Parking Bicycles

[CEINEWYDD]

Oh yes !  Missed that . G'night all.

[DCB]

7 minutes ago, CEINEWYDD said:

Billy Connolly used to tell a great joke about parking a bike, but I am sure I will get banned to submitting that, so you will have use your imagination!! 

Legendary, second only to Jasper Carrott's "Mole" joke and  Frank Skinner  "Every woman every man join the Taliban of love.

 

On 26/11/2023 at 16:22, whart57 said:

In the Netherlands bikes from at least the 1930s on had something called terug-trap which translates as back-pedal for braking. You can free wheel but if you pedal backwards you apply a small drum brake inside the backwheel axle. There are still bikes around with that today and it was certainly still standard on the ordinary go-to-the-shops sort of push bike in the 1990s. Never seen them in England though, which made the bikes my mum and dad brought over with them in 1955 somewhat unique.

Netherlands is a bit different to most of the UK  as its flat, You don't really need gears, so a back pedal brake makes sense,  You wouldn't last long in Yorkshire wi back peddle brakes, not down 1 in 3 to Grosmont any road.   I had a front  hub brake in the 1960's taken from an earlier bike ,  Almost useless. Most  post WW2 bikes seemed to have cable operated caliper brakes which pulled on the sides of their 26" rims, pre war they were rod brakes which pulled up onto the underside of 28" wheel rims for gents bikes
Those pre war bikes were big, bigger frames proportionately  and  those much bigger wheels, 
The bikes were known as "Push bikes" and older ladies would push their bikes around festooned with shopping bags and occasionally coast down a slight hill.   Many were single gear and had dynamos which ran against the side of the tyre which was more effective as a brake than a generator  while posh ones like my dad had new circa 1952 had a rear hub with a three or four speed Sturmey Archer hub gear plus a hub dynamo.  This was a bit ostentatious and impractical as any serious pedalling the  first gear stripped.    4 speed deraillieurs were common in the 1950s with big wide chains 5's needed the more modern narrow chains, and a front mech and 10 speed was common by 1970's    Really common was the Raleigh Chopper.  Utterly useless fashion statements. We used to raid the Council tip at Foss Cross station for bike spares, we seldom needed to buy anything.  I became expert at making  one good 3 speed hub from half a dozen wrecked ones .   We built a push bike and sidecar and a tandem later shortened to a very very fast long wheelbase bike,     With gearing I ran a two sprockets and a deraillieur plus a 3 speed hub gear, 98% of the pedalling effort was absorbed by the gears but top was super high.

For modern image attach several cycle frames to a lamp post.  They nick the wheels and leave the frames.

[whart57]

10 hours ago, DCB said:

Netherlands is a bit different to most of the UK  as its flat, You don't really need gears, so a back pedal brake makes sense,  You wouldn't last long in Yorkshire wi back peddle brakes, not down 1 in 3 to Grosmont any road.

 

 

Having cycled in both the Netherlands and the UK I get a little irritated by that "Netherlands is different" excuse. It is, but the difference, and reason why I'd still consider using a cycle in NL, is infrastucture. The Netherlands is much more cyclist-friendly, and that has been because of political choices. Your 1 in 3s to Grosmont are a rarity in Britain, our hills are much less steep than that. The Netherlands also have steep inclines, nearly everywhere in the west there are height differences between roads running along the tops of dykes and those running in the base of a polder, and the transition between the two is as steep as any normal hill in Britain. And then there are the long drags into headwinds. The Dutch adopted bicycle gearing just as fast as the British, price being the main driver there as here.

 

Back pedal brakes have one advantage over the wheel rim brakes favoured in Britain, namely that they work just as efficiently in the wet as they do in dry conditions.

 

In the Netherlands they have a different voting system, one that favours centrist coalitions rather than swinging from right to left and back again, and they have a reinforcing virtuous circle that encourages cycling. Mums - and sometimes dads - take the kids to nursery on the bike. When the child has learned to ride a bike themselves they ride to school along safe cycle paths escorted by parents and then on their own, safety coming from the herd effect of dozens of kids following the same route at the same time. When those kids learn to drive in late teens - or get mopeds - they don't stop being cyclists, and when they become parents themselves the cycle starts again. Because nearly every Dutch motorist also keeps a bike for weekends and short journeys, they don't have the vicious politics dividing car drivers and cyclists so putting in a cycle lane on a new road is seen as a perfectly normal thing to do. We should be like that here too, but to make that happen we should have started sixty years ago when car use started growing.

