AG2R’s Steve Houanard provisionally suspended after testing positive for EPO

Not quite the first time, I rode over it back in the late twentyteens, just happened to see it was jammed nose-to-tail so thought it would be fun to filter along...turned out there was an overturned lorry at the eastern end blocking all carriageways. I honestly didn't know cycling was banned (the signs aren't very prominent), just assumed nobody rode on it because it would be suicidal in normal circumstances. Fortunately the weary copper at the other end who saw me just cut off my apologies and said, "Fuck off over there [a gap in the barrier to a slip road] and don't do it again."

They're not slalom barriers, they're Sheffield stands for parking your bike.

@momove I would think that spending time training someone up, putting the time and effort into that only to have most people move on relatively quickly isn't a great business model. I know there is the argument that "if your business has to take advantage of people to run then its not a viable business" but thats the reality of some of these shops. Up to a point, thats exactly what apprenticeships have always been. A business get cheap labour that might help them a bit and the apprentice learns something.

One may wonder why bureaucrat Lappartient wants to reinvent the wheel with a massive injection of DEI and drastic reduction of money. Let the best cyclists win, period. Meanwhile, women's pro peloton needs means and support to attract new sponsors, increase TV coverage, improve salaries and prize money.

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).