Matt Seaton was "silly"

[dkahn400]

wafflycat wrote:

> See the C+ forum for discussion about his current article..
>
> http://www.cyclingplus.co.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=90840
>
> Matt arrives at page 9
>
> http://www.cyclingplus.co.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=90840&whichpage=9

I agree with you Helen. "Signing the pledge" is an own-goal. It makes
anyone who signs appear to agreeing to /stop/ running reds. It gives
publicity to the most common complaint about cyclists and appears to
validate it. And the sort of people who go through reds are not likely
to respond to the campaign anyway.

I'm not going to agree to stop beating my wife either.

--
Dave...

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2006 08:46:15 -0000, "POHB"
<[email protected]> said in
<[email protected]>:

>Following intensive lobbying (well I know a few of us wrote to him) Matt
>Seaton has retracted his suggestion of cycle licensing:

And following some gentle feeding with Clue he has also said this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1736331,00.html

concluding:

"The benefit of helmet use being hard to quantify, the government's
own Transport Research Laboratory has not even tried. While the
anti-helmeteers may protest too much, the reason they do so is because
they fear that if the case for helmets were "proved", then the
pressure for compulsory wearing would be irresistible. Net result:
fewer cyclists riding at greater risk. And that, as Australians have
discovered, is no accident."

The usual canard about anti-helmet, but otherwise pretty sound

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

 

[Kristian Davies]

> The usual canard about anti-helmet, but otherwise pretty sound

Sounded like he just regurgitated www.cyclehelmet.org to me...

-Kristian

 

[Tony W]

"Kristian Davies" <Post to Newsgroup!!> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>> The usual canard about anti-helmet, but otherwise pretty sound
>
> Sounded like he just regurgitated www.cyclehelmet.org to me...

And very sensible you would be, too, if you looked at some of the evidence
for and against wearing a helmet.

There are many, many threads in this newsgroup that would enlighten you.
The evidence is that a helmet makes little difference to your safety and may
increase the risk of some injuries.

One thing is certain, they do not deflect lorries.

T

 

[Kristian Davies]

> And very sensible you would be, too, if you looked at some of the evidence
> for and against wearing a helmet.
>
> There are many, many threads in this newsgroup that would enlighten you.
> The evidence is that a helmet makes little difference to your safety and
> may increase the risk of some injuries.

I'm not passing comment on helmets, i'm just saying it's "Sounded like he
just regurgitated www.cyclehelmet.org to me..."



-Kristian

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 15:50:08 -0000, "Kristian Davies" <Post to
Newsgroup!!> said in <[email protected]>:

>Sounded like he just regurgitated www.cyclehelmet.org to me...

No, not really. He missed a lot of sound points from
cyclehelmets.org, and used the "anti-helmet" canard, of which the site
would probably have disabused him; the most likely explanation is that
somebody engaged in dialogue and he then followed up some of the
research links for himself. He is, after all, a journalist. It's
what they do, allegedly.

But hey, what would I know? It's not as if I'm on the editorial board
of cyclehelmets.org or anything, am I? Oh, er...

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

 

[Ambrose Nankivell]

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Mar 2006 08:46:15 -0000, "POHB"
> <[email protected]> said in
> <[email protected]>:
>
>> Following intensive lobbying (well I know a few of us wrote to him)
>> Matt Seaton has retracted his suggestion of cycle licensing:
>
> And following some gentle feeding with Clue he has also said this:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1736331,00.html
>
I was very impressed by The Independent's cycling columnist yesterday,
talking about fixers and a fixed/free switchable hub that's no longer in
production (but whose inventor would welcome approaches about putting it
back in production)
--
Ambrose

 

[bugbear]

Kristian Davies wrote:
>>The usual canard about anti-helmet, but otherwise pretty sound
>
>
> Sounded like he just regurgitated www.cyclehelmet.org to me...

Journalist in "uses sources" shock...

BugBear

 

[davek]

bugbear wrote:
> Journalist in "uses sources" shock...

Journalist in "regurgitates press releases" shock.

Veering off-topic, I'm reminded of this story from the Media Monkey
column in Monday's Guardian:
'The Daily Telegraph was on the case of plagiarists last week, with a
report saying it was "rife at Oxford". A leader-writer took up the
cause, saying that many students "don't even bother to read the work
that they cut and paste from the net". But no word on a bit of cutting
and pasting rather closer to home, three days earlier: "Town halls have
opened a new front in the war on the mini-motorbike craze that they say
is sweeping the country," said a piece under the byline of Sarah Womack,
social affairs correspondent. "Figures show that there has been a
20-fold increase in the number of mini-motorbikes since 2001, with
144,000 now in circulation." Compare and contrast with this, from the
press office area of the Local Government Association's website: "Town
halls have opened a new front in the war on the mini-motorbike menace
that is sweeping the country. New figures show that there has been a
twenty-fold increase ..." And so it goes on. The Telegraph piece is
lifted almost verbatim from the LGA press release - a fact first pointed
out by blogger Les Hack on his media-watch website, www.hackles.co.uk.
Times are hard at the Telegraph at the moment, but was there any need to
advertise the fact so blatantly?'

d.