Can someone please explain to me how the Tour de France is starting in fucking Yorkshire? This makes no sense at all, and if this is the extent to which things now get messed about with for commercial reasons, maybe the Cannes Film Festival ought to have a short run in Bognor Regis - or maybe the Henley Regatta will be staged in Marseilles.
The entrepreneurial spirit has been lauded by the media, with notes about a £100million boost to the local economy. That amount is quite easily racked up when you consider the opportunism that's prevalent. £500 to stand on a ladder in someone's garden [more fool the person who wants to balance on steps for a view of people whizzing past on bikes]. Fields have been rented out to campers, hotels have trebled their rates, and a sausage sandwich is now £13.65. Okay, I made the last one up, but you get the message. As for renting a house in Harrogate for a week, I fear lunacy has taken hold when I read that the cost can be anything up to £10,000.
£6million has been spent on filling in potholes and repairing roads on the route. I find this outrageous; the local authority decides it has this money to target efforts for some visiting cyclists, yet ignores other roads (many far worse) because they obviously are not in the spotlight at the moment. Disgraceful. Cyclists don't even pay road tax.
I have nothing against the Tour de France, or competitive cycling [except when the UK uses it to claim loads of medals to make up for being shit at everything else that does not involve a boat or a horse] but I do worry that after the Yorkshire event, amateurs will take to the roads on bikes, and hinder the fuck out of road tax payers who will struggle to get past two-abreast cyclists who weave and wobble.
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