Look at the Genesis Flyer – takes full mudguards now.

Pearson are well-priced if you’re near South London

S/S is great – virtually maintenance-free 🙂

By Chris Kelly on 19 Feb 2009
Format: Audio CD
This is a work of such beauty, i cried and shat at the same time the first time i heard it.

God bless you Katie and Peter

Exactly aracer, so why all the promises. Bloody politicians.

I see stuff like this at work. People making all kinds of promises to their bosses which they have absolutely no chance of being able to keep.

It’s like they’ve operated for so long in a world of smoke and mirrors, game-playing and dishonesty that they actually don’t realise that it’s bleeding obvious to everyone else that they’re lying and they’re setting a trap for themselves – total self-deception.

It was a desperate step when the penny finally dropped that the electorate really have had enough of their self-obsession and complete lack of respect for their job description – to provide leadership and good governance and I’m really not sure they quite know how to cope with it…

I think I may have eaten some of what Binners has been eating 🙂

But as for the message, apart from 1.6m Scots, who exactly has been asking for an unbalanced approach to democracy across the UK?

Just a hunch, I have no actual evidence for this but it seemed to me that a chunk of the rUK seemed to think that devo max was a fair enough deal to give to the Scots (after all we all sympathise with their dislike of Westminster)…

And so if Westminster failed to deliver on their promises, we’d have sympathy with those Scots who’d voted No on the strength of those promises… and you’d end up with the Yessers, the No’s who voted on the strength of the promises and a chunk of rUK all throwing rotten tomatoes at Westminster for being a bunch of shysters! United in their dislike of Westminster.

So ironically, the result of the referendum would be a more united UK 🙂

The best thing here would be a time out and some reflection. We have even more knee jerk politics. AS spouting more BS this overnight, Brown promising things he has no authority to promise, and CMD and EM playing games without proper debate and reference to those they serve.

Yep – from what I heard about the various pronouncements overnight it seems like our leaders don’t quite get the message they’ve just been given by their electorate – Westminster AND Salmond. It’s like they just can’t help themselves… straight into playing tit for tat games, making pledges they can’t guarantee, setting traps for each other etc.

It’s not a good sign – UK’s not in a great place right now economically and I can’t imagine the electorate (Scotland AND rUK) being too impressed if Westminster fails to deliver on the pledges they made last week. Not sure how that will pan out – protests, riots, refusal to vote? Time will tell I guess.

On media bias – refusing to watch BBC because you don’t agree with their view just disempowers you. Best hint I was given to protect yourself from media bias is take two papers (broadsheet, not tabloid) – one which shares your political views and one from the other side. It’s a right eye opener when you compare and contrast them – not just the slant on the stories, but the prominence they give them and even the stories they include/don’t include… you realise even the broadsheets can’t really be trusted to inform you…

If the situation’s not clear, we shouldn’t be so quick to condemn the cyclist.

It appears that a lot of people on this thread were all there as witnesses!

I really don’t understand how any of us are in a position to judge the cyclist or the taxi driver based on the OP’s description…

granted, but he was on a bike with aero bars, not ideal?

eh? So supposed to take a spare pair of bars with him for when he’s riding through town? Or do you mean he was riding in heavy urban traffic on the aero bars ie: not covering the brakes? In which case, fair enough – that’s not showing much skill or risk awareness

It’s true, you can’t trust the media….
including ‘social’ media

A mainstream news outlet which is losing money and influence because of social media, putting out a story suggesting social media can be manipulated. Never 🙂

Then again, in the list of cognitive biases in Wikipedia is this gem 🙂

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

The media had an agenda on this and from now on I’ll assume they have an agenda on everything else.

Don’t want to be patronising but that’s a given, surely? No-one sets up a newspaper because they want to inform people… it’s about power and control of information. Media’s always been like that.

Read Hack Attack by Nick Davies about the NOTW caper if you want to understand just how agenda/commerce driven all our media owners are and see that you basically can’t trust any of the mainstream media sources… but have hope that social media is taking that power away.

Worth reading George Orwell 1984 too if you want to understand how propaganda works

You know, before the internet, nobody other than the very people who were involved would ever have known about this.

This – how does anyone other than the OP feel they’re in any position to judge the cyclist?

I can’t quite work out what happened here from the OPs description of events and I’m not sure how anyone else has!

