HUBBERS DOT COM BLOG

I have been having a few moans on my blog about the state of cycle lanes and cycling in general recently. Usually when I see something dangerous I take a photo and send the link to that photo to my local councilors, the Mayor of London, Local MP, Transport for London and other people who might have an interest in my moaning.

Last time I had an even better idea and I have decided to harness the powers of Web 2.0 to fight the good fight against the morons who put cyclists at risk in London.

This is a link to my flickr group about cycle safety that anyone can post photos to. Within a week I have already found ten other people who have also been taking photos of anti-cycle-idiocy.

That is the power of the internet my friends, it enables ticked off loonies to find each other and bug elected officials together. Well one of the powers anyway.

Went up to Wembley Stadium to see Live Earth. I cannot think of to many things more inappropriate to bring attention to the state of the planet than an alcohol and rock fueled orgy of consumption.

The bands ranged from good to great but the highlights for me was seeing Wembley Stadium itself. It was awesome. It’s just a pity they don’t play rugby there.

My humour highlight was Thandie Newton’s small piece to air. She started by saying:

“Someone once said -”

At this stage I was thinking I bet she was too lazy to even bother to find out and credit the author of the quote she is stealing. She finished:

“- with power comes responsibility.”

Then I didn’t know when to laugh or cry. Not only did she steal someone else’s quote but she also butchered it. Everyone knows that the line “With great power comes great responsibility” is by Spiderman’s uncle Ben. So I started yelling “Uncle Ben said it! Uncle Ben said it!” But it was still early in the day and people hadn’t drunk very much so everyone just edged away from me and looked nervous.

These are all from the Evening Standard which seems to be the only newspaper to carry regular articles on cycling and cycle safety in London. My guess would be that one of the editrors at the ES rides to work.

• 372 cyclist were killed or seriously injured on London roads last year
• 19 cyclists were killed in collisions – nine of which involved a goods vehicle
• In 2005 21 cyclists were killed, nine involved lorries
• The was a 30 per cent rise in cycle deaths between 2003 and 2005
• The number of cycle journeys has risen by more than 80 per cent over five years
• There has been a 23 per cent increase in the number of cyclists using London’s main roads, compared to the same time last year
• 64 per cent of drivers never cycle on roads as they are afraid of having an accident

No surprises about that last one.

Earlier this year I wrote to a long list of local councillors about a stretch of cycle lane on the way to work that was blocked in several places by road works. In some places the road was genuinely dug up but in several other the cycle lane was blocked to provide storage space for road signs, equipment and – a portable toilet. I even took some photos (click on the image below to see more).I got a couple of responses about looking at danger areas etc a few weeks later but not much else.

Yesterday on the same stretch of road I took the photo below of a toilet blocking a cycle lane. In the couple of minutes it took me to take these photos I saw two cyclists ride into oncoming traffic on the wrong side of the road to avoid the toilet blocking the cycle lane. While I admit this is an incredibly stupid thing for cyclists to do the fact that a high percentage of cyclists will do this makes the placement of the portable toilet here, dangerous in the extreme.

My proposed solution is that the local councils should outlaw using cycle lanes for storage by road workers.

It’s been 9 years since I last went to Tiger Tiger in Leicester Square. Sixteen hours before I was due to make a return visit for a friend’s birthday some evil bastard parked a car packed with explosives and nails outside it.

Luckily the bombers are once again as skilful as they are sane and the bomb never went off. Thankfully in the UK there seems to be a high correlation between being a sadistic terrorist murderer and being a bumbling incompetent.

When will the bombers learn? Horrifically killing innocent people doesn’t get you paradise and virgins. It gets you a little concrete cube to spend the rest of your life in with a guy called bubba who makes you wear lipstick.

Glastonbury is a brilliant thing to do. The UK’s biggest and best festival has such an awesome vibe that you can host the whole thing in 6 inches of mud and everyone still has an amazing time.

Fortunately the high fence and even higher ticket price kept a lot of the riff-raff out and the whole festival was a rather chipper event. The great irony of a muddy Glastonbury is that is seems to be the most efficient way to make 120,000 middle class white kids brown for four days.

Saw loads of cool bands, ate loads of yummy food, danced in the rain, saw all sorts of hippy art and theatre (not sure how they got in). I also partied pretty hard for an old fella if I do say so myself.

Leaving was a problem as the exit near us was sooo muddy that three tractors had to tow or push cars across the last field one at a time. We spent five hours in a queue that never moved. Eventually that gate got closed because even the tractors were finding it too difficult to use. Tent flap to door it took us nearly 12 hours to get home. And then the car rental people charged us a £76 cleaning fee because the car was dirty. Well duh?

These are the photos I took at Glastonbury ;)

I am fortunate enough to have a ticket for Glastonbury 2007. The previous two times I have been to the festival the weather has been sunny or sunny intervals, as they say in weather circles. This time it appears that my luck has run out and the typical Glastonbury mud bath is expected. There have even been televised news reports of gumboot (wellingtons as they call them here) shortages in the UK.

This is the BBC weather forecast for the weekend.

My digital camer has recently started taking very overexposed pictures. I contacted Canon and they had this to say.

Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding your Canon product.

In response to your query, please be advised that from your incident description and from the two images we concluded that the over exposure effect the images have would be normal, even with the Automatic mode.

Please be advised that in case the camera would automatically set the balance to normal in the sunny sky area, the rest of the image would be even more massively under exposed.

Furthermore, in case in normal light conditions the images are not over or under exposed using the Automatic mode settings, most certainly there is nothing wrong with your Canon Digital IXUS 750.

Well I know there is something wrong with my camera so I have sent them this picture I took in Boston. There is no sky or bright light in this photo. Just more of the same building. And the sun is behind the building so there is no reflection.

The Evening Standard have a thoroughly praiseworthy 12-point charter for improving cycle safety in London. I am struggling to find more information about it online except on one other blog so I thought I would promote it here:

1. A real cycle network across London
2. Better cycle lanes with proper segregation
3. Enforcement of special advanced stop lines for cyclists
4. HGVs to be fitted with special cyclist safety mirrors
5. Compulsory cyclist awareness training for all bus drivers and new HGV drivers
6. Make safe the Thames bridges: some of the most dangerous places for cyclists
7. Cycle-friendly streets: fewer one-way systems which funnel cyclists into the middle of traffic
8. More cycle parking across London
9. A police crackdown on bike theft
10. Campaign to urge the selfemployed to claim a 20p a mile cycling allowance against tax
11. Better cycle-bus-rail coordination: adequate parking at all railway stations
12. Cycle training for all schoolchildren and any adult who wants it

Every day when I ride to work I see people step out onto the road without looking. I guess they have forgotten the advice of their parents and are not looking “right then left then right again”. And while ears might be useful for hearing cars and trucks they aren’t so useful for spotting cycles. This often results in the unobservant pedestrians getting a bing from a bell or a toot of a horn and usually a little scare.

Some of these sharp eared walkers have taken offence to cyclists binging them and the local police have been called into action to sort out the silly cyclists. A group of them now regularly patrol the intersection next to Holborn police station issuing tickets to any cyclist who stupidly runs a red light while they are there.

My point is that I don’t think that a lot of pedestrians are getting hurt. But London roads are putting at least four thousand cyclists in hospital each year.

Now if I were in charge of the police (and why not?) I might target my limited resources at minimising death and injury on the roads. Or I might be looking into why thousands of bikes are stolen in London each year. Quite possibly I might send an office down to Brick Lane where rumour has it you can choose from several cut price stolen bikes any day of the week.

That’s just me though. I have crazy ideas for common sense use of limited police resources.