Contracting is a good way to be able to benefit from your experience whilst still earning a living from what you’re experienced in. It def helps dealing with day to day idiocy and politics that you can stand aside and not get involved (and no-one else gets upset if you don’t get involved either).

However if you really don’t like the corporate environment or what you do any longer then it doesn’t really solve the problem, you’re still doing the same thing and in the same environment. It helps you cope but it’s not a real solution…

Also bear in mind, there’s lots of people out there now contracting, but most roles (in marketing at least) are perm – it’s not some dream world where the jobs are easy to find…

I left a perm role in 2011 and have been contracting in a different business since then. That finished a few months ago and I’m trying to find a new contract and they’re really not easy to find – maybe 10 contract roles for every 100 perm? Quite a few are fixed term contracts too, not day rate, so the ££ is no better than perm but you still have the job insecurity.

So worth trying contracting but it’s not a perfect world by any means

I have standard Grand Prix on my commuter – gets used in all weathers and through London all the time and rarely get a puncture. V comfortable too.
I have GP4000 on my winter bike. Grippy and ok but had more punctures. Not sure whether it’s the tyres or the rims but it doesn’t feel quite so comfortable

+1 for Jon Kabat-Zinn. It can take a while to get to what he’s on about – but that change in mindset is the benefit

Wherever You Go, There You Are

Also +1 for yoga.

These things are centuries old. They’re not just new fads. They’re popular right now because a lot of people are feeling like life is hard. This stuff has longevity which to me, at least, suggests there’s something in it.

Give it a go and see if it works for you?

Just sell it to someone looking to make a home not a profit.

This.

We have a major housing crisis created by a shortage of property to sell and a massive % of the Great British Public go “I know what I’ll do, I’ll buy another house/keep mine when I move” – great response! That solves the problem, doesn’t it…

Worth remembering that this belief that housing is some kind of magical money printing machine is holding back real economic growth. Lots of money which would otherwise be lent by the banks to businesses, or invested in something useful, or spent by homeowners and tenants on real goods and services, is being diverted into a bunch of buildings which already exist – adding no economic value whatsoever. So if you want to spiral down into deflation and secular stagnation (lower living standards and wages) then go ahead.

Less politically – think very carefully about the most likely outcome long term for UK housing given we’re at historial peak and way above the mean of affordability based on wages. Think also about the Tories electoral gain from going after BTL and the whole rental sector. They got the last election from boosting house prices but as an increasingly large proportion of the electorate cannot afford to own, Osbourne will now be putting policies in place to appeal to the renters, not the owners/landlords. The last Budget was just the beginning to see what reaction he got from the electorate. He also has to find more taxes from somewhere and landlords are an easy target – the general population have no sympathy for them.
BoE has serious concerns about BTL and UK economic instability, so expect action to be taken there. Interest rates will go up at some point in the next few years.
Prime London is already falling in price.
The Economist explains the problems well Calling for a house price crash worth reading the comments there and seeing who thinks the current situation is a good and sustainable thing…

DM has gone a bit Daily Mash…

It has, ironically, made a household name of Ronnie Pickering, with almost everyone in Britain now aware of who he is.

When MailOnline visited Ronnie Pickering’s two-bedroom council bungalow in Bransholme this afternoon he refused to answer, maintaining his growing status as, again somewhat ironically, an international enigma.

In a way it was good to see a balding, fat, middle-aged man in a cheap car hassling someone who wasn’t a cyclist. For once. Shows where the problem lies, and it’s not with people on bikes.

+ Ron Pickering is no doubt getting loads of stick for this from any friends or colleagues he might have.

Oh, and has that area actually been gentrified? I visited it a couple of years ago and it was absolutely horrible. Dirty, a bit scary, ugly and busy.

You should have seen it 15 years ago. I once watched a girl walking past when I was waiting for a bus, as you do. Five mins later she came back and asked me if I wanted ‘business’… or seeing the kerb crawlers picking up as you go to work at 8am.

