Re other people’s lives, I wouldn’t assume anything about how they feel about their own lives.
Plus – use of overdrafts and credit cards is on the increase again after slowing down since 2008. Your answer to other people’s apparent wealth is probably right there.
You’d have thought we’d learnt something about avoiding debt in 2008, but apparently not 😯

Not sure why and when slowing down and giving a friendly, verbal ‘excuse me’ went out of fashion. Seems the most effective way for everyone to continue having a nice day IME

A few thoughts:
1. Fair play for admitting publicly you have a problem. That’s half the problem solved already
2. You’re not alone. Lots of people are angry at the moment – the credit crunch was a real shock to the system.
3. Anger’s a very destructive emotion if not dealt with
4. There’s huge amounts of support and solutions out there, you just need to find the one which works for you. I’d recommend looking at:

a) Therapy. Go and have a chat with your GP and see what they say. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel from sharing it
b) plus 1 for yoga – do a class – you’ll realise a lot of people need a little help with the stresses and strains of life.
c) meditation can be useful John Kabat Zinn
d) focus on eating well, sleeping enough, regular exercise and spending time with people who you feel happy with.
Good luck

Condor Tempo. Lovely bike.

Riding and walking mates know they’ll always get to enjoy the sight of me repacking the bag I’ve just carefully packed, to double check I’ve not forgotten anything.

On the plus side, I never do forget anything, and when something goes wrong in the middle of nowhere I’m usually the one with the spare thing and the kit you need to get you out of trouble 🙂

London has got so silly now I was shown a 2-bed flat between Forest Hill and Catford, built about 7 years ago and already falling down the hill – big cracks around the front door, damp coming through from upstairs and cracks on the outside wall.
Asking price? £325k… 😯

Looking properly, driving at the speed limit, waiting till there’s space for your vehicle before you pull out, all seem out of fashion at the moment.
Doing what suits you and then having a strop at anyone who’s in your way seems more fashionable.
We need traffic police back on the road, pulling people over and giving them a damn good bollocking/fines/points etc.
I don’t remember it being this bad since I passed my test in the mid-90s

“Spelling and grammar aren’t your forte.”

Which should have been:

Speling and grammer arent you’re forte

I’ve never tested it scientifically but I’ve heard the choc milkshake thing from many different sources over the last 10 years. Choc milk + a proper stretch down seem to work ok for me – especially a foam roller session.
Cheapest way to make choc milk (Friij is £1 a bottle) is cadbury choc powder – 1.5-2 rounded dessertspoons + 1.2 pint of milk in the blender. Job done

IMO it’s pretty mature to go public with an apology like that…
But I am tired of nearly being hit because other people can’t be bothered to look properly…

Even my butler thinks Waitrose has gone too common recently

Bit weird that this isn’t on any news websites…

Huff Post and Rolling Stone carrying it

His legacy is far far wider than a lot of people know.
RIP to a genuine talent and someone who had something meaningful to say

You know this forum is marketing the magazine don’t you? It’s why it has the same name

What’s all this ‘the cameraman deserves a punch’?

If someone calls you a dick for breaking the law and you hit him, you’ve kindof proved him right. Hardly eye for an eye is it?

One thing we really need to teach in schools is macroeconomics and capitalism, and especially the downsides of excessive debt. It’s a complex system with many players and many incentives to misbehave in favour of jam today.

A lot, if not most of the general public had no idea how out of control things were and why buying so much on tick was a bad thing (all the nice shiny things would have to be paid for some day).

What I’m really shocked about is that house prices in London have gone up 10% in a month… less than five years after such a major bust and one we are still working out of, with most of the country struggling. Have we learnt nothing about over-borrowing?

Capitalism is way too complex a system with too many players for the bankers to be able to bring it down on their own.
There were certainly a lot of shoddy practices going on in the banks, but regulators were asleep on the job and we, the people, went mental on personal debt. And scarily seem to be going right back there again right now.
It’s easy for the various stakeholders who would like to deflect the blame away from themselves to blame ‘bankers’ en masse – they were hardly flavour of the month even when we thought we were rich. It’s like blaming all black people for all crime…
We need to be very careful about following simplistic narratives about the crises, otherwise we’ll end right back there again in short order

It was the Hoxton/Clerkenwell fixie lot that made cycling cool in London. We have a lot to thank them for

In a way I feel sorry for people like that. I’ve known a few. They can’t see it’s their own behaviour that leads them into conflict and problems all the time. They just carry on crashing through life behaving like toddlers, from one crappy situation to another, totally unaware…

I sold some wire bead 700c tyres on here recently at a loss cos the postage was more than the £10 I’d sold them for 😯

Collect + means I’m far more likely now to buy clothes and stuff online knowing I can send it back for free and not have to incur ££ from Royal Mail.

Without trying to open up the whole privatisation debate again, it should make them more responsive to customers now as they’ll lose revenue if they can’t respond to our requests and superior competitors… which for us and for e-comm, has to be a good thing

I ride in from Sydenham/Forest Hill border a few times a week.
Crystal Palace hill is steep but do-able but you can get round most of it by sticking on the South Circular to East Dulwich.

Route through Dulwich Village and Herne Hill velodrome for a quieter ride, and then through Brixton north. Bus lane all the way up the A23 from Brixton makes for good riding out of the main flow of traffic.

That Streatham one’s ok actually. Outrageously priced for a 2 bed flat, but see what you mean about older flats
floorplan suggests I’ll have to carry the bikes across the lounge though!

