Reading the intensity of this debate and seeing how many posts it’s got in a short space of time, I hope this video goes viral – then it’ll do it’s job and the mother’s decision to do it won’t have been in vain…

I don’t think the video was released to allow casual observers to lay blame…

I think it was released to remind all of us that we could die or kill someone else if we don’t drive carefully and make proper observations at all times.

People speed, people make mistakes, but none of that has to lead to a dead biker and traumatised driver if we take more pride in driving well in the first place…

Quite…

Interesting article although we’ve no idea of the credentials of whoever wrote it.
One thing we do know is that speculation on a new commodity tends to lead to boom and bust – dot com crash anyone?

Can you find Bitcoins down the back of virtual sofas

You can hear the shout: sell Bitcoin, buy virtual sofas!

far from being over and done it has only just begun…

I’m 40 and for most of my life we’ve had rising living standards and relatively constant economic growth. Since the mid-80’s most of this has (it’s now appears) come off the back of increased supply of credit.

I would expect the remainder of my life to be flat at best, probably just bimbling along as we are now with v little growth or at least moving from low growth to slight recession – which to a lot of people will feel like worsening circumstances because they’re not getting ever-richer. Not so much a lost decade as a lost generation

I always find it puzzling that economic policy news gets such a high priority in the media. No one understands it (although some they think they do), .

Economic policy is as much about managing expectations by making public statements as anything else.

So a big news headline saying interest rates are dropping will encourage people to spend as it means credit is cheaper and saving is less worthwhile.

Just dropping the rate but not mentioning it to the general public very loudly would not lead to the required change in behaviour…

For a boutique brand – where looks are part of their selling pt I think it’s poor to tell you to lump it – they could at least have said ‘sorry this is all we have’. Yeti’s aren’t cheap and when you pay premium price you expect a premium product and premium service.

If you can get it wrapped cheaply, maybe do that. Alternatively, sell the frame and new rear on and put the money to a new frame – Yeti or otherwise. Or as mentioned above, new black forks, whilst thinking about whether you’ll buy Yeti again.

There must be some kind of on/off switch tho. If he had a puncture he’d need to stop the motor whilst he got the wheel off and the service car turned up with the replacement. Or at the beginning of the race, or at those points where the peloton comes to a halt behind a crash – if he couldn’t stop the wheel spinning then it’d be dead obvious

The more insane conspiracy theorists are saying that the way his bike spins after he’s fallen off it shows that he has a secret motor fitted.

What else could it be?

Not conspiracy-theorising but with a freewheel the wheel stops dead usually…

In the 70’s we just got the candles out, and carried on reading, which is what we’d being doing before the lights went out.

Being slightly more dependent on electricity these days I suspect it won’t be quite as much fun but I have my tin opener, camping stove and down jacket so I’m sure I’ll survive.

Sadly we won’t be able to get onto STW and tell each other incredulous stories of our neighbours not being able to cope 🙂

Apparently the upper echelons of German Government departments have gone back to writing internal memos on paper than than email, and having face meetings rather than voice calls, after the leaked information about American eavesdropping.

Struck me last night watching the programme that’s the obvious solution… Same for payment transactions you don’t want tracked – go back to cash.

The OP hasn’t really said how his introversion affects his day-to-day working, but unless he’s fallen into a career where extroversion is prized (marketing? sales?), then there shouldn’t be any reason why that on its own is enough to turn folk against him.

I work in Marketing… and I’ve never felt like I fitted, in 18 years.

One obvious solution of course is to change career. Problem with that is that when I’m given the opportunity to work in my own way, people say my work is very good + I enjoy a lot of what marketing is and make a respectable income from it (not to be sniffed at under current economic circumstances)

My current solution to this is to be a contractor – being a solo operator and not part of the company structure/culture seems to mean that people don’t mind what they perceive as my oddities so long as I deliver the project (which I do). e.g. I had a perm job a few years ago which lasted a year and I still don’t know why they had such a problem with me when they threw me out. I then went back to a previous client as a contractor and lasted 3 years… with very complementary feedback all round.

brooess don’t suppose any of the books you mention have any advice regarding managing or coping with introversion?
This is a second login I made to raise my own particular struggle with one particular area of life, though has so far I’ve been too shy to raise it

Yes – get Susan Cain – Quiet, from Amazon and spend a few hours on your own reading it 😉
There’s an awesome chapter about 3/4 of the way through which suggests how you can find ways to act extravert when you need to, which is essentially find something you really believe in, and it’s much easier to find the energy to change your behaviour in those moments when you need to (and then go back and sit quietly on your own!)

