What I did on my lunch hour by Dave

Unfortunately, in this wildly litigious society, I have to side with the Forest Service. In the end, it's not the most culpable that are found the most responsible, but the deepest pockets.

It’s all half-arsed, from the clickbait title of this article, to the unsafe design of the bike track. …Why do we live in such a world? Capitalist fantasies of exponential growth vs conservative nimbyism - within the one Range Rover shopping cart world view! The Greens are trying to do it right. Everyone else has their knickers in a knot because their world view is small, and wilfully / selfishly half-arsed.

Yes ... although while still trying to remain in the middle (and thus offending everyone) from my limited knowledge Hamas won an election there. That was a long time ago of course * Hamas may well have been declining in popularity before the 2023 attack and killing of Israelis. I'm sure they've became even less popular after years of Israeli retaliation (and as their organisation was weakened / people became more desperate). Of course folks hating Hamas doesn't mean that they therefore have moderated any ill-will towards Jews, or Israel. * Exactly how "free and fair" is moot ... since shortly afterwards they had a civil war with / murdered the main opposition. And nobody in a position to will allow Fatah / the PLO back.

All he had to say was 'modified e-bike' since unmodified e-bikes are made to be compliant with the law. Obviously the modification to remove 15.5mph assistance restriction makes it an e-scooter not a compliant e-bike.

@mitsky The gridlock would certainly make it safer.

@ErgoKnees Presumably the family didn't ask for it to be neutralised? Personally I'm not a fan of neutralised stages after such tragedies, I remember Bjarne Riis had the guts after Casartelli was killed in the '95 tour to speak out and say it had done nobody any good to ride at a snail's pace under a blazing sun for six hours with nothing to do or think about but the death and tragedy. Save the commemorations (apart from a few simple marks of respect like a minute's silence at the start, black armbands etc) for the church. I'd reckon a lot of racers would say the best tribute that could be paid to them was to go out and race the next stage hell for leather in their memory.

@polainm Yeah...except that's nonsense in this case. The Forestry Commission have pulled the pin on a small jumps area because the jumps have become unstable and dangerous. They're looking into ways they can safely reinstate the facility. In the meantime, cyclists are welcome to use all the other trails in the forest. Tip: the bit below the headline is called "the article". If you read "the article" instead of just the headline you may find nuances that could stop you going straight to foolishness.

I don't know why no one wants to blame the organizer. It sounds like there have been other traffic issues, and the organizers want to make the race bigger than they can handle. Why can't the UCI tell the organizers to reduce the race days for a year or so until they show that they can safely run it? I know the family wanted the race to continue but why wasn't the next day neutralized? It seemed like the organizer and UCI, etc. wanted to get past the tragedy as quickly as possible.

£billions spent on highways used by dangerous drivers, segregating communities, and generating huge amounts of pollution including carbon black, with a proven link to dementia. Key inactivity directly linked to obesogenic society. Exercise in a forest - just no. Stale dinosaurs in board rooms who enjoy their big executive cars just hate people on bikes, exercising, having fun. Will never facilitate this. Orwell was wrong. The current dystopia is far worse.

@chrisonabike To answer your asterisk this is very much the case, the latest polling in the region shows that only 24% of Palestinians support Hamas; in the West Bank this falls to 18%. Sadly our new shoehorn non sequiteur troll doesn't appear able to understand the distinction; tragically neither do Israel's phosphorous shells.