Video: Graeme Obree Battle Mountain film gets world premiere in Edinburgh next week

@mdavidford Oh what's £3.25 billion between friends?

@Rendel Harris Well sir, the tax gap is currently £47 billion, how about we go after the evaders and avoiders, if we could just get a quarter of that back we could pay for everything we need When Cat Smith MP wrote to DVLA about BF64 TGE over a year ago, pointing out that I first reported it along with the address in 2022, the company is at Companies House, the vehicle itself is proudly pictured on the company Facebook page etc., Lilian Greenwood wrote back stating Dodge 1 (we can't comment on individual cases due to GDPR) and 'we make VED easy to pay and difficult to avoid'. DVLA is absolutely determined to NOT KNOW about VED evaders, and make it really difficult to avoid them. They refuse to accept photographic evidence and the website makes it impossible to report anybody if you don't know the address. Sadly for us, We Do Nothing Greenwood declared herself in the House to be in charge of implementation of the January 2026 Government Road Safety Strategy, so that's long been on that shelf with the big red Bin sign.

On the plus will you be better able to charge the battery when you've been blown / knocked off and the bike is flat?

Well, people have done versions of this kind of thing... (see World Solar Challenge) ... but I note the solar panels are at a different angle. And it's in Australia.

One quarter of £47bn to fund at least £15bn? - you'll never get a job at the treasury with maths like tha... actually, on second thoughts, never mind...

"What's that buzzing noise Vladimir? Is it the drones again? " "No, worse: Deliverossiyskoi riders on ebikes. We'll never get through the congestion in the Donbass in time now..."

Try it on top of the Itchen Bridge and tell me it copes with the wind.

RE: green waves for lights. This is of course revolutionary for car-sick places like much of the UK and US. When we've got our heads round this though we might spot this is still "thinking like a motorist" and "treating cyclists like they're driving mini cars/motorbikes". At that point it's time to learn about "separation at network level", "unbundling / unravelling routes". And cycle paths (where necessary) and junctions where traffic lights don't always apply to cyclists. Or even smarter traffic lights with advanced detection of approaching cyclists and more (variable) phases, or things like default green for active travel / default red for motor traffic. Perhaps we could skip ahead to some of that immediately?

- Right then Carruthers, we need a really substantial rise in defence spending to put those pesky Ruskis in their place, at least £15 billion a year more. Suggestions? - Well sir, the tax gap is currently £47 billion, how about we go after the evaders and avoiders, if we could just get a quarter of that back we could pay for everything we need. – Oh Carruthers, I'm disappointed in you. Why on earth would you advocate such drop in the ocean pie in the sky schemes when there's £900 million a year of cycle lane funding to be diverted?

Acceleration/speeds that don’t match the power profile, especially uphill (e.g no change in crank power but a change in speed out of line with other riders). It wouldn’t be foolproof but would provide an indication. I agree that I don’t think anyone is doing it, but it would give extra confidence that it’s not going on!