As I said earlier, most people I know in London think things have gone too far now – partly because we’re all being impacted in some way by the sheer amount of outside money which has poured in, especially into property in the last 2-3 years. The sentiment isn’t really about hipster cereal bars, it’s seeing communities getting ripped apart and feeling powerless to do anything about it…

The internet. Allowing stupid people to broadcast to the WHOLE WORLD how stupid they are. Since 1996

I think it helps to understand if you’ve ever lived in the area. For years and years Brick Lane and Spitalfields have been very poor, very working class, and actually rammed full of immigrants – Huguenots, Jews and recently Bangladesh. Bethnal Green was the territory of the Krays.

It’s basically been taken over/invaded by the middle-classes over the last 10 years. I should know, I used to live there! Spitalfields was the fruit and veg market for years – a crucial part of the local economy, providing jobs in a poor part of town. That was regenerated in the early noughties and Brick Lane followed. Yes, the areas are far nicer, less crime, cleaner etc, but the indigenous local communities who used to live and work there and had their roots there have been pushed out by ‘outsiders’ – the middle classes and the corporates – the area is rammed full of chi chi shops – coffee bars, bars, bakeries etc etc. The Brick Lane Bagel Bakery is one of the few local businesses which seems to have survived this influx of money.

So as I said above, I don’t support violence but it’s worth reflecting on how the local, established population might feel about how it feels to be pushed out of their homes. When you speak to local businesspeople about these things, you realise how much damage it’s doing.

This is happening at a wider scale across London, to the detriment of jobs and the cost of living which is already having an impact on essential services like ambulance drivers, doctors and teachers.

A bit of chi chi and regeneration is not a bad thing for some, but it is for others…

London’s economy will get ruined if we don’t get on top of the price of houses and rents – this kind of shop is just emblematic of those with money pushing everyone else out to the detriment of local communities and the city as a whole – and all the jobs and taxes it produces..
The implications are really serious – we appear to already be losing ambulance drivers, teachers and potentially doctors as living costs push above earnings.
Brixton Cycles is getting pushed out of their premises to be replaced by luxury flats for e.g. There goes a well-established business providing jobs… they should get a new site but it’s really not a great strategy to deprioritise successful local businesses like this.
The super-rich have pushed everyone else out of central London into zones 2 and 3 which is now pushing the less-well paid out of London entirely. Even well-paid professionals are pretty much priced out. let alone the low paid.
The long term outlook for the London economy is not healthy…
I don’t support violence but I can understand the sentiment and desire to protest… same as the smashing in of Foxtons in Brixton earlier this year…
Most people I know in London want this situation to change – born and bred Londoners, home-owners with and without kids, renters – we all understand the damage being done… and we’d all rather have lower living costs than chi-chi shops like this.
Anyway – niche shops like that only have a finite lifetime and market – there’s not enough people with the money and will to buy premium food over the long term – and with another downturn/bust(?) on the way and a lot of people in London having to spend so much on accommodation, I suspect a lot of these chi-chi shops will be gone in 2-3 years…

I wonder if he’s just digging his heels in as a form of rebellion… we all do it as kids, especially as we get older, to try and push back against authority and gain some of our own identity.

If he has no health issues, maybe don’t worry about it so much for now. If he’s hanging around with an active, healthy peer group that’s a good thing – he’ll follow them voluntarily and pick his own way of being active.

I was pretty active as a kid – it seemed normal in the 70s and 80’s but I didn’t get really passionate about running, cycling and hillwalking until my late 20s really… so if he’s not massively sporty right now this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re setting him up for a life of obesity. No doubt he’s secretly inspired/impressed by your healthiness and he’ll come to it in his own time when he’s older.

Alternatively, have a chat with your GP?

I can’t think of anyone in my club who has discs, and we’re not a luddite or poorly paid club either… I think it’ll be some time before discs become the norm on road bikes, there’s just much less demand.

They’re a no brainer for MTB where quick, powerful braking is essential for control and safety – you’re riding on an unstable surface.

