (pot holes, pedestrian casualties etc) 4) Zero-rate VAT on bikes. 5) A simpler, progressive cycle-to-work scheme without the middlemen taking a cut
"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.
The old National Savings Bank (via the Post Office and what is now NS&I) might have been the ideal vehicle but we are where we are. We will need something like this as cash disappears, but who will be the supplier? Surely we cannot legislate that everyone is entitled to a Coutts account.
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).
Cargo bikes were also popular here before 1900.
I have a been in my bonnet about the brilliance of built in wheel locks.
As we have discussed, bikes are bet for short journeys. But for short journeys, the palaver at the start and end of your journey becomes a disproportionately large part of your journey. Sure, in an urban environment you can cycle two miles quicker than you can drive two miles, and you can cycle half a mile quicker than you can walk half a mile. But if you have to add on to that the palaver of getting your bike out of the shed and of locking it up at your destination - whereas with your car, there it is on your drive, and ping, there it is locked at your destination - these advantages quickly get eroded. The built-in-wheel-lock is a brilliant solution to at least the latter problem.
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.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
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
"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.
The narrative, though, was that the majority of common people with common sense agreed. The others were a minority of enemies of the people, often educated into being urban liberal elites, like the judge who was a gay fencer.
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.
But there’s a fab Jamaican restaurant in Camden which does brilliant cocktails and really hits the spot.
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).
Cargo bikes were also popular here before 1900.
I would very happily take a hill over a headwind any time. At least you get a sense of achievement at the top.
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.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Not quite a ground but Monaco Grand Prix. If not accepted anything in the Louis II stadium.
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.
Are there no KFC's, Burger Kings and McDonalds near Lords then?
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 Party Stand (The Fosters Party Stand, to give it its full name) may not be a thing of beauty. It may not be as iconic as the Hollies or the Western Terrace. It may have a classless name. But it is rather striking in its sheer SIZE, no? Possibly the worst view in cricket, and with absolutely no shelter from sun or rain. But I found myself rather envying the fun they were having in there from my rather better seat in the opposite corner. Next time, I'm going in the party stand.
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.
Are there no KFC's, Burger Kings and McDonalds near Lords then?
England not exactly banzai this morning. Has the weather forecast improved?
Really? They've added 70 runs with the Aussies not exactly busting a gut to bowl their overs in a timely fashion. On course for 200 lead by lunch. I think you need to recalibrate!
"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.
The old National Savings Bank (via the Post Office and what is now NS&I) might have been the ideal vehicle but we are where we are. We will need something like this as cash disappears, but who will be the supplier? Surely we cannot legislate that everyone is entitled to a Coutts account.
We can legislate that banks must give an honest reason when closing an account or refusing to open one.
To be fair the government are (as a result of Coutts-Farage) inching in the right direction after a decade or two of encouraging ever tighter checks and controls without much thought about a balanced end point.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
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.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Almost certainly.
In most of England, the cricket grounds are in rather nice parts of town. But Lord's is something special. There can be few approaches to a sports ground which give you such an impression that you're in for an experience which is something special.
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).
For us we started out as one car and discussed a second (I think just out of cultural norming) but on no sums did it work out as anything less than much more expensive, even more than Ubering twice a week for whatever reason, plus trains and bike maintenance. We manage just fine with one - though it helps that I work in central Manchester so can just get the train if the weather is extra crappy or I'm not feeling 100% or whatever.
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.
How do you explain Somerton and Frome? Used to be a labour area - surely Labour should be aspiring to appeal to the whole nation. not just those seats where the Lib Dems aren't the biggest threat to the Tories?
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!)
Grew up in Timperley, but came south for university & ended up working in Oxford. Still have friends back there, but the family has mostly moved to other parts of the NW.
I will happily admit that my views on what’s possible for personal transport are skewed by having lived in the two highest density cycling cities in the country - Cambridge & Oxford. But in both these places the cycling happens mostly despite the local authority, not because of it: The critical mass of local cycling is what convinces others that cycling is a reasonable thing to do. We’ve seen similar effects in London, where more cycling seems to encourage even more in turn.
It's not uncommon in big cities for much of the population to want to give the mayor the finger, as they did in Uxbridge yesterday.
What will prevent Labour from winning the general election is this:
1. They've got no hope of selling Camelot, because nobody hopes for Camelot any more - they have low expectations and just want to survive. (Blair sold a positive message in 1997. That was nearly 30 years ago. Things are different now.)
2. The rightwing outplayed them years ago and has mindf*cked them in a "culture war" so that they are tied to what most people think is total bullshit - a) trans rubbish, and b) greenery. Don't get me wrong - people don't tell pollsters that they think trans & green are bullshit. They don't stand in public places and say it's bullshit either. They don't say it in the workplace, because they might get the sack. There are probably places where they don't say it because they might get called neo-Nazis, Trump supporters, or conspiracy theorists. But when they're in small groups of two or three, almost everybody says it's f***ing bullshit. Almost everybody thinks for example that Ricky Gervais's comedy piece ripping the piss out of trans rubbish is funny and that his message is accurate. Of course a male rapist with a penis in his pants who says he's a woman is a man. He's not a "trans woman". That's bullshit. I'm just saying the obvious but the left is so far up shit creek that they can't say this.
Anyone who doesn't grasp or agree with the second point should look at the last Labour manifesto. It proposed the most radical program since Michael Foot's manifesto in 1983, and people really should have voted for it. Nonetheless, it was dotted through with references to transsexuals (16 in all - in the T in "LGBT") and made the utterly fruitcake promise of creating a million climate jobs. Why oh why does the left - that should be talking about class struggle - talk such shite?
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.
I will concede that. And that's why I think the whole taxation of cars/vehicles needs to be inverted.
