^ organising, encouraging, allowing to happen..? But yes, pretty much as you say. There will be a legal line so it may be just a case of finding out where it is (cost/will to do so is another q)

I’ve seen similar sorts of pseudo legal arguments at club level for “events” – if we don’t call it an event we don’t need to do the same level of admin/dilligence etc.  I think it’s nonsense – the law (in U.K. jurisdictions) doesn’t have definitions of “organiser” or “event” – the question is simply did you owe a duty of care.  If you did you can’t really get away with saying “I encouraged but didn’t organise; or I knew all about it and didn’t raise concerns”.   I think it would be difficult to go to court, where this thread might be evidence and say “I had absolutely no belief that I had any duty of care”, because the fact you opened the thread is basically saying you do want some influence on timing/course etc.    Now France and Italy’s legal systems are very different from here so they may define an event or an organiser.

if Cycling UK is not the answer, is there a French equivalent?

Jameso, manslaughter or other charges in foreign jurisdictions would be my sort of concern.  That doesn’t mean I absolutely wouldn’t organise something like this, or that civil liability would not also be on my radar.

im surprised insurers have stipulated must have trackers, checkpoints etc – my experience is they are clueless and want you to follow some sort of “industry best practice” and risk assess and mitigate.  I think it would be difficult to do a risk assessment for 200 people all riding the same 150 km route at the same time and not come up with some significant risks: collision between riders, collision with the public, crash due to technicality of trail, crash off side of path, competitor getting lost, competitor getting lost and ending up somewhere very dangerous, competitor having a mechanical and being left in the exposed, competitor having underlying medical problem, etc.  They can all be mitigated to varying extents and costs.

no matter what you do, there is a non-zero chance someone dies at your event.  Make sure that if that happens legally you did everything a reasonable organiser would have done, but also so you can eventually sleep again at night knowing you did everything possible to prevent it. 

Sharing the organising workload would make for less stress, more eyes to spot potential problems and ideas to mitigate them (affordably), and reduce any suggestion that a Ltd co and the personal directing it were in fact the same entity.  I haven’t studied the case you allude to, whilst it’s certainly possible for reach through to directors when there has been wrong doing, the most common (it’s still rare) reason for trying to hold the directors liable is when the directors aren’t 100% crystal clear themselves when the distinction arrises.  Don’t call the company Jameso Ltd, have its own bank account, email address etc and label all company communications with the name and registered office / registration number, Never jump between the two “personalities” and you’ll be 80% of the way there.  Multiple directors and shareholders would help further.

even if you sort that – I’ve no idea if individual directors can be held accountable for criminal matters in France/italy.  Its best to assume they can, and avoid breaking the law.

Perhaps it needs the participation of the routing sites. komoot do run events for their own promotion (and did one on the route I put together).

Well the ideal would be to get a corporate sponsor that covers the cost of insurance!  If they happened to be the venue where your event starts from, then there’s a definitive what’s in it for them as well as potentially being able to be your “EU Rep”?   I’ve not idea what the insurance requirements are for EU events, but have heard various industries having insurance headaches post brexit.

A relationship like that might offer the sort of distance/protection I hoped a Ltd Co could offer, but doesn’t. Then it would be down to the router and the route hosting platform to have some sort of contract.

I’m a little surprised that you don’t think a Ltd co offers you any protection.  If it was clearly the organiser it would offer some substantial protection, although it is possible for some criminal stuff for reach through to the directors and if you personally make the stupid decisions on behalf of the Ltd Co then you might not personally be 100% off the hook.  Why not create a Ltd Co (or CIO if its for charity) with multiple directors/trustees who collectively as a board make the decisions.  If the Ltd Co can carry insurance, and even better Directors and Officers Insurance, then you almost have to try to do something wrong to be personally liable.  But this would mean moving from your ‘pretend not really an event’ status to the Ltd Co / CIO saying “we are the organiser”.   I don’t really understand why you can’t charge a fee to cover insurance costs?

Alternatively if you have no EU rep – relocate your trip to the UK?

Even if you are not legally responsible it will not stop a participant (or an angry relative) trying to claim that you are through the courts if something goes wrong.

^^ this ^^ (although you will only get sued by someone sensible if (a) you have some assets OR (b) insurance); where there are multiple organisers they may only pursue those worth chasing.

If I send a friend a message saying “Bob I’ve got a great plan for Sat 9am ride, come along” then I have some duty of care not to blindly lead him off a cliff.  Depending on his level of experience, our relationship and his understanding of my experience, I might have more or less duty towards him.  If he replies, “great I’ll bring Dave” then I probably have a duty of care to both Bob and Dave, but Bob may also have a duty to Dave (cause he knows I’m a reckless cock).  If we all keep meeting each sat at 9am to see where my wonderful plan goes and each week Bob and Dave bring another friend, and their friends bring friends of their own – suddenly I’m inadvertently the organiser of a large group and have a duty of care to all of them.  I can’t possibly know all their abilities, and they can’t possibly know mine.  Someone turning up when there’s 100 people in the group might quite reasonably expect the organiser has put more dilligence into the planning than on week 2 with five people.

