+ 1 for speed limits – esp 30 limits. Have you ever tried driving in a 30 zone at 30 and not had someone tailgating?

does anyone else ever get the temptation when cut up/pulled out on to just not brake and brace for the impact?

No. I’d be a broken mess by now if I did!

I rarely get told off, cos I’m very well-behaved. The only time I do get told off is when I’m cycling down the road in primary position. Usually by someone angry, fat and ignorant 😀

If you’re anywhere near London then Condor are a good bet. As you can spec exactly what you want, the cost of the bike over 3+ years of ownership comes out as good value as you never feel the need to upgrade…

For £3k I’d spec my own bike tbh – for the same reasons as above

Um, online banking/email?

I’m no fan of Miliband but if we refuse to vote for him because he doesn’t photograph well then we’re idiots…

Refuse to vote for him because he has no obvious policies, fair enough

No positive vision for Britain to survive as globalisation changes the balance of global power – fair enough…

Too much ideology and too little pragmatism, maybe…

5,4,3,2,1….

Zero house price growth over 10 years? Or v slow, slight price drop?
Wages will catch up + gives first time buyers time to save up a deposit

Or just let the usual boom/bust pattern which is a feature of capitalism run its course…

I was wondering how they got them back uphill…

Part of the problem is that house building is massivelly lucrative for the government

At a time when the national debt is massive and the government needs to get hold of every last penny of income it possibly can so our future economic output doesn’t just get eaten up in interest payments, leaving the country in long term penury.

As upset as I am by the extra-ordinarily high house prices, we’re in such a tight spot, you can see why Gideon is playing the games he is playing.

The worry of course, is that if he’s this desperate for income, just how bad is our debt and our ability to pay it off?

It’s on the skinny side. That said, my winter top is Mavic and I love it. Good quality and very comfy.
I’d try and buy it from a shop so you can try out sizes first. I spent 20 mins swapping between the large and the medium before deciding on medium. usually a 40 inch chest

Poor bloke. probably spent his whole life ranting against something or other instead of enjoying himself

Molgrips – exaggerating to make a point, to a degree, yes.

However:

Individuals now owe a total of £1.43 trillion,

On average, that means each adult in the UK owes £28,489, including any home loans.

Which is higher than median annual income

Since the start of the economic downturn, median household income and GDP per person have both fallen. However, the fall in UK median household income has been smaller than the fall in GDP per person over the same period. Between 2007/08 and 2011/12, median income fell from £24,100 to £23,200, a percentage drop of 3.8%, while GDP per person fell by 6.5%.

Source

EPO stops up our smiling muscles working, that’s why 😯

@Edukator – we are due for a long period of low interest rates, I don’t see what is going to trigger a fall. Any rate rise is going to be relatively modest.

Ahem – from the other thread about our obsession with house prices

I remember when my then GF and I had signed out lives away on an Endowment mortgage of all of £42k ( 2 bed cottage) when the interest rate went from 4 to 17% over the course of just 48 hours

No sleep for a bit after that

No-one can make assertions like ‘we are due for a long period of low interest rates’ unless you’ve overcome the challenge of time travel! Especially when conditions have no historical precedent.

What seems more likely is that BoE/UK government will do everything they can to avoid doing it because the country is so indebted there’ll be a collapse in confidence if they too it too quickly and too soon, and we’d be back in another bust.

On the other hand, to ensure growth doesn’t get out of control (and lead to another bust), they may have to raise interest rates.

I’m pretty glad I’m not involved in trying to get that decision right tbh.

Was too busy enjoying the sunshine to stop and take pics 😀

We’re all assuming here that prices are going to continue going up…

I posted this chart a few weeks ago. There’s an interesting and repeated pattern don’t you think? Following the overall trend, its suggests the bottom will be around 2018.

London has already got the point that people simply can’t afford to pay the mortgage needed to pay the prices being asked – and now the amount they can borrow is being limited, sellers won’t be able to sell unless they drop their prices. It’s less a case of unwilling to pay that much but simply unable.

I’m only 41 and this has happened 3 times in my lifetime already according the graph

Part of the initial boom in prices was a result of the first round of sex discrimination legislation. Before this the amount couples could borrow was based on a single income. After the legislation borrowing and consequently house prices are largely based on two incomes. Just one of those unforeseen consequences (unless your seriously into conspiracy theories) of otherwise worthy legislation

(This doesn’t let Mrs T & her cronies off their share of responsibility for the later booms)

In a similar vein, my Mum blames feminism – meant more women going to work which doubled the amount a family could afford to pay for a house, too much money chasing too few goods, and prices went up.

Then in the 90’s BTL came in as a concept and people thought owning 2+ houses for themselves was ok, whilst blithly ignoring what it meant for other people who also would like to buy a house, but to live in.

The only reason I’m within a fighting chance of being able to buy a house (living in London, aged 41) is because a) help from my parents, in part from money from my gran, which itself came from selling her house when she died in 2001) and b) some level of inheritance that’s left from them when they die(a chunk of which will also have come from the increase in value in their house)

So basically, no-one wins, not even the middle-classes, who are in a minority in the UK. Meanwhile anyone not in a high-earning job or help from family money is screwed… it’s not a great outcome from anyone’s perspective really.

