I recently heard my local MP on the radio, talking about the "Plebgate" controversy. (As a side note, I'm not really keen on the trend where "-gate" means "scandal". At this point, I don't think it's even a direct reference to Watergate, it's just become a synonym. However, in this case the people concerned were at least standing next to a gate ( Read more... )

I've been involved with the World Naked Bike Ride for the past five years. I took part in the London ride in 2009, then London and Brighton in 2010, and Southampton/London/Brighton in 2011-2013. When I've spoken to people about this, a lot of the same questions keep coming up, so I've structured this post as a dialogue ( Read more... )

Last week the Express published a blog post: Hey cyclist, stop shouting...Basically, the writer (Penny Stretton) was doing a driving lesson, then she swerved to avoid a lorry and almost hit a cyclist. This cyclist then shouted at her, which ruined the rest of her lesson. In fairness, she admits that she shouldn't have been driving when she was ( Read more... )

Yesterday the BBC published an article about Fabrice Muamba: Can you be 'dead' for 78 minutes? It's interesting, but I think that some of the information is inaccurate.

Quoting the article:

"The important thing in such cases is to start CPR quickly ( Read more... )

I've seen a lot of comments on Twitter recently about the "occupy" campaigns. In particular, there's an Occupy London campaign going on at the moment, which seems to be a direct response to the Occupy Wall Street campaign in the USA. Both groups refer to themselves as "the 99%", as distinct from the 1 ( Read more... )

I cycled over to Tooting Bec Lido today for a swim. Normally they close to the public at the end of September, but they extended that by a couple of days because we've had such warm weather recently. I haven't been along for a while, but that was the busiest I've ever seen it. The water was about 17°C, and I gasped a bit when I first got in, but it ( Read more... )

There's been a bit of controversy from Andrew Marr today:
"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting."
(Source: Guardian, TelegraphThe bit that I find most interesting is the reference to basements; I've heard similar comments ( Read more... )

If you're a (potential) cyclist, there are some interesting things happening, particularly in London.

1. Sky Ride. These take place in various cities, and the streets are closed to motor vehicles, so it's a nice chance to cycle around if you're not confident about dealing with cars. I'll be on SJA duty for the big one in London, and I'm going ( Read more... )

My homepage in Internet Explorer is MSN, mainly because that was the default and I haven't got round to changing it. I do sometimes click on their links, but I'm not overly impressed by their quality. Here are a couple of examples.

* Burke won't read Twilight novels: I haven't read the books or seen the films, so when I read the article I was ( Read more... )

Someone left an old copy of The Sun (from 15-Sep-2009) in the changing room at work, and one of the stories caught my eye:

"HIVE A HEADACHE

Scientists in Leeds are studying if the honey bee decline is due the queen bee's boring sex life."
Leaving aside the poor grammar, this struck me as a rather odd theory. It implies that the queens aren't ( Read more... )