You mean Jim?[/url]

+1 for Brixton – and Jim, he’ll build you something decent

How long before Osborne goes too? He’s been noticeably absent since the vote and as key strategist/Machiavellian on Cameron’s behalf and having been sacked by May there’s no role for him any more…
I suspect those MPs who supported him will back slowly away now his power is so diminished…

Beatles wrote Revolver
Brian Wilson thought it was unlike anything he’d heard before so he wrote Pet Sounds in competition
Beatles heard Pet Sounds, thought it was amazing – especially all the multi-tracking and production quality which was years ahead of anything else at that time – and came up with Sgt Pepper…

That’s where Pet Sounds sits in the pop music pantheon – right at the top.

Problem with judging Pet Sounds now is we’re judging it 50 years after it was written, which is 50 years of other artists being inspired by it and copying a lot of the ideas and techniques that Brian Wilson pioneered – so it doesn’t sound quite so amazing as it did back in the 60’s when nothing like it had ever been heard before…

Oh and listen properly to Brian Wilson and you’ll hear one of the most eloquent writers on depression and finding life hard there’s ever been in pop music – for that alone he should be revered…

As much as like the early surf stuff, it’s deeply misrepresentative of his wider talent, so if all you get is a Beach Boys Best Of and then slagging them off for being sugary pop, you’re massively missing the point…

1. Don’t touch any property being sold by Curran & Pinner… seriously…
2. If you’re a Bowie geek then there’s all kinds of random trivia around Beckenham and Bromley round there e.g. he got married to Angie in the Registry Office and Ziggy was created in a salon in Beckenham High St :-)
3. Drivers get noticeable nastier once you’re out of Crystal Palace – I nearly died in Bromley once stopping at a red light and the driver behind me tried to run it – he then spent the next minute giving me abuse…
4. Nigel Farage lives in Downe village… although it has a great coffee shop
5. Don’t even think about putting an offer in around asking price around Crystal Palace – prices are 70% higher than they were in 2013. I know of at least 4 properties at the top end of Crystal Palace Park Road which have been on the market for around a year and they’ve not sold – sales have fallen through. I used to live there – and one of those flats belongs to a friend of mine and he’s finally accepting he’ll have to drop his price – he was saying something very different this time last year… CP is also carbon monoxide heaven, although the park is very nice and the cake in Cadence is top notch…

Re helicopter money, I wonder if there’s some scheme going on btw BoE and the retail banks re PPI – it’s a nice way to put some cash into peoples’ pockets…

£24bn has been given out in PPI so far – which is the equivalent of £600 per UK adult. £32bn is apparently the total amount set aside.

No way of knowing where that money went but it’s a nice little addition to the economy where median household income is £25k. Being happy little consumers who liked using their credit cards I suspect most people spanked their little gift on more shiny stuff rather than saving it.

Interestingly, today the news is that the FCA wants to put a deadline of 2019 on PPI claims. Forecasts are expecting inflation to pop up to 2-3% next year from the fall in the £ so we don’t want too much extra money being spent as it’ll send inflation up higher, force interest rates up, with the ensuing collapse in house prices and general consumer spending power (and possibly the whole shebang)

Or maybe I’m just getting too cynical, who knows?

+1 for finding a riding route through the back streets – there’s lots of signed ‘quietways’ which IMO are better for peaceful riding than the cycle superhighways.

The CSH have been deliberately built to be highly visible and to get the non-cycling/normal masses riding – so by definition the vast majority of riders on them are new or inexperienced at riding in urban conditions amongst so many other riders… hence the experience people are having.

The quietways are just that, quiet… and you get to see more of the place as you don’t have so much going on around you

I’ve had people make comments on my ads along the lines of too pricey or something like that, and then the stuff sells to someone else the next week…

I’ve also been amazed what some people are happy to pay for – used tyres, inner tubes, chainrings etc.

This is the beauty of capitalism – one buyer and one seller happy to come to an agreement and everyone’s a winner!

So everyone’s entitled to an opinion but personally I wouldn’t spend time making comments on someone else’s pricing/selling strategy – none of my business really. If I do want something and I think it’s overpriced then I’ll make an offer…

If you think those gloves are too expensive then go ahead and make me an offer and they’ll no longer be there for you to get yourself in a lather over :-) Like Mark says I think it’s a bit odd that people are so obsessed about it!