On the road it’s not quite the same dynamic, the use case isn’t as strong. My summer bike has done several thousand miles over 5 years (3k?) and I’m still on the original brake blocks. Essentially, road biking doesn’t require anything like as much braking as MTB and if you’re riding mainly in the dry, rim brakes are perfectly adequate. Discs would have been a total waste on this bike and just made it heavier and harder to accelerate.

My winter bike would benefit from discs in that it’s more likely to get ridden in the wet or damp, but on a typical ride I’m really not braking that much and brake blocks will last a couple of winters before being replaced.

My commuter on the other hand – lots of stop starting (I work in central London) and lots of wet riding – and I go through brake blocks one set per winter… I really like my current commuter so it’s a keeper but when I do come to replace it I suspect I’ll go for discs as they’re better for wet weather braking and I care less about the weight than I do on my other bikes.

My uncle went over there in the sixties and never came back. He lives in Vancouver which I think is a cool city, but they have the same problem that London has with massive amounts of foreign money flooding into real estate and making it unaffordable for anyone on local incomes. Our current central bank governor used to be theirs and he stoked a housing boom there too apparently…
With the drop in commodities their economy’s not looking too hot right now but I believe they were one of the few rich countries not to have a bust in 2008, in part because the central bank were much tougher on the banks and what they got up to…

Seems to be increasingly hard to hide bad behaviour these days…

Needs Government to sort out really.

Labour created the initial boom in the 90’s to con people into feeling rich. Tories stoked the most recent boom to win the election by giving us the illusion we’re rich even though wages have stagnated, and to keep the banks from going bust which could well lead to a systemic bust.

Problem is, like 2008 (which originated in bad lending in property don’t forget) it’s not always so easy to stop a bust once the banks and the borrowers are out of control…

OP – fair enough. You’re one of the view who seem to get the bigger picture when they rent instead of selling their properties.

I don’t see the point of that argument – everyone should be free to invest how they wish.

A house isn’t an investment – it’s a home. That attitude that we see houses as a way of making ourselves richer is exactly the problem we have. It’s also illusory wealth – it’s not money that can be spent in the real economy.

And I would argue that we shouldn’t be free to invest as we wish if there’s a broader negative impact on wider society e.g. investing in arms manufacturers/oil etc is generally seen as undesirable by those wanting an ethical investment.

As for backing up my argument that failing to sell a property causes broader issues – read the Economist link – key points here:

The booming market weighs heavily on the rest of the economy. People priced out of the capital take jobs in less productive places or waste time on marathon commutes. Young Britons have piled on mortgage debt—those born in 1981 have one-half more of it than those born in 1961 did at the same age—making them vulnerable to rises in interest rates, which are coming. Some will retire before they pay it off.

As house prices have gone through the roof here in London I’ve had to save a whole lot more to be able to afford to buy so for five years I’ve reigned in my spending – money which could have been spent in the real economy. Equally it looks increasingly likely I’ll be renting in retirement which means I have to save even more for my pension so I can pay rent as well as day to day living costs – meaning for the next 25 years I’ll be saving every last penny instead of spending.

So if we want deflation and secular stagnation/falling living standards then keep pumping up house prices. If we want real economic growth and wealth and don’t want to lose the best of our youth as they emigrate to countries they can afford to live in then letting prices fall over the next 10 years would be a sensible policy…

The irony of people owning more houses than they need, creating a shortage of supply then saying they can’t afford to upsize because prices are too high! You’re not the only person thinking this – I have friends thinking about buying a house for their 3-year old ready for when he’s an adult on the basis prices will be too high for him to afford… 😯

Personally I’d sell the flat to someone who needs it for their own security and financial stability/raising a family and put the cash into some kind of investment for your retirement. Getting into BTL now is for fools – BoE and government both have it in their sights as a risk to financial stability… Gideon also has his eyes on it from a tax and electoral advantage point of view

BTL a threat to financial stability – BoE

The Economist also recommending a crash would be a good thing given the broader disadvantages to economic growth… Gideon stoked the recent boom to get the Tories the election but now realises the desperately needed economic growth is being strangled by high housing costs… if you paid attention to the last Budget you’d have seen several policies designed to cool the market (if not get prices falling esp in London and SE)

Economist

I think you can be happy in a consumerist society without being consumerist and falling into all the traps that are set and without rejecting it entirely. You just have to decide what level of participation suits you, and stick to it.