There’s a bigger picture here though of a country which seems to have seriously lost perspective on what’s important – we’re in masses of debt because people are convinced that status and happiness comes fro what they buy (house, clothes, car, holiday) etc, rather than who you are, how you treat people, and what contribution you make to the world…

Far more people die from preventable health issues than on the roads

What you need here is some joined up thinking in government.

IIRC, obesity-related deaths are around 30,000 in the UK (have not been able to find a source for this though)
Meanwhile, the main reason people don’t cycle (when surveyed) is they’re too scared

So people are dying of bad driving but not in a way which the recorded numbers are showing…

I suspect cycling campaigners and health organisations will have pointed out this connection to ministers but as there’s no direct causation proven by putting these figures together, it’s easy for ministers to side-step

To the point that i had one guy get out at a set of traffic lights hammering on my window and screaming how dare i tell him he is driving like a bellend.

Thereby proving you to be 100% correct – if he was that out of control of his anger whilst driving, he’s not emotionally fit to be driving really!

Impossible to plot but it would be useful to see it against the introduction of ABS/Air bags etc etc.

Looking at the dates below (from Wikipedia) and the graph above, there;’s no correlation – deaths went up slightly after ABS was introduced, and no decrease when airbags were introduced – was stable for a while

ABS: In 1985 the Ford Scorpio was introduced to European market with a Teves electronic system throughout the range as standard. For this the model was awarded the coveted European Car of the Year Award in 1986, with very favourable praise from motoring journalists. After this success Ford began research into Anti-Lock systems for the rest of their range, which encouraged other manufacturers to follow suit.

Air bags: In Europe, airbags were almost entirely absent from family cars until the early 1990s. The first European Ford to feature an airbag was the facelifted Escort MK5b in 1992; within a year, the entire Ford range had at least one airbag as standard. By the mid-1990s, European market leaders such as Vauxhall/Opel, Rover, Peugeot, Renault and Fiat had included airbags as at least optional equipment across their model ranges. By the end of the decade, it was very rare to find a mass market car without an airbag, and some late 1990s products, such as the Volkswagen Golf Mk4 also featured side airbags.

Post-ride stretching – British Cycling has some good cycling-specific suggestions
Yoga for flexibility and core strength
To be strong up hills, ride a lot uphill!

Can anyone provide a link to some data which demonstrates that driving is getting worse?

Whether cycling, walking or driving, my impression is that not bothering to look properly or just outright lawlessness is on the increase but I don’t know if the data reflects this or I’m just getting grumpier in my old age 😀

Certainly when I rode on the road as a kid in the 80’s, I never got verbal abuse or people trying to knock me off, and I didn’t in 2005 when I started road riding seriously but it’s happening an awful lot at the moment – but that may just be because I’m riding so many more road miles.

One anecdote is nearly getting hit twice in a day when I stopped at amber lights – the cars behind had no intention whatsoever of stopping. But tbh that’s been a problem since I first started driving regularly in London so I’m really not sure if the ‘falling standards’ is factually correct or just something that people are noticing a lot more

unless it works out to be more practical than tying £7000 up in a depreciating asset that spends about 21 out of 24 hours a day sat still, empty while I pay for the privilege of leaving it there.

When a decent alternative (self-driving car which you can book to turn up at your house when you need it) becomes a real-life proposition I think you’ll see a lot of people realise how utterly lunatic the private car is as a financial proposition – as per ^^^

let alone the benefits of being able to sleep, work, eat, chat etc etc whilst you travel

In terms of real-world-ready solutions, self-driving cars are the closest option to becoming reality IMO

All those drivers using their phones/shaving/doing makeup/reading/Facebooking etc are already demonstrating they’d rather not have to do the driving themselves…

Ironic that a profession full of right-wingers is going on strike!

I don’t think so – every car/cab still needs a driver (for now…)

True, I meant to say a trained human – it basically removes the need for cab drivers to do the knowledge which makes it easier to be a cab driver, which means more people can drive cabs, which will bring down prices to the consumer..

Careless driving? Yes.

Seems like fear of a competitive threat to me. The Knowledge has provided a high barrier to entry for years and protected the cab industry and its drivers from competition. SatNav and apps has brought down that barrier.

People bang on about ‘immigrants taking our jobs’ but this is a very good case study for technology taking away the need for a human – which is going to play out across a wide range of jobs in years to come.

Cabbies need to adapt to compete and offer something better than Uber if they want to survive – they’ve had it good for a very long time…

For instance, being willing to drive South of the River after midnight!

From the video I’d say he nearly died. One second later and he’ve been toast, possibly you too, and the truck driver traumatised…

Penny Farthing – for when you need to go proper retro

Data shows the number of people dying on UK roads falling massively since 70s and 80’s which would indicate we don’t really have a problem.

But I’d like to see a study which shows what the causality is – is it people driving better or is it cars being so strong and with so many features to protect the occupants?

Anecdotal experience as a driver, pedestrian and cyclist suggests there’s a generalised level of aggression, dozyness and lawlessness which is getting worse. Surveys of people who’d like to cycle but are too scared to do so provides some evidence for this.

