White kit for playing in the mud? 😯

I went to see a house to rent in Bromley today. The existing tenant (mid-30s) said she was moving out after 6 years to move back in with her parents so she could save for a deposit. I think she had a wedding ring on too.
That’s mad. How’re you supposed to plan for a family and invest in your pension if you can’t even afford your own place after you’re married?

I really can’t see how prices can even stay where they are, let alone go up if there aren’t enough buyers who can raise the cash. A market has to have buyers as well as sellers… and sellers seem to be being really greedy right now

In that London you find stuff on Rightmove, ring the estate agent and their stock answer is ‘it’s already gone’.
You’ll also walk into a place and think they’ve got mixed up and shown you the wrong one, cos it looks so different from the photos… they do something with the lighting to make them look a lot smarter and I’m also pretty sure they’re stretching photos to make rooms look bigger… you might as well just register with the agents and go and see places – the website approach seems pretty lame to me…

I can’t see how the recent jump has been good for anyone – in London house prices are now so high that even on a decent income there’s almost nothing affordable.
My 2-bed flat that I rent in SE London went for £300k a couple of months ago, and that’s leasehold with £190pcm service charge on top. I’ve given up on living in a London postcode and moving further out…

If even the wealthy can’t afford to buy, then surely it’s got to come shuddering to a halt? No market without buyers, surely?

I was chatting to one of our apprentices about this – he’s 17. His generation are walking away from Facebook, they think it’s old hat. But they love WhatsApp, and we came to the conclusion that’s why Facebook bought them…

Problem is, you can’t just ‘buy’ customers like that. As soon as WhatsApp becomes passe, all that cash will have been wasted and they’ll have to buy whatever new thing is the current fave, until that also becomes old hat.

Apps are really easy create and launch so their lifecycles are bound to be much quicker than other products or services – much easier for a new player to take all your customers.

This smacks of desperation to me…

Warren Street. On a jetski.

Is that a Polish/Russian rule or applying to all nationalities?

As it’s barely rained in London all week, Post-Flood rules do NOT apply. You can use either the Pre-Flood rules of 1954 or the Heatwave Articles (1976 v2.3.3)

There is an exception which may apply:
The maintenance guy for the Thames Barrier has lost his screwdriver and gone on the sick with the stress, so the Post-Flood rules will be enforced from next Tuesday at 11:58am…

In the meantime, walking from Bank to Liverpool St is permitted. From Tuesday, only wading, swimming and aquarobics allowed, inflatable armbands excluded

I thought it was penis service announcement 😳

e-bikes are kind of missing the obvious point about cycling – which is that it’s exercise and therefore good for you.
The internal combustion engine was invented for those that don’t want exercise – and we know what that does to people… 😯

FWIW taking a tow on an e-bike from a guy riding under his own steam is somewhat cheeky and a bit odd IMO

Um, this is is exactly why the industry has ‘brought back’ 650B and claimed they’ve had it wrong with 26 all these years… the market’s gone to road bikes and they’re looking at massive financial shortfalls with MTBs if they can’t get us all to buy new ones.
By and large 26 is perfectly fit for purpose – do you think we’d have been quite happily riding it for 25 years if it wasn’t?

That’s why they’ve not done the usual with new standards which is to give us the choice – but instead forced the issue by removing support for 26. Sorry, OP i know you’re not looking for a debate but it strikes me that the decision you’re thinking about is exactly what the bike companies are trying to push us into…

If 650B is that good and they’re confident it’s better, why is 26 being killed?

You can’t invoke post-flood rules in Mornington Crescent – there are no floods in London.

The bike industry have done themselves a lot of damage with the way they’ve handled 650b. A new standard to choose from is ok. To try and force all your customers’ installed base into obsolescence by refusing to support it, comes across as manipulation.
There’s something desperate about the way they’ve gone about it which seems different this time about all the other innovations we’ve had.

