Boris Johnson on the theft of his bike.

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Fnaar

Smutmaster General
Location
Thumberland
Boris possibly just forgot where he left it! ;):biggrin:
 

Bigtallfatbloke

New Member
I hope when he becomes Mayor that he introduced public flogging for bike chave theives and the idiots who hurl abuse at cyclists on our roads.
 

Flying_Monkey

Recyclist
Location
Odawa
Londoners would be daft to elect such an elitist buffoon as Mayor even if he is a cyclist. You don't realise how good a Mayor Ken is in a global perspective, and how much London has so clearly improved, seen from outside. I travel to many other large cities for research purposes and talk to a lot of policymakers, and most cities would kill for a Mayor like Ken. Boris would at the very least be ineffectual and at worst be a disaster.
 
he's fallen into the trap that every politician seems to have fallen into lately- to remedy a social problem just chuck surveillance technology at it. Note the little comment about 'putting simple tracking devices on bikes'...yeh sure, I buy that....cycling is about freedom, not surveillance.
 

Amanda P

Legendary Member
I'm a wildlife biologist. I know quite a bit about tracking devices - they're my stock in trade.

There is the technology to put tracking devices in cars, lorries etc, which allow police (or anyone else) to easily track them once they're reported stolen. To function well over a long distance, they must either use GPS, or be quite powerful transmitters. Either option requires quite a bit of power.

That's no problem in a car, but such a gadget on a bike would (with present technology) either be heavy, too visible, or wouldn't transmit for very long, I'm afraid.

RFID chips - the things we have put in our pets - are tiny and require no power, but you can't track them over any distance. They require a detector to be placed close to them. So they're great for establishing the identity of the tagged item (Fido, razor blades nicked from Boots etc), and tracking its rightful owner if it's logged on an accessible database - but useless for preventing the theft of the tagged item or recovering it once it's gone.
 

Pete

Guest
Is this a thread about Boris, or is it a thread about cycle theft?

Based on the latter: well, one of my colleagues remarked this morning that his bike had been stolen. Simply that. He'd only had it a few weeks, nothing flashy, just a cheapo hybrid that he'd picked up second hand for £15 (he had the wisdom not to sink a lot of cash into something he planned to leave around!). Burgess Hill Station is simply 'not a nice district' anymore, you can't leave anything there - nor at any railway station IMO.

But it was his wheels, his mode of transport. If he decides "'Oh sod it, I'll use the car from now on" - that's another one lost to cycling. I can try and persuade him to get another, give it another chance. Do I have the right?

But of course he's not Boris, so this doesn't get in the papers. He didn't even bother with the cops, though he reported it to the station.

I'm not religious, but I do have a code of ethics. I was brought up in the belief that thieving turned the perpetrator into a class of vermin. Now, kleptomania is so commonplace, most convenience stores don't allow two or more schoolkids into the shop at a time...
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
Uncle Phil said:
RFID chips - the things we have put in our pets - are tiny and require no power, but you can't track them over any distance. They require a detector to be placed close to them. So they're great for establishing the identity of the tagged item (Fido, razor blades nicked from Boots etc), and tracking its rightful owner if it's logged on an accessible database - but useless for preventing the theft of the tagged item or recovering it once it's gone.

Saw a thing on the One Show the other evening about tracking kids via GPS and phone technology, and they said "we track our cars, we even chip our pets" and I thought they were, if you'll excuse the pun, barking up the wrong tree...
 

Amanda P

Legendary Member
By a combination of a GPS reciever in it, and mapping which cell it's in, you can track a phone pretty well. But you have to charge it up once a week or so - more often if it's logging its position by GPS at all regularly. So even if you hid one on a bike, it wouldn't be all that practical.

A couple of companies sell VHF radio tags for tracking pets. But you have to have the appropriate reciever and a certain degree of skill to track them, and range is only a few km at best. Fine for Tiddles, but not so helpful when your stolen bike is heading down the M1 in the back of a van. VHF tags are also used for tracking working ferrets and falcons when they go AWOL, but the same terms and conditions apply....

I'm using combination GPS/ARGOS/VHF transmitters to track greylag geese. (Never thought I'd get to plug what I do on here...) Anyway, these transmitters you could use to track stolen bikes. Only snag is, they cost around $3000 a pop. More than most bikes are worth... And they only work out of doors...

Damn. Thought I might be onto a good thing for a moment there...
 
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