Man arrested after cyclist killed in West Yorkshire hit-and-run

Streeting is a flippin' embarrassment and needs to stop aping Farage. The best thing he did was resign his cabinet position.

More cars in playgrounds, alas. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4eldkpxgwo

I'm not well versed on Streeting's political positions but I believe he's seen as more towards the "party of the motorist" (before Starmer piped up that no, Labour was) than many. Anyhoo, while I suspect he's just desperate to keep prominence in the political jockeying, it's still a bit sad to hear. As to numbers for the benefits of cycling I believe there are European studies which demonstrate investment in cycling delivers a net return, while further investment in driving is overall a net cost. (Was it this - The Social Cost of Automobility, Cycling and Walking in the European Union - Stefan Gössling, Andy Choi, Kaely Dekker Daniel Metzler?) Then some years back the UK government commissioned a report on the economic benefits of cycling and concluded that there were indeed benefits. Fiona Rajé and Andrew Saffrey - The Value of Cycling, DfT / University of Birmingham / Phil Jones Associates TfL has figures in: Walking and cycling: the economic benefits

I'm all for converting the unlawful scrotes into lawful ones, but a) that would appear to be an endless task which might simply absorb any (reasonable) resources thrown at it, and partly because b) where it's not manifestly clear that the illegal thing is really illegal AND people care about it, the continuum from the "outlaw and don't care" via the "yeah it's illegal but everyone's doing it" to the "but I hardly ever / I didn't know I was doing wrong" may be towards the latter end and thus we have far more offenders to deal with. I hope amending the law in this case pushes mean away from "but you can buy it in Currys/PC world how was I to know?" end and perhaps that makes this illegal behaviour a bit less prevalent. Eventually... (I don't know if the forthcoming law changes are necessarily the *best* ... and it isn't the greatest issue we face. OTOH this appears to be a lot more useful harm reduction than stopping cyclists and handing out cheap lights or creating the "death by dangerous cycling" legislation - though I'm not *against* that...)

As for the crankset, [snip] is available in 265mm to 175mm lengths. Finally! Long cranks, although ground clearance maybe an issue

On the subject of rust - an ode to the shed bike: https://soundcloud.com/friko-music/dear-bicycle

I can't remember the figures, but I believe there is a significant return on investment when active travel is well funded and good infrastructure is put in place. Dare I say that, given Streeting's previous role in the nation's health, he is using taco-trumpian logic/numbers to justify his current "position"?

More political BS. It's not "there's not enough money for defence" it's "there's not enough money for an increase in spending of more than £6bn in one year on defence". And that follows similar increases in previous years. Compared to a total active travel budget of £0.9bn per year.

Re the mobility scooter / road race incident. What are the chances of the Daily Telegraph running with this one? : "Disabled Pensioner Mowed Down By 85mph Speeding Cyclists." "How many more pensioners must be killed or injured before number plates and insurance are made mandatory for cyclists, asked Nigel Farage, from his £5m crypto donation enquiry hideout?"

I mean, they could probably just only sell them to people with legitimate licenses for the ebike they are selling them. ie. they have passed their motorbike test. Worrying about private land proof etc just sounds like a nightmare and a huge amount of work. People would be saying "oh yeah, this ebike is just to ride at my local dirt bike track". Link the purchase to the buyers license and if they want to sell it, they have to sell it to another licensed rider. I think the core issue is perhaps the delivery riders however. I see a tiny proportion of them with what I would think is a legal ebike. Most of them are going way over 15.5mph and many of them don't even have to pedal to work them.