Zaphod's Day In Court

I was contacted by Zaphod, a sometime commenter here, regarding a post he had put up on his own blog forum, and I thought my readers would appreciate it.  (Zaphod is one of the authors of the Nothing2Declare blog, and a fine fellow he is too.)

And now for something completely different-
I was in court today, for speeding. Apparently, I drove past a speed trap van doing 35mph. Allegedly.
I had ignored the offer of a speed awareness ritual humiliation course. And the reminders. And the subsequent repeated offers to pay a fixed penalty. They couldn’t believe I would be so stupid as to contest it in court, when they had a signed confession that I was the driver. Or did they?

Read on here.  It's ideal heart-warming stuff for a cold January evening.

Another day, another IAM poll

The latest IAM poll is about restrictions on young drivers.  The Association of British Insurers wants to see more restrictions in place - graduated licences, bans on night-time driving, number of passengers, and so on.

As motorcyclists, we have put up with graduated licences for many years now, and although as a liberty-minded chap I am never in favour of more state control of our lives, I would say that generally they have been a Good Thing.  The days when you could turn 17, buy a 100 mph 2-stroke road rocket the same day, pass a ludicrously easy test, and then without any instruction whatever jump onto a bike of any size and power are long gone, and perhaps rightly so.  These days, you have to start small and work your way up.  It's expensive, and there are a lot of very difficult hoops to jump through before you can throw away the L-plates and ride off into the sunset on your new hyperbike - hoops which may involve the selling and purchase of three or four bikes of increasing size and power before a full licence is granted.  If I am honest, today's new riders are far better trained than we oldies ever were, and probably better protected from their own foolishness.

For a youngster to get a car licence is much easier.  A theory test which can be learned parrot-fashion, a reasonable test of your basic abilities, and off you go.  One day, you have never driven without someone sensible sitting beside you, have never driven on a motorway, and have probably never driven after dark or in bad weather. The next, you can fill your car with six drunken mates and drive up the M6 to a rave, in a car which could legally be anything from a banger to a Bugatti Veyron.

Perhaps a more graduated approach to getting the freedom of the road would be a good thing.

Anyway, let them know what you think.  As always, the IAM want as much input as possible, so fill your boots.  You don't have to be a member, ect ect.

The poll is here.

Full Circle

I tried, I really tried.

I had the BMW for six months.  I wanted to like it.  It had everything going for it - a full set of luggage, an economical and reliable engine, lots of expensive accessories, and it looked pretty good too.  But last week I sold it.  And yesterday I rode home on a new bike - the rather pretty Yamaha pictured above.

What was wrong with the Beemer?  In a word, it was dull.  In another word, it was the wrong shape. And in a third word, it was built so far down to a price that it reached Australia.

Dull, first.  Whatever a bike does, whatever you use it for, however much it cost you, it must be fun.  It must light a fire somewhere in your soul.  If I want utility, I will use my car.  The engine was reasonably powerful (50 bhp) and yet managed to make that power in such a somnolent way that it seemed like half that.  The exhaust note was (and I mean this literally) less engaging than my lawnmower.  There was a mild duff-duff from the back end, and an annoying pockety-pock from the induction, and that was it.  It gave no sense of excitement whatsoever.  At least the mower sounds businesslike.  Yes, this could have been cured with an aftermarket system, but only at a cost of several hundred pounds - and I didn't love it enough to sink that kind of cash into it.

It was the wrong shape for me.  Even with a higher seat (at a cost of £160) it was too low.  I felt like I was riding a cruiser, all feet forward and arms in the air.  I exaggerate, but that's how it felt.  And it wobbled round slow corners.  Great for a shorty, but for this almost-six-footer (5' 11⅞" to be precise) it was like riding a roller-skate.

