+1 for foam roller. Assuming MTFU is out of your reach 😉

Isn’t that what Cav does? Seems to get quite well-rewarded for his efforts 🙂

Has anyone explained to him how these things are done? We’ve had a lot of problems with new members not pointing out holes and stuff or not singling out in traffic but tbh, we’ve not really done enough coaching so can’t really blame them…

I thought the plan was just to plonk all the Fracking wells in the ‘desolate’ north? With it all being so grim and horrid, and populated as it is by frightful uncouth trogladites, and communists?

If you live somewhere nice, you probably vote Tory, so therefore there’s nothing to worry about

Well you keep moaning about the mines being closed down, and here’s an opportunity for some re-industrialisation to remind you of how it used to be. Make your mind up! 🙂

I’m happy for fracking to take place so long as the risks are properly identified and mitigated against which I know is a big ask.

There’s a lot to be said for diversifying our energy sources and there’s certainly political risk from expecting to get our gas cheap from Russia for the forseeable. If it drops energy prices and supports economic growth/helps pay off the national debt (which is huge and growing) then well-managed fracking could help sort out a lot of our problems

Instead of spending time being anti-fracking, thinking about how to reduce the pollution from excessive use of cars and lorries might be a bit more constructive IMO

Is there even any evidence that fracking will take place in our national parks or is it just a story that NIMBYs like to tell? (note there’s not a single source for any of the claims made in the petition other than a link to a Guardian article!)

I remember when Chris Bonnington put forward a proposal to ban driving in the Lakes and there was a hell of a fuss…

He’s lost an opportunity to learn from the experience, based on your description of events. Sooner or later he’ll just drive straight into someone, believing it was nothing he did wrong 😯

Bibs for everything, always

5’11 here with 33 inside leg. Medium Soul with 70mm and layback seatpost. Cy firmly recommended medium (well worth a chat with him) and it’s been spot on

I’m hearing more and more people say they’re fed up of jobs they don’t enjoy, working with bosses who don’t care or provide any leadership and working for employers who feel no sense of employee needs…. and that self-employment looks a lot more attractive (in part because they think contractors are all millionaires!)

I’ve been contracting for the last 3 years and it’s been really useful to realise that the unhappiness with work was primarily my reaction to a crap situation that created the stress. As a contractor the work situation is often still crap but because I’m not an ’employee’ who has to do what ‘the boss’ says, I find it easier to deal with and don’t get so stressed. I still think i’m a long way from my perfect job but I’m far far happier than I used to be and it’s a very workable solution from my point of view

So, freelance might well work for you but remember you have to create your own income, crap bosses will still be crap people when they’re your clients, and any issues you have with your job will not go away without significant self-examination and a change in your own approach.

WhoCanFixMyCar?[/url]

Here’s the solution. Scammers will disappear eventually once we have the choice not to use them.

Looking at the review link posted ^^ there’s a whole load of reviews of housebuilders and every one was one star…

This isn’t going to help house prices really – everyone says bring prices down by building more, but with such an appalling reputation, no-one’s going to buy one of these new builds and will look at established houses only – and you still have massive competition for a few desirable houses…

Last time I sold a bike I offered to deliver it to the buyer. Cost me in petrol money but gave me security…

I know it was made in jest ^^ but agreeing to meet outside the local cop shop is not a bad idea is it?

Out of interest why do roadies ride down the main roads such as the A25/A24 etc?

Same reason as people drive on them. To get somewhere else they want to be. Better than sitting at home and better than trying to drive/ride through the fields on either side of the road 😀

More seriously – you have to spend some time on the main roads to get to the quiet country roads which are your main aim. When we ride from South London to Box Hill we go through Croydon. Not because we like it or because it’s good riding, simply because it’s between where we start riding and where we want to get to…

To the OP: probably best if you give your driving licence back until you’ve grown up

some rather lovely Ladies in light flowy dresses

Quite. London is visually great for males and lesbians. I’m not sure what the equivalent attraction is for the ladies. Lots of very rich men?

Unless you’re a couple and both earning 60k plus you’ll be finding it hard to make the most of all the opportunities and the place becomes unattractive.

Utter bollocks

With 2 bed flats in Sydenham and West Norwood (until recently not very desireable) now going at £350-400k and even renting such a place c £1200/month, how does someone on median wage of £35k have the spare cash to go out?

And ‘oh living a fantastic lifestyle in London is easy when you don’t have a mortgage’. Really? I wonder why more people don’t try that?

Precisely. You’re very lucky/have worked very hard to get there, sure, but it’s hardly the norm for your average Londoner is it?

Binners has a point about social cleansing I think. Unless you’re a couple and both earning 60k plus you’ll be finding it hard to make the most of all the opportunities and the place becomes unattractive. There’s been a few reports this year of employers saying they can’t afford to get graduates into London any more – rent/mortgage too high to be able to pay them a living wage.

