Is a women's Tour de France in 2014 a realistic goal?

I want to make it clear from the outset, I am not against the idea of a women's Tour de France. Of course the pinnacle of cycling should have gender equality, whether it realistically can happen within a 12 month window is the question we should be asking.

A recent petition [found here], addressed to Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme requesting gender equality has been championed by many as the necessary first step. The petition, from the pen of Emma Pooley, Kathryn Bertine, Marianne Vos and Chrissie Wellington, requests that a women's professional field is added to the 2014 Tour de France. The petition doesn't request that ASO simply add a racing schedule that includes women, but that they run a professional race for women in conjunction with the men's event. It's requested that such a race would be run at the same time, over the same distances and on the same days; I don't feel that it's reasonable to request such an event within a 12 month time frame. To be frank, I feel such a request is actually doing the women's professional scene a disservice. A push for so much, so quickly, has the potential to put ASO off. Surely approaching them with a petition requesting to race the final Champs Elysee stage of the 2014 Tour in its entirety would be a realistic goal, the first step of many on the path to gender equality. 

The Tour de France is a monstrous machine, one which already poses significant logistical challenges. We're talking 1200 hotel rooms reserved daily, 1500 vehicles, 13,000 gendarmes and around 4500 accompanying persons including cyclists, mechanics, drivers, managers, journalists. Is it realistic to superimpose a women's event within 12 months? ASO don't start planning the next edition of the Tour after the previous edition has ended, it's a process that begins years in advance. ASO will already have financially invested in planning the 2014 edition, it's unreasonable to expect them to alter those plans immediately at their expense. Why couldn't the petition have requested to have an event in conjunction within say 4 years, giving time to plan properly such a huge undertaking. It seems to me that this petition hasn't considered that it would take far more than a year to integrate successfully an identical women's event with the men's.

I'm not qualified to discuss the sport science aspect of a women's Tour, something which Emma Pooley very rightly pointed out to me on Twitter recently. I had mistakenly said that a women's Tour over the same parcours would be too physiologically demanding. I was responsible for promoting the same myths of physical limitations the petition seeks to debunk, for that I apologise. I don't however feel that a massive jump in race duration and distance for just one event each year is in the best interest of the sport. The average stage distance at the 2013 Giro Rosa was just over 100km, the average at the 2013 Tour was 162km. If I'm wrong on this please correct me, but surely it would be better to gradually increase the distances of all the existing women's races on the calendar and build towards the same distances as the men? Speaking from my own limited racing experience, I wouldn't want to enter an event three times longer than anything I'd ridden previously with stages on average 60% longer; I'd much prefer to build up to such a grueling task. If racing over the same distances is something the women's professional peloton desires, they'd also need the UCI to first change the rules restricting race length before any route could be planned. Something much easier said than done, the UCI aren't exactly famed for their decision making abilities. Thanks to the UCI I now own a pair of illegal socks, five years ago I wouldn't have thought that possible.


I think it's very unlikely that we'll have what the petition requests by July 2014, but that isn't to say the petition will have been a failure, far from it. The four women at the centre have ignited the debate and that was always going to be the starting point. True gender equality across cycling as a whole will take time, it isn't something that can be forced through overnight. I'm almost certain that the close to 100,000 people who've signed the petition would sign another pushing for the inclusion of women on some level at next year's Tour. Compromise is going to have to come from both sides. I fear that such a demanding request will be ignored by ASO, whereas a petition requesting simply inclusion on a smaller level to begin with would be far more likely to succeed.


As always, discussion or correction welcomed......

Is America to blame for North Korea's nuclear weapons program?

Up until January 2003 North Korea were part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The objective of said Treaty is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament. On the 10th of January the North Koreans gave notice of a withdrawal from the Treaty alleging that the U.S. had started an illegal uranium enrichment program. The withdrawal became effective on the 10th of April, but did they really pull out because of an illegal enrichment program?