It means living life to your own values which can be hard when other people can’t cope with your ability to think for yourself, but it’s very possible.

Self-employment or contracting helps me a lot – I can cope with the corporate environment so long as I don’t have to belong and conform to it.
Walking more and driving less helps – it gets you out into the real world
Reading instead of watching TV or spending time on Facebook helps – spend your time learning rather than comparing yourself with other people
Spending spare time helping other people rather than shopping helps, you’re making a contribution rather than passively consuming ‘stuff’
Spend time with thoughtful people who share your values. If people you think are your friends prefer to spend time on their phones when you’re out with them, do you think you really have that much in common?

Think carefully about what ‘stuff’ you do buy e.g. go for good quality shoes and clothes that will last years and years rather than buying the latest fashion. Buy second-hand so you’re not just consuming new resources all the time. Learn to make stuff for yourself, especially food. Home-made bread is much nicer than anything you can find in the shops – and it’s really not difficult!

I have some really nice bikes – riding bikes make me very happy and a nice bike is more pleasant to ride than a cheap bike. But my car is 10 years old and I barely use it. I spent £3k on my car and £10k on my bikes over the years – that seems like a better balance than £200 on a bike and a car on credit @ £500/month

Does he plan on making citizens’ arrests on all those driving using their phones, speeding, red light jumping, parking on double yellows, punishment passes, etc? that’ll have a bigger impact on quality of life and respect for the law. It’ll keep him pretty busy I should imagine

Yeah these bus and cycle lanes are all well and good, but how am I supposed to get a three flat pack wardrobes and a double bed back from Ikea on a bike?

home delivery service. simple.

Not driving is much easier than people think when they actually look for solutions rather than pretend to…

Re pedestrian crossings – there’s one on a junction near me which has cars driving through on the green man pretty much every time I cross the road – I’m surprised no-one’s been hit. It’s after a right turn box-junction – people wait in the box to to turn right, wait till the oncoming traffic stream has gone and then do the right turn. However by this point, the light they were sitting in front of has gone red so they’re effectively running the red light. The pedestrian light setting thinks that as the traffic light is red, there’ll be no more cars.

One woman I remonstrated with had a go back. I think she knew full well she was in the wrong but simply couldn’t compute that not moving forward was the best thing to do and was panicking.

Another woman got a fright when I slapped the side of her car as she drove past me – the pedestrian light was green and I was already on the crossing as she moved forward but she was so determined to get out of the box junction that she wasn’t checking for pedestrians.

On the one hand, the junction/lights need a redesign, on the other, their lack of awareness of how close they are to running someone over is scary. If you’re not hyper-aware of this scenario and looking, you’ll get hit.
I don’t think the drivers are aggressive idiots, just don’t know how to cope with imperfect infrastructure and are so wrapped up in their bubble that the outside world is not a ‘real’ thing with real people to hurt.

Personally I’m going to avoid using that crossing and I won’t be driving that way either…

Parliamentary debate on dangerous driving sentencing

The debate is finally beginning to be heard – albeit we’re making very slow progress. Sometimes it does feel like the whole system in the UK is anti-cycling… but this is beginning to change at last…

ppt would be very effective if only people were trained how to use it properly, but I’ve never worked for a company that was willing to make this investment.

I wrote a presentation once in which each slide was a headline with the key point and an image which filled the rest of the slide. It went down very well and I got the job.