GP and tell them how you feel – let them make the diagnosis…

I highly recommend CBT – the world would be a far happier place if everyone did it. It can be a really positive experience as you let a lot of stuff go…

And obviously riding your bike 🙂

Looks pretty epic to me.
Given she has a pretty demanding day job as well as being mother to 3 kids that’s something else.
Really do hope the critics keep themselves to themselves. When most people are overweight and obese we need role models like her

I was with O2 and getting 14mg consistently for all that time. Got sold to Sky and dropped to 7mg almost immediately. Then the phone line stopped working and broadband down to 3mg at best…
Lousy. I;m moving house soon and won’t be staying with Sky

Buy Gore, buy once 🙂 I have a 9-year old gilet which looks as new.
The red Xenon jacket above – I have a blue one, is very good quality, very breathable. Proper tight roadie fit tho…

If you are _only_ doing admin rather than anything more creative / productive, then that’s a different matter.

Not only, but mainly. This part of the role has no authority. I fill in the forms for someone else to sign…

I have no problem doing the admin for something I’m overall responsible for e.g. when I was in ad agencies I had no problem managing the invoicing and I have no problem managing status reports and status meetings when I’m responsible for delivering a project – it’s being given admin for no real reason, which then takes up time I could be spending on adding proper value commensurate with my abilities and experience…

I’m contracting in-house. I look and sound like a perm person but am not PAYE with the end client.
No-one stays in the role for more than a few months because there’s no focus to it and it’s so badly managed. I’m third in the role in a year – I doubt they could make it perm – it would cost too much to recruit perm people every 6 months!

Contract says 7 months in this role and the job description is a bit vague but certainly doesn’t state financial admin is part of it.

I will have to make my feelings known to her first, but expect I’ll have to go to HR as I’ve no faith the line manage rwill take my request seriously – it’ll be easier for her to try and fob me off/refuse to listen, than to give me appropriate work…

Giving out praise is much harder than giving out criticism…

And I think we know who’s most respected across the world for their work between Morrissey and AA Gill.

“You shut your mouth, how can you say I go about things the wrong way” is a pretty apt quote I think 😀

Buy a posh bike which you’d feel stupid riding if you were only fit enough to bimble on it and let your pride take over and get you fitter so you can ride it fast…
Or a bike so nice that you want to ride it all the time.

Several months later your new bike will be a lot faster than the old one 🙂

City of London has a separate Police force.

Museum of London is well worth a visit. The City was the first part of London to be settled – well before Government and Monarchy turned up. Which shows you why the City can seem like it thinks it’s above the law – it kind of is as it got there first…

Also worth reading up on The Liberty of Norton Folgate

I never get people who say they don’t like London, it’s got the most fascinating history and you walk through it every day…

All the ones that make drivers feel so safe that they have to speed and generally drive like a lunatic to get some level of excitement back into their driving… it’s making cycling less pleasant than it should be!

What happens to all the water when it reaches London? Is the Thames through there deep and wide enough to handle whatever is arriving without any risk to person or property?

Nothing’s been mentioned about that I notice 🙁
The Thames barrier’s in place to stop the sea coming in, so we can’t necessarily open it to let water out that’s come down from upstream…

Hopefully though it will lead to all the foreign investment money that’s driving up house prices, leaving, so at least we can afford to buy somewhere to live, so long as it’s not a basement flat!

Really ?… I mean a few minutes.. a few seconds for a group riding to BC recomendations with a tail gunner calling ‘ car back ‘ and the pack sorting itself out . I reckon 30 secs maximum.

Ideally, yes. We have a lot of new riders in the clubs I ride in and not all are listening out for the shouts or confident enough to move quickly which can make things slower. Plus the groups are getting larger – we’re starting to split them now to make them easier to manage…

Really, do you actually ride like that? I’m alright jack, bollocks to the rest of you?

No absolutely not – that’s the point I’m making – people are judging cyclists and putting them in danger because they ASSUME, just as you’ve done, that there’s some kind of deliberate ‘sod you’ attitude.

This is how club riding works:
You ride together for social reasons
You ride two up for increased visibility for vehicles (safer for the driver and for the cyclists) and because it’s most efficient in the wind.
(Dulwich Paragon, one of my clubs, was formed in 1935 – before cars were in mass usage and before most of today’s drivers were born… so 2-abreast certainly was not invented as some kind of ‘sod you’ to drivers!
So we ride along quite happily down quiet country lanes with no traffic in either direction – legal, safe and social…
A car comes up behind. People at the back shout ‘single out’ if they think the road’s wide enough for the car to overtake. No point singling out if it’s not (that’s a safety issue, not a ‘sod you’)
For a group of any size 8/12+ this process will take a few minutes whilst we all change pace so we can slot in behind one another without taking anyone out (which would be a danger for the riders and the driver)…

In the meantime the driver will have had to slow down.

