Cyclist left shaken after being pelted with cement on Edinburgh bike path

Would the same workman have placed the mixer on the carriageway if there was no cycle lane?  Whether he placed it on the pavement or the road he would have been blocking progress. Even with that there's no guarantee he would remove spilt concrete once done. The builder could of course done it the old fashioned way and mixed by hand inside the building.

Reading the article it doesn't see like Mr Mitchell caused a fuss. He filmed this, asked a question and said he'd report this to the council.  He then went on his way.  Sounds like the builders got bolshy and then assaulted him.

I'd say it was assault because cement can definitely cause injury just by sitting on you.  Plus having a shovel-full would be a few kilos of material flung at you.  At the very least you've possibly written off some property (damage to clothes / bike).

Unfortunately it's very common for people to deposit their property on footways and cycle tracks / paths - or use this for their commercial gain or private projects.  You can of course go round it - more or less conveniently.  Maybe much less conveniently if you're old / disabled, occasionally not at all.  You may be forced into the road.  That may be difficult (high kerb which may be impassible in a wheelchair). And aside from the normal risk of being in the road it might well be a specifically dangerous place to move into the traffic.

So in this case the workman makes his wage, the builder gets his fee, someone has their property improved, but it's at everyone else's inconvenience and possibly increased risk.

Let's all choose to look the other way and leave it up to a pensioner with a sense of pride to stand up to some arsehole with sense of entitlement.

Vigilante action is never a good idea; report to the relevant authority.

It's not really vigilante action though - that involves a decision on guilt, enforcement and retribution. Hangman, judge and Judy, that kind of thing.

The victim merely asked the perpetrator not to continue with his bad behaviour.

TheBillder wrote:

It's not really vigilante action though - that involves a decision on guilt, enforcement and retribution. Hangman, judge and Judy, that kind of thing. The victim merely asked the perpetrator not to continue with his bad behaviour.

Spot on, I am so bored with people saying a cyclist reporting an offence - or simply asking others to stop committing an offence - is "vigilante action." Vigilante action is taking the law into one's own hands and meting out punishment to malefactors, not acting to report or point out to others transgressions of the law. I'd like to live next door to some of these people (well I wouldn't, but just for this purpose): "Sorry mate, I saw your house being burgled but because I know you don't like 'vigilante action' I didn't try to stop them, film them or call the police, I knew you'd approve."

We've already explained to you the meaning of vigilantism in other threads. Please don't make us repeat ourselves. 

giff77 wrote:

We've already explained to you the meaning of vigilantism in other threads. Please don't make us repeat ourselves. 

You can say that again!

No need - you just did it for them.

Joeinpoole wrote:

Why didn't Mr Mitchell simply cycle or walk around the temporary obstruction without causing a fuss? That would have cost him a second or two rather than the hours spent complaining and cleaning his gear. The workman was just trying to earn a living.

You seem to suggest that he was preventing the workmen from earning a living (he didn't, they will be paid anyway), and that the workman was justified in slinging a load of concrete at him (they weren't, with no need for a qualifier)

Whether the workmen  were operating reasonably or not is moot, but abuse and assault/vandalism is not an acceptable response in this situation.

The company is operating for a profit. Ensuring that their operation minimises inconvenience in the public space, and adheres to regulations and good practice needs to be costed into their model. It's not the public's responsibility to ensure this happens.

Edinburgh, this morning. We have a road that's been designated as part of a "cycle route" where traffic calming is in place - so regular build-outs to narrow the road to a single lane.  Bypasses for bikes.  Non-mandatory cycle lanes.  Just before a build-out I find Stellar Cleaning Services window-cleaner parked in the cycle lane. Bearing in mind this is not illegal (because non-mandatory lane...) it however hides me from on-coming traffic (the build-out block is on the right side here).  You can just see the sign at left showing that I've priority at the narrowing / build-out.

I caused no fuss and just went around after taking pictures.  This is absolutely standard though.  Ultimately the road design and "culture" are the issue.  My beef is if we actually want "normal people" (e.g. most people) to cycle we need to sort this.  Otherwise you're taking them for fools - they'll sensibly not want to do this multiple times every trip.

A mile or so further on - slightly different type of blockage but similar idea.  Again - no-one's doing anything illegal, it's not as bad as a hole in the road or as dangerous as routing bikes around HGVs.  Having this constantly repeated just makes cycling feel less save and much less convenient.  Plus it's effectively a design mistake that we've all paid for.  Failure to think it through - it's "professional amateurism".

Anyway I don't bother to note these normally as it's so normal.

chrisonatrike wrote:

Again - no-one's doing anything illegal,

It is illegal, it's obstructing the highway.

I had the same about ten years ago, but the perpetrator had a caravan on his drive with the same reg, so I knocked on his door at 0700 when I was trying to ride to work, and asked him to move it because it was causing an obstruction, or I would be forced to report it to the police, which he did.  About six months later I found out he was a policeman.

Surely in the same way as it's unconscionable that politicians could break the law - they just make it - the police can never do anything illegal?

I can see this whole "optimism" thing will take more effort than I thought.

Have one of these at a roundabout exit by Glasgow Airport. I think the plan was to allow you to circumnavigate the roundabout without stopping. People now seem to use it as a parking bay.  😡  There's no way this is encouraging infra for new cyclists. 

giff77 wrote:

Have one of these at a roundabout exit by Glasgow Airport. I think the plan was to allow you to circumnavigate the roundabout without stopping. People now seem to use it as a parking bay.  😡  There's no way this is encouraging infra for new cyclists. 