BUT – finding the right images and organising my thoughts ready to present (because I couldn’t just read off the slide) took a long time. I could do this because this was my own time as it was a job interview. I’ve not had a single manager at work who I think would have the wisdom and intelligence to let me take that long in prepping a presentation. I’d be accused of being slow and perfectionist…

The older I get, the more I’m becoming anti-mass-excessive-default usage of the fossil-fuel burning private motor vehicle. The amount of damage this behaviour does to the drivers, everyone else in the community and to the planet is collossal…

The good news is now more than any other time in my life (born 1973), we’re beginning to accept this, have a dialogue about it and agitate for change. I guess the damage has got so great now – global warming, pollution, obesity, that we can’t ignore it – the costs are so clearly greater than the benefits.

You can see from the abuse and bullying meted out to cyclists that a lot of people (in the UK at least) are struggling to cope with the change that’s happening, but if you look at government, health professionals and other people who make decisions about how we live, and they’re moving in the right direction, albeit at snail’s pace…

It’ll be interesting to see what the VW situation does to force the debate – this looks likely to impact many more manufacturers. It may wreck VW. It’s put the fact that driving is poisoning us all with the fumes right out there into the spotlight – and we all have to face up to this as drivers – we’re as complicit as the manufacturers.

I’m particularly interested in this

jamj1974 – Member
Som of the research into the psychology behind driving behaviours is very interesting and somewhat disturbing…

– can you post up some links please? I get the feeling that people are so isolated from the outside world in modern cars that they effectively lose all compassion/conscience and awareness of the damage they’re doing – almost psychopathic when you think it through – people behave far worse in cars then they do when walking, cycling or are on the bus…

The good news is that this ‘addiction’ we have to excessive use of the car is relatively recent – back in the 70’s and 80’s far more people cycled or shared cars – we just have to turn the clock back 30 years to make massive positive change.

I think excessive use of car has gone hand-in-hand with excessive consumerism and debt – and the tide is turning on both these things- we’re looking at secular stagnation – static/falling real incomes and living standards. This will help people reconsider how much they can afford to drive everywhere, all the time.

I think everything’s falling into place to bring about change but there’s vested interests, poor leadership from government, resistance to change amongst the population and utter stupidity to overcome before we get to travel utopia…

However just because I could have prevented surely dose not mean that I’m at fault? A car that pulls out onto oncoming traffic would be a fault it doesn’t mean the other drive he has hit has joint liability because ‘if he were driving slower and braked quicker he could have prevented it’.

Personally it seems like you could have prevented the collision but she was quite clearly being impatient by overtaking in order to turn right and should therefore not have been there for you to see whether you did or didn’t look. i.e. you could have prevented it, but she created the situation in the first place…

Be interesting to see where this one goes re insurance/legals cos IMHO there’s way too much impatient driving these days and it causes chaos – we need more Police and more prosecutions. So many people seem to think ‘I can so I will’ rather than ‘I can, but it’s illegal or risky or stupid so I won’t’

No such thing as an “accident” – something, somewhere wasn’t as it should have been.

IMO from your description, you were doing things as you should, she was being impatient and drove into you, instead of doing what you did, and waited in the queue till she got to the junction and then turned right.

I guess you have to leave it up to the insurance but it seems to me as a layman that she was totally in the wrong, overtaking at an inappropriate point (by a junction), without checking the road ahead was clear, and for inappropriate reasons (too impatient to wait).

I hope she gets prosecuted for careless driving, points + a re-education course…

Put ‘normal’ people into cars and they go crazy… we badly need some re-education/proper enforcement/better karma

I’ve got some photos of guys racing these at Smithfield Nocturne last year – pretty skilled riding those things at speed round 90 degree corners!

Given what else you know, whyTF were you in the car in the first place?

Fair question – I guess if you spend your life avoiding people with whom you don’t 100% share morals, you’ll end up alone! Seeing her fiddling with her phone in the rotten poor-visibility conditions we were in was just the straw which broke the camel’s back – hence also posting it on here for STW thoughts!

Should be fun working on the new brand for Audi
Vorsprung Durch Technik – progress through technology becomes Betrug mit Technik – cheating with technology

Dmorts has it IMO – we only have ourselves to blame. If we, customers, demanded proper testing or were willing to pay the price/accept reduced performance of a car which didn’t wreck the environment, manufacturers would be less likely to cheat

her actions are probably not limited to just fiddling at the lights occasionally.