Boris better keep an eye on that – London needs people at every income level to work – it’s a working city with cleaners/waiters/office workers as well as the City boys, oligarchs and chief execs. If it’s too pricey for the mid or lower paid, the whole place will decline. The rich need everyone else to be there too. Bit like the aristocracy need the working class to run their estates and the middle class to manage them…

Interestingly housing prices have been dropping for the last few months. A bust (20-30%) will do the place some good in the long run to keep the new and younger generation moving in…

How will we display our wealth and social status ( ability to get credit) if no one owns a car?

^^ this. You bet your bottom dollar that despite there being many many rational arguments for self-driving cars, there’ll be some people/interest groups who’ll be against them. Their rationale will be ostensibly rational but it’ll just be a cover story for their desire to continue trying to get a feeling of self-worth from the car they own.

KPMG report

I read this last year. IIRC they reckon 10 years and self-driving cars will be a reality. The trial in Milton Keynes is already in plan for next year, which is clearly a proof of concept.

All the moral and legal stuff are known aspects which will need to be worked through.

I say bring it on. Mass usage and excessive usage of cars is destroying our communities, relationships, mental and physical health…

I’ve seen a lot of kindness given to strangers in London. When you’re here every day you see it quite often. Seats offered to pregnant ladies, help carrying luggage up stairs etc.

It can be a tough city to live in and the best way to deal with it is just to protect yourself by putting on an outer shell. That often gets interpreted as rudeness IME. + these events aren’t done in a showy way so can get missed by the casual observer.

I think it’s a shame when people from outside London accuse us of being rude, I don’t think it reflects the masses. Of course there are anecdotes and situations, but it’s not normal. It’s just a very busy city with a lot of energy so once in a while you get some conflict… you’re bound to with 12m+ people

Road riding I do with a club so I tend to spend the time chatting rather than thinking.
Mountain biking – like most others ^^ I’m focussing too much on the present to think too much – it’s very meditative – which is why I suspect we love it so much

The hares are much faster than rabbits, I think.

Tortoises are even faster than hares, apparently

I’ve thought about a long cycle tour but never got around to it.
A couple of considerations:
1. Maybe it’s best with someone else, so you can share the experience and chat as you ride along
2. SE England is probably not the most enjoyable place to cycle tour. I would have thought empty, beautiful places like Wales, Scotland, France, Spain etc would be a better experience
3. If you’re not enjoying it, go home. No point killing your enjoyment of cycling for the sake of completion

If you’re going to stop and look at something, PLEASE check behind you first 😀
Equally, check for cyclists before walking into the road…

Mate of mine who lives in the Lakes but has spent a fair bit of time in London points out that one way to deal with London is to have no expectation of being able to walk in a straight line. Remember that and getting about is a whole lot easier 🙂

There’s a lot to be said for wandering around Hyde Park when the weather’s this nice too.

Science Museum is good. They have a Rover Safety bicycle hanging from the ceiling – it’s rather noticeable how similar it is to the “super-hi-tech” things we fork out several grand for these days. I think it might even have 650B wheels (sorry kittens)

I rode past Buckingham Palace on the way to work today 🙂

Moved down here for uni aged 18 from Cheshire – and still here 25 years later.
Did leave a few years ago and moved back up North. Missed the place like hell and came back.
Currently exiled in Bromley due to silly house prices but hoping to move back in – the energy, culture and general positive attitude is addictive after a while, I don’t imagine I’ll leave until I retire when I’ll probably move up to the Lakes

“These threads remind me of “Who needs a Full Suss anyway?” and “Why do we need disk breaks?”

Really? – full suss was an obvious and massive benefit – same as front suss was over rigid. Disc brakes too – an obvious and massive benefit over cantis and V-brakes which was well overdue and well worth the money. Both were genuine, new innovations too – adapted from motorbike technology. 650B’s an ancient standard, nothing new, no real advance.

Using a razor to shave? Who’d have thunk it? 😀

Shoeing Solutions

Any idiot can shout “shoo” at a horse!

Why do you think bike companies are pushing 27.5″? It’s because the mtb market has stagnated & they are trying to kick it up the Arse

This. 100%.

I used to MTB round Surrey Hills every weekend from 2005-20010. You barely saw a road bike round there. Now the A25 is jammed with groups – to the point where you daren’t go anywhere near the national speed limit, but keep down to 30/40 cos there’s likely to be a group round the next corner. Which is 100% fine by me.

Peaslake Stores – same – as many roadies as MTB these days. It’s all bikes, it’s all good. It might just save the UK from sinking under the (over)weight of its population 😀

If the industry had faith that 650B was better than 26 they’d have brought it in as an option like they did with 29, not forced in on people like bullies.

One major factor they’ve forgotten about – wages have stagnated, living standards are falling, lots of people are skint. MTB is not an essential purchase! Few people are going to spank £2k + on a new bike they don’t really want to have to buy or think is any better if they can keep the old 26er running for a few more years and keep their readies for food/rent/mortgage payments.

I hope 650B fails – it’s a nasty way of doing business…

Sorry, kittens.

