Ride: Lovely Lea & Springtime Epping Forest Explorer When: Saturday 1 June 2013 Meet: 10:00 @ Cutty Sark Gardens, SE10 9LW (by foot tunnel entrance) There are a number of longer rides that I like to do every season, and Epping Forest is one of them. So, following my last Lovely Lea and Epping Forest [...]

It speaks volumes about the neurotic British obsession with youth that an otherwise interesting lifestylee article on the UK’s first official European Space Agency astronaut carries the headline “Major Tim Peake says he is not too old to go into space”. What on Earth is that all about? I mean, the last thing you want [...]

Two months following the death of its little red leader Hugo Chávez, it looks as if his Catholo-Trostskyite revolution may not be so permanent after all. According to an Associated Press report, the “pink tide” at the top of Latin America is fast turning into a shit tide, with nary a sheet of toilet paper [...]

We hear much talk of a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, or at least we used to. Global warming has since fallen down the political agenda. At the same time there is a challenge to the thesis from mostly but not exclusively right-wing commentators who claim that there is no scientific consensus. They insist [...]

Where: The Delights of Newham (Greenwich feeder) When: Saturday 18 May 2013 Meet: 09:00 @ Cutty Sark Gardens, SE10 9LW (by the foot tunnel entrance) Our friends in Newham are currently running a series of Saturday rides, with support from the borough council. After speaking recently with Bernard McDonnell and Emma Harper of Newham Cyclists, [...]

Unable to sleep last night, I surfed the TV airwaves, alighting upon a SWAT-style police drama that within milliseconds revealed itself to be a Canadian effort. Flashpoint centres on the work of the fictional “Strategic Response Unit” of the Toronto Police, and it’s the usual funky combat fatigues, helmets, goggles, kneepads, assault rifles, pockets bristling [...]

Reporters Without Borders has just published its World Press Freedom Index for 2013. Apologies for being so parochial, but what immediately strikes me about this document is that it shows the United Kingdom in 29th place out of the 179 states listed. There are no obviously dodgy states above the UK in the latest press [...]

Whilst the electronics industry and its gadget-addled followers obsess over computer and mobile device processors and advanced graphics capabilities, the more interesting advances are being made in relatively simple technologies that should vastly expand the economic, geographical and cultural scope of microelectronics. I am thinking for example of the use of age-old printing techniques to [...]

English composer Steve Martland has died suddenly at the tender age of 53. The cause of death is not reported, and it comes to me as a bit of a shock. Martland first came to my attention in the early 1980s with his large orchestra piece Babi Yar. I had grown up listening to art [...]

Following Monday’s 120 kilometre epic, my next ride for the Dog & Bell Crew will be a short and leisurely London loop, being a variation on the late Barry Mason’s Locks, Docks and One Smoking Ferry ride. Only 45 kilometres or thereabouts (70 Li), but still worth getting out of bed for. Starting at Cutty [...]