London’s great but give yourself some time to get used to the pace, the noise, the lack of open space, trees and grass and the apparent unfriendliness (it’s not that unfriendly at all IMO but it can take some time to get used to it)

Also, money leaves your wallet at a much greater pace than outside London – there’s more than enough opportunities to spend it – whether it’s after-work drinks or just wandering past Costa – you’ll go through £20 a day without thinking about it quite easily. I really hope you’re on £50k + or it’s hard to find the disposable income to make the best of what London has to offer.

Accommodation prices have gone really silly. I used to pay c£500/month for a room in a shared house in various parts of SE London which weren’t really that great and I believe it’s more like £7-800 now + bills.

Think about zones 3 or 4 to keep your accommdation costs down – and try and get below the magic hour commute time.

There’s plenty of road clubs in London, who’ll have MTB sections. If you’re SE I can recommend trying Brixton Cycles – strong riders, very friendly and very sociable. Surrey Hills is ace for the MTB.

Enjoy :-)

Thinking about the consequences of the vote, rather than the vote itself, one (largely) positive outcome would be:

A marginal win for Remain.
Enough of a win that Cameron and Osborne don’t resign immediately, which would mean uncertainty, which with the economy as weak as it is, we don’t need right now.
Enough of a win for companies to feel confident about investing and recruiting
Not enough of a win for the Brexiters – like Scotland, if it’s close then they’ll feel encouraged to keep making a fuss until they can get another vote in a few years time
This fear of an exit vote next time around will rattle the EU – there’s plenty of people in other EU member states for whom EU is not quite working at the moment too so EU are desperate for UK to stay in as a leave might well mean a total collapse of EU
This fear can be used by Cameron to go in for some proper reform rather than the wet lettuce he brought back earlier this year. ie: ‘if you don’t pay attention to those wanting reform, it’ll be the end of the EU cos no reform just gives the Exiteers the argument they need for another ‘leave’ vote.

At the end of the day, Cameron’s strategy is all written by Osborne who’s pure game-player – so they’ll be planning some long-term game here, it’s not just about a win in June.

Mind you, I may be assuming that Osborne and Cameron actually give one about the future of the UK, which given what they’ve done to the London housing market and the economy in general (and the £170bn of foreign money in shell companies in UK property) maybe somewhat naive thinking on my part!

Ah, so the “assertion” is fine because it’s a requirement?

No. The assumption/interpretation/judgement that people being assertive is somehow rude. Especially from anyone who’s not actually spent any time living in London and getting to know it’s codes and way of living.

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and all that…/before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes etc

What’s offensive about all this ‘Londoners are all rude’, ‘cyclists are all RLJers’ is the negative judgement that starts in the observer’s head, which that observer then transfers onto the unwitting recipient

I go down every so often for work duties, and people are all so rude and self entitled.

This is the problem – both you and the OP – you go there occasionally and think you can judge the place, without actually living there for any time yourself! Just naked prejudice…

London has a manic energy – you won’t get anywhere if you don’t decide where you want to get to and make a beeline for it. Walking, driving, cycling, Tube, everything.
Honestly – you’ll be late for every meeting you try to get to if you’re not assertive – what do you expect when you cram so many people into narrow streets. You try saying ‘hello’ to everyone you walk past and you’ll be hoarse before you get to work…

I’ve left now and I miss it like crazy and I’d go back in a heartbeat if I could afford it. I saw moments of kindness and generosity every day – which you won’t see if you go in with a ‘it’s a full of entitled people’ lens on everything you look at.

The biggest image problem London actually has is visitors coming in expecting the place to be rude and aggressive, only noticing those behaviours, never looking for the niceness and not staying long enough to actually get under the skin of the place and then going around telling everyone they know how nasty Londoners are!

Go and read a psychology book about confirmation bias, prejudice and stereotyping OP and come back here and tell us what you’ve learnt… what a load of generalising old toss!

TBH I suspect that London, being an open-minded, liberal, ok to cope with ‘the other’ type of place will be quite happy for you to stay away for a further 15 years…

Stopping at an amber feels risky these days – I usually check my rear view mirror before doing it in case I get rear ended.

Any UK driver who likes to claim that cyclists are a bunch of lawbreakers is a rank hypocrite!

Self-driving cars will be with us soon enough. In the meantime I’m glad my commute is on a fully segregated cycle network, makes all the difference to an enjoyable ride.

After seeing her on HIGNFY last night I think it would be kindest if the media were to just stop paying her any attention, I’m not sure she’s fully well.

+1

She barely said anything on HIGNFY and when she did it was some negative comment about something or somebody, nothing positive to say and she generally looked rather uncomfortable throughout.