If a couple of months in I say “folks I am out” then clearly most of my duty of care disappears.  There’s probably all sorts of grey areas where it could remain. Retaining influence on the timing (particularly if time was an important factor in the incident), reviewing proposed routes (particularly if the route was a factor in the incident).

Waivers are both useless (they don’t stop you being sued) and potentially helpful to focus participants minds IF carefully and clearly worded to focus the mind on the important points and provided sufficiently in advance that people have a genuine choice.  They also at best, only apply to participants – if your 150 riders all come flying through a tricky route just as a minibus load of ramblers are going up that path and one of them comes a cropper you will have a whole other problem.  All the more so if the ramblers had done their diligence well, had landowner permission etc – and you had not.

Donations are made directly to the charity who send out some event merch in return. The route info has always been freely available.

Sounds like they probably should get their own advice!  If I was looking for someone to sue, they would be on my list of possibles!  What diligence have they done on the organisers before agreeing to make event specific merch etc!  Did their “badge” add a degree of credibility than made me reasonably presume this was not just one guy figuring stuff our on the fly?

If I download your route from Strava or a route guide from bikepacking.com and I ride it I can’t hold someone liable for anything that goes wrong because I acted on free will and rode on a day I chose etc. Route resource websites have established this as far as I know from talking to them and the route for this event is hosted on one of them.

(1) If the route you downloaded took you along a railway line or motorway then I think potentially you could hold “me” liable.  But the court would likely also say “you downloaded a random route from a random stranger so theres a big element of at your own risk”.  Once the random stranger is someone who organised 5 previous big rides and arranged a party the night before and access to the party was controlled by invitation/ballots/tickets then I think the “I’m just a random on Komoot” is a weak defence.

(2) I am sure the route resource websites have had lots of legal advice and have sufficient budget to scare off anyone / quickly settle for claims.  I’d be amazed if they have zero liability – I am sure they will have a mechanism to delete routes that are flagged as dangerous OR allow users to leave feedback comments so other users are alerted to potential risks, that still wouldn’t stop someone trying to sue them especially if their negligence contributed (e.g. if they has a software error that meant the route was provided in reverse and so people were exposed to different risks).

(3) But “established” is a strong word in legal circles.  Even if you “establish” something in one jurisdiction if may not apply in another.  Lawyers love to point out that each case needs assessed on its own merits – subtle distinctions between cases can have big differences in outcome.

-o0o0o-

As well as wanting insurance for liabilities I would be considering if the worst happened if I had done everything possible to avoid it, not just from a moral perspective but from a criminal one – “manslaughter” would worry me far more than being sued.  If I was looking to test my own mind on what was and was not “organised” and how other people might see it, then I might look at these two documents:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63906ea0d3bf7f328063e844/2022-13-Paddleboards-Report.pdf

https://www.outdooraccess-scotland.scot/sites/default/files/2018-09/Guidance%20-%20Outdoor%20events%20in%20Scotland%20-%20guidance%20for%20organisers%20and%20land%20managers.pdf

The first is a commercial arrangement and the MAIB is not interested in legal liability, but you can easily read between the lines and see how professional investigators view lack of paperwork and clarity on organisation etc.

The second is Scottish land reform / access code specific – so of course irrelevant to France etc.  But in the absense of any local guidance perhaps gives some idea when a “gathering” becomes “an event” and when people who have some “de facto rights” to cross an area might need to consider additional permissions.  I’m not saying they’ve got it right, but they have considered the issue from much more than just the MTBers perspective.

Why not just show one fee instead three? It’s a bit like calling extra income tax National Insurance and hoping folk don’t notice how much is being taken overall, maybe that’s the point ;)

that’s so the pensioners can pay no NI whilst complaining about winter fuel payment cuts and self employed people can have different rules – presumably because that suits lots of politicians!

Its a bit complex!  Are you in Scotland or England/Wales?

You’ve slightly jumbled up your language.

In E&W – Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is a document which assigns certain powers to the Attorney (the person you choose) in certain circumstances.

You can cancel an LPA entirely but only if you still have mental capacity.  I don’t think the Attorney’s would automatically be informed by the OPG but it would certainly be good practice to tell them yourself.  If you have multiple attorney’s appointed under the same LPA you can remove one of them (again you need to have mental capacity).   There is a register at the OPG which can be searched to see who are the current attorneys.

LPAs can be just for welfare issues or financial stuff or both.  The financial stuff can be “active” whenever you want (or only if certain criteria are met).  Welfare ones always apply only when you can no longer make your own decisions.  So what do you think you had LPA for? and was it actually “active” – ie. had the process to “trigger” it been followed?

