Cycling UK Forum

Isn't the point that he now agrees to limit his personal use of the aircraft to $200,000-worth of travel a year. I.e. not work related use.

For putting up with that hardship his company has given him $4m compensation.

Dusting down my crystal ball...

I predict ever increasing costs of raw materials and land yet decreasing costs of manufacture. The former because the easy to extract raw materials have already been taken (and because they just don't make any more land these days), the latter due to the advance of technological know-how.

Slowly this will lead to a change from the culture that once you own a car you use it all for all journeys to one where many people own cars, but most are careful about using them, because of both running & parking costs.

Some people will understand that sooner than others.

UKIP policy:

"Local authorities should be given additional powers to enforce a ‘cyclists dismount’ or ‘no cycling’ regulation where there are safety concerns – such as on busy roundabouts, junctions or bus lanes, or where or where the road would be too narrowed by cycle lanes and cause unacceptable delays to traffic."

kwackers wrote:Good luck to them.

Ehh? The policy is Nanny State backing for the Motoring Master Race.

Highlights of UKIP policies

10. Pedal Cycles
[...]
10.2 We believe that there needs to be a better balance of rights and responsibilities for
pedal cyclists, with too much aggressive abuse of red lights, pedestrian crossings and a
lack of basic safety and road courtesy.
[...]
10.5 UKIP’s proposed new elected police boards could also put greater emphasis on
tackling bicycle theft, particularly in theft hotspots such as London, Reading, Bristol and
Oxford.
10.6 UKIP would consult on the desirability of minimum third party liability insurance
cover for cyclists - a simple annual flat rate registration ‘Cycledisc’, stuck to the bicycle
frame, to cover damage to cars and others, which are currently unprotected. The
Cycledisc should also carry clear identification details, which will help counter bicycle
theft, and deter dangerous cyclist behaviour. We support provision of cycle parking at
reasonable charges.
[...]
10.8 Cycling on safe cycle routes, lanes, tracks and trails should be actively encouraged,
particularly as a leisure pursuit. UKIP believes off road dedicated lanes are preferable to
a confusing maze of cycle lanes on unsuitable or dangerous roads, which is problematic
for cyclists as well as other road users.
10.9 Local authorities should be given additional powers to enforce a ‘cyclists dismount’
or ‘no cycling’ regulation where there are safety concerns – such as on busy roundabouts,
junctions or bus lanes, or where or where the road would be too narrowed by cycle lanes and cause
unacceptable delays to traffic.

thirdcrank wrote: Also, in spite of predictions that improvements in digital communication would reduce the need for business travel, there's not much evidence of that happening.

Reducing the need for business travel is not the same as reducing the desire. Some people seem to like meetings.

When I started a career in telecommunications, back in the 1970's, people talked about "The paperless office", others about "Home banking" and reading the daily newspaper on a computer monitor.

Thoughout the eighties people said the amount of paper in offices was growing. And asked why should anyone bank at home - there wasn't going to be a ATM in the sitting room! About that time I read that IBM in the 1950's had confidently predicted that the worldwide market for computers would never get into three figures. In an earlier age pundits had predicted that Nuclear Fusion would soon produce safe clean and abundant energy but television would never catch on.

About a hundred years ago people thought battery cars would be viable. Or at least battery car manufacturers did. For decades sales of fax machines were predicted to be just about to skyrocket. They didn't, until the eighties .

kwackers wrote:The largest majority of drivers actually don't need to drive. However trying to get them on bicycles is probably a lost cause, only a small percentage would be capable, most are simply too unfit and would find the effort too great to persevere. We've created a generation that is so used to being lugged around that I fear all is lost.

The only real option for most is public transport, it should imo be re-nationalised and made fit for purpose.

Buses will never match the flexibility of cars and bicycles. Cars and buses will never match the health advantages of walking and cycling.

jan19 wrote:One thing that did interest me was that many people said they couldn't do their food shopping without a car - baffled me as they were clearly using a PC to post. Have they never heard of online shopping? I do the vast majority of mine online now and while I know its not to everyone's taste (no pun intended), and that some prefer to use local shops (as I would if I had the time!) it is a viable alternative and I was just surprised nobody mentioned it.
Jan

Four times a year I use online grocery shopping. I buy the bulky, heavy things which keep. Once a week I shop locally (with my bicycle) for fresh meat, fruit, bread & veg. Every couple of days I walk across the road to the corner shop to buy milk.

About 4 years ago I attended a lecture given by a representative of a motor manufacturer. He said that research had shown that consumers rated "fuel economy" as the seventh most important factor when considering which car to buy.

I expect it has moved up the "charts" since.

kwackers wrote:I seem to remember seeing some figures that suggested that even if we all lived as 16th century peasants we'd still need more land here in the U.K than we've got.

Where are those figures?

I can well imagine that sustaining 70m people in the UK is impossible using 16th century technology, but why not using 21st century technology with 19th century per-capita raw material consumption?

TheBrick wrote: Discouraging people from breeding and encouraging other countries to take the same route would help a lot but the chancres of a government encouraging people not to have children and explaining to them the problems of population growth is zero.

It's not human population that's the problem; it's the amount of non-renewable resources consumed per person that's the problem.

Today the areas with the highest population growth have the lowest consumption. Ignorance and poverty, for reasons which aren't 100% clear, lead people to have large families. As education & income levels rise in a society the number of children, on average, produced by each woman falls. The same pattern has been repeated across the world from country to country. For example in the mid 19th century families were much bigger in Britian than they are today while living standards and educational levels were much lower.

It seems to me that the argument that population is the issue is an attempt by rich people (who don't reproduce much but do consume a lot) to deflect attention from their environmentally damaging behaviour and blame poor people.

"It's the rich wot's has the fun and it's the poor wot's gets the blame" - a much repeated saying from 19C British housemaids on being made pregnant by the young lord and getting the sack. Things don't change much.

Road Traffic and Congestion in Great Britain: Quarter 4 2009:

The latest provisional figures show a decrease of 0.9 per cent in overall traffic levels between the fourth quarters of 2008 and 2009.
Comparing the whole of 2009 with 2008, traffic is provisionally estimated to have decreased by 1.3 per cent.

Some of the decrease must be due to the recession. Nevertheless some people are saying that they are seeing more people cycling for apparently utility purposes.

Somehow the UK economy must change to bring exports in balance with imports - high petrol prices are a way the markets are pushing this country in that direction. Bananas, I read, have reached an all time price high as well!

psmiffy wrote:I would be very interested to know how many of the Cambridge student cyclists contine to use a bike as their primary transport following their graduation and subsequent relocation to cities and towns where cycling is not regarded as being normal

Warwick university surveyed their staff and students and found that a higher proportion of the staff cycled than the students. I put that down to many of the academic staff being Oxbridge graduates - certainly the two which come out on CTC runs are.

Given that far too many people think that hugging the kerb is the right way to cycle, getting beginners to adopt the primary position on the approach to red traffic lights and only filtering when it will bring real benefits would seem to me a good idea.

Obviously it does depend on traffic levels. But at least some of the time filtering will bring no real time advantage while re-enforcing the habit of kerb-hugging and putting the cyclist at risk from left turning vehicles.

The vast majority of areas built before 1950 weren't designed for mass car ownership. Now that mass car ownership is a reality not only are the roads clogged with them but motorists also park their garishly coloured contraptions on the pavement.

Will Mick F concede that chain life is more to do with what the chain is made of than how clean you keep it?