Most drivers in my experience are ok with this. Some aren’t. Some, like you, make assumptions that we’re playing childish games, when in fact most of the time we’re mature adults, trying to show some consideration, whilst keeping safe.

But it’s bloody hard sometimes to keep calm when people start judging us when they themselves are utterly ignorant about cycling, safety and best practice.

So please try and think before you start judging…

Two abreast when you’re just holding up traffic for giggles is nobbish.
What if I’m having a chat, is that ok with you?

Exactly – making assumptions about why cyclists might be riding 2 abreast or primary and instantly judging them as nobs is YOUR problem – YOUR ignorance – there may well be very good reasons for it and often are.

I remember Boris correcting Vanessa Feltz when she interviewed him after the horrible sequence of dead cyclists in November claiming that cyclists “ride 6 abreast”. She was too thick,it appeared, to realise that may just be 6 people who’ve never met who aren’t riding together, but riding at different paces and just trying to get some space to ride safely in…

We’ve 20 mph winds forecast tomorrow so 2-abreast is going to be pretty essential on our club ride to be able to make any progress. Besides – cyclists have been riding through and off for most of the 20th century for reasons of efficiency – there’s no good reason on earth why that should stop just because cars are so prevalent now is there?

On a positive note, get yourself the Bikeability training – usually free from your local authority. Even with 36 years of experience I learnt loads from my day. Not least looking behind you very very frequently.
a) it gives the drivers a sign you’re observant
b) it humanises you – showing your face makes it harder to treat you like an object and tailgaters will pull back when you do
c) you’re not surprised by the close pass – as you’re more likely to see it coming and if you’re primary you then have space to pull into and therefore avoid the scare.

There’s more you can do than you might realise to deal with the idiot psychology of a lot of drivers…

Turkey’s delight-ful

Self-driving cars are the only thing which will properly resolve the nastiness passed out to cyclists.

There’s a road sign on our regular club route which has been put up by a blind corner saying “caution, cyclists” and someone took the trouble to stop, get out and write a the c word on it…

Mind you drivers get bullied and harassed as well – it’s quite interesting driving at 30 in a 30 limit…

We just need to get people out of cars, it’s not physically or mentally healthy to isolate yourself in metal box…

Never quite got Therapy, was too busy discovering Metallica and Nirvana.
1995 Donnington was the one when you could barely see the sky for bottles when Metallica came on, my mate got hit by a watermelon and we got serious cases of the shits from the hog roast…

20 years this year since Kurt Cobain died…

Keep it clean please! Don’t want the thread pulled…

Was hoping for some sensible advice! I might lose my contract if I can’t find a way to work through this…

Walk into their office and ask for one, telling them if they fail to give you one you won’t take the task on and confirm it in an email to them.

Is that supposed to be a sensible answer, or one as peurile as all the others 😀

schedule a meeting with both in a little room and *ahem* thrash it out?

All the offices have glass walls

Do regular stretching after all runs and bikes to keep yourself supple. I’d recommend regular foam roller work too.
Tight hamstrings are frequently the root cause of back issues and cycling really shortens your hamstrings.

Worth getting a physio to check you over and make a diagnosis and give you some recommended stretches

I’m guessing that slow flashing increases the length of time the light is off, therefore increasing the chances of not being seen as you;re more likely to fall into a saccade

I don’t think slow flashing is much good for cycling.

saccadic masking…

650B – someone had to say it!

beat me to it!

If bread wasn’t very very easy to make by hand, homo sapiens would have died out long ago 😀

With so many entrants it seems that the public have voted in favour of more cycling and more closed roads 😀

Ian Huggins (him of the anti-cycling petition) is no doubt frothing at the mouth…

My ride in today was slower than usual because of all the cars… 😯

Overall I’d say it’s been surprisingly docile – considering the scope for frustration I think the mood has largely been ok, probably better than your average day. Although I think riding more slowly in anticipation of people doing silly things probably helped…