In September 2002 George Bush had begun formally making his case to the United Nations for an invasion of Iraq; stating Iraq was "a grave and gathering danger". In his state of the union address the following January he refered to North Korea, Iran and Iraq collectively as the 'Axis of Evil'. By February an invasion was almost certain and by March troops were on the ground in Iraq. Kim Jong Il watched as George Bush followed through on his administration's preemptive strike policy, I believe this to be the event that significantly increased North Korea's drive to build nuclear weapons. It would seem Kim Jong Il felt Saddam was ousted because he didn't have nuclear capabilities, the world takes you seriously when you have a nuclear bomb. 

Three weeks after the invasion of Iraq, North Korea officially withdrew from the NPT and three years later they announced they had successfully tested a nuclear device. It would appear that North Korea invested in nuclear weapons technology as a defence strategy and not to attack the rest of the world like the US government would like everyone to believe. 

While I'm not condoning it, building nuclear weapons to protect yourself from a global bully could be considered a perfectly rational response. If North Korea ever do use a nuclear warhead, aggressive American foreign policy will be largely to blame. Not that they'll ever admit that.

Should ecstasy be a prescription drug?

Next week, BBC Panorama will air an edition focusing on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and how it affects serving soldiers, veterans and their families. Curiously the Ministry of Defense releases suicide statistics of serving soldiers but ignores the rate of suicide in veterans. According to a 2004 article in The New England Journal of Medicine, 18% of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan had PTSD and more died from suicide than in combat. Obviously as the war in Iraq became more violent, more soldiers died from combat, it's reasonable to assume the number returning with PTSD also increased, and as a result the suicide rate increased. Hopefully Panorama will be able to back these assumptions up with facts, as yet I haven't found anything I deem reliable on the subject for 2012.

If large numbers of soldiers are returning with PTSD, you'd assume that doctors could treat afflicted people in the most effective and efficient way. This isn't the case. Doctors currently treat PTSD with selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and benzodiazepines with limited results short term, suffers can be left unable to function in society for years despite receiving treatment.

In 2011, the first randomised controlled pilot study into the safety and efficacy of methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA/ecstasy) in a psychotherapy setting was published. The study found that after two sessions of ecstasy assisted psychotherapy, 10 out of 12 subjects no longer had the disorder. That's an 83% success rate over a matter of weeks or days. The study also found that there where no negative neurocognitive effects and they had no negative drug related events. Under the supervision of a doctor, fatal or damaging reactions to ecstasy are almost unheard of.

Why don't we give people the opportunity to relieve disorders such as PTSD with a drug shown to be effective? We allow cancer patients to pump themselves full of incredibly toxic drugs or be exposed to radiation in the hope that it will increase their life expectancy. Major surgery can have serious risks of death but we afford people the opportunity to make an informed decision; ecstasy should be no different.

So why is ecstasy still a controlled and class A drug and unavailable to doctors?

Put simply, some illegal drug policies are written on misinformed public opinion and not evidence based. The majority of the British public view ecstasy as extremely dangerous; yet when scientists such as Dr David Nutt use evidence and years of research to show that alcohol is far more harmful to users and society than ecstasy, he's branded a 'mad man' by the Daily Mail. David Nutt was sacked from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs because he used scientific evidence to show that horse riding was a more dangerous activity than taking ecstasy. He was appointed to advise on drugs, yet when he did just that he was sacked because it wasn't what Home Secretary Alan Johnson wanted him to say. If the public are misinformed and view ecstasy in the same light as cocaine and heroin, Johnson knows that he and his party will lose votes by going against that view whether it be evidence based or not.

In my opinion ecstasy should be available for doctors to prescribe. The UK government has sent thousands of men and women to fight unnecessary wars in foreign countries in the last decade, if they survive the least we can do as a society is help them return to a 'normal life'. Can you imagine if a banned drug cured 83% of cancers and the government criminalised patients?