Great programme. Inspirational but no ego about him at all. I wish I got to work with people like that

The guy cutting my hair this morning was convinced that when he hit a cyclist when he turned left without checking the road was clear – that he’d done nothing wrong… in fact he has going to knock off the next cyclist who did that 😯
I was sitting in the barber’s chair in full lycra having ridden there but he still seemed surprised when I made it clear I thought that was pretty offensive.

People seem to go funny when they get in their cars

even more unbalanced than ever, looks like the banks gobbled up QE and kept it to themselves.

Kind of. They appear to have dished it out as mortgages to people who can’t afford to get in any more debt!

Remember when people said QE would cause inflation – and a year later we had 20% increase in London house prices when everyone’s still skint? No causality, obviously 😯

According to TradingEconomics, exports have been pretty flat since 2011 and are now falling?

City AM carried a similar story about how poorly exports are performing

I think the Tories might have gone mad. There’s clearly a whole big mess sitting underneath the patina of good news stories.
They’re putting a positive spin on the situation so they can win the election. But it’ll be after the election, when interest rates go up and growth slows that the debt and weaknesses will crystalise.
And who’ll be in power? The Tories… so they’re just setting themselves up for 3 terms out of office again…

Surely they’d be better off admitting it’s not great but pointing out they’ve kept things from getting worse than the mess they inherited. They should let Labour win the election, who will then screw up the economy completely, and allow the Tories to walk back into Downing St for another 3 term session! Worked for Maggie 🙂

Then again I see people at work create massive screw ups for themselves without apparently being aware they;re setting themselves up – and then seem genuinely shocked when they finally get called on it. I guess power makes people’s heads go funny…

People just expect discounts these days, presumably due to CRC, Amazon etc.

and massively in debt but don’t want to have to cut down on buying shiny things…

got a promotion this month but paypacket today says no more cash in it.

I’m a contractor so this doesn’t affect me but there’s been a reorg in my place over the last couple of months and apparently pay rises have not accompanied promotions and increases in responsibility – suggests there’s not a lot of cash around.

My client/employer’s revenues are very closely linked to UK consumer expenditure…

But if governments want to distort the free market in housing – even capitalist Tories (?)

That Gideon is playing games with the housing market to me is a massive warning sign – if there was a real, sustainable recovery feeding through to the electorate – and likely to be that way by the time of the election – then he wouldn’t have had to do it would he?

It strikes me as a lack of confidence in his own policies. And if Tories feel the need to manipulate free markets to get themselves re-elected we really are in trouble!

Can anyone else see a pattern in this graph?

I’ve seen the aftermath of infidelity and it ain’t pretty

The cycling community has to be the best in the world at getting wound up over tweets. The organisation, and relentlessness with which they go about their flaming of people and companies involved with anything like the tweet in the OP is staggering.

Animal Rights groups + Gay And Lesbian rights groups are pretty active when they want to be. As were Racial Equality groups back in the 60’s.

My observation to the House of Commons Transport Committee was that in nearly 40 years of cycling I’ve never received the amount of abuse and harassment that have in the last couple of years – couple this increase with the ability for a dispersed group to make itself heard, and the lack of support we feel we get from the Law – a lot of cyclists are taking matters into their own hands…

All core muscle groups, not just abs or lats – or you’ll become imbalanced.
Lots of stretching and flexibility – especially hamstrings and lower back which get very tight for cyclists
Worth some upper body work for biceps, triceps and shoulders for sprints and hill climbing.

Just do yoga!

Tricky. Whenever I owe friends money – generally from a trip away, I get it back to them asap. I value their friendship, not their role as a bank! + I don’t want money to get in the way of the relationship.

Give them a few days I say – and definitely let them know how you feel, that you want the money back and that it was given to you by your Dad and that’s why you want the money returned.

IME some people don’t understand that other people have different values attached to money and because they wouldn’t worry about chasing money they’d lent to others, they don’t worry about paying back their own debt. I think that’s insensitive but there you go.

You have to let them know how you feel and how important it is. If you still get no response then I guess they’ve demonstrated how importantly they value your friendship…

One of the problems the internet has brought us is many things that consumers used to pay for are now effectively free. For a web-based business this is fine as the marginal cost to the business of supplying one more unit is zero. That works well for software and other IT or service-based products.

But for a owner-managed bricks and mortar shop where sales assistant time spent fitting a tube for free, has an opportunity cost attached to it e.g. the other customer who wanted to spend £1k on a bike who leaves because the shop assistant was too busy to deal with them.

Customers need to learn that businesses only survive if they make a profit – especially small businesses, and stop acting like spoilt children. What’s partly offensive her IMO is the customer telling Al how he should run his business, when his opinion wasn’t asked for…

I remember when I was in ad agencies having to explain to a client that if they didn’t pay for the time it took to make all the amends they wanted, I’d have to make one of the account managers redundant… there’s a moral obligation to expecting stuff for free in many circumstances…

Christ alive! Does she really intend to go out and drive into a cyclist?

I’ve sent this to the House of Commons Transport Committee on Cycling Safety – part of the report they published last week talked about driver attitudes… and asked them if they’re prepared to make a PR story around it. I suspect they’re unlikely to but this really is pretty shocking