This week’s round-up features Boris and the church kicking off about various bike related topics, a BAFTA nomination, and a fantastic response to negative stories about cycling in the press.
The top image is from a Reddit post by user phstoven showcasing the entrance to the bike storage room at their place of employment – looks pretty swish! Commentators on the post try to guess where the poster works, with some interesting suggestions – Gringotts Bank was our favourite.
On 1st November Eurostar will be changing its bike carriage policy, in a move that has been described by various sources as anything from backwards-looking to plain frustrating. Numerous voices have asked them to change their mind through letters and petitions including London mayor Boris Johnson, who said that “it is a backward step, which undermines Eurostar’s green pretensions”.
We hope they decide to reconsider!
A church in Washington DC is also unimpressed about proposed changes in cycling policy, although we’re not sure we agree as strongly with their stance! They are citing “constitutionally protected rights of religious freedom and equal protection of the laws” as a reason to block the building of a bike lane on a road that passes their church, or, in layman terms, a lot of their congregation park in the surrounding streets and a bike lane would interfere with this.
What do you think? The full story can be found here.
Mountain biker Danny Macaskill has been nominated for a prestigious BAFTA award for his film The Ridge which, if you haven’t seen, details his hair-raising ascent and subsequent descent of the In Pinn on Skye:
Also in cycling film news, The Program was released last week – a film summarised as “the incredible true story behind Lance Armstrong – the success, the controversy, and the quest for the truth”.
Reviews range from the candid (“a watchable piece of work, but doesn’t quite do justice to the subtle wriggling and squirming and sheer denial that characterised Armstrong’s downfall” – Guardian) to the witty (“visually dynamic and, like its compelling antihero, doesn’t have an inch of fat on it” – Empire) to the ruthless (”
Lance Armstrong is a big fat liar” – The Times).
Reactions across the board seem to suggest it’s worth a look, but is nothing ground-breaking.
This week’s top story, if only for the phrasing of the response, is a piece in Road.cc wherein Andrew Gilligan (London’s Cycling Commissioner) addresses critics of cycling schemes.
He uses facts and figures to show that the criticisms of various aspects of London’s cycling investment program, noting that “”You always get this when there’s any kind of scheme to take away traffic: people say they’ll lose business and they absolutely never do, all the evidence shows the exact opposite.”
His comment that “‘crap freelance journalists’ using an attack on cycling as click bait is ‘inevitable'” was especially pleasing. It’s definitely something we’ve seen before: people trying to play up on the conflict between cyclists and drivers as a way to generate traffic to their articles, rather than taking an objective look at the debate.
Thanks Road.cc for a good article!
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