"Why is the right at war with cyclists?... "

[Jdsk]

"Why is the right at war with cyclists? We’re not ‘wokerati’ – we’re just trying to get around":
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... get-around

Jonathan

[MikeF]

Most of those who have opinions on what cyclists should or shouldn't be doing are "armchair cyclists" sitting effortlessly coccooned in a metal box and who have never ridden a bike on the road.

[a.twiddler]

And so it goes round. If your preferred government is failing to deal with the real problems, its apologists and supporters and those on the fringes and just plain opportunists just find a minority that encapsulates the things that they resent and attribute society's ills to them.

Climate change? Traffic congestion and pollution? LTNs? NHS shortages? Local council funding shortfalls? Food banks? Distract, divert, divide. Cyclists are convenient at the moment, along with asylum seekers, immigrants both legal and illegal who all get lumped together. Don't dare to be neurodiverse, sexually different from the norm, from an ethnic minority, differently abled, unusually tall, short, or ginger haired. Above all don't dare to stand up for your rights, you'll be labelled as a trouble maker. It's got all the sophistication of the school playground, bashing those who are identifiably different from the herd to distract from the failure of those who supposedly, aren't.

It's an old old technique, yet people still seem to fall for it. It's not just cyclists getting "othered".

[Airsporter1st]

I would hazard a guess that the author of that piece lives in or around London, where the majority of cyclists, especially commuters and delivery riders, seem to behave in such a way as to invite the negativity.

[roubaixtuesday]

I would hazard a guess that the author of that piece lives in or around London, where the majority of cyclists, especially commuters and delivery riders, seem to behave in such a way as to invite the negativity.

I'm in the North and any post on the local Facebook remotely related to roads immediately attracts random cyclist haters.

This in a town where in 25 years I've never once been even slightly inconvenienced by a cyclist.

[Nearholmer]

A. Twiddler has hit the nail bang on the head, and if you think that the othering and hate that we see on the surface now in the UK is bad, just dip down into bottom half of the internet, and look at what flows out of a combination of the US far right, and European (including Russian and formerly Ukrainian) movements that are effectively nazi-revivalists.

There is some genuinely, deeply disturbing/chilling stuff out there. I saw something yesterday which advocated burning transgender people in ovens, and it was attracting comment after comment in support, for instance.

There is organisation and money behind a lot of this stuff too, state actors using it for destabilisation purposes, commercially motivated big business using it as a tool in the pushback against legislation aimed at tackling climate change etc, as well as rich loonies doing it out of twisted ideology. Then there is Musk, running an on-line publishing house for this stuff in the name of free speech.

So, a large slice of the current government decided that the best way to engage with it all is not to challenge it head-on, but to become fellow-travellers, in the deluded belief that they will benefit from it at the ballot box. In so doing, they’ve invited the devil into our collective parlour. At the moment, only professional spooks, and strangely enough Michael Gove, seem to get how dangerous it is.

As cyclists, we simply find ourselves in the crosshairs in a small way.

Where this all goes, I don’t know, but I see no organised opposition to it, either from “the guardians of democracy and peace” that we elect, or at the sort of “street fighting” level that I recall from the 1970s and early 1980s when the enemy was the NF, which in retrospect looks like a baby outfit compared with the forces of darkness at play now.

[Carlton green]

A. Twiddler has hit the nail bang on the head, and if you think that the othering and hate that we see on the surface now in the UK is bad, just dip down into bottom half of the internet, and look at what flows out of a combination of the US far right, and European (including Russian and formerly Ukrainian) movements that are effectively nazi-revivalists.

There is some genuinely, deeply disturbing/chilling stuff out there. I saw something yesterday which advocated burning transgender people in ovens, and it was attracting comment after comment in support, for instance.

There is organisation and money behind a lot of this stuff too, state actors using it for destabilisation purposes, commercially motivated big business using it as a tool in the pushback against legislation aimed at tackling climate change etc, as well as rich loonies doing it out of twisted ideology. Then there is Musk, running an on-line publishing house for this stuff in the name of free speech.

So, a large slice of the current government decided that the best way to engage with it all is not to challenge it head-on, but to become fellow-travellers, in the deluded belief that they will benefit from it at the ballot box. In so doing, they’ve invited the devil into our collective parlour. At the moment, only professional spooks, and strangely enough Michael Gove, seem to get how dangerous it is.

As cyclists, we simply find ourselves in the crosshairs in a small way.

Where this all goes, I don’t know, but I see no organised opposition to it, either from “the guardians of democracy and peace” that we elect, or at the sort of “street fighting” level that I recall from the 1970s and early 1980s when the enemy was the NF, which in retrospect looks like a baby outfit compared with the forces of darkness at play now.

