Fancy some singlespeed fixie action German style? No not Fixie inc (we’ll check them out later) – here’s some Bergamonts that caught the eye. Not sure about pedalling the pink and white number down Peckham High Street but there’s also this classy looking flat bar version or a tougher looking urban effect black and green number – I’ll try to nip back later and get a shot of that baby in focus… 
Something altogether more radical on the technical front – at least in the sense that it’s come back into fashion again – is belt drive, in the form of these two new belt driven Treks. Apart from being different and probably silent, not sure exactly what the great benefit there is of powering your bike with a plastic belt. Unless this is very special plastic, which I’m sure Trek will tell us it is, there is no way that a belt is as efficient at transferring your power to the back wheel. Even without the belt drive the new Trek District is an eye-catching bike. Sporty looking semi-discs look great but this isn’t a performance machine – and I wouldn’t fancy catching one of those urban crosswinds that blast out of sideroads. The clock is nice, maybe it’s for timing your run into work – and the chainguard makes a lot of sense. It’s weird, but I like it. 
Slightly less weird is the ’09 version of the Soho which combines belt drive with a rear hub – and still gives you somewhere to carry your coffee. 
Street classicism from Salsa (try saying that with a mouthful of würst in a bun), the Casseroll has been around for a while, but I haven’t spotted one before with a chainguard – could be I wasn’t looking hard enough. If the Trek and the Salsa are anything to go by Chainguards could be something a mini-trend on ‘performance’ commuters – Mike Burrows will feel vindicated and so he should – not everyone wants to ride around town fast with one trouser leg rolled up or your jeans tucked into your socks (hurts my knee eventually). As ever with Salsa, nice detailing around the dropouts. 
Street bikes are go…
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So they want to pay people a pittance "for the experience", not record their leave accrued, have them ineligible for sickness pay, then complain about them not being experts on e-bikes, bikefitting and more?
No right-wing media frothing about this?
Made worse by the fact the road has recently been closed for services works for a few weeks, and that was brilliant while it lasted.
Whilst all the changes made are broadly good, there are a host of businesses that can and will suffer for them if they are unlucky enough to hire bad people or simply have bad luck. Small businesses are already really hard pushed to turn a profit with all the pressures of NI, wages, rent, energy costs etc so at some point we do need to find a way to support small businesses and encourage their growth rather than encouraging their demise at every opportunity by treating them in exactly the same way as big, wealthy businesses. A country is built on the businesses people start. When all people see is risk with little chance of reward, why would they even try. Its already an issue for plenty of people who start up a one man band and grow to the size where they could and should start thinking of turning things into a proper company with employees. Do you take this risk or do you just in a comfortable place and take more holiday to avoid the pitfalls of VAT and all the issues with hiring people etc?
First casualty already: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd95ezw4003o [Particularly bitter about this one as it's a regular running route for me.]
Difficult to know as (a) most teams don't publish accounts, (b) even if they did, riders may be treated as contractors and buried in with other things, and (c) what gets counted is complicated (there are sponsors paying riders directly, sponsorship in kind, release payments to other teams, etc. etc.). Seems to be about 70-80% (and growing) of costs related to paying riders in some way, though. Don't know what the picture looks like in those other sports for comparison, though. Most of them do tend to have stadium costs to factor in, which may be not inconsiderable (though also a source of income, especially if they own them and can host other events there).
@mdavidford Curious if the distinction between a budget cap and a salary cap is more important for cycling than other sports. Maybe I don't follow other sports closely enough to know what's going on behind the scenes, but it feels like for the sports with a salary cap (NBA, NFL, NHL etc.) it's all about the players, whilst for cycling the rider is of course very important, but a lot of money goes on other things - most obviously the equipment, but also things like support staff (chefs/mechanics etc.), training camps, wind tunnel testing etc. I note F1 has done the opposite and has a cost cap that specifically excludes driver's salaries (i.e. aiming to level the playing field mechanically speaking, but teams can still chuck money at getting the best drivers).
@mdavidford Pffft? Is that the noise you make when expelling hot air?
@mdavidford I can see how it confused you when I pointed to the reviewer at the bottom. but hey if you cant read an entire comment before getting all keyboard warrior blah, kind of like you usually do that not my fault. I should have guessed the first person to reply to a comment would be you, you cant help yourself.