I don’t think it’s obvious, and I do think it needs to be spelt out, hence “I wish people would stop repeating this line, and challenge it whenever they hear it”.

+1

Lazy prejudice needs challenging wherever we meet it. Overall, Western society appears to have made great strides over the last 10 years in this respect. Cyclists and immigrants are the two groups who seem targeted the most at the moment…

With cycling in particular, the lack of care (or worse) from drivers towards cyclists is the biggest barrier to more people riding. At a time when we have serious obesity, mental illness and environmental crises, we need to fight anti-cycling prejudice as hard as we can for the good of the wider community – there’s a bigger purpose here.

It alarms me how judgemental people are towards cyclists, and so stubborn with it too. Ultimately you have no idea why a cyclist might be riding along a main road and until you actually have a face to face chat with them and get their perspective then you have absolutely no justification for judging them…

As drivers we have a responsibility not to cause harm to other road users which is enshrined in law and the terms of our licences. It concerns me that some people are determined to ignore this responsibility and seek to blame others for their own failures…

just because something’s legal doesn’t automatically make it sensible.

And what if something’s necessary to complete your journey? FFS 8O

We can’t go around labelling cyclists for ‘being in the wrong’ whenever they ride along a bit of road that we randomly judge ‘not sensible’. There may well be a very good reason for it like, for example, they have no other choice!

Baffles me as to why

Some of my local solo rides have me riding along a 70mph A-road.

The reason why?

Cos the nice, quiet country roads I like riding on do, at times, come to an end (funnily enough!) The only way to get back on to the next nice quiet, country road, is to ride along the main road for a few hundred yards.

I’m constantly watching over my shoulder at these points as I believe the vast majority of drivers will be blatting along at full chat and if they even see me they’ll be sitting there all judgemental thinking “Baffles me as to why, it really is a border line suicide attempt. Would scare the crap out of me.”

I don’t know if people have always been this stupidly judgemental about cyclists or whether it’s a recent thing, or social media just reveals it to the rest of us 8O

Big Train
Green Wing
Mary Whitehouse Experience

All top-notch leftfield comedy

But given the choice between road and a good path I’d always choose the path.

Assuming that’s the real-life choice of course – as described above by many, it’s often not the choice – the path not a good one – it’s rough, full of hazards or putting the rider in danger by repeatedly crossing traffic…

Part of my commute goes past a hospital. I ride the road. The ‘perfectly good’ cycle path isn’t that good IMO – it crosses car park traffic 3 times in 200 yards – the drivers are trying to negotiate the car park, they’re not looking for cyclists and at each crossing point there are high hedges which block visibility for both the cyclists and the drivers. I found this out when I nearly got hit last month. I’ve not come near being hit since I started using the road.

The road is clear, smooth and I’m more visible on there than I am on the path…

Which one will get most use? Choose that one, it’s the one you’ll get most benefit from.

the crystal ball is strong in this thread.

I guess ill just live under the bridge until house prices come down.

Try looking at the debt data and The Economist article – there’s a lot of damage being done by super high prices. Pointing that out does not make anyone a doom monger or crystal ball gazer… it’s just sensible to inform yourself rather than make heroic assumptions based on religious-type beliefs…

Anyone who’s based their financial security around the assumption that house prices will go up forever is an idiot. Sensible people would be organising their finances so that they can cope with a change in their current circumstances… and not depending on a single asset class.

Did we learn absolutely nothing from the apparent total unpredictability of 2008? If nothing else we should have learnt that very serious bad things can happen with no warning at all…

Depends, it’s hard to see the condition of cycle lanes when whizzing past in a car, many are built and then never maintained, poorly designed, and if you couple that with general debris.. The road might be the smoother option.

This. Where I live we have fully segregated network and I’ve had to change from 25c tyres to 28c to cope with the constant getting rattled by the lousy surface. Looks smoother than a baby’s bum until you’re actually riding on it.

The few road sections I do on my commute are bliss.

At weekends when the roads are quieter I will use the main roads – it’s smoother and also quicker for the same distance as you don’t have to stop start all the time – the roads are direct but the cycle paths meander.