1) Abolish fuel duty - it hurts the rural economy 2) Introduce congestion charging in all built up areas to replace the revenue 3) VED replaced by an axle-weight tax (pot holes, pedestrian casualties etc) 4) Zero-rate VAT on bikes. 5) A simpler, progressive cycle-to-work scheme without the middlemen taking a cut
Have all the tolls, LEZ and ULEZ, congestion charges etc, run on a single, central system, where you get a monthly bill paid by DD or card on file. Foreign cars also charged, with bills handed out at ports and airports.
The people who run the existing schemes would really hate this, as they make so much money from disproportionate fines given to confused out-of-towners who don’t vote in the area.
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).
For us we started out as one car and discussed a second (I think just out of cultural norming) but on no sums did it work out as anything less than much more expensive, even more than Ubering twice a week for whatever reason, plus trains and bike maintenance. We manage just fine with one - though it helps that I work in central Manchester so can just get the train if the weather is extra crappy or I'm not feeling 100% or whatever.
EDIT to note we're a family of four.
Yes, your final point is cromulent - we briefly managed as a one-car family, but gave in when our third child was due.
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
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.
Are there no KFC's, Burger Kings and McDonalds near Lords then?
How would I know (or care)?
I prefer food.
I think your lack of respect for the RoseAgeasWhateverBowl is concerning. There is more to cricket than going to the pub before?afterr?during? A day at the test is 7 plus hours. Pretty sure they don't take cash there, so thats a bonus for you!
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.
You clearly never did the Luton airport bus shuttle service
Compared to that the DART is, indeed, dreamy. Verging on orgasmic
Makes Luton a quality option for north Londoners now. Better than Stansted in fact.
MILES better than Stansted, which is a pain in the arse in numerous ways
The only problem with Luton is the tiny terminal which means limited drinking and eating options but then it’s not an airport to linger in anyway. The whole point of it is ease and speed
It’s phenomenally convenient from Camden. Uber to St Pancras. 3 minutes. Train to airport station. 20-30 mins. DART 5 minutes. If i get a quick check in I can go from shutting my front door to airside in 50-60 minutes
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.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Not quite a ground but Monaco Grand Prix. If not accepted anything in the Louis II stadium.
Pretty good call. Tho it’s perhaps arguable the stadium is “major”
"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.
Surprising how little the multiethnic (and multireligious - at least 10% of Russians are Muslim, plus surprising numbers of Buddhists and Jews) nature of Russia is understood in the west outside of nerds on internet discussion boards.
It's not uncommon in big cities for much of the population to want to give the mayor the finger, as they did in Uxbridge yesterday.
What will prevent Labour from winning the general election is this:
...
Anyone who doesn't grasp or agree with the second point should look at the last Labour manifesto. It proposed the most radical program since Michael Foot's manifesto in 1983, and people really should have voted for it. Nonetheless, it was dotted through with references to transsexuals (16 in all - in the T in "LGBT") and made the utterly fruitcake promise of creating a million climate jobs. Why oh why does the left - that should be talking about class struggle - talk such shite?
Piers Wauchope's history of Camden Council details it well. Hampstead concerns began to predominate over St. Pancras concerns, after 1982.
England not exactly banzai this morning. Has the weather forecast improved?
Really? They've added 70 runs with the Aussies not exactly busting a gut to bowl their overs in a timely fashion. On course for 200 lead by lunch. I think you need to recalibrate!
Lead now 150. Agree that they will have their eye on 200 lead by luncheon. Then bat for ten minutes, and declare?
Pissing it down in Sale. I give the cricket five more minutes at most.
Stopped now. That was weird. Black, overcast skies and heavy rain, for about 90 seconds. Bright sunshine again now.
There were a few spots of rain on one of the cameras at OT, but it passed by and they stayed on. Good chance of 500 at lunch now, if there’s no more showers.
"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
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).
Cargo bikes were also popular here before 1900.
I have a been in my bonnet about the brilliance of built in wheel locks.
As we have discussed, bikes are bet for short journeys. But for short journeys, the palaver at the start and end of your journey becomes a disproportionately large part of your journey. Sure, in an urban environment you can cycle two miles quicker than you can drive two miles, and you can cycle half a mile quicker than you can walk half a mile. But if you have to add on to that the palaver of getting your bike out of the shed and of locking it up at your destination - whereas with your car, there it is on your drive, and ping, there it is locked at your destination - these advantages quickly get eroded. The built-in-wheel-lock is a brilliant solution to at least the latter problem.
I think change will happen to the degree that we begin to get safe mobility infra ie safe from motor vehicles racing round, which will be either protected and of decent quality (on classified roads) or with motor vehicles controlled so that they are not a safety threat to everyone not in a vehicle. It is notable that in NL most roads/streets have zero cycling infra but they *do* have low speed limits and traffic calming / filtering, so there are essentially separate networks for walking / cycling / distance driving - a concept with an unpronounceable Dutch name normally called quite clumsily "unravelling of modes".
As we develop similar the option becomes attractive and preferences shift, as we have already seen in eg areas of London. The clincher is that in urban settings - where 85% of us live - the private motor vehicle is the least space-efficient form or travel; put in a cycle track and before you know it it is transporting more people per 1m of width than the vehicle lanes next to it.
We'll get longer distance journeys as we build a network of safe, high quality infrastructure - with supporting facilities such as secure cycle parking everywhere. In my town I can't think of a single supermarket or GP surgery with safe parking.
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.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
I had a friend who lived in Cavendish Avenue. Pretty posh I have to say.
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.
I will concede that. And that's why I think the whole taxation of cars/vehicles needs to be inverted.