Yep, that’s the bigger picture - or certainly part of it. We should all be very concerned but, being stupid, we’re not. The Ministry of Defence is majorly out of date and we with it if we don’t understand that our country is under hidden attack.

Gove, he’s not liked and of limited ability, but he’s still worth (critically) listening to. Even folk we don’t like sometimes say useful things.

[axel_knutt]

Above all don't dare to stand up for your rights, you'll be labelled as a trouble maker.

Really? You don't say.

It's got all the sophistication of the school playground, bashing those who are identifiably different from the herd to distract from the failure of those who supposedly, aren't.

It's an old old technique, yet people still seem to fall for it. It's not just cyclists getting "othered".

Indeed.

[axel_knutt]

"Why is the right at war with cyclists? We’re not ‘wokerati’ – we’re just trying to get around":
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... get-around

Jonathan

It's not about cyclists, it's motorists. Here's how they react when they're held up by road works. I recall a similar article about tractor drivers not so long ago.

[cycle tramp]

There is some genuinely, deeply disturbing/chilling stuff out there. I saw something yesterday which advocated burning transgender people in ovens, and it was attracting comment after comment in support, for instance.

As cyclists, we simply find ourselves in the crosshairs in a small way.

Where this all goes, I don’t know, but I see no organised opposition to it, either from “the guardians of democracy and peace” that we elect, or at the sort of “street fighting” level that I recall from the 1970s and early 1980s when the enemy was the NF, which in retrospect looks like a baby outfit compared with the forces of darkness at play now.

Good lord, that's terrible- as if transgender people don't have enough confusion and mental angst in their lives, they have to put up with that sort of thing...

..apart from the ctc and other organisations does there have to be an opposition to it? After all, mass car movement is self defeating - there comes a point where the road network simply will not accommodate any more cars, either parked or moving....

..anyway - perhaps the greatest argument we have, is for more people to cycle, to enjoy it and do it more often. People are very jealous of other people having more fun than them (perhaps it's the reason why the LGBT community gets targeted so often - a sense that their lives are just more happier than those who seek to oppress them). Sometimes people get so jealous they go out and have ago at it themselves, like cycling....

In lots of ways I do wonder if the whole angry thing is in part the acknowledgement that they have lost the argument. That the next generation could have much more freedom than this generation has, and it scares the hell out of them.

[Carlton green]

"Why is the right at war with cyclists? We’re not ‘wokerati’ – we’re just trying to get around":
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... get-around

Jonathan

It's not about cyclists, it's motorists. Here's how they react when they're held up by road works. I recall a similar article about tractor drivers not so long ago.

As ever, and in all activities, including cycling, there’s a small percentage of: nutters; misguided; and desperate people. Such folk shouldn’t be labelled as motorists, well certainly not regarded in anyways as representative of motorists, but as part of some dysfunctional group.

[Nearholmer]

..apart from the ctc and other organisations does there have to be an opposition to it?

To the seemingly inexorable rise of hatred and othering across society, yes, because if it continues unchecked, there will be a repeat of the horrors perpetrated by the nazis, on a much larger scale.

And, it needs something a lot more influential than a touring cycling lobby body to achieve that.

[cycle tramp]

Still one of my favourite quotes;

Some people think that a great power is needed to keep evil in check. That is not what I have found. I have found its the small every day deeds of ordinary folk which keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of love and kindness.

[Nearholmer]

Can only help, but I’m utterly unconvinced that being nice to one another at an individual level can overcome the deluge of hate-provoking poison that is being directed at our society from several directions. Those who take it on board, which is to say far too many, need to see that people who don’t share their warped outlook exist not only as isolated individuals, but a collective, and collectivity gives individuals the secure base from which to operate to “call out” injustice and hatred when they encounter it. The “great power” is collectivity.

[simonineaston]

I’m sure it should be possible to weight the two groups using some sort of scoring method, that takes everything into account to produce an overall Goodness Score you know, concrete things like damage to road infrastructure, cost to NHS, carbon footprint, days benefitting employers due to fitness and well-being - all the metrics we’ve read about over the years, as well as things harder to measure, like happiness and positivity.
And we all know that the poor old motorist will score very badly indeed with the exception of a handful of measures, such as contributing to gdp due to millions of pounds of vehicle sales, keeping the finance industry afloat on account of ditto and maybe, just maybe, range of individual journies - potentially hundreds of miles per journey, roadworks allowing .
So perhaps they hate us so ‘cos they are sore losers?