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OPINION
Boris Johnson, Tadej Pogačar and Taylor Swift are the same person, apparently... the problem with calling all cyclists 'Cyclists'
Thu, Oct 10, 2024 13:58
73
Boris Johnson, Tadej Pogacar, Taylor Swift, Mike Graham and Howard CoxYep, you're reading that right. Boris Johnson, Tadej Pogačar and Taylor Swift are the same person. They all believe the same things, behave the same way, and they even dress the same. I don’t know how nobody has noticed this before, when it is so obvious to anybody who takes three seconds to look through the comments on any provincial Facebook group as soon as the word ‘cyclist’ is typed.
Jocelyn, a member of the same beloved local provincial Facebook that I am a member of, has noticed that "...in my experience [they] make their own rules up. Then if there’s an accident/incident, it’s everyone else’s fault, and they become abusive."
Meanwhile, the ever insightful Rob mentioned: "They normally just make there [sic] own rules up."
He has a point. Tadej is certainly rewriting the rules of professional cycling, Taylor Swift has changed the rules around ‘childless cat ladies’, and Boris likes to have parties during lockdowns, cheat on his wife etc...
Of course, this whole thing is ridiculous, and there is no equivalence between those three people. One is a billionaire musical phenomenon, one is the new Eddy Merckx, and the other is a disgraced ex-Prime Minister; however, across social media and often traditional media too, they have each ridden a bike. So they are all the same.
They are simply ‘cyclists’...
Sure, but that’s just semantics right? That’s like when you call people who drive cars ‘drivers’, or anybody who travels to work as ‘commuters’?
Except for some reason the ‘cyclist’ is not somebody who occasionally rides a bike. It seems to be deployed as a collective noun for wronguns.
For instance, Councillor Alan Amos from Worcester knows for a fact that "cyclists routinely flout the law. Because cyclists don’t have any identification, they continue to do so with impunity and never get caught."
This is an unhinged thing to say. Not because there aren’t people who ride bikes that don’t flout the law, but because claiming that cyclists are some kind of homogeneous group that do this more than any other group shows not just ignorance of anything specific to cycling, but ignorance of the basic human condition.
How could you possibly establish correlation and causation based on the type of vehicle somebody uses for transport or fun? I would make an educated guess that there are more sheds containing bikes than not in the UK today, so is Alan claiming that most people who own a shed "routinely flout the law"? Or is Alan somehow saying that these people are law-abiding unless they are on a bike? Somehow the process of turning your legs and propelling yourself via pedals and chains is a gateway movement to criminality.
I am going to be honest here, I can’t see many similarities between the person riding around the Cotswolds on a £12k S-Works Tarmac SL8 and the teenager in Croydon doing a wheelie on a £20 mountain bike they bought off Facebook Marketplace. However, people like Alan want us to believe that there is equivalence.
Perhaps I am being a bit mean to Alan though, because it’s not his fault. His mind has just been pickled by the media.
There was an awful story from the end of September about a man who was riding a bike on a pavement. He was told to get off the pavement, so he stopped, got off his bike and punched the man who spoke to him, killing him. The fact that the bloke was riding a bike isn’t particularly indicative of him being more or less likely to have killed somebody, but this is how it was reported:
'Cyclist, 23, punched 78-year-old to the floor and killed him after widower told him off for riding on the pavement' — The Daily Mail
'"Cyclists Are The SCUM Of The Earth” | Elderly Widower Killed By Cyclist' — Talk TV
'Cyclist killed pensioner in row over riding on pavement' — The Telegraph
'Cyclist killed pensioner with one punch after pavement row' — The Times
'Cyclist who punched and killed pensioner during pavement cycling row, before “cowardly” trying to flee scene, jailed for five years' — road.cc
This man riding a bike is important to the narrative of the story, but in the same way that a bank robber might use a car as a getaway vehicle, or how the Hatton Garden robbers used public transport to get to theirs. I don’t remember any headlines from the time along the lines of ‘Public transport users rob jewellery shop’.
It is bizarre that we have the media (usually right-wing media in my opinion, but I note that even here on road.cc the word 'cyclist' was used to describe the perpetrator) trying to use a mode of transport as their defining headline descriptor to show whether somebody is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Imagine if the same thing happened with other forms of transport, it would make journalists look insane.
As it stands, we just have people like Mike ‘you can grow concrete’ Graham spitting hatred and bile against cyclists, with some of his videos carrying titles such as 'Cyclists Are The SCUM Of The Earth' and '"Selfish, Sanctimonious And Untouchable!” Mike Graham And Howard Cox Furiously BLAST Cyclists'.
With this unhinged level of hatred out there against people who are simply using a specific form of transport, it’s no wonder people like Alan, Jocelyn, and Rob have their brains pickled...
George is the host of the road.cc podcast and has been writing for road.cc since 2014. He has reviewed everything from a saddle with a shark fin through to a set of glasses with a HUD and everything in between.
Although, ironically, spending more time writing and talking about cycling than on the bike nowadays, he still manages to do a couple of decent rides every week on his ever changing number of bikes.