1) Abolish fuel duty - it hurts the rural economy 2) Introduce congestion charging in all built up areas to replace the revenue 3) VED replaced by an axle-weight tax (pot holes, pedestrian casualties etc) 4) Zero-rate VAT on bikes. 5) A simpler, progressive cycle-to-work scheme without the middlemen taking a cut
Have all the tolls, LEZ and ULEZ, congestion charges etc, run on a single, central system, where you get a monthly bill paid by DD or card on file. Foreign cars also charged, with bills handed out at ports and airports.
The people who run the existing schemes would really hate this, as they make so much money from disproportionate fines given to confused out-of-towners who don’t vote in the area.
Also change the numberplate design and have government-run numberplate factories, as in the US and Middle East. Plate cloning is already a huge problem, and will only get worse as more of these schemes come into force. Make private production of number plates akin to private production of banknotes, with severe criminal penalties.
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.)
I'm always surprised people don't use bicycles all the time in post apocalypse movies and TV shows. Add a trailer on the back and they'd be far more useful and far easier to maintain than ailing cars, and a zombie is easily outrun.
England not exactly banzai this morning. Has the weather forecast improved?
Really? They've added 70 runs with the Aussies not exactly busting a gut to bowl their overs in a timely fashion. On course for 200 lead by lunch. I think you need to recalibrate!
The runs per over average has been falling steadily. It’s still pretty quick but it’s not early declaration pace.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Bicycles are also widely used for commuting. When I lived in Germany, I used to cycle 5 miles to work every day, unless the weather was particularly bad. As well as saving me money, this kept me fit and left more space on the roads for those who needed to use their cars.
I would commute by bicycle here in the UK, but it's simply too dangerous and unpleasant, so that's another car added to the rush-hour traffic.
The idea that bikes are inherently recreational rather than utility vehicles is quite silly. They ought to be a perfectly good way of making practical 2-10 mile journeys (like commutes). They can (like cars!) absolutely be recreational too.
I don’t think anyone is seriously suggesting replacing cars with bikes for long journeys. But most people don’t make long journeys that often.
Let’s be careful though, this thread carries an increasing risk of becoming about WFH.
The country is not setup for bikes and most people will not risk their lives dodging arsehole drivers. Not a hope of us being like Europeans whist our politicians are shit.
Neither was the Netherlands in the 60s - it took a lot of bold reforms and infrastructure against the run of public opinion.
You’re right about our politicians being shite though.
Bikes are semi situational though. The Netherlands has the great advantage of being flat.
There is untapped potential still in the UK on this front, but in some places you’re just not going to persuade as many people that they want to cycle up a giant hill every time they come home from work or the shops.
Plenty of flat places in the UK that could do much better with bikes. Manchester, Liverpool, plenty of London, loads of towns. We are way behind notably non-flat countries such as Spain, France and Italy when it comes to bike usage.
There aren't many cities in the country where the terrain is hilly enough to be a real barrier. Sheffield, Bristol, Plymouth - I don't think any others. Nottingham and Leeds undulate a bit but not enough to deter cycling. Personally I'd rather have a bit of up and down on my route - for me, my nearest hill of any sort at all is the Warburton Toll Bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal, which is 7 miles away.
The biggest lump I encounter is the bridge over the M60 by Sharston tip - though if I fancy pretending to be Tom Boonen I've got a lovely tiny steep cobbled hill by work in Jutland Street.
Bradford, especially to the west, is quite hilly.
Yes, I should have included Bradford.
I know exactly the two hills you mean! You barely notice the bridge by Sharston tip in the car: on a bike it's Les Alpes d'Gatley. And cycling down Jutland Street would be insane!
Cue a Four Yorkshiremen type discussion about the steepest/roughest climbs managed...
England not exactly banzai this morning. Has the weather forecast improved?
Really? They've added 70 runs with the Aussies not exactly busting a gut to bowl their overs in a timely fashion. On course for 200 lead by lunch. I think you need to recalibrate!
The runs per over average has been falling steadily. It’s still pretty quick but it’s not early declaration pace.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
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, and this is a similar picture where I live. A number of measures taken but without any measurable attempt to bring people with them.
Some will always complain. That’s nothing new. But you need the people on the middle ground - the ones who are happy to cut back on car use where they can but who cannot give up a car entirely - to come with you.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
This is another reason they'll lose - they are still unable to agree on the best direction so 1/3 want the cautious Hunt approach, 1/3 want big man Boris back (Truss would do as a back up perhaps) and 1/3 will just go with the flow.
No joke, she really does act like she is in love with Boris. He even screwed up over her peerage and she's still flying the flag for him.
The evidence doesn't really point to it being Boris that screwed her over. Like him or not, it seems to have been indicated to him that Nad would be fine.
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.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
And if I have to repeat it again then so be it but people aren't about to jump on bikes, even to go a mile or three if they are not a) youngish; or b) of the athletic type to start with. It is a huge faff plus you need all the kit plus it starts raining plus you need to find somewhere to put it plus you aren't sure where you will start and finish and so forth.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
I know it’s an unpopular view, but they should have all got behind Liz Truss instead of stabbing her in the back.
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).
Cargo bikes were also popular here before 1900.
I have a been in my bonnet about the brilliance of built in wheel locks.
As we have discussed, bikes are bet for short journeys. But for short journeys, the palaver at the start and end of your journey becomes a disproportionately large part of your journey. Sure, in an urban environment you can cycle two miles quicker than you can drive two miles, and you can cycle half a mile quicker than you can walk half a mile. But if you have to add on to that the palaver of getting your bike out of the shed and of locking it up at your destination - whereas with your car, there it is on your drive, and ping, there it is locked at your destination - these advantages quickly get eroded. The built-in-wheel-lock is a brilliant solution to at least the latter problem.
At the personal level I think people tend to under-estimate just how long it takes them to park & walk from car park to destination when making these trade-offs. Sure, if we’re talking about a commute where the destination is an out of town office with it’s own parking that’s the ideal. But many, many trips don’t fit that template.
