Nuxx:MPG.25517f8ff9e1aaa1989681@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!goblin2!goblin1!goblin.stu.neva.ru!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!shaftesbury.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID:  From: "Just zis Guy, you know?"  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Terrifying bike attack. Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:07:51 -0000 References:    Lines: 60 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: MicroPlanet-Gravity/2.9.13 X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 091027-0, 27/10/2009), Outbound message X-Antivirus-Status: Clean Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: 9c5df1db.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=E:mj1Nd4RW0UF9Yg6^So:5nok4Z\, guy.chapman@spamcop.net says... > > On 26 Oct 2009 12:23:23 +0000 (GMT), Ian Jackson >  wrote: > > >Why would you get angry rather than just going round ? It seems > >bizarre, since going round a car isn't hard. > > Remember, we only have the driver's word for what went on.

And as we all know, drivers are fundamentally selfish, murderous scum whose word cannot possibly be trusted.

> I was > witness to an incident in London not so long ago when a car driver > pulled out right in front of a cyclist, who managed to avoid her by > swerving and riding up the right side of the car. The road has speed > ramps, so the cyclist was at the next junction well before the car. > The driver then proceeded to give the cyclist a mouthful of abuse, the > gist of which was that it was perfectly acceptable for her to pull out > in front of him and completely unacceptable for him to then outpace > her along the rest of the road because... "I'm faster". Faster in the > sense of not as fast, of course.

And there we have one of Chapman's main "reasons" for his fanatical, unconditional support of anti-motorist measures. He just loves it when he outpaces a grown-up car on his toy bike solely because some stupid artificial obstacle is impeding the car completely unnecessarily. And who cares if that obstacle actually makes things *more* dangerous for all road users (in stark contrast to the claimed "safety" benefits of such measures)? Not Chapman, that's for sure. He doesn't care how many people die as long as he can thumb his nose at those selfish drivers while he cycles past.

Of course, most normal people are concerned about safely maximising their own progress, rather than impeding others. Reasonable people don't mind what other people do as long as they're not affected. But for Chapman, getting there quickly is not enough; others have to be seen to suffer and be held up. And if those others are motorists (curse them for being warm, dry and comfortable, using satnav and listening to their choice of music through speakers while Chapman is stuck outside of his own free will), then so much the better. If Chapman wants to slow motorists down so that the advantages of motoring over cycling are artificially reduced, simply so that he can feel spitefully smug and less jealous of their mode of transport, then that's what he'll jolly well do. If that's what he has to do to convince himself that cycling is the right choice, then who are the motorists concerned to complain?

But don't you call Chapman an interfering fuckwit. It's perfectly normal and understandable to devote so much time and effort to pissing off, frustrating and impeding millions of people that you don't even know, simply because they're using the mode of transport which is by far the most convenient to them (and very often the only practical one). It's perfectly reasonable to continually deny that you're running such a campaign, even when it couldn't possibly be any more obvious, and you've admitted it on your own website. And it's absolutely fine to carry on doing it when it becomes apparent that many of the measures that you're advocating are KILLING PEOPLE. It's not as if you'd have BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS or anything like that.