Is this forum unrepresentative?

[francovendee]

The Brexit thread has been active since Sept 2016 and in that time I'm pretty sure the majority of posts have been from people who voted to remain.
This means,

A few very prolific remain posters who'll not stop.

Leave voters got fed up and stopped posting ( with one or two notable exceptions, you know who you are! )

Or this forum for cyclists is out of wack with the rest of the country.

I'd be very interested in other views.

I see the moderator has closed the thread and I don't want to the same old arguments about brexit to start up again.

[Bonefishblues]

Yes.

[Mick F]

Yep.

The political stuff has taken over the asylum.

[pwa]

On that particular issue, yes it is slanted more in one direction than is society as a whole. But internet discussion sites are like that. Like-minded people gravitate towards each other then reinforce their views. It is the job of awkward sods like me to disrupt the pattern.

[iandriver]

Well it's mostly men, so yes. Apparently you are more likely to cycle if you are wealthy. That's what all this campaigning is about. Building infrastructure for 8 to 80 and more, regardless of gender, race or ability.

[francovendee]

On that particular issue, yes it is slanted more in one direction more than society as a whole. But internet discussion sites are like that. Like-minded people gravitate towards each other then reinforce their views. It is the job of awkward sods like me to disrupt the pattern.

I think you've got something there.

I'm glad for awkward sods like you it often offers a point of view I'd not considered
It's always a shame if the discussion gets rude and personal.

[Carlton green]

The Brexit thread has been active since Sept 2016 and in that time I'm pretty sure the majority of posts have been from people who voted to remain.
This means,

A few very prolific remain posters who'll not stop.

Leave voters got fed up and stopped posting ( with one or two notable exceptions, you know who you are! )

Or this forum for cyclists is out of wack with the rest of the country.

I'd be very interested in other views.

I see the moderator has closed the thread and I don't want to the same old arguments about brexit to start up again.

IMHO it was right for the thread to close and we really don’t need or want to go back to all the Brexit arguments (I find the whole thing poisonous).

It seemed to me that remainers here were vocal beyond their true numbers and not at all concerned with the views of anybody but themselves. Personally I find such people tiresome and regardless of remain or leave stances the referendum produced a result and bleating about it is counter democratic. As far as I’m concerned the issue now is get on and make the referendum result work for the U.K. , and I’d have thought that regardless of the result.

Are folk on here out of whack with rest of the country? My suspicion is yes, folk here tend to be left of centre yet the electorate is not.

[gbnz]

Or this forum for cyclists is out of wack with the rest of the country..

That's pretty much a given fact

[Bonefishblues]

On that particular issue, yes it is slanted more in one direction more than society as a whole. But internet discussion sites are like that. Like-minded people gravitate towards each other then reinforce their views. It is the job of awkward sods like me to disrupt the pattern.

I think you've got something there.

I'm glad for awkward sods like you it often offers a point of view I'd not considered
It's always a shame if the discussion gets rude and personal.

I prefer the term 'contrarian' - so much more elegant

Although tbh I now think quite hard before expressing such an opinion because tbh I can't be bothered with the pettiness and low-level abuse (from a very small number of individuals) that sometimes results. That's completely different to robust argument btw, which is hugely enjoyable, and from which I've learned much.

Someone recently described the Forum as an 'echo chamber'. I think that should give us pause for thought.

[Mick F]

............... folk here tend to be left of centre yet the electorate is not.

Having had many of us over the years do the Political Compass test, we all seem to be left liberals.

Have another go at it ......... if anyone hasn't done it yet.
I'm very much like Ghandi as are most of we CTC forumites ................. even though I'm very much a supporter of brexit.

https://www.politicalcompass.org/test

[reohn2]

........Although tbh I now think quite hard before expressing such an opinion because tbh I can't be bothered with the pettiness and low-level abuse (from a very small number of individuals) that sometimes results. That's completely different to robust argument.........

I agree,there are those who like to wind up other forum members for their own entertainment and not for any other reason,I've come very close to leaving the forum a number of times because of such behaviour which has become a real nuisance at times.

[661-Pete]

Yes of course this forum is unrepresentative. Did anyone seriously suppose otherwise?

Although the forum has over 21,000 members, only a handful of us are actually active, especially in the Tea Shop. We are not a statistically significant sample. And there's bound to be a liberal/left-wing bias amongst those who are committed cyclists (as most of us are, I guess), or who campaign for the promotion of cycling. Yes I know there are exceptions!

Maybe some of us are 'lefties', even! I don't mind being labelled with the word: I don't regard it as an insult; rather, a compliment. I had the word thrown at me often enough in my student days!

Yesterday we hosted our U3A 'French Conversation' group, which consists of nine people, all of us relatively 'senior'. And unsurprisingly, each one of us, to a man or woman, is utterly pro-Remain. After all we have strong Francophile beliefs. But I'm not going to claim that our group is 'representative' in any way.

But neither are the vox pops which the BBC and other media love to present to us. Once again, a tiny sample of the electorate.

Nevertheless, amongst the electorate at large, if current opinion polls are to believed (I know the Leavers will protest to the contrary!), there is, and has been for a long time, an apparent majority in favour of Remain. Those polls may all be wrong, of course, but they have been carefully sampled and analysed.

The GE result, of course, proves nothing - when only some 45% voted for pro-Leave parties...

[100%JR]

I see the moderator has closed the thread and I don't want to the same old arguments about brexit to start up again.

Locked two threads in as many days.......not sure about unrepresentative but it's definitely over-moderated
Mods are supposed to be impartial.Unfortunately they seem to be too far up their own backsides on here and if they don't like the way a thread is going they see fit to lock anything they don't like.
This is what happens when people are given power beyond their capabilities

[Bonefishblues]

I think that your view is unrepresentative.

[100%JR]

I think that your view is unrepresentative.

I don't really care what you think.