Boris Bike Refunds

An article I read this morning…

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Mr Johnson said: “It is unfortunate that such errors have occurred.” However, he added: “It is important to note that over five million journeys have been taken on scheme cycles, meaning refunds have been issued for some 0.3 per cent of all journeys.”

0.3% of refunds is not the same as the apparent volume of complaints as outlined eloquently on Boris Watch. Anecdotally, I have heard that there isn’t an occasion that goes by where you don’t encounter at least one problem with the cycle hire scheme. How long are teething problems supposed to last?

—

On a completely different topic that no one else will likely find interesting, I just had a lovely conversation with someone else called Carmen:

Her: “My name’s Carmen too!”

Me: “Really? Wow, I’ve never spoken to another Carmen before. How do you spell it?”

Her: “C-A-R-M-E-N, how do you spell yours?”

Me: “Same way. I don’t get how anyone spells it with a K, it’s clearly a C”

Her: “The one I hate is Car-MAN. What’s that all about?!”

Me: “Oh god yeah. What are people on? Anyways, lovely chatting to you Carmen!”

Her: “You too Carmen!”

It was like being in a science fiction film only better because it really happened.

That's me on the left, and the other Carmen behind me.

]]> http://carmenego.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/last-ever-blog-post/feed/ 1 carmenego Boris on a Boris bike Science Fiction Ideas and Dreams http://carmenego.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/sexy-kids/ http://carmenego.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/sexy-kids/#comments Tue, 21 Jun 2011 11:54:29 +0000 carmenego http://carmenego.wordpress.com/?p=622 ]]> http://www.mumsnet.com/campaigns/let-girls-be-girls

This blog post has taken me ages to write, so it’s kind of “old news” now. Sorry about that, I’ve been busy cycling and reading about cycling and talking about cycling and obsessing about cycling for some time and it’s pushed any other thoughts to the back of my head.

My main point is that I don’t believe kids are being sexualised any more than they were 20 years ago. I see pictures of semi clad “grown up” ladies in ridiculous heels on telly and billboards and in the gossip and lifestyle pages of newspapers, I’m not denying that. I see photos of Suri Cruise and Piper Palin in heels and I think “Yikes, that’s probably not healthy for growing children,” same as everyone else does. I also think “What stupid parents,” but then as someone who isn’t a parent, I fully accept that it’s their decision how to dress their dolls kids, not mine.

In an ice-cream-sale-in-hell kind of way, I agree with David Cameron that it’s a social responsibility not a state one. If parents are buying their children sexy clothes, then that’s their business, and mine to shudder at the apparent lack of taste. If adults see children in sexy clothes and think “PHWOAR” then it’s a problem with the adults, not the children. A kid in make up looks exactly that, a kid:

"Mummy, buy me that new iPhone now or I'll grow up to make tough decisions about your retirement."

I grew up seeing images like this:

Madonna whore complex?

And this:

Free pasties for everyone!

I knew all the words to Push It by Salt ‘n’ Pepa as a toddler, and it’s now a karaoke classic.

When you learn to talk and that some words get a bigger reaction than others, you use those words more often. Words like “Wanker,” “Div,” and “Bumface” will continue to delight me as long as I live.

So Mumsnet’s “Let Girls Be Girls” campaign seems a bit unnecessary to me. I haven’t seen any children wearing heels or mini skirts or even make up – except for rare special occasions like weddings, when everyone is expected to wear uncomfortable and often distasteful clothes, and I haven’t seen any shops selling them recently. Ok, so just because I haven’t been browsing the children’s sections of popular clothing outlets in the last 10 years, it doesn’t mean they’re not selling this filth flarn filth. But if that’s the case, it should be up to all the responsible parents to boycott those shops and let the other shops reorder the bestselling-non-sexy stock. Isn’t that what supply and demand is all about?

IIRC, Tammy Girl (my favourite place to get clothes as a kid) sold a thong for children as young as 5, which sparked Miranda Sawyer (I think) to make a documentary on it a few years back. I remember it because I’d been shopping with my mum a few days earlier when she jokingly asked me if I wanted a thong to go with my training bra (which I hated wearing) – you might be pleased to know that I flatly refused. Despite being the girliest girl I know now, I certainly wasn’t as a child. As it happens, I don’t enjoy wearing thongs as an adult either. It’s comfy pants or nothing in case you were wondering. Ooh err.