If you are concerned that his wife is not acting in his best interests then it may be worth a call to the OPG.

So Globuchul – why do you think “Children in Need” is that different?  They get to define their own rules for distributing support – not driven by politics, linking to benefits etc.  Much of their delivery is linked to government organisations and other charities or voluntary groups.  Yes some of their work probably shouldn’t be needed because its shoring up gaps in state provision but a big chunk of what they support is stuff that even in the most socialy generous countries probably wouldn’t be provided by the state.  I suspect 100 years ago a lot of what they do would have been covered by churches – but as we become increasingly secular the “media” has replaced the church and so “media charity” seems an appropriate solution…

and when it comes to the 2CBC, a majority of people actually support that too.

I think that entirely depends how you ask the question:

“Do you think people should be able to exploit the benefit system by having more children?” 

v’s

“Do you think children in poverty should suffer more if part of a large family?”

or

“Do you think people who find themselves in unexpected hardship should get more support if they have more dependants?”

or 

“If two single people each with 2 kids get together and live as one family, would you cut the total amount of tax/benefit support available to them?” 

and

“When determining the size of family to have, how much did you consider the UC and CTC in your family planning decisions?”

I just want my watch to stop calling me lazy!

I’m going to try that pyramid swim,

Its like giving in to a child seeking attention… they will just want even more next week!

I would rather not have 5+ year old recorded videos which were out of date with the technology of today on a robotics course.

I would rather not have recordings from mid pandemic which also had oddities and bit which have been corrected after the lecture as ‘not right’.

I didn’t state my own preference, and clearly your middle ground is not good – but back in the days when someone stood at the front with some chalk there was nobody else to critique what was said or what the students heard from it.  Would you hope that a university is proud of its teaching and wants its new intake to get the best impression?  Of course.  Do half the lecturers even want to be teaching?  No – probably most accademics go into it to do research not because they are passionate about teaching.  They are managed according to both teaching and research objectives – but if you can bring in grant income, publish papers etc you are the hero.  You need a lot of bums on seats to bring in the money of a research grant!

I agree that there’s a need for a lot more self directed learning, group work, and initiative to solve problems and learn for yourself. Unfortunately my experience is that this is a useful excuse to reduce as much contact time as possible, assume that learners can ‘just do it/mtfu’ from day one rather than coaching them into it, mark group work deeply unfairly, and generally provide a poorly thought out learning experience using the excuse of ‘do it for yourself, it’s a life skill don’t you know?’.

Perhaps universities haven’t adapted well to the floods of students coming from school who have been coached to get brilliant exam results but have minimal enquiry beyond the strict definition of the syllabus. Certainly colleges are struggling having lost a lot of their best students.  Most academics are of an era when going to uni was for the “elite” who did manage to cope against the adversities; all are inevitably the self selecting group that survived uni and did well in that environment.  Group projects are an interesting challenge – in many ways they do reflect the reality of working life: some people put in more effort but see less reward, some do loads of work on the wrong stuff because they refuse to listen to others, some do seemingly trivial work that actually transforms the recipients perception whilst not actually understanding the inner workings.

Without doubt though 17 yr olds spend way too little time considering the style / quality of the teaching in different places.  When I was finishing my PhD the department had just introduced a new course with a sexy title that was oversubscribed for the first time in recent memory.  Was it being led by experts in this special new branch?  was there a particular research pedigree in the area? No!  There was actually nobody in the department with relevant knowledge or expertise.  Didn’t matter though – the course content was the same as the rest of the dept for Y1 and 2 and only specialised in Y3 – we’ll hire someone by then!

This, charity should be for nice-to-haves not essentials.

I have a lot of sympathy for that argument, although it suggests it’s a simple black and white line to define when it is not.  But, take an example, the RNLI provide an “essential” service – they are a charity and proudly independent of government.  They don’t want to be tax payer funded and a political pawn so choose not to go down that route.   Every charity is likely funding some element of their area of work that others would either say is not essential or would cost more to deliver through a state provided model.

regardless of who should be funding services, if the reality is nobody else is, then you have a choice stand by and complain hoping government increases taxation to do the essential work or step in and do something yourself.

arguing on a bike forum against celebrities supporting charity because the state should be doing the task the charity does and taxing everyone more is just an excuse to aswage your own guilt for not doing more, or the usual “increase taxes” rhetoric when what you mean is “increase taxes on everyone else”.

I said that ^ to my daughter when she was thinking about uni, but really all that I learned as a student was the most basic cookery, how to use a washing machine every few months and an ability to find cheap beer.

Three essential skills!

It was only when I moved away to work that I was forced to learn ‘life lessons’. Being a student was (imo) completely divorced from real life, but did develop social skills and contacts!