Again, I’m not making a universal statement here, just that there are a lot of trips out there where the hassle of using a car outweighs using a bike.
At the societal level, as Leon has pointed out, parking isn’t free. It takes land that could be used for other things & using that land for parking makes everything else less efficient: you no longer get the benefits of density & the sparsity actively works against you at every turn.
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.
Coming back to this: I largely agree. But I am glad the extra ground exist. I would go for a six match series, with: - Lords - Edgbaston - Three from Old Trafford, Headingley, Trent Bridge, Oval - One from Rose Bowl, Sofia Gardens, Chester le Street - We only have Rose Bowl when we don't have Oval - We only have Chester le Street when we don't have both Old Trafford AND Headingley
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.
You clearly never did the Luton airport bus shuttle service
Compared to that the DART is, indeed, dreamy. Verging on orgasmic
Makes Luton a quality option for north Londoners now. Better than Stansted in fact.
MILES better than Stansted, which is a pain in the arse in numerous ways
The only problem with Luton is the tiny terminal which means limited drinking and eating options but then it’s not an airport to linger in anyway. The whole point of it is ease and speed
It’s phenomenally convenient from Camden. Uber to St Pancras. 3 minutes. Train to airport station. 20-30 mins. DART 5 minutes. If i get a quick check in I can go from shutting my front door to airside in 50-60 minutes
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.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Not quite a ground but Monaco Grand Prix. If not accepted anything in the Louis II stadium.
Pretty good call. Tho it’s perhaps arguable the stadium is “major”
We can't really call Craven Cottage major, I guess. How about Stamford Bridge?
I was hoping to get a reference to Wankdorf in, but it's a bit far out of the centre of Bern.
Any English supporter who has their umbrella up should be summarily escorted from the ground.
Shameful.
I remember when the boot was on the other foot and the Aussies all came out with their sun glasses on pretending to be dazzled when England got off for bad light.
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.
I will concede that. And that's why I think the whole taxation of cars/vehicles needs to be inverted.
1) Abolish fuel duty - it hurts the rural economy 2) Introduce congestion charging in all built up areas to replace the revenue 3) VED replaced by an axle-weight tax (pot holes, pedestrian casualties etc) 4) Zero-rate VAT on bikes. 5) A simpler, progressive cycle-to-work scheme without the middlemen taking a cut
Have all the tolls, LEZ and ULEZ, congestion charges etc, run on a single, central system, where you get a monthly bill paid by DD or card on file. Foreign cars also charged, with bills handed out at ports and airports.
The people who run the existing schemes would really hate this, as they make so much money from disproportionate fines given to confused out-of-towners who don’t vote in the area.
Also change the numberplate design and have government-run numberplate factories, as in the US and Middle East. Plate cloning is already a huge problem, and will only get worse as more of these schemes come into force. Make private production of number plates akin to private production of banknotes, with severe criminal penalties.
There was a Muppet in London who had put some green tape on their reg plate to try and get out the ULEZ/ congestion charges.
There used to be a bike shop on the Pimlico Road (just near Hunan) and it closed abruptly a few years ago with a snitty sign in the window blaming those people who wanted £100 bikes.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
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.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
A major turning point in the history of British society. A scuffle in the Long Room.
No joke, she really does act like she is in love with Boris. He even screwed up over her peerage and she's still flying the flag for him.
The evidence doesn't really point to it being Boris that screwed her over. Like him or not, it seems to have been indicated to him that Nad would be fine.
I didn't mean he intended to screw her over. I don't doubt he wanted to reward her. But he told her it was all fine, she believed him, and he was wrong. She is now furious but should know better that for all his positives - and he does have them - details are not one of them. His blasé confidence and bluster let her down.
That's why I said he screwed up, not that he screwed her over. Those are quite different.
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).
Cargo bikes were also popular here before 1900.
I have a been in my bonnet about the brilliance of built in wheel locks.
As we have discussed, bikes are bet for short journeys. But for short journeys, the palaver at the start and end of your journey becomes a disproportionately large part of your journey. Sure, in an urban environment you can cycle two miles quicker than you can drive two miles, and you can cycle half a mile quicker than you can walk half a mile. But if you have to add on to that the palaver of getting your bike out of the shed and of locking it up at your destination - whereas with your car, there it is on your drive, and ping, there it is locked at your destination - these advantages quickly get eroded. The built-in-wheel-lock is a brilliant solution to at least the latter problem.
At the personal level I think people tend to under-estimate just how long it takes them to park & walk from car park to destination when making these trade-offs. Sure, if we’re talking about a commute where the destination is an out of town office with it’s own parking that’s the ideal. But many, many trips don’t fit that template.
Again, I’m not making a universal statement here, just that there are a lot of trips out there where the hassle of using a car outweighs using a bike.
At the societal level, as Leon has pointed out, parking isn’t free. It takes land that could be used for other things & using that land for parking makes everything else less efficient: you no longer get the benefits of density & the sparsity actively works against you at every turn.
It's the old Eurostar vs flying, or train vs plane to Scotland discussion.
England not exactly banzai this morning. Has the weather forecast improved?
Really? They've added 70 runs with the Aussies not exactly busting a gut to bowl their overs in a timely fashion. On course for 200 lead by lunch. I think you need to recalibrate!
The runs per over average has been falling steadily. It’s still pretty quick but it’s not early declaration pace.
Down to 5.2 now. Last 10 overs at 4.2.
Last 10 now 39. But it’s good bowling with the new ball in fairness.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Bicycles are also widely used for commuting. When I lived in Germany, I used to cycle 5 miles to work every day, unless the weather was particularly bad. As well as saving me money, this kept me fit and left more space on the roads for those who needed to use their cars.
I would commute by bicycle here in the UK, but it's simply too dangerous and unpleasant, so that's another car added to the rush-hour traffic.