[cctransuk]

50 minutes ago, whart57 said:

 

Having cycled in both the Netherlands and the UK I get a little irritated by that "Netherlands is different" excuse. It is, but the difference, and reason why I'd still consider using a cycle in NL, is infrastucture. The Netherlands is much more cyclist-friendly, and that has been because of political choices. Your 1 in 3s to Grosmont are a rarity in Britain, our hills are much less steep than that. The Netherlands also have steep inclines, nearly everywhere in the west there are height differences between roads running along the tops of dykes and those running in the base of a polder, and the transition between the two is as steep as any normal hill in Britain. And then there are the long drags into headwinds. The Dutch adopted bicycle gearing just as fast as the British, price being the main driver there as here.

 

Back pedal brakes have one advantage over the wheel rim brakes favoured in Britain, namely that they work just as efficiently in the wet as they do in dry conditions.

 

In the Netherlands they have a different voting system, one that favours centrist coalitions rather than swinging from right to left and back again, and they have a reinforcing virtuous circle that encourages cycling. Mums - and sometimes dads - take the kids to nursery on the bike. When the child has learned to ride a bike themselves they ride to school along safe cycle paths escorted by parents and then on their own, safety coming from the herd effect of dozens of kids following the same route at the same time. When those kids learn to drive in late teens - or get mopeds - they don't stop being cyclists, and when they become parents themselves the cycle starts again. Because nearly every Dutch motorist also keeps a bike for weekends and short journeys, they don't have the vicious politics dividing car drivers and cyclists so putting in a cycle lane on a new road is seen as a perfectly normal thing to do. We should be like that here too, but to make that happen we should have started sixty years ago when car use started growing.

 

As a former local government highway engineer / cycling officer, in the cycling metropolis of Cambridge, I have heard the mantra 'They do it so much better in the Netherlands' ad infinitum.

 

Go to the Netherlands, look at the urban scenery; does it look like the UK? No! What is the glaringly obvious difference - space!!!

 

Urban road environments in the UK are still largely dictated by mediaeval urban structures.

 

I lost count of the times that the pro-cycling lobby demanded wide, safe, segregated cycle tracks in Cambridge.

 

My response - OK, which historic, listed buildings shall we demolish first? On which arterial road shall we demolish all of the expensive residential properties on one side, in order to create sufficient space.

 

The Netherlands never had such compact, dense cities as we have in the UK, and they suffered the effects of two world wars, which created a lot of space in which to design a 20th century transportation system.

 

So, instead of doing what the cycling lobby is very good at - telling the professionals that they do it better in the Netherlands - sit down and design an ideal system for your conurbation.

 

..... and don't forget that there are the powerful private car and commercial transport lobbies, who will be equally demanding in their requirements!

 

John Isherwood.

[whart57]

2 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

As a former local government highway engineer / cycling officer, in the cycling metropolis of Cambridge, I have heard the mantra 'They do it so much better in the Netherlands' ad infinitum.

 

Go to the Netherlands, look at the urban scenery; does it look like the UK? No! What is the glaringly obvious difference - space!!!

 

Urban road environments in the UK are still largely dictated by mediaeval urban structures.

 

I lost count of the times that the pro-cycling lobby demanded wide, safe, segregated cycle tracks in Cambridge.

 

My response - OK, which historic, listed buildings shall we demolish first? On which arterial road shall we demolish all of the expensive residential properties on one side, in order to create sufficient space.

 

The Netherlands never had such compact, dense cities as we have in the UK, and they suffered the effects of two world wars, which created a lot of space in which to design a 20th century transportation system.

 

So, instead of doing what the cycling lobby is very good at - telling the professionals that they do it better in the Netherlands - sit down and design an ideal system for your conurbation.

 

..... and don't forget that there are the powerful private car and commercial transport lobbies, who will be equally demanding in their requirements!

 

John Isherwood.