I used to have a mate who was generally unhappy with himself who had nothing good to say anything much about anybody – blacks, gays and the working class being his favoured targets. She reminds me of him…

It’s a real shame that this kind of person has happened upon cycling as their latest target (as mentioned above, abuse of most other minorities is legally and socially unacceptable these days – immigrants being the exception) – it’s poisoning the debate and take up of something which would bring innumerable benefits to society…

I’m amazed by those pics of the CSHs – the numbers cycling in rush hour at the end of last year before I left London were fantastic and it looks like it’s getting better and better. bring on even more of it :-)

I would ban people from trying to ban things

I agree with one of my best mates who’s Lakes born and bred, who comes down to London fairly frequently: London ladies are very often absolutely smashing to look at but you’d struggle to get a very meaningful conversation from them that lasts more than a few minutes :-)
There really are some who carry dogs in their handbags!

Gideon’s screwed things rather by telling us house prices will fall if we vote Brexit – cue all the Millenials who weren’t going to vote, and if they had, likely to vote for Remain – all running to the polling booths to vote Brexit so they can afford somewhere to live. Probably accompanied by their parents who want to get them out of the house and to stop asking for £50k for a deposit :-)

Hoping for an adult response from a couple of abusive drivers when I expressed my ‘what did you do that for?’ feelings – one driving straight at me down a single track road (straight past the passing place on his side of the road), and the other was a passenger in a convertible who returned my wave with a finger…

Stupid of me to expect irrationally angry people to act like mature grown ups…

Liverpool-born, Cheshire-bred and been in London for just over half my life and I reckon it’s horses for courses – home is where the heart is and all that.

IME, Northerers are nicer, most of the time and the hills are proper ones but it rains a lot. Cost of living is a lot less but you need two winter bikes as winter lasts from October to April :-)
Southerners – plenty of nice ones but keeping up with the Jones is a regional sport so can be harder to get a community feel. My London-based friends can’t manage to hold a conversation about anything without turning to house prices after 60 seconds. They weren’t so bad 10 years ago mind.
Spring and Summer weather is definitely better down South and sometimes the lack of hills is a blessing. Winter is rubbish when you want to go and play in snow though, although weirdly enough the most deadly avalanche ever in the UK was in Lewes in Sussex when a big dump of snow slid off the South Downs…

+1 for gel manufacturers having a vested interest in recommending you eat loads of gels, all the time. Of course they’re going to do that!

Regular roadies were doing massive distances for decades before gels were invented and managed perfectly well…

I use gels for emergencies only – when I’ve eaten all I can and I’m still struggling – basically to stop the bonk. And even then I won’t take a gel till I’m nearly home.

I don’t know how long you’ve been road riding but the only way to work out what your food and drink needs are and what you respond to best is experience – lots of riding, trying out different things and finding out what works for you.

That said there’s lots of best practice re carb loading the night before and slow release carbs for breakfast on the day and little and often throughout the day + keep well hydrated – especially on hot days.

Most 50 mile club rides I’ll not need anything extra to eat beyond breakfast and the half-way cafe stop. But I find for a century I need more than twice what I’d eat on a 50 mile ride, it takes more out of you.

I also avoid caffeine after midday after I overdid it on a century once and couldn’t sleep that night, just when I needed a really good night’s sleep!

Good point on the wide words! In which case, this is my favourite :-)

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

The video has a wonderfully poignant lost sense of innocence to it. Which it what (I think) they are trying to get at here.

There’s a fantastic contrast between the use of an innocent childhood TV series (for Radiohead’s target audience demographic) and having them exhibiting some really nasty behaviour, which somewhat screws with your mind :-)

I thought the song itself was a bit bland but the message of the video is right on the money for the times – we’re having a lot of myths about our place in the world and about things we believed were certainties being rather evidently displaced, which is unsettling a lot of people…

Didn’t detour but it was the first ride this year with no leg or arm warmers – just bare arms and knees, which is always a pleasant ride 8)

Def get legal advice OP. I’d be very surprised if the driver’s not at fault – filtering is legal (and in many cases where the cycle lane is on the inside of the traffic, it’s where you’re effectively told to ride…) so surely it’s the driver’s fault to make sure the road is clear… what you were doing is legitimate…

Personally I think this is one very good reason to filter on the right rather than the left – it gives you more visibility into what oncoming traffic is doing, and makes you more visible to the traffic you’re overtaking (you’re visible in both rear-view mirror and wing mirror) and more visible to any traffic planning on turning…

A to E has better views and you’ll get a better suntan :-)

A to W – a lot of it is wooded and much like a standard southern England ride rather than a classic SDW ride.

