A serving of anti-cyclist pissy pants remarks from the UK, although the ensuing comments are worth clicking the link.
License those pesky cyclists *and* bring back school uniforms? Hrrmmm the morning commute & BR's could get kinda interesting
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Think bike? Think of the tax, Gordon
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/06/22/do2203.xml
Wednesday, 9.25am, I am in my car, about to turn into the quaintly named Fish Street Hill in the City of London. The traffic lights are green, I move forward. As I start to turn, a cyclist shoots across my path. I swerve, he swerves; I hoot, he makes an obscene gesture and then speeds off - clad in Lycra and self-righteousness. Naturally, he is cycling on the pavement - best be safe, eh?
If I had killed or seriously injured this buffoon, I might have ended up in court. No doubt I would have received a letter from one of those personal injury lawyers who hector us on afternoon television ("Been involved in an accident - and it's Not Your Fault?"), and no doubt my insurance company would feebly pay up, because it's easier than going to all the bother of a civil court case.
Perhaps because it is summer, perhaps because we are in the middle of yet another witless government-inspired "initiative" - Bike Week - there are more cyclists on the road than ever. Indeed, according to Transport for London, the number of cycle journeys in the capital has doubled in the past five years. But as the numbers of cyclists have grown, so has their arrogance.
The self-centredness of metropolitan cyclists is all too familiar: every day you see them blithely breaking the law - riding the wrong way up one-way streets, ignoring red lights, failing to stop at zebra crossings, cycling on pavements and then snarling when small children impede their progress - or just being pigs - silently cycling up behind old ladies and nearly giving them a heart attack, blowing whistles to ensure that you get out of their way, holding mass bike demos, so we all realise just how amazingly eco-friendly they are.
For it is their Green credentials that make cyclists so unspeakably smug. They are saving the planet, so the thinking goes. Therefore, to say you hate cyclists is to say you approve of clubbing seals or wearing a leopardskin coat.
The thing is, I enjoy cycling and do commute by bike in summer, a journey of seven miles from home to office and back, as it happens, so I know what I am talking about. I agree that there should be more designated cycle lanes - not just the foot-wide gutters strewn with broken glass that pass for cycle lanes in much of London. I think more traffic lights should have bike-only green lights, to allow cyclists to move off before cars, that the parks should be opened up to allow more cyclists, that potholes in the roads should be repaired.
But in return, cyclists have to realise that they are part of the road-using "community", as they would put it, and accept that just because they are not contributing to global warming, that does not give them the right to flout the law. The radical, if impractical, solution would be to license all bicycles, to give them registration numbers like cars and to require all cyclists to have third-party insurance.
Given this Government's propensity to find new and innovative ways to take our money, I am astonished no one has thought of it before.
Forty years after school uniforms were abolished in France, French politicians want to bring them back.
Well, jolly good thing, too. I approve. Even though I never fitted the skirt my mother bought for me to "grow into" when I was 11, and some rough girls on the bus pulled the little pointy thing off my beret, at least I didn't have to think about what to wear in the morning. In a world of bottle-green pleated skirts and striped ties, no one cares what you look like.
I am not sure, however, how wearing uniforms will stop French teenage girls resembling so many Lolitas - the thought troubling the politicians. Aren't "schoolgirls" up there with "nurses" as a top male fantasy?
License those pesky cyclists *and* bring back school uniforms? Hrrmmm the morning commute & BR's could get kinda interesting
*****************************
Think bike? Think of the tax, Gordon
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/06/22/do2203.xml
Wednesday, 9.25am, I am in my car, about to turn into the quaintly named Fish Street Hill in the City of London. The traffic lights are green, I move forward. As I start to turn, a cyclist shoots across my path. I swerve, he swerves; I hoot, he makes an obscene gesture and then speeds off - clad in Lycra and self-righteousness. Naturally, he is cycling on the pavement - best be safe, eh?
If I had killed or seriously injured this buffoon, I might have ended up in court. No doubt I would have received a letter from one of those personal injury lawyers who hector us on afternoon television ("Been involved in an accident - and it's Not Your Fault?"), and no doubt my insurance company would feebly pay up, because it's easier than going to all the bother of a civil court case.
Perhaps because it is summer, perhaps because we are in the middle of yet another witless government-inspired "initiative" - Bike Week - there are more cyclists on the road than ever. Indeed, according to Transport for London, the number of cycle journeys in the capital has doubled in the past five years. But as the numbers of cyclists have grown, so has their arrogance.
The self-centredness of metropolitan cyclists is all too familiar: every day you see them blithely breaking the law - riding the wrong way up one-way streets, ignoring red lights, failing to stop at zebra crossings, cycling on pavements and then snarling when small children impede their progress - or just being pigs - silently cycling up behind old ladies and nearly giving them a heart attack, blowing whistles to ensure that you get out of their way, holding mass bike demos, so we all realise just how amazingly eco-friendly they are.
For it is their Green credentials that make cyclists so unspeakably smug. They are saving the planet, so the thinking goes. Therefore, to say you hate cyclists is to say you approve of clubbing seals or wearing a leopardskin coat.
The thing is, I enjoy cycling and do commute by bike in summer, a journey of seven miles from home to office and back, as it happens, so I know what I am talking about. I agree that there should be more designated cycle lanes - not just the foot-wide gutters strewn with broken glass that pass for cycle lanes in much of London. I think more traffic lights should have bike-only green lights, to allow cyclists to move off before cars, that the parks should be opened up to allow more cyclists, that potholes in the roads should be repaired.
But in return, cyclists have to realise that they are part of the road-using "community", as they would put it, and accept that just because they are not contributing to global warming, that does not give them the right to flout the law. The radical, if impractical, solution would be to license all bicycles, to give them registration numbers like cars and to require all cyclists to have third-party insurance.
Given this Government's propensity to find new and innovative ways to take our money, I am astonished no one has thought of it before.
Forty years after school uniforms were abolished in France, French politicians want to bring them back.
Well, jolly good thing, too. I approve. Even though I never fitted the skirt my mother bought for me to "grow into" when I was 11, and some rough girls on the bus pulled the little pointy thing off my beret, at least I didn't have to think about what to wear in the morning. In a world of bottle-green pleated skirts and striped ties, no one cares what you look like.
I am not sure, however, how wearing uniforms will stop French teenage girls resembling so many Lolitas - the thought troubling the politicians. Aren't "schoolgirls" up there with "nurses" as a top male fantasy?
