It turns me off.

[reohn2]

You've missed the point again.

Have I?

You mean this?

Its simple, people don't like having a righteous drum banger by the side of their head!

If so, I think you'll find I both know that and I haven't...

Then perhaps if the drum is let roll down the hill we can both watch it disappear

[kwackers]

Actually R2 as a final footnote.

Have you ever wondered how many of societies problems exist simply because we won't be told? People won't be told it's bad to use their phone and drive. People won't be told throwing litter is bad etc etc. This thread amuses me for that very reason - the fact that we won't accept anything we consider 'preachy' - and 'preachy' is pretty much anything we're told that we either don't agree with or secretly know is right but refuse to accept for whatever reason and so are annoyed by the guilt we feel.

It's peoples reaction to 'preachy' that makes me laugh and makes this thread so amusing. Nobody died and yet - as you say 13 (now 14) pages...

[reohn2]

I'm a vegeterian,but I don't like being told that I have to be,I made that decision all by myself,and for my own reasons.

Now if the preacher had said there was only beans on toast on the menu, there wouldn't have been a problem.

PS Its my reaction to being preached at that prompted my replies.

[atoz]

It's all getting a bit heavy, all this. To be sure, there are some obsessive greens around, but I suspect they are outnumbered many times over by the Jeremy Clarkson fan club.

Seriously though, cycling can have a "holier than thou" image sometimes, at least on the campaigning side. Maybe we could do with a cycling show on TV in the style of Top Gear- Top Bike? Maybe get Vicki Pendleton and Wiggo as presenters, perhaps...

[kwackers]

It's all getting a bit heavy, all this. To be sure, there are some obsessive greens around, but I suspect they are outnumbered many times over by the Jeremy Clarkson fan club.

Seriously though, cycling can have a "holier than thou" image sometimes, at least on the campaigning side. Maybe we could do with a cycling show on TV in the style of Top Gear- Top Bike? Maybe get Vicki Pendleton and Wiggo as presenters, perhaps...

No point, it would appear most cyclists don't have a TV license ( http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=30675 ) preferring instead to download stuff for free - so you'd need someone to make it out of the goodness of their heart.

[CREPELLO]

Actually R2 as a final footnote.

Have you ever wondered how many of societies problems exist simply because we won't be told? People won't be told it's bad to use their phone and drive. People won't be told throwing litter is bad etc etc. This thread amuses me for that very reason - the fact that we won't accept anything we consider 'preachy' - and 'preachy' is pretty much anything we're told that we either don't agree with or secretly know is right but refuse to accept for whatever reason and so are annoyed by the guilt we feel.

It's peoples reaction to 'preachy' that makes me laugh and makes this thread so amusing. Nobody died and yet - as you say 13 (now 14) pages...

This is really what this thread boils down to (IMO) when we consider the reaction of people being told something they'd rather not hear. Or when their favourite choice is revealed to have some hidden consequence we'd rather not hear about. Whilst I dislike the notion of being 'ambushed' by somebody with an opinion seemingly out of context to the situation, the reaction that's generated 14 pages of reaction is instructive as to how people generally react to a their own behaviour or values being challenged.

We live in this so called democracy where everything we do is seen as a choice, or our right to choose something as long as it's not illegal. It's choice everywhere, from the million and one choices in the supermarket, the 1001 TV chanels on Sky, the NHS offering you your own preferred appointment time, choosing whether to take a holiday in Cornwall or fly to Thailand, we demand the choice to choose our preferred option, come what may. It is what the consumer democracy is all about.

So when some pesky environmentalist points out that, unfortunately, your preferred choice is hastening the collapse or degradation of ecosystems worldwide, we feel affronted that somebody could suggest that we (me, you) are being destructive in our behaviour. And so we have the reaction that we've seen here. And this is the enormous obstacle that societies the world over have to overcome if we are going to transform our world into a sustainable one. It's what the politicians at Copenhagen are seeking agreement on, because their decisions will affect the potential choices we have on offer. If we had the real deal fully signed that would curb carbon emissions to stop run-away climate change, the implications for what you or I have to choose from would be drastically challenged.

So I will just add this. Even if we get affronted by the idea of a vegan sermonizing at a cycling conference, if somebody somewhere doesn't confront our choices and it doesn't seem like it will be politicians, then the 'market' definitely will. Why do you think food prices have shot up so drastically over the last few years? Or Shimano components? Of course, this is a cycling forum, so I'll make it topical .




It's the environmentalist's perenial

[Ru88ell]

It all got far too deep and meaningful for me. Sorry.

I guess my mail point was that we can get people to make sustainable transport choices, but we have to do it without demanding it, and without politics. As soon as we start preaching to people they turn off. Make it feel normal, because normal people do it, and numbers cycling will increase. Tell them they must, and that they should stop eating meat at the same time, and you can kiss the whole cycling growth goodbye.

As for these Copenhagen things, they don't inspire me either. Perhaps if it was all done via 'Telepresence' I'd change my mind - but at the moment it all looks like a bit of a junket that will create more travel based C02 than I, or my family and all of our friends and their friends will in all our lifetimes. The time to believe is when politicians start leading from the front.

[George Riches]

It's been written before, but I'll write it again.

