dhufto

The 18mph "limit" for shared cycle paths originated in a Department for Transport cyclist conduct guide: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/archive/2004/ltnwc/annexdcodeofconductnoticefor1688 The relevant point is: Ride at a sensible speed for the situation and ensure you can stop in time. As a general rule, if you want to cycle quickly, say in excess of 18 mph/30 kph, then you should be riding on the road.

Except if you had bothered to read the BMJ study linked above you would have seen that it specifically relates to travel in the urban environment (Barcelona as it happens) and so it's your trips up the Monsal Trail that aren't relevant to the quoted increase in life expectancy in that study.

And after all that you can still expect to live a longer healthier life than someone who commutes by car! Well, I'm convinced - time to dig the bike out of the shed.

Then wait until there is. No, the driver should follow the highway code and: give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would when overtaking a car (see Rules 211 to 213 and 214 to 215).

But only rich people vote tory, so it is in their interest to make some poor people rich if they want to get elected, in contrast people who aren't rich tend to vote Labour...

Not sure about VAGs but some diesel engines (Mazda for one) contaminate the oil with fuel when used for lots of short journeys due to repeated regeneration fails when you switch off the ignition. Eventually the level of contamination reaches the point where the engine runs on its own oil until it self destructs. Can be quite expensive to sort...

More base stations means that mobile phones will be on average closer to a base station. They will therefore transmit at lower power, and the base stations themselves will have to transmit at lower power so as to avoid interference between the greater number of nearby base stations. Power drops off proportional to radius squared after all. Presumably then, in order to minimize the 'health effects' of electromagnetic radiation, the OP is in favour of increasing the number of base stations around Sheffield?

Someone claiming to be a young offender on some sort of rehabilitation scheme is going door to door in Ecclesall this evening trying to sell their wares. He produced a piece of laminated A4 paper as identification which would have taken all of 5 minutes to knock up. When I politely declined he had a bit more attitude than your average door to door salesman. There is a warning on the South Yorkshire probation service website regarding bogus callers that suggests this is some sort of scam. (sorry not enough posts to embed a link) There seem to be similar warnings from other police and probation forces across the UK. Following the advice on the SY probation website I reported this to the non-emergency police number who seemed to think that he may be legitimate? Does anyone know if this is a scam or not, and whether this is a regular occurrence? Oh and warning: there may (or may not) be a bogus door to door salesman walking around Ecclesall tonight.

There is a place for superzoom lenses. I have the Sigma 18-250mm which my research indicated was a definate improvement over the 18-200 and on a par with the Tamron 18-270 and Canon offering. Paired with a 450D body it's light and easily portable, and took some cracking shots when I walked the Inca Trail, where carrying a full set of kit (say my 5D2, a few primes a couple of large aperture zooms) was simply not an option. Sure there are inherrent compromises in a superzoom,and I wouldn't use it for any 'serious' photography, but much of the distortion, etc. can be corrected in software. At the end of the day, you get infinitely better pictures by having your camera with you than by leaving it in a hotel room because you can't face carrying the weight all day.