Don’t think many folk would pay more than the minimum they were required to pay.

But not many of us go out of our way to (putting it generously) “selectively interpret” tax regulations in dubious, under-the-radar, or plain underhand ways.

Prefer this version

What an utterly massive twunt.

Does GIMP support it?

How can you enforce high viz clothing? It’s not a legal requirement, so what’s to enforce?

Half of serious brain injuries happen in car crashes. Isn’t it about time we had compulsory helmets for car occupants?

How do you know there’s not something devastatingly wrong in his life outside work?

I have to agree that in the second vid, the cyclist could have slowed

But you have an instant, in a situation like that, to make the right decision. Slowing is not necessarily right because you still have a car coming at you, and little space to do anything if the car doesn’t stop. It looked to me like the cyclist made the other choice, which was to go for the gap. No issue with that at all, for me.

This link to Mark Green Disco is still working:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qhu7Pr7cV8

But why oh why do reports of bike accidents always say “the cyclist was/wasn’t wearing a helmet”? WTF has that got to do with anything?

Exactly. Massive pet hate of mine. You don’t hear “the motorist, who was not wearing a neck brace, suffered whiplash”

Yep, why?

Isn’t it about time all car occupants wore helmets? After all, 50% of serious brain injuries result from car accidents.

+1 HoratioHufnagel.

The more cyclists on the roads, the safer they’ll all be. Take a look at Holland’s participation rates and accident stats and week for Britain.

I don’t know why he was (a) out in the dark

Yeah, cyclists out in the dark, only got themselves to blame.

*headdesk*

Anyway, here’s Fabio Canavarro having a perfectly normal medical procedure.

Equally UEFA do quite a lot of testing too: 2200 players tested in 2011/2012, apparently, both in and out of competition,

How would they detect blood doping?

From that Juventus article:

As for those who felt the trial had stained the reputation of a great club, he had a succint riposte. Anyone who thought along those lines was, he said, “a village idiot”.

At least you wouldn’t get cyclists abusing people who dare to question them. Eh Bradley?

(and bear in mind, mid-table cloggers don’t stay in their divisions by beating Barcelona and Manchester United on a regular basis. They stay where they are by having a decent record against fellow mid-table cloggers)

That’s not to say that having a team of players off their tits on EPO isn’t going to give an advantage, of course it is, but less of an advantage than in road biking.

I don’t see it’s very different at all.

Take two teams of average mid table cloggers, playing a fixture in January after five games in two weeks.

Feed one on a diet of blood bags and epo. Feed the other on bread and water. Who’s going to win? I reckon the drugs would give a massive edge, all other things being equal. You’ll never take away the element of chance but you can’t do that in cycling either.

I don’t think you can honestly say that the ‘real’ problem is with (for example) football. I’ve no doubt it goes on, but I don’t think it biases the outcomes of events in quite such the same way.

I think it’s probably absolutely endemic in football. And although I don’t think it’ll ever make a player more skilful, it’ll still be used in exactly the same way, to gain an edge over roughly-equally-skilful players. You still get that “we’re as good as them but they’re doping and it means they beat us all the time because we’re more knackered after 60 minutes” worry.

Hence I think it’s probably a cycling-style arms race, with early-2000s-quality drug testing having no effect whatsoever.

I say all that as someone who is a season ticket holder at a Premier League football club, and has spent countless thousands and hours watching the game. There’s so much money, there are so few controls, and there are exactly the same “them vs us” worries that cycling faces.

Completely agree, but if someone in a car insists on trying to blind me, then they get it back at them!

It’s all well and good until you approach a car being driven by a moth.

34×18 on my Karate Monkey, although it’s currently built up as a cross bike with 34×16

I’d still be much angrier with the phone company than the teenager who has accidentally gone over a limit. The magnitude of the “punishment” is ridiculous, dubious at best given their overuse of the word ‘unlimited’, and doesn’t bear any kind of relation to the actual costs of processing those texts.

The whole thing is rotten. 3000 texts = a few quid, 6000 texts = £500. Dubious under contract penalty law I’d have thought.

It was the spoil heap for a deep mine that shut in 1989. The mine was just the other side of the Deal to Sandwich road.. I grew up in Deal, was an interesting and sometimes sad time

Is the Fowlmead mud full of coal dust or has the site been cleaned up?

I’ve often wondered how it’s legal to sell anything as unlimited when it’s not unlimited

What version of “unlimited” is this?

Good effort ormondroyd. Saw you racing and thought fair play. It was hard enough with gears.

Haha, was that you who called me barmy? Fair enough if so! 😀

Here I am on about lap 2, so still relatively clean: http://www.grahamrobins.net/photos/Beeline%20Cycles%20%28Oxford%29%20Cross%202012/272.JPG.php

I don’t, I just get through a lot of meniscuses

Oxford today. Great fun… Very muddy indeed but it was largely very wet mud rather than chilternsy soul-sucking clag. Got utterly head to toe filthy and finished 37 out of 47 finisher in seniors. And fastest of the two singlespeeds 🙂

It’s the bin, isn’t it? It’s Dusty Bin

Hang on, when did anodised purple come back in? Is this a 1994 revival? Next you’ll be telling me the Stone Roses have reformed to play gigs.

If anyone thinks Lance is a good role model for their kids, I worry.

> Funded by lemond apparently…..

Funded also by a large number of donations from a large number of cycling fans. Just made my third donation to the pot. This is really big.

Kimmage fund

Four more arrived this morning

Mine just arrived.
It’s just one inner tube.

Good luck to the rest of you.

Trouble is, some people can apparently get caught and still get away with it. That’s when you need witnesses.

It also means enough to me to have made two donations so far to the Paul Kimmage defence fund (which to my joy looks like turning into the ATTACK fund, and good luck to him). Back when I was fooled by it all, in the early Armstrong domination years, I used to think he and Walsh were bitter and twisted sensationalists. If I ever meet them I’ll give them a very heartfelt apology and make sure they don’t get near their wallets in the pub all evening.

Just look at the current low number of +tests

Microdosing, smaller blood bags, training camps in remote locations…

Surely he must have been clean when he came 3rd in the 2010 tour? Testing must have been so advanced then

No way. Why would he have changed the habit of a lifetime? Plus, Mike Ashenden is convinced his blood data shows clear signs of manipulation (less than one in a million chance of it NOT being, according to him).

if they all took drugs aleast you would know they are all on the same page

But Armstrong was paying Ferrari more than most cyclists are even paid. It’s not a level playing field even if everyone is cheating, because some people respond better to the drugs, and importantly – some people can afford a much more comprehensive programme.

What does it all mean to me? I ADORE the sport, and I desparately want it to clean up. I walked away from it for a few years after the Hamilton and Tyler busts, creeping back with some trepidation in the last few years as more and more stuff was exposed. Now we’re at a turning point… either the current regime crumbles, and things radically change, or the fat old men running the UCI somehow hang on and we end up with a sport in freefall, gradually turning into something sub-pro-wrestling.

Either way, I’ll still be there by the roadside. Hell, I love watching it. But I’ll be SO much happier if I can start to believe it again. Right now, I don’t believe in it, and that includes Sky’s miraculous performance this year.

It is Scotland only, but if you’re using Sky, BBC2 Scotland is buried deep in the listings just before the radio stations. Thanks for the pointer

So I’m doing Oxford at the weekend, for my second ever ‘cross race. Anyone ridden at the Oxford Brookes University course?