Oslo cycling...disability...and BoJo

Lesley is back from a visit to Oslo and is full of admiration for their public transport scheme. The Paralympics may have been spectacular but the scandal of 'disability' testing continues. And finally, could Boris Johnson be the face of #bettertogether ? Only the Lesley Riddoch podcast can deliver the answer.

Comments

[Mike Vickers]

Nice one – have a good holiday.
In the meantime we were last week in Barcelona and yes they do have the bicycle scheme and there are bike parks everywhere. And the city is equally full of other bikes. But bikes in Edinburgh – well it’s hilly - while the city of Barcelona is reasonable flat and at this time of year Barcelona is warm and dry although it is surrounded by hills. We did see the odd electric powered bicycle and just a couple of electric powered scooters – two rear wheels very close together providing a little stability – moving at great speed.
To Andy Murray, its nauseating; everyone cashing in on his success – he is one of us. It’s not so long ago that the Scotsman regularly chose to depict him grimacing or howling his head off.
Will there be a final straw that will push the Scots to take that big jump to Independence – Eigg like. I gather that Lloyd George is quoted as saying that you can’t jump a chasm in two steps.
So it’s back to Barcelona and Cataluña. Cataluña to Spain is like Scotland to the UK – the same sized populations. It is proud of its Catalan language, lying between Spanish and French, and the first language is formally Catalan. It would like to be independent but unlike the Basque region relies on negotiation rather than terrorism. It has its own government and like Scotland gets a block grant from the central government (although Scotland does seem to have more control over all of its public service like education): it too is contemplating that one big jump.