Children sometimes like doing things that make adults frown. Whether it’s refusing to eat anything except ice cream or saying naughty words or heaven forbid wearing something that would have been inappropriate when I were a young lass (my mum never let me wear anklets, saying they were “For women of the night”). Children have always been children, and pushing our own insecurities/concerns onto them on a matter as trivial (IMO) as whether we think they look too sexy, before they even have a notion of what “sexy” means, could do more damage to how they grow up than if we just let them be kids.

Or have I missed the point?

If the issue is about seeing semi naked women everywhere, then yeah. I’d like to see an equal number of sexy men on billboards and adverts and in national daily publications. If it’s about promoting unrealistic ideas about sex and sexuality, then on that we agree, but that doesn’t seem to be the focus of Let Girls Be Girls.*

*On a side note, what if those girls want to be boys?

That's me, that is, that's what I look like on a Boris Bike. Click on the pic to go to Amelia's Magazine, and support young artists in these times of woe!

“The Boris bikes were a bit heavy but otherwise very fun. It attracted a lot of stares and I could hear people chatting about them, so people definitely want to have a go. The biggest obstacle that I noticed yesterday was the fact that the bloody docking stations didn’t work at Hyde Park after about 5pm. Literally all of them had technical failures, but people were still queueing up to try their luck which was really encouraging.

As pessimistic as it sounds, I don’t think there could ever be one single thing that would make people go from thinking about cycling to getting up and actually doing it. For me, it was a combination of frustration at the amount I pay to use London Transport and the fact that I recently took a desk job without making provisions for my extremely sedentary lifestyle (with free lunches and Family Choice biscuit tins, plural, hello pot belly) and that all of the friends of mine who cycle are pretty hot! There have been no major changes in infrastructure in the last few years (other than the CS’s [Cycle Superhighways] which I’ve only heard bad things about) that would make me more or less likely to cycle, just a gradual desire to take control of my own travel arrangements.

People think with their wallets, not their heads. If you told me 3 years ago that I spent £2,316 a year on travel to work versus however much it costs to get on the road by bike, I’d probably have started cycling a lot earlier. You can get a decent 2nd hand bike for maybe £70, plus £50 for a decent lock, £30-50 for some lights, £30 for a helmet (if you choose), that’s £200 – less than 10% of what I spend on public transport, with minimal costs after that (spare tyres, pump etc?)

Screw the health benefits or that normal people can do it too, that’s £2,116 extra a year to spend on beer and those chocolate covered peanut things from M&S – £40 a week, imagine that. Even buying a 2nd hand car you’re looking at maybe £300 for a wreck, plus maybe £500 a year for insurance, £50 for the MOT, then at least £20 a week every week for petrol, slowly rising by pennies every damn day. After a year of driving you’ve spent nearly £2,000.

If you can make people understand they can get to work in the same amount of time as it takes by car or train and save 90% of the costs, then everything else will follow.”

See the twinkle in my eye.

Well well well, super thanks to Ms Dawn Foster for teaching me to ride a bike today! If I hadn’t made it clear in my last blog post, I was utterly petrified to get on a bicycle but with Dawn’s extremely patient guidance it was one of the best day’s out I’ve had in a long time.

We met up at Green Park to use the Barclay’s docking station on Deanery St next to Cafe Nero. My grandparents had bought me a bike when I was about 10, so I assumed that I would instinctively know what to do after negotiating the card machine to pay for a day’s ride. Unfortunately, my optimism quickly turned into near death embarrassment when I fell off the damn thing, narrowly missing a parked car. So we found a quiet mews of unoccupied holiday apartments of the tax exempt, and Dawn talked me through little tips and tricks to go a few metres without falling off. It was harder than she made it look, though once I realised that it was easier to use the brakes than to fall off, things got significantly easier.

After a coffee break and a cultural app exchange (my Android vs her iPhone, I think I won), we walked up to Hyde Park and got another pair of bikes. Being on the wide and friendly cycle path was great, and I actually managed to go a few metres several times. Go me!

I probably only managed to cycle less than a mile in total through a combination of personal ineptitude, psychologically crippling fear and software failures at the 3rd, 4th and 5th docking stations we tried to get bikes from but here are some key points from today:

1. It’s a fashion faux pas to wear a helmet on a Boris bike.
2. I have no strength in my sitbone. It’s a dull ache right now, not dissimilar to the time I fell on the horse in gymnastics at school, or the feeling I had a few years later, the day after I lost something.
3. My opinion of cars has shifted somewhat from being an expensive mode of transport to an offensive weapon.
4. Men are more attractive when they’re on a bicycle – this is a scientific fact. (NB: It probably isn’t a scientific fact, but it was certainly true today.)
5. Not letting the Boris bikes, and by extension Boris Johnson, defeat me was great motivation to keep going. Him and his chicken feed will never beat me.

