Re: Loraine at 07:05 this morning...Of course you're making it all up. That's what busybody battleaxes do all day.Anyway and to begin - cycling and ordinary folk riding bikes have nothing whatsoever to do with religion. Or “tiresome cycletology” as you're now calling it.Riding a bike is a perfectly innocent, simple and healthy means of getting about. One that, unlike motor cars, has the benefit of not adding to life and planet-threatening pollution.But sadly (here on W4.com) the growing culture of cycling is what you (and a few others) have chosen to continually demonize over the past couple of years. A campaign which you personally didn't create (your talent is to destroy) but a campaign which you have personally helped conduct and orchestrate from the very beginning. Pemberton fingerprints are all over this local anti-bike campaign. From Hounslow destroying Chiswick to the London Mayor to the TV bloke with his camera on a penny-farthing to an abused Imperial professor and to every other poor sod who dares sit on a saddle in W4. This is the so-called “bike-lobby” - purposely vilified with its deliberate inference to devil work in the dark corridors of Westminster.Thus all bikers are zealots in your posts. Invariably lycra-clad zealots and dangerously crazed evangelists, characterised as more like huge sub-human flies from outer space. Rather than dear old Mr and Mrs Simpkins out for pleasant ride down the High Road on a Sunday afternoon with their two teenage children.Even worse (and unacceptably far more devious) is this latest twist in the campaign, latching on to the perfectly understandable fears of the aged and disabled - and twisting matters completely out of shape. So crazed cyclists are all bullies are they? Mad zealots happy to bully elderly folk to get their own way? Force them out of their cars and make the buggers walk! “Scant regard for the elderly and the disabled”, was you yesterday Loraine. Along with your ridiculous “passive-aggressive” jibe towards a poster. So easy to write. Demonic to perceive. PAUSEThe debate about cycle lanes, cycling, pavements, parking cars to shop, the High Road, traffic measures, retail etc etc etc is (or rather should be) the stuff of interesting and passionate debate on a forum like this. Us locals have very mixed and different opinions, particularly about the future of Chiswick.Alas, the debate I've been reading on here (as a non-cyclist contributing very little) too often descends into the depths of personal insult. And (by a very long way) most of the nasty stuff comes from the anti-bike side. But that's another matter. How many anecdotes have you reported Loraine, telling how you and the dogs have had yet another near-death experience and been screamed and sworn at by a “vile” lycra-clad cyclist with no number plate on his back? I wasn't counting. But other than a few tweaks for effect, it's always the same old story and the same old casting : with you and the dogs starring as the terrorised victims - and the poor forum poster being lectured given the unenviable role, not just as a conspirator in the crime - but actually a close friend of the bastards... Here you are again yesterday:- “Btw perhaps you'd have a word with your lycra chums who hurtle down Heathfield Terrace towards CHR and if the cyclist traffic lights are Red or Amber they then veer off the road onto the pavement past Exit Here, Barnard Marcus and The Lamb and cause a hazard to Pedestrians, myself and my 2 Jack Russell's being in danger of being hit, but I suspect you think that's acceptable ?” That's fuel Loraine. The same sort of petrol people put in cars, now being poured over a forum and oven-ready to burst into flames. A few like yourself continually lighting the blue touchpaper that dwells in others, providing them with a target and giving that target a lexicon of hate. Not nice. A positive for readers to end on: Embrace cyclists. Support cycling. Give it time. Don't take the poison. The rest is up for negotiation and will have to be worked out...
Stuart Kerr ● 2007d