"We are not a nation of motorists": Led By Donkeys projects moving 20mph speed limit video onto Houses of Parliament, after PM's pledge to end "war" against drivers; Hi-vis victim-blaming; When you win a race without noticing + more on the live blog

perce wrote:

Yes, yes it was. I didn't know he was also responsible for the Pontcysillte aqueduct, among his other great works.

Pontcysyllte, known locally as 'The Fron' and part of the Ellesmere canal, is an engineering marvel. Completed in 1805, it's the longest aqueduct in the UK and the highest in the world. It features at the start of this charming video of cycling NCN route 85 to Llangollen, which I found while researching routes from Chirk to Llangollen avoiding the A5. The nearby Chirk aqueduct and the A5 London-Holyhead (including the suspension bridge over the Menai Straits) are among Telford's many creations. CTC North Wales has a fascinating and detailed article about the history of the route here. The picturesque bay of Porthdinllaen on the Llŷn peninsula was in the running to be used as the departure point for Ireland but Holyhead was chosen instead.

Simon E wrote:

part of the Ellesmere canal

A pedant writes: it was intended to be part of the Ellesmere canal, but that was never completed - abandoned not long after the aqueduct was finished. It's now part of the Llangollen canal. I've driven (sailed?) a narrowboat over it and the drop on the non-towpath, non-guardrail side is quite vertigo inducing.

Thanks for those links Simon, much appreciated. Great video and really interesting article about Telford (and Macadam). 

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

Simon E wrote:

GCN is fine, if you see it solely as light enterainment. The 'science' is suspect, it's about as deep as a toddler's paddling pool with a hole in the bottom and about as edgy or controversial as choosing magnolia wall paint.

Feel free to spend your time on GCN instead of here.

I think they're clear that the science is not necessarily the work of a professor. 

And yes thank you, since they have updated their website to be more relevant and include news etc, it's a lot better than here. Sorry to have been quieter here than usual.

Did you know that you can still buy old copies of The Hotspur, Rover & Adventure and even The Wizard comics for little boys? You can probably get Bunty too. 

These comiks would shirly shoot you as they tend to have big biffy Bwitish blokes in 'em, punching foreigners and generally being very Tory-like. Also, the girly comics keep the little rascals in their place, down in the makeup and dolly places. Gud ole Bwitish traditions you'd shirly find infotaining and not a drop of science in sight, just plenty of that by-jingo you seem to crave.

Mind, only the bad-germans seemed to have bicycles. But it was so long ago that I read these Jingo-organs myself. Perhaps some other olephart can recall a Bwitish boys comic-character who rode a bike?

Q bikes in the beano. Six of them there were, on a quest to fight crime before teatime.

perce wrote:

Q bikes in the beano. Six of them there were, on a quest to fight crime before teatime.

Well, that's just typical!  What about those crimes perped by crims after the buns, scones and Earl Grey have been consumed?

I haf informed that Truss about this neglect, so she can add it to her Brittleania Unchained book describing the lazy Bwitish serfs and how she will have them whipped into action by a satanic miller or two. (Even The Famous Five may be slackers, perhaps).

No more apres-teatime crimes then (except those committed by new aristos, exempt because they're Toryspiv pals and bungers-to-the-party). Truss'll fix it.

But I digress.

Some years ago, a pal from the cycling club in NW England got a job as a cycling village bobby in the village where I lived. He was very pleased, getting lots of training opportunities as he cycled his ten-ton-tessie of a police bike here and there to check the theft of onions from the allotments or a break-in to the bowls shed to get the lignum vitae to make lathe-turned gew-gaws.

But they found out and cancelled such bobbies, spending the money on a large computer installation that constantly failed to do .... anything. Well, except make some privatisation Toryspiv bunger loadsa money. (They get a contract to supply the IT but also a contract to maintain it.  When it doesnae work, this generates more money for 'em than when it does work).

*********

But never mind that. Today I went for a nice hilly ride about the Welsh hinterlands in me shorts.  Nineteen whole degrees C and sunshine!  Eeee, reet gradely. No crimes were being committed and every driver (all 4 of them) were well-behaved, considerate and good-lookin'.

Yeah, but it's our never-ending rabbit hole of doom and gloom, and we like it here.

