Christopher John Myers

Croydon, Surrey, residents have until Wednesday 30 th March to respond to the Council’s latest crime survey wheeze.   So get cracking and tell ‘em what they must surely know – crime and fear of crime is most people’s Number One issue and it needs action.   Not strategies.   Not ‘partnerships’.   Not liveried vans. Not office-bound admin workers. Not glossy publications. Here’s the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/lbc-community-safety-survey By the way – do you think the ‘Survey Monkey’ part of the web address actually means anything??   Is someone, some highly-remunerated council officer on a gold-plated pension having a laugh?? You’d think that anyone with half a brain already knew that crime and fear of crime was most people’s number one ‘community’ concern.   Well, you would, wouldn’t you? So why is it that the Safer Croydon Partnership (nice, comforting name that is nothing of the sort) wants to know how we feel about crime and fear of crime? ...

St Barnabas, Purley Summer Fair – Sunday 12 June St Barnabas Church in Purley has booked Purley’s ‘officially fourth best magician’ © for their popular summer fair on Sunday 12 June. With the magician, also known by his stage as ‘Rubbish Robin,’ booked for the whole day, St B’s has pulled out all the stops with a ‘magic theme’ for all activities, stalls and amusements. “We’ll have a magic bouncy castle, magic tombola – an activity that is always well supported with great donations from Purley businesses, and Surrey ’s biggest crockery-smashing stall which will be magic too,” said show spokesman Chris Myers. The show’s magician will perform regular stage shows throughout the fair and will also display his close-up magic skills as he sashays round the fairground. Live music from acclaimed rock band ‘Time is Tight’ will perform several sets.   For this event the band is featuring Giles Holland, fresh from a Russian gig at St Petersburg . The fair is free to enter and kicks off ...

If someone you knew claimed Buckingham Palace connections and that officials were blocking her attempts to contact members of the royal family; what would you think? Me too.   So, how sad it is that my local paper (25 March 2011) has reported the case of a woman who claimed royal connections and is now the subject of an Anti Social Behaviour Order (ASBO).   Surely she needs help, not an ASBO and her photo in the Croydon Advertiser, together with her address? Ms X claimed her mother's death was a cover-up and ‘harassed police’ with claims she is related to royalty. She defended herself saying, “I’m not a drunken lout."   But she had bombarded the police with more than 1,000 calls in three months claiming a royal connection. has a royal identity and that her mother could still be alive.   Apparently she believes the police have files which prove her claims, but have kept them a secret in order to rob her of her money. The ASBO bans her from contacting the ...

It is well known that alternative therapists are sought out by vulnerable cancer suffers and those that love them, but I hadn’t realised that lurking amongst this dubious ‘alternative’ crew were ‘real’, qualified doctors. My eyes were opened reading a moving piece by cellist Steven Isserlis about his partner Pauline, who succumbed to a virulent form of cancer in May 2010. Daily Telegraph 21 March 2011. Like many desperate people Pauline turned to ‘alternative’ treatments after mainstream medicine could do no more.    She“came to believe” that she could be helped by alternative treatments after researching magazines, newspapers and the internet. What made me sit up and take even more notice however, was that ‘alternative’ ‘holistic’ qualified medics are active in this field, offering ‘searing ‘ courses of pills (up to 200 a day) and unproven chemotherapy treatments where drugs are injected directly into tumours.   Of course, I cannot say whether these medics are m...

Today I am starting my campaign to make Silvio Berlusconi apologise.   Not, however, for his current sins at his ‘bunga bunga’ parties, but for what his ancestors did to our forbears a few hundred years ago.   Of course, I am talking about the Roman invasion and rule of our little island from about AD43 to AD410. You may know about the killings, the flogging of our queen Boudicca and the rape of two daughters in AD61.   You may also know that wealthy Romans had British slaves here, and there were British slaves in Rome as well. Do you suppose their lives were a lot of fun?   I don’t think so.   So, Silvio – listen up and just say sorry for what the Italians did to us.   And, while you are about it, put aside some of your millions to help amends – you can call it the Pax Britannica. No doubt, Silvio, you are familiar with the heroic speech given by our former Premier Tony Blair gave when he apologised for the inaction of his parliamentary predecessors who...

Daff’d Today’s papers are full of madness!   Did you see the ‘Family threatened with arrest for picking daffodils’ story in all the papers?   We’re treated to a heart-rending story about six and ten year old sisters whose parents were threatened with arrest because the kids were picking daffodils in a Poole park. Well, yes – that much is true … but it seems the parents were encouraging the girls to pick the flowers and had collected 70 and 80 bunches between them when they were cautioned.   OTT?   Hardly.   Read this from blogger Guy Walters: “The one-sided reporting of the story has also arisen because Ms Errington and her family look Midsomer-friendly. Had the daffodil pickers been a group of non-white teenage hoodies, then I doubt that the story would have been reported in the same way. (It’s also debatable that they would have got away with mere ticking off, but that’s another issue.)”   You’ll find his blog here. Mp jiggery-pokery My friends at Moto...

How did we bikers ever get to the current state of things, where 90 per cent of new motorcycles come without centre stands? Were we consulted?   Did anyone ask you?   I thought not! Is it fair that Triumph Bonneville owners, for example, have to pay over £100 for a centre stand? How are they expected to align the wheels, change the rear disc pads …? Whatever next? Will we be expected to pay for footrest rubbers, handlebar grips, user manuals...? There is a case, I admit, for off road and track-day bikes to be supplied without centre stands.   But for the rest of the market – NO! Mind you, I am wondering if anyone is man – or woman – enough to be able to hoick the Triumph Rocket 3 onto its (non-existent) centre stand. As BMW are the only company who are really innovating in bikes right now, I think it’s up to them to take a lead.   Power assist centre stand anyone?

