@BBCNorfolk: encouraging hate for the sake of ratings

Transport taxes are not hypothecated. The main tax that is hypothecated is "the television tax"; the money everyone with a TV pays irrespective of whether or not they watch BBC TV. Or listen to BBC Norfolk. Something this article will return to at is end.

On Tuesday, BBC Norfolk dedicated their three hour talk show to, nominally, "should cyclists pay road tax".

Why? Over the weekend a cyclist got hit by a driver coming round the corner too fast -and ending up on the wrong side of the road. The driver didn't stop; she drove off and was only identified because she boasted about it on Twitter, saying they don't pay road tax.

That could have been an opportunity for a news channel to get the region to look at itself, to consider that driving off after injuring another person is no longer unusual. To consider how "road rage" has gone from being something that happened in the US, to something that happens every day somewhere in the county. To consider that the driving test may not be preparing the next generation of drivers to drive safely in the current generation of cars. To ask why the punishments for any act of dangerous driving is usually a gentle slap on the wrist.

That didn't happen. Instead, the way they treated the incident of a hit an run assault on a cyclist by having a three hour phone in on whether cyclists should be on the road at all.

They may gloss that over, to say they were "encouraging the debate" -but if you listened to any of that show, it was primarily an opportunity for cyclist-haters to come out of their caves, to phone in complaining about cyclists not using the paths to the side -and so endangering the drivers. To phone in complaining about a cyclist wobbling all over the road "whey they tapped their horn behind them". The radio show accepted these calls without ridiculing the caller "how many drivers were killed by cyclists last year". Without ridiculing the "all over the road" hater with "why did you sound your horn just because you were behind someone with the right to be there?". No. The station -our tax funded station- delegated all defence of the situation to the few people dialling in to make that defence.

Carlton Reid got to make a response, which he did, politely, on the topic of road tax. Yet even he didn't raise the fundamental issue with the program: why was the BBC reacting to a hit and run, not by looking at the issue of dangerous drivers, but instead effectively asking: should the cyclist have been there?

That is what they were asking, and they let the locals dial in to make the case that no, they shouldn't.

Imagine an immigrant had been victim in the hit and run. Would the channel have a broadcast "should immigrants be allowed on the road?". No, because they'd recognise that even though immigration is a core UKIP theme, to devolve it to a "should they be on the road" topic would be morally wrong.

Imagine a child had been the victim in the hit and run. Would the channel have had a three hour talk show "is it the children's own fault for being out there?". No. Because the victim blaming would have been blatantly obvious.

Yet here we have a channel where they were looking round for a local theme to keep the phone lines busy, and came up with "lets start a discussion about whether cyclists should be on the road".

Did anyone put their hand up in the planning for this and say "to do this two days after someone justified running over one as 'they shouldn't be there' is morally wrong". Did someone say "we are stirring up hate?". Well, they may have -but it didn't stop the show going ahead.

And now whoever measures the ratings will be feeling smug, "this was popular", and planning a rerun later this year.

If the radio station had chosen to make the theme anything stirring up hate against immigrants, the disabled, travellers, or similar, they'd be rightfully part of a national scandal, how a local channel was encouraging on-air abuse of a minority group. Not so for anything picking on cyclists. It is considered socially acceptable.

If the taxpayer-funded BBC radio and TV channels can do this, what hope do we have for the rest of the country. The BBC is legitimising the actions of those people who do "punishment passes" at "arrogant cyclists" who have the arrogance to hold up drivers who "have paid road tax". They are defending those people who lean out the window of their cars and should at the cyclists "you don't pay road tax" whenever their driving is criticised.

Why does the BBC consider doing this to be acceptable?

To close then, here is a suggestion for BBC Norfolk to cover one morning:
TV License fees: are they worth the money?

Bells for the bicycles of westminster

Westminster's pro-car policies poison the heart of London; the heart of political Britain.

By encouraging residents to own cars and drive, they increase congestion in and around the borough. By seemingly actively trying to suppress cycling, they again have knock-on effects in the adjacent boroughs and across the river.

Their cycling policy has now, apparently, been updated to support the TfL plans. All that seems to have happened there is some praise for it in the introduction and explanations in the body of the report explaining why segregation is impossible in Westminster. Perhaps the document was nearly finished when the TfL plans came out -the council knew they had to acknowledge it, and did so in a way that completely dismissed the vision.

Indeed, some of the statements "no need for 20mph zones S the average speed is below that" seems classic old-school TfL, something cut and paste from a Blackfriars bridge report. That 20 mph limit shows the core issue with the Westminster plan: they don't actually want to do anything. It's not that they want to encourage cycling but can't think how -the usual- it is like they see cyclists coming into their borough and want them to stop it. Keeping the speed limits at 30 are the symbol here: a council unable to accept that there is a place for cycling in the city.

