Nuxx:02e7c479-f8c7-4bd6-b76d-f4b0e6b91ab7@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com

Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <02e7c479-f8c7-4bd6-b76d-f4b0e6b91ab7@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: What king of newsgroup is this ?? Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:09:22 -0700 (PDT) References:  Lines: 45 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.105.145.93 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1217473763 21909 127.0.0.1 (31 Jul 2008 03:09:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:09:23 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=88.105.145.93; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 3781 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:659813

On Jul 30, 9:07=A0pm, Brian Goldsmith  wrote: > I subscribed to this group about a week ago, but I don't see to much > about actual cycling. =A0It all seems to be about the politics. =A0Is > generally how this group is ? > If so does anybody know of a UK group where there is discussion about > rides, routes and bike stuff ? =A0That's what I was looking for when I > subscribed and I have been waiting to see if general level of discussion > is all about the politics of cycling as it has appeared to me. > Brian

Unfortunately, the most prolific native posters in this newsgroup are not your everyday cyclists, who are interested in actual cycling and making things better for cyclists. The newsgroup has long since been taken over by those who have an axe to grind against motorists. They know that being anti-motorist is rightly frowned upon, so they pretend to be "pro-cyclist" instead of anti-motorist, in an effort to bring a level of acceptability to their prejudices.

But their militant agenda is entirely obvious from the content of their posts (e.g. their mysterious support of every anti-motorist measure, no matter what evidence is presented to them that such measures cost lives, and the distinct lack of posts which are about actual cycling, as you rightly point out). In particular, it has been pointed out many times that Spindrift (possibly *the* most notorious anti-motorist poster) *never* posts about actual cycling; indeed, it is entirely possible that he doesn't cycle at all.

If you want to read discussions about actual cycling, this is not the place to come (the group should be called uk.rec.anti-motorist). You're best off visiting the web forums, such as Cycle Chat. Although those places also harbour their fair share of motorist-haters (Spindrift is a member of seemingly every one), they are at least mainly confined to forums with names such as "Soapbox" and "Campaign".

Good luck in your quest to find "moderate", real cyclists on the Internet. It's a lot harder than it ought to be, and no doubt plenty of the real cyclists are pretty pissed off about the car-hating pretend cyclists making them look bad. (I don't cycle, and I freely admit it; I'm here because this is the most anti-motorist newsgroup, and it's always fun running rings round the illogical car-haters...you realise after a very short time that there's no logic behind their anti-motorist stance, it's just a load of emotive and/or socialist bollocks. You also realise that they really don't like being proved wrong.... ;-) )