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73 comments
There's a good example in today's Telegraph (2 yr old left hospitalised by Ebike rider, Iain Duncan Smith demands "dangerous cyclists should be driven off our roads") vs yesterday's Telegraph (that interviewed CyclingMikey even if it labelled him a vigilante again)
Ironically the incident in question apparently took place on a path across some playing fields, so IBS's, sorry IDS's, call to get dangerous cyclists off the roads isn't even relevant. Can't find any specific details of the case but the police decided not to charge the rider (65 year old woman) with any offence...
I quite often point out that the term cyclists is cyclist is useless because it doesn't reamean anything. The response I usually get is that I would say that as a cyclist. Years ago started using the term drivist to describe anyone driving.
What is a 'cyclist'? Is it someone who happens to be using a bike or is it a 'lifestyle' or ideology? Pogacar is a professional cyclist by profession but does that make him different from someone who is a doctor, banker or plumber by profession? He drives too. A very nice car as it happens. If you are in a pub or supermarket, at the theatre or cinema does riding a bike matter? Clearly there are many who think riding a bike makes them a better more virtuous class of person and claim they are 'cyclists' in the way vegans call themselves vegans. In reality riding a bike doesn't make you special, far from it. Being called a 'cyclist' is never a compliment. It is now an epithet used to describe a 'Karen' who constantly rails against the world and how it victimises one daily. Someone for whom the rules that govern everyone else do not apply. Stop being pretentious and just say you ride a bike some of the time. Be a better person by NOT acting like a cyclist.
You're so far wide of the point here that you haven't even missed it.
Spectacular isn't it, given the scattergun spread of cliches they've blasted, you'd think they'd get somewhere near the point just by chance, but no...
The comment relates to the vast majority of the cyclists that comment here, who most definitely have a leftist ideology..
The vast majority of people who comment on here appear to be decent folks who care about the environment, equality, decency and fairness. Oh sorry, you said that already...
I would say that you have phrased it rather more favourably than the person you were quoting. Thank you.
Nowadays it seems that caring about anything beyond your own selfish desires is so often portrayed as a negative thing while your harmful impact on others (including non-humans) is their problem and not your responsibility.
Also, "reality has a well-known liberal bias" (Stephen Colbert) and cyclists are much closer to reality than people who simply view it through a windscreen.
Hogwash. "Drivers" drive minivans, Formula 1 race cars, taxis, and every other sort of vehicle for every sort of purpose. Noting that the man who drives a truckload of hogs to market and a Grandma who drives herself to church are both drivers simply notes that they are both operating a vehicle. No reasonable person whoudl assume they have anything else in common simply by virtue of driving.
Similarly, all cyclists have one thing in common - they operate a bicycle. Anything else is a poorly founded assumption. Thats why we have terms like "racer", "commuter", "recreational", etc.
There is no reason to divide cyclists into a collection of tiny groups that are even easier to ignore. Focus on what we all have in common and go on.
I agree. The headline is ridiculous. It's like saying King Charles, Lewis Hamilton and me are the same person just because all three of us are drivers.
Well, I can't recall seeing you all in the same place at once...
This is a good characterisation, but I need to know what I can do about it. I hope I can be forgiven a long comment.
On a sidwnote, I see that one group - obsessed politicians with poisonous opinions, especially there-for-life politicians in eg the Lords such as Hogan-Howe - that need more attention and more challenge. As reported by Roadcc in the latest HH-lead Lords' debate, one peer referred to London cyclists as 'a plague of mosquitos", which is only one step from Goebbels language about people the Reich later killed en masse.
I think the language will continue to be used because those using it are out of power. Speaking as a former Conservative member for a couple of years whilst there looked to be a chance of levelling-up happening to see if I could do my bit to 'rebalance to the North' from the inside, the Tories tried a wedge strategy to save their butt at the Election, and were handed said arse on a plate by the voters. The Tory right, and groups who think similarly, will continue to do so because they are now Sunk for maybe a decade with little or no influence, and are an irrelevant, sunk cost. Just look at their leadership options: corruption vs conniption, Blow Job Bobby, with his prat hat, vs Kemi-Kaze, who flies into issues at random and blows herself up. I'd extend this to Paul Marshall owned media such as Speccie, GBN, maybe DT if he gets it.
Imo we now start from here, and have perhaps a decade to cause the new Govt move to something newer and better, pushing on a half-open door.
Abuse shouters, including political abuse-shouters in Parliament, aren't going away (but there are fewer of them), because they have no Plan B, and essentially no credible, rounded, case to make, beyond a inchoate, shouted "Leave Me Alone". There are bits and pieces to be done, and (thumbnail) a big difference between 1) people who hate an image they have made up and shout about it incl. some who are self-promoting, and 2) ill-informed people who pay attention/listen to eg MIke Graham, and 3) people with concerns, and 4) people who are more thoughtful.
As I see it we're in some ways in a culture war (in some respects a necessary culture war), and abusive stereotypes will unfortunately be part and parcel until culture changes. Roughly on 1-4 (and being simplistic), I'd say "1 - Counter / marginalise / exclude, 2 - Inform / educate / sell the benefits, 3 - Discuss / Address, 4 - Discuss / Demostrate."
