The London Biker

Whilst I was growing the ‘tache to raise a little cash in Movember, I had a few comments along the lines of how creepy / un-trusty it made me look. And now I know why.

It turns out I was trying to grow the ‘Curly’ which is listed here as ‘questionable’ I urge everyone to consult this chart before attempting to grow any facial hair.

Click the image to enlarge.

Thanks to Matt McInerney who made the actual graphic and Culture Popped where I actually found it.

Yes, I’m talking chatroulette.com. What else could it be? The low-tech, random and slightly exciting way to see what people all around the world are up to via the now ubiquitous webcam. I’ll be very honest with you – I had a look because I’d seen many many posts saying how many people were up to naughty things…. that’s kind of exciting, especially when you consider the simplicity of the site – and the fact it’s dressed up as nothing more than a way to talk to people – and people – inevitably do a bit of everything when presented with that degree of freedom.

The internet, as well all know, is for porn (safe link btw). But chatroulette really isn’t, despite what you may find on a five minute browse of the site. The invitation to ‘start a new game’ lets you in on the sites success, the sites secret if you will. It is a game – and it’s any game you want to play. How long until I see three drunk men in a room laughing? How many willies do I need to see before I see a face? How many people frown before moving on instantly? It really is a lesson in the ‘I want it now’ nature of the net – an anonymous way to instantly decide if you want to connect, ignore, insult or ‘connect a little more’ with absolutely no consequences. Well, unless you get caught by this dude.

So today, my score is: 19 willies, 7 conversations with an actual person, 12 groups of teenagers (boys & girls) and a sign asking ‘if you want to see me cum just smile’. I frowned. I like chatroulette, long may it continue without interference, without silly things like ‘design’ and most importantly as a little window into what we’ll all do if left to our own devices on a broadly anonymous web connection.

Following on from my last post here I wrote a piece for the blog ConservativeHome. Much along the lines of what I’ve already said but concentrating a little more on how a Welsh Valleys boy can consider voting Tory.

I used to think your politics was something you inherited, like ginger hair or knobbly knees or a love of Marmite. Growing up I thought your political persuasion was a bit like a religious belief, that you could slice someone open and see the word Labour or Conservative or Liberal written on their inside.

Read the full article on Platform at Conservative Home.

When I was in University (studying nursing – a course I never completed btw), I got heavily into politics. In fact I was the chairman of the Hendrefoilan Student Village association (HEROES), as well as the representative for nursing students in Swansea with the RCN. Before that I was a shop steward for the engineering apprentices for the AEEU whilst I was at GE (another course I didn’t complete). I saw politics as a way to change things that were broken – or more arrogantly – as a way to make people who had more power than me to sit up and listen to what I had to say.

In both roles I worked hard to ‘make a difference’ – but frankly it was small-fry and those small victories I won (getting Swansea University to accept monthly payments for accommodation  or nursing students on a monthly bursary for example) were limited in their scope and ambition – and one thing I’ve never been short of is ambition.

A city and council election was on the way and the Labour incumbent was up for re-election – in a district split almost 50/50 between local residents and students Labour had always done well out of the student vote, and our councillor was a good man. However, he had rather forgotten who he was there to represent, and time and time again we saw him pander to the residents (who tended to vote Lib-Dem) to the detriment of the students – a good solid plan to broaden his support whilst holding on to his supposed safe votes from the students.

I was a staunch supporter of New Labour, and still held Tony Blair up as an outstanding statesman, optimism was still the message of the day.  However, a good friend of mine who worked at the student union – Stewart Rice – had decided that the local Labour councillor didn’t have the needs of the student population top of his priority list, and that he should run as an independent (Stewart is now a Lib-Dem Councillor for Uplands, Swansea) to both remind him of that fact – but to also get an elected official in-post who really knew about students and what our needs were. I swung my support behind him, I campaigned for him – both in my official capacity at HEROES and by knocking on doors and getting people out to ‘vote for Stewart’. Of course what we’d managed to do was split the Labour vote down the middle and hand the election to the Lib-Dems – my first practical lesson in politics – always look at the bigger picture.

The count that night was a nasty affair – as it became obvious what we’d done the Labour camp grew increasingly upset with us – and several of my ex-friends in the Labour movement cast nastier and nastier looks in my direction. It eventually boiled over and in a horrible shouting match in the middle of the count it was explained to me in rather colourful language and at high volume how much of an idiot I had been.

I left the count at some dreadful hour of the morning, exhausted after the campaign as well as my 12 hour nursing shifts and holding down a carers job at the local nursing home. I collapsed back at my student dorm and was taken into hospital with sever exhaustion which brought about some other complications that had me on my back for nearly three weeks. I vowed in that hospital bed that I would never go near politics again.

