Ranting

OK, so here’s the Prisoners’ Dilemma: Two guys are arrested on suspicion of being the pair behind an armed bank robbery. The investigating officer is cunning though, and separates them, making each an identical offer: Confess to the robbery, and thus provide the evidence to put your accomplice away for a long stretch, and we can...
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No - not that early ’80s thing with Hazel O’Connor, but the type that gets left all over the road. Actually it’s generally not left all over the road, and if it is, passing cars soon sweep it aside / grind it down to a harmless dust. No. I’m talking about the kind that gets...
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Yesterday on the way back from taking our Huge Dalmatian for a walk, Daughter & I stopped off at the local Coop shop to pick up the paper. There’s always a parking problem here, with drivers ignoring the double yellow lines along Huddleston Street, so as to minimise their walking to the shop. Anyway, the...
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This image comes from the Crap Cycling & Walking in Waltham Forest blog, and is pretty astonishing. Looking at the white zig-zags on the road, it’s near to a pedestrian crossing, but what’s it for? If you were riding on the road, you’d have to give way to pedestrians, though by the time you...
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So there’s this case of Daniel Rosier that went to court in Oxford last week. He cycled past a line of cars at a pedestrian crossing, but didn’t stop, and hit a pedestrian. THEN he stopped, and helped the child he’d hit, and looked after them ’till the boy’s parents arrived. Anyway, he broke the law,...
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Reading a couple of pieces over the last few days by Magic Roundabouts and Padded Pants, and Treadly and Me, and even this piece in the New York Times, I’ve been struck at the way we see differences in our fellow human human beings rather than the similarities. There’s some switch inside our brains that...
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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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By and large, cycle infrastructure in the UK is a mess. It’s not joined-up, doesn’t go where you need to get to, and always, always seems to play second fiddle to roads for motor vehicles or footpaths for pedestrians. Many local authorities do things that could only charitably be seen as making any effort, yet...
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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 have more than one bike, so I also have the luxury that they’re not all completely sensible. Trixie the Fixie & Christine have no mudguards (fenders). They also both have skinny tyres and the only way to carry any luggage on them is to put it on your back. On Trixie, there aren’t...
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