Met office is named most cycle-friendly employer

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Matthames

Über Member
Location
East Sussex
Just come across this via twitter:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/pr20100513.html

They are one of a number of businesses in Exeter that have won awards for promoting cycling to work.

The met office encourage their staff to cycle in by providing a number of bike sheds. They also provide a number of pool bikes that employees can make use of.

This is good news to me personally, because if things go well on Monday they could become my future employer. :biggrin:
 

adscrim

Veteran
Location
Perth
But the weather has been terrible. Don't the people that make these decisions take this into account when considering the met office?
 

Moodyman

Legendary Member
Do they have a category for the most 'cycle-unfriendly information provider'.

I use the Met office for checking the weather ahead of my commutes and so often they get it wrong. Yeah, Yeah, I know there are issues beyond their control, but still in this day and age...
 

Moodyman

Legendary Member
they could become my future employer.

That's a nice ace to have up your sleeve if they ask you why you want to work for us?
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
Moodyman said:
Do they have a category for the most 'cycle-unfriendly information provider'.

I use the Met office for checking the weather ahead of my commutes and so often they get it wrong. Yeah, Yeah, I know there are issues beyond their control, but still in this day and age...

And yet, so often, you check their information again?

I'd just take a coat mate.;)
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Lucky blighter.

Sounds good but I'd be a bit sceptical of cycle parking facilities, the people doing the inspecting/in charge often seem to think they are much better than they really are.
 

Moodyman

Legendary Member
And yet, so often, you check their information again?

All the major weather information providers get their information from them, even the mighty BBC. So I figured, I'd just go to the source.

Having said that they did me a favour last weekend. I bought some theme park tickets in advance for my 7 year olds birthday.

All week they'd been predicting heavy rain (for the weekend) which, I think stopped a lot people going. The day was quite nice, sunny and cool, but no rain. Didn't have to queue on any of the rides.
 

BentMikey

Rider of Seolferwulf
Location
South London
Actually, I'll dispute that. I check Metoffice every day for my work, and most of the time they are right for 6-12 hours in advance. Sometimes the timing will be a little out, or the intensity of any rain, but what they show is generally ball-park. The temperatures are usually quite reasonable too.

You might want to add checking their rain radar to your weather checks, by the way. Oh, and also don't bother with anyone's forecasts that are more than 6-12 hours in advance, as that's almost as much guesswork as long term forecasts.
 

Moodyman

Legendary Member
Thanks for coming and spoiling my point Mikey. My comments (aside the theme park one), were all disingenuous to The Met Office. They were tongue-in-cheek to expand Matt's thread.

I agree the Met Office are usually spot on, which is why I use them, but saying that wouldn't be interesting. Besides, it's become fashionable to criticise the Met since doubts arose around climate change.
 

Crankarm

Guru
Location
Nr Cambridge
If the Met Office were a person I wouldn't trust them to sit the right way on a toilet. Their weather forecasting is atrocious whether (sic) it is 3 hours or 3 weeks in the future. The 1987 hurricane in Southern England revealed them to be jokers. Anyway most of their reports comprise what has already happened.

The Met Office are NOT the most cycle friendly employer. BSKYB, GSK and HSBC were voted the top 3 in the comic (CW) about a month ago. EON in Coventry came in for high praise as did EMap.

The top three have shed loads of secure bike parking, changing facilities, showers, lockers and in house bike shop and servicing at extremely subsidised rates. So the fact that some one has declared the Met Office as the best cycle employer is probably just propaganda b*ll**ks. Still they have got to be good at something I suppose. It's certainly not weather forecasting.

BBQ summer ......... ;)
 

al78

Guru
Location
Horsham
Crankarm said:
If the Met Office were a person I wouldn't trust them to sit the right way on a toilet. Their weather forecasting is atrocious whether (sic) it is 3 hours or 3 weeks in the future. The 1987 hurricane in Southern England revealed them to be jokers. Anyway most of their reports comprise what has already happened.

Hmm this sounds analogous to one of those petrolhead rants that goes something like "all cyclists are law breaking lycra louts, I saw three jump red lights today ..."

If they really were as bad as you say, no-one would use them.

Regarding the 1987 storm (it was NOT a hurricane) firstly we are going back over 20 years now, forecast models have improved in that time. Secondly, there were two factors that caused that, 1. the French met agency were on strike so there were no observations from the French stations. 2. shipping in the Bay of Biscay evacuated in advance of the approaching storm, this meant no sea observations; one of the ships that was recording misread its barometer and reported a higher central pressure in the storm than it should have done. This resulted in the computer models failing to forecast the left hook which strong storms have a tendency to do.

Crankarm said:
The Met Office are NOT the most cycle friendly employer. BSKYB, GSK and HSBC were voted the top 3 in the comic (CW) about a month ago. EON in Coventry came in for high praise as did EMap.

The article was referring to the most cycle friendly employer in Exeter. I don't think any of the companies you quote are based in Exeter.
 

Crankarm

Guru
Location
Nr Cambridge
al78 said:
Hmm this sounds analogous to one of those petrolhead rants that goes something like "all cyclists are law breaking lycra louts, I saw three jump red lights today ..."

If they really were as bad as you say, no-one would use them.

Regarding the 1987 storm (it was NOT a hurricane) firstly we are going back over 20 years now, forecast models have improved in that time. Secondly, there were two factors that caused that, 1. the French met agency were on strike so there were no observations from the French stations. 2. shipping in the Bay of Biscay evacuated in advance of the approaching storm, this meant no sea observations; one of the ships that was recording misread its barometer and reported a higher central pressure in the storm than it should have done. This resulted in the computer models failing to forecast the left hook which strong storms have a tendency to do.



The article was referring to the most cycle friendly employer in Exeter. I don't think any of the companies you quote are based in Exeter.

Ha! Blame the French .........why not, they hate us and we hate them :rolleyes:.
 

Crankarm

Guru
Location
Nr Cambridge
Matthames said:
Just come across this via twitter:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/pr20100513.html

They are one of a number of businesses in Exeter that have won awards for promoting cycling to work.

The met office encourage their staff to cycle in by providing a number of bike sheds. They also provide a number of pool bikes that employees can make use of.

This is good news to me personally, because if things go well on Monday they could become my future employer. :sad:

Find out if they do C2W? Good luck with the interview. Every cloud has a silver lining :rolleyes:.
 
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