Has anyone had a look at the lengthy piece in yesterday's Observer magazine
about the virulent anti-cycling lobby brewing in Britain at the moment?

Horrific quotes about people wanting to take shot-guns to cyclists, etc.,
etc.

However, there are some interesting points made by the cyclist author of the
piece:

"Out there, everybody's trying to kill us. Everybody hates us. The council
hates us, with their potholes, ignored broken glass, imbecile cycle lanes
and 6in moats around storm drains. Buses hate us, pedestrians hate us,
cabbies hate us, van men hate us, motorbikes hate us, Lord Howarth of
Newport hates us, even God hates us, with his wind and sleet and
unreasonable, arrogant bloody hills. To cycle in Britain is to feel like
the whole of the universe is giving you the evils......... So, in the head
of a typical driver, subconsciously and automatically, things like these
happen: the behaviour of the worst cyclist is used to judge them all; any
cash the council visibly spends on them seems maddeningly unfair; any
accident is the cyclist's fault; when making a decision, the motorist puts
the needs of other motorists first; any behaviour at all that is 'different'
to the driver's own is wrong."

He explains that he doesn't use cycle lanes because "they're filled with
holes, telephone boxes, grates, craters, broken glass, trees, pedestrians,
parked cars, waiting cabs and litter bins; but mostly because they stop and
start suddenly, up on high kerbs, so to get off the road and on to them
safely I'd have to master some nifty manoeuvre to do with quantum
bi-location, atomic wormholes and halting earth time. Also, they often last
for all of 10 metres."

Over at the Sun, Emma Parker Bowles has come up with her own 'special'
solution to the problem of cyclists, "There needs to be a natural
extermination process for these infuriating people."

But then motorists are responsible for "3,500 deaths a year - compared with
cyclists' annual tally of none whatsoever."

If you made some of the comments made about cyclists in the article and
directed them against women, gay people, or black people, you would be
likely to be prosecuted for inciting hatred or violence. How can people get
away with talking about cyclists like that?????

Full article is on the web:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1788039,00.html

Craig