Biking the Borderlands

Brilliant post. Lots of family cycling info is based on young kids and this provides a great perspective for older kids.

Questions to the First Minister today around pavement parking elicited a 'lets see what happens in England and go from there' response. Another chance to remind ourselves that banning pavement parking was a 2021 manifesto commitment with a further commitment in-government to banning by 2023.

This is a good example of a policy which should be able to be initiated by Community Councils,neither Highways Authority being required to do the implementation unless statutory reason not to.

For me it’s that just as if you have no frame of reference for disability you can fall in to ableism, so do people who only drive fall in to driverism. How else could I possibly get there? Cycle?

I’m not sure that problem isn’t more that the BBC wants to use ‘British’ vehicles, larger ones are more practical, and there’s been little attempt to decarbonise the British branded car industry by government.

It’s a very thinly veiled attempt to self justify not paying attention when driving a huge lump of metal. Worst kind of me-me-me journalism dressed up as ‘InDepth’.

Senedd!

THe whole ‘review’ thing has been a farce. Those comments were made almost 2 years ago now and there’s plenty of evidence to use instead.

Until someone actually challenges in court we’ll see the 20mph unwound due to some ‘noisy’ people who travel through streets rather than live on them.

Right in my neck of the woods! I look forward to seeing some stickers along the amazing Wales Coast Path cycle routes.

Active Travel is about showing non-car/public transport also has econ value inland overcome investment rules.

If we got over that silliness and valued travel for other reasons too (which cars are used for as well!). We could fund ‘routes’ based on the max social benefit and not worry about names!

Copilot is like having an incredibly enthusiastic but incompetent colleague.

I’m sure @southwalespolice.bsky.social issued clear advice to drivers about looking out for children cycling. Right?

It’s a deliberate act with no legitimate reason for doing it so should always carry an unmitigated penalty.

“Hey, us doing something is too hard. Let’s tell them they need to do something”.

There are some interesting changes which were promoted as part of the ‘cut printing to cut costs’ approach 15yrs+ ago - I remember showing the cost and backcharging printing being minimally effective but moving printers to a central location and making you manually release the job had a huge impact.

I don’t think it’s comparable because most people will swap Car A for Car B, whereas the subsidy would be supplementary.

Now a scrappage scheme where you trade your car for a cargo bike would be great.

I think we know that if demand was centrally controllable we would be able to close the gap but of course that would cause culture war chaos.

We either heavily subsidise home batteries, pay people to not use energy at certain times, or change our habits. I wonder which would be cheaper/achievable?

HMP Berwyn inmates refurbish bicycles to raise money for Nightingale House Prisoners at HMP Berwyn are refurbishing bicycles to raise money for Nightingale House Hospice as part of a new rehabilitation scheme. The project, delivered in partnership with FCC Environment, Wrexham Council and the hospice, sees donated bikes repaired by inmates before being sold at the Bryn Lane Reuse Shop.The project All proceeds raised through the sales go directly to Nightingale House, which provides care and support for people with life-limiting illnesses.

Prisoners at HMP Berwyn refurbish bikes to raise funds for Wrexham hospice

This is what happens when you have all carrott and no stick.

This whole thing is hyper-weird as a Welsh person. I mean we have flags all over the place. In shops, on t-shirts, houses. And it’s lovely, and nice, and colourful and full of dragons.

England needs to fix its relationship with its flag.

If Y2K had happened in the tyranny of Agile we have now we would have been entirely screwed.

BBC Shropshire manages to prove that cycling beats driving but still ends up with a car brained ‘race across town’.

www.instagram.com/reel/DNfaAzZ...

Latest from my occasional series of fly-parked bikes in Wrexham. This is what happens when there’s no convenient parking.

UK leadership seems to be missing that it’s perfectly possible for Wales to end up with Reform AND still be to the left of England.

Sunday Supplement - Election Special: Everything you didn't realise you wanted to know about the next Senedd election - BBC Sounds A look ahead to the next Senedd election in May 2026.

(Not about cycling but…) Apart from the cringy bits about Welsh-only constituency names, this discussion on the election is one of the best bits of reporting so far.

Have UK Labour really written off Wales? Are the MPs and MSs really still in the same party?

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Oops. Yes, strange not to be here given the level of multi-site tools that are in use for managing social media!

From the other place but @transportforwales.bsky.social are rubbing free bike marking at Shotton Station today - 9am-1pm for anyone local.

Backfired a bit on the cons though - an admin of one local ‘anti-20’ group I lurk on came out to say they were standing for the council and immediately got shot down for not being reform.

This is equally true of many other ‘AI-vulnerable’ areas from consulting through to stock imagery. A positive view is that AI will push quality up, but the general acceptance of ‘minimum viable’ will probably mean software development has no appetite for quality anymore.

The same reason you probably don’t want to eat 200 burgers at an all you can eat Buffett?