The Life-Sized City Blog

The Carbon Trust's Bicyclegate continued yesterday and made it into the House of Lords. The transcript of which I include here. Generally, reading the questions and responses, it seems like an awful lot of peers with little experience of cycling pulling all manner of stereotypes and misinformation out of their robes. Fortunately, there are voices of rationality present, not least Lord Berkeley , Lord Davies of Oldham , Lord Greaves , Viscount Bridgeman and Earl Attlee . Baroness Butler-Sloss seems not to worry terribly about pedestrians getting hit by cars, instead choosing to exaggerate the myth about "pedestrians leaping to safety out of the path of bicycles". One Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Roy Kennedy, innit) went onto the BBC later to continue his rant against "lack of suitable suitable attire" on Boris Bikes . There's a bit of Rob Ford about this chap. Sorry... noble, honourble chap. [Thanks to Aedan for this link] Lord Berkeley posed a question ab...

Thanks to an unexpectedly large number of re-tweets and re-posts and not least to Carlton Reid over at BikeBiz it appears that Carbon Trust is having second thoughts about their anti-bicycle stance - which we wrote about yesterday . In this email sent round to employees this afternoon we can see a change of heart/ volte face : "Since Friday’s email from a Health & Safety perspective regarding the use of bicycles for business travel we have been contacted by a number of staff seeking clarification on our overall position on cycling. Due to a number of recent serious accidents related to staff cycling the email was cautionary as we were reviewing our approach. Our overall position on cycling has always been positive and we have always been supportive of taking the low carbon choice when travelling. To encourage staff to cycle we have provided access to cycle safety training, secure cycle storage (in place of car parking spaces), cycle maintenance, access to the Cycle To Work...

London cyclists. Who clearly shouldn't apply for jobs at Carbon Trust. There's something called Carbon Trust in the UK . They describe themselves thus on their website: The Carbon Trust is a not-for-profit company with the mission to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy. We provide specialist support to help business and the public sector cut carbon emissions, save energy and commercialise low carbon technologies. By stimulating low carbon action we contribute to key UK goals of lower carbon emissions, the development of low carbon businesses, increased energy security and associated jobs. Sounds great. Innovative. Progressive. N'est pas? One senses that this is an organisation that would, whether directly or indirectly, support transportation like... oh I don't know... bicycles. An organisation that places weight on science and rationality and common sense. So here's the funny thing. Well... not really Joe Pesci haha funny... just quite sad funny. T...