We need to get the general public to appreciate this so they can stop judging cyclists who (entirely legitimately) choose to use the road and assuming they’re being deliberately awkward… (as the OP appears to be)

I run mine quite high for puncture resistance (Conti GP4000 28c) – 100psi – including my commuting back it’s c 80kg overall weight.
IIRC Conti recommend 100-120psi which is higher than those guides above suggest

So, in summary, there’s a very strong case that historically high house prices are causing massive damage to the economy and to individuals’ finances, and conversely there’s a very strong case that a crash and negative equity will cause massive damage to the economy and to individuals’ finances.

So, the current situation is unsustainable, both in terms of the economy overall and in terms of individuals’ finances. The current direction of travel is deeply damaging to all of us at some level but a sharp reversal will also be damaging. The only debate here is which group of individuals we choose to cause the harm to – the older/homeowners or the younger/renters…

For the last few years the market has been deliberately skewed in favour of the older/existing homeowners by BoE and government policy but the negative economic impact and electoral impacts of this policy are now beginning to show themselves… Osborne appears to be trying to dampen down Prime Central London, Cameron appears to be beginning to make the right noises about all the foreign (much of it criminal laundering) money in London, BoE and Osborne are both cutting off the supply of money pouring into BTL.

I think they’re trying to stop the bubble from bursting and instigate a flattening or slow deflation. Whether they can or not remains to be seen. Osborne appears to be more Politician than Finance Minister and if markets distorted by debt were that controllable then 2008 wouldn’t have happened – history shows that speculative bubbles tend to pop rather than deflate in a controlled fashion.

Time will tell.

Surely the massive queue of people waiting to buy houses as soon as they drop in price a bit (and I include myself in that category) precludes any significant correction?

Most likely they’ll be expecting further falls and will sit on their hands rather than buying before an anticipated drop in the market – that’s why bubbles pop rather than sustain. Plus, the psychological shock could well pull the economy back into recesssion and FTBers will be concerned about their jobs and unwilling to take on a load of debt, or banks will be unwilling to lend…

“As long as I’m alright, everyone else can f-’em selves”

Some of this sentiment is, I reckon, just naked fear. It’s not that people are ‘alright’, more that they’re screwed if prices fall or even just stop increasing.

So many people are eyeballs deep in a massive mortgage and have planned their whole finances around the assumption they can use their house as some kind of store of value/source of future income (spending all their disposable and saving nothing, maxing out on credit cards on the assumption of equity withdrawal, downsizing to pay for retirement, BTL for retirement), that a fall in house prices will mean really serious financial trouble for them – won’t be able to sustain current lifestyle and impoverished retirement.

It’s rather scary how dependent people and the overall economy are on maintenance of such high house prices… and this I think is one of the main reasons why BoE and Osborne appear so damn desperate to keep prices inflating… they’ll be looking at hard data and seeing the underlying debt levels and probably feeling somewhat concerned…

Whilst inflation isn’t guaranteed, it’s still a long term solution to the problem.

Central Banks have made a heroic effort to stave off deflation and get some inflation going and pretty much failed. I wouldn’t say inflation isn’t guaranteed, I’d say it’s actually highly unlikely. Japan have been having a go for 20 years and failed… If we were going to have some inflation, surely we’d have seen it by now?

Ageing population, peak stuff, stagnant real and disposable incomes, excessive housing costs (mortgage or rent), rising awareness of the need to save for our pensions… I’m not sure what the drivers of inflation over the long-term are going to be.

Saudis are pumping like crazy to get the oil out of the ground and turn it into a sovereign wealth fund before the oil becomes worthless black sticky stuff – so can’t see oil prices going back up anytime soon, which would likely provide inflationary pressure.

More of a theoretical solution than a likely one…

The best all round solution for everyone is price stagnation, if prices remain stable and we inflate our way out of it over time then no one loses out

I wouldn’t be hoping for inflation any time soon if I were you – Central Banks across UK, US and EU and Japan have thrown billions and billions of Pounds, Dollars, Euros and Yen into the system in the form of QE and held interest rates at emergency levels for nearly a decade to try and get consumers spending and get some inflationary pressure going and we’re still barely out of deflation… The house price boom in London and SE was also an attempt at encouraging consumers to spend… but as you can see from The Economist article above, it’s reducing consumer spending and incomes – the opposite from the desired effect.

