Monday 11 August 2014

Not the Judean Peoples Front!

I can't take it any more.

Let me paraphrase what I'm seeing a lot of right now. 

What the hell is WRONG with all these cycling campaigners, getting all uppity with each other and not seeing that they need to do things MY way?

If its not dissing each other over whether sport cycling is a good way of getting people interested, its fighting over whether a fairly harmless seeming television program about cycling is any good for us. And if its neither of those they'll just diss each other for no good reason. Here. Look.

Guys, for fucks sake. Chill out. 

Is it just that cyclists in the UK are, by their nature, willing to be a bit fighty else they'd never be happy braving the roads? Or  is it more that the few people who are willing to discuss cycling online have been beaten and battered in to their positions by years of never ending negativity from cyclist haters who want to berate us for no readily apparent reason? This goes further than 'being a cyclist myself' - it seems to me that so many folk who talk about cycling fail to grasp that we have a slowly emerging UK cycling culture, and its got its own shape, its own way of doing things - and that any argument failing to address this as part of how we further the cause of cycling (whatever that cause is - there isn't consensus!) fails at the first hurdle.

Sometimes, you know, its just a telly program. Or its just a bike. Or its just a race. And maybe, just MAYBE if so many of those in to cycling campaigning in the UK weren't lost up their own arses we'd all do a lot better.

Stop taking yourselves so seriously. Stop infighting. Or fuck off and stop pretending you're helping any cause other than your own ego. There aren't enough of us for it to be worth having tribes.