The idea that bikes are inherently recreational rather than utility vehicles is quite silly. They ought to be a perfectly good way of making practical 2-10 mile journeys (like commutes). They can (like cars!) absolutely be recreational too.
I don’t think anyone is seriously suggesting replacing cars with bikes for long journeys. But most people don’t make long journeys that often.
Let’s be careful though, this thread carries an increasing risk of becoming about WFH.
The country is not setup for bikes and most people will not risk their lives dodging arsehole drivers. Not a hope of us being like Europeans whist our politicians are shit.
Neither was the Netherlands in the 60s - it took a lot of bold reforms and infrastructure against the run of public opinion.
You’re right about our politicians being shite though.
Bikes are semi situational though. The Netherlands has the great advantage of being flat.
There is untapped potential still in the UK on this front, but in some places you’re just not going to persuade as many people that they want to cycle up a giant hill every time they come home from work or the shops.
Plenty of flat places in the UK that could do much better with bikes. Manchester, Liverpool, plenty of London, loads of towns. We are way behind notably non-flat countries such as Spain, France and Italy when it comes to bike usage.
There aren't many cities in the country where the terrain is hilly enough to be a real barrier. Sheffield, Bristol, Plymouth - I don't think any others. Nottingham and Leeds undulate a bit but not enough to deter cycling. Personally I'd rather have a bit of up and down on my route - for me, my nearest hill of any sort at all is the Warburton Toll Bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal, which is 7 miles away.
The biggest lump I encounter is the bridge over the M60 by Sharston tip - though if I fancy pretending to be Tom Boonen I've got a lovely tiny steep cobbled hill by work in Jutland Street.
Bradford, especially to the west, is quite hilly.
Yes, I should have included Bradford.
I know exactly the two hills you mean! You barely notice the bridge by Sharston tip in the car: on a bike it's Les Alpes d'Gatley. And cycling down Jutland Street would be insane!
Cue a Four Yorkshiremen type discussion about the steepest/roughest climbs managed...
By far the worst I've attempted (and failed) was Mow Cop in Staffordshire.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
I know it’s an unpopular view, but they should have all got behind Liz Truss instead of stabbing her in the back.
Or not stabbed Boris Johnson in the back in the first place.
Anyway talking of cars I was in one yesterday for hours as I had been visiting friends in the Cotswolds and much as I would rather stick pins in my eyes than watch the cricket, TMS remains fantastic entertainment and I thought Ali Mitchell in particular was excellent. I listened all the way from Crawley's 100 to him getting out. A thoroughly enjoyable time.
Would have been a completely different experience on a bike, even an e-cargo bike whatever the fuck that is.
Igor Strelkov, a prominent critic of the Ministry of Defence as well as of Putin and Shoigu, has been detained. This is a moment many within the siloviki have eagerly awaited. Strelkov had overstepped all conceivable boundaries a long time ago, sparking the desire among security forces — from the FSB to military chiefs — to apprehend him. The complaint came from a former commander of the Wagner Group. At this point, the source of the accusation is inconsequential — it does not come from Wagner in its current, let's put it softly, difficult state. Strelkov's arrest undeniably serves the interests of the Ministry of Defence. This is a direct outcome of Prigozhin's mutiny: the army's command now wields greater political leverage to quash its opponents in the public sphere. It's unlikely that there will be massive repressions against 'angry patriots,' but the most vehement dissenters may face prosecution, serving as a cautionary tale for others. https://twitter.com/Stanovaya/status/1682344849041764354
"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.
The old National Savings Bank (via the Post Office and what is now NS&I) might have been the ideal vehicle but we are where we are. We will need something like this as cash disappears, but who will be the supplier? Surely we cannot legislate that everyone is entitled to a Coutts account.
We can legislate that banks must give an honest reason when closing an account or refusing to open one.
To be fair the government are (as a result of Coutts-Farage) inching in the right direction after a decade or two of encouraging ever tighter checks and controls without much thought about a balanced end point.
Coutts did have a legitimate reason to close Farage's account even without the political stuff. His next problem was several other banks did not want to open one, and what use would the honest reason be if that is just "you look like a pep and frankly it is too expensive to investigate properly"? Still no account.
Issues around AML, KYC and source of funds are common to bookmaking and banking and many punters, invariably winning punters, have run foul of this ill-considered legislation.
And it is not just bank accounts. I know a woman with a steady job in retail for the last several years who can't get a credit card.
So well done to Nigel Farage for exposing this issue but it goes a lot further than whether one man can have a posh charge card that gets him into airport lounges.
2. The rightwing outplayed them years ago and has mindf*cked them in a "culture war" so that they are tied to what most people think is total bullshit - a) trans rubbish, and b) greenery. Don't get me wrong - people don't tell pollsters that they think trans & green are bullshit. They don't stand in public places and say it's bullshit either. They don't say it in the workplace, because they might get the sack [...] Why oh why does the left - that should be talking about class struggle - talk such shite?
People get sacked for wanting to drive a diesel car? Interesting, or maybe just fictitious paranoia.
Anyone telling a 21st century political party to focus on "class struggle" is deluded or arguing in bad faith. The class struggle won't deliver Selby.
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.
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.
I will concede that. And that's why I think the whole taxation of cars/vehicles needs to be inverted.
1) Abolish fuel duty - it hurts the rural economy 2) Introduce congestion charging in all built up areas to replace the revenue 3) VED replaced by an axle-weight tax (pot holes, pedestrian casualties etc) 4) Zero-rate VAT on bikes. 5) A simpler, progressive cycle-to-work scheme without the middlemen taking a cut
Have all the tolls, LEZ and ULEZ, congestion charges etc, run on a single, central system, where you get a monthly bill paid by DD or card on file. Foreign cars also charged, with bills handed out at ports and airports.
