A WAR OF WHEELS

By Hattie Turner

Why sticking to your lane won't solve the conflict between cyclists and drivers.

The phrase ‘before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes’ has never been more true when considering the conflict between cyclists and motorists. Switch ‘walk’ for ‘cycle’ and I guarantee you’ll find a lot of drivers are more sympathetic to the danger cyclists face on a daily basis; unobservant pedestrians, chaotic commuters and a general lack of use of the indicator. Likewise, a cyclist who spends a day working in a vehicle may find their sympathy increases somewhat, after they are stuck driving round one-way streets and avoiding roadworks, while earning what is often a modest income. Cyclists are not the bad guys, but nor are drivers. Why is it so hard for a lot of people to see this? With just hours to go until the London mayoral election, I want to explore one of the longstanding issues the city has been plagued by. 

Cyclists are labelled as a ‘nuisance’, ‘entitled’ and ‘self righteous’ and motorists are ‘aggressive’ and ‘inconsiderate’. This language is unhelpful at best, and downright tribal at worst. Last week I saw a post by a cyclist boasting about going through a red light while being tailed by the police. It’s this very attitude that isn’t helping. In the same week I witnessed a motorist, red with rage shouting expletives at a cyclist who was barely coping with the demands of Hyde Park roundabout. On the face of it, these two groups are sworn enemies, but is there any room for conciliation?  

unsplash-image-Sz1aoOyeIFE.jpg

Data from earlier this year shows cycling has increased by more than 35% in London. Once traffic goes back to normal levels will the ‘35%’ find they are met with hostility from other returning road users? According to TFL nearly two-thirds of the traffic on the city’s roads are buses, taxis, tradespeople and delivery drivers. These are driven by people who have largely been working throughout the pandemic, delivering our parcels and getting us where we needed to be this last year. Similarly, the boom in takeaways and online shopping has meant there are more and more key worker cyclists on London’s roads. Speaking with XeroE, an eco-courier start-up, they calculated their fleet of cyclists has quadrupled in the last year.  

The crux of the mutual resentment is that there’s an element of danger when bicycles and motorists co-exist on the same piece of tarmac. London’s population is projected to rise to 10 million by 2030, potentially exacerbating this conflict Yet, there is real optimism that technological developments for road users will help mitigate deaths, which in turn, will alleviate road user tension. The LINKS Foundation has developed a global navigation device fitted with a 5G transceiver used to convey location information to nearby cars. Companies like the LINKS Foundation are building into the new ‘smart city concept’ where all traffic and infrastructure are interconnected and constantly communicating information designed to keep all road users safe. Cyclists and other road users will no longer be in each other's way, but harmoniously weaving in and out of each other like a synchronised swimming team. 

As with most tensions in society, there is not one group who is all bad, nor one group who is all good. Until we understand that most of us are just trying to go about our daily business, to meet the demands of working in a city and just trying to enjoy the ride, this divide will remain.

Hattie Turner

Hattie Turner

WHAT’S SO WRONG WITH RENTING?

By Hattie Turner

As I’ve reluctantly inched closer to thirty, more and more of my friends have become homeowners. Some have now sold their first home and are onto their second. Consequently, I’ve always felt a little behind, still living in a rented flat while others pick out carpets for their spare bedrooms and discuss the merits of the £800 KitchenAid. My biggest purchase this year has been a milk frothier. I don’t even drink coffee, but just fancied having the odd ‘posh’ hot chocolate.

In the UK over the last fifty years, it’s been the default action for adults of a certain age to buy a home. In fact, since 1971 between 50-75% of employed adults owned a house at any given time. Politicians constantly talk about ‘generation rent’ but in reality, we are still largely a country of homeowners. It’s easy to see why. Living in a home that is yours is almost a cultural symbol of having made it. It’s the yardstick by which others measure you against. Come tooth and nail, people scrape together every penny to achieve that revered accomplishment. This is made easier still when government-backed schemes such as the Help to Buy ISA and the newly introduced 95% mortgages means you can essentially buy an entire house for just a few thousand quid. You just have to forget about the crippling 35-year mortgage repayments.

