Nuxx:4e28725c$0$2489$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!goblin1!goblin.stu.neva.ru!txtfeed2.tudelft.nl!tudelft.nl!txtfeed1.tudelft.nl!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!prichard.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e28725c$0$2489$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Another Compo cam case? Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:39:21 +0100 References: <1bb5f516-f44b-4349-b228-24d62f198ee6@q15g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>   <98qoocF5oqU1@mid.individual.net> Lines: 86 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <98qoocF5oqU1@mid.individual.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: 4cdd0c1b.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=n^hbAPjbno\RGl[M\hVLXP0g@SS;SF6nWR9OH0:RnENT<2;RXiaHNb\`:ITG5aA:cWWT\B9gVhn3V X-Complaints-To: abuse@zen.co.uk Bytes: 5190 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:818009

On 21/07/2011 14:43, JNugent wrote: > On 21/07/2011 13:04, Judith wrote: > >> "Mrcheerful" wrote: >>> Simon Mason wrote: > >>>> Doesn't say if the cyclist was kitted up though. > >>>> QUOTE: >>>> "A cyclist has been pushed into a holly bush during an assault by a >>>> driver in Andover. >>>> The man in his 30s wasn't hurt but police want to hear from anyone who >>>> saw what happened on Monday afternoon. >>>> The cyclist was riding along Anton Road in Andover at around 4.45pm >>>> when he was cut up by a dark coloured BMW - when they both reached a >>>> set of traffic lights, the rider knocked on the car window. >>>> The driver then got out, pulled the man from his bike and pushed him >>>> into a lamp-post and holly bush. >>>> Police are trying to find out who that driver was and want to hear >>>> from any witnesses. >>>> This description of the driver has been released by officers:" > >>>> http://www.andoversound.com/pages/extranet/cyclist-assaulted-by-driver-i-11312.php >>>> > >>> which just shows that if you re-act with agression to an imagined, >>> accidental or real slight then aggression is what you will get in >>> return. >>> Far better to just chalk it up to experience and move on. > >> Indeed : "the rider knocked on the car window" as hard as he could - >> followed >> by a bang on the roof. > > QUOTE: > The cyclist was riding along Anton Road in Andover at around 4.45pm when > he was cut up by a dark coloured BMW > ENDQUOTE > > That reads as though it were an independently-established fact, doesn't it? > > Whereas we all know that it is not.

Yes, quite. More like:

" The cyclist was riding along Anton Road in Andover at around 4.45pm when a dark-coloured BMW overtook him leaving plenty of space. However, the cyclist decided that he resented being overtaken, and that the driver was even driving at all, and so, feeling full of belligerent self-righteousness because he was on his bike and therefore 'morally superior' and 'saving the planet', caught up at a set of traffic lights and then banged hard on the car window, gave the driver the finger and started swearing at him and saying horrible things about his family.

He realised he'd bitten off more than he could chew when the driver, instead of just driving on as he'd hoped, got out. He thought "Oh shit, I've really done it this time", but luckily, all the driver did was teach him a lesson by pushing him into a holly bush (oh NO! A HOLLY BUSH!  What a HORRIBLE thing to do!)  He realised that the driver could have done something a lot nastier, and that he had done him a favour by warning him not to be such a twat in the future.

He was prepared to leave it at that, but when he spoke to his psycholist mates about it later, they persuaded him to report the incident to the police on "principle": "We've got to get the selfish motorist scum any way we can, and show them that we're better than them because we cycle. Well done for provoking this guy and getting him to react; you've done the hard bit, now you just need to follow through and tell the police...don't lose your bottle now". "

As I've said before, this is very much a case of "crying wolf": every time a psycholist deliberately provokes a motorist just so that he can report it to the police, the police will become that bit more weary of dealing with such time-wasting bollocks, and it will become that bit harder for genuinely aggrieved cyclists to be taken seriously when they report actual, real incidents of violence from motorists.

The psycholists, as ever, are acting incredibly irresponsibly: if they must persecute motorists then why does it have to involve provoking motorists and then spuriously reporting their justified reaction to the police, advocating anti-car measures like speed cameras when they know they kill people, and thoroughly unpleasant and unwarranted things like that? Is there any such thing as persecuting motorists honestly and responsibly?