Daily bike checks

David Cameron nearly came a cropper after the brakes on his bicycle failed. As you may remember the bike had been nicked and then returned, I don't know whether the brakes had been tampered with, or damaged etc but I'm sure that the conspiracy theorists will have plenty to talk about.

The lesson to learn from this is that you should do some basic checks of the bike every day that you ride. Do these and you should be sound as a pound.

Tires: Give them a little squeeze to check that they haven't lost air since the last ride.
Brakes: Apply the front brake and then try to roll the bike forward make sure it doesn't move. Do the same with the back brake.
Headset: Apply both brakes and try to roll the bike forward, there should no wiggle or rocking of the front forks.
Wheels: Lift up the front of the bike, spin the wheel and check that it isn't buckled, do the same with the back brake.

This should only take a few seconds and could save your life. The more detailed checks can be done when you clean your bike.

Road to Damascus?

Boris has released his climate change plan and the reaction to it has been interesting.

The Greens have immediately gone to their default setting of saying that the plans are not hair shirt enough. There are also some rather critical reactions from some on the Conservative side of the fence, they seem to feel that Boris has sold out and run off to join the hemp wearing, lentil eating, hippy, tree huggers.

I've had a quick peak through the plan and it seems sensible. The focus is on making the best use of natural resources, cutting wastefulness and preparing for a changing climate (man made or otherwise). Boris has been critical of some of the more hysterical environmental comments, as have I. That is not the same as disregarding everything to do with the environment.

I have long thought that we have been obsessed with only a narrow band of environmental issues. With regard to renewable energy we only hear about carbon emissions, almost never about fuel security. You don't need to be a fully paid up member of the Gaia movement to worry about how much we throw away.

We can make some big improvements without having to crucify ourselves, once we make those improvements we can look at the next step.

He must be Caracas!

During the election campaign a popular joke was that if he lost, Livingstone would run off to a luxury villa in Venezuela before the skeletons in the cupboard are found.

It was a funny enough little joke that no one really thought would happen, until now. In a life imitates art (if you can call a rubbish joke art) Livingstone is on the Chavez payroll. I hope that the former Mayor gets to catch up on his tan while he is in Caracas, he was looking rather peaky the last time I saw him hanging around at city hall.

Back to work

I'm now back from hols and it was very relaxing, thank you. But now I'm back at work and I'm getting stuck straight in.

Today is the launch of this year's main body of work for Health and Public Services Committee, of which I am Chairman. We are doing an in depth investigation into problem drinking amongst young people in London.

We are not trying to vilify people or become preachy, but we want to find out the scale of the issue, why young people drink to excess, where they drink and how much. We have set up a facebook group where you can share your experiences and pass on any ideas.

The launch has generated a fair bit of media interest so I've been interviewed by the BBC, for both London radio and TV, ITV, LBC, and Time FM. Zipping back and forth across London for the interviews and trying to be coherent when you get there isn't as easy as it looks (or sounds, in the case of radio).

This is what we are asking:
1. Is alcohol misuse by young people a problem amongst your friends, within your family or in your community? Are you a young person who regularly drinks alcohol?
2. What impact does it have on your friends, family and local community?
3. Why do you think some young people misuse alcohol?
4. Where do young people drink?
5. How do young people get access to alcohol?
6. What can be done to encourage young Londoners to drink more sensibly?

Off on hols

I and the family are off for a few weeks in France. Due to a scheduling mistake on my part I will not be able to compete in the London Triathlon on Sunday.

While I'm away I will also not be blogging about the Olympic Games in China, the upsurge in home repossessions, the conflict between Russia and Georgia in South Ossetia, Gordon Brown's incompetence at press manipulation or anything else.

Have a good couple of weeks and I'll see you after my cousin's wedding.

Don't dither on stamp duty

The election that never was killed Labour's chances of a fourth term, the "will they, won't they" over stamp duty could kill the housing market.

If you thought that stamp duty might be suspended in the Autumn, would you buy a home now? No, me neither. So the entry end of the housing market is frozen because Brown and Darling can't even make up their minds about this electoral bribe.