The other example is the "free bells for cyclists" idea. This is a worse piece of bollocks than even the hi viz that S Gloucs council likes to give out: hi viz may make you visible to the HGV driver, and, provided they don't mistake you for some street furniture they can drive over, may keep you out of the KSI statistics. A bell? That may help you avoid hitting a tourist that steps out without looking, but it doesn't protect you from anything that endangers you.

If there is one key conclusion from the tone of the report, independent of the sheer awful ideas, it is that it shows that Westminster council view cycling as "for others". There's no attempt to identify with the cyclists, just portray them as a group that fails to show respect for motorists. If anyone who cycled had written the report they'd know that taxis and buses usually show resentment to anyone on a bicycle in the shared lanes. They'd know that regardless of average speeds, if ever an empty stretch opens up in one of the one-way rat-runs someone will be sprinting down at 40 mph -and when you are cycling on the "quiet routes" the risk of someone cutting in from a side street at speed is always there. Then they'd get into the topic of bike parking, the inadequate supply of Boris bikes at Paddington station, and the way every square has been turned into a gyratory system which needs aggressive cycling through to get round every corner safely.

There's none of that. Instead you get a planned cycling percentage below other parts of the same city -on a deadline so far away that they can always say "we are on track", because it will take 15 years to show they weren't. 

If the London cycle campaigners get a chance to meet with the councillors -ask them if they cycle round Westminster. When they confess to not doing so, put them on the spot and ask why not?

Asking the question will probably show their Eric Pickles "rubber trouser" prejudice, which is something that needs to be drawn out. But it may force them to admit that they don't cycle in the borough because it is a shit place to ride a bike. Which would lead to the next question: are any of these proposals going to do anything at all to change that? Because they aren't, the council clearly hates people who cycle, and they need to come out as cycle-haters rather than pretending they are really trying to help cycling in Westminster by giving out free bells. 

Betrayed by a Legal System

A key point of the APCG report on cycling was a legal system that protects the vulnerable. It is clear this week that we do not.

Earlier in the week, Martin Porter discussed why a videoed road rage assault wasn't something the CPS could be bothered to prosecute -even though the prosecutions from the riots showed it was perfectly possible if they wanted to.

There's a key difference between rioters and drivers who assault cyclists: rioters threaten the very stability of society, whereas drivers are pillars of society, and it is cyclists who are abnormal.

One thing Martin Porter missed was that if that Birmingham driver had, instead of getting out of his van to start a fight, had just "clipped" the cyclist, even if the CPS had tried to prosecute the driver, the "a momentary lapse in concentration" defence would have got him off.

We've seen in Bristol judges letting off speeding drivers who cause injuries using the phrase "you didn't intend to hurt someone" as the reason to not punish them. We've seen in London that killing someone by dooring them or driving them over in an HGV not something to penalise.

Today's scottish punishment "you can kill someone and the victim gets blamed" shows how fucked justice is. The driver didn't even have to try the "sun in my eyes" gambit, make up some medical condition and get let off -because in the UK you are not only allowed to drive until you kill someone, you can keep driving afterwards.

In the US, there's evidence of racial bias in Judges, though little seems to be done about that, or juries.

In Northern Ireland, Diplock Courts attempted to address juror bias in acquitting/convicting suspected terrorists. The Diplock report blamed juror intimidation, which no doubt was ubuquitous, but there was also "the danger of perverse acquittals". Having three judges rather than a jury of peers was considered fairer.

This year we've seen many perverse acquittals, and this time a sheriff who gave a driver a mild slap on the wrist -though perhaps if the community service consists of 300 hours of cycling up and down the A9 he may not only appreciate things differently, but he may experience a death penalty administered by someone who could use the "momentary lapse of concentration" gambit.

The Times cyclesafe campaign has been one of the key drivers for visible change in England, triggered by the near death of Mary Bowers, again a case where the outcome could only be described as perverse.

This needs to be fixed. Obviously the petition calling on parliament to act is something everyone should sign, but it is not enough. Every needs to get out there and demand better treatment.

For everyone in Scotland who wants to cycle and live, Pedal on Parliament, is where they need to be in May 19.

But let's go one better. Let's have people from England go up there too, to show how much everyone in the country thinks that this week the Scottish legal system has betrayed us all.

Parking Priorities at Bristol Parkway

the sign says "Cycle Lockers for Long Term Users", and adds a phone number for a key.
What a great idea -you could cycle to the station, do a day trip to London, pick up a Boris bike and then head home, knowing your bike will still be there. A way to travel across the city without creating congestion.

only the lockers aren't there.
 
They were there, then they got removed so First Great Western, holders of the train franchise (and a sister company of First Bus), could add some extra premium parking. That didn't come about, but nor did the plans to reinstitute the lockers somewhere else.
 