Barack Obama is an introvert apparently, so it can be done

This is a good precis but you need to read the book to get the real benefit of her insights

Susan Cain TED talk

Also worth finding someone who can do Myers Briggs with you. It gives you more granular detail around your preferences. Since I did that and accepted that I’m an introvert I’ve just given up trying to be extravert and I’m much more settled for it…

in Sesame street style: today the word for the day is : ambitious

I have mixed feelings about separation from the main carriageways. I’m not sure its the right answer.

Agree with you on whether I like segregation or not – but with the main reason people giving for not riding being safety, projects like this will go a very long way to getting the masses out on bikes – and from that comes the culture change around acceptance of bikes as legitimate forms of transport and change in driver behaviour…

There’s space for comments in the consultations, I put comments in there about driver behaviour being the real big issue and that the existence of paths shouldn’t stop me from using the road…

Well worth using these consultations to express your view even if you don’t wholeheartedly agree with the proposal

A Murdoch news channel running a story of secret hacking into other people’s phone calls?

No irony there at all… I’d def take it with a pinch of salt

Shows how powerful STW has got! One thread complaining about them and we get this 🙂

Same query just been posted on the other forum, so I suggest ‘yes’

Where do MAMILs go on holiday?

Richmond Park and Box Hill it would appear

dour Scots

They’ll be even more dour in a few years when they realise Salmond was hiding the figures for a reason 😀

But then the Yorkshire woman should cheer up cos all the jobs will have moved South!

I love Lou Reed/VU and I love Metallica but not this…

I’m going to need a different bike for each of those arent I?

Just tyres…

Not quite – it’s different wheelsize. 650B makes the loam come alive.

Sorry kittens…

Be interesting to see if this is GQ’s Ratner Moment…

One of the best things about social media is how much harder it is for media owners and power mongers to own the narrative… and so much easier for them to be ridiculed when they make blatant errors of judgement…

i.e. you’re kidding 😯

I always assume there’s something wrong with them.
You can be happy riding a bike, or playing with your kids, or when you’re down the pub, but being happy in an office means there’s something wrong with your powers of perception of reality 🙂

Is it turning into jobs and wages though? Cos if not positive factors like this will feel irrelevant to the electorate…

Positive economic performance is not really meaningful for the man on the street if it doesn’t provide him with a job and an income.

Not sure there’ll be too many buyers on STW!

very happy with my Lezyne Zecto – USB rechargable, very bright and lots of settings

please tell me what you think of the listing so if needs be i can go back to the EA and get changes made.

No woodburner or Audi or LED lighting…

Looking at the map, the river to the west looks like you could be at risk of flooding, which would concern me if there’s any history of flooding…

You couldn’t even get a studio flat for that price in London…

Wiggle reviews aren’t complementary (for the 700c ones at least), although there’s not a lot of them to judge

Houses round here are literally selling in a matter of days, it’s mental.

This seems counter-intuitive to all the news we keep hearing about falling living standards, falling real wages, no wage rises, falling GDP per capita and interest rates due to go up – you would expect this kind of behaviour when people are feeling flush and confident about the future… I saw a stat last week which said less than half of UK households have £1500 spare in savings which sounds pretty close to the wire to me

I wonder if people are rushing to get in on fixed deals whilst they can still afford them before interest rates go up…

Last time we had people queuing up to buy and offering more than asking was 2004+

@brooess, that’s a generalization,

to be fair it’s not a deep analysis! I’m looking at SE – Forest Hill, Sydenham etc which used to be affordable and then went mental last year – £350-425k for 2-bed flats which previously were more like £200-250.
Where asking prices are being dropped it’s from £425 to £400 or £400 to £350 – so from utterly obscene to still unaffordable…

Bromley asking prices aren’t falling…

Still, it’s a good sign for those of us that want to buy that people have stopped thinking they can just write down lots of noughts and expect to get it…

Was that last month (july)data brooess – where the market appeared to slow down based on year on year data

This months(august) data showed almost universal growth over same time last year again.

Depends which source you read 🙂
Nationwide I think said prices were going up
Hometrack said the opposite – as does my observation of asking prices on Rightmove (for London at least)

One website (Guardian or Telegraph, not sure which) even carried both headlines on the same day…

Where are you?