Casey Neistat would have a field day here.

If only they had miniature bicycles for the animals, how much happier the world would be!

Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of attending my first ever Street Talks event (run by these clever cloggsies).  The talk was about streets and their design and relevance in the 21st Century. The bit that everyone was particularly interested in was the way in which different kinds of road users can share the road successfully. It was a great talk, and despite the dry-sounding theme, it was fascinating and I’m really looking forward to the next one, especially once I’m used to cycling and have a slightly different perspective on the way I use roads.

I’m about to buy a bicycle in a few days (maybe a couple of weeks) and am reading and learning as much about cycling in London as possible before I take to the helm of a Boris bike on Sunday with Dawn. Truth be told, I am bricking it. The last time I rode a bike I was about 10 years old and it was in circles around my grandparents back garden. I’ve never been behind the wheel of a car (though I have been hit by one) and I generally take public transport or walk everywhere, including to my office in Central London from zone 6.

As a result of the distance away I live from my place of work, it costs me £193 a month to use a transport service that I am frustrated by on a daily basis. Today, the 8.10am train to Victoria was delayed by about 40 minutes due to signalling problems, the London Bridge 8.22am train had been cancelled, and the 8.39am train that I would usually take in to work had disappeared, flip knows where to. When I eventually got to Victoria, the 73 bus that I made a run for (in full view of the driver) left without me, and the next bus that I managed to get was stuck in traffic. I only got the bus from Victoria to Mayfair to make up for the lost time my delayed train had cost me, to find that it would have indeed been quicker to walk. I also had to sit next to a woman who, without any indication from me, decided to explain the levels of appropriateness of pissing on public transport. For the record: Kids = OK, homeless people and adults = Not OK. I assure you I did or said nothing to invite this conversation or topic and that she was sitting on a newspaper.

£193.00. One hundred and ninety three pounds. “Fuck-a-duck,” I thought this morning, “I could buy a decent second hand bike for less than that!” (which I am planning on doing).

As a result of my interest in taking up a new mode of transport, I’ve been reading London cycling blogs a lot, initially thinking that I’d find tips on where to buy a tweed suit and those things you clip onto spokes that look a bit like Pokemon characters or Bagpuss. But instead, I’ve discovered a few issues to think about in a way I hadn’t before:

1. I’ve yet to meet a cyclist of whom I thought “Christ, they’re a bit thick.” This is just an observation, maybe I haven’t met that many cyclists. I know one who’s a bit of a knob but I wouldn’t call him stupid.
2. TfL are not as good as they’d have you believe. Check out Crap Waltham Forest’s blog for general examples and this post on ibikelondon about the proposed speed limit increase on Blackfriars Bridge, despite someone getting knocked down there very recently. There’s also a hoo haa about building escalators at Elephant & Castle if they extend the Northern line towards Battersea. All this goes in complete opposition to campaigns like this, which seem to encourage cycling in the capital.
3. Helmet’s are not as safe as I assumed they were. But some are very pretty.
4. It’s ridiculously easy to steal a bike (links to YouTube), so make sure you invest in a decent lock or two.
5. You’re statistically safer on a bike than on a horse. Though let’s face it, there are a fair few things safer than horse riding.

Over and out.

Cx

This is what I'd look like if I was King For A Day, but less white and less beardy.

At the moment, I am reading probably the most depressing book I have ever read in my life. It’s called Jilted Generation: How Britain has bankrupted its youth and it is making me want to crawl into a hole with a 6 pack of Special Brew to cry until everything is back to rainbows and sunshine, just like it was before the recession hit. Except that looking back on it, things were pretty bad for people my age before we’d even heard of the recession.

When the recession kicked off, I was one of the few people in my age group to be in a full time job, only have debts of around £20,000 after one year of university a few years ago (when top up fees were first introduced) – this is mostly due to the interest being significantly higher than the amount being taken out of my account. Yes, that’s right, the money that gets taken out of my account was significantly less per month than the amount of interest added onto the debt in the first place. The cost of renting alone took up more than half of my income before bills for a, frankly, shitty single bedroom with a double bed squeezed into it, the landlady of which then proceeded to screw me over on the deposit (I’m still in the process of going through the small claims court). Since then, I have moved back home, am back to temping, and can actually afford to save money without needing to worry about the interest on my student loan (because I’m finally earning enough that my contributions clear the interest and a few quid off the actual debt).