 

Have you ever been to Amsterdam? Or Utrecht, or any number of Dutch cities? They had more cities in medieval times than England did. The centre of Amsterdam is full of narrow winding streets - many with a canal down the middle - alley-ways and a few, congested, main roads. To make that cycle friendly required making decisions unpopular with motorists. Reducing car parking space for example, closing roads off to through motor traffic. That approach has been taken for the inner suburbs too, the streets that were laid out before WW2. Only in the estates laid out in the 1960s and later do you have wide thoroughfares. But on these estates the cyclist is still the priority.

 

I don't know Cambridge but where I am we could have a network of cycle tracks that link the town centre and our high schools to the main residential areas without demolishing anything. However it would mean doing things car drivers wouldn't like. So that comes back to my point of political choices. Our high schools have large car parks and drives laid out for parental drop off and pick up, the sixth form college even has a car park for students. As I said, claiming the Dutch have a country laid out for cycling and we don't is an excuse. It's an excuse to hide the fact that the Dutch chose to have a country like that and we chose to choke our towns and cities with short distance car journeys. And more historic buildings have been demolished to make space for cars and trucks than have ever been knocked down for bikes.

[Michael Hodgson]

36 minutes ago, whart57 said:

 

I don't know Cambridge but where I am we could have a network of cycle tracks that link the town centre and our high schools to the main residential areas without demolishing anything. However it would mean doing things car drivers wouldn't like.

 

Many European cities have wide boulevards where simply crossing the street is a moderately long journey as their roads are so wide.  Cambridge is perhaps a more extreme example of our typical compact British town layouts, with winding streets that are far too narrow to accommodate separate lanes for pedesatrians, cycles, cars and buses.  The council has ruled out the introduction of bendy buses - on the grounds that they too long to fit into a bus stop.  It's a nightmare of a town to try driving in.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On 26/11/2023 at 16:22, whart57 said:

Never seen them in England though, which made the bikes my mum and dad brought over with them in 1955 somewhat unique.

Hardly, my Ma and Pa brought a pair of Dutch design fiets to the UK in the same decade as did a  neighbouring couple who had transitted as refugees through The Netherlands post WWII. My late parents' machines are now in Norfolk, much more practical there than their retirement location in West Yorkshire!

[Nearholmer]

26 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

It's a nightmare of a town to try driving in.

I think it’s meant to be, to encourage use of the alternatives, but it sure is a place, like most others, where it would be effectively impossible to meet all the conflicting wants, wishes and whims (bus, car, van, bike, walk) simultaneously. 
 

Given the constraints of reality in the vast majority of places, choices have to be made, and most of the UK is only just now beginning to think about making choices other than “car”, which has been the default choice, the unspoken choice, since about 1960, possibly even earlier.

 

As a footnote: For the ‘non native’ Cambridge is actually a flipping terrifying place to cycle in too. I’m used to two modes when cycling “road, so behave like a very weedy motor vehicle” and “some form of fully segregated cycle path”, so behave like a bike, but be very careful to watch out for people and dogs. Cambridge is weird, because cyclists rule many of the streets, and they act differently from the way they do in other towns, and the signage is very, very unclear in many places about which mode has priority.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

5 hours ago, whart57 said:

We should be like that here too, but to make that happen we should have started sixty years ago when car use started growing.

We did better than that! Construction of Stevenage new town commenced 72 years ago with a properly segregated cycle path installation.

https://www.stevenage.gov.uk/documents/cycling/stevenage-cycle-map.pdf

 

According to an urban layout architect known to my parents named Harri Snoeks, this wondrous concept was  the basis on which The Netherlands systematically applied the fietspad system so apparent there and elsewhere.

 

Unfortunately subsequently pretty much abandoned in the UK.

[Vecchio]

On 26/11/2023 at 20:54, Vistisen said:

The same thing is true in Denmark.  The lack of brakingpower is quite frightening. They only make sense in countries where they are separate cyclelanes. Since bikes with only this type of brake have the same stopping distance as a supertanker. Even more worrying when you consider they can be used for transporting quite heavy loads:

Sorry, but I do not agree. My sister had a bike with this kind of brake, and I could easily block the rear wheel from turning with a bit more weight on the brake. Doesn't help with the tire life... No fear, I was always very thin as a boy - not really the case nowadays...