If you were correct and the road traffic statistics were being manipulated then the deaths would still be recorded elsewhere.

Any death in a traffic collision has to be reported to the coroner and the cause of death would be recorded at that point.

There should, therefore, be plenty of indisputable documentary evidence to back up your claim.

Can you provide a link to any of it?

Pretty sure that Trevor was highlighting that there's a fair number of collisions that go unreported as opposed to actual KSIs  

I know several individuals who have been knocked over or had a spill due to oil/gravel/pothole and not attended hospital or informed the police. I also know of people who when calling police have been told that if the road isn't blocked or an ambulance not required to treat the matter as a civil case. I dryly commented to someone once that if hit to stay lying on the ground and the police would have to attend. 

A clearer figure would be to establish from the insurance companies claims made without police in attendance as well as those with police in attendance. 

Firstly, in edition of the RRCGB reflected on the large disparity between the reported casualties and hospital admissions data.
Secondly, my neighbour's son was injured in a PI RTC, the Police did not attend, therefore, this incident was not reported to Stats 19. I was in email contact with a cyclist who was hit by a car and suffered a broken leg. The Police were called but didn't attend. Again, this would not have been reported on the RRCGB stats. A pedestrian was seriously injured in a collision on my road. An FOI to the Police revealed this was not recorded on the Stats 19 database. The incident I referenced in a previous post, Essex Police did not attend because the injuries were not serious enough. That collision will not have been reported on the casualty stats. I could go on.......

Things I Learned Today: Tim Vine and Jeremy Vine are brothers.

Ah, but have you heard about their older brother, Grape?

I think Tim referenced him in one of his sets - so I Heard It Through the TimVine....

HoldingOn wrote:

Things I Learned Today: Tim Vine and Jeremy Vine are brothers.

And they come from where I live (Cheam).

Steve K wrote:

HoldingOn wrote:

Things I Learned Today: Tim Vine and Jeremy Vine are brothers.

And they come from where I live (Cheam).

So not Tony Hancock territory then?  East Cheam.

eburtthebike wrote:

So not Tony Hancock territory then?  East Cheam.

"This radio lark's a wonderful hobby, y'know. I've got friends all over the world, all over the world . . . none in this country, but friends all over the world."

"Ah... but before the car they only survived in rural areas because they couldn't get into town!"

If you go back say 100 years plus it turns out that quite a few people still spend a lot of time commuting (e.g. maybe walking an hour to the mine before you even started your shift).  The expansion of mass cycling (around say the 1920s on) may have represented a rare drop in enforced commuting time - until it started to go back up when the roads got busier with cars / it became "normal" to drive an hour or so to access better work opportunities.

(It was never planned, but replacing the "freedom to breathe and not get run over, but at the same time possibly starve / not be able to access amenities / get bored" with the "freedom to travel ... for hours a day and spend a long time in queues, while also paying a chunk of money for the priveledge" has actually turned out to be a genius move in keeping the peasants from revolt while still extracting money from them.  Unfortunately it turns out that there's been an explosion in the peasant population AND all the peasants want a car now which has caused some small additional issues)

It's almost as if it would be better that people had what they needed within a 15 min walk...

Before widespread car ownership, the "15 minute city "already existed, even in rural locations, when there were local shops, rural buses, local post offices, banks etc.

Today, High streets have suffered due to large out-of-town supermarkets, banks are online, rural bus services are no longer economic, and children can no longer walk or cycle to school on their own, because the roads are too dangerous, full of speeding motorists due to the lack of Policing.

To the majority of voters, the car is now the essential and only form of transport [well, that is how they perceive it!!!!].

Labour are also chasing the same voters, so don't hold your breath for any radical policies from them.

Trevor Anderson wrote:

Labour are also chasing the same voters, so don't hold your breath for any radical policies from them.

Yep - all the vox pops I've heard / read recently simply have the government doing the usual polical "say things which you can't actually pin us on" (like "baying packs of cyclists dragging drivers from their cars and setting about them has got to stop!" or "Some Local Authorities seem to think that they should have the power to ban motorists from driving for longer than they can hold their breath - we fundamentally disagree")

So irrelevant stuff but they have been flirting with lending support to complete lies.

