Someone made the point on one of these threads before that you don’t want to allow yourself to be infected by someone else’s anger…

I find it very hard to take abuse or near-harm without responding but I find I’m better off in myself if I do. There’s too much shocking driving around to get upset by it every time

the traditional jockeying for the gravy train seats has begun.

This I’m afraid.

What the government really need to do is let the market adjust of it’s own accord – extrapolating the data in the graph below suggests that’s already coming through. Certainly, in 40 years the market has never gone steadily up and then stayed stable – peaks and troughs every time, going down as fast as it goes up.

Interesting to see that despite the headlines on London prices recently, when you use Property Bee (add-on to Mozilla that allows you to see amends made to listings on RightMove) 2-bed flats in South London are being reduced in price – quite significantly in places, and sales are falling through. Not every single property but certainly a significant proportion.

Gideon will be desperate to keep buyer demand up until May by keeping the dream of owning alive. However classical economics tells us that when people expect prices to fall (and there’s more than a few news stories about the London market cooling), they delay purchases on the expectation that prices will fall further – which itself can drive prices down as buyers sit and wait (the converse of panic buying when prices are rising).

This little announcement suggests Gideon is worried. If demand was healthy, he wouldn’t have had to make it…

There’s no part of being hit by a car which is excusable.
Glad you’re ok OP but please report it so that there’s a chance some kind of correctional action will be taken – either Police having a quiet word, or a prosecution (for careless driving?) or at least it appearing in the stats to demonstrate action is required

Not a lot IME.
If people are bad enough drivers to run you off the road, they’re clearly not people who are mature enough to take criticism.
I know this already and re-discovered it yesterday when I got the finger for shaking my head at a driver who overtook me and then jammed his brakes on before he hit the slow moving traffic that I was riding behind. I’m sure he knew full well his observation skills were inadequate, but resented this being pointed out to him 😯

My current strategy is to be very polite and wave a thankyou to those drivers who wait and then overtake with plenty of room – they’re increasing in number IME and the more you say thank you the more you give an incentive for them to do it again. We’re social creatures who follow social norms so the more friendly we are, the better the treatment we get from most people – and the angry/childish/hard-of-thinking will slowly follow suit when they realise everyone else is able to cope with cyclists… and they’re just a sad and lonely minority

if it is underfunded why is reform 100% necessary ?
There seems no obvious link there tbh.

It just needs ore money

Are you willing to pay more tax? Is anyone willing to pay more tax? With a cost of living squeeze and massively overpriced houses (higher mortgage repayments) can anyone actually afford to pay more tax?

Is it fair that I pay more tax to fund the NHS because so many people are eating too much, when I look after myself?

My point is that finding more funding may or may not be possible and may or may not be acceptable to the electorate whatever our own personal political stances on the matter..

We don’t seem to be able to have a debate about the NHS without everyone jumping on their own particular party political bandwagon and shouting at each other. Which isn’t very helpful.

As I understand it, we have an ageing population and an increasingly obese population – one of these is just an unavoidable fact of demography and the other is more complex but could have been avoided.

Either way – this increase in poor health means the NHS in its current form of funded by the taxpayer and free at point of delivery, surely needs more funding. At a time when we’re mired in debt and there’s little scope to increase taxes.

Therefore reform is 100% necessary – there’s a serious an unavoidable problem which needs dealing with.

Private healthcare is also in a poor financial state which shows you it’s more than just an NHS problem – Bupa have had major problems with falling profits as the cost of treatment is running so far ahead of what their customers can afford to pay.

I’ve no idea how I think it’s best done to be frank, but a few years ago when I found myself repeatedly in hospital from falling off my bike (3 operations in total) I noted that the rest of the country were paying for it, despite it being the result of my own actions. I’m not sure that’s fair really, not when the service is under so much pressure.

It’s sad when people say they won’t vote for Ed miliband because looks a bit weird. If we vote like that then we get the politicians we deserve, frankly.
Refuse to vote for him because he appears to have no policy, maybe, but sod how comfortable he is in photos and on TV! It’s nasty IMO, like laughing at the odd-looking kid at school.

I think we need to be taught parliamentary politics at school – how the system works, how it was developed, political history, how each party has developed and what their core manifestos/philosophies are etc

Also party-neutral basic stuff whereby people understand that our pensions will be paid from the taxes of our children and grandchildren, taxes are NOT government money, but OUR money, that if we want more public services run by the state we have to pay more taxes, explain the difference between government deficit and government debt etc, benefits and pitfalls of running services by the state vs privatisation – the technical stuff.