As always, thoughts welcome.

Why aren't benefits means tested for the over 65?

Polling stations for the 2013 local elections are now open across England. More than 2,300 seats are to be contested in county council and unitary authority elections, including the seat for South Shields vacated following the resignation of David Miliband.

What I find interesting is that in a time of austerity the predicted turnout for the 18-34 age group is well under 50%, even the during the last general election only 51% of that age group made it to a polling station. I'm not sure whether it's a general lack of interest in politics or a mentality of 'my vote won't matter'; the later couldn't be any further from the truth. A high percentage turnout for a particular age group is vital if you actually want the Government to listen to what you want.

The average turnout of voters aged 65 or over during the last general election was 76%; the highest turnout of any age group and a fact politicians are well aware of. You only need look at how quick David Cameron was to dismiss Iain Duncan Smith's suggestion that wealthy pensioners should give back their free bus pass, television licence and winter fuel allowance. Cameron has promised that all benefits available to those over 65 would remain in place regardless of their financial situation, essentially he's trading a few billion pounds for a few million votes.

Benefits should always be means tested, it should be a system helping those who truly need it and not those who feel they deserve it because they've worked hard all their life. The over 65 are the only age group to receive full benefits regardless of whether they need it or not. Every other age group has had to deal with significant cuts, why should the over 65 be any different?

An unemployed person in their mid-twenties isn't entitled to job seekers allowance if they have more than £16,000 worth of savings. A multi-millionaire pensioner can claim a full pension, free bus pass, free television licence and receive a winter fuel allowance at the tax payers expense. Where's the fairness in that?

It's incredibly unlikely that the Conservatives will make any significant cuts to over 65 benefits this close to a general election, they can't afford to lose the votes. It would seem that David Cameron is willing to take from those who'll have less of a say in whether he remains at 10 Downing Street.

In 2009 Cameron claimed a Conservative Government would take 'unpopular' decisions, how about you actually follow through on that David?

Can Spain afford to reveal doping in football?

On the eve of the 2006 Tour de France cycling was rocked by yet another drug scandal, Operacion Puerto. The Spanish Police had uncovered a vast doping network organised by Dr Eufemiano Fuentes, a network used by some of the biggest names in the sport. Not since the Festina affair had the Tour been broadcast in such a negative light. The two favourites, Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich were thrown out of the race along with Alexandre Vinokourov and Francisco Mancebo among others. Much to the annoyance of many cycling fans, the press coverage focussed primarily on the involvement of cyclists despite Fuentes himself stating that cyclists only made up roughly one third of his client base.

Fuentes stated on record that he counted track and field athletes, tennis players, hand ballers and footballers among his clients despite no names officially being linked to Puerto from any of the aforementioned sports. Why is it that the name of every cyclist on Fuentes' 'list' is public knowledge while the footballers or tennis players keep their anonymity? Even this week as the Operacion Puerto trial started the Spanish authorities explicitly stated that the trial would focus only on cycling. This is despite their acknowledgement of the involvement of other sports and pressure from WADA to release the additional evidence.

Why is Spain so keen to protect sports such as football at the expense of cycling? Put simply football is worth a lot more money to a failing Spanish economy, especially an international team that wins trophies. Financially they can't afford to reveal the truth.

In 2006 French newspaper Le Monde acquired two sheets of A4 paper whilst interviewing Fuentes at his Canary Island home, the sheets in Fuentes' handwriting were 'preparation plans' for the 2005-2006 season. Allegedly the 'preparation plans' were not for cyclists but for Barcelona FC with the Champions League and the World Cup as the primary goals. The plans contained circles for steroid cycles and 'IG' symbols similar to those used to indicate insulin use on a cycling plan found in Fuentes' Madrid office. In addition to steroid cycling and insulin use the plans also contained small 'e' notations and circles with a dot in the centre. These were thought to indicate when EPO injections and blood transfusions were to be performed. Barcelona denied the Fuentes link but did admit to attempting to hire him in 1996 and 2002, both times their offer was refused.