Sorry TurnerGuy but I think you’re misunderstanding where the anger comes from – it’s not rational – it’s to do with change and power and frustration.
Change – the UK and Western World in general are going through massive change and a lot of people are scared about what it means for them.
Change – some people just can’t cope with the fact they have to change the way they drive now there are more people cycling
Power – more people cycling changes the power balance on the roads and some people driving can’t cope with having less power to drive how they like
Frustration – driving in the South East is a rotten experience – not the ‘open roads’ dream we were sold – congestion, slow, polluting

I get hassled when riding singlefile with the club, riding 2 abreast with the club, AND when I’m on my own… how we ride will make no bit of difference whatsoever

When I converted mine to geared I superglued a Campagnolo cable guide underneath the BB shell. It held fast, no problems

I wouldn’t worry about other peoples’ ignorance. Seems to me you did the right thing.
There seems to be a trend of getting stroppy and getting offended at the tiniest thing on the roads at the moment.

Doing roughly 5000+ miles a year here. More than I’m driving, which seems like the right balance 🙂

There’s a lot of aggro with drivers these days and much more of an us v them mentality than there was 5 years ago.

give it time. The aggro is mainly because when a lot of people get into a car, they start acting like spoilt children.

It’s also just a symptom of people struggling to cope with change. As cycling continues to grow and become normalised, people’ll get used to it and chill out. I hope…

Anecdotally, there’s less aggro in Central London than there is out in the country lanes I ride at weekends – I think London drivers are more used to people riding

Ive been struggling with this for most of the last 15 years.
My solution has been to go independent and be a contractor. Pay is better, I don’t have a formal boss, and I can detach myself from the aspects of corporate life that I don’t like, and it’s largely ok.

You have 2 choices essentially. One is to go off and follow your dream. Likely it’ll pay worse – jobs people will do for the love don’t need to pay so much. Accountancy and IT have to pay a lot or no-one would do them!
The other, which has worked for me, has been to find my peace with the industry I work in. tbh I think it’s the better choice – I’ve found a way to enjoy being at work and I still have the financial security which I’d lack if I was working as a personal trainer or doing something for a cycling charity

The case against, from the ITEM Club

UK is a beautiful country with an amazing history and an entrepreneurial/trading/open-minded spirit which will stand us in good stead as the new world order comes through.

I also think it’s not obvious when you live here how much better off we are than the vast majority of the world. Southern Europe seems to be rather knackered economically, USA is going through a confidence crisis, China doesn’t treat it’s people too well.

I lived in France when I was a student and it gave me a real sense of perspective how great UK is…

Hard to say. Still pretty high numbers commuting in London Village even though the weather’s cooling off.
Last year the numbers in my club mid-winter were around 100, same as we used to have mid-summer about 3 years ago. Be interesting to see if that’s sustained this year.

Personally I think growth rates are unlikely to be sustained but growth will still continue – driving is such a rubbish experience – at least in the South East – and we do seem to have hit a tipping point of normalising it – which has always been CTCs argument for growth.

Anecdotally there’s people at work and friends of mine who’ve been nowhere near a bike for years, who’re starting to get into road riding. I think this is in part because they see how much the ‘new’ cyclists are enjoying it and enthusing about it. It’s one thing for me to bang on about it but when they see ‘someone like them’ also loving it, they start to consider it for themselves.

Hopefully now the balance will tip and we’ll start getting less hassle …

To anyone who thinks the UK’s rubbish, why don’t you spend some time out of your first world bubble and get a bit of perspective on how it is for the rest of the world?
Try popping across to one of these places and complain about how crap your first world life is:
China, Russia, Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela, South Africa (most of Africa tbh) India, Japan, Zimbabwe, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, Somalia, North Korea…
All of these places are either massively poorer, much higher unemployment, corruption, lack of democracy or basic freedoms, lack of proper healthcare, basic infrastructure etc etc

KFC should be banned on the basis it’s not got any nutrition in it, and is therefore useless as food! Very good at making you fat tho, if that’s what you want to be

25 mile commute. Great to be riding rather than the Tube. I love having Big Ben to check whether I’m on time or not

You can have one of mine!

Cateye + Specialized bike computers

The fact he’s given his son the job rather than an outside (and presumably more likely to be competent) manager should tell you something about how open he’ll be to any complaint

Harder cos you can’t change down on the hills/have to keep pedalling downhill (fixed), therefore you’ll use the same number of calories/put out the same power output over a shorter distance

It’s a filthy fuel. It’ll make it much harder to reduce our carbon output. It’ll also lead to dirtier air and it’s not exactly the safest way to make a living.

The answer to our energy issues is use less energy, not find more sources to waste!

It’s a filthy fuel. It’ll make it much harder to reduce our carbon output. It’ll also lead to dirtier air and it’s not exactly the safest way to make a living.

The answer to our energy issues is use less energy, not find more sources to waste!

The Tories do seem to be coming out with some control-freaky policies. If we want young people to be better drivers then teach them to be better drivers – better skills, better attitude, greater sense of responsibility.
Putting restrictions on how and when they can drive could well just drive up resentment and resistance, rather than grow understanding.
A fair few older drivers could do with remembering they set an example to younger drivers too…
We do need to sort out the self-entitled ‘I should be allowed to drive however and whenever I want and sod the costs to everyone else’ attitude.
It kills 2000+ people a year and massively contributes to keeping kids from playing out in the street and the population at large riding bikes, which is also contributing to the 30k+ deaths per year from obesity-related causes