BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

As expected, Edinburgh locals have decided to vote against c-charging. Edinburgh's newspapers were against congestion charging and came up with constant Daily Mail type news stories about property price hikes, of the type often parodied in Private Eye.

A server upgrade will be taking place from 9.15am tomorrow and will take most of the day. The whole of this site will be down so if you wish to research any archived subjects, find companies using the online BikeBizBible or scope the job ads, do so tonight or early tomorrow morning. Many other UK bike websites will also be displaying just holding pages tomorrow because we all share a single webmaster, the shy and unassuming Si Watts.

At 11.30am the results of a postal ballot will be revealed in Edinburgh. 290 000 residents were asked whether they wanted to see a £2 charge for motorists to enter the city centre. 60 percent have voted, most are believed to have said 'No' to "another sneaky new Labour tax." In London, where c-charging has been an overwhelming success at reducing motorised traffic, the scheme was not put to a public vote but pushed through by a politician with balls.

The Canadian International Trade Tribunal (CITT) has received a complaint from the Canadian Bicycle Manufacturers' Association (CBMA) requesting a “global safeguard action” covering imports of bicycles. The action is likely aimed at imports of Chinese bicycles but the complaint cites bike imports "regardless of price or country of origin."

Shimano's has released its consolidated financials for fiscal 2004. The company made an after-tax profit of 143m Euros, a sizeable increase over the 90m Euros made in 2003 and the 60m Euros made in 2002.