Author Archives: Joe

AWWTM: Return to Glasgow

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Joe

While touring the hills of England and Scotland a month ago, I briefly stopped off again in Glasgow.  I think they must have read my blog and been shamed into action.  Look how the city has changed in just six … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: This pretense of neutrality

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Joe

On Saturday I wrote about the leaked draft of the Tories’ coalition’s draft new planning policy document: LAs are told to take into account existing local car ownership rates when doing this.  Fair enough, but why aren’t they also told … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: An inconvenient driving ban

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Joe

On the launch of the UN decade of action on road safety (which I wrote about here), Kim Harding questioned the choice of frontmen for the campaign: a pair of racing drivers with numerous convictions for driving offences.  Exploring further … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: Government wakes from electric dream

Posted on July 3, 2011 by Joe

So Philip Hammond’s policy — his one lonely policy* — of encouraging people to drive electric vehicles has been cut.  The government are still wasting money giving £5,000 subsidies to people who are already able to afford expensive new electric … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: How localism works: councils lose power to reject sprawl and congestion

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Joe

A draft of the National Planning Policy Framework has been leaked.  This is the document that Eric Pickles’s department, Community and Local Government, has been preparing to replace some of the previous government’s policies, rules, and guidelines on development and … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: Second hand; unused

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Joe

Thinking about how the Cycling Embassy might go about trying to generate political will to progress cycling, I’ve been researching previous failed attempts to advance cycling in this country.  So on Amazon I snapped up a second-hand copy of an … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: Friday photo: star of the show

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Joe

This was during the first of the student protests last year, when Conservative Party HQ was smashed up for the cameras.  It was long over by this time, but there was still a large backlog of arrests being processed in … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: Followup: pimp my ride

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Joe

Before the last random meandering tour of the hills and mountain ranges of England and Scotland (idea for a book: find the least flat end-to-end route) I briefly mentioned the latest accessories with which I had pimped my ride.  A … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: The man who crossed the road

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Joe

Brian Haw had a few weird ideas amongst the good ones in his head — in that he was not unusual.  But the weird ones do not mean that we don’t all owe him thanks for the good ideas and … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: Friday photo: bloody motorists…

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Joe

You can hardly walk anywhere in the countryside ’round here without your way being blocked by some anti-social motorist who has left a vehicle on a footpath… Even after all this time, I still find it so bizarre that in … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: A vaccine for road safety

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Joe

I stumbled upon this infomercial from BBC World while looking for something to entertain me over dinner: Continue reading at At War With The Motorist…

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Scientists bend observation to fit evolution

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Joe

This is another archival repost, originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. I wrote the majority of this post a couple of years ago, when I had the intention to do a regular … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: Shaftesbury Cycle Revival

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Joe

I went to school in a small Westcountry market town — Shaftesbury, in Dorset.  Built on a chalk hillside, Shaftesbury’s claim to fame is a steep cobbled street of simple picturesque cottages, a street you might recognise from one of … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: Friday photo: imagine they are all drivers

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Joe

While working on my photography stuff, it occurred to me to add a new recurring feature here…   A cloud of single occupant vehicles. This is London’s Silk Road — Theobald’s Road for the West End on the right, heading … Continue reading →

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AWWTM: Tipping points

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Joe

Since the 1950s, bicycle use has declined.  The one overwhelming reason is that decades of road construction, widening, and “improvement”, coupled with the advances in car technology that put machines designed for the autobahn on British city streets and country … Continue reading →

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