Lots and lots of car parking. The RAC Foundation are claiming that parking is the main revenue stream for railways. Presumably they are complaining about how much it costs -certainly those charges aren't suppressing demand -the car park is full on this weekday.
 
A more sophisticated claim would be "FGW not only charges a lot for parking, it does nothing to enable or encourage you to come by any other means. That means FirstBus buses are never co-ordinated with the trains, and they take away the secure parking

What's left? A row of wheelbenders right in front of the station. Full to capacity, despite their notorious insecurity. These aren't leftovers from the 1980s either -this revamped station building is probably less than a decade old.
 
Alongside this new station building: a two-level bike park that works if your bike is light and you are strong. Dutch style bikes? not a fucking chance, even for a fit adult male.
   
If you want a dutch-style cycling revolution, you have to provide destinations as well as routes. First Great Western absolutely fail to do this at Parkway. They do at Templemeads -it's problem is popularity, but they don't at Paddington, but they go out of their way to make parking a bike at Bristol Parkway insecure and hard, even to the extent of removing the only good bike lockers they had in order to get mor car parking in.

S Gloucs can't get the blame here -but it's interesting to consider what influence they have over the station. Can they require them to add more -decent- bike parks, to replace the wheelbenders with rows of sheffield racks, to return the secure racks, and to turn some of the car bays into bike bays.

Because forcing FGW to do it is the only way it is going to happen.

What kind of role models are these?

There's a series on BBC3 right now, something like "fucking dangerous new drivers", or similar, though they don't actually question why these teenagers think driving is so important.

The first week, one of the fucking dangerous new drivers was described as being from Bristol, but she wasn't. She was from Thornbury, S. Gloucs. She'd had to sell her first car after earning a few thousand pounds worth of parking fines, and now she was being considered for a second one.

During that week's filming, she was seen: texting while driving. Screaming in rage at some vehicle in front for not being aggressive enough at a junction for her liking. Driving on the motorway while waving her hands around signing. Enough in a single week's filming to have earned her a license disqualification. The only reason she "won" is that the other subject -some idiot who could be shown as proof that university acceptance criteria is too low- had to be stopped by the camera crew themselves from driving home from a club while twice the legal limit.

Hopefully they aren't representative of the majority of their age group, but if you wonder where the cycle haters on twitter come from (and no doubt many more on facebook), these fuckwits give you a clue.

So why do they drive? For the fat-arsed Thornbury resident, its obvious: its a dormitory town where you either stay in the town or get out via the A38 or M5. There is a bus service, but it is getting progressively worse. Most people who work -presumably in Gloucs, Bristol or the Bristol North Fringe- will be driving. If you area teenager, unless you can fit your life around the dire bus service, a car gets you out of the dormitory and into the city. Though if you can run up a few thousand pounds of parking tickets, you need to think more about where to park -and whether your journeys are economic.

The program did cover some of their journeys -one of them was to a Range Rover dealer near to Thornbury. The idiot said how she admired Katie Price and wanted a range rover too, sitting in one and dreaming of being famous and driving round in a black range rover with tinted windows.

Which comes  to the title of the post "What kind of role models are these?".

Today the Former Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding has been banned from driving for six months. According to the BBC, "she was pulled over in her Range Rover on 4 April after swerving into the path of a cycling policeman on Charing Cross Road in central London."

Pretty unlucky there: if it had been anyone other than a policeman there'd be a video on youtube and another futile complaint to Roadsfe. It's notable that this is the second time this week that something appears to have happened after a cycling policeman was nearly hit -which shows how important it is that they do, and, given how few do, how common near-misses really are.

Because this former celebrity had totted enough points, she was banned from driving for six months. Her lawyer, trying to weasel her out of this, argued that his client had "suffered more than a normal person because of the media attention her arrest had attracted".

See that? trying to get someone out of a driving ban "because they weren't a normal person"? At least this time the judge declared that to him she was normal -another dangerous driver- and there'd be no exemption. But it shows the arrogance of the elite -and sets the example for everyone else.

• Chris Huhne: tries to get out of a ban by getting his wife to say it was her. This must be ubiquitous -all Chris did was show that MPs were prepared to do it too. Caught on the phone a few months later and banned anyway.
• Katie Price, role model for the Thornbury road rager. Gets off on a 12 month ban on December 3rd, "we don't read our own post" and "the white ranger rover isn't the one I use" Spotted texting on the M25, in her pink range-rover December 23rd.
• Carlos Tevez, banned in January for speeding, "didn't understand the letters". Arrested for breaching the ban in March in a Porsche Cayenne, excuse "I only live down the road, two minutes."
• This week, Sarah Harding, penalised for having the misfortune to nearly hit a cycling policeman, rather than nearly hit any other cyclist.

