#mycyclingweekend – Fun in the su… here’s the rain

Apologies JOHN5880.

At least the good folk of Clevedon can see that £ 425 k to reverse some painting and chuck away a few bollards was, relatively speaking, a bargain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9rv0nxv54o

Concerns over street trees are often overblown. Many older trees are not species that would now be planted as street trees, which also points to the fact that many large trees are actually at or near the end of their reasonable life. Trees are important. Street trees can perform multiple roles (though those roles are not often maximised). However, not all trees perform well as street trees. Street trees should serve the use of the street. If they don't, they should be replaced appropriately.

Presumably, CycloWatt must know this—and have a plan to avoid or address these issues?

£1.7 m for construction plus £2.7 for removal plus compensations for injured people, local taxpayers might not be so keen on supporting cycling infrastructure. after this fiasco.

Shame, I was hoping to steal a mattress from The Sleep Centre and get away with it rapidly on my bike.

Brim Brothers ran into problems with the stability of the interface between cleat and shoe. The interface is never perfect, particularly across the many kinds of shoe out there, and there is always a smidgen of flex there, more than there is in a steel spindle of a pedal, more than there is an al or carbon crank - which adds noise to the power signal. Brim Brothers also ran into longevity issues. The cleat is a high-wear area, and the shoe is also subject to lots of abrasion. Fairly hostile to delicate electronics. This PM is going to face major issues with wear on the cleat. It's also going to really struggle to solve that huge stack height issue. The Brim Brothers PM had the electronics on a separate pod, clipped to the top of the shoe, with a ribbon cable encased in a steel-wire reinforced, rubberised resin running down to the force plate. So the electronics were fairly safe, and the force plate added very little to the stack height. However, the connection from the electronics pod down the side of the shoe to the force plate was subject to being worn through and damaged with use. Brim Brothers never really solved that - had it made it to mass production, they would have had to cost-in semi-regular replacing of plate+pods, as riders wore down connectors (particularly on their foot down side).

It's surely long overdue that whilst civil fines should remain in place for minor offences such as overstaying paid-for time in a parking space or parking in a permit only area without a permit, parking that puts other people in danger, e.g. parking on blind bends or, as here, parking in such a way that pedestrians/cyclists are forced to leave their protected space and move into the roadway, should be criminalised and incur points as well as fines. Plenty of people can afford a £50 fine and I've known quite a few who just regard it as an occasional hazard of being able to park where you like; when a few such offences could put their licence at risk they would start to think a bit harder about it.

Sounds like we're both right - the organisation is indeed still proscribed, and the protests were silent and peaceful. Yes, there are people protesting and expressing sympathy with Hamas or shouting antisemitic slogans - but as I understand it the recent ones were not. As for critical mass being proscribed ... I would hope that's paranoia. Except that in the case of the JSO / XR folks there seemed to be a quick mutual escalation between them and government/ police when their actions were seen to be effective (causing a fuss). I still doubt this would happen in the case of cycle protests / gatherings, mostly because they aren't frequent or aiming to be as noisy. So most politicians don't see enough mileage in making it an "issue". But note there are already some who might. Such types may be increasingly gathered in Reform as some of the Conservatives migrate there.

Considering the fuss over £2 parking fees here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c204p0pprvxo a £50 fine might be enough to make them vote for reform!