Mind you, do politicians want us to understand all this stuff, really? Much harder to make insane promises like Brown did if we start asking difficult questions about how it’s going to be funded… I’m cynical that politicians really want a properly engaged and educated electorate

10 speed XX is £300

That’s insane! XT 9sp for years was c £35 and replacement triple rings about £100 tops.

My first mountain bike was a 1995 Rockhopper, so not some BSO – and it cost me £400.

It does strike me looking at a lot of the more recent innovations and the prices that are being asked for them that the manufacturers may not have realised that there’s a cost of living crisis for a lot of people, v little in the way of pay rises over the last 10 years which is unlikely to change in the near future. ie: they’re making it unaffordable for many… and one result is to move to road where kit lasts a lot longer

Worth listening to this?

Radio 4 – Last Day. Redundancy

How did you take that photo while driving at 100mph and living to tell the tale? 😯

If MTB is on the decline, that’s not great news for those areas of Wales and Scotland who were given the funding for trail centres to support the (deprived) local economies…

However if you see lots of roadies coming through your rural village every weekend, time to open a bike cafe?

One of my favourite cognitive biases:

Hostile media effect – The tendency to see a media report as being biased, owing to one’s own strong partisan views.

Wikipedia

Don’t ask the locals what they’ve ever done for you

Broken little toe 🙁

No regular STWer is well-placed to reject Facebook on the basis they don’t like inane crap!

I invented the wheel, and was very upset to find that whilst I was working on the finer details somebody else had already patented it.

Maybe there’s a new size wheel you could patent? Or has that been done already?

A lot of my disposable income used to go on my MTB – replacing worn parts/upgrades etc. I was riding every weekend.

Then I got into road riding and I spend an awful lot less overall – a chain on my MTB might last me a year or so, on my summer road bike, more like 4 years.

I’ve no need to replace my MTB but as it’s 26 I’m inclined to keep it till it totally wears out now it has virtually no resale value. If 26 hadn’t been killed off, I suspect I’d have bought some new forks by now.

For MTB makers I’m a disaster – they used to get a few hundred quid + off me every year and now they get virtually nothing. Road kit doesn’t wear out so fast so my overall cycling expenditure has fallen thru he floor and at the same time I’m riding an awful lot more.

I suspect the fact consumers are struggling with debt and day to day living costs has had a big impact here too.

It’d be interesting to look at a breakdown of manufacturers’ target audiences and associated revenue/profit and compare enthusiasts with non-enthusiasts.

For e.g. Cotic’s market must be entirely the high end, frequent spending types, but Trek I suspect gets a greater % of profit from the mass market. Same for LBS’s. So diff companies will have been impacted in different ways by the shift towards road riding

Beautiful place, Torridon. Very nicely captured in those pics, too

Too late.
Outside of weddings and estate agents, who actually wears a tie these days?

If you ride with a club your clubmates will hate you if you have a bike without guards. Dangerous for them as well as mucky – spray in their eyes is not safe.
The clip-on guards aren’t as long as full guards so they don’t stop this happening.
I ride 25mm tyres in winter – wetter and icier roads need more grip. I didn’t quite get this when I first got a winter bike and have a scar on my chin and got a broken finger for my ignorance…
IME it only takes one winter for a newly-converted road rider to go off to the shop with credit card in hand for a winter bike when they see how wrecked their £2k+ summer bike has got…

This doesn’t look any different to me to what Google are already doing… e.g. I ‘like’ the way my screen will be full of bike related adverts in the minutes after I’ve been browsing around Wiggle.

Advertisers do need to be careful to use this targeting tech sensibly though, and not weird out their customers. Just because you ‘can’ doesn’t mean you ‘should’

Tony Blair in a blue tie. We knew all along he was a secret Tory

41-and-a-quarter and I still have Converse. We all dress like teenagers these days you know 🙂

Although I was once advised if you remember clothes from the first time around you shouldn’t be wearing them second time round…

I wouldn’t get carbon for a winter bike – they get covered in grit amongst other things, which can be quite abrasive. My winter bike is steel.
No-one in my club rides carbon for winter – mainly steel or ally bikes and usually ones that are deliberately not too nice – the state your winter bike can get into, especially if used for commuting too, can be a bit upsetting!

Worth looking at Boardman or Genesis Croix de Fer or Kinesis maybe?

