Best way to travel 5 miles to a train station?

I agree.

 

Jolly decent my dear chap, although two abrest or single file doesnt
matter, as I am way over the other side of the road when I overtake (It's
as if you replace the bike with a lorry with the left edge where the bike
is).

Long chains are worse though. If you had 100 riders in a single file, it
would be very dificult to overtake unless there were regular gaps in the
file. Like convoys of lorrys on single-carriageways.

Yes, a misdefinition of "pack", I blame the tour de france.

What reason does a driver, or anyone, have to resent your (as a courteous
law abiding rider - sadly very rare in London) presence. The
only things I resent are bikers breaking the law by ignoring lights,
riding on pavements, etc.

I've been a cyclist before, and will be again. If it was a granny in a
micra at 20mph I'd have to give that much room, so why not for a bike?

Now a bike at 5mph might not get as much room if it wasn't available (although I'd only pass at
10-15 in that case)

 

I dont pay it, so I doubt it

Why is the VED fair? If you want to charge based on road use, surely it's
fairer to charge per mile (petrol tax). If you want to charge based on
everyone, just throw it on income tax. I dont see the justification of
VED at all, and if it is just park of "general taxation", then theres even
less justification.

I also wonder why vehicle tax isn't transferable? If I owned two cars (a
smart car for commuting, and an estate for holidays), and kept them in my
garage, I could only ever use one at a time, but I have to pay twice?

 

I believe that taxes should be hypothecated. Cigarette tax -> treating
lung cancer, and any propagander the government puts out. Alcohol tax ->
policing at kick-out time and liver disease.

Income tax should be scrapped, or at least reformed. The rich can easilly
avoid it. VAT should be increased, however there should be more exemptions
- it should be on luxury items only. Not food, not cheap clothes, not
transport (bikes, train tickets, cars, fuel). All transport related tax
(fuel, VED) goes to funding all roads (including local council roads), and
public transport. Any cost of accidents due to vehicle collision should be
paid out of insurance. etc. etc.

 

Empty pavement joining into a crowded pavement or plaza

 

I think you're probably right

 

Just zis Guy, you know? spouted the following pile of shite:

Utter bollocks. Look, do us all a favour. Plug "Fruitarian" into
Google, spend 10 minutes reading (or 5 if you can manage it
without moving your lips), and get up to speed.

 

Aye, it smarted for a little while, but it's worth it.

It's an interesting argument.

 

Something to do with tax-evasion, apparently.

d.

 

£1000 will get you a mid-range road racing bike. Top-end bikes can cost
upwards of £3500.

d.

 

Racing? I trust you dont do this "racing" on the public road of course...

Personally I'm happy with a £100 halfords bike.

 

The gear cable broke on a car I owned years ago but it didn't stop me you
can still change gear without a cluch.

There motoring advice from a cyclist.

 

Ok, it's a fake on that score, but it's a way closer than Hyde Park.

Which is why I was keen to stress legality

I'm sure someone will correct me, but wasn't the ark populated with just
two of each?

I wish you were right, but I fear being uncourteous isn't strictly
against the law.

True enough - it's all about interpretation. I suspect that Jo(e) Public
will react differently too. While strictly illegal if you did come
across a decent sized group that road like they were in the Tour I might
expect a decent proportion of drivers to welcome the site, not be wound
up be it.

And fair enough - even if there are possibly decent excuses for it, it's
still illegal.

 

I've raced on (closed) public roads, private roads and others - and then
there's training.

But yes, I've 'raced', albeit informal time trials with strict
instructions to abide by traffic laws, on public roads.

Each to their own, it's money well spent in my mind.

 

How can the unemployed people (who are the ones who use bicycles)
possibly afford that much?

 

The Older Gentleman says...

Cos benefits pay better than working

 

Indeed, I've experienced this myself. Can be tricky to do without
knackering your gearbox though, it has to be said - there's a learning
curve to overcome ;-) And while you can change gear whilst on the move,
doing a hill start doesn't seem feasible. Luck was with me that day,
climbed the hill toward home, managed to keep the car going only just
fast enough to prevent a stall at the top, made sure the road was clear
whilst being prepared to stand on the brakes and pull it out of gear..

If the road'd not been clear, I would have never got back in gear from
stationary, still being pointed up a hill.

 

Because not all cyclists are unemployed, troll.

 

I think they should start charging cyclists say 5GBP/year VED (probably
doesn't make sense for it to be any less than that or it would cost
more to collect that it raises) and then charge other vehicles
appropriately based on third power of axle load.
Smallish cars have an axle load about 10 times bikes so would cost
5K/year. 4x4s about 40K/year Large HGVs something like 8M/year.
(some estimates put the damage at the fourth or even fifth power of axle
load but I don't think 500K/year for a small car is going to leave many
cars on the road)

For bicycles it would probably be cheaper just to levy 100GBP at the
point of sale and assume that bikes last for 20 years. In fact we could
extend that to all vehicles - I don't know the average lifespan of a car
but say 8 years so just levy 40K at the point of sale for a fiesta, 320K
for a rangerover and no more tax dodging

Tim.

 

I did the calculation some time ago but IIRC the tax per MJ on chocolate
is about the same as the tax per MJ on petrol.

IIRC 1Kg chocolate ~ 40MJ is about 5GBP*0.175=0.88GBP tax
1l petrol ~ 40MJ is about 0.9GBP*.8=0.72GBP tax

Someone else can redo the calculations and lookup the real tax rate for
chocolate and petrol and the price of chocolate

Tim.