If they do decide to suspend stamp duty, it would be nice of them to explain where the money is coming from at the same time.

"My" bank isn't doing very well

I didn't want to own a bank. I don't know anything about how to run a bank but as part owner of Northern Rock I am now forced to take a greater interest.

It seems that "My" bank isn't doing very well. To be fair the other banks aren't doing particularly brilliantly either but I don't own any of them.

Like all the owners I hope that "My" bank pulls through the tough times and moves on to the bright sunny uplands of financial security. It's just when I hear Alistair Darling on the radio talking about it it fills me with dread.

£1.6 million payoffs for "Team Livingstone"

Wow.

It seems that Ken Livingstone repaid the decades of loyalty displayed by his team of closest advisers by changing their employment contracts a little while before the election. Their fixed term contracts were amended to include a very generous payoff if Livingstone lost the election.

He lost, they now get a total of £1,600,000.

UPDATE:

Slap wrist to me! It seems that it was central government that changed the rules on employment contracts rather than Livingstone himself.

Nottingham Triathlon 2008

I got up at 4.30 this morning, Susie got up a little earlier so she could have a shower and wash her hair (women are crazy like that). We lifted the boys, still in the stupor, into the car, loaded up my bike, wetsuit and ancillary items and then drove to the National Watersports Centre in Nottingham to take part in the Nottingham Sprint Triathlon.

Experienced triathletes always tell you to leave plenty of time before the start to set up, "it always takes longer than you think". I thought I had done that yet I was still queuing for the loo, still not in my wetsuit ten minutes before the official start time. I found myself pulling on my wetsuit while the first competitors waded into the water to swim over to the deep water start, they had arrived at the start line before I had entered the water, not the preparation recommended by the elites.

Despite this I felt calm as the starting horn went off at 9.00 am. Last year I started at the back of the swim pack and stayed there, this year the early morning open water swim sessions paid off as I was comfortably in the middle of the pack the whole way around the swim course. It's nice to get to transition 1 and see bikes other than your own.

I hopped onto the bike and set off at a pace, I was overtaken by the real racing snakes but I went past some very fit looking people on some very fast looking bikes. The bike leg is my strongest, the commute to and from work on a daily basis helps a lot.

However, the effort that I put into the bike leg came back to haunt me on the run. The run was, is and probably will always be my weakest discipline but today was poor even by my own meager standards. I had the traditional jelly legs coming off of the bike but they seemed not to go away at all. It was disheartening to see all the people who I had shot past on the bike close and then overtake me on the run. I finished feeling worse than I did last year.

Overall I was leased with the result. Here is last year's breakdown and this year's result (I don't have the breakdowns for transitions so T1 is in the bike split and T2 is in the run split).

Swim 750 meters, bike 20km, run 5km.

Swim: 25 min 01 sec (although I have it on good authority the swim distance was long)
Bike: 42 min 51 sec
Run: 30 min 55 sec
Total Time: 1 hour 38 min 48 sec.

This year
Swim: 14 min 47 sec (10.14 better)
Bike: 36 min 35 sec (6.16 better)
Run: 33 min 39 sec (2.44 worse)
Total Time: 1 hour 25 min 02 sec.

That means I beat my personal best by 13 min 46 sec. I'm a happy boy!

Come back Tony all is forgiven

A poll for the Telegraph shows that the only man who can save the Labour party is Tony Blair.

Have I slipped into a parallel universe? It was only 18 month ago that I was being told that the only man who could save the Labour party was Gordon Brown.

The Labour MPs who are now pointing at Brown and saying that it's all his fault should remove the motes in their own eyes. It was they who waved Brown into Number 10 without a leadership battle. It was they who let an untested back room boy run the country.

The collective spinelessness of Labour MPs has inflicted the worst Prime Minister in living memory on the country just at the time when it needs quality. This terrible error is now being compounded by their unwillingness to depose him.

They circle around him, they brief against him, they write essays and articles designed to weaken him yet none will look him in the eye and say "go".

So we all have to live through the maelstrom created because Labour MPs were too weak to stand up to bully boy Brown and now too weak to get rid of him.

Thank you very much!