A very broad range of social skills many of which are so subtle you probably don’t even know you’ve learned them.  Of course “stay at home” students learn a lot of those skills too – but there’s all sorts of trivial little issue of being on your own two feet that you discover.  Presumably £3.20 means he’s not far (in time/distance) away from the student body but there was quite a clear natural divide formed when I was there between – catered halls students // self catered flat students // live at home students.  My son could feasibly have lived at home (although the train fare is alot more than 3.20!) but I was keen that he got the wider experience – not because he’s a wild party type student, but precisely because he’s not!

We employ quite a lot of graduates. 20% overseas students or British students who studied abroad for a while // 60% British students who left home to study – even if they are back with parents now // 20% British students who studied at home and are still living with parents.   There’s nothing academically between them, but the ability to solve everyday life problems, work out how to come with difficult colleagues etc gets progressively worse from overseas / uk away from home / uk at home.   Our UK at home grads are, almost without exception, used to someone just sorting stuff for them.

There are pros and cons for virtual v in person lessons: if the lecturer is unclear you can interrupt, ask questions etc.  BUT recorded you can rewatch the unclear bits, and mediocre lecturers will find it harder to hide.  I also learned a “proper” subject 30 yrs ago with lots of in person stuff lectures/labs/tutorials etc.

There was luck of the draw which tutorial group you ended up in.  Learning was about quality of note taking.  If you missed a lecture you had to borrow someone else notes.  Technology isn’t all bad.

Would you rather have a well thought out “webcast” with decent content or mediocre content delivered in person?

is university more effective at education if the students have lots of contact time or are left to self directed learning?

Before assuming that there’s nothing to do from 13-30th Jan it might be worth understanding if there are group projects, tutorials, etc to be fitted in by people themselves rather than the official timetable team.

and of course university is as much about learning about life as the subject; your cheap train ticket might be part of that learning but it could also be that moving out of home is much more impactful.

The fundraising team at Children in Need must be really excited that there’s so many people here willing to give up days of their time to raise money for them and who want to do even higher profile / more impressive stunts too.

am on the cusp of going to see a specialist and getting imaging. But in terms of cause…. has anyone had anything similar?

A good physio probably doesn’t need imaging for that.  I’ve had roughly the sort of pain you describe following a foot injury which made me hobble for a while.

I never mentioned the mental side of the injury. It seems stupid to say that I feel that all I stand for as an individual are my hobbies, and when a big chunk of that is taken away or removed altogether, it has a big toll on me mentally. I’m a very withdrawn person now because of my anxiety.

I know it seems stupid to say this stuff, but honestly you probably won’t be the first person to have had that sort of conversation with them, and you certainly won’t be the stupidest thing they see/hear today.  It MIGHT just make a difference to the approach they take, or where you sit on a waiting list.  I’ve no idea if they would try to push the drugs/counselling route but you can say no.

I’ve never thought about another social type sport tbh. Cycling and football have always been the ones. Running was part of football of course, but I only ended up running as a hobby really through meeting my girlfriend.

I guess that’s the other option is to look for a “hobby” rather than a sport.  It won’t directly help with the fitness but it might help with the state of mind, social interaction etc.  You should be able to find a group of cyclists at almost any fitness / technical level but I’ve never found it that easy – and if you actually want to enjoy talking to them as well that makes it even harder.

FYI, I am awful at swimming, I wouldn’t be drawn to watersport stuff.

So am I, the idea is usually not to fall in!   I tend to gravitate that way so probably not best placed to suggest others, but you certainly won’t be alone in being a middle aged man who’s been injured out of their “main sport” and now looking for things to fill their time.  I dare say there’s a whole volunteering for the scouts thread just itching for you to get inquisitive…

UK PLC don’t sell any arms to Israel, the likes of Thales, or Lockheed Martin and so on might, but again, i believe Labour recently suspended several licenses for some of these companies in relation to selling specific parts to Israel, not sure of the criteria, but it did cause a fair bit of outrage at the time.

The UK Government (not “labour”) controls export licenses for military technology.  These may be for complete systems supplied by BAE, Lockheed Martin, Thales, Leonardo etc.  But they can also be for components or parts of systems with military capability – those might be supplied by the same big names or by smaller specialist firms.  In some cases stopping supply of a tiny component may actually bugger up the supply chain of a much bigger system.  The UK gov suspended 30 or the 350 export licenses currently in place for Israel.

In some cases the original development of that technology will have been sponsorred or supported by UK MOD funding.

This is not the preserve of truthful economic planning.

More big fails to come.

Why are they so bad?

I don’t know – did you stand for election?  because its seems there’s a lot of people in this thread know exactly what it is that politicians should be doing but who don’t seem interested in actually doing it themselves?

In my (albeit limited) experience children at that age are far better at coping with grief than you will be.  Are you alone? or do you have a partner?  In some ways it may be easier for your partner to explain it than you – she can discuss with them the fact “daddy will be upset”.

In your shoes I probably would take the kids to see her, but I probably wouldn’t leave it until she’s in a hospice or whatever at the end.