From a cyclist’s point of view in particular I’d like to see a massive clampdown on lousy driving – it’s spoiling my riding and stopping cycling from becoming a mass-transit option.

But I don’t think we can put in mass surveillance without some data showing a massive increase in law-breaking and injury to justify it first

It’ll be the same here soon enough.

Hope so – the number of people driving like dicks with impunity needs dealing with. No wonder so many people are too scared to cycle

I’d rather see telemetry used as a ‘punishment’.

I like that. Especially if it had some way of emailing the perpetrator at the end of the day with their bill for all the misdemeanours they’d perpetrated.

If traffic offences were properly captured and fined then the national debt would probably be sorted in a couple of years 😀

airing it again without a correction is really not helping.

how cynical do you need to be to believe the programme makers knew full well they’re peddling a myth? Just the TV equivalent of clickbait surely?

But yeah there does seem to be an image of “Youtube helmetcam road warrior” in the public’s mind, pretty sure that is down to some media misrepresentation and a lot of wilful or ignorant confirmation bias.

^^^ this – the camera-wearing rider is not the cause of the problem.
The anger and aggression was present in the driver when they got out of bed in the morning, and today’s target was the cyclist. Bear in mind that ‘road rage’ is used against all road users, not just cyclists…

Cyclists don’t ‘make’ drivers angry in some sense that the driver is passive in the whole process. They’re angry people who have a need to persecute or otherwise vent… they just pick the easy target.

If the media or a driver claims that someone wearing a camera on their helmet ‘made them angry’ then they’re being disingenuous at best

I find it a bit tragic that he gets such a slagging from cyclists.

^^^ this – if you weren’t there at the time and unless you’re a qualified cycle trainer, who are you to judge?

Every regular cyclist I know has tales of outright aggression and generalised carelessness which has led to either personal injury or just a deeply unpleasant experience… and the main reason why the general public won’t ride is because they’re too scared.

So whether we like ‘gobby YouTube’ cyclists or not, they serve a useful purpose in raising the public and Police’s awareness of the typical cyclist’s experience which will hopefully make riding safer and more pleasureable for us and everyone else in time…

This ^^^^

Interesting how so many long-standing corrupt/cheating setups/individuals have fallen in recent years… there’s something in the water which seems to be making it harder to get away with it… and people seem less willing to tolerate it any longer

I’d counsel that there’s no ‘ideal’ London commuter. What’s best can vary enormously depending on your route – distance and from where to where…

e.g. London is largely flat so if you work central but live Zone 3 or closer then singlespeed road bike (c 70 inch gear) will probably see you right. But if you live the wrong side of the Crystal Palace ridge then gears may be better…

Equally if you’re carrying a lot of stuff then panniers become necessary and therefore gears a better choice.

But gears can be a right pain with all the stop/start of many London commutes – traffic lights/junctions/traffic jams etc – constant changing down and then up again. I find a singlespeed ride much less hassle in this respect.

My favourite commuters have been:
A singlespeed Roadrat with flat bars and disc brakes – very nippy, upright position and stopped very well. But the rear axle couldn’t take the force of the discs and the rear wheel slipped all the time, and the horizontal dropouts made full mudguards a hassle.

My current Condor Tempo is my favourite – singlespeed steel frame with dropped bars and decent quality dual pivot brakes. 25mm tyres and a carbon fork + full mudguards. A London bike for London riding. Not cheap but you get to build it up exactly how you want so you don’t ever need to upgrade anything.

2 main things I would think about:
1. if you;re leaving it locked up public on a regular basis then either get something you’re not too worried about getting nicked, or that can be heavily disguised
2. Get your Bikeability training free from your local authority – anticipation + proper control of your bike win above disc brakes any day in my book 🙂

Despite the stories you hear, I find London riding more enjoyable than out of town – it’s a great way to see a beautiful city, often the quickest way to get around, drivers are very used to cyclists these days and there’s a real feel of London being a proper cycling city – just from the sheer numbers around 🙂

Anyone who criticises the posties for taking this action would be well-advised not to go anywhere near Liverpool and make comments like that in public – and if you’re not prepared to do that then maybe best not do it from behind a keyboard either. There are some things which just aren’t appropriate to be criticising.

You might want to take your lead from the Royal Mail

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “Any concerns about this delivery in Skelmersdale will be handled sensitively with fairness, dignity and fully respecting the views of individuals.”

In case you need reminding:

Ninety-six men, women and children died as a result of the Hillsborough Disaster on 15 April 1989. It remains the most serious tragedy in UK sporting history. Thousands suffered physical injury and/or long-term psychological harm.

Government Enquiry[/url]

convert – agreed, aggression usually just escalates…

IME it’s often the whole purpose of the initial aggression… but it’s not really the point here – try and hit someone with a tank like that because they kicked the caris hardly an appropriate escalation is it? Do we really want people with that level of latent aggression in charge of a car?

In the midst of an obesity crisis which is going to cost us £billions and the main reason people don’t want to cycle is because they’re too scared… there’s much bigger issues at stake in incidences like this