And the build quality was depressing.  Perhaps I had high expectations of a Bavarian product, but it was disappointingly poorly-made.  The fork lowers were starting to pit, the engine had lost most of its paint, and the quality of the fasteners holding it all together was dire.  Many chassis bolts were simply rusty (and looked awful), and several times I had to resort to cobalt-tipped drills and witchcraft to get seized bolts out.  Electrolytic corrosion between dissimilar metals and a complete lack of anti-seize compounds during manufacture made it a DIY nightmare.  It had a full BMW main dealer service history, and from the amount of paperwork that came with it the previous owners must have been anally retentive to the point of solidity, so I don't think any of it was owner neglect.  Nope, BMW build these as entry-level bikes to the BMW 'family', and my guess is they are not built to last more than a few years, just long enough for the first owner to trade up to a £12k monster.  I know I bang on ad nauseam about how good the XT600 is, but seriously - a 19-year-old Yamaha with eleventy-six owners, evidence of neglect and abuse throughout its life, and which lives out in all weathers and is rarely cleaned, has less rust and is easier to take apart than an 8-year-old 'premium product' from one of the world's most famous bike makers.

When I got back into riding in 2007 after a break of nearly ten years, I bought a Yamaha XT660R - partly because it was the right price, I liked the look of it, and I had owned two smaller XTs in a former life.  I sold it on after a year (for reasons which were entirely incorrect, I now learn) and subsequently had everything from 800 to 1300 cc, straight fours, parallel and V-twins, a V-four and even a triple.  But all that time, guess what?  My hyper-secure password that I use for all critical internet logins is a cleverly-scrambled mix of characters based on that Yamaha.  It was in 2007 and it is today.  And my desktop backgound?  Yes, that's right. Still.  It's a bit like that number that you never quite manage to delete from your phone, the photo you can't bear to throw away.

I rode it home from 'up the line' yesterday and had a total blast.  It's got 2 bhp less than  the GS, and with the lack of wind protection it's probably as comfy at 70 as the GS was at 80.  But it jumps off the line like a terrier, grunts and snarls on the throttle, and has a tall and commanding riding position that puts you where you want to be - in charge.  In other words, it's just like the older XT, but better.  And coming from me, that is high recommendation.

Needless to say, I am in lurve all over again.

Structures

I read once, not sure how true it is, that the bicycle wheel is the strongest structure, weight for weight, in the world. I have ridden many bicycles over much rough terrain, I am far from being anorexic, and I have never buckled or even bent a wheel, so there must be some truth in this. And then I saw this picture on Facebook. Awesome, if genuine (and I wouldn't be surprised if it was).

Free Speech

Thanks to a link in Longrider's blog, I have come across the best defence and justification of the principle of Free Speech that I have ever read.  Here's a sample, but I urge you to go and read the lot.

Nowhere in Farago's pro-censorship argument does he address, or even fleetingly consider, the possibility that the ideas that the state will forcibly suppress will be ideas that he likes, rather than ideas that he dislikes. People who want the state to punish the expression of certain ideas are so convinced of their core goodness, the unchallengeable rightness of their views, that they cannot even conceive that the ideas they like will, at some point, end up on the Prohibited List.

That's what always astounds and bothers me most about censorship advocates: their unbelievable hubris. There are all sorts of views I hold that I am absolutely convinced I am right about, and even many that I believe cannot be reasonably challenged.

But there are no views that I hold which I think are so sacred, so objectively superior, that I would want the state to bar any challenge to them and put in prison those who express dissent. How do people get so convinced of their own infallibility that they want to arrogate to themselves the power not merely to decree which views are wrong, but to use the force of the state to suppress those views and punish people for expressing them?

...

Ultimately, the only way to determine what is and is not "hate speech" is majority belief - in other words, mob rule. Right now, minister Vallaud-Belkacem and Farago are happy to criminalize "hate speech" because majorities - at least European ones - happen to agree with their views on gay people and women's equality. But just a couple decades ago, majorities believed exactly the opposite: that it was "hateful" and destructive to say positive things about homosexuality or women's equality. And it's certainly possible that, tomorrow, majorities will again believe this, or believe something equally bad or worse.

In other words, it's very possible that at some point in the future, majorities will come to hate rather than like the personal beliefs of minister Vallaud-Belkacem and Farago. And when that happens, when those majorities go to criminalize the views which minister Vallaud-Belkacem and Farago hold rather than condemn, they'll have no basis whatsoever for objecting, other than to say: "oh no, it's only fair to criminalize the ideas I hate, not the ones I like."

Thank you, Guardian, for a very sound and well-argued article.  (That's a sentence you won't read often on this blog.)  The comments BTL are, as ever, both wildly entertaining and profoundly depressing in equal measure.