Environment

If you don’t speak German, this’ll seem like hard work for a Friday afternoon - you’re going to have to read the subtitles. But there’s a point to all this, so stick with it to the end. (via the excellent People Powered blog of Andy in Germany )
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This is something that’s definitely close to my heart - as someone who was on the slide towards middle-aged spread, but is now very much reformed, I’m a bit like the people you know who’ve given up smoking. There’s none so zealous in the anti-smoking brigade as the reformed smokers! Anyway, take a look at...
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. . . like a fish needs a bicycle . . . Get a bike instead:
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I met my business partner for a quick lunch today in Jarrow - a place with an interesting history: In 1936, mass unemployment and extreme poverty in the north-east of England drove 200 men to march in protest from Jarrow to London. Their MP, Ellen Wilkinson was with them as they came south to petition...
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(n.b. That’s a tongue in cheek title. We love Xtracycles.) ANYWAY, having made that clear, take a look at this, which I found via the Bicycle Diaries: Until the punchline, I thought it was going to be an advert from some lunatic “we’ve got a big enough army not to need to worry about any so-called...
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I started riding again because I realised that doing the same thing, but expecting different results is a pretty workable definition of insanity. It suddenly struck me about four years ago that sitting inside a tin box going no-where fast, and expecting everyone else to get out of my way wasn’t working. And that expecting...
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No, I’m not talking about getting a second car, but wondering about the whole concept of a car at all. Here’s the problem. It’s time for us to part company with our current car. It’s a 2001 Renault Lagune (yes, I know) that’s done 108,000 miles or so, and is getting to an age where...
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There was an interesting question raised on the Commute By bike blog yesterday, as to why the world at large seems to view cyclists as “Kooks, Freaks and Weirdos”. Basically in societies where the car has usurped the bicycle as the mode of transport of choice about town, people riding bikes are very much...
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I remember about, oh, eight years ago, I gave up my three vices for Lent - caffeine, chocolate and alcohol. It’s not that I’m religious at all, but denial of the senses is certainly good for the soul. Or whatever we have if we don’t have souls. I was expecting the end result of all...
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OK - it’s fantasy shopping time. No, not that kind of fantasy shopping. Here’s the scene - you’re a senior manager of a medium-sized private company employing 60 people across three offices that are spread across a town, each office being no more than 4 miles apart. You’ve generated £9,000 of savings from green initiatives,...
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