But as usual on the internet we don’t have all the facts so have to rely on speculation and assumption

Well, this was just one example of a few behaviours where I would describe her and I as having different attitudes to risk/living a healthy existence… I think this was probably the deal-breaker in terms of whether I want her to be the new Mrs Brooess…

Tea and biscuits anyone?

Seeing someone pass you in the street is quite definitely not providing you with enough information and evidence to judge whether they’re employable or not!
When I worked in ad agencies there were plenty of people who, if you judged on appearance only you’d assume were nothing special when in fact they were incredibly bright, talented and hard-working (often award-winning) creatives…

My thoughts about the welfare state are simple:
1. The were conceived of at a time when the demographics of the situation permitted it, but the demographics we now have in the Western world, China and Japan (ageing population) are making that model much harder to keep going.
Promises made in the past are simply unrealistic now. My Dad worked for a company for 30 years, paid into his pension all that time, retired at 55 and now, at 77 is still drawing on that pension. In all likelihood he’ll be taking out of that pension for longer than he paid into it. He freely admits this always was an unsustainable model over multiple generations

2. Society can look after the poor, old, ill and needy in many many ways. The Welfare State we currently have is the response that ‘government should do it’. I think we need to let go of the belief that the best/only solution is for ‘government to do it’. There’s many more ways to look after those who can’t look after themselves – families, charities, voluntary work, employers etc etc. Given the economics/demographics of the situation I think we need to be examining those options and working out which combination we think is most effective for the next 50 years – and then it’s quite possible we’ll need another re-design.
Dismantling the Welfare State as we currently know it is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as you replace it with something as good or better… IMO…

I thought a heard a shout as the van passed and it did rather look like deliberate close pass so the odds are it was one of those idiot drivers rather than one of the good ones… and he clearly wasn’t looking where he was going.

I’d like to see him blame that one on the car driver or the cyclist… as no doubt he will try…

+1 on the self-driving cars – maybe a montage of YouTube clips like this could be built into a launch campaign for Google cars once they’re on the market 😀 ‘Travel to work in peace and quiet, catching up on sleep or emails in a Google car… or drive yourself and show the whole world what an idiot you are by crashing into everything in sight?”

Surely this is a tacit admission that internal combustion engines have had their day and are doing too much damage to justify their benefit and such widespread use?

If you have to cheat a test like this, you’re admitting that your product is damaging the environment – if you weren’t causing damage, there’d be nothing to hide…

Good to see they’re being hit very hard where it hurts: the bottom line. Share price has been massively hit and from the FT ” VW now faces steep fines and possible criminal charges, and a difficult time restoring its brand”. This is the good thing about capitalism – money is the motivator so remove the profit opportunity and you can get companies to change bad behaviour far more quickly than you will through regulation. I suspect the Chief Exec will be gone in time, too…

It feels slow and painful, but with self-driving and electric cars being invested in more and more, we may finally be moving to a post-internal combustion engine-powered, drive-everywhere-all-the-time world…

IMO people that angry have bigger personality/life issues and any attempt to reason with them – Police, you speaking to them or leaving notes, often (though not always) fails – they just blame the Police for ‘taking sides’ or ‘telling them what to do’ – the fact the overreact to you so badly suggests they’re already maladjusted.

my recommendation would be to change your route or timing – move yourself out of the zone of conflict…

I’ve got stuff to do so I need to get off this thread but Junkyard – have you taken Bikeability? I’ve been riding 36 years and I did levels 2 & 3 a couple of years ago and I learnt loads… really, loads.

Level 3 was 1 on 1 with an instructor following me home on my regular commute and stopping every 10 mins or so for a feedback session on what he observed – I could never have learnt this myself – incredibly effective as training.

