RIP Peter Yates
The director has died aged 82.
I admit, I didn’t know who he was until I read the Jalopnik post. He directed Bullit, which gave us one of the best known car chases on film.
The director has died aged 82.
I admit, I didn’t know who he was until I read the Jalopnik post. He directed Bullit, which gave us one of the best known car chases on film.
The Mechanic
Far better than the Burton Arms, which was so bad I didn’t take picture.
Just a bit full.
Third pub.
All dark wood. Okay beer.
It’s grown since I last walked past it.
We can't let that happen. We need to stop these plans. National treasures like the The Forest of Dean, Sherwood Forest and The New Forest could be sold off. Once they are gone, they will be lost forever.
A huge petition will force the government to rethink its plans. If we can prove how strongly the public are against this, they will have to back down. Please sign the petition now.
Turned around and took him by the hair. Throwing him about, laughing out, sat down for a drink in her father’s favourite chair.
Kill.
Your.
Television.
Yesterday afternoon I set off to ride into town. On Burton Road I sat in the filter lane, waiting to turn right onto Yew Tree Lane. There was a car coming the other way and I reckoned the gap wasn’t wide enough to make it across in time. The driver pulling out of Yew Tree, on the other hand, thought they had loads of time to turn right. Without bothering to look at what was in front of them.
The car hit the pannier rack on the back of the bike, damaging the rack and mudguard enough that they needed replacing. I managed to keep from falling over, though something did whack my inner right thigh hard enough to give me a big oblong bruise. As it becomes more distinct I may be able to work out what I bashed against.
I slapped the side of the car and rather loudly berated the driver then pulled my bike out from in front of it so we could clear the junction and they could apologise and arrange to pay for any damage. Except they didn’t stop. Though it appeared they were going to pull in at first, they decided not to and just turned down the next junction and drove off. Luckily the driver behind them had taken their licence plate, so I’ve reported them to the Police. Hopefully they’ll get a fine and points for dangerous driving and/or leaving the scene of an accident, but I’m not optimistic.
Having written about my incident I would like to point out that it’s only the second time in 21 years of cycling around Manchester (and one or two other cities) that I’ve been hit by a car. I did once ride into the back of a car because I let myself get distracted by the driver who should have been behind me but was actually beside me and trying to be on top of me, but that’s something else. I’ve fallen off a few times as well, often for comedy reasons. (Ride over an empty drinks can and the ends curve in and lock around your front wheel. This can then rotates with the wheel until it hooks under your mudguard, locking the wheel and throwing you over the handlebars.) But, really, my riding career has been safe and enjoyable overall.
I’ve spent thousands of hours, and covered thousands of miles, on my bikes. I’ve saved thousands of pounds in bus fare and visited parts of the city that I wouldn’t have got to otherwise. I’ve commuted and ridden for pleasure, transported stuff and gone shopping. And, until last year when I went soft and became rain averse, bikes have provided exercise which has kept me slimmer than anyone who eats and drinks as well as I do deserves to be.
Bikes are brilliant. If only we could get those idiot drivers off our roads.
There's a reason the movie starts there, and not earlier. It's because the early part, where we go from one zombie to millions, doesn't make any sense. If you let the creeping buzzkill of logic into the zombie party, you realize the zombies would all be re-dead long before you even got a chance to fire up that chainsaw motorcycle you've been working on. Why?
I didn’t know he was a member of Stealers Wheel, so I’m going to forgo the obligatory Baker Street embed in favour of this-
City to City, the album with Baker Street on it, used to be a favourite of mine, but I haven’t owned a copy in years.
"That date has not one stitch of biblical authority," Camping says from the Oakland office where he runs Family Radio, an evangelical station that reaches listeners around the world. "It's like a fairy tale."
The real date for the end of times, he says, is in 2011.
But for many women and their partners, the quest to find the so-called G-spot has ended in frustration.
Now new research suggests this elusive, erogenous zone supposed to be located on the front vaginal wall, may not exist.
Not really- or at least, not formally- but they have, in the shape of Decentralisation Minister Greg Clark, echoed motorists self-pitying rhetoric as justification for yet more regressive policies. Two parking related policies- one encouraging more sensible use of space in new builds the other attempting to encourage more people onto public transport- have been “relaxed”. So we’ll get more suburban sprawl and more urban jams and the people who’ll suffer because of this aren’t the drivers or the politicians hoping to win their votes.
There is no war on motorists. There have been policies which have attempted to reduce congestion, and many of us would like drivers to take more responsibility for the damage they, collectively and individually, cause, but that’s not a war. If it were a war it would be fair to say that the motorists are winning. They kill thousands of people every year and injure scores more- and quite often get away with it, receiving minor or no punishment. They have newspapers and politicians on their side and a prejudice amongst the public which somehow paints the far less dangerous cyclist as the great evil of the highways.
If the Government really wants to make life easier for “decent, ordinary motorists” then some tough love would be a better prescription than the constant coddling they do at the moment. More actively punish dangerous drivers- such as the idiots who talk on their mobile whilst driving. Enforce parking restrictions more rigorously, particularly around schools at the start and end of the day. Close some roads and reduce the speed limit on others. Make short, inefficient, road clogging car journeys a thing of the past. (I don’t know how to go about that last one, but millions of journeys every year are walking distance and millions more are cycling distance. The pointlessness of these journeys- and the health and wealth benefits of doing them by foot or pedal- needs to be made clearer to drivers.)
We’re not at war with drivers, no matter how much they behave like the enemy. But we should be at war with the sort of selfishness and blindness which gives rise to dumb phrases such as “the war on motorists”.
For as little as £999 you can buy the pimped taxi which formerly belonged to Mr. Mark Berry, AKA Bez. It looks terrible, and only some of the elements are left over from the version that existed at the end of the Pimp My Ride episode that it was on. (You can watch the episode here. I’ve only managed little bits of it, I have a very low tolerance for Westwood.)
Kits are made to allow Honda 2Ltr Vtec, Volvo T4 turbo engines or even Suzuki Hayabusa and Yamaha R1 motorcycle engines to be fitted.