But more than prestige and financial motivation, living in your own space has many more untold benefits. Autonomy being one of them. If I wished to paint the walls bright pink or nail some questionable artwork to the walls, who’s going to stop me? Perhaps I’d like a husky for a housemate. That freedom, albeit acted upon in a slightly different way to these examples, is very liberating, and can be a huge plus for buyers.

unsplash-image-t9ovV7r-FJU.jpg

All these positives point towards buying being the logical choice as a long-term accommodation strategy, but - without wanting to sound too Carrie Bradshaw - I can’t help but wonder whether being a long-term renter is so bad? The average house deposit in the UK in 2020 was £47,838. The average rental price in the UK in the same year was £700 per month, meaning you could live in a rented property for nearly six years before you’d paid the equivalent as those with the deposit. That’s without even considering the mortgage repayments, repairs, solicitor and surveyor fees, possible service charges and leasehold fees, all of which hang heavy on the purse strings.

There’s also the argument that flexibility trumps security. When buying, you’re in essence committing yourself to a long-term loan repayment for many years. You’re planted somewhere for the foreseeable future and it’s difficult to just up sticks and leave on a round-the-world tour without worrying about whether the last-minute tenants you found aren’t disregarding your stringent coaster policy.

Besides, don’t think that flexibility only extends to jetting off around the world to find yourself. And whilst the pandemic has changed this a lot, it also used to make you more employable. Unless you’re happy to let your house out promptly, are you stuck to applying for jobs in your direct vicinity, knowing you can’t be too flexible as a homeowner? Perhaps renters and their adaptability give them somewhat of an advantage.

Channelling my inner Ray Liotta, problems are easy enough to solve as a renter:

‘Fancy exploring a different part of the city?’ ‘No problem, I’m renting.’

‘What about the busted boiler that needs fixing?’ ‘No problem, I’m renting.’

‘What about the sudden work transfer to New York?’ ‘No problem, I’m renting.’

Sure, moving house can be slightly arduous. You might look at your new shower and see a complex algebra puzzle. The previous tenants might have left some little surprises for you in the fridge. But when you’ve got a few suitcases full of clothes and a milk frother, it’s not all bad.

Hattie Turner

Hattie Turner

THE ORIGINAL SOCIAL NETWORK

By Hattie Turner

Will the post Covid-19 era mean we finally put our phones down? 

Aristotle described man as being ‘by nature a social animal’. I’d like to think if Aristotle was around today, he’d have meant this in the non-virtual sense. This year has really pushed our lives online, more so than ever before. In April, worldwide usage of Zoom was at 300 million daily active users, compared with 10 million in December 2019. In the UK this year, Ofcom found that of the total time spent on the internet, four fifths was on a mobile phone. 

Our obsession with phones is nothing new. Since the first mobile phone was invented in 1973 by Dr Martin Cooper, usage in the UK has risen to 95% by 2019. I’m pleased to have been one of the last generations to grow up without phones being central to our lives. At the age of 15, I had a Nokia 3310 ‘to be used only in emergencies.’ It didn’t really do much, so it largely remained at the bottom of my school bag while we gossiped on the bus and scribbled down last-minute homework. At 29, a slightly old-fashioned part of me wishes it had stayed like that. 

Fast forward to 2020 and, for many of us, the days may have felt like they blurred into each other. You found yourself floating through the seasons, like Hugh Grant in that scene from Notting Hill. The only way of clinging onto a sense of normality was through your phone. It was the gateway to family, friends, and the wider world. It was where you read articles on how to knit and make cocktails, and where you joined in on virtual fitness classes. It became the primary way of accessing a version of the life you had before Covid. 

We have been largely deprived, rightly or wrongly, of real social contact for the past year. The kind of social contact I imagine Aristotle was convinced of as being so essential to society. Think forward to when the full weight of the restrictions will be gone from our lives. Simply seeing other people, without the ever-present grey cloud of social distancing and awkward elbow bumps, will feel like breathing again after being underwater for far too long. Picture yourself meeting up with friends in the pub for the first time after life has returned to normal. Their faces bear little resemblance to the digital versions you’ve been largely interacting with previously. They are expressive, imperfect and real. Will you be wasting that time scrolling through Twitter? I hope a few of us will now think twice.  

I think we could well be set for a renaissance in terms of social interaction. We have all had that feeling of taking a picture of a beautiful building or landscape, yet the image never quite matches the reality. The experience of virtual socialising is very much the same. It is an imprint of the real thing and will never compete with the original ‘social network’.

Hattie Turner

Hattie Turner