London.  The Swinging Sixties, Carnaby Street, The Kings Road. It used to be scooter heaven, and judging by what I've seen over the last few days, its becoming scooter heaven again.  Despite an unseasonably wet summer (not much different to Perths winter!!), there are scooters everywhere.

One thing that London hasn't lost is its sense of style, and easily the most prevalent scooters on the road appear to be Vespa's.  Actually, let me be more specific.  The most prevalent scooters parked around the place are Vespa's (and a lot of these are the ET2s), the ones zooming around the streets (ie those favoured by the various couriers which are everywhere) appear to be a broad mix of Piaggio Zips, Flys and Honda Leads.  There is certainly a greater number of big wheeled scoots in evidence than we see in Aus, which given the general condition of the roads and weather is perhaps unsurprising.

Riding style seems distinctly aggressive at first - but on reflection I would be more accurate if I used the term assertive.  If you need to get around in London, you have to ride with a definite sense of purpose as the less confident rider will never get anywhere. And woman riders are definitely as assertive as male riders.  

One thing that is great to see is the amount of parking for two-wheeled vehicles around the place.  It certainly helps to encourage more people away from 4-wheels. And they still need all the help they can get, because travelling by car is still the disaster it always was.  

Hopefully the weather will improve in the next day or two - I have a hankering to test ride an MP3!!!  Wish me luck! 

Welcome fellow scooterists!  I've never blogged before so if I remember to use verbs in words then I apologise.  Or is that texting?   Whatever.

I understand that what is required for a good blog is plenty of gossip, a bit of contoversy and a hint of humour.  So apologies in advance if you just get my ramblings instead. So where to start?

Well on Sunday I had the pleasure of riding our Vespa GTS out on the annual MAD ride (that stands for Make A Difference which raises money for the spinal injuries unit at one of our local hospitals - an excellent cause, particularly given that a number of the patients are ex-motorcyclists.  So there I was surrounded by at least 1000 motorcyclists of varying types and smells.  And you couldn't have met a nicer bunch of people.  A lot were genuinely interested in the Vespa (particularly when I burned a few off at the lights), but then, who wouldn't be?

But after a glorious day on Sunday, the weather has returned to wet and windy.  Its like living in Melbourne!  This is WA people, the land of sunshine.  We need more sun to get people back out on their scoots again.

Another fine example of the worst of our industry came into the workshop yesterday.  What is it about 16 year olds that encourage certain dealers to short-change them?  They are happy to take their money for the powerpipe and other fruit, but fitting the driveshaft properly and using the right bearing for it was clearly too difficult.  What a mess.   It's infuriating that for many people, their first experience of scooters is through something like this - it puts them off for life and gives the rest of us a bad name.

We aren't all like that though, and a few of us dealers have been talking about setting up a group or association of ethical dealers - who look after our customers appropriately, give them accurate info and no bull, encourage them to buy the right scooter for their needs, instead of just looking at them as a meal ticket.  Whaddya reckon?  Would it help the first time buyer if they knew that they weren't going to take advantage of?  Let us know what you think - and about what you consider to be ethical standards that you'd like to see dealers adhere to.