As far as I have experienced, there is and always has been complete insecurity in almost every aspect of my life. Temping and office work is insecure – I have to take bank holidays off as annual leave; the legislation in place for private renting is clumsy and extremely difficult to enforce – I’ve had boyfriends last longer than private renting contracts; and assurances that education would help me get a decent job later in life were either a gross error of judgment or a bold faced lie. Either way, I was explicitly told by an employment agent a few weeks ago that employers much prefer those with experience over those with a degree for the simple reason that any idiot can pass a degree if they don’t think too hard about it. Harsh words, but if feedback from recent graduate friends is anything to go by, perhaps there’s some truth in it.

Anyways, as I’m reading this book, I can’t help but think “What would I do if I was King For A Day?” – I say King, because the only type of queen I’d be would be a raging queen, and because the chances of electing a second generation immigrant tattooed leftie glamourpuss like me are slim enough to shop in Topshop. So here are ten things I’d do if I was King For A Day:

1. Put Simon Cowell against a wall and shoot him with several paintball guns for a healthy dose of some decent reality TV. The potential for a spin off series, perhaps featuring Louis Walsh, Cheryl Cole, and Gillian McKeith would be a possibility if the show was a success.
2. Set up mandatory Rent Officers to regularly inspect all private and social landlords.
3. Build a fuckload more affordable AFFORDABLE affordable homes, strictly reserved for first time buyers. A house should be a home first, a cash cow second. My loyal subjects need affordable homes that stick to the Parker Morris Standards.
4. Decriminalise all drugs in favour of licensed regulation of supply and use, high taxation, and free and unstigmatised medical treatment for those with abuse related problems. I don’t know how we’d unstigmatise it. Nice people take drugs too.
5. Set the minimum wage to £7.00 per hour or £14,000 per year and repay back all the money paid into the Student Loans company, including the interest.
6. Decrease the pay gap by taxing the extremely wealthy (I haven’t thought this one through yet. What’s extreme wealth, anything above £40k?) and those corporations that keep dodging tax. If you don’t want to pay tax in the UK, don’t earn money here.
7. Create an “actual war” on the motorist, by setting up decent cycle paths and promoting the living daylights out of cycling everywhere in the UK. The fear of being attacked by a car driver or knocked down by a car driver or sexually assaulted by a car driver is currently the only thing preventing me from buying a bicycle.
8. Make all education free. Fee paying schools promote social immobility.
9. Ban jeggings with elasticated waistbands. They’re just hideous.
10. Free and good wifi for all my loyal subjects!

Thanks to Mark (@vbloke on Twitter) for the link to this image.

Good morning all,

Today, I was very pleased to discover that The Rapture never happened (cached copy of the official website here). My family, all devout Christians remained bound by the laws of gravity, and according to The Guardian, there is about an average level of misery and destruction in the world. Nothing that would suggest to me that the world will end on October 21st – which is nice, as that’s my dad’s birthday and I have a few ideas of what to get him already.

Yesterday I spent a pleasant afternoon with friends, showing off my new piercing. 6pm happened (the supposed Judgment time) and you will have to take my word for it that I have never seen a bluer, more pleasant May sky in London, completely devoid of people floating up towards the heavens. We atheists and agnostics and those of faith not dogma can sit smug that we knew it wouldn’t happen, it was all a lot of fuss over nothing.

It is now deeply tragic, then, to hear and read about people who genuinely feared the end of the world and hurt themselves and others because of it. Harold Camping is a dick. I bet the vast majority of the people in the world who’ve heard of him will probably agree that he’s a dick. He’s a cretin who should never have been given airtime and publicity. He’s a moron who should have been dismissed by everyone from individuals right up to the major news outlets who chose to air his idiotic views in prime time news slots.

All of us talk bollocks sometimes (some more than others *cough cough*) but major news outlets don’t take most of us seriously, and don’t even put most of us onscreen to have a giggle at our expense, though anyone watching The Apprentice might disagree. It’s fine to dismiss arseholes for what they are, but don’t rest the blame for the horrific actions of the individuals above solely on Camping. We should have never given him the time of day, and those unfortunate people PZ Myers refers to should have been under some kind of program of professional help before it got to the point where they could do serious harm.

As a former Christian, I can say with confidence that the first thing you do when you’re scared about something with a religious tangent to it (ie Judgment Day) is to speak to a priest or religious older person. A responsible priest will assure you that either it won’t happen (because the Bible is too perfect a document to be understood by mere humans apparently) or that you’ll be ok if it does happen because you’re a good Christian/person etc. They will also alert the authorities if they get the impression that you will do something to harm yourself or others. Believe it or not, some priests are good people.