For e.g. on a main road when passing a car wanting to turn into the main road from a side turning, I was freewheeling – being cautious in case the car pulled out. The instructor saw me doing this and said keep pedalling – if you’re not pedalling the driver may assume you’re slowing or turning into their road, keep pedalling and it’s a sign you’re continuing to move forward at the same speed… little behavioural tips like that were invaluable and showed me how my own riding style could influence the behaviour of drivers… I can’t recommend it enough

sometimes it is just the drivers fault

I’d take this further – it’s ALWAYS the drivers fault if they drive dangerously.

Where we have to agree to disagree is whether I, as a rider, can do anything to reduce the effect of a bad driver’s behaviour on me. I think I can. So do BC and Bikeability – that’s what they teach – how to manage traffic.

I think the toddler analogy is apt. Most drivers are unaware of how they should behave around cyclists and the difference between that and how they do behave. With appropriate signalling and communication, you can demonstrate how you want them to behave… right there in the moment.

Won’t stop them trying!

Agreed but in my experience they always stop just before they hit the concrete or whatever is creating the pinch point. Which is better than them hitting you cos you gave them what looked like enough space…

Even then, if they tank straight into the concrete then they come to a sudden stop with a busted car. Which is still better than them hitting you…

I agree with junkyard, riding primary works most of the time but it doesn’t stop the morons from attempting something stupid.

Last night I was on a road on an estate which is a bit of a rat run. Coming upto a blind left hand bend and there is a van parked on my left, half on the grass verge, half on the road. No probs I thought take primary to give enough clearance and to stop the car behind passing on a bend.

I was doing about 15-20 mph and this plantpot in a Peugeot behind overtook me on the blind bend. It would have took him about 5 secs longer just to wait whilst I got round the bend and got back to secondary.

I accept that Primary isn’t the answer to everything – the standards of driving are way too low for it to work 100% of the time e.g in Simmy’s example he clearly had to be even more primary than he was. But it is the recommended position where preventing a close overtake is likely to put you at risk as a rider… and from the OPs description this is one scenario where it could have been an effective tool for him to have employed…

Simmy’s right – it works most of the time, but not always. For me, most of the time is better than none of the time…

Equally it depends on just how primary you go. At pinch points I’ll go midway between the kerb and the pinch – very visible, no way anyone could pass. Same with passing parked cars in a narrow street where there could be ‘just enough’ space if I left it – better to fill that space. It’s a bit like dealing with toddlers – give them very clear and assertive guidance about how you want them to behave and you’re more likely to get compliance.

If a driver gets upset about this, I’d rather they were upset and behind me than upset and alongside me, close and at speed. They can get upset if they like but their opinion doesn’t take precedence over that of British Cycling and professional cycling instructors paid by local councils to provide best-practice training…

Yes its your fault not theirs
REMEMBER THIS

Total misrepresentation of what I’m saying… utterly not the point.

Primary position is one of the cornerstones of the formal training funded by government – it’s not some random idea I made up…

Also promoted by British Cycling… Primary position

We all know driving standards are lousy. Primary position is a method by which you can reduce the liklihood of these low standards impacting on your safety. It’s putting you back in control.

By advising the OP to ride more primary I’m suggesting he takes charge of the section of road he is riding in, NOT treating him as a victim… precisely the opposite

^^ I like 🙂

If, as looks possible, Corbyn got in like Milliband did, without the support of his MPs because the voting system was gamed (Milliband using the Union vote, Corbyn by either the same or Tories trying to sabotage Labour) then expect chaos rather than a decent opposition at a time when we really, really need proper questions being asked of government policy.

Reading serious financial press e.g. FT, Economist + speaking to people I know working in the City and we are so not out of the 2008 mess – if anything the underlying problems are worse and debt levels are so much greater, and the ‘slow and steady recovery’ narrative being spun by the Tories is balderdash and otherwise known as ‘jacked up house prices cos you think that makes you rich’

This narrative needs challenging, properly. If Corbyn’s in without the support of his MPs then Labour will just spend the next couple of years in an internal mess trying to oust him instead of doing their job of being a proper opposition