It's a good idea to taylor your message to your audience. To individuals cycling is good because
- it's economical
- it's good for your health
- it gives you freedom (at least for those too young or poor to drive)

To government, when trying to get them to keep up spending on cycling, say things like
- it's good for public health (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression...)
- it's good for air quality (no nitrous oxides etc)
- it helps with climate change (very low CO2 per km)
- it makes good use of roads (a lane can take 7 times as many cyclists per hour as car occupants)
- it's quiet (noise polution is nasty for people living near main roads)
- it's safer for non users (buses, cars, lorries etc kill far more non-users per km)
- it leads to a pleasanter visual environment than motoring (compare planters and trees to asphalt & ugly heaps of garishly coloured steel littering the streetscape)
- it's good for reducing inequalities in access to transport (Many people are too infirm, young or poor to driveI

[glueman]

Riding a bike is not the opposite to driving a car. There is nothing about the bicycle that is political, it has been used by naked body painted counter-culturalists in demonstrations and the Japanese imperial army for jungle warfare. A bike is what it is, its ideological credentials are a construction. There's nothing inately green about a bike and some manufacturing processes are highly toxic but they increasingly happen far overseas. Try living next door to a large aluminium plant.

I bristle at cycling and cyclists being associated with any movement of whatever colour because all seek to harness and diminish the bike's potential as a vehicle and label its users. Telling someone they'll like Vegan food because they ride a bike is as logical as saying they'll like cats or the colour orange, the links are an artifice that exist in the speaker's mind.

[johncharles]

Mostly everyone, obviously some people will be upset there if there are no carrots or broccoli; but for 99% it's completely edible, doesn't offend principles, is healthier and represents a common ground. For those that eat nothing but meat it could even be the start of a brave new world.


So it is 100% fact that they are healthier

Why do you need something that 'possibly' may taste like bacon if you are vegan, are you unsure of the so called benefits that you need them.

[Flinders]

At a cycling meeting, I'd expect to be told about the green benefits of cycling, as well as other benefits (and disadvantages, but can't think of any of those.... )
At a food conference I'd expect to be told about the benefits and disadvantages (and they all have both)of different diets.
At either conference run by considerate organisers, I'd expect a range of foods, veggie, vegan, and meat, to be served.

I don't like being told what to do about what I eat when I'm not at a meeting about food. It would turn me right off. The nagging I've had recently about food in non-food places has not made me eat any less meat, as the arguments are smug and half-baked most of the time and take no account of my particular health needs. It's got so bad that I even have to resist the urge to go out and eat a pound of raw liver every time people start on about it. How, if I was considering cycling for the first time, would linking veganism to cycling get me interested in cycling? How about if someone had got up at this conference and said you need to eat meat to get enough protein to cycle? That would have be no more justifiable. Vegan food, or fruit, is not by definition any lower in CO2 than meat- it all depends on food miles, etc. Sorry if people don't like that, but it is true.

[johncharles]

If it bothers you that much I'd suggest carrying bacon sprinklies with you so that next time you find yourself offended by the lack of meat in your food you can sprinkle some on the top, alternatively simply ring up, ask if there's meat on the menu and if not then vote with your feet and don't attend - they'll get the message if enough do it.

Except Bacon Sprinklies are actually made of Textured Soy Protein, so are Vegan.

The answer is in their title by the way.

'bacon flavour' not bacon bits.

[Flinders]

(example- my meat, farm down road, 2 miles, can see stock in fields, looks healthy and happy, grass-fed (usually all year). Abbatoir (also butcher from whom I buy the meat) three miles away. My veg and fruit, allotment, end of street, or garden, ten paces. No supermarket, no motorway full of lorry. Local milk. Do I have more food miles or less than those who buy veg imported from Europe or even beyond?

[kwackers]

Mostly everyone, obviously some people will be upset there if there are no carrots or broccoli; but for 99% it's completely edible, doesn't offend principles, is healthier and represents a common ground. For those that eat nothing but meat it could even be the start of a brave new world.

So it is 100% fact that they are healthier

Wondered where you'd gone.

Than meat? Yep, unless you have some physiological aversion to them. That's not my opinion by the way - feel free to write to your health professionals if you disagree.

Why do you need something that 'possibly' may taste like bacon if you are vegan, are you unsure of the so called benefits that you need them.

For someone who gets all uppity that people make assumptions, you've assume a lot in that sentence.
I never said I was a vegan and I never said I had any sprinklies or even that I'd ever tasted them.

(I'm not and I haven't)

[Flinders]

A diet has to be balanced and provide everything the body needs. So long as it does that, and doesn't include too much of anything (fat, or even fibre, as too much of anything isn't good for you) and it isn't contaminated it doesn't matter a hoot what the source is as far as your body is concerned. The more variety in a diet the better, in general.

Some diets make it more difficult to obtain some things- too little dairy, and you have to be careful about sourcing enough calcium, and hello osteoporosis, too little veg, and you have to be careful about sourcing enough fibre...of course you can get round all of this, but you have to work at it.

An omnivorous diet is just as healthy as any other if it is done properly, and a veggie or vegan or fruitie one can be an utter disaster if it isn't (especially for older people and males). Ancient veg that's been hanging around in the distribution chain for days or weeks on boats/planes/lorries and in warehouses will have lost some of the Good Things in it, it isn't just an air miles issue.

For what it is worth, I don't eat huge amounts of meat, white or red, but I don't think any diet has the moral high ground when you consider everything. If we want to be nice to the planet, we should stop breeding more people. That's the only thing that stands much chance of working.