However Labour is not challenging or disagreeing with these - they're actually tacitly accepting the arguments but just responding "... but the government's response is too little, too late - this government has so far done nothing to protect motorists from these lycra louts".  Or "well a Conservative government has presided over there being speed limits for the last 12 years - and you shouldn't hold your breath if you think they will address the fact that working people pay for their cars, whereas Mr. Sunak gets his limo for free..."

Car Delenda Est wrote:

Sunak wrote:

For those in rural areas, it is a lifeline

One wonders how people in rural areas survived until the car was invented. It must have been absolutely grueling doing the 5+ mile journey to the nearest supermarket...

In Wales they have the various T or Trans bus services.  They go about through many, many villages and towns, typically between the larger towns.

The Carmarthen to Aberystwyth T1 service goes past our front door every two hours, each way. (It's an hourly service but varies parts of its route to serve even more villages). It takes about ten minutes longer (50 rather than 40 minutes) than it does to drive the same route to Carmarthen from our front door. Free to we pensioners and (as I recall) still a max fare of £2. No parking fee or fuel costs.

At Carmarthen and Aberystwyth, one may get off the bus and walk straight into the railway station.

There are several such T bus services about Wales hinterlands. Just lately, the buses have gone electric.

For those who like local shopping services, several vendors of essentials such as meat, milk, fruit & veg, mixed groceries and fish bring their goods to your door or very near it. If you must, you can also get stuff delivered by the supermarkets (spit) but they charge and are expensive.

********

I also recall a youth (Tyneside) in which council and private-firm buses went all over; and were inexpensive. Several different buses to all sorts of places near and far were just a 2-5 minute walk away for most people and, on average, departed every 7 minutes to here, there and everywhere.

Good public transport can be done. It just takes political will, to provide such services and to curtail the preda-tory money-wasting polluting murder machine that is the car.

Car Delenda Est wrote:

Sunak wrote:

For those in rural areas, it is a lifeline

One wonders how people in rural areas survived until the car was invented. It must have been absolutely grueling doing the 5+ mile journey to the nearest supermarket...

I wanna tell you a story:

I threw my back out as I was leaving work on Monday night.  Tried riding home, and got to that point where you are sitting on your bike, can't pedal, can't lift your leg to dismount and you think, "Shall I just fall over and crawl out from under it?".  Managed to get home, anyway.  Eventually.  Pedalling veeeerrrrryyy slowly...  Couldn't even roll over in bed: just sank into the memory foam mattress like Uncle Fester.

By the next day, it was fine when standing up or walking but terrible if I'm sitting (especially on low furniture like bus seats) and I didn't want to risk mounting/dismounting my bike.

So I walked.  Six miles.  Took me an hour and half.  Left home a bit earlier than I usually would, and arrived later than I usually would, but still in time.  Walked home again too.

Anyway, my point: I wonder how many people nowadays would have just stayed at home, thinking that six miles along tarmacced footpaths was an insurmountable distance...?

brooksby wrote:

By the next day, it was fine when standing up or walking but terrible if I'm sitting (especially on low furniture like bus seats) and I didn't want to risk mounting/dismounting my bike.

I'm sorry to hear about your injury.  But ... your effort was unnecessary.

(Apologies, for full points I would have needed a petrol-powered Segway pic, I know...)

An ElliptiGO might be the legal alternative (I doubt even the King has a 6mi private driveway?)

I love my bike wrote:

An ElliptiGO might be the legal alternative (I doubt even the King has a 6mi private driveway?)

Keep It Simple, Stoopid.  (Per my username I can't really quibble the extra wheel though).

handy you have a stand up desk !

I think I've spent more time fiddling with my office chair to try and get comfortable, than I have actually doing work...

You walked....six miles.....!

Actually, as I am sure you knew, you were doing just what most people from the 12th C onwards would do to get to market. As outlined in this webpage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_town most markets were placed 12 to 13 miles apart this meaning no one lived more than a reasonable six mile walk from one.

Indeed, walking to market was still a thing when the railways were built. In the town I know live, there was a line built in the mid 1850's which went via a small village 2 miles from the market town. Given how little distance there was between the two places, no station was built as the company felt that people would prefer to walk rather than spend money on the train fare. No one from the village now walks to town...apart from the EU national field workers who can often be seen striding away carrying their shopping while the fat and unfit locally born individuals sit in the kiddy killing car.