Will the Pea-Brained cyclist who did this stand up and explain themselves!

hawkinspeter wrote:

srchar wrote:

This is actually a discarded N2O bottle and a makeshift ligature. Really makes my blood boil that the actions of a few selfish idiots make the entire laughing-gas-asphyxi-wanking community look like litterbugs.

I'll not have you bring down the laughing-gas-asphyxi-wanking community like that. There's no balloons, so it couldn't have been us them.

You That lot need to have a good hard look in the mirror. Discarding your their asphyxiwanking paraphernalia so carelessly not only lets you them down, it lets society down too.

srchar wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

srchar wrote:

This is actually a discarded N2O bottle and a makeshift ligature. Really makes my blood boil that the actions of a few selfish idiots make the entire laughing-gas-asphyxi-wanking community look like litterbugs.

I'll not have you bring down the laughing-gas-asphyxi-wanking community like that. There's no balloons, so it couldn't have been us them.

You That lot need to have a good hard look in the mirror. Discarding your their asphyxiwanking paraphernalia so carelessly not only lets you them down, it lets society down too.

I'm more concerned about the lack of balloons - that's how you freeze your lungs.

davidw07 wrote:

You will gather that my blog is new, and intends to cover three topics - one being general cycling topics. Being a great fan of road cc, I thought that the  forum would be a good conduit for feedback on  cycling issues  that I felt worthy of comment. What I didn't anticipate was being vilified.

How to plug your blog on a forum:

- Create one thread.

- Call it "I've started a blog".

- Do not create any more threads about your blog.

- Thank the one or two people who post replies of encouragement.

- Repy to trolls with good humour.

- Watch your thread sink rapidly down the list of Recent Comments, reflecting general lack of interest in your blog.

davidw07 wrote:

Pilot Pete wrote:

Your constant plugging of your blog is tiresome, just stop littering this forum with your trivia and leave it where it deserves to be...in your blog.

PP

Thanks for your helpful comment Pilot Pete, the end of a perfect day. 

You will gather that my blog is new, and intends to cover three topics - one being general cycling topics. Being a great fan of road cc, I thought that the  forum would be a good conduit for feedback on  cycling issues  that I felt worthy of comment. What I didn't anticipate was being vilified.

If your comments are a reflection of the road cc forum  views - which  they do seem to be, I clearly need to think again.

There does, in my opinion, need to be honest recognition of where cyclists let themselves and society down. Until this happens we will continue to be considered as pig-headed pariahs by lots of people. It is somethhing that is worthy of sensible, intelligent debate.

As I said , I'm new to this and I got it wrong - the road cc forum was clearly not the right place for this to happen (acknowlegment to srchar's post above for confirming this) 

 

 

You'll have to go into a bit more detail about how I let both myself and society down.

don simon wrote:

davidw07 wrote:

Pilot Pete wrote:

Your constant plugging of your blog is tiresome, just stop littering this forum with your trivia and leave it where it deserves to be...in your blog.

PP

Thanks for your helpful comment Pilot Pete, the end of a perfect day. 

You will gather that my blog is new, and intends to cover three topics - one being general cycling topics. Being a great fan of road cc, I thought that the  forum would be a good conduit for feedback on  cycling issues  that I felt worthy of comment. What I didn't anticipate was being vilified.

If your comments are a reflection of the road cc forum  views - which  they do seem to be, I clearly need to think again.

There does, in my opinion, need to be honest recognition of where cyclists let themselves and society down. Until this happens we will continue to be considered as pig-headed pariahs by lots of people. It is somethhing that is worthy of sensible, intelligent debate.

As I said , I'm new to this and I got it wrong - the road cc forum was clearly not the right place for this to happen (acknowlegment to srchar's post above for confirming this) 

 

 

You'll have to go into a bit more detail about how I let both myself and society down.

I've been compiling a list.

davidw07 wrote:

There does, in my opinion, need to be honest recognition of where cyclists let themselves and society down. Until this happens we will continue to be considered as pig-headed pariahs by lots of people. It is somethhing that is worthy of sensible, intelligent debate.

Really struggling with the logic here. Your other posts suggests AngryWindowMan took umbrage for no valid reason.

So which is likely to be closer to the truth?

Do you think he arrived at MAMIL-hating because he saw one-too-many discarded CO2 canisters, and the route to combating the likes of him is not to ditch bike litter and not jump red lights etc?

Or will there always be stupid and angry people who just want to hate things they don't understand, and the state of cyclist litter will have no bearing on him?

SingleSpeed wrote:

Struggling to see how he noticed this in the first place, were you scouring the countryside looking for litter in the first place. As a normal rider I'd struggle to notice a black inner tube just happening to lie on the roadside.