I think my QoL has been damaged more due to my anxiety, rather than the last 6 years of ongoing injury.

Out of interest do you discuss this with the consultant – or is the focus on the “mechanical” aspect of the injury?  Not sure if its a “man thing” or just we all bow down to the “doctor is an expert in knees not minds” thinking but one of the drivers for the docs doing particular surgery on my better half’s foot was not the foot pain, but the indirect consequences on ability to exercise.  I’ve been quite impressed with the team looking after my daughter who has a long term condition that they are not focussed purely on the medicine but on making sure the condition doesn’t define her, and how to support the “whole person”.  They know how important excercise if for body and mind and seem pleased when people want to do it rather than trying to prise a fatty off the sofa.

If the knees really are knackered and you need some variation to cycling, perhaps try something totally different: kayak? paddleboard? old wooden rowing boat (not a racing type with a sliding seat – more a “local pond” type – or if you are near the coast there is a resurgence in small community “gig” rowing), wild swimming…   if football was about team sport / camaraderie then many of those things can be done solo or in groups but there’s other less obviously exerting sports like bowls or curling where you’d probably be considered a youngster, or if you can still walk reasonably a friends wife in her 40s has taken up walking football after repeated running injuries.  Perhaps early 40s feels too young to be going to these “old people” sports but if you miss social side of playing then it might be worth exploring.

The correct response from a strong government would be to stop all donations to any party or MP by putting rules in place. If any people want to donate to the workings of government then they donate to a central pool where the money gets equally distributed

I suspect that’s pretty much what SKS would prefer; the problem is for anyone other than the tories to push for this it comes across as “they’ve got more donors than us – that’s not fair”.    The reasonable solution is not to rely on donations but rather to accept that functioning democracy needs elected politicians and opponents and fund it through taxation.

across each party to give all parties the same amount to run, stand for election and so on.

All parties?  So you think Countbinface, the BNP etc should have the same funds as Lab/Con/LibD, even pro-rata’d per seat that would seem to be funding the absurd?

After all, it is not very democratic for one party to have more money than another when it comes to elections.

You could argue it is entirely democratic – if your party is popular it will manage to raise more support!

I imagine the amount of donations would drop to pretty much zero if that was put in place.

I think the things people get especially uncomfortable with are donations to individuals/personal campaigns; huge donations (or multiple donations from the same individual) that are far bigger than any “ordinary” individual could make; donations that come from corporate bodies (and perhaps Unions) where there’s clearly some direct link between donation and policy direction. It feels like that could be solved by separating donations from specific actions more clearly, e.g. donations to a central party only, who then distribute the funds on a clear, published and transparent basis (each party could decide if it wants to treat all seats the same, put more effort into seats it already holds, seats with narrow margins, seats with government ministers etc).

Clearly there is an issue with honours for donations – there should probably be some sort of block on any honor for anyone who directly (or through a company) could be seen to have donated to get it: perhaps anyone in the top 20% of donors is barred from honors for 3 yrs, top 10% for 5yrs, top 5% for 10 yrs.  Equally anyone who had been given an honor should similarly be barred from donations of certain sizes, for certain periods.

There was an interesting point in an interview the other day.  As shadow minister for Sport attending say Wimbledon would be declarable but the incumbent minister would not need to declare it, as that is a “ministerial duty”.   The question then arose whether attending your local football team playing was something you should pay for or should be given to an MP as a “gift”.   Ironically, if the person likes football the gift will have more impact than it would on me.  However, if they liked football and are a pillar of their local community you might expect they sometimes go to see their local team play at their own expense.  However, if I was an MP and had very little interest in football but the football team want me to see the great youthwork we are doing, understand the redevelopment of the stand or share concerns about how regulation affects smaller/bigger teams differently, then inviting me along as a special guest might be exactly how to get the issues on my agenda!

Oh but I should maybe add – Redbull (the sponsors) might have loved it, because appealing to stroppy petulant teenagers is presumably their target demographic?

Hamilton said he hoped Max would ignore the punishment and certainly wouldn’t do it if it was him. I reckon the drivers are pretty much behind Verstappen on this.

Because they are all spoiled children!  I suspect they don’t like the idea that the FIA might have found a punishment that actually hurts them rather than a fine and the overreaction from the drivers will just tell the FIA they’ve found a way to control them.  Who’d have thought that being told to do something “useful” with your time would be such a punishment.  I noticed last night he was ranting that he already does useful stuff for the sport including having spent HALF AN HOUR with some junior stewards earlier this year to support their training!

Did he screw-up the presser? I thought it was refreshingly non-corporate TBH.

Its a live press conference broadcast on media around the world, including in many nations who are much more prudish than we are in the UK about swearing.  The business reality of F1 is that those are particular growth markets for them.  if you don’t want to be in “business” of F1 then don’t drive an F1 car.  You can’t complain your sport is too corporate when that’s exactly why you make millions.

