Might be worth going to the NEC bike show in November if you can wait that long.

I did think that was good idea so I just checked out when and the cost as I haven't been for a few years.

It would cost me £34 plus fuel from London to Birmingham - any bargain I got would have to be bloody cheap to make that worthwhile!

My Sidi Vertigo's have now just about fallen apart and I'm considering going down the waterproof route as it seems to be constantly raining through recent Winters.

Problem is no waterproof boots I can find have much ankle protections like the Vertigo's do.

Any recommendations?

Alternatively choose one of the following:

1. Buy a car or van
2. Rent a car or van
3. Get a mate to pick up whatever it is and drop it off for petrol money
4. Get a cab - whatever fits in that tiny trailer would easily fit in a car boot.

Why would you want a trailer on a bike?

I can't imagine what it does to the handling but it must be ten times worse than carrying a fat bastard and that's bad enough.

Ignore is not the most up to date advice, the latest best course of action is to send the prove contract and breakdown of costs letter then ignore.

Personally I prefer to ignore but I do play with them sometimes and go through the non existent appeal then appeal to POPLA which costs the PPC money but but the decision is not binding on the applicant, only on the PPC

Your CAB advice link above is broken but there are plenty of examples on CAG where CAB have advised to pay the invoice then try to claim it back - not sure why you are questioning this, I wasn't digging at you, I was just trying to clarify for the OP that there is misleading advice on the net and from CAB ( who in my experience are not experts in anything).

The OP should be armed with all the information so they can make an informed choice on the action they want to take - above all they need to be advised that the charge is unenforceable and they should not pay it.

Sorry VNA but the above post is wrong, contacting them does not identify you as the driver of the car and anyway this does not matter as the charge is unenforceable.

As far as your extract from 'this is money' that is wholly inaccurate as well, contract law cannot apply as you have to enter the car park to read 'the contract' as it posted on signs in the car park - what happens if you reject 'the contract' and drive out without parking? Most of these PPC's use ANPR cameras and you are invoiced as your number shows up even though you didn't park.

There is a lot of bad information on the web about these invoices and even Citizens Advice get it totally wrong and advise to pay then try to claim it back - no chance! MSE also has a lot of misinformation as well by uninformed posters.

This is a little hobby of mine and the best advice is found on the Consumer Advice Group forum, someone posted a link earlier in the thread.

In Scotland the registered keeper cannot be pursued by the Private Parking Company (PPC) and also in Scotland the RK is not obliged to reveal the driver. There is also no trespass law in Scotland so that's a bit different as well.

In the UK since October last year the RK can be pursued by the PPC with requests for payment, however this does not make the charge any more enforceable.

The reasons are:

1) only the land owner can claim losses for you parking on the land, the PPC's do not own the land and therefore cannot claim any losses
2) the PPC have to hold a contract with the land owner giving them rights to take action on their behalf and that cannot be used as the only reason for taking any action is trespass which you have not committed as the land owner has given you an implied right of access.
3) the PPC has to provide a breakdown of costs which show the invoice is for actual costs as only Plod, Local Authorities and Court can fine you, they can't prove the costs so the only amount they can claim is the actual losses - so for an overstay in a free car park what is their loss - exactly zero.

I ignore some and I play with others, even the most determined PPC Parking Eye get trounced every time they go near court (which isn't often) and the only cases they have 'won' turn out to be a relative, an ex employee/director or not defended.

PPC invoices are a total scam and designed to intimidate the recipient into paying when they don't owe a penny.

They send you a chain of begging letters and then pass the 'debt' on to a Debt Collecting agency which is actually just the next desk monkey along - never, ever deal with a DCA, all you need to say to them is 'any alleged debt is denied, refer to your client'

These scam artists need to be exposed and stopped and it's about time the Government got involved in this.

Excellent, I'll be very surprised if that doesn't get picked up by someone - hope you copyrighted it for reproduction!

Brilliant film work and loved the rebuild 

Top tip that one, itunes can go to Silicon Hell.

I can;t see where you can make the album artist Various and there's another artist entry though?

Was with Bike Team for years for the Fazer 600 but at this year's renewal they were not the cheapest so moved to Bennetts for £70 for the year, fully comp, commuting, garaged at night over 10 years NCD

However when I changed the 600 for the FZ1 Bennetts demanded an additional £147 which is 3 times what I was paying for the 600 per year - not impressed and I won't be renewing with them.

Best is my classic Lambretta TV175 agreed value of £5k for £48 per year with Bikesure, garaged at night and no commuting, with zero NCD free road tax as well!

The Ship and Shovel! Is it still there??

Not sure, think it is

When I was about 12 years old all my mates had rat bikes which they raced around some waste ground behind the Ship & Shovel pub in Barking.

After much pestering from me my Dad brought home a pretty good nick FSIE and cut the seat in half, knocked the lights and number plate off and presented it to me with the words "Push it there, if I see you riding it on the road I'll cut yer nuts off".

When I turned 16 all my mates got scooters, so I got one of them as my first legal road bike.

It was a Vespa Primavera 125 but I insured it as a 50 special as they had the same frame and looked almost identical - you could not get away with that now! .

It cost me £120 and insurance was £25 and a Centurion Pinto open face lid was £15 I think, a pair of me Mum's gardening gloves (for when it was raining) and I was good to go.

Did a year or so on that and then upgraded to a Lambretta GP200, trashed that after a year by riding it into the ground and chopped it in for...an RD250!   It was a private sale out of the Exchange & Mart, two bikers took it along with cash for the RD, I think they were going to have a ceremonial burning or something!

Most of my mates had got bored with scooters and moved onto cars so I was happy to move to more powerful motorcycles, plus I'd given up on the Mod thing as the scene was changing and I wasn't into scooter meets where you got your head kicked in by Skinheads and Scooter boys trying to flog you NF t-shirts.

Sadly both my scooters were genuine Italian bikes and in good nick, these days they would go for about £3k for the Vespa (although these are going up in price even more now) and about £7k (I kid you not) for the Italian GP.  I currently own an Italian 1963 TV175 series III and you would have to part with at least £5k if you wanted it.

Anyway, I took my test on the RD and passed, then blew it up and flogged it to get a new engine for my Cortina 1600E - well technically it was a 1600 Super with E trim and furry seats, but it was a car and girls only gave you a feel of their tits in a car (well, only the classy birds).

Step forward a year and my need for transport changed again, having established a regular pair of knockers to grope, I decided I could not put up with using public transport to get to work, so I needed another bike - enter the Suzuki GP era!

I had about 3 Suzuki GP 100s and they all gave up the ghost after a while, there was also several dodgy old Hondas CB100, Superdreams, a very short spell on a C90 then I got a VT500 (awful, awful machine) Suzuki Katana - looked good but I think the frame was bent so I never liked it and then a never ending list of shit bikes until I bought my Fazer 600 in 2002

So dear reader you may ask what has this got to do with the original question "Why are you a biker?", Well surely it's clear?

My first foray into powered two wheels was the desire to tear the arse out of the World and get noticed.

The rest of my biking desires have been based around the need to go to work to earn money.....to put petrol in my bikes and provide a bit of food and shelter along the way and still tear the arse out of the World at weekends...if I've got the energy.

And insurance and VED and a road riding license if they expect me to take them seriously.

I go in the cycle boxes all the time usually kicking all the cyclists out of the way to get in there, oh hang on, there's never any cyclists in the cycle box because they've all jumped the red light!

We have one.

If you want it to live longer than you they take quite a bit of care - especially diet. No, you can't just feed them cucumber (or a lot of other stuff which has traditionally been fed to them).

A good start here:

H

Ta, just what I was looking for