BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

The politically-correct song is all about 'Little Johnny' suffering a head injury because he wasn't wearing a cycle helmet. The reason for authoring such a PC polemic? Humpty Dumpty didn't wear head protection, and look what happened to him...

The European Commission has performed a u-turn and has asked EU ministers to extend for two years a pilot scheme allowing the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments to continue levying reduced VAT rates of six percent on bicycle repair services.

Bangladesh's earnings from bicycle exports are set to top $80m in fiscal 2003-2004, reports India's The Financial Express today, a rise of $30m on previous period.

Last year, the average turn was 18 days. At the annual Chicago sales meeting of SRAM/Rock Shox, Robert Priest, SRAM's global aftermarket manager, revealed the turn has been reduced to 1-2 days for most European countries.

Children's BBC TV recently ran a bright ideas competition seeking inventions from children that could be turned into reality. Five inventions have now been shortlisted. There's a spy-in-the-sky model aeroplane disguised as a bird (for video-peeping on your mates); a CD player that projects pop-stars on to a hologram-type screen (very Princess Leia); and a GPS speed limiting device, requested by 10-year old Charlie from Norfolk. There's an online poll to pick the invention that will be produced commercially...