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Live blog: Evans Cycles owner Mike Ashley calls for 20 per cent tax on online sales to save the High Street, Deloitte RAB entries open, e Yorkshire fly thru + more
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Fri, Dec 07, 2018 15:36
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road.cc’s founder and first editor, nowadays to be found riding a spreadsheet. Tony’s journey in cycling media started in 1997 as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website – the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc – finally handing on the reins in 2021 to Jack Sexty. His favourite ride is his ‘commute’ – which he does most days inc weekends and he’s been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes, though he’d like to own a carbon bike one day.
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Latest Comments
hotspanners 14 minutes ago
Deleted my comments because Road.cc have removed the offending poster from the article. I hope people have learned from this that using gen AI for marketing is a bad idea. Human creatives first!
kingleo 18 minutes ago
It looks like the anti-cyclists in Spalding are making up the evidence.
Hollis Jones 25 minutes ago
@Pub bike Came here to say just that. The frameset isn’t that expensive, similar to what I paid for my Condor Italia RC a few years ago. Same sort of Dedaccia tubing too! I built mine up with ‘older’ Dura-Ace, aero wheels and managed to get it all for around £3.5k and it weighs less than 8kg (in a size 61!). So yes you can spend loadsa money on an aluminum bike, but you can also build it up how you like for a lot less and still have a great bike.
Paul J 50 minutes ago
This BBC article has some further details on what happened that day, including what Gabriele Debotte's (the passenger) did and did not do. It is _absolutely horrific_ what Richardson did to poor Michael Mullins. Unfathomable. Richardson must be an absolute sociopath. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmde86918z3ro
Sredlums 1 hour ago
@Borisface No one questioned your experience or knowledge. It's irrelevant, because your comment doesn't show any sign of that experience or knowledge.
Sniffer 1 hour ago
The comments on this thread mirror the comments I get when I roll out with my steel bike, a Fairlight Strael, to a group ride. Some people think it is a thing of beauty and like the idea, others don't understand why I have spent that kind of money on something that isn't carbon and weighs a bit more. I have a carbon race bike with aero tweaks. I love it for the chain gang and other fast paced riding, but when I was out on my own this weekend the steel bike was a joy to ride. Proper mud guards are back on, and it even looks good to me with those fitted. I think Mason, and Fairlight, know that there is a chunk of the market that will not be interested in a steel / alloy bike, but there will be enough customers willing to spend their cash on nice versions. If that is not you @Borisface, that is fine. I have not ridden a Mason, but I would like to. I fondly remember my Kinesis T2, bought as a full bike on the cycle-to-work scheme many years ago. The frame is still going strong, currently sitting on my son's turbo trainer.
Paul J 1 hour ago
@Rendel Harris With all the regular stories of shockingly reckless, and sometimes deliberately aggressive, drivers who end up seriously injuring or even killing cyclists we read, it is hard to be shocked anymore by the next such story. However, this story, and that behaviour - stopping to try pull the man out, failing, then continuing on and veering from side to side to dislodge the *still alive* cyclist from under the car - has managed to shock me. It is incomprehensible. How could anyone do that to another person? Not just deliberate murder, but murder with the certain knowledge that it would lead to a prolonged, slow, gruesome, most painful death. And he did this with a *passenger* with him in the car!
Sredlums 1 hour ago
@Freddy56 Following that line of reasoning, what's next? Will the First Aid volunteers be replaced by a First Aid kit and a a kiosk computer with ChatGPT to tell you how to take care of yourself? The announcer replaced by a computer voice, spitting out names based on race bibs and facial recognition? Have some pride, man. If you cannot organise an event in a proper way, with human attention and care, then don't. Just don't. Events don't have to be perfect. Perfection is not to be expected of things that are mostly run by volunteers. And perfection is overrated anyway. But they should feel human. You should feel the enthusiasm and the pride of the organisers and volunteers. An event with an AI poster send the very opposite message, and it is reason for me not to even consider partaking.
mdavidford 1 hour ago
@sheridan This is an opinion piece (it's clearly labelled as such at the top). I'm not clear what facts are in dispute - the article was in response to the existence of AI-generated promotional images for the races, and those clearly do exist.
DS2025 2 hours ago
@Freddy56 Nice assumptions.
8 thoughts on “Live blog: Evans Cycles owner Mike Ashley calls for 20 per cent tax on online sales to save the High Street, Deloitte RAB entries open, e Yorkshire fly thru + more”
20% tax on online sales, that
20% tax on online sales, that seems REALLY steep.
I’d happily buy all my cycling gear from a local bike shop, but that would require my LBS to actually stock the brands I want to buy (they don’t) and actually have the item I want, in the size I want, in stock (which is a rarity).
It’s particularly difficult when I have to drive for 30 minutes just to get to a bike shop…
I bet Ashley’s got some great
I bet Ashley’s got some great avoidance schemes for what comes into his own pocket.
Also, good luck with this 20% thing seeing as most of the ‘big’ companies seem to be avoiding paying their fair shair in the first place.
Failing business model in
Failing business model in desperate calls for government meddling.
I lived In seattle in 2010
I lived In seattle in 2010 and most of the bike shops had innertube recycling back then. A local company made bags and things out of them. I still have a messenger bag with a seatbelt for a strap. Great idea but it had stained quite a few cycling tops
20% on shopping, plus 2.5%
20% on shopping, plus 2.5% tax on income just for being alive and over 40. Because 40 year olds are ‘old’ and rich of course. When is the next referendum; they all need lining up against a wall….
So Evans want’s government
So Evans wants government help to stay competitive? Why should high street shops have special treatment. How about a 20% tax credit for online shops – they are better after all. As Canyon48 rightly says – you don’t get a sale if you havn’t got the product stocked in the store. The most basic logic of retailing. And if people prefer to shop on-line? Move your business to where the customers are. That is the second logic of retailing!
risoto wrote:
Don’t you need customers to have money too?
Not sure which logic that is, I hadn’t realised that logic was countable either. Full of learning this thread is.
Canyon might not be the best example either as they struggle to get another important factor whch is availablity. No good having a good price if people can’t get hold of the goods. Good job people are stupid, eh?
I haven’t bought a bike or
I haven’t bought a bike or bike accessory except emergency repair stuff for years. They all stock goods with a massive markup that I don’t need. Chain reaction and planet X have supplied what I want at a third of the cost of a brick and mortar operation, why would I want to shell out on a markup?