The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[Kim]

Last week the police in Strasbourg were out stopping unlit cyclists, but instead of swingeing 11€ fines they were passing out minimalist lighting kits consisting precisely of tiny LED bobby-dodgers, with a half-dozen 3M spoke reflectors.  Shows that they're more concerned with the law than safety - I'd have no confidence, riding with those things.

The Wet Midlands police (of close pass initiative fame) have a similar protocol, but the lights they're giving out are vaguely decent (at least from a be-seen perspective).  They're not setting out to catch unlit cyclists, either, on the basis that as traffic police they have more important things to do.

[Tim Hall]

Dear The BBC.

Pls to stop buggering around with your Friday night schedule, especially that of that nice Victoria Coren Mitchell. I want to watch Only Connect, not the poxy football.

ktxbai.

Dear the BBC. See what I wrote last week. Abstrads.

[ElyDave]

Last week the police in Strasbourg were out stopping unlit cyclists, but instead of swingeing 11€ fines they were passing out minimalist lighting kits consisting precisely of tiny LED bobby-dodgers, with a half-dozen 3M spoke reflectors.  Shows that they're more concerned with the law than safety - I'd have no confidence, riding with those things.

The Wet Midlands police (of close pass initiative fame) have a similar protocol, but the lights they're giving out are vaguely decent (at least from a be-seen perspective).  They're not setting out to catch unlit cyclists, either, on the basis that as traffic police they have more important things to do.

I guess if they avoid one clean up at another RTA involving a cyclist, its a positive outcome

[Kim]

Last week the police in Strasbourg were out stopping unlit cyclists, but instead of swingeing 11€ fines they were passing out minimalist lighting kits consisting precisely of tiny LED bobby-dodgers, with a half-dozen 3M spoke reflectors.  Shows that they're more concerned with the law than safety - I'd have no confidence, riding with those things.

The Wet Midlands police (of close pass initiative fame) have a similar protocol, but the lights they're giving out are vaguely decent (at least from a be-seen perspective).  They're not setting out to catch unlit cyclists, either, on the basis that as traffic police they have more important things to do.

I guess if they avoid one clean up at another RTA involving a cyclist, its a positive outcome

I think it's basically that they've worked out what they're going to do if they do end up stopping an unlit cyclists (presumably in response to a specific complaint).  Giving out lights seems more likely to work than giving out FPNs.

Meanwhile, they can go after motorists for excessive speed, mobile phones and lack of insurance and so on, which  is more likely to reduce RTCs.

[CAMRAMan]

CAMRAMan Jr. I asked you to wash your Mum's car and you said 'I'll do it in 30 minutes'. An hour later, I remind you and you ask for 10 minutes more. OK, think I and go out to set up the hose and put detergent in the bowl & find the sponge. I go out and clean my bike that was well & truly crudded up from the cyclepaths I use near farmland. That takes a good 20 minutes. WTF, think I, I might as well wash the car myself, so I do. And about 3/4 of the way through, you decide to wander out. Well sunshine, too late, so no money.

[Mrs Pingu]

Brother's latest Ryanair grumble:

A warning to those who fly Ryanair. I have HAD to fly them 3 times in the last 3 weeks. I tried the following experiment on all three flights. I order a coffee and pay with a 5 Euro note. The crew never have change but they always say they will return with change, but they never do. It's not about the money. Clearly dishonesty and theft is standard practice. If the crew on three flights is happy to be dishonest and steal it begs the question.... what else are they stealing?

Related,  perhaps?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/03/ryanair-crew-judged-against-strict-sales-targets-documents-show

[hellymedic]

Brother's latest Ryanair grumble:

A warning to those who fly Ryanair. I have HAD to fly them 3 times in the last 3 weeks. I tried the following experiment on all three flights. I order a coffee and pay with a 5 Euro note. The crew never have change but they always say they will return with change, but they never do. It's not about the money. Clearly dishonesty and theft is standard practice. If the crew on three flights is happy to be dishonest and steal it begs the question.... what else are they stealing?

Related,  perhaps?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/03/ryanair-crew-judged-against-strict-sales-targets-documents-show

Certainly fits with brother's experience and helps explain the Despicable Incident of the Sick Passenger.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Could the person who conceived open plan offices also provide compulsory gags for all staff? Oh and a ban on using speakerphone mode in the office?

tired-of-working-with-earmuff-on

FFS

[T42]

I worked in an open-plan office in 1975.  I doubt if the sadist who invented them is still around.