I’d rather drivers express themselves honestly than have them be bland and make the sorts of non-comment that you see in other sports.

But you don’t need to say the car is “F****D” to say that there’s a problem with it.  Indeed it actually adds no insight to the problem.  Is it handling, acceleration, breaking, etc.  I get why he’s not happy, when he had a great car he was winning, nor he’s having to fight to be on the podium.  A more mature response could have got that across without swearing, but if I was Horner I’d not be happy even if he’d said “the car just isn’t right” – a bit of press training would teach him that you don’t throw your team under the bus like that, especially when they are the ones tightening the bolts on your 200mph plastic box.  The corporate response would have been something like “some of the changes we’ve made to the car this season haven’t brought us the improvements we hoped they would, the guys are working really hard to try and catch up, but that is F1 – we only see how successful they’ve been once the lights go green.  I know we will take the data from the weekend and use it to make more improvements for the next race.  Its not ideal for me, but it certainly makes it more interesting for the spectators.”   There’s loads of opportunity outside the press conference for him to show his personality.

I don’t mind the FIA having a word and saying “Can you all mind your P’s & Q’s please”,

The FIA ruling strongly suggests that all drivers have previously been warned: “But, as this topic has been raised before and is well known by the competitors, the Stewards determined to order a greater penalty than previously”

but to try to impose a sanction is really treating them like children.

Because they behave like spoilt children!  Its not surprising F1 drivers behave like kids – they live in a weird bubble like premiership footballers etc, but sometimes kids need told to behave and they need some form of sanction that makes them try to avoid doing it again.  Other kids watching need to see that sometimes being a smart arse isn’t actually that smart.

Honestly, I thought that was pretty much the best response to the FIA trying to slap his wrist.

I thought it was petty, immature and contemptible.  He is earning millions living a very comfortable lifestyle because of the TV coverage his chosen branch of motorsport gets.  Don’t screw up the press conference by swearing.  Don’t give one word answers to the questions when the FIA tell you off.  He is trying to make out that’s it’s ok in other sports – I can’t think of many where swearing in the press conference would be normal.  He wasn’t sanctioned for his team radio in immediate response to an incident – he was swearing about his car/team.  Even without the FIA sanctioning him I’d expect Horner to have been having a strong word about how a team works.  However he’s clearly pissed off and that means the FIA have found a sanction that works!  A fine would have been trivial to him.

KLM will fix it, just be nice, fill the forms in, submit the claim and wait. They’re not BA!

your experience with klm must be different to mine – I had to take them to arbitration for something that was directly THEIR fault, and they admitted the facts of never mind where they could blame others.

they do have online customer service people 24/7 though if you want to log the issue – but Monday isn’t going to make any real difference to when you get a resolution.

That HR person or solicitor will also be subject to the fear of repercussions. You are asking them to put themselves at risk to prevent future occurrences.

no im not questioning if someone who covers up evidence is guilty of failing to prevent future offences, thats some sort of moral or ethical dilemma.  My question was a genuine one, could the use of NDAs to prevent an alleged victim of crime (or other witness) reporting that crime amount to attempting to pervert the course of justice. (Or perhaps “Assisting and Offender” or other such charges).  It seems unlikely that Fayed could pull off shutting up the victims without help from others, who perhaps should bear some of the criminal responsibility – which would make it harder for the next Fayed (be under no doubt there will be more rich people exploiting their power).  I appreciate that to some extent these people might also claim to be victims of the Fayed machine – but unless they quite their jobs asap after I am not convinced.

Where do you stop? Are each of the victims equally guilty of “perverting the course of justice” by not going public at the time and therefore encouraging future offences?

im not saying someone who hears a complaint and doesn’t report it is guilty, im saying someone who hears a complaint and offers you money and makes you sign an agreement never to speak of it again might be guilty.   Its quite a leap to get from that to blaming the victims for not speaking up sooner.

Is an HR person, or solicitor, who knows or suspects what’s gone on and arranges a “pay off” and “NDA” that prevents* reporting it to the police guilty of an offence?  It seems that might amount to attempting to pervert the course of justice.  It’s only by making these third parties liable that we can stop such cases from being properly reported and investigated.

*I doubt any such agreement is enforcible but that shouldn’t matter to your intent by using it as a tool.

When daughter has done gymnastics events abroad, British Gymnastics have insurance for accidents while performing, but the girls have to have their cover for everything else.