The people who run the existing schemes would really hate this, as they make so much money from disproportionate fines given to confused out-of-towners who don’t vote in the area.
Also change the numberplate design and have government-run numberplate factories, as in the US and Middle East. Plate cloning is already a huge problem, and will only get worse as more of these schemes come into force. Make private production of number plates akin to private production of banknotes, with severe criminal penalties.
There was a Muppet in London who had put some green tape on their reg plate to try and get out the ULEZ/ congestion charges.
70% of the fines are unpaid. Will be far higher than that once we expand the zone and meet more opposition, so if you really don't want to pay, just don't pay and it will very probably be okay as we never fund the courts properly for regular stuff. They can't cope with millions of unpaid fines.
"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.
PB: legally making business take cash is wrong! Also PB: legally making banks taking clients is right!
If you are going to make banks take on people, you're going to have to open a trusted third party bank - something like the old Post Office account.
Igor Strelkov, a prominent critic of the Ministry of Defence as well as of Putin and Shoigu, has been detained. This is a moment many within the siloviki have eagerly awaited. Strelkov had overstepped all conceivable boundaries a long time ago, sparking the desire among security forces — from the FSB to military chiefs — to apprehend him. The complaint came from a former commander of the Wagner Group. At this point, the source of the accusation is inconsequential — it does not come from Wagner in its current, let's put it softly, difficult state. Strelkov's arrest undeniably serves the interests of the Ministry of Defence. This is a direct outcome of Prigozhin's mutiny: the army's command now wields greater political leverage to quash its opponents in the public sphere. It's unlikely that there will be massive repressions against 'angry patriots,' but the most vehement dissenters may face prosecution, serving as a cautionary tale for others. https://twitter.com/Stanovaya/status/1682344849041764354
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.
I will concede that. And that's why I think the whole taxation of cars/vehicles needs to be inverted.
1) Abolish fuel duty - it hurts the rural economy 2) Introduce congestion charging in all built up areas to replace the revenue 3) VED replaced by an axle-weight tax (pot holes, pedestrian casualties etc) 4) Zero-rate VAT on bikes. 5) A simpler, progressive cycle-to-work scheme without the middlemen taking a cut
Have all the tolls, LEZ and ULEZ, congestion charges etc, run on a single, central system, where you get a monthly bill paid by DD or card on file. Foreign cars also charged, with bills handed out at ports and airports.
The people who run the existing schemes would really hate this, as they make so much money from disproportionate fines given to confused out-of-towners who don’t vote in the area.
Also change the numberplate design and have government-run numberplate factories, as in the US and Middle East. Plate cloning is already a huge problem, and will only get worse as more of these schemes come into force. Make private production of number plates akin to private production of banknotes, with severe criminal penalties.
There was a Muppet in London who had put some green tape on their reg plate to try and get out the ULEZ/ congestion charges.
Let those muppets be muppets. Much more worrying is the guy who lives in Aberystwyth, who got 21 London ULEZ notices in 21 days, and had to fight off bailiffs asking him for several grand in fines and costs, when he’d never left Aber. And dozens of others like him.
Suggestion to everyone, no matter where you live. Make a photo of your car totally unique. Put a sticker somewhere on the back and the front. If you’re taken to civil court, you’ll need to prove it wasn’t your car when the other side has a photo of it with your numberplate.
"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.
The old National Savings Bank (via the Post Office and what is now NS&I) might have been the ideal vehicle but we are where we are. We will need something like this as cash disappears, but who will be the supplier? Surely we cannot legislate that everyone is entitled to a Coutts account.
We can legislate that banks must give an honest reason when closing an account or refusing to open one.
To be fair the government are (as a result of Coutts-Farage) inching in the right direction after a decade or two of encouraging ever tighter checks and controls without much thought about a balanced end point.
Coutts did have a legitimate reason to close Farage's account even without the political stuff. His next problem was several other banks did not want to open one, and what use would the honest reason be if that is just "you look like a pep and frankly it is too expensive to investigate properly"? Still no account.
Issues around AML, KYC and source of funds are common to bookmaking and banking and many punters, invariably winning punters, have run foul of this ill-considered legislation.
And it is not just bank accounts. I know a woman with a steady job in retail for the last several years who can't get a credit card.
So well done to Nigel Farage for exposing this issue but it goes a lot further than whether one man can have a posh charge card that gets him into airport lounges.
For many the reason will be, you are on list x provided by company z.
The individual can then challenge company z if it is wrong instead of having a kafka-esque nightmare. Yes, this only impacts a tiny minority, but it is still important, and will become increasingly so as society drifts towards cashless and big data.
Yes, I agree. I don’t understand. Why aren’t they bazballing the crap out of everything?
Get to a lead of minimum 200 by lunch, surely that’s the target?
OTOH Stokes is an all-time genius international cricket captain, and I am - if I’m brutally honest - not
Very confusing. England had loads of batting who can throw the willow at it. Brook can be incredibly destructive, but batted well within himself. Absolutely no downside in getting to 200 ahead all out than 6 down, if you get there quickly.
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
One reason I thought a Labour gain in Selby was likely is that it's in the general area of York which has been swinging away from the Tories recently. For instance, the York Outer constituency is a lot more marginal than it would have been 30 or 40 years ago. York itself used to be a marginal but is now very safe for Labour. Harrogate is also less Tory than it used to be.
And if I have to repeat it again then so be it but people aren't about to jump on bikes, even to go a mile or three if they are not a) youngish; or b) of the athletic type to start with. It is a huge faff plus you need all the kit plus it starts raining plus you need to find somewhere to put it plus you aren't sure where you will start and finish and so forth.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
This is just another example of perception vs reality. None of these things are really things that prevent you using a bicycle to get around, they’re just barriers that exist in your mind.