Published pictures of film stars and celebs are routinely touched up and have been for 100 years or so. No surprises there.   But images are now routinely stretched and distorted so that models sometimes look like freaks.   The generic term for this is ‘Photoshopped’, after the pre-eminent Adobe Photoshop imaging software. Long legs look good on a man or women, but when they are practically DOUBLED in length then we need to stop and take stock.   We already hear that model’s ‘size zero’ figures and silicone boobs are causing some young girls to have a poor self image. Double-length legs may look freakish to mature readers, but how are they influencing impressionable pre-teens? Part of the problem page sub-editors are often given an impossible space for an image.   Squeezing or cutting and pasting extra limb length is one solution.   Look for tabloid pages, where a narrow full page depth space is devoted to a single person and you’ll see what I mean.   Of...

My local bike dealers, Doble’s in Coulsdon, Surrey (excellent, if you’re asking) have a second hand 2010 year Triumph Thunderbird for sale.   It’s immaculate; as well it should be with just six – yes SIX – miles on the clock. What happened there, then?   Did the original buyer, who must have been local, go for a (very) short test ride, buy it, take it straight home and return it the next day?   Or was the mileage accumulated as it got moved around the showroom and therefore under some mad new EU law was deemed ‘second hand’? But should I really be surprised?   There are other signs which seem to show that mainstream biking is dying out: §         Most new bikes sold are sportsters; low bars, full fairings, ‘high chair’ pillions – weekend toys, pretty well unsuited to all-duties biking §         So few new all-rounders are available – bikes like my 2000-reg Yamaha Fazer 600 that are much more t...

Lazy journalists have done it for years – now there’s a website that can catch them at it! Churnalism.com allows anyone to paste in a block of text and compare it with material published on the web.   Matches show up the guilty parties. But the site isn't really about catching journalists who are ripping off their colleagues' work, it is designed to 'catch' hacks who are simply cutting and paste press releases – this is ‘Churnalism’, according to the Media Standards Trust whose site it is. ‘Churnalism’, the term, is the creation of British journalist Nick Davies who coined it in his book Flat Earth News .   He reported a study at Cardiff University by Professor Justin Lewis and a team of researchers that found 80 per cent of the stories in Britain 's quality press were not original and that only 12 per cent were generated by reporters.   The end result, he argued, is a reduction of quality and accuracy as the published material is open to manipulation and d...

It’s probably my advancing years that’s the problem … but I’m starting to read the obituaries in the papers.   And I’ve come across some extraordinary stuff.   Some people’s lives are amazzzzing – makes you wonder how any human being could manage to pack so much into just one life ? A few days ago I came across one of these amazing obits; only this one was so staggering, so utterly extraordinary, my eyes were out on stalks. His name - not his real one – was Poppa Neutrino and he died on January 23 aged 77.   In the words of the Daily Telegraph ‘obituarist’ he was “an itinerant American whose singular life story featured episodes as a card sharp, a soldier, a prisoner and a pastor; he never lived in any permanent structure for more than a year, and owned almost nothing, but in 1998 he became the first man to sail across the Atlantic on a raft made of junk.” Read on… and be amazed. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8348609/Poppa-Neutrino.html

It’s well known that BMW boxer engines drink oil, but that prompts some questions that no one has satisfactorily answered. Like, where’s all that oil going? Unless there are leaks – highly unlikely – Ghaddafi’s black gold must be being burnt.   That’s either being drawn past the valve stems into the combustion chamber, or seeping past the piston rings. And being burnt.   If it’s the latter, then this might be happening when the bike’s parked on its prop stand. But the biggest puzzle is, given that the oil’s being burnt, why doesn’t this show in the exhaust?   Why doesn’t the burnt oil b****r up the catalytic converter?   And, how come the bikes can pass the stringent emission tests, with all that filth in the exhaust?? So, all you technical types out there … can you solve this one for me?

It’s very, very, rare that MCN road tests give any fuel economy figures, so it’s surprising to see their star columnist, the right-thinking KEVIN ASH, proposing that motorcycle manufacturers start giving miles per gallon figures for their bike. This would be good news for motorcycling, particularly in these cash-strapped times when fuel economy has become a big issue for bikers.   After all we, unlike MCN testers, have to pay for our petrol. It’s good news too that the Motorcycle Action Group’s Ian Mutch has thrown his weight behind Kevin’s campaign – with a letter in this week’s issue.   More power to both their (pair of) elbows! But where does this leave MCN - languishing it seems.   And out of touch. Still there’s always hope that Editor Marc Potter and Chief Road Tester Trevor Franklin will read Ian Mutch’s letter (page 30 lads!) and start telling us how economical their test bikes have been.   The case for this is unarguable.

Since 90 per cent of over 17s in the UK hold a car licence, it follows that the vast majority of motorcyclists are also car drivers.  Doesn't it?  So why is it that my favourite weekly bike newspaper - Motorcycle News (MCN) - always presents daily life as a battle between 'bikers' and 'motorists'?  Why always present most bike accidents - there are lots of them - as the fault of 'motorists', i.e. car drivers?