It's almost certain that despite Operacion Puerto, Fuentes continued to help athletes dope. This is evident by his involvement in Operacion Galgo (2010), in which Fuentes again found himself at the centre of a doping scandal. As a result of Galgo Fuentes spent a night in prison during which he reportedly bragged, "If I said what I know, goodbye to the World Cup and European Championship". It's worth noting that while Barcelona allegedly planned to 'prepare' for the World Cup in 2006, a large portion of the Spanish National team that won the World Cup in 2010 constituted Barcelona players. I highly doubt that Barcelona stopped doping post Puerto and Fuentes, it seems far more likely that Fuentes was simply replaced.

A World Cup and two European titles; the financial benefit associated with winning a World Cup alone is pretty staggering. ING estimated that by winning the World Cup Spain boosted their GDP growth by 0.25-0.5%, quite a big increase when you're really struggling. Add on the economic benefits from two European Championships and you can see how much international football has helped Spain since 2008. Even if you consider the tourism revenue from Barcelona and Real Madrid alone, Spain has a lot to lose if the truth was revealed.

It could be argued that Spain has already reaped the majority of the benefits associated with international football success. The big prize however is still to come, the 2020 Olympic games. If Spain were awarded the 2020 Olympics it would create jobs, increase tourism and if done correctly turn a respectable long term profit. Include football in the Operacion Puerto trial and all this could potentially be replaced with a serious dent to national pride.

Even this morning when Fuentes said he would name all he athletes he'd treated, the judge refused. It seems that the Spanish authorities are willing to go to serious lengths to ensure both national pride in their football teams and the associated financial benefits.

It's my opinion that a large majority of the Spanish national team used performance enhancing products during the 2010 World Cup and the 2008 and 2012 European Championships. Spain simply can't afford a doping scandal that would disgrace their prized possession; they're willing to sacrifice cycling to save football.     

As always, discussion welcome.

Is tipping altruism or based on service?

I've always been interested in the practice of tipping and in particular whether the quality of service actually reflects the tip given. In theory you reward for good or outstanding service while penalising for poor or in my opinion adequate service. Saying that, I've not always found this to be the case. I've found that people tend to tip a set amount unless the service has an extreme attribute i.e. the waiter has gone above and beyond their mandate or they've spat in your soup. I'm aware that a number of US states are still without minimum wage and as a result waiters rely heavily on tips, a clear incentive to provide a quality service. In the UK however minimum wage is nationwide and as such the incentive to exceed the bare minimum doesn't exist to the same extent. I've found that people still tend to tip even if they receive adequate service, something I find puzzling and don't agree with despite previously working in a restaurant.

For example, I've found people will leave a tip if their chosen food arrives warm and within 30 minutes. Surely this is the bare minimum you expect from a restaurant and not something worth paying extra for? When I fly I expect to arrive on time and alive, I don't leave five pounds on the seat for whatever airline meets that standard. Why should a restaurant be any different? If a waiter or restaurant goes beyond what I expect i.e. lets me change a set menu item, then I can see why that would warrant an additional token of thanks. Bringing my chosen food promptly and warm is simply expected.

If people still leave a tip for an expected level of service, it suggests they're not tipping based on service but for another reason altogether. Could it be people just like to feel generous? Giving an unnecessary tip makes you feel better than if you'd just paid the bill and not a penny more. Altruism is good for your emotional well-being.

I believe when faced with small amounts of money the majority of people will take a moral incentive over an economic incentive i.e. the feeling of being generous over the money saved by withholding a tip. It's actually quite similar to donating blood. Research has shown that when given a small stipend for donating blood as opposed to being praised for their altruism, people tend to donate less blood. Essentially I believe people tip to feel better about themselves and not to reflect the quality of service they've received.

As always, thoughts welcome.