Monthly Archives: May 2015

Domestic (UK), Politics, Voting Reform

Voting Reform Revisited.

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I haven’t said much about Voting Reform since we lost the referendum back in 2011. The results of our recent general election tell me at least that it is time to revisit it.
We need to get from this:

To something like this:

(This ballot paper is from New Zealand)

Cycling

Electric Bikes at the Giro????

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“It’s the stupidest thing. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of.

 
This is what Ryder Hesjedal said after officials seized his bike at the finish line of today’s stage of the Giro d’Italia to check for any hidden electric motors. The full story can be found here at Velonews.

There have been rumors of some riders using electrically assisted bikes for a while. I think it started after the 2010 Ronde van Vlaanderen when Fabian Cancellara rode away from Tom Boonen on the Kapelmuur. (round about 2:40 on the video clip)

Strangely this is not the first time that Ryder has been suspected of having a motor in his bike

Electric assisted bikes exist. My wife Grace has one, and it works well. It also weighs 22 kg, of which the battery accounts for about 3 kg and the motor probably about another 3 kg. In other words the motor and the battery weigh about as much as the average pro’s race bike.The maximum power boost is probably about 120 to 150 watts, using it at that level the battery would last about two hours.

An Electric Bike
A Cannondale Race bike as ridden by Ryder Hesjedal

I think the important part of the bike to focus on is the bottom bracket area (where the cranks are) If you look closely at the E-Bike you will see a grey rhomboid shape just in front and above the front chainring. This is the motor housing. Do you see anything remotely like this on the Cannondale – no. Electric motors produce power roughly in proportion to their size, so to get a significant power boost you need a reasonably sized motor, something which I don’t think could be hidden in the seat tube. Another thing worth noticing is that grey box on the lower tier of the rack, that is the battery. It is conceivable that you could fashion a battery that would fit into the down tube, but I’m not quite sure how you get it in and out without cutting the frame nor can I see how you would charge the thing without leaving evidence of a charging port. Also note the wires everywhere on the E-bike and not so much on the Cannondale.

On top of that why would a professional cyclist want the penalty of the extra weight of a battery and motor on a mountain stage for a five or ten minute boost?

However some professional cyclists, in particular the Dutch female rider Marjin de Vries think that all electric bikes, especially the type ridden by my wife should be banned completely.

“A similar incident last summer was even more traumatic. I was training in Zuid-Limburg, in the Dutch hills, doing efforts on a climb. Efforts mean riding up a hill as fast as possible. Again. And again and again. When I did the effort for the fifth time, gasping for oxygen and with legs about to explode, I suddenly saw an aged couple two corners above me. They were pedaling up as well.I should have realised immediately that only Super Granny would be capable of riding up a climb like that. For ordinary-aged people it was far too hard. But doing efforts blurs ones vision. I could just notice that this aged couple’s pace was pretty high. Actually, they seemed to be flying up. I was giving it all and I hardly came any closer. WTF?, I thought. WTF, OMG, BBQ?!?! I squeezed out every bit of energy I had left in my body and found myself back in the slipstream of the couple. And there I saw what I should have realised minutes before: electric bikes.

 
Having tried to follow Grace in full boost mode up a hill, I tend to agree with her.

Domestic (UK), Politics

A Pre-Election Sunday Salmagundi

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As (I hope) all of my multitudes of followers in the United Kingdom will know we have a General Election on Thursday (7th May). My further flung readers may not. So in recognition of this fact my irregular Sunday round up of news and opinion will be mainly about the who, what and why of Thursday’s stramash.
Working out exactly what this election is about has been difficult.

“Huge issues that will confront the next government, whatever form it takes, have been missing from the campaign. Britain’s role in the world has barely been discussed and in so much as it has been debated it has been narrowed to an argument about whether you need four submarines or just the three to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent. The environment has hardly got a word in edgeways. The economy has been talked about a lot, but usually in superficialities. I hear everyone assert that we need a high-skills, high-wage, high-productivity economy; I hear precious little about where all these wonderful jobs are going to come from. How is Britain going to earn a successful living in the future? That most fundamental of questions remains unanswered. We are in a fog of uncertainty about what sort of country we will be living in. We cannot even be sure that this country will exist in five years’ time. Labour is locked in a desperate struggle for survival north of the Tweed against the rampant Scottish nationalists and has not the breath to spare to describe how it would remake the United Kingdom. The so-called Conservative and Unionist party has responded by colluding with the nationalists in stoking the grievances that are pulling the UK apart.

 
English Conservatism needs a makeover reckons Will Hutton, otherwise,:

“Detached from Scotland, the England over which it aims to preside, never-endingly, will be a poisonous, inward-looking and mean-spirited place. It will be welcome only to the super-rich and their insider networks, denying the mass of English citizens the structures and institutions through which they can live the good lives to which they aspire.

 
The Britain I love – an outward-looking country that is tolerant, good-humoured, fair-minded and generous, and which, with some reforms, could become one of the most dynamic places to live in Europe – will have been expunged.

Beware the siren call of nationalism – both Scottish and English. says Nick Cohen.

“On 16 February 1886, Lord Randolph Churchill confided a plan to destroy his Liberal opponents to the Conservative lawyer Gerald FitzGibbon. It was a risk, he implied. But if William Gladstone’s Liberal administration proposed home rule for Ireland, “the Orange card would be the one to play. Please God it may turn out to be the ace of trumps and not the two”.

 
David Cameron thinks he is a firefighter. Jack Monroe, who knows a bit about the Fire Service, begs to differ.

Let’s vote for hope over fear.

“In the end, it boils down to this: do we want the UK to be a hopeful country or one scared of what lies beyond? I land on this stark question because arguments about everything else have reached stalemate. But a lot of us seem unable to make that one final decision, who to vote for, because we don’t want to be let down one more time. We’ve had enough, they’re all as bad as each other, a plague on all their beautifully maintained houses. It’s a chorus of negativism that’s so easy to join. I urge you not to join it.

 
But some things never change.

As per the above we do have a new princess to distract us.