To blame Harold Camping for these atrocities is to ignore the many hours of free publicity he was given by journalists and TV producers who should know better.

Here’s some Blondie to lighten the mood. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

There have been a fair few instances in the UK recently of Christians being denied things. Denied the right to practice marriage counselling if their beliefs interfere with their ability to actually do the job, denied the right to run a B&B if their beliefs interfere with the law stating that all people are equal, and more recently, denied the right to foster children because their beliefs interfere with the rights of vulnerable children to not be prejudiced against.

Over on my Facebook page, a deeply religious friend argued that it was a wrong decision because the children they are likely to foster would be too young to have any form of sexuality. I happen to disagree, but I’ll get to that shortly. The wider picture that I’m particularly interested in is the notion that many Christians I know feel that they are able to pick and choose sections from the Bible that are good and bad and act on those, rather than take it as a whole.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather a Christian with a Humanist conscience than a Christian Fundamentalist, but I still find it curious when conscience and the Bible disagree, how a good Christian decides what the right thing to do is. For example, Christians rarely partake in human sacrifice, force women to be sex slaves, or avoid the mixing of different types of material. We live in an enlightened age now and conscience (or practicality in the case of mixing fibres) takes precedence over something that was written thousands of years ago. How is it that some beliefs erode over time, like these, but others like prejudice against the LGBT community remain intact?

Regarding sexuality, I was born straight, I didn’t have a choice. My massive crush on Andi Peters as a child pretty much confirmed that. I never had to hide my crush on him, or go through my teenage years wondering what was wrong with me – I did anyway, but not because of Andi Peters – and as an adult I don’t have to deal with anywhere near as much vitriol as my gay friends do, not even close. It is exhausting to my brain that we need to legislate equality because some people are unable to work it out for themselves. They’ve worked out that a bunch of other stuff in the bible doesn’t need to be enforced, why can’t they go one step further?

Wowser, it’s been a while!

A relative of mine called the house yesterday afternoon and we talked at length for a while about various things going on in the world. They told me about their work, I shared tales of living at home, and a particular thing that happened recently that’s been on my mind a lot. Without going into detail, they ended their summation of this issue with “Well, let’s face it Carmen, you’ve always been very stubborn.”

In fairness to my relative, that wasn’t the first time I’ve been told this. Usually it’s revealed to me that Taurus was the second choice of whatever astrology enthusiast picks in guessing my starsign because I’m so particularly stubborn, like many farmyard animals and other people born in April. How funny and mildly disappointing that they never pick my obvious creativity, sense of humour, or modesty when guessing my starsign. Incidentally, most astrology enthusiasts, when asked, assume I’m either a Leo (perhaps owing to the amount of leopard print I wear?) or a Scorpio. I have no idea what being a Scorpio involves, however whenever I see or hear that word, it makes me think “Scorrrchio!”

It’s now become a fairly common joke between my mum and I that I am a very stubborn person. The usual response I give to this is “Well, if you say so, I suppose,” which doesn’t seem to make people change their minds, it gives them a slightly sour grin across their mug, pleased with themselves that they’re right. I don’t mind so much. Astrologers more than most need to take small victories where they can, no matter how vague or false their victory may be. Had I said “I’m not stubborn” it leads them to conclude that I am indeed particularly obstinate and therefore they’re proved correct, and in agreeing that I am stubborn at times, they’re proved correct. There are few ways I can think of to counter an accusation of stubbornness. The best I’ve got is to quietly smile to myself that no matter what, they still believe in astrology. Bless.

Where’s the line between being stubborn, assertive, and a pushover? If assertive is some sort of golden mean, how does one go about moving towards it? If someone gave me constructive criticism, how do I decide whether it is actually constructive or just a useless disagreement, as surely a genuinely stubborn person would not be able to tell the difference? There are times when I’ve stuck to my guns on something I thought was correct, and probably a few occasions as a teenager when I dug my heels in despite many people around me telling me otherwise (like my decision to go to a less academically successful but more social college) but there are far more occasions in my adult life when I’ve made a decision and changed my mind based on perspectives that reframed a debate in my mind.

I happen to disagree that I am a very stubborn person. Argumentative, attention seeking, fabulously dressed, perhaps. But now that this opinion of me is so prevalent among a section of people, what lengths would I need to go to if I wanted to change it?

Cx

Cx