The coaches have a folder with copies of all the insurance and EHIC details for the squad just in case.

having been involved with a sport governing body when a return trip went wrong (nothing that serious just the usual Ryanair cancellation – no other flight for a week, Ryanair usual customer service skills) this sounds like someone at British Gymnastics needs to reflect for a moment on how you actually manage that realistically.  A better airline would re-route you but chances of getting say a dozen kids and a couple of coaches on the same flight is fairly small so then you have safeguarding headaches!    Who has a credit card that can cope with booking 10 short notice hotel rooms, plus alternative travel.  Who would want to then be the coach trying to get repaid for that from 12 different parents, some of who can’t afford to repay you till their insurer pays out.  If it turns out the small print of Little Johnny’s policy has a carve out for the particular scenario involved who is on the hook for the plan that got adopted?  The parents, the coach, the sport NGB.  It’s bad enough understanding the rules of one policy without trying to understand umpteen policies and which options parents ticked.

I wish I could think of a good idea for a YouTube channel. It seems like a potentially fun way to make a living as long as you don’t commit to a gruelling weekly upload schedule that sees you constantly repeating yourself. (most UK mtbers)

It’s also completely tapped out. Literally anything you can think of is already on there.

seems like a lot of hardwork if you want to actually make money from it – you pretty much need to do the video a week thing to make it viable.  Someone I met who had 70k subscribers said for each 1 min of content he had at least 1hr of filming/prep/set up and at least 1/2hr of editing.  Then admin/marketing/promo stuff on top.    After 3 yrs said basically minimum wage – unless you do patreon etc

Plan is to use empty student accommodation. We have a lot of that in Glasgow in the summer

it doesn’t sit empty all summer though?  And I don’t think the actual date has been fixed yet?  Some suggestions that July and Aug were difficult because of other major fixtures…

I think possibly it isn’t included because the school book everything direct and not through a third party/agent.

it is surprising that it’s not provided though, imagine if there’s some sort of travel disruption and you have multiple people with different policies all covering different solutions, and then perhaps some people who don’t actually have cover for that particular problem.  If I was the school I would want to have one consistent group policy

@Ambrose it’s a small Independent Grammar school – not sure what difference it makes.

Perhaps because some/most local authorities have a general policy which covers this sort of thing.

are you sure you are being asked to provide travel insurance for all the “usual” things: travel problems, medical problems, loss/theft of property?  IIRC the local authority policy our school uses covers travel & medical but has an excess and single item cap for property that means probably most claims for an Individual teenager would be pointless (I can’t remember the exact numbers but I think no single item >200, and excess of 250 total claim).  They encouraged people to take their own policy if taking valuables: we had a family annual policy – but check the rules on <16s if not travelling with someone >16 on policy.

But it seems to have wrong footed the international community a fair bit, many of them seem unsure how to respond/comment on pager attacks despite it still being a clear escalatory action.

I imagine many of them are frantically checking where their own handheld electronics come from and how good the supply chain and security vetting is as well as wondering if they could pull off the same move if they needed to.

Currently I appear to be in the ludicrous situation of, if I want to “parent” anything in my sons account I need to factory reset his phone, set it up with my credentials, make the changes, then reset and put his account back on. Come on apple fans, surely this isnt true? Tell me Ive done something fundamentally wrong and theres a much easier, accessible method….that doesnt involve buying another apple device…?

No apple fans can tell you as they all have iDevices of their own so found the process simple.  I’m sure a trip to your local apple store would sort you out.  At 15 it won’t be long before they are expecting increasing freedom so maybe see if the features apple provide to adult users is enough to help them with the carrot/stick that if you don’t think its working you’ll go back to kiddy mode.

But I guess I needn’t worry, the screen will be no doubt be cracked within a couple weeks, then device totally fubared not long after, so it’ll be back to android when he’s earned enough pocket money for a basic replacement handset

My experience of extensive drop testing is modern Apple screens are surprisingly robust – more so than the cheap androids we get our children!

Does any teenager require that much tech?

I’d say yes grandad!  Realistically any teenager today is living in a highly digital world, much though you may not like it.  They need to learn to use that tech to their advantage and also how to moderate the temptation to overuse it too.

Simpler just to buy them a smartwatch.

A smartwatch without a matching phone is probably not that useful, but potentially has all the same issues!

The recumbent gets thumbs up from white van man, phone videos out of the passenger window and generally a lot of love. Probably a WTF is that response, but it’s seen. Of course I ride with three rear lights too.

Know someone with a KMX, who overheard a lady tell her son to keep out of the way of the man in the wheelchair…  they probably think you are a war hero raising money for charity in your special bike…

All I can tell you – anecdotally obviously – is that riding a matt-blacked courier bike with panniers, ridden with an apparent disregard for the rider’s safety meant that most drivers tried quite hard to get out of your way.

Was it loud?

My point is that cyclists really aren’t ‘threatening’ when you’re sat in a metal box, so treating them with respect becomes a more discretionary thing, which relies on some sort of basic humanity and empathy, both things that seem to be left at home when some people get into their cars. And I guess the flip-side is that it’s easier to be empathetic / sympathetic to someone who looks like a person rather than Lance Armstrong or Darth Vader.