I have commuted to work in jeans & a shirt in all weathers by bicycle. What is this ”kit” you refer to?
In the modern world, e-bikes completely eliminate any need to be athletic, but honestly even before there was no need to be athletic for utility cycling: Out of breath? Go slower! Nobody cares.
& I really don’t understand the start & finish thing. I start at home & finish where-ever I want to get to. Lock the bike up, done. Are there exceptions to this? Sure! But again we have this weird absolutism that if the bike can’t solve /everything/ then it doesn’t deserve consideration. I don’t use the bike all the time: Sometimes I (shock, horror, etc) drive! Or take the train. Neither of these invalidates my bicycle.
It’s fine to not use a bike - lots of people can’t for a variety of perfectly good reasons! - but lots of people seem to have this idea about cycling that it’s somehow meant to be hard work or difficult or they have to do it all the time. None of these things are true: You can cycle a little bit, in ordinary clothes, at comfortable speeds, in whatever weather you’re happy to cycle in.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
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.
But there’s a fab Jamaican restaurant in Camden which does brilliant cocktails and really hits the spot.
"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.
An Empire with explicit Russian Supremacy. Other races are supposed to feel grateful and pay tribute.
Edit: it is interesting that some people can’t see this. In the run up to he Ukraine invasion, I was told by some posters here, that “calling Russia imperialist doesn’t make sense”. China is very similar - using a fake plastic version of Han history/culture as the One True Culture.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
I know it’s an unpopular view, but they should have all got behind Liz Truss instead of stabbing her in the back.
Or not stabbed Boris Johnson in the back in the first place.
Truss and Johnson stabbed themselves.
Crackpots running the Tories will end as well as crackpots running Labour did.
"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.
An Empire with explicit Russian Supremacy. Other races are supposed to feel grateful and pay tribute.
Russia is an explicitly colonialist empire & they really hate it when it gets pointed out to them.
Over rate is shocking from the cheating convicts. What are we on - 20 overs in 1 h and 45 minutes?
Should either be you can play as late as required or ingame punishment like there is in T20.
Worth noting slow over rate is not always down to the bowlers. Here it is, obviously, On Wednesday the slow over rate was definitely down to the constant delays, hold ups, batsman-not-being-readys, etc of the batting side.
Comments
1) Abolish fuel duty - it hurts the rural economy
2) Introduce congestion charging in all built up areas to replace the revenue
3) VED replaced by an axle-weight tax (pot holes, pedestrian casualties etc)
4) Zero-rate VAT on bikes.
5) A simpler, progressive cycle-to-work scheme without the middlemen taking a cut
As we have discussed, bikes are bet for short journeys.
But for short journeys, the palaver at the start and end of your journey becomes a disproportionately large part of your journey. Sure, in an urban environment you can cycle two miles quicker than you can drive two miles, and you can cycle half a mile quicker than you can walk half a mile.
But if you have to add on to that the palaver of getting your bike out of the shed and of locking it up at your destination - whereas with your car, there it is on your drive, and ping, there it is locked at your destination - these advantages quickly get eroded.
The built-in-wheel-lock is a brilliant solution to at least the latter problem.
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the
Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
And your back!
Possibly the worst view in cricket, and with absolutely no shelter from sun or rain. But I found myself rather envying the fun they were having in there from my rather better seat in the opposite corner. Next time, I'm going in the party stand.
I prefer food.
To be fair the government are (as a result of Coutts-Farage) inching in the right direction after a decade or two of encouraging ever tighter checks and controls without much thought about a balanced end point.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-clamps-down-on-unfair-bank-account-closures
Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
In most of England, the cricket grounds are in rather nice parts of town. But Lord's is something special. There can be few approaches to a sports ground which give you such an impression that you're in for an experience which is something special.
EDIT to note we're a family of four.
I am going with...HYUFD!
I will happily admit that my views on what’s possible for personal transport are skewed by having lived in the two highest density cycling cities in the country - Cambridge & Oxford. But in both these places the cycling happens mostly despite the local authority, not because of it: The critical mass of local cycling is what convinces others that cycling is a reasonable thing to do. We’ve seen similar effects in London, where more cycling seems to encourage even more in turn.
What will prevent Labour from winning the general election is this:
1. They've got no hope of selling Camelot, because nobody hopes for Camelot any more - they have low expectations and just want to survive. (Blair sold a positive message in 1997. That was nearly 30 years ago. Things are different now.)
2. The rightwing outplayed them years ago and has mindf*cked them in a "culture war" so that they are tied to what most people think is total bullshit - a) trans rubbish, and b) greenery. Don't get me wrong - people don't tell pollsters that they think trans & green are bullshit. They don't stand in public places and say it's bullshit either. They don't say it in the workplace, because they might get the sack. There are probably places where they don't say it because they might get called neo-Nazis, Trump supporters, or conspiracy theorists. But when they're in small groups of two or three, almost everybody says it's f***ing bullshit. Almost everybody thinks for example that Ricky Gervais's comedy piece ripping the piss out of trans rubbish is funny and that his message is accurate. Of course a male rapist with a penis in his pants who says he's a woman is a man. He's not a "trans woman". That's bullshit. I'm just saying the obvious but the left is so far up shit creek that they can't say this.
Anyone who doesn't grasp or agree with the second point should look at the last Labour manifesto. It proposed the most radical program since Michael Foot's manifesto in 1983, and people really should have voted for it. Nonetheless, it was dotted through with references to transsexuals (16 in all - in the T in "LGBT") and made the utterly fruitcake promise of creating a million climate jobs. Why oh why does the left - that should be talking about class struggle - talk such shite?
The people who run the existing schemes would really hate this, as they make so much money from disproportionate fines given to confused out-of-towners who don’t vote in the area.