[cctransuk]

29 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

Many European cities have wide boulevards where simply crossing the street is a moderately long journey as their roads are so wide.  Cambridge is perhaps a more extreme example of our typical compact British town layouts, with winding streets that are far too narrow to accommodate separate lanes for pedesatrians, cycles, cars and buses.  The council has ruled out the introduction of bendy buses - on the grounds that they too long to fit into a bus stop.  It's a nightmare of a town to try driving in.

 

Quite - the only way that I was able to design for Cambridge - what became the first city-wide signposted cycle network in the UK - was to use routes which paralleled and crossed the principal traffic arteries. That was because said arteries are not wide enough for even single lane each way motor traffic, plus a pair of cycle tracks, plus a pair of footways.

 

(Not quite true - we could have cut down every one of the avenues of mature trees that line said arteries)!

 

Unfortunately, the cycle lobby dismissed the signed network, on the basis that cyclists were being relegated to the side streets!

 

Why not improve public transport, you ask? That has been done - the closed St.Ives to Cambridge railway line has been (controversially) converted to a dedicated busway - which can only penetrate to the outskirts of the city.

 

Cambridge railway station is a good twenty minutes walk from the city centre. Why, because in Victorian times the University objected to the potential for railways to convey ladies of easy virtue from London to corrupt their students! True!

 

You see, urban transport network design is far from being easy, but those who have never tried it are quick to cry 'Excuses, excuses' if their pet mode of transport does not have absolute priority.

 

I am not going to enter into an endless defence of the results of transport planning decisions. However, I have forty years professional experience of the subject; and I know what I am talking about - which is more than can be said for most of the loudest voices that praise the transport networks of the Netherlands to the detriment of the UK.

 

John Isherwood.

[cctransuk]

16 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

We did better than that! Construction of Stevenage new town commenced 72 years ago with a properly segregated cycle path installation.

https://www.stevenage.gov.uk/documents/cycling/stevenage-cycle-map.pdf

 

According to an urban layout architect known to my parents named Harri Snoeks, this wondrous concept was  the basis on which The Netherlands systematically applied the fietspad system so apparent there and elsewhere.

 

Unfortunately subsequently pretty much abandoned in the UK.

 

When you start with a blank sheet of paper, anything is possible!

 

How many times that's happened in the UK can be counted on the fingers of two hands.

 

John Isherwood.

[whart57]

45 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

Many European cities have wide boulevards where simply crossing the street is a moderately long journey as their roads are so wide.  Cambridge is perhaps a more extreme example of our typical compact British town layouts, with winding streets that are far too narrow to accommodate separate lanes for pedesatrians, cycles, cars and buses.  The council has ruled out the introduction of bendy buses - on the grounds that they too long to fit into a bus stop.  It's a nightmare of a town to try driving in.

 

Those boulevards are rarely in the centre though, the centres of most European cities are as twisty and windy as any British town or city. I come back to my point about political choices - when cities expanded in the 1920s and 30s most European cities decided to lay in those boulevards and separated motor and human powered traffic from the start.

2 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

You see, urban transport network design is far from being easy, but those who have never tried it are quick to cry 'Excuses, excuses' if their pet mode of transport does not have absolute priority.

 

I never said it was easy, but I would reiterate again that it is an excuse to hide behind an excuse like the Dutch don't have hills - you don't in Cambridgeshire either - or that European cities have plenty of space. I'm not surprised you found it very difficult to design a cycle network for Cambridge but trying to retrofit one on top of sixty years of car-centric planning will be difficult. I say again, it's the choices we made fifty or sixty years ago that are now coming to bite us.

[cctransuk]

22 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Cambridge is weird, because cyclists rule many of the streets, and they act differently from the way they do in other towns, and the signage is very, very unclear in many places about which mode has priority.

 

The lack of indication of prioriry is deliberate.

 

Many years ago, one of the diagonal paths across Parker's Piece in central Cambridge had a white line painted down the middle; one side clearly labelled for cyclists, the other for pedestrians. The line lasted around six months!

 

Cambridge cyclists are aggressive at the best of times - give them 'their own' half of the path, and woe betide any pedestrian who encroached by the odd inch!

 

There were a number of really nasty injuries, and the abuse that was hurled at hapless pedestrian 'trespassers' was insupportable.

 

Suffice to say that the line, markings and signs had to be removed in favour of 'shared use'.

 

It's called, in the trade, 'designed-in uncertainty' - messy, but it works!

