Bizarre Bicycle Blogging
Posted 5 months ago 6 responses
Highly regarded cycle store Velorution has posted something bizarrely horrible and horribly bizarre on their widely-read Velorution cycling blog. It’s a hard to follow rant that seems to be slamming immigrant communities for driving badly and not understanding cyclists, also slamming the traffic police for being from the Essex suburbs and not doing enough for those on two wheels. Read More
6 responses
premiumThat confirms most of my suspicions about blogging in general, i.e. that it’s the written equivalent of an LBC phone-in. Aren’t there mods who, er, moderate that sort of ill-informed inflammatory claptrap? Or is it just a little flag-waving exercise by a group facing falling membership?
Not sure I care one way or the other, to be honest.
Posted 5 months ago by BraveNewMalden
Oh, Londonist. Tsk
there ends the that’s what you need to say part of the post
In my experience, and I understand that this is subjective and a narrow viewpoint (qualify, qualify, qualify), those with the least regards to the safety of cyclists (of which I have been one daily for a year now) and those with the worst attitude to the laws of the road do oddly, in the main, tend to be those of a different ethnic background to what I’d term, generally, for the purposes of sparking a bit of debate, ‘white’.
This may be for a variety of reasons. I can save some time by listing the most obvious standard responses: My own narrow minded mentality, the area in which I live, institutional racism, a limited sample size, intolerance, my own western white bias, etc. There’s a whole host of arguements to counter my observation. Or it could be the possibility that actually there are disproportionate number of new arrivals in London from other countries where the driving standards are lower than the UK and this is simply reflected on the roads. The gist of what he writes rings true – in my reality – although I don’t agree with the terminolgy that he uses to get his message across.
In fact, while I’m in this hole, I live in fear of black ladies of above a certain age who, generally in my experience – that key word again – seem to have the spacial capacity of a dead frog. I have no love for – generally – caucasian ‘White van man’ drivers who think nothing about cutting up someone on three poles of aluminium and two rubber tyres. I have a less than tender spot for young black men, who enjoy sharing their car’s music with the residents of Edinburgh as they drive down a street in South London. And I have little enthusiasm for taxi drivers from numerous nations that drive with one wheel in the cycle lane while asking me directions to where I want to go. Bless them all.
Now, it would be more interesting to see you actually look at the statistics and see if there is any truth in his comments, rather than solely jump on his terminology. That would be value added journalism and hopefully prove, usefully, that his, and my, reality is wrong.
Accuses self of racism and fucks off in boredom to White Supremacist stronghold
Posted 5 months ago by UncleGeorge
premiumBicylce
Oh my eyes.
Posted 5 months ago by CarmenM
premiumNever mind all that, Uncle George, what about the accusation that our beloved police officers hail from grits teeth Essex?
Posted 5 months ago by BraveNewMalden
While anti political correctness can be seen as a virtue in allowing valid debate in areas that have been seen as too sensitive, this blogger has taken it an excuse to use the kind of crass racist vernacular that wouldn’t be out of place in a Jim Davidson stand-up routine from the 70s. It effectively obliterates her argument which is valid, if of little real importance.
From my experience of the myriad of people who try and end my life on a near daily basis, from those too old to see over the steering wheel to brash young men in their Fuxton Minis, the ignorant, stupid or careless, the one defining factor is they are all bad drivers. From those people I could define a subset who are poor drivers because of lower standard of driver training that was required and that they undertook in the country of their birth. I would imagine many of the subset would come from less developed countries. I would not, however, conclude that the answer to road safety for cyclists is to “send the darkies back where they came from”.
Posted 5 months ago by middleofnowhere
premiumHats. It’s hats. People in hats cannot drive.
Posted 5 months ago by flippy