RoseAgeasWhateverBowl is concerning. There is more to cricket than going to the pub before?afterr?during? A day at the test is 7 plus hours. Pretty sure they don't take cash there, so thats a bonus for you!Shameful.
The only problem with Luton is the tiny terminal which means limited drinking and eating options but then it’s not an airport to linger in anyway. The whole point of it is ease and speed
It’s phenomenally convenient from Camden. Uber to St Pancras. 3 minutes. Train to airport station. 20-30 mins. DART 5 minutes. If i get a quick check in I can go from shutting my front door to airside in 50-60 minutes Pretty good call. Tho it’s perhaps arguable the stadium is “major”
As we develop similar the option becomes attractive and preferences shift, as we have already seen in eg areas of London. The clincher is that in urban settings - where 85% of us live - the private motor vehicle is the least space-efficient form or travel; put in a cycle track and before you know it it is transporting more people per 1m of width than the vehicle lanes next to it.
We'll get longer distance journeys as we build a network of safe, high quality infrastructure - with supporting facilities such as secure cycle parking everywhere. In my town I can't think of a single supermarket or GP surgery with safe parking.
We need to see more of that attitude in Test cricket.
Some will always complain. That’s nothing new. But you need the people on the middle ground - the ones who are happy to cut back on car use where they can but who cannot give up a car entirely - to come with you.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
Again, I’m not making a universal statement here, just that there are a lot of trips out there where the hassle of using a car outweighs using a bike.
At the societal level, as Leon has pointed out, parking isn’t free. It takes land that could be used for other things & using that land for parking makes everything else less efficient: you no longer get the benefits of density & the sparsity actively works against you at every turn.
- Lords
- Edgbaston
- Three from Old Trafford, Headingley, Trent Bridge, Oval
- One from Rose Bowl, Sofia Gardens, Chester le Street
- We only have Rose Bowl when we don't have Oval
- We only have Chester le Street when we don't have both Old Trafford AND Headingley
I was hoping to get a reference to Wankdorf in, but it's a bit far out of the centre of Bern.
That's why I said he screwed up, not that he screwed her over. Those are quite different.
EDIT: Pic for context
Would have been a completely different experience on a bike, even an e-cargo bike whatever the fuck that is.
Igor Strelkov, a prominent critic of the Ministry of Defence as well as of Putin and Shoigu, has been detained. This is a moment many within the siloviki have eagerly awaited. Strelkov had overstepped all conceivable boundaries a long time ago, sparking the desire among security forces — from the FSB to military chiefs — to apprehend him. The complaint came from a former commander of the Wagner Group. At this point, the source of the accusation is inconsequential — it does not come from Wagner in its current, let's put it softly, difficult state. Strelkov's arrest undeniably serves the interests of the Ministry of Defence. This is a direct outcome of Prigozhin's mutiny: the army's command now wields greater political leverage to quash its opponents in the public sphere. It's unlikely that there will be massive repressions against 'angry patriots,' but the most vehement dissenters may face prosecution, serving as a cautionary tale for others.
https://twitter.com/Stanovaya/status/1682344849041764354
Issues around AML, KYC and source of funds are common to bookmaking and banking and many punters, invariably winning punters, have run foul of this ill-considered legislation.
And it is not just bank accounts. I know a woman with a steady job in retail for the last several years who can't get a credit card.
So well done to Nigel Farage for exposing this issue but it goes a lot further than whether one man can have a posh charge card that gets him into airport lounges.
Anyone telling a 21st century political party to focus on "class struggle" is deluded or arguing in bad faith. The class struggle won't deliver Selby.
Also PB: legally making banks taking clients is right!
If you are going to make banks take on people, you're going to have to open a trusted third party bank - something like the old Post Office account.
Get to a lead of minimum 200 by lunch, surely that’s the target?
OTOH Stokes is an all-time genius international cricket captain, and I am - if I’m brutally honest - not
Suggestion to everyone, no matter where you live. Make a photo of your car totally unique. Put a sticker somewhere on the back and the front. If you’re taken to civil court, you’ll need to prove it wasn’t your car when the other side has a photo of it with your numberplate.
The individual can then challenge company z if it is wrong instead of having a kafka-esque nightmare. Yes, this only impacts a tiny minority, but it is still important, and will become increasingly so as society drifts towards cashless and big data.
I have commuted to work in jeans & a shirt in all weathers by bicycle. What is this ”kit” you refer to?
In the modern world, e-bikes completely eliminate any need to be athletic, but honestly even before there was no need to be athletic for utility cycling: Out of breath? Go slower! Nobody cares.
& I really don’t understand the start & finish thing. I start at home & finish where-ever I want to get to. Lock the bike up, done. Are there exceptions to this? Sure! But again we have this weird absolutism that if the bike can’t solve /everything/ then it doesn’t deserve consideration. I don’t use the bike all the time: Sometimes I (shock, horror, etc) drive! Or take the train. Neither of these invalidates my bicycle.
It’s fine to not use a bike - lots of people can’t for a variety of perfectly good reasons! - but lots of people seem to have this idea about cycling that it’s somehow meant to be hard work or difficult or they have to do it all the time. None of these things are true: You can cycle a little bit, in ordinary clothes, at comfortable speeds, in whatever weather you’re happy to cycle in.
Edit: it is interesting that some people can’t see this. In the run up to he Ukraine invasion, I was told by some posters here, that “calling Russia imperialist doesn’t make sense”. China is very similar - using a fake plastic version of Han history/culture as the One True Culture.
I'm less of a fan of adding penalty runs, but in the current situation, with weather at play, its pretty cynical as the overs will just be lost.
England collapso now.
Crackpots running the Tories will end as well as crackpots running Labour did.
Here it is, obviously,
On Wednesday the slow over rate was definitely down to the constant delays, hold ups, batsman-not-being-readys, etc of the batting side.