There's another ludicrous anti-cyclist rant under the heading 'There's no stopping 'lycra lout' cyclists as prosecutions for running red lights plummets' in the Daily Mail today. Well, at least it's not in a newspaper.
Others will tear apart this nonsense better than me - no doubt Freewheeler's windows are steaming up as much as mine right now - but even by Mail standards this is dire stuff. Unrelated figures are linked (prosecutions for pavement cycling and number of journeys, for example): see the dimwit Lord Lipsey's claim about only 'two cyclists in a million' being caught and prosecuted.
It's the sort of rubbish that pompous middle-aged men write in green ink to local newspapers. Unchallenged assumptions are made, anecdote is paraded as evidence, and the Mail subs still don't know how to use 'fewer than / less than' properly.
I couldn't be arsed to register in order to post a comment, which they wouldn't publish anyway; I think they have house rules against publishing facts.
hehe - a bit of redundancy in your title there. Are there any non-ludicrous ones?
ReplyDeleteps just noticed your improvements to the picture of the page in question. Nicely done...
ReplyDeleteI have not yet read today's Mail. Conditions for cyclists in Waltham Forest are quite enough to reduce me to a condition of feverish indignation and rage. I'll save this blood-boiling treat for later...
ReplyDeleteHehe I spotted this in my inbox today, I read the first few lines and just about had enough. Not even going to give it coverage on the blog they don't deserve it.
ReplyDeleteI'm loving the picture you've put up! They don't call it the Hate Mail for nothing you know...
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, laughing aside, people DO read this peace of crap and DO believe the nonsense it publishes - you should speak to some of my parent's more suburban friends - they genuinely believe that the country is overrun with Polish plumbers / paedophiles / lycra louts / disease-carrying homos / feral teenagers etc etc. Not only is it of course totally untrue but it's desperately desperately sad. How do you even start to get through to people like this (which is what you need to do if you want cycling numbers comparable with Denmark / Holland)?
Does the Mail forget all the Furore they stirred up with James Martin and the ensuing Complaints by Cyclists not just in Britain but around the World.
ReplyDeleteTheir Web Site was Inundated and Complaints were sent to the Complaints Commission. They seem to Hate Cyclists and Pander to the Lunatic Fringe.
Mark's comments about Mail readers ring oh so true to me.
ReplyDeleteI grew up with smug suburban tory voting Mail reading parents and even as a child their attitude puzzled me, because their trash journalism fuelled "opinions" never seemed to quite match what was going on outside the front door. My brother followed their lead but went down (up?) market and gets his opinions fed to him by the Sun. All I can say is that I'm glad I only see him once every three years or so; because that is about as much as I can take of his endless pontificating. (Try and imagine Jeremy Clarkson but without the intelligence and wit and you'll get the drift...) :-)