Social Integration

[Nearholmer]

Who are these community leaders we need to submit our cycling plans to for approval?

Classic example of reading some words that say one thing, and filtering them through preconceptions to make them say something completely different. It’s says “collaborate”, meaning “work with”; it says nothing about seeking approval.

It’s a list of good recommendations for things for groups to do if they wish to increase participation in cycling, which most cycling groups seem to want to do, no more, no less.

That it seems to upset, threaten, or otherwise ruffle the feathers of, some says a great deal
more about the some than the list.

Maybe Alyrpal hits the key point: it’s modern, and it’s well known that a few people really struggle with anything modern.

[slowster]

When I first joined the CTC everyone was welcome

That is not something which can always be relied upon to happen naturally. Hence the need for clubs to have rules and guidelines.

[al_yrpal]

Yes, us oldsters that understand good manners, we dont need babywipes.

I can just imagine it at Guildford, a load of snowflakes meeting once a week to discuss crap like this. Covering their rses and being seen to do something.

Oh how our society is deteriorating day by day! Sad...

Al

[mjr]

Always strange when it's the thin-skinned objectors melting and making puddles over what other people do that label others as "snowflakes"! But anyway...

Maybe Al hits the key point: it’s modern, and it’s well known that a few people really struggle with anything modern.

Yet some of the people who are loudest against Artificial Incompetence (AI, as large language models LLMs are predictive models, not reasoning/intelligence) are those with a long history of working enthusiastically with IT, the internet and other modern technologies. It's rubbish because it doesn't do what it's being sold to do, not because it's modern. Much of it appears to be an investment scam, a bubble, a new tulip mania.

[Nearholmer]

I’ve amended to make clear that I was referring to Al, rather than Al.

[al_yrpal]

Maybe Alyrpal hits the key point: it’s modern, and it’s well known that a few people really struggle with anything modern.

The reason a lot of us struggle with it because often modern is seen as ridiculous.

I went to my grandsons school on an open day and before you got in you had to put things into a device on the wall. Anybody could put in anything they wanted to! Then you got admitted.

Apparently its something called 'safeguarding'. As far as I could see it wasnt safeguarding anything?

Everywhere seems to be cluttered with stupid rules that dont do anything except create non jobs and unecessary expense.

Back in the day, all CTC rides followed a simple pattern. Everyone understood and complied with a few simple rules. Now it looks like the nanny state has arrived which is one of the reason so many of us left.

Al

[slowster]

My experience was that it was a small but significant minority of the older members of the club who behaved badly. Their potential impact was counter-balanced by the rest of their age group, and more importantly by the older members in senior positions in the club who kept bad behaviour in check and stopped the rot spreading. The younger members tended to watch their Ps and Qs.

It is only with hindsight that I appreciate the work put in by those older club members in positions of authority to make and keep the club what it was.

The small number of badly behaved older riders mostly learned to watch their behaviour. The odd one or two could not abide by the club rules on behaviour, and they left. That was their loss and to the rest of the club's benefit.

[mjr]

The reason a lot of us struggle with it because often modern is seen as ridiculous.

I went to my grandsons school on an open day and before you got in you had to put things into a device on the wall. Anybody could put in anything they wanted to! Then you got admitted.

Apparently its something called 'safeguarding'. As far as I could see it wasnt safeguarding anything?

That's not ridiculous because it's modern. That's ridiculous because it's broken.

Safeguarding isn't ridiculous because of that, because that's not safeguarding.

Modernity isn't ridiculous because of that, because that sort of brokenness was also around long ago. It was just much more difficult for ordinary members of the public to tell many people.

Similarly, we now see many more complaints about fossilised organisations that claim to be open to all and claim the tax, grant and other benefits given to public good works, but are really rather hostile to newcomers.

[Nearholmer]

The reason a lot of us struggle with it because often modern is seen as ridiculous.

Some of it is, but a lot of not-modern was ridiculous too, some of it toxically so, which in some cases is why it got modernised. To be blunt about your instance, safeguarding was “modernised” because not-modern gave free rein to scoutmasters, choirmasters, priests, and sundry others to prey on the innocent.

No, the reason we struggle with modern is because we aren’t used to it, it’s new, it’s different, it requires fresh learning, and some individuals are better/worse at all that than others, but, taken as a whole rather than individually, the general trend is that the older people get, the more they struggle with it.

[rareposter]

It’s a list of good recommendations for things for groups to do if they wish to increase participation in cycling, which most cycling groups seem to want to do, no more, no less.

This! ^^

Here's an analogy for the hard of thinking...

You are invited to a social event - birthday party, wedding, dinner party, whatever. You only really know the host and maybe one or two others.

Scenario 1: you arrive, the host gives you a drink and then leaves you to your own devices. Other people are already in their own little groups, they all know each other, conversation is quite difficult to break into as it's all friends chatting.

Scenario 2: you arrive, the host gives you a drink then introduces you to various people, you get chatting, find some common interests, you're made part of the conversation.

In both those scenarios, you've been "welcomed" (invited, fed, watered, no-one has been rude to you) but only in the latter example have you actually been made welcome.

I'm sure you can work out how that translates to a cycle club and a group ride...

[rareposter]

Almost right on cue is this article in Cycling Weekly. Not all about clubs although it does reference exactly the behaviour that the guidelines the OP pasted seek to address:

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/i-fe ... onto-bikes

And there's a second, related, article more about Sportives and semi-competitive events failing to address gender parity:

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/one- ... ale-riders

[Bmblbzzz]

Interesting that this topic very quickly got on to discussion of group riding etiquette and skills. I didn't see that as the OP's intention at all. Nor is it about being coercion or the nanny state. It's about seeing people you can relate to.

Rareposter's analogy just up there is a good one. There's a difference between being "welcoming" and being "inclusive". Inclusivity is an action not just a reaction. The problem with quite a lot of cycling groups is they tend to be dominated by one demographic; typically younger white men, in the case of racing type groups, and older white men in the case of more leisurely groups like CUK. This doesn't mean the groups are unwelcoming to any women, ethnic minorities or people at the wrong end of the age spectrum, who turn up – that would be very rare. It does mean that those people turn up, have a look, see no one they can relate to, no one who (sometimes literally) "looks like them" and they go away again or don't come back.

Of course there's nothing wrong in a group explicitly describing itself as for eg men over 55 or black women under 30 or those who've completed a 25-mile TT at evens in the last 12 months, or anything else. But CUK doesn't do that – and that's one reason the mag seems to go out of its way (sometimes at least) to show photos of those minorities (women etc).