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Attendance at conferences has always been a confusing time for me. New people. New faces. And new facts and figures to mull over at leisure. I suppose the important thing is not what we learn, but what we do with what we think we have learned. And what baton to pick up and run with.
For me Ben Hamilton-Baillee came up trumps. In-filling the stuff he has on his website http://www.hamilton-baillie.co.uk/ The first few tentative steps to try to persuade the 'Great British Public' that we are not complete morons needing lines to tell us where to go in our cars and on our bikes. But how do you persuade morons that they aint morons after all ? Let's cross our fingers for Ben's vision for Exhibition Road, Kensington.
For my part, the one thing that fired my boilers was the repeat of what I have heard on other occasions, that the visually handicapped lobby is persistently opposed to cycling initiatives that involve any sort of juxtaposition of pedestrians and cyclists, even if cyclists life and death is involved.
I overheard at least two highways bods agreeing that we cannot ignore this lobby, nor other negative perceptions from other user groups. No thought that perhaps they should be using the word 'prejudices' instead of 'perceptions'. Everywhere else in our society 'prejudice' is under attack, except cycling. Here it seems to be getting worse - and more violent, if half what we hear about riders experiences on the road is true.
We really do need to get off the back foot on this issue and start dancing on our toes. Our ranks include representatives of virtually all the other user groups, from blind tandem stokers, paraplegics with foot or hand driven machines, to someone close to me who still cycles independently in spite of Alzheimer's.
No, we should not be afraid of tackling opposition head on. We should be demanding that they start applying the sort of nous we are beginning to hear from Ben H-B and his likes.
And it might help if we started to use the word 'cycling' more, rather than 'cyclists'. It's much more difficult for opposition to get a head lock on the former, than the latter. (Conference organiser please take note)
Roy
CTC RTR Denbighshire/Conwy
PS And that's the sort of outburst you get from me after peering into the gloom all day over the Menai Strait. I'll go and have a suck on my dummy now - if I can find it amongst the cushions.
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