My suspicion is “we” are more tolerant of people who are using the roads for “work” or “commuting”* but feel that people who might be adding to the traffic whilst having fun are a problem.  Caravans, Tourists, Cyclists, Motorbikes, Sportscars, perhaps even School runs…

* As most people think cycling to work is mad – clearly you can’t be commuting on a bike; that makes you a weirdo who’s doing it for fun.

Hoping there will be some flexibility on ‘zombie knife’ law for professional use, although looking in the back of my work vehicle that profession might be mistaken as cutting up bodies to bury in the woods…

I’ve not had to study the details at length – but my recollection is there is zero “professional” exemption for zombie knives.   If your work tool meets that definition then from next week owning it, even tucked away in your garage is an offence.    If you are affected there was a plan for compensation if you surrender it before the ban comes into force.

Zombie-style knives have:

– blade over 8″ long AND
– a point AND
– a smooth cutting edge AND
– a serrated cutting edge OR holes in the blade OR multiple points

There are definitions of what counts as a point, areas close to the handle which are exempt etc.  BUT if my work tool sounded like it might fit those criteria I’d want something in writing to clarify why it was not illegal.

I dunno, I can well believe it. Pretty convincing IMO.

Thinking about damage resulting from a collision or delay to the journey time (beyond “there’s a cyclist in the way”) is a conscious thing. Seeing a police vehicle and thinking “oh bugger, better be careful” is much more instinctive.

Oh, I wasn’t disputing people behave better when they are aware (or think) the cops are around, it was that motorcycle couriers get more respect because they will cause more damage than a bike that I was questionning.

I will be thinking about this in a year or so. I honestly think there needs to be more done here. Maybe kids have a different sim card or restricted network by default. I see so many kids with normal phones that have access to anything.

You’d need to be very good and constantly on top of a technical battle to lock them out of stuff completely.  Most phone network operators will provide the option to block the dodgiest end of the internet from “data” connections.  Most premium (and many free IP provider) routers will have an option to block sites.   None of that will stop them popping round a mates house and using their WiFi.  None of that will stop their mates from sending them video/pic on WhatsApp etc.   To be honest that last issue always worried me far more than anything my kids might actively look for.

BUT all of that is I think a different question from the OP is asking?

OP – does this help? https://support.apple.com/en-us/108806

The parallel was that working as a motorcycle in courier in that London also elicited a certain amount of ‘respect’, which was probably fear for their bodywork.  Cyclists rank pretty low on the scale of actual threat to cars, so unless you make motorists automatically liable under law or blatantly carry a large bomb with you, as a cyclist you’re relying on a combination of compassion / consideration and basic observational / spatial skills, something quite a few drivers conspicuously lack, commuters in particular.

im not convinced by that – my bike, and I, will make significant damage to the bodywork of any car I hit.  Even a glancing blow from a pedal / bar-end or taking a wing mirror off probably costs more to fix than the fine you alluded to m/cycle cops potentially imposing.  Your sub conscious “calculation” doesn’t include the delay to the drivers journey which must be a factor even if it is only to get out and check no damage done.

I suspect the subconscious and conscious decisions of which m/cycles to allow through are not about fines but something much more subtle.  Thats the sort of thing this research was trying to understand.    I think the humanisation scale is flawed – it stops at 100% human, but people are culturally reluctant to score anything as 100% – to understand the significance of the scale you would need to reference against other examples, and understand what people mean by “not human” – after all about 10% of my total mass as a “cyclist” is not human – it’s bike.

The study is a bit odd.  The pictures don’t show people on bikes, rather standing beside them.  They only show one orientation with reasonable eye contact to the camera.  What do sunglasses do to perception? What does the rear view do?  What do different styles of bike / riding position do?   Different ages of rider? Shape/style of helmet etc.  the Lycra examples they include show some of that but are attributed to being Lycra. Obviously this is an “initial” study, from an unrepresentative self selecting group but whilst it sets out to answer a “why” question it does it with this rather unusual concept of “dehumanising” but without really establishing what that means in the minds of participants which is probably dangerous to then draw conclusions on – are they understanding drivers attitudes to cyclists or psychology participants attitudes to the word human?

but they should probably be congratulated for doing the study and asking the questions because that will likely stimulate others to replicate with improved studies which might make design of bikes / clothing / transport infrastructure / policy / driver education more effective.

a study using simulators would be interesting, it would be easy to randomly swap the cyclist, but I don’t really care “why” just how to “mitigate”.

I’ve seen cases in the past where the accused have pled not guilty up until the morning of the court appearance, and still got the discount, that was in a case of joyriding, theft of a motor vehicle and other charges where the defendants had to be cut out of the wreck by the fire brigade!

The “expectation” is you get 1/3rd off for guilty at first appearance.  1/4 off for guilty at a case management hearing.  About 1/10th off for pleading on the day of the trial.  The latter still avoiding the witnesses having to actually go through the experience of giving evidence, and saving court time.