Permit cyclists to carry air pistols which they can fire at punishment passers to either take out their rear windows, or tyres, as they see fit

I reckon the spread at Kensington Palace is probably pretty good – if you can get in! 🙂

Paying off your mortgage now might be a good idea if it’ll go up when interest rates increase next year.
Consider contracting as well as full time? Having lots of experience means you have the necessary maturity + the ability to hit the ground running.
Get yourself on Linked In and get networking
You’ll be surprised at what the day rates can be.
Good luck – things seem pretty busy out there right now

re the dark place, just stay very aware of your mood each day – don’t get out of bed late and doss just because you can – keep a to do list so you’ve a reason to get up and out, and take advantage of all that time to ride your bike lots!

Cool pics

Great, we’ve solved racism, ban buffs and it’ll go away!

Or rather, allow people to wear buffs how they wish, but teach them not to judge people because they belong to a different tribe…

Both bike and eye-level are best IMO. I saw a rider last year who had just the one light – on the back of his helmet and it was mainly obscured by the top of his rucksack – which he didn’t know until I told him…

As MCTD says, I have a light on the front of my helmet which means I can look at drivers to make sure they’ve seen me – I took it off last winter and nearly got hit 3 times on one ride with drivers pulling out on me – from side roads and on a roundabout – so it went straight back on…

Even thinking about overtaking on a narrow road like that in those conditions show’s poor judgement – no way you can see far enough to know the road’s clear. Driver needs to go back to driving school and learn risk assessment and that having a big car doesn’t mean you don’t have to worry about anyone else’s safety

On a narrow country road with a line of parked cars all down one side

Ok. I wasn’t there so I can’t judge but: the OP said it was a narrow country road with a line of parked cars…

1. Best practice is to stay away from parked cars – stay out of the door zone. The alternative is to find yourself knocked off your bike by an unobservant car-dweller. Potentially into the path of the car behind or one coming down the road, which is dangerous for everyone and potentially fatal for the rider so not really something to compromise on.

2. If it was a narrow lane with cars down one side I can’t quite understand how there was space for an overtake – whether cyclists were single or double file. Certainly there are times when overtaking parked cars I’ve taken extra primary to prevent a dangerous overtake, or on a club ride we’ve not singled out because to do so would signal to a following car that they could overtake, when in fact there’s not the space.

Not all cyclists riding doubled up are ignorant and selfish. Sometimes it’s deliberate to keep themselves safe and to manage the traffic… read Cyclecraft by John Franklin.

Happily, yesterday’s club ride was absolutely dominated by cars taking a lot of care to give us loads of space, for which they got profuse thanks. So the message does appear to be getting through at last…

Scary how quickly a previously dominant brand can decline…

I was avoiding it quite nicely until you started this thread!

Has anyone ever respected democracy?

Lots of countries don’t even have it because it means losing control. Those that do are hardly free of manipulation of voters… see the other thread about media bias and read Hack Attack about the NOTW hacking to see just how manipulated UK democracy has been for the last 40 years… honestly, it’s a shocker…

I have a ring of hair around each nipple

Too much info 😯 this isn’t Mumsnet!

There also seems to be confusion over many who support the union being supporters of Westminster. For many of us we want the Union, we don’t want the Westminster politicians and we certainly don’t want more mini CMDs and EMs locally. We want Westminster politics to be less about process and more about ideology and practical improvements to peoples lives.

Some sound insight in there. I suspect Westminsterites of all colours are going to find it even harder to win the respect of the electorate. UKIP are full of populist nonsense so they’re hardly any panacea.

I suspect most of the UK wants better-quality leadership but frankly I don’t know where to go for it. I believe having a vote is a very very precious thing so I don’t want to refuse to use it next May as some kind of protest but for the first time in my life I really don’t know who to give it to, whilst still having some faith there’s any point in voting…

Basically our politicians have no idea how to deal with the ageing population, the debt, and globalisation, and I don’t know who does…

Boardman’s Lotus bike is hanging from the ceiling in the reception area of the Science Museum so don’t forget to look upwards on your way in.

And remember not to just stop in the middle of the pavement when you’re looking at the sights, please 🙂

Willy-waving time?

49mph down Dunmail Raise into the 30mph limit in Grasmere. The bike would’ve gone faster but I bottled it.

Personal best without the (direct) aid of a motor: 120mph downwards when I used to skydive

That’s not a dawning realisation!
But I’m decent and good enough for me. I ride for fun so that’s ok