As house prices continue to rise and interest rates stay low I’m cutting my spending more and more to try and get a decent deposit together + I’ve taken a pay cut when I left London and have a lower disposable income as a result – my parents are living off a fixed income and are spending less as the interest on their investments is so much lower than expected, and friends can’t find work at all – meaning no income, meaning spending less…

So many people believe that house prices will only ever go up that they’re sticking everything they have into mortgages, and none of it into actually buying the stuff which produces economic growth (and inflation)

Basically, high house prices and policies aimed to get us spending have incentivised exactly the opposite effect to thaT intended…

Any first-time buyers getting into the current market will have very little left at the end of the month so for long as prices stay as high as they are (or continue to increase) then we can expect lower inflationary pressure, not more…

It’s all a bit silly…

The MAMIL.

8O

The MAMIL is making up the vast majority of the increase in cycling participation, which is taking it out of a minority activity into a mass, population-wide activity.

A MAMIL may not be a ‘pure’ cyclist and I’ll frequently raise my eyebrows at some of the excessively posh kit and Strava-obsession prevalent in some people but it’s all cycling, it’s all about taking it mainstream – so MAMILs are making a massively positive contribution whether we like it or not…

This is well worth a read about the damage already being done to London’s wider economy. Bearing in mind London and SE are the drivers of UK economic growth, it’s a bit daft for us to have driven London house prices beyond affordability… the country as a whole suffers for the benefit of London homeowners…

House prices throttling London

Economists might welcome a shift from low- to high-value industries, but property prices threaten its continuance. Academics say they have been forced to move out of town. The share of employed people in inner London working in professional scientific, research, engineering and technology jobs has fallen from 6.6% to 5.4% since 2011. Public services struggle. “It’s almost impossible to hire young teachers who don’t live with their parents,” says one head. And it is not just young teachers who are throwing in the towel: between 2011 and 2014 the number of twenty-somethings fell by 3%, reversing long-term growth.

Those who cling on in the city do so at a cost. Between 2008 and 2014, Londoners’ disposable income (ie, after housing costs) fell by 4%, a steeper decline than in any other part of England (see chart). According to the Centre for London (CFL), a think-tank, the disposable income of private renters in inner London dropped by 28% between 2001 and 2011.

A few anecdotes too: it’s already getting harder to find work in London…

1. I’ve left London after living there for 15 years because I can’t afford the rents or to buy and salaries are pretty much where they were in 2008 when house prices were not far off half what they are now (+ I couldn’t find a job at a time when allegedly the economy is growing)
2. A friend of mine similarly can’t get an interview, let alone a job..
3. Another friend has been made redundant and they’re moving her company to Edinburgh and Cheltenham. She says she’s too expensive for them to employ her now. She worked in an ad agency – advertising being something the UK is world-class in and a major contributor to our GDP so a bit silly to tear it apart for the sake of house prices.

It’s all got rather silly… in SE26 where I used to live, 2-bed flats have gone from £250 to £450 since 2013 – 80%! increase when wages have barely moved. Meanwhile the economy flatlines because so many workers have so little money left after paying their housing costs and pensioners have lower incomes because interest rates are so low, and pension funds are struggling to meet their liabilities for the same reason…

The game now is to spot Osborne’s next stimulus that he tries to disguise as ‘helping FTBers and hard working families’

^^ Confused. Are these HOMING pigeons or WORKING pigeons?

If you have access to a microwave then a tin of soup doesn’t weigh too much. Oatcakes and butter and maybe a tin of tuna too

Do NOT assume you can use your card (debit or credit) anything like the same extent as you can in the UK cos you’ll have a hell of a shock! Romania is still a very cash-heavy country (and one of the largest black markets in Europe I might add) with an average annual income c Eur 7k…

My 11 year old Focus is still largely going ok. Mileage us usually well under 5k as I ride to work and now I’m a full time roadie I’m not doing long trips up to Wales and the Lakes any more. I have it serviced every year – partly cos I don’t fancy breaking down and having to call out the RAC and I’d like it to have some residual value when I decide to get rid

Just had it serviced last week £300 and it’s definitely running more smoothly.

Like PP I like to look after my possessions and a car isn’t supposed to be free/cheap to run – I know I’m going to have to spend at least £300/year on servicing and just factor that into my budgeting.