[arabella]

...
Bah.

My stock response is to say I read the spec., looked at what it did/didn't cover and compared it with past riding practice.  So far so good.

[andytheflyer]

Not sure who is the culprit and the object of this rant, but it revolves around the filthy rural roads that I have to ride on at this time of year.

They are filthy because the increasingly large tractors the farmers use won't fit on the lanes, at least they won't if trying to pass anything wider than a bike - and sometimes not even then.  So the wheels go onto the soft verges, and muck is sprayed liberally across the road.  After a few vehicles have been along, there are the two, narrow reasonably clean wheel tracks, separated by a ridge of mud, hiding a range of thorns and gravel, all sufficient to have me off my recumbent if I am unwise enough not to have planned my ride so as to avoid having to cross this linear mountain range.

The corollary, is that the verges now look like Speilberg's remake of the Battle of The Somme, and the road is barely distinguishable from a ploughed field that's been home to a herd of cows after a couple of inches of November rain.

An modern cars are not much better, although admittedly they don't spread as much muck over the road as a mega-tractor towing a slurry tanker the size of my house.  My mum's old Mini was about as wide as an ICE trike. Then came the Elf  - n - Safety snowflake generation, with the side impact bars and airbags, all of which means that the current Mini is about as mini as a 1970's Ford Transit.

So whose fault is it?  The farmers for buying ever-wider tractors, the E-n-S brigade with ever larger cars, or the councils for not anticipating the trend for ever larger road vehicles and omitting to grub up all the hedges to widen the country lanes into A-road size carriageways?

Whosever fault it is, will you please stop running over the verges at this time of year 'cos it's bad for the environment and it's dangerous to cyclists - especially me.......

[T42]

Around here it's not so much the verges that supply the mud as the fields. The farmers pull out onto the road and bring several cwt of mud with them.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Ironically the larger tractors are used because they cause less damage to fields, don't chew up the ground so much.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Ironically the larger tractors are used because they cause less damage to fields, don't chew up the ground so much.

I didn't know that. I thought it was because they were more efficient, covering a larger field area in the same time, but I can see larger wheels and wider axles might cause less damage to ground.

[Kim]

My sympathies on that one tend to side with the farmer.  Their vehicle is (presumably) optimised for a job, and I tend to regard country lanes as their factory floor.

Modern cars are optimised for various things, but rarely the job they actually get used for.

[ElyDave]

I must admit, I find the farmers around me to be quite bike friendly, after all, we are getting into or near their workplace, and a large part of their ever  expanding fields and machinery is at least partly due to our push for ever cheaper food.

That said, beet harvest season is particularly muddy as it goes right through the winter

[Guy]

Radio 2

A Wombling Merry Christmas.

Please. Make it stop

[Guy]

It's getting chilly in my office. Brigadier Nick's dog has gone to sleep with her head just in the way of shutting the door.

[hellymedic]

Radio 2

A Wombling Merry Christmas.

Please. Make it stop

My partner LOVES that one!

We seldom listen to music radio though.

[TheLurker]

Radio 2

A Wombling Merry Christmas.

Please. Make it stop

Could be worse. Could be McCartney's dreadful little ditty.

[Mrs Pingu]

Radio 2

A Wombling Merry Christmas.

Please. Make it stop

Could be worse. Could be McCartney's dreadful little ditty.

Or Mariah.

[T42]

Météo France does it again: 5°C & sunny forecast, 1°C and 10/10 misty overcast delivered. 5° I can ride in, 1° clobbers me. Haven't been out for a week, now.

[SoreTween]

Pisa check in have insisted my b&m foldon go through oversize even though it isn't above max in any dimension. On the way out here I was given the choice and opted to send it the oversize route in the hope of kinder handling. It arrived in perfect condition two nervous days after me.

[Si S]

Could have been in the overheard today thread but :

"With us expanding to new office space in the new year we need to start urgently thinking about things like how many Christmas trees we'll need next year"

I can't cope, somebody shoot me.   

[Tim Hall]

Dear ourquer de vache

Reasons for creating an Excel document do not include "I'm going to print it out landscape".