The Road Safety Review is looking interesting, and looking at some underlying strategic principles such as the ways "return" is modelled in transport projects, standard use of Op SNAP, the points system. There's a lot in applying Equality Law to all transport projects/principles, and reestablishing the Traffic Police specialism abolished by Blair, and much more. We need to help Louise Haigh here. Charlotte C Gill was deliciously cross on Twitter; she knows she's now outside the house, howling at the moon.
For a decent perspective as to what is currently happening, without my quite heavy political slant, Chris Boardman at Active Travel was good a couple of weeks ago - including good thoughts on communicating and convincing, and some hints on what was happening in Govt:
https://youtu.be/MPgi8_rHD9E?t=65
Lot there! Thanks for the link, hadn't seen that. I'm glad that Active Travel England hasn't just evaporated.
Yep.
They seem to be paying attention to the underlying "plumbing" first, which is great. We're not going to get everything we need for walking / wheeling / cycling, but I see significant change over a deacde.
Not least we will have models in the UK of what is possible,and why it is better.
One of my more abstruse speculations is that some well-off towns / cities in the South will be less desirable places to live compared to the regions in the North which have eg done light rail, trams, and the rest. And they will be howling for Government intervention to bail them out of motor traffic problems that they chose not to address.
Highly recommend Chris Boardman's talk here.
The first part of this "politics" - essentially saying "how we need to work with people's emotions first". That includes politicians' aspirations and indeed council officers' / civil service folks' culture and conventions. Not news - there is a reason why the more "populist" politicians are a) often very popular (despite lacking "substance" and b) work with very visual, emotive imagery. But I think this is really important in "how do we get there from here".
Interesting phrases (new to me...):
Also - just how far in showing the bleedin' obvious you have to go to get change started, and just how hard it is to get things through the politics (small "p" - basically people covering their backsides and not taking risks with their jobs / careers).
A LONG way, I think.
My simplistic categorisation comes from Change Management training for organisations.
Another model I like is called "Removing Constraints at the back, rather than Pulling from the Front", which is about how if we manage to stop things preventing use (here: cycling or wheeling), individuals will discover what they can do with cycling or wheeling. Inevitably there will be lots of things we never thought of, so providing a space to let individuals discover the possibilities can create things we never dreamed of. It's nice that that therefore informalises feedback loops inside what we are doing, and lets our initiative adapt as it evolves by allowing the commomunity itself to create objectives from the bottom not the top. That model is from a book On The Anvil about leadership in voluntary organisations by an Anglican Vicar called Canon Robert Warren from the 1980s.
That makes having a vision (broad objective) and good communication and giving permission for "do your own thing, with our support" very important.
It's quite similar to the idea that individuals will choose the most attractive option for their journey, which comes down to "make it safe, and perceived safe, make it possible, and make it straightforward". That is similar to Boardman's "what must be true" ie "what needs to be in place" - for a journey that will be 1 - Storage at home, 2 - Accessible and suitable route, 3 - Secure storage at the destination, which then feeds into eg separated infra / controlled motor vehicles, and things like no physical barriers.
(Not quite as succinvt a description as I would like, as it bleeds over into my thinking about how a local group can prioritise the 183 things that need to be done in their town to choose their appropriate priorities/projects, and avoid 'analysis paralysis' aka the Centipede's Dilemma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede%27s_Dilemma
A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?"
This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
She fell exhausted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.)
A while back I used to occasionally work on a project in East London that donated refurbished cycles and taught trainees to cycle - the trainees were female, Muslim and mostly refugees. The project was funded by the EU and TfL.
In the time of brexthick hysteria, I grimaced at the thought at what the Mail etc would make up if they knew about the project.
Depends on whether if affected house prices....
So what are you supposed to call people who are riding bicycles or habitually ride bicycles or do whatever it is that cyclists do?
Cyclists. But not as a singular, homogenous group. In the same way you wouldn't characterise 'people who walk' as a homogenous group.
There are lots of cyclists who think of themselves and elite group aomngst all road users in the way the Ramblers or Fell runners think themsleves elite walkers.
Bollocks.
And even if there really is a small number of people on bikes who think that they are somehow 'elite' they are soon put in their place by drivers.
I know elite cyclists, club cyclists, child and recreational cyclists and they all say the same thing about safety and how badly some drivers behave. I'm sure just about every person on here who cycles on the road (or has retreated to offroad riding) will say the same.
But feel free to carry on living in fantasy land.
We're faster, fitter and more beautiful than other road users, so in a sense we are an elite group.
You speak for yourself, I'm not! A lot happier with my choices though, to judge by most of my drivist encounters.
What ever is appropriate and accurate.
The one who got off his bike and punched that elderly man should, for example, be called a "thug", not a "cyclist".
"Cyclist" in those circs is just a dog-whistle comment.
'People riding bicycles'?
That's clearly inadequate, since it excludes anyone who isn't cycling right now.
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