OP – do you know why I’m so fat?
Cos everytime I sleep with your wife, she gives me a biscuit :-)

My guess is a lot of stuff now is contract manufactured in the Far East – which probably makes QC much harder to manage than having your own factory, being able to recruit your own employees and run your own processes and procedures etc

I’ve not had the experience you’ve had though, and I’ve bought a lot of different bikes over the years. Exposure did fix or replace by Flash and Flare about 4 times though! On the other hand I have a 10 year old Joystick still going strong

Yoga will help. Everything’s connected – hips, glutes, hamstrings, calves etc. Worth doing something holistic to sort the whole lot out at the same time

Yoga

Some cyclists insist on riding a good quarter to half way into the width of the road for no apparent reason.

It’s the recommended position from BC and all the government-funded cycle training. You may not like it, or understand it, but it’s still the recommended position…

It also helps to make the cyclist more visible to the driver by being away from the edge of the road.

It worries me there’s so much ignorance around this… as per the other threads on this over the weekend, a lot of people seem to think their ill-informed opinion is right e.g. ‘I think that cyclist is riding like an idiot/deliberately being a pain’ when in fact there are very often very good reasons.

If you’re in a car, you’re a danger to everyone else, try and judge yourself rather than everyone else if you want the roads to be safer

For on-road use I find it easier to dip them when they’re on top of the bars (Joystick) when I’m approaching a walker

Suspect it’s one or more of the above but were you dehydrated? That can make it more difficult, if there’s barely any fluid there in the first place

Longest period juggling satsumas whilst standing on one leg dressed as Santa Claus. About 50 secs I think. There used to be some video evidence too…

In simple terms:

Miles (on a bike) = Smiles

Personally I have more faith in mass adoption of self-driving cars than I do in the UK changing its laws and law enforcement in favour of keeping cyclists safe and changing driving behaviour… good news is there are some very rich and very serious companies looking at self-driving cars who’re very motivated to do it – certainly in my opinion more motivated than UK government, Police and general public are to change their attitudes towards cycling.

On a more curious note, it would be very interesting to see a proper study looking at prevalent attitudes to cycling and cyclists across Europe, which examines just why the gulf is so wide across the channel. In Netherlands it seems to have been deliberate government action but in France, Germany etc I don’t know.

I’m sure that with proper examination you could isolate the factors which have had the biggest impact, and we could then apply them in the UK…

House prices causing baby bust?

Some interesting (and well-sourced) considerations in this article that super-high house prices are reducing the number of babies being born – across several Western countries, not just UK. Worth reading the readers’ comments too, which are largely supportive of the premise…

So whilst everyone needs somewhere to live, there may be fewer ‘everyones’ needing somewhere to live in 20 years time. In around 5-10 years’ time the Baby Boomers will begin dying or going into nursing homes, thus increasing supply with no commensurate increase in demand… put the two together and the long-term supply and demand equation may not be the same as it is now. So anyone thinking about selling their house in 15-10 years time to ‘be their pension’ may find the situation somewhat different to what they expect.

Without mass-automation or immigration to provide economic output, a shrinking population will also lead to lower economic growth – which tends to follow demographics… the more people in the workforce, the more economic output and the more GDP, assuming productivity stays the same…

Just to be 100% clear, this isn’t a prediction, just an observation that long-term trends are not necessarily in favour of ever-higher prices….

I assume that’s all meant tongue-in-cheek?

I genuinely find some cyclists choice of route to be utterly bewildering.

Why not go and ask them? You might then understand why they’ve made the choice they’ve made. The old ‘to understand a man, walk a mile in his shoes’ idea…

There’s plenty of scenarios in this thread where people explain why they make the choices they do to ride on the main road…

The best solution for reducing bewilderment is education…

Not saying all cyclists are cliquey and judgemental, just that such attitudes are far more apparent among this sport than the other one I regularly take part in.

Same with running. Years ago I used to skydive and there was a clear mutual respect for everyone who had the balls to do it, although there were some rather unbalanced people in that sport so it wasn’t all sweet and smiley!

I find, though, that when people are actually riding there’s none of the daft cliqueyness you get online so it may be an online thing rather than a real thing…

Mind you, with driving, the level of stupid judgementalism is very much present in the moment of driving…