Sure as shit nobody in a car is going to notice an inner tube on a country road traveliing 40-60mph that will taint their opinion of cyclists!

 

Me thinks an agenda is to be had (oh yeah blog hits)....I agree with it as it happens, it is much much more common at Mountain Bike trail centres where some entitled dicks seem to think there is a litter patrol for their Butty Wrappers and Inner tubes.

I have found all sorts of things at the side of the road. I have a fine collection of lorry tension straps. I guess some people are just more observant than others.

alansmurphy wrote:

But it is the because of this, this argument here (ergo proctor hoc or whatever it is).

 

The drink drive campaign didn't mean that I could sit in a pub car park and await a tipsy person heading towards their car and smash their head in...

 

Suggesting people close pass us, don't respect us etc. due to one persons actions is shifting the blame...

Who said anything about close passes as a result of this? Who mentioned violence?
Driver behaviour was never mentioned, the OP was referring to an encounter they had with a villager the previous day and their attitude to him as a cyclist. We do not know if this villager was a motorist or not. The villager was not endangering the OPs life, just being rude and the OP is suggesting that this sort of behaviour by cyclists could be one reason why.

davidw07 wrote:

Should you not speak out in condemnation of the few?

This already happens. If there is one thing that unites us it is that we belong to a group that it's open season on - permanently. Us few are already condemned by judgemental berks anyway, and whether you litter or not made zero difference to the social meeja expert you clashed with. Throw in some contentious topics and there are plenty among us who would condemn us as victims too.

If you're looking for moral crusades regarding cycling, you could fill your blog many times with some I could get behind. There are genuine tour de wannabes on Sportives and the like who need to be pulled up on littering, but that's not the basis of this particular rant. Littering is shoddy but this feels like a reach, to me.

davidw07 wrote:

I am surprised by the response that my OP has created, and in some cases disappointed. Disappointed that simple condemnation of the actions of this cyclist (it was a cyclist, it was a road cyclist and it certainly wasn’t an oversight) have been fudged  - the major theme  - don’t put the blame on me or the perpetrator, because others (motorists seem to be the biggest target) do the same thing.

Maybe I need to add a bit more context. My blog a day earlier  http://bike-write.co.uk/lycra-paranoia/  described an unpleasant encounter with somebody who specifically focused his argument on his perception of cyclists (with specific mention of those clad in Lycra i.e. road cyclists) I really don’t want to give individuals like that any ammunition to give credence to their distorted views. Hence my extreme anger when I saw the bike rubbish on the verge, something which plays directly into the hands of those who seek to vilify cyclists.

If you are an English football supporter, do you not feel shame, embarrassment and anger when a minority riot abroad and become violent. Should you not speak out in condemnation of the few? Or do you just say, well it’s not just us, the Russians, the Italians and the Turks do it. Are you telling me that that is some kind of justification or excuse?

Criticism and condemnation by your peers and those who share the same interests, is a powerful message. Please don’t fudge it.

But cyclists aren’t a group or a community. We’re just people who happen to be on bikes. You are buying into the group responsibility bollocks that plagues the hard of thinking.

If you are annoyed at the cyclist for littering, then fine. 

If you are annoyed at the cyclist because a motorist is annoyed at the cyclist and then will have a go at you / close pass you / do something else dickish to you, then you’re getting angry at the wrong person. And you are validating their prickish behaviour. 

That is wrong with what you are saying. 

Bikebikebike wrote:

davidw07 wrote:

I am surprised by the response that my OP has created, and in some cases disappointed. Disappointed that simple condemnation of the actions of this cyclist (it was a cyclist, it was a road cyclist and it certainly wasn’t an oversight) have been fudged  - the major theme  - don’t put the blame on me or the perpetrator, because others (motorists seem to be the biggest target) do the same thing.

Maybe I need to add a bit more context. My blog a day earlier  http://bike-write.co.uk/lycra-paranoia/  described an unpleasant encounter with somebody who specifically focused his argument on his perception of cyclists (with specific mention of those clad in Lycra i.e. road cyclists) I really don’t want to give individuals like that any ammunition to give credence to their distorted views. Hence my extreme anger when I saw the bike rubbish on the verge, something which plays directly into the hands of those who seek to vilify cyclists.

If you are an English football supporter, do you not feel shame, embarrassment and anger when a minority riot abroad and become violent. Should you not speak out in condemnation of the few? Or do you just say, well it’s not just us, the Russians, the Italians and the Turks do it. Are you telling me that that is some kind of justification or excuse?

Criticism and condemnation by your peers and those who share the same interests, is a powerful message. Please don’t fudge it.

But cyclists aren’t a group or a community. We’re just people who happen to be on bikes. You are buying into the group responsibility bollocks that plagues the hard of thinking.

If you are annoyed at the cyclist for littering, then fine. 