 

John Isherwood.

[cctransuk]

22 minutes ago, whart57 said:

 

Those boulevards are rarely in the centre though, the centres of most European cities are as twisty and windy as any British town or city. I come back to my point about political choices - when cities expanded in the 1920s and 30s most European cities decided to lay in those boulevards and separated motor and human powered traffic from the start.

 

I never said it was easy, but I would reiterate again that it is an excuse to hide behind an excuse like the Dutch don't have hills - you don't in Cambridgeshire either - or that European cities have plenty of space. I'm not surprised you found it very difficult to design a cycle network for Cambridge but trying to retrofit one on top of sixty years of car-centric planning will be difficult. I say again, it's the choices we made fifty or sixty years ago that are now coming to bite us.

 

If you want to see wide boulevards designed in the 1920s and 30s, you don't have to go to the Netherlands; try the outskirts of any UK city that expanded at that time.

 

Dual carriageways for motor traffic; wide central reserves for tramways; separate footways and, yes, cycleways were, and are once again, becoming commonplace. Sheffield, Leeds, Sunderland, Glasgow etc., etc. spring to mind.

 

This is what really gets my goat - anyone would think that the Dutch invented urban transport planning - WRONG.

 

Cycling in urban Britain is a far from ideal travel experience, but then the same can be said of all modes of transport.

 

Those who believe that this is entirely due to a perceived basic difference in politics between the UK and the Netherlands are living in cloud cuckoo-land - it is MUCH more complex than that.

 

John Isherwood.

Edited December 19, 2023 by cctransuk

[whart57]

I never made that claim, but explain how every medium sized Dutch town has a safe cycling network but hardly any British equivalent has. The climate is the same, few British towns are clinging to cliffsides, most have hills that can be tackled by a reasonably fit cyclist, the populations have similar needs for schools, shops, travel to work. Yet I last rode a bike here thirty years ago because I don't like sharing road space with impatient motorists cutting me up at the lights and not seeing me at junctions. The difference does come down to political choices made decades ago. Political systems are part of that but it is choices made.

[cctransuk]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

.. I would reiterate again that it is an excuse to hide behind an excuse like the Dutch don't have hills - you don't in Cambridgeshire either ...

 

Sorry, where did I suggest that Cambridge had hills?

 

I now reside in Bodmin, Cornwall; where we do have lots of hills. Funnily enough, cycling is virtually unknown, apart from in the holiday season when gaudy, sweating lycra-clad stoics are followed, for mile after mile, by crawling convoys of motor traffic quite unable to overtake in the narrow lanes.

 

This, despite the existence of the Camel Trail - a converted railway line stretching from Bodmin to Wenford Bridge and Padstow - dedicated purely to cyclists and pedestrians!

 

John Isherwood.

Edited December 19, 2023 by cctransuk

[cctransuk]

3 minutes ago, whart57 said:

I never made that claim, but explain how every medium sized Dutch town has a safe cycling network but hardly any British equivalent has. The climate is the same, few British towns are clinging to cliffsides, most have hills that can be tackled by a reasonably fit cyclist, the populations have similar needs for schools, shops, travel to work. Yet I last rode a bike here thirty years ago because I don't like sharing road space with impatient motorists cutting me up at the lights and not seeing me at junctions. The difference does come down to political choices made decades ago. Political systems are part of that but it is choices made.

 

I am not going to prolong this - let us just reflect upon who actually made a career of urban transport design and implementaion, and who didn't(?).

 

I can assure you that I embarked upon the task with all of the high-flown ambitions which the cycling lobby so loudly proclaim. Forty years of practical experience proved to me that there are no easy solutions, and it was NOT the legacy of poor decisions in past generations that was the problem.

 

The past was a very different place, with its own pressures and priorities. Who are we to criticise our forefathers from today's perspectives?

 

John Isherwood.

[whart57]

You are being far too defensive. I accept many of your points, particularly that you were working with what you inherited and that the road transport lobby is very influential. We might note for example that a few months ago a Westminster byelection turned on a dishonest representation of a transport policy which was spun to be a "war on motorists". But we created the political climate of the car is king, that was our collective choice. We can't go back to the 1930s though and design things differently, we need to work with what we have, and that's not easy. Let's be honest with ourselves though, it's not because the Netherlands is flat and we aren't.

