Censorship

There's an article up on the independent about the war on motorists.

Our fellow travellers, the Association of British Drivers added a comment:

Whilst we are pleased that the penny is beginning to drop with regard to taxation, it is sad that the author refers to driving as a "bad habit", when it is in fact merely a means of going about one's business.

We agree! Accordingly, we replied stating this fact:

We in the bristol traffic project agree. Some people view us driving our van around a narrow city, while texting one hand and sounding the horn at pedestrians and cyclists in our way as "antisocial", our activities, as the ABD says, "a bad habit". Yet as they say, this is the only way to get on with your business. When you are held up by pedestrians on a zebra crossing, of course you have to sound your horn. When you are held up behind a cyclist, of course you have to text ahead to your destination to warn them you'll be late. Yet still this anti-motorist country, with its zebra crossings, its traffic lights and its double yellow lines persecutes us.

And what's happened? Our comment has been "flagged for review" and it is no longer on the site. It has been censored by an online press that cannot accept the truth!

update: we posted asking why praising the ABD for being the voice of van driver is being suppressed and the ABD replied

the Independent is just trying to ensure comments are reasonable and well balanced. Whilst comments like those you made may have been acceptable during the last decade, the country has moved on to more reasoned debate.

That's good. We thought somebody had felt we were taking the piss. That happens all the time.

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Men: bicycles are not the answer to your mid-life crises

We like seeing Bristol on TV, and right now the TV show that has coverage is the BBC's Mistresses, one that shows pretty women driving round the city having extra-marital relationships with men who are also driving round Bristol. Got that? There's a link there: cars=sex. 

This fact is important as there a lot of press right now saying that the new mid-life crisis toy is not a sports car, a motorbike or a woman half your age -it's a racing bicycle. These articles are appearing both in proper papers and socialist rags.

This is wrong.

Men: whatever issues you have in later years -  a bicycle will not solve them.

You may have seen the Tour de France, seen Andy Schleck go to-to-toe with Contador in the Pyrenees, and thought "I could do that", but sadly, you can't. You just penalise the rest of us.

Oh yes, it sounds nice, and makes for some articles showing shiny bicycles against mountain backdrops, such as here, Crater Lake, Oregon. Oh yes, you can dream of such things while stuck in the traffic jams on the A370, or the M32.

But look at those mid-life crisis cyclists. Has it really solved their problems? No, they just fill their lycra clothing too much for everyone else to enjoy, and have strange looking legs. The one on the left: drinks too much beer for that top. The one on the right, scrawny, and apparently has not only continued with his bicycle obsession, gone on to come in at #5 in the veterans category of US Cyclocross rankings, and dragged his daughter in that same obsession.

Well, it's their choice, their money you may think. But as well as damaging the family, we, the motorists suffer. You don't see it in those news articles showing the fat men gasping up the mountains, but we know. We get stuck behind them on our trips to cribbs causeway when we get held up by packs of these middle-aged lycra-louts on their Saturday training rides up the A38. We get stuck behind them on our weekday commutes when their training regime mandates mid-week rides. We get stuck behind them when they spend so much money on bikes and bits that they can't afford to drive and have to cycle to work -on our roads.

We even get stuck behind them in the mountains.


The photo above may look nice, but this is the Going to the Sun Road,  the road from the opening scene of the Shining, the only road through Montana's Glacier National Park, a road that last month the Guardian listed as one of the "must visit" roads in the US.

Yet it is somewhere a single mid-life-crisis roadie could hold up line of Recreational Vehicles, each of which could be towing an SUV carrying a quad bike and a jetski. There to enjoy nature, to bring revenue to the area, not faff around pretending they were six again. At least in the US, they recognise this and ban bicycles in summer, but that just means these people ride up illegally. Whoever took this photograph was not only a tax dodging cyclist, they must have illegally ridden up this mountain pass which is rightfully kept free for important people. Us.

Yet still they come, naively believing that spending money on a bicycle, some silly clothing and then pedalling round the mountains is a noble thing to do.  Then there are these "sportives", which is where hundreds of them come out and block through traffic, such as here, on the RAMROD "Ride around Mount Ranier in One Day" event.

As the cyclists block our roads -here there are even signs up to warn us of the inconvenience- the rest of society pays the price of your inability to settle into middle age with a few beers in front of the TV.

For all those men who have been spending too much time loitering around at Fred Baker's, Mud Dock or that fancy shop at the bottom of Park Street, print out this article and read the points below before you fritter away your money.

1. The main mid-life crises toys for men are sports cars, motorbikes, and a women closer to the age of your offspring than your own year of birth.
2. Motor vehicles -especially the open topped car, help you get that woman on the side.
3. Motor vehicles reward those with money: the more you spend, the faster it goes.
4. It doesn't matter how much you spend on a road bike, you will still be overtaken by the 22 year old riding a fixie one-handed while texting a friend and smoking a cigarette
5. That student girl you were after will find that 22 year old fixie-rider cuter than you.

Think about it. Open topped fast cars have a purpose, road bikes don't. 

More on this topic another day. In the mean time, we are watching you. Act your age -get a sports car.

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Unter den Linden: the Telegraph goes soft

Every time someone accuses us of being some kind of spoof, we point to the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail and say "if we are a spoof, then these two papers must also be". They aren't -we view them as fellow-travellers.

That's why we are pretty shocked to see that the Daily Telegraph has published an article praising cycling.

Their points

1. It's cheaper than driving or public transport
2. It's the only way to avoid the repressive "film all the cars" state we are still in, despite the coalition taking over from NuLabour.
3. Berlin managed to transform their city to make it nice to cycle round

Obviously, we object to all of these. As, fortunately, did enough people in the article's comments, that perhaps now the Telegraph will know their place better. If we wanted to read articles praising cycling, we'd read the Guardian or other socialist rags.

1. Cycling is only cheaper as they don't pay their dues, because the cost of congestion caused by bicycles, the danger they pose to children walking from the 4x4 to the school gate isn't taken into account.

2. Yes, Cycling may avoid the repressive state we read about in the Telegraph and the Mail, but we want that corrected by having every cyclist, every pedestrian registered, number plated, third-party insured and billed. And the speed cameras removed. Because we drivers are not the criminals, the cyclists are. Look at this man: threatening pedestrians on Karl Marx Allee, Berlin.

And Berlin? Well, whoever wrote that article missed their history. The liberation of Berlin in May 1945 left vast quantities of open space due to the actions of allied forces, and even today the population of the city is way below that which it was designed for.

Then the partition of E and W, on the photographer's side of the Brandenburg Tor, took away the German's rights to drive their cars through this, the centre piece of Deutschland. When the wall came down they kept it closed to traffic, and now, with the US and UK embassies behind, it, it's going to stay that way. This is wrong.

We should be able to drive our cars through the Brandenburg Tor then park them here, on Unter den Linden, the most famous street in Berlin. This is the road where the Nazi government cut down the trees for their marches and rallys. And what did the communists put back: the trees.

The fact that central Berlin is a nice place to walk and cycle is not due to to planning or well-meaning government, it is due to WWII and the repressive, communist, socialist state that followed, and a failure of the FDR to push through the changes this city needs to be a modern European city. After the war, we rebuilt our centre, to give us Broadmead, Lewin's Mead and the Queen's Square dual carriageway. What did Berlin do? Let the pedestrians and cyclists go back to the 19th century on their pre-motor toys.

This may be Europe, but it is not Britain, and any attempt to encourage walking or cycling in our streets must be opposed by the coalition as the EU trying to control our lives.

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