But the time has come for me to put that aside. The reason I was so passionate about politics really stems from the fact I grew up in the South Wales Valleys – Brynmawr to be exact and the famous Blaenau Gwent constituency – Labours safest seat until they forced an all woman list on the voters and the voters told them where to go (twice). I grew up under the Conservative government of the 1980′s, I saw first hand what the massive loss of work and industry had done to South Wales – I grew up in a family where the word Conservative was as dirty a swear word as you could utter.

Things change though. Over the last term of the Labour government I’ve become convinced that they don’t have a clue. I’m convinced that they’ve lost all understanding of what life is like in Britain today, and I’m convinced that they’ve not got the foggiest idea on how to start to move us forward, to once again capture the imagination of the whole country – as Tony Blair did in 1997 – and get us to the point where we can build a Britain based on a modern idea of what we are capable of on the world stage, rather than out-dated ideas of what we might have been as an ex-empire.

I do think I know who can help us achieve that goal, or at the very least start moving us in the right direction – and as odd as this sounds from a Valleys boy – that party is the Conservative Party. Today, Gordon Brown finally got around to making the election official, and today I’m going to stop not talking about politics, today I’m going to re-engage and start to campaign – I’m going to do my bit to try and get us going again.

This is fair warning I’m pegging my colours to the mast and I’m going to do everything I can to convince you over the next few weeks to put that cross in the right box – at the very least I’m going to try to convince you to at least get out there and vote – this time it matters – this time we can make a difference.

I really enjoy the 1st April – and this year is no exception. There are the usual suspects that try to pass off spurious stories as news (for one of the original and still the best watch the video at the end of this post), then the rather stranger personal statements on peoples blogs – so this year I’m going to round-up my top 10 favourite April Fool posts.

1. Waterloo & City tube lines to be pedestrianised – walkit.com
2. Passenger strike at Heathrow – lonelyplanet.com
3. Labour’s election strategy: bring on no-nonesene hard man Gordon Brown – The Guardian
4. Apple admits iPad is a massive joke – cnet.co.uk
5. Google translate for animals – Google
6. Zombie Outbreak?! – Ushahidi.com
7. iPhone to Tablet Converter – I want one of those
8. Google to go nuclear – techcrunch.com
9. So I got married – everything everywhere
10. Pooh sticks to be played at London 2012 Olympics – UK Travel Blog

Watch the video on YouTube

I sometimes take a moment to post here about crazy, funny or just outright stupid adverts and PR stunts I see. This time, I’m posting one of the best I have ever come across. Let this video download in full before you press play, make sure you have your sound on and then watch it full screen.

Wonderfully crafted, expertly executed.

(watch on YouTube)

Last week I posted a short note on the cost of travelling into London from Buckinghamshire via public transport vs the motorbike. The difference was startling, I was expecting public transport to be more expensive, but was hoping to be able to dismiss the difference easily, and argue that the time spent on the train reading the paper, listening the the archers podcast (obviously not working – that’s not possible in standard class) and having a little nap. But at nearly £50 difference per week I simply can’t.

As expected a few people messaged me on the blog, and via facebook to point out where I could make the public transport options cheaper, I’ve also spent some time this week finalising the costs of the motorbike. The main points made were that the working year is not 52 weeks, that a monthly pass would be cheaper, that combining my train and zones 1-2 travel card would be more economic and that I should include the depreciating value of the motorbike in my calculations. Fair enough, let’s recalculate with those suggestions. All worked out per week for comparison.

Public Transport

• Weekly train ticket with zones 1-2 travel card* – £90.24
• Bus daily return to station** – £15

Total = £105.24

Motorbike

• Weekly petrol*** – £51.74
• Weekly Insurance**** – £5.53
• Weekly Tax – £0.92
• Weekly Servicing***** – £7.69
• Depreciation****** – £9.61

Total = £75.49

That’s still £29.75 per week difference, or £1547 per year. It’s a much smaller difference, and if I were to calculate the motorbike figures JUST for using it for work (dividing yearly costs by 45 rather than 52) it’s only a difference of £3.69 per week (£79.18 per week).

So taking all of that on board, is sitting on the train reading / having a nap worth £29/25 per week? Not really, especially when you consider that I have the motorbike for use all of the time, and yes I’d need to pay petrol for those outings and yes servicing costs may increase, but that’s the same if I use the train to anywhere other than London.

My headline may be misleading, perhaps being green isn’t for the rich when it comes to transport – but until there’s a solid cost benefit to using public transport over my personal transport; I, and I suspect a large portion of the population will continue to head into the city using their own options. At least I’m not doing it in a cage! Next post… carbon footprint comparason on the journey.

