As someone living in London and travelling to The Netherlands on a regular basis (intending to migrate), I have to say, pretty much everything from public transport to supermarket design seems of a much, much higher standard than its British equivalent.
Further to that, it generally feels as though the UK is a country massively in decline and this transcends down to the quality of goods which we pass as acceptable.
The bar of quality seems to have exponentially lowered over the past decade and the effects of such are now rearing their head in our day to day life.
I was born in England, live in London, have a Dutch partner, and also travel to the Netherlands often enough. I agree completely. They have their problems too (from the political to having to tap out on buses), but the overall level of quality and care seems rather higher. The sense of decline and disengagement is strong too. Difficult to say much objective about that (though keep an eye on the turnout in the upcoming general election), but I see it from all political persuasions.
Yeah I agree that it is hard to be entirely objective on something as subjective as sense of decline — lord knows I’ve spoken to Dutch natives whom hold an opinion that the country is ‘not what it used to be’. I do get a feel that people, generally, seem less embroiled in a race to the bottom than we do in the UK.
It feels that people in UK have been ground down to a point of ‘ah well, it’s all f*cked and always will be now’ and, as such, people accept things like a £5k bicycle failing multiple times within 2 years.
> Further to that, it generally feels as though the UK is a country massively in decline
To a large extent it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People expect decline so it happens. It has been happening for a long time - back to the 1960s or so when the UK became the only only country ever (still true) to have a space launch capability and lose it.
That said, IMO the causes of this are widespread across the west. It is evident in the US, and the drift away from competitive free markets, the rise of culture war politics, short termism is business and politics, naivety about the rest of the world (disastrously reflected in foreign policy - Russia being the obvious example) and so on seem to be spreading.
> drift away from competitive free markets, the rise of culture war politics, short termism is business and politics, naivety about the rest of the world (disastrously reflected in foreign policy - Russia being the obvious example) and so on seem to be spreading.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. Especially the naivety about the rest of the world. As someone whom travels to India regularly (my family are there) I have to say, people have no clue about the rate of change happening over there.
In an extremely short space of time (I want to say at most a couple years) I’ve seen what used to be an all day journey from Delhi to Meerut be cut down to a couple hour bus trip through the building of the Delhi - Meerut expressway.
I’ve seen the Delhi metro continue to expand its reach and new expressways begging building (in our home city of Batala a new motorway was recently started to take us to Delhi directly)
Meanwhile the M25 continues to be a massive pothole with indefinite road works that never seem to complete
The west (admittedly this not only a flaw of the west) tends to think its cultural norms, identities and values are human universals.
There is also a tendency to think that the golden age of peace and prosperity the west enjoyed after the end of the cold war is the rather than the exception - it even lead to silly ideas like "the end of history".
Different bike brands, but the same motor is very common in NL as well. Never heard a lot of failures and e-bikes are absolutely everywhere.
One factor may be that in most of the UK biking is done on the road mixed with cars which may have more oil, sooth or other things in the water that gets on the bike, compared to dedicated bike lanes in the Netherlands. A lot of those lanes here aren't just a part of the same road, they're a few meters away from the road.
Another factor may be that there is more of a longer term bike culture, so more people know about simple bike maintenance (spray the chain etc) or have a bike shop around the corner.
You may nog hear it a lot because it's mostly warranty issues and consumer protection is pretty good here so with most issues it'll be handled quickly and under warranty.
I've had pretty much my entire electric drive system replaced under warranty with my first electric bike (admittedly I rode a _lot_ of km with that one.) Then on the second it's been in the shop at least once a month for ~1.5 years. Sure it was all covered by warranty but the amount of hassle did make me reconsider and go back to a regular bike.
Well road condition can do a lot. Most of water that ingress into bike parts do not usually come from the rain directly but being sprayed by the wheels. So in theory well made/designed bike paths shouldn't induce as much dirty water spray as badly maintained roads full of puddles.
Cube is not a very popular brand of ebikes in the Netherlands as far as I'm aware. Definitely not for city bicycles. Gazelle, Batavus, Cortina, Vogue, Azor, but Cube? Not so much.
The bike brand doesn't really matter, the brand of the electrical motor system matters. There are 3 big leaders: Bosch and Shimano on the high end, Bafang on the low end with Brose, Yamaha and a handful of other smaller brands occupying a much smaller fraction of the market.
It does matter since different brands may offer different levels of weather protection. Typically only Dutch bicycle makers care about things like proper mudguards and chain guards, for example. And some, like Azor go crazy and test their parts in a rust chamber.
And, for example, the Cube bicycle as depicted in the article, is clearly not designed to be used in rainy weather. Who knows what else shortcuts they took?
> Typically only Dutch bicycle makers care about things like proper mudguards and chain guards, for example.
That is not true.
It is about class of bikes, not brands. Sure there are brands such as Gazelle who focus pretty much on those characteristics only but there are other brands doing the same all over the world alongside more racy models.
> And, for example, the Cube bicycle as depicted in the article, is clearly not designed to be used in rainy weather
The bike depicted is a mountain bike, so no it hasn't be designed with fender in mind but that doesn't mean Cube or any other non-dutch brand doesn't produce city/trekking/touring bikes.
Having said that, I would expect a mountain bike to be built to survive wet and muddy conditions.
I would say shop culture as well as buyer cultures. A lot of shops in non cycling friendly areas just only keep stock of high margin high end road bikes and MTBs. So it may very well be that the guy in the article photo didn't knew much about bike and was sold an e-MTB because that was what was available and it looked good and unlike those bikes used by grannies and only installed fenders as a second thoughts later when he came back from a commute totally soaked.
They do have a lot of nice trekking models with upright geometry, full mudguards, rack and lights that can be used as a city bike though. Just not so many models with step through frames, aka "Dutch" bicycles.
I don't mean "Dutch" but actually bicycles built for the Dutch market, mostly by Dutch companies. And that means, among other things, bicycles that are excessively robust to avoid regular trips to service, and are built to live outside in the unpredictable and rainy Dutch weather. Cube doesn't come close to even cheaper Dutch brands. Also Cube bicycles are a maintainability nightmare with a lot of incompatible and proprietary parts.