Sadly this is self-fulfilling e.g. we notice there are no cyclists, so to get some we put in cheap interventions.  We can't find money or will to do it properly - because there are no cyclists.  Because the interventions are poor and don't form a network you get no more cyclists.  Because there are no cyclists drivists think "what a waste, I might as well use it". So you end up with no cyclists.

It's hard to break that cycle because if money is found and the will to do something properly it's almost inevitable that this only stretches to doing it in one place.  So as this doesn't link up to other routes you still get few takers because no-one wants to brave the roads to get there.

Although they're definitely "second class" when compared to The Netherlands I think models like Sweden / Denmark or maybe better Seville point the way.  They've created a network. Yes - it's not going everywhere yet, some of it's pretty poor and they still have tons of space for cars.  However although compromised it feels like it's been designed by people who cycle. My rant about the new Edinburgh stuff is basically that it doesn't.  It feels like it was designed by someone who had certainly seen some good cycle infra but not actually ridden on any.

So maybe the way is to get as much money as possible but spread it a little more wide and thin.  It's important to set a minimum standard (no paint-only stuff, no "sign it better", no posts in the middle of the cycle path). But in the interests of getting a coherent network maybe that can be low.  So ugly and a bit bumpy is OK, concrete blocks and slaps of tarmac are OK. Make a network - even if it doesn't cover the whole town / city.  Address the junctions first - those are the real "road blocks" for both convenience and feeling safe. It should be possible to get pedestrians on-side here too!

Joeinpoole wrote:

Why didn't Mr Mitchell simply cycle or walk around the temporary obstruction without causing a fuss? That would have cost him a second or two rather than the hours spent complaining and cleaning his gear. The workman was just trying to earn a living.

My partner (not a cyclist) has suffered verbal abuse at the hands of a "workman" that was just trying to earn a living..... Why? 

Because they asked a van driver who was parked blocking the pavement, preventing an elderly gentleman in a mobility scooter from being able to pass the vehicle, to move their van to let the elderly gentleman past.  My partner passed the van on their way to the shop and passed the elderly gentleman a little further up the road.  Despite it being clear that the elderly gentleman wanted past the "poor hard working van driver" completely ignored them for at least 10 minutes before my partner returned.  Given that it was November and was cold, wet and windy (and the scooter was not a covered scooter) it wasn't a place where I would be wanting to sit for 10 minutes, let alone a pensioner.

To make things worse this was about 50m away from the location where an elderly gentleman had been killed crossing the road less than 7 days earlier.

So I really don't buy the "just trying to earn a living" excuse

TriTaxMan wrote:

.....

So I really don't buy the "just trying to earn a living" excuse

Perhaps "hard pressed"?

At 67, I'd say he's retired.. he's got nothing better to do than confront angry workmen; but seriously, don't be a cycling Mikey type and confront people about infractions.. take discrete video and later report to the relevant authority and/or employer.

It could just be random coincidence but it isn't the first company a person with the spelling 'Jenifer' has been a director of at some stage that has 'Domus' in its name, they also appear to have been born in the same month.

open_roads wrote:

There's presumably a reason Mr Hamilton claims to be the owner whilst it's actually set up legally to give the appearance of being run by someone else - possibly his spouse.

Jenifer is listed as sole director, sole shareholder, and sole 'person with significant control', and the company's accounts say that they have 1 employee.

However, if Ian Hamilton actually tends to run things and Jenifer tends to do what he says, then he should be listed as a person with significant control "having other significant influence" regardless of his not being a director or shareholder.

You know, that's the sort of omission that ought to be notified to Companies House...

As someone who's had to spend a bit of time digging about Companies House records for work I can safely say

To be fair to the Companies House people this is entirely the fault of their masters who set the rules.  Or rather they don't, they don't provide resources to detect - let alone do something about - people recording nonsense with CH or indeed just not bothering to.  Our politicians do provide clear direction here though.  It's totally clear that the last thing we want is to cause any trouble to money coming into this country.  Or influential folks within the UK squirrelling it away.

IAF they do seem to be (finally) cracking down a bit of late.  We've had several letters come in here relating to clients or former clients querying what's been declared as the PSCs.

Yeah - though it's a bit like the school setting a policy of pupils marking their own homework and then deciding it needs to try to avoid plagarism and everyone getting full marks.  So they decide to have an occasional check up where they ask "is this your own work? Is this mark correct?" - but always accept the pupil's answer. On some of their forums you can sense the incredulity - especially from people outside the UK.  Here's an official register but which has no investigatory powers and there's barely any validation of individual fields of data, never mind checks on whether that bears any relation to reality. (Yes you can report a few things here and insolvency/unfitness to direct is dealt with).

You probably know of plenty but Graham Barrow's blog has some interesting comment.

On the other hand just from the data point of view keeping a reasonably simple record for over 100 years [ 00034786 RC000830 ] when culture changes, the rules change, the laws change, even countries change shape, name and indeed existence is always going to be an interesting exercise!

chrisonatrike wrote:

As someone who's had to spend a bit of time digging about Companies House records for work I can safely say

I share your pain

Done for tax purposes.. good luck with reporting your suspicions.