Cycling UK Forum

Being a charity, presumably being based in London, I suspect they're highly likely to have someone on call to further their crusade like view of this issue.

Perhaps they should be asking Nigel Lawson about cycle helmets and Headway about climate change. It couldn't be worse. Or more ill informed.

Is headway a charity like cuk employing well paid experts?

thirdcrank wrote:I fear it would be an easy crowd pleaser for a bankrupt govt. Ditto number plates. Ditto compulsory use of farcilities.

Couldn't agree more- great to butter up readers of the Daily Mail.

Sorry, going very OT here:

thirdcrank wrote:The Today programme seems to have hours to fill. I say "seems" because it's some time since I stopped listening.

You haven't missed much. It was useful as a news fill-in in the pre-internet days - now I tend not to have R4 on in the mornings any more. And the present incumbents, Robinson, Humphrys &Co are frankly irritating.

I hanker after the good old days of Jack de Manio and Brian Redhead - long since departed to that studio in the sky! My all-time favourite item - long long ago - was an off-the-cuff interview conducted by a roving reporter of theirs named Monty Modlyn, which was utterly hilarious. Only at the end was it revealed that his interviewee was ..... a mynah bird.

Cyril Haearn wrote:I saw a picture once of a very practical vehicle, a wagon with a horse who "walked" on an endless enclosed belt to drive the thing along. Could that be the future?

Oddly enough, it's rooted well into the past.

I had occasion the other day to Wiki "Rainhill Trials", which, as I'm sure you know, was the celebrated 1829 competition run to test the efficacy of steam (or other) locomotives. Well, one of the entrants was, apparently, a contraption called Cycloped, built by one Thomas Shaw Brandreth. It was not steam-driven: instead it featured a horse on a treadmill driving the thing. It didn't complete the course, sadly: it seems the horse fell through the floor at some point.

OK Back to OT and the 'lids' debate: I notice that BHIT (which some of us lovingly referred to as "Be Hit!") has re-branded itself as "Cycle-Smart". Does that make it any smarter? As a lid-recusant myself, I rather doubt it....

atoz wrote:

thirdcrank wrote:I fear it would be an easy crowd pleaser for a bankrupt govt. Ditto number plates. Ditto compulsory use of farcilities.

Couldn't agree more- great to butter up readers of the Daily Mail.

That is a great concern. Please the DM readers and provide a distraction from other shortcomings and things going badly. The reason the review was started was political and the results will be political. I think the Gov. already knows what it needs to do to improve safety for cyclists.

I've not seen compulsory use of farcilities raised before but I can see that would also be a worry - particularly round me where a pavement not even wide enough for a double baby buggy is classed as "shared use" with arrows diverting/encouraging cyclist off the road.

Ian

bovlomov wrote:

Psamathe wrote:And disappointed that the Green Party (?) person did not mention that a helmet can make some accidents worse (or rather make the riders injury worse).

And while quoting a load of stats will probably put people off, if she had been half briefed, she could have demolished many of his claims. Wark accidentally asked Mr Headway a relevant question, at which point he started waffling about the Highway Code. Any journalist would have picked up on that diversionary tactic. She didn't.

Yes, very poor journalism indeed. Kirsty Wark has gone right down in my estimation.

Thing is, both of those interviewees were terrible. The Green Party lass rambled on ineffectually, utterly failing to construct an argument and the smarmy guy from Headway blatantly lied. Wark failed to hold either of them to account.

The tragedy is that I get the feeling that Jesse Norman is even more stupid and weak than Kirsty Wark and simply does not have either the brains or balls to be trusted with this farcical 'review'. The government is bankrupt of both ideas and cash and bread and circus rubbish like helmets and hi-vis will seem very attractive options for pretending to be seen to be doing something.

atoz wrote:

thirdcrank wrote:I fear it would be an easy crowd pleaser for a bankrupt govt. Ditto number plates. Ditto compulsory use of farcilities.

Couldn't agree more- great to butter up readers of the Daily Mail.

+1
It's the sorry state and way this country is heading under such a useless set of millionaires who's services have been bought by billionaires

Stevek76 wrote:Being a charity, presumably being based in London, I suspect they're highly likely to have someone on call to further their crusade like view of this issue.

Isn't most of the BBCs broadcasting done from Salford?

The utility cyclist wrote:

Stevek76 wrote:Being a charity, presumably being based in London, I suspect they're highly likely to have someone on call to further their crusade like view of this issue.

Isn't most of the BBCs broadcasting done from Salford?

No, radio 5 comes from Salford but the real talent (John Humphreys for example, KW etc etc) stays in London and earns an awful lot, likewise most of the jobs, Salford is just an outlier

Maybe JH could be tempted to move to Wales for his last decades as an opinion-former