What I do know is I’m getting bored of strangers judging me to be scum of the earth when I’m on my road bike…

Central London is fine – it’s the edges that are terrifying. Car drivers who have been/will be in traffic jams for two hours making the most of clear bits of road

Yep – had more abuse in 6 months in ‘middle class suburban paradise’of Bromley than I’ve had in years of riding in London. We get a fair bit out in the country lanes on club rides too. Glad I’m moving back to Crystal Palace next month tbh

Best thing about cycling in London is, if you believe the plans and the Mayor’s cycling vision, we’ve only just got started 😀

IIRC, when England was offered mayors a couple of years ago, only Bristol took up the offer…

I grew up in Cheshire and moved down to London for uni and I’m still here 25 years later and I really don’t think (even though I’m the beneficiary of it) that the economic imbalance in UK is very healthy for either London, the South East or anywhere else.

But if the regions were offered the choice and didn’t take it, what can you do?

Mind you it wouldn’t surprise me if the Scottish debate opens it right back up again and if you now offered England’s regions the opportunity for greater devolution, it might be taken.

Although I guess it depends on the opportunities – Manchester and Liverpool look they could well come out well – large, skilled populations and transport links, whereas Cornwall would be very dependent on tourist income… not a recipe for success

Surprised. Then again he went full on for victory and seemed to have convinced so many people the Yes would win that maybe his credibility is shot – why should they believe him if he tried to lead an independence campaign again?

Not having a go, just wondering

Is getting angry with myself if I get scared counter-productive?

Yes, of course it is. Fills your head with disabling emotions when you want it to be either empty or full of encouraging thoughts.

Best interpretation I heard of how to deal with fear is it’s a warning to yourself that there’s something you need to prepare for.

Then you just accept the fear, accept you have something to deal with, and find a way to deal with it. It’s perfectly ok to get scared when you’re doing something risky – no need to beat yourself up about it

I suspect some time with a coach will help you a lot

If YouGov is right and it’s a clear no then it’ll be interesting to look at the age breakdown.
If yes was mainly younger voters and no was mainly older voters then all the Yes camp have to do is hold another referendum in 10 years time and there’ll be a yes.
Although I still think it would be a good idea to actually agree with Westminster what’s on offer before asking the people to make such a massive decision…

It’s a myth that social media and the internet have brought power to the people.

We’re just spending our time arguing with strangers about nothing of any real consequence, totally distracted whilst the 1% take more of and more of our £££ 😀

The Edinburgh agreement was no prior negotiation to the referendum, so there were no parameters for either side.

So I understand. Still seems daft to go to a referendum on that basis… why didn’t SNP say ‘not good enough’ and continue negotiate at that point?

I’m stressing here that this seems a poor position to put both the yes and the no voters in… as you say, Scotland is just being asked which bunch of politicians do you trust the most – when deep experience for most people alive today is that no politicians can ever be trusted!

I like the idea of getting a speeding ticket for my bike 😀

You can get 50mph coming down Dunmail Raise into the 30 limit in Grasmere

More seriously, drivers are way too unobservant these days to risk it – even if you can ride at 30 in a 30 limit, I avoid it now as the liklihood of getting a driver pull out on me feels too high, and there’s no way I’d stop in time…

the world is changing from the old patriarchal hierarchical system to a new position where people are empowered, informed and engaged. At least I hope so.

Kind of. I hope the world is becoming less hierarchical and more inter-dependent too – internet and social media being a key driver.

However, the most serious concern about this whole referendum for me is that neither the yes nor the no camp have actually informed their audiences just what they’ll get for their vote… so both sides have fallen on rhetoric in the absence of any concrete proposition to offer…

Cotic Soul

It makes sense not to fully enclose yourself IMO. But it’s not the kind of risk you can actually get data on to fully understand how much of a problem it is

@brooess

Did the Asics ever sell?

Yes, thanks

Monksie – you might have noticed the fees on Ebay take up a chunk of your revenue, which when you’re selling stuff for a tenner means you might as well chuck your stuff and save yourself the hassle.

You don’t have to read my for sale posts if you don’t want to

What about the near omnipresent panaracer rampage, road gloves and cinelli road stem ad? Cleverly disguised previously with a different title and the inclusion of some shorts and one (single, not a pair) pedal.
God loves a try’er.

The shorts and pedal got sold, thanks. Like I said, some stuff takes a while to sell + I’d rather re-post on STW twice a week than throw away stuff that’s perfectly serviceable.

If you want me to stop re-posting, why not buy it from me? 🙂

Some stuff takes a while to sell… but it does in the end.
There’s a lot goes on there so if you don’t re=post regularly, you’re not on the first page or two

Ribble/Boardman?

Seems to me no-one wins out of this whole sorry mess:
Yes – half of Scotland pissed off with the other half, rUK pissed off with half of Scotland
No – half of Scotland pissed off with the other half and continued ‘pressing on’ by the SNP for another round of the whole charade in a year’s time, and dragging out the resentment…

Joy

Has this whole thing just been a massive great bluff by Salmond to get the devo-max he always believed was best for Scotland?