As ever, your thoughts, comments  and correction of my maths most welcome.

* Monthly season ticket multiplied by 12 and divided by 45 (my working weeks per year) to get weekly figure.
** Includes 1 mile walk to and from the bus @ £3 return per day per week.
*** 462 miles per week to and from work, 10 miles per litre of petrol = 46.2 litres per week @ £1.12 – (((46.2 * 2)*5) / 10)* 1.12
**** Insurance = £287.69 per year / 52 (I get to use the bike all of the time so not a fair comparison to divide by 45)
***** 2 Major Services @ £200 each / 52
****** £3000 depreciated to £500 over 5 years = £2500/5 = £500 per year / 52 = £9.61 per week

I’ve given public transport a real go, and it’s all perfectly acceptable. I sit on a clean train that takes just over 35 minutes to get me from darkest Buckinghamshire to deepest London – well Marylebone – and another 30 minutes on the bus over to Old Street.

I take a taxi home in the evening  - that’s £7 a day, or rather, the same amount it would cost me to get the bus (after a 1 mile walk to/from the stop) there and back… yes I know… evil…. cars.

But here’s the thing, I can’t make the numbers work. I like to think I’m doing my bit for the environment but how can I afford it? It’s a privilege for the rich. Work with me on these numbers.

Public Transport Costs

• Weekly Train Pass: £73
• Weekly cab/buss ticket: £35
• Weekly Oyster Ticket: £20

Total: £128

Motorcycle Costs

• Weekly petrol: (50 litres per week @ 10 miles / litre) £57
• Weekly insurance: (based on 12 months / 52 – fully comp most expensive quote) £9.61
• Weekly tax: £0.92
• Weekly servicing: (2 major services per year @ £300 each / 52) £11.53

Total: £79.06

I can bring down the public transport train pass price by about £7 per week if I buy a monthly pass – but then I don’t save if I don’t go in (unlike the bike) so I’m trying to compare like for like – and £7 per week just doesn’t cut it with these figures.

So that’s it folks. Public Transport it just too expensive for me to be able to afford it. I’m going to have to jump on the bike – and these figures are hardly cheap – two full major services, top notch most expensive insurance and worst case millage figures at an estimated 10 miles more per day than google maps suggests. I suspect in real life it’ll be even less.

I don’t mind the cold and the wet – I’ve commuted into London for years on the bike – I’m just disappointed that our public transport system is so expensive as to be out-of-reach. I’m sure the solution to this is to continue to stack tax on petrol until it’s so expensive as to make public transport seem cheap.

As most of you know I’ve been living in Melbourne out here in Oz for about 14 months now. It’s been a blast – working for a pretty funky company that’s allowed me to explore new ideas and ‘do cool stuff’ as well as discovering a pretty funky country.

Squash with Ken... even though he won the trophy he's still a pretty nice bloke.

Australia has been good to me – it’s helped me lose a not-insignificant amount of weight (4 Stone/26 Kg), it’s helped me discover an active lifestyle I didn’t really understand I had or could even make happen. It’s provided me with friends that I’m going to be exceptionally upset to leave behind…. it’s a culture and a life-style I’m reticent to say good-bye too. Working out of Australia has been a real experience – I’ve never really heard the phrase “drink a can of harden-the-fuck-up’ and get on with it” before – but I have to say I agree with the general principle… Melbourne is the arse-end of beyond as far as the rest of the world goes, but that doesn’t seem to matter when you’re here – only when you’re on a plane trying to get here.

I'm going to miss the ride-outs with Nigel - actually I'm just going to miss Nigel.

I land back in the UK on Thursday (17th) morning – I’ll be in the office from Friday (18th) and back to my old tricks – still working for Lonely Planet – just doing it from a slightly more ‘connected’ city… which should make my life a little easier.

I shan’t miss a few things from Oz – the price of books for example, or the sad lack of any technology launched in the rest of the world in the last 12 months, or the customer service (seriously… I didn’t think it could get worse than London). But they’re trifling things and I don’t want to sound like I’m moaning. I am looking forward to being in London again – how well it’s connected to the rest of the world, the feeling that you can actually change the world and the ability to grab absolutely anything you need – ever – by jumping on the bike and finding the right part of town… then haggling for it! I’m also rather looking forward to being so near France and the rest of the continent again… I didn’t think I’d miss the ‘idea’ of being able to dash over the channel…  but there you go.

Here it is then – the final post from Oz, the final goodbye in the office and the final farewell to dear friends… but as the New Zealanders say… “you don’t lose a friend, you simply gain a place to stay in London.”