Mobike is a Chinese company that offers bike-sharing schemes in 99 cities in Asia. Manchester has been chosen as its 100th and first non-Asian city – a pilot scheme was launched on 29 June 2017. The Guardian said this about it: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/29/chinese-bike-share-scheme-mobike-launches-in-rainy-manchester...
On the evening of 12 February 2017 Harry Sievey died whilst riding his bike on Mauldeth St. West in Withington, Manchester. He was 24. The incident received quite a lot of coverage due to his being the son of Chris Sievey,...
Following my recent post on the failure of a multitude of news outlets to join the dots between various “good” and “bad” news stories about cars (https://bangingonaboutbikes.wordpress.com/2017/01/05/on-a-new-year-and-the-same-old-disconnected-thinking-about-cars/), it will come as little surprise that nothing has changed only a couple of...
Hello blog types, It’s been a while, but last year was a bit of write-off for more and less apparent reasons. And with that in mind, we start a new year with the resolve to be more vocal and active, and what better...
2015 was deliberately a year of cycling. In 2014 I was less focused on bikes and ended up missing a lot of key events. My aim this year was to rectify that and get as much out of cycling as possible....
It’s hard to say really. The whole thing seems to be a bit of a mess right now. I originally wrote about this scheme here: https://bangingonaboutbikes.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/on-why-its-crucial-to-get-cycling-right-in-prestwich/ and those thoughts are still very much valid, albeit now tinged by an unhelpful dose...
Postscript (9 May 2018): the issues discussed in this post have been superseded and are dealt with here: https://bangingonaboutbikes.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/on-how-to-report-bad-driving-online-greater-manchester-polices-operation-considerate-reporting-capability/. I’m leaving the below post as it is so we can see the development of these processes over the last couple of...
We looked at some brief points on “road tax” here: https://bangingonaboutbikes.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/on-why-the-road-tax-argument-is-bullshit/. This post looks in a bit more detail at ways of dealing with the mouth-breathers who invoke that pathetic line of non-reasoning and seeks to debunk a commonly used retort....
There is no denying that the hard-of-thinking hate “cyclists”. “Cyclists”, that prescribed, impenetrable group of road users afforded special rights to use the roads without any of the administrative overheads foisted on the poor, downtrodden motorist. “Cyclists”, that group of slow-moving...
I originally wrote a really long post on this, parts of which I may still use in other polemics, but I think the main points are best expressed succinctly as follows: “Road tax” is an erroneous colloquialism for Vehicle Exise Duty,...