In London, asking prices are dropping – quite dramatically in some cases and places are selling much less quickly than they were a year ago.
This observation comes from the Property Bee add-on to Firefox rather than media scare stories…

The general sense from various research being released suggests prices have got to the point where few people can afford the prices being asked given the rises over the last year, and that this change has only come about in the last couple of months…

If the cat keeps making a bolt for the door then stop taking her to blacksmithing lessons 🙂

IGMC

Well the problem;s been bubbling away for some time now and it’s not gone away…

I suspect government are far more worried than we think – Putin’s a sharp operator and is playing the long game for Russian glory and maintaining his own grip on power.

I don’t think he wants to go to war – he’s calculating rather than mad and even under current financial constraints, US and Europe are very well equipped militarily.

However, he definitely wants us to think he’s prepared to go further.

WW1 was by some estimates an accident – the opposing powers didn’t want to go to war but pushed the brinkmanship too far. He may end up doing this if we don’t take care and always leave him a get-out…

I do hope it takes the Russian money out of London houses so I can afford somewhere to live!

I’m sure most motorists will leap at the chance of paying for something they don’t use,

I don’t use my insurance but I still pay for it because I don’t have the choice – simple 🙂

Agreed there are pragmatic considerations but there’s some very strong factual evidence which demonstrates that when I drive I’m far more of a risk to cyclists than I am when I ride… and therefore the burden of responsibility rests on me more as a driver than a cyclist…

First car I bought I paid with a £5k loan. Lost loads of ££ when I sold it – paying interest on a depreciating asset… insanity. I’d rather have a cheaper car and pay with cash than throw money away like that again.

When people own a house which is worth less than the loan on it, we call it negative equity and the country goes into a spiral of depression!

IMO if you’re not paying in cash then try and find some kind of 0% finance deal. Or buy on a credit card and then move the balance on a 0% balance transfer if you can find one

Just for clarity! I think:
a) the driver should pay for the cycling training that Neil proposes – on the basis that drivers are proven to be the cause of collisions with cyclists most of the time (c 70%) – as a driver I pay for all the other measures put in place to pay for my disproportionate damage to the world around me (ie: VED re pollution, lessons and test re killing people, insurance re damaging other people’s property)

b) that would cover off most people who want to ride. For those cyclists who don’t drive and would therefore not receive training we should encourage but not make it compulsory e.g. your idea about it coming with every bike purchase…

If it became a compulsory part of the driving test and licence renewal then within 10 years the majority of the public would have received training, some may even be encouraged to ride more and drive less.

Agreed – compulsory for drivers (which will in effect mean most of UK adults) but optional (whilst encouraged) for non-drivers (kids + the bulk of new cyclists in London and other urban areas.

So we could achieve mass take-up of cycling training without the negative message of ‘you’re not allowed to cycle without a licence’ + the benefit of driver education – win win win!

Who’s going to pay for all that?

The driver – I paid for my lessons and for my test, I pay VED and insurance, why not training to ensure I don’t kill other road users?

Neil – I agree with you wholeheartedly on the benefits of the vast majority of cyclists being given training, I just don’t think making it compulsory will achieve mass takeup – it’s quite likely to put people off buying the bike in the first place = fewer cyclists.

Plus, when the danger is proven to come mainly from lousy and aggressive driving, it won’t necessarily resolve the issue of cyclists getting hurt. For e.g. I ride primary around parked cars and through pinch points and twice in a month I was tailgated to the point of getting myself off the road because I was scared I was going to get run over – the training of the cyclist did nothing to help me keep safe – training of the driver to know why cyclists ride primary and to keep hold of their own anger, would have avoided the danger 100%.

Better to find other ways of persuading people to get training than compulsion IMO. e.g. Cougar’s suggestion above. Also, UK Government are doing a lot of work with Behavioural Science to encourage people towards more legal and healthy behaviours which avoids compulsion but can still lead to mass changes in behaviour (like pension auto-enrolement), by changing the way the choice is presented to people.

I’d 100% agree with attaching it to the driving test – but that’s about improving driver behaviour around cyclists (which would be a major step forward with c40% of people who’d like to cycle not doing do because they think the roads are too dangerous) – it’s not about compelling cyclists to ride to a higher standard.

Uniqlo?

My observations of the people who have to work with psychopaths is that the psycho’s manipulations and lies are so shocking and damaging, that people do get very (passively) angry with them, and become rather obsessed about trying to uncover them… seeing them get away with ruining other people’s opportunities to progress at work can be hard to take…

However, getting that emotionally involved gets you nowhere. Leaving the organisation and getting out of their sphere of influence is your best action OP.