What annoyed you (in the news) today?

Charity trustees disqualified


www.gov.uk/government/news/regulator-disqualifies-charity-trustees-for-inadequate-financial-and-safeguarding-practices

So all transactions in cash !
properties purchased for community benefit were used as the homes of church leaders.
In January 2022, the Insolvency Service applied for a petition for a public interest winding up order against the charity. The petition included that the charity failed to cooperate with the Insolvency Service’s investigation; discrepancies in the information provided to the Insolvency Service and the Commission compared to that provided to its accountant; and that it operated without transparency and filed “suspicious and incorrect” accounts at Companies House and with the Commission. The High Court accepted the petition and a winding up order was issued on 15 June 2022.

I would like to know what has happened to the properties ...,

I don't know the real underlying reason for the differences in standing charges. However, I would surmise that one might expect the unit cost (cost per domestic premises) of infrastructure to distribute power in less densely populated areas is higher than densely populated. Sure you can perhaps have a higher percentage of overhead vs buried, but fundamentally densely populated large cities are simply the most economic for all sorts of "infrastructure" and other costs of living.

and they wonder why events avoid Wales.

Imposing this Limit has so far cost £33 million !

oh and a £4.5 billion impact on the economy over 30 years 

I thought the decision to cut the route short is a good decision.

However, I couldn’t understand why there is no temporary speed “variation” to allow support vehicles to drive above 20mph

Many countries hosting high speed races in urban area such as Monaco and Macao have no issue allowing high speed vehicles in the race course just for the day. 🤣

Well it seems they were planning it until it didn’t. Either not enough time or not enough resources.



Meanwhile, some are expected to be back at 30mph

news.sky.com/story/welsh-government-set-to-announce-changes-to-20mph-limits-13121282

What some U-turns.

So you've got a 20mph section of road.

All of the road users are doing 20mph at most, or exceeding the speed limit.

Why should there be a waiver for a group of road users who, if not for the fact that it's a race, would be travelling in a way that would be against various other road laws apart from simply a small number of them (the motorised support vehicles) breaking the limit?

Seven miles of road at 20mph takes 21 minutes.
Seven miles of road at 30mph takes 14 minutes.
Seven minutes in total, across four days of racing, assuming the cyclists are doing a constant 30mph (they surely can't be exceeding 30, else this would be a much wider issue, not just a localised 20mph one). 
If we assume that the "number of short sections" are seven one mile sections, then the support vehicles will have dropped back at most a minute (a little over 500m) in each section from where they would have been. Obvs, less for shorter sections.

But, of course, they won't be doing a constant 30. The winner's time last year was an average 25mph, so you're looking at the support cars losing about 30sec or 250m across each mile.

These are SUPPORT vehicles, not actual race participants. Is a gap that small really that critical?
30 riders finished within five minutes of the leader, . How many support cars are getting tangled up in amongst that pack of riders?

And, yes, I did see the vague para: "Richard Hopkins, the race organiser, said: "A Welsh government scheme designed to enable cycle races to manage race and public safety through 20mph zones has failed, leaving us with a major problem."

As with various other debates - elite sport should be way down the list of things to be prioritised when setting the wider public agenda. 

I have none*

I just don't think they should be using open public roads to race, and I don't think sport should decide what happens for the rest of the world.

Close the roads? Go at it.
But if a cyclist doing 25-30mph approaches a junction or roundabout, and other traffic's in the way, do you really think they're going to squander their lead or give up the chase or whatever... or are they going to stop and let that pedestrian cross or wait for a clear entry? No, nor me.

I've come across cycle races a few times, especially on the A1, and - no - their race does not trump the highway code.

* - I do have some experience, however, of liaising with the police to organise non-competitive vehicular events on the open public road - and the golden rule there is "Joe Public shall not be inconvenienced". If you don't want to follow that, you won't get permission to run the event.