As an economist, he must have done some sums and realised a lot of what the markets and outside business interests are saying about the implications for an independent Scotland could well come to pass ie: worse rather than better.

CMD wouldn’t give him devo-max so Salmond pretended to go all out for full independence whilst deliberately not backing up his assertions with data because he knows that in general Scots are too canny and have too much commonsense to believe his nationalist assertions unless there were some facts to back them up…

In the meantime he guessed that close polls would send Westminster into a mad panic and give him on a plate what they’d previously refused him?

It’s a hell of a gamble!

The Youth of today. Tut 🙂

What happens to Salmond if Scotland votes to stay in the Union?

That Shetland thing could lead to a massive car crash for Scotland in the event of a Yes vote… at the very least, I hope the SNP has a contingency plan in place

We should do more direct action. I’m not very willing to get thumped tho’

Do you want a rug for your knees as well? 🙂

Why?
I’d like to see him do that in the rush hour – looks like a Sunday if Tubes and the City were that quiet

Our politicians have failed us, our business leaders look for more opportunities to screw us and our media report whatever their bosses tell them to. We are being utterly let down by the current system and the people it attracts. We need a big change, a federal island of regional assemblies, with proportional representation and money spent on making sure that everyone in our society is valued, supported and given the opportunity to exceed their own expectations. We won’t get that from Westminster. Ever.

To be fair, I think globalisation is out of the control of our politicians, business leaders and media.

I’m not saying they’re doing a sterling job (read Hack Attack by Nick Davies, about how Murdoch has interacted with UK government and how other media orgs have turned a blind eye to see how much dishonesty we’re fed daily), but it’s worth remembering that our parents grew up in a postwar period which naturally meant growth, but that was never going to go on for ever

The West had the political power and growth naturally followed the War because Europe and the UK were close to broke…however, the post-war boom had to come to an end at some point and we’re just unlucky to be around at the time when it has… government has been trying to hide this with credit growth since the early 90’s – which ended in the credit crunch in 2008 – which wasn’t the cause of our current issues, it was a symptom of long term weakness.

It’s very easy and attractive to blame ‘them’ but it’s really more complex than that. This is a cyclical thing – no-one stays rich and powerful for ever.

I seriously doubt that localising UK politics and further devolution will help us counter the threat from China, Asia, India etc, as attractive it may be to blame the current establishment…

As Jambalaya says, UK is still one of the world’s most democratic and wealthy countries – and I think we should be grateful for what we do have, and build on the opportunities we do have to survive the changes in global economic and political power. The World is not a zero-sum game…

+1 for 2nd hand Soul, or Dialled Prince Albert or Sanderson Life

My Soul was bought in 2006 – it’s such a nice bike that I don’t feel like buying anything else – which over the long run makes it a lot cheaper!

I hope Ewan Morrison’s wrong… whether the vote goes yes or no it suggests there won’t be a healthy atmosphere afterwards –

Cotic Soul – just a great-handling bike
Condor Tempo – beautiful bike to ride
All Gore Bike Wear kit I’ve ever bought

Re=privatising services would mean taxes go up to fund them. Whichever government did that, you can expect them to be voted straight out again…

So, what would be the best way to deal with this, before little timmy is run over and death occurs

Get the council to turn it into a 20mph limit, and enforce it?

Molly you are treating a newspaper story in the Torygraph as if it is a true depiction of facts
That is foolish and naive.

Good advice, that. Telegraph is a Mail for the middle-classes – seems to delight in taking the negative side of the story…

I’d not realised it was a 2-year-old article but I still think the quotes from the Shetlands leader are worth thinking about…. whether there’s a yes or a no, I suspect there’s all kinds of interested parties in Scotland and rUK (or indeed the UK if it still exists!) who have hitherto remained silent, who’ll come out of the woodwork when they realise what they have to lose or gain by the result…

OP – you did know there was no answer to your question and that we’d all just run to our pre-existing prejudices didn’t you? 😀

a) what’s success? prices, cost to the taxpayer, quality of service?
b) if, somehow, you were able to split the service part public, part private and run both at the same time, under the same conditions, then you could look at the outcomes and make some kind of evidence-based judgement…

As someone who believes in the free market I’m not sure what we have in the UK is proper privatisation as there isn’t true competition in many of the privatised services ie: if the supplier doesn’t meet my needs, I can’t take my business elsewhere.

For e.g. if I want to get the train to Liverpool from London and Virgin run late or are too expensive, I don’t actually have much choice, I’m stuck with Virgin.

That said, the journey’s way quicker and in much better trains than it was back in the late 80’s/early 90’s so something’s got better… we just don’t know if it would have been better or worse if it hadn’t been privatised