If you are annoyed at the cyclist because a motorist is annoyed at the cyclist and then will have a go at you / close pass you / do something else dickish to you, then you’re getting angry at the wrong person. And you are validating their prickish behaviour. 

That is wrong with what you are saying. 

The drunk driving campaign of the 70s/80s targeted motorists as a community even though they are just people that happen to drive, and it was effective.

The OP was annoyed because a villager (not known if a motorist or not) did something dickish to them. Whilst this is not pleasant, it is understandable how this could happen.

I have a dog, and I dispair when I see dog mess that has not been cleaned up whilst out. I do not think that there is a dog owners community either but I do believe that the acts of these owners that do not pick up their dog's mess reflects badly on the rest of us.

Bikebikebike wrote:

I don’t give a fuck if motorists think I am reasonable, responsible or public spirited. I just don’t want them to run me over. And I don’t see how littering by me, another person on a bike or anyone else should have any effect on how they drive around me. Exactly what are you trying to achieve?

Page hits.

ClubSmed wrote:

Drinking and driving is an issue specific to motorists, but not all motorists were drunk drivers.

Littering the countryside with discarded inner tubes and inflation canisters is an issue specific to cyclists, but not all cyclists have littered in this way.

And 'littering with discarded inner tubes' is fundamentally different to all other forms of litering in what way, exactly? Sorry, but it _still_ doesn't work as an argument. Littering is littering, there aren't special categories of littering depending on the nature of the litter (assuming we aren't talking barrels of lethal toxic waste that turns people into zombies or something).

Drink driving is not an arbitrarily defined special case of a more general problem, its a particular problem of its own, very different from drink-walking, say.

So, nah, you are still failing at logic.

(But I am being argumentative about something that isn't very important, I acknowledge that much.)

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

ClubSmed wrote:

Drinking and driving is an issue specific to motorists, but not all motorists were drunk drivers.

Littering the countryside with discarded inner tubes and inflation canisters is an issue specific to cyclists, but not all cyclists have littered in this way.

And 'littering with discarded inner tubes' is fundamentally different to all other forms of litering in what way, exactly? Sorry, but it _still_ doesn't work as an argument. Littering is littering, there aren't special categories of littering depending on the nature of the litter (assuming we aren't talking barrels of lethal toxic waste that turns people into zombies or something). Drink driving is not an arbitrarily defined special case of a more general problem, its a particular problem of its own, very different from drink-walking, say. So, nah, you are still failing at logic. (But I am being argumentative about something that isn't very important, I acknowledge that much.)

Drink driving could be considered a “defined special case of a more general problem” of being Drunk. Section 12 of the Licensing Act 1872 outlaws “every person found drunk in any highway or other public place, whether a building or not, or on any licensed premises”.
Other defined special cases of this more general problem include Drunk in charge of a child and Drunk and Disorderly

This is all beside the point though.

Littering is a massive problem but tackling it as a whole doesn’t seem to have a big enough impact because the problem is enormous. So we need to eat the elephant slice by slice by targeting specific groups one at a time to get the overall problem down. I think one grouping that should be targeted for this is smokers (who seem to believe that cigarette butts are not classed as litter), but just because I think that another group is a higher priority for targeting does not mean that I can’t accept that other groups also should be targeted.

It’s a problem, not dealing with it and using the retort of “others do worse” is not fixing the problem. If anything this actually makes it worse.

ClubSmed wrote:

just because I think that another group is a higher priority for targeting does not mean that I can’t accept that other groups also should be targeted.

The problem with this is assuming that cyclists are a group.

DaSy wrote:

ClubSmed wrote:

just because I think that another group is a higher priority for targeting does not mean that I can’t accept that other groups also should be targeted.

The problem with this is assuming that cyclists are a group.

They are as much of a group as smokers, drivers or dog walkers are and that is all that they need to be for this discussion. Maybe I should have used the term targeted market or demographic instead?

ClubSmed wrote:

I agree that there is no "cyclist community" that encompasses all cyclists so all should not be brought into question over every action of individuals.

However...

This highlighting and stating that this behaviour is not acceptable is, I believe, important and effective.

You only need to look at how media campaigns targeted at motorists in the 70s/80s managed to change the mind-set from not using seatbelts and drink driving being acceptable to them being socially unacceptable.

If posts like this can do the same thing with littering then I am all for it, regardless of the way it groups people together.

Except 'drinking and driving' was and is an issue specific to motorists.  The distinguishing feature of this blog post is that it tries to make littering into a group responsibility, which is just silly.  There are doubltess a million blog posts and adverts out there saying that 'littering is bad', it doesn't seem to have solved the problem.

Littering is not confined to any particular group.   And the issues you mention involved a state campaign and police action -  a blogger is not the state.