I reckon the EU’s to blame somewhere here – those damn Europeans banning disc brakes and telling us what to do! Vote Brexit if you want to use good old-fashioned British disc brakes :-)

I have 23c Conti 4000 on my summer bike – used a lot around Pilgrims and other North Downs-type routes and they’ve been fine.
My winter bike has 25c Conti 4 seasons and they do feel like they have a little more grip for wet roads, although I would say there’s very little difference in feel really
However when I went from 25c Conti Grand Prix GT to 28c Conti 4 seasons on my commuter the increase in comfort and grip (especially when leaning the bike over) felt quite significant.

100psi in all tyres and I weigh 73kg.

Money launderers and crooks will love it.

The banks are already looking at it

:-)

His Saville one is probably worth a re-watch now we know the truth. I remember watching it and thinking that Saville was a rather weird individual, but Louis didn’t really bring out just how bad he was. Whether this was knowingly or not I don’t know…

Boris Bikes are great too

Um, we have to pay more to go and see live music now we, the punters have habituated not paying for the recorded music.

Before MP3s and downloads, the artists got most of their revenues from the recorded music and the tour was used as a promotional vehicle for the albums. Now we either don’t pay for the recorded music or we pay a lot less, the business model has changed.

Given that I love my music and I want to see the artists be able to earn a living from it, I guess I’ll have to fork out a lot more to see them live. And in this instance, I don’t mind, I reckon he’s worth it.

And as for calling Brian Wilson and old duffer – that’s pretty uncharitable. You’d be a bit dufferish if you’d had a life fighting depression and drug addiction. And to be fair, he is one of the pioneers of popular music as we know it.

And perhaps when you’ve been able to write a tune more beautiful than one of these, you’d be good enough to post it on here :-)

Albeit it’s a series of personal observations, there’s more insight into the possible reality in Medders’ post than I’ve had from either camp over the last few weeks.

I think his opinion is more considered than most people spouting on the subject, who just seem to think Brexit will miraculously solve all the world’s problems and we’ll suddenly be transported to full employment, a booming economy and the return of all of the British Empire etc

This.

When the whole global economy is on extremely shaky ground/drowning in an unprecedented amount of debt, partnership and interdependence is a far more sensible strategy than ‘proudly going alone’. If a Brexit leads to exits of other EU countries and collapse of the EU then we’ll be starting off a chain of events which tips the global economy right over the edge.

Not sure if they’re the best but I’ve had Rubino Open Pro and they’ve been pretty good. Cut up easily but they didn’t seem to puncture. Also, Conti Grand Prix GT – really supple, grippy and comfortable, had some for 2+ years in London and don’t think I got any punctures. I now have Conti 4 seasons and they’re ok.

I also have Stans in my tubes to ward off punctures

Given the various bits of sabre-rattling going on with Russia, China (South China Sea) and N Korea, personally I’d rather keep our relationship with the only remaining superpower and the largest military spender on the planet and the major partner in Nato, on an even keel…

This is not a good time to damage relationships with any major allies – although no time would be a good time IMO.

Biggest problem with the whole Brexit debate is it’s largely toddlers shouting childish insults at each other… which is a pretty poor way of persuading us to make such a major decision.

For my money, his intervention and the points he made were a good strategy by the Remain camp and will go a long way to persuading the undecided to stay in – he’s a well-respected and neutral party, even if he will be gone by the time we would be exiting…

Boris resorting to referring to his racial heritage has given me pause for thought about Boris – that’s pretty nasty politics – far enough right to be touching on Fascism and National Front type rhetoric – and I really don’t want to support anyone with that kind of thinking.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Brian Wilson recently – his solo stuff. What a beautiful songwriter.

Happily I found out this morning that he’s touring Pet Sounds this year before he goes the way of all the other celebrities in 2016, so as long as he holds out until the end of May I’ll be seeing him in London :-)

Saw him tour the Gershwin album in 2011 and I’ve never known a crowd to be so warm towards an artist – everyone just really wanted him to give a good performance and he did – superb…

Mind you, at £130 a ticket this time, he better be good!

You may see yourself as an individual who rides a bike, fantastic! Many people will see you as just another cyclist. If you chose to or not, if they meet you, you represent cyclists. This isn’t something you get a choice in. This is the real world. How you behave on a bike has an influence on how people view and treat cyclists.

You’re right. The real world is full of ill-informed prejudiced people making negative, stereotyped judgements.

