Onwards and Upwards

Yet again, thanks for the support and goodwill. In particular Lazy Bicycle Blog, Manchester Cycling, Biking Brits, i b i k e l o n d o n and everyone else in the blogosphere, twitterverse and email..er…globe. A special thank you must go to Anthony Cartmell for setting up the website and continual assistance. Unfortunately for him, he only lives 2 miles away from me.

Embassy news is as follows:

LTP3 page has been opened up and links are being uploaded. This is for you to comment on Local Transport Plans and look at other areas as you please. We shall be creating a page for Cycling Strategy Documents to be uploaded so we may see what has gone before across the land in terms of broken promises in overly verbose documents with added greenwash.

In our Manchester Consulate, Chris Page at Manchester Cycling has set up a facebook page for the Embassy. Wonderful stuff. There is also a twitter account (@GBCycleEmbassy)

I wrote last week to the Cycling Embassy of Denmark and they’ve written a lovely message back expressing support plus advice on what they do & how they do it. I shall post this on the Embassy forum, as I will all my correspondence. It is quite clear that our aims and ambitions are going to be very different from the Danish Embassy and indeed the Cycling Embassy for the The Netherlands (launching next year) – whereas they have a cycling culture, political will and standards of cycling infrastructure, we have car culture, political greenwash with empty platitudes and crap cycling infrastructure.

Deepest apologies but I would like to make the final confirmed date for our inaugural meeting the 29th January. This is because too many people have written to me saying they can’t make it on the 8th (either because they live in far flung areas of our Empire or maybe their hangovers are still clearing). Same venue as before. This also gives me more time to stockpile Fererro Rocher for your welcome packs. Over the next few weeks I shall be encouraging discussion on organisation structure (many have come forward stating they wish to set up Consulates across the country), partnerships, policy, funding etc. This ensures that by the time we meet and greet, it’s a simple matter of finalising issues. I think it’s going to be quite straightforward as the aim is simply to get more people on bikes, to create proper infrastructure to facilitate this based on best practice across Europe and the World and make riding a bike as easy as riding a bike.

I will start contacting pertinent charities and groups over the weekend to form partnerships. If you have any ideas on who we should be contacting, or you are an interested party, please let me know.

Personal news:

I have an office Christmas party to attend in Brighton Friday afternoon where we shall be remembering the birth of Jesus Christ in the traditional British way of drinking enough alcohol to float a Raleigh Grifter. I shall refrain from Twitter et al as a mark of respect to good manners and taste.

I’m putting in my order for a Batavus Old Dutch Friday morning. I’m selling my KHS 3000 Mountain Bike (barely used) and Carerra Zero (fixed wheel) to make room and justify expenditure to The Wife. I’ve sampled riding Dutch bikes now and they make me feel like a child again – in particular the just getting on a bicycle with no need for special clothing or preparation and going about my day. That is proper freedom.

I leave you with a piece of film that reflects what we should be aspiring to (and don’t take any ‘times are hard’ rubbish. If a fraction of the budget for new road schemes and electric cars was spent on proper ‘Sustainable Transport’ it would be easily achievable) – people going about their business on bikes with not a helmet or high viz tabard amongst them. It’s sped up of course – the Dutch don’t have to cycle everywhere at breakneck speed like the British seem to.

Oh, and thanks to Freewheeler for inspiring my resolve 🙂