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I think it’s meant to be, to encourage use of the alternatives, but it sure is a place, like most others, where it would be effectively impossible to meet all the conflicting wants, wishes and whims (bus, car, van, bike, walk) simultaneously. 
 

 

As a footnote: For the ‘non native’ Cambridge is actually a flipping terrifying place to cycle in too. I’m used to two modes when cycling “road, so behave like a very weedy motor vehicle” and “some form of fully segregated cycle path”, so behave like a bike, but be very careful to watch out for people and dogs. Cambridge is weird, because cyclists rule many of the streets, and they act differently from the way they do in other towns, and the signage is very, very unclear in many places about which mode has priority.

No it's not.  it's an accident of history.  The town got built that way long before motors were invented.

 

Most of the cyclists are of course non-native - the place is crawling with foreign students, many of whom don't seem to know which side of the road (or pavement) to ride on

[cctransuk]

18 minutes ago, whart57 said:

You are being far too defensive. I accept many of your points, particularly that you were working with what you inherited and that the road transport lobby is very influential. We might note for example that a few months ago a Westminster byelection turned on a dishonest representation of a transport policy which was spun to be a "war on motorists". But we created the political climate of the car is king, that was our collective choice. We can't go back to the 1930s though and design things differently, we need to work with what we have, and that's not easy. Let's be honest with ourselves though, it's not because the Netherlands is flat and we aren't.

 

I'm not defensive - I speak from a position of practical experience over many years.

 

The fact that that experience totally undermines your avowed convictions is an unfortunate fact - for you.

 

..... and, once again, where on earth has this mythical statement that the Netherlands is flat come from? Not me!

 

John Isherwood.

[whart57]

This is getting pointless because you are now telling me what I think. You could enhance this debate by sharing some of your real experiences as to why the Cambridge situation has evolved into what it is rather than try to bully us into silence with it. I'd be interested for example in understanding how councillors have to be swung behind a plan. The guided bus system is obviously a controversial one - or was at the time - so what did the decision-making look like from the inside? Our neighbours in Crawley also have such a system, put in with a lot of fuss and froth. Speaking of Crawley though, that too was a blank sheet of paper like Stevenage, but it is far from a cyclists' paradise. And not many hills to use as an excuse.

[Vecchio]

I have the feeling we are far away from parking bicycles... 

 

Let's get in a more Christmassy mood...

[cctransuk]

1 minute ago, whart57 said:

This is getting pointless because you are now telling me what I think. You could enhance this debate by sharing some of your real experiences as to why the Cambridge situation has evolved into what it is rather than try to bully us into silence with it. I'd be interested for example in understanding how councillors have to be swung behind a plan. The guided bus system is obviously a controversial one - or was at the time - so what did the decision-making look like from the inside? Our neighbours in Crawley also have such a system, put in with a lot of fuss and froth. Speaking of Crawley though, that too was a blank sheet of paper like Stevenage, but it is far from a cyclists' paradise. And not many hills to use as an excuse.

 

I'm sorry - I have neither the time nor the inclination to favour you with my career autobigraphy. I will, however, give a taste of the context of my firmly held views / experience.

 

I spent forty years dealing with the sector of society which believes that they know far better than those with professional training and practical experience. Very early in that career, I learned that facts mean very little to those with a political agenda.

 

Suffice to say that those same 'amateur experts', in collusion with would-be politicians of the liberal / left, sought to defeat facts and practical considerations by bringing a private prosecution against me (and others) - alleging riotous assembly, affray, criminal assault and criminal damage.

 

All of this, and the evidence of academic professionals / council candidates produced by the prosecution, was shown in open court to be lies and perjury.

 

(The foregoing can be verified in court records, and the archives of the 'Cambridge Evening News').

 

So, your conviction that our current planning problems are rooted in the dubious politics of former generations ring hollow for me - there was and are plenty of unprincipled and murky politics about in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

 

You will forgive me if I delve no further into a painful period of my past.

 

John Isherwood.

 

(Who regularly turned up on site to find his effigy hanging from a lampost).

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

I spent forty years dealing with the sector of society which believes that they know far better than those with professional training and practical experience. Very early in that career, I learned that facts mean very little to those with a political agenda.

 

Ideal preparation for RMWeb.