But where you wrong is whether we have a choice in this. We can’t choose not to be the target of someone else’s prejudice but we can choose to fight back and correct that prejudice. You may have noticed that the 20th century and esp the last 10 years or so, the fight back against prejudice has made some great progress: Jews, Blacks, Women, Gays, Disabled – all these communities have fought back and made progress…

So you can roll over and say ‘some people judge cyclists, deal with it’, or you can fight back. Remembering that at it’s worst this prejudice has resulted in people being killed and their killers given no real punishment (read Martin Porter’s recent piece about biased juries. It’s also stopping a lot of people riding as they’re too scared because of the poor quality and aggressiveness of driving…

So on the one hand you’re right, cyclists get judged. But where we disagree is on whether we should accept that, or fight for positive change. Given the impact more people riding will have on mental health, pollution and obesity I think it’s well worth fighting back. Let alone the fact that I just like riding my bike without being abused by idiots who can’t cope with change..

And someone needs to have a word with that cop about reciprocity. If he goes around addressing members of the public so aggressively, he’s going to get static back. Perhaps if his opening lines were a bit more adult he might get a better response! The cyclist was hardly some hardened criminal committing the crime of the century…

But not cry, that’s something they can never do.

Because they’d seize up and go rusty?

Percy Sledge has died two years in a row. Fingers crossed that 2017 is a better year for him

Twitter

the rider joined the road in the police car’s blind spot

Have you ever ridden much in London? You spend most of your time passing static traffic – passing from blind spot to blind spot…

And to my point above – if the Policeman were properly trained about what is best practice cycling technique (Bikeability) and the way that cyclists will ride to keep themselves safe, then he would have also known that ‘cycling furiously’ wouldn’t have stuck as a charge as all the cyclist was doing was riding along the carriageway, which isn’t ‘cycling furiously’

I have superfat feet (only specialized cycling shoes fit me) and I have some Scarpa boots and sportiva which both work for me

Having watched the video in full now I’m afraid that copper handled it really badly – if he wasn’t a copper, he’d just have been some ill-informed driver with an opinion having a go at someone because he didn’t like what they did… he clearly understood nothing about the reality of riding in heavy traffic and that cyclists should ALWAYS be given room as there are always obstacles – potholes, paint, drain covers etc, and you shouldn’t pass so close to a cyclist that you may hit them if they need to swerve for any reason.

If Police are going to go around telling cyclists how to ride then they need to be given some training so they have some perspective and pick people up when they’re really riding badly, not stuff like this – needing to ride wide like that in London happens several times in a ride out of necessity (pedestrians walking in front of you being a big reason) and Police need to understand that before they start having words with cyclists…

It’s rather worrying that what began as a local spat amongst the Tories, is now leading to several senior world leaders getting involved.

Cameron needs to be got rid of asap for this misjudgment alone – the problem is one for him to manage as an internal disagreement and he’s managed to make it a problem for all our allies and trading partners, and holding the whole country to ransom! How on earth did he manage to escalate it so spectacularly?

Walk away and good luck with your new landlord.
But take legal advice on the implications for breaking your tenancy agreement and how to get your deposit returned first.

Good luck – not enough people realise how utterly below standard most rental accommodation is – and landlords and agents.

My LL is well-meaning and finally starting to get stuff sorted but she’s failed to get a whole raft of stuff sorted in my flat – dodgy electrics, troublesome neighbours (flooding my kitchen, and needing to call the Police for various violent antics), no TV signal… all well-below standard when you’re paying full market rent…

Broess – if you had watched the chat bit you would have discovered that the policeman didn’t say he couldn’t use the road – the title is misleading.

This is STW – the opinion comes before the typing :-)

I’m still shocked they were all stopping at red lights !

I used to ride that route 2-3 times a week before the new CSH went in. Contrary to popular belief/made-up nonsense, those red lights are very widely respected at that point and rarely jumped. You’d be jumping into pretty heavy traffic coming up from Camberwell…

The Policeman needs to spend some time riding in London before he goes around passing out advice – riding on the highway is entirely legal and there’s no requirement to be in the cycle lane… I watched the cycling bit but not the ‘having a chat’ bit and I couldn’t see what was wrong with the cyclist’s riding at all. Once he was out of the CSH he couldn’t get back in – there’s a raised kerb all the way along… he’d have had to stop dead in the moving traffic to lift his bike over, which is dangerous.

Police need to have a word with the SUV driver who pulled right out into moving traffic if they want to make the roads safer…