What you can see is the general belief amongst the rich, famous and powerful that they are exempt from little thinks like speeding, driving bans, laws against texting. And when they do get caught, their lawyers will try everything they can to get them out of any punishment, including saying they don't deserve a ban because the press coverage means they suffered more than a normal person.

These are the role models for the majority of the country's teenagers (excluding Chris Huhne, who is just a selfish wanker). People who drive high end cars, drive dangerously and then think they exempt from what little enforcement and justice there is in road safety today.

This shows a cultural problem. The Netherlands and Denmark have their cycling royalty. Instead we get royalty, footballers and celebrities who all drive round in range rovers -while the "normal people", including the aspiration fuckwits of Thornbury and elsewhere, aspire to the same lifestyle. They too want a ranger rover -and in the meantime, they can at least drive round texting and speeding.

Why do mondays bring out the haters?

As CycleHatred shows, Monday mornings appear to be the time when most of the "fucking cyclists I hope they all die" rants crop up.

Why?

Probably because it is the first day the posters have been stuck in a rush hour traffic jam after the weekend. The first day of trying to get across a city on a deadline while everyone else has the same idea; the first day of getting frustrated and angry about sitting around while nothing happens because some bastard has blocked the junction you want to get across.

Later on in the week, the car commuters have become used to this, so only whine about specific bicycles, rather than their very presence on the road.

But why the hate for bicycles? If you follow up with the posters, it's often about them taking up space "hogging the road", "holding us up". They are an obvious outgroup to blame for this experience of having to sit in traffic.

There's also that situation where there's an almost clear stretch of road from one set of lights to the traffic jam behind, where the driver could put their foot down, get up to 30 mph for a few seconds, and pretend to themselves that driving is a fast way to travel at rush hour.

What's not so obvious is that 29% of morning traffic that is the school run parent, nobody tweets "fucking lazy parents not walking their kids to school". Even if they are visible, with the kids in the back each staring at their personal DVD player embedded in the rear headrests of the front two seats, they can't be blamed for "hogging the road" as the driver behind isn't fucking stupid enough to demand they get to the side to let others past.

And of course, nobody is stupid enough to say "fucking commuters, always blocking the road at rush hour", as that would mean having to acknowledge that they themselves were to blame for being stupid enough to drive into or across a city at peak hours and expecting the journey to be anything other than a crawl between traffic jams.

This is probably also why so many of the local-rag cyclist haters rant on about removing traffic lights.

The fuckwit haters seem to blame the traffic lights for causing the jam, missing the point that the traffic lights are to try and ensure that people heading in different directions get across the city. The jams are because there are too many people trying to do this.

Trying to get the haters to clarify their hate over Twitter has proven futile.

What else?

Well, what are our goals. Is it:

1. Stop the haters ranting on twitter.
2. Stop the haters trying out punishment passes, cutting in before left hooks or the next traffic jam.
3. Have them trying to cycle themselves and so stop not only hating the cyclists, but becoming less of a problem to the entire city.

#3: get off their fat arses and cycle in must be the ideal goal. 

How to do that? 

How the S Gloucs transport planning has let down everyone

Here are some photos from September, A4174 between UWE and the M32 -M32 is behind the camera, the direction all the cars are going

or would be going if any of the cars were moving.

Nothing is moving because somewhere on the M4 there is a traffic jam, which goes back to the M32, which then goes back to the A4174.

In both directions: people are sitting in their cars, getting frustrated, no doubt complaining that not enough is being done to prevent jams.

Yet if you look, what is happening here is that too much has been done over 30-40 years to create traffic jams.

The North Fringe offices: apart from the students, you are all expected to drive.

The housing estates of Emerson's Green, Bradley Stoke, etc? You are expected to drive out of there to whereever you are going, and back again.

By creating a featureless sprawl of ring roads, roundabouts, dual carriageways gluing together dormitary housing estates and bracknell-class offices, the area is probably the most car dependent part of the city.

Which is where things failed: no serious attempt has been -or is being made- to change this. The cycle plans get the leftovers, when the traffic planners remember to even think of them. Instead the work goes into the big things, the bypasses, the "managed motorway", the roundabout improvments.

And what do people get for that? They get raised expectations, and, when congestion occurs anywhere within the road network, traffic jams that hold up more people.

On spreadsheets, the planners can look at the number of people held up, use a cost model that says "a minute for a car driver costs X pence", multiply it by the number of people waiting, and use the growth in traffic jams -the mistakes of the previous projects- to justify the next one.

What is never done is look at the entire expenditure over 30+ years and say "was it worth it?"

Because in S Gloucs, all it's done is create traffic jams to dormitory towns, and a commuter class who come in to work in the North Fringe from as far away as Wales, Gloucester and Swindon.

And the cyclists? The very infrastructure put in to help driving has made cycling there awful. You get the cycle paths of varying quality alongside the ring road -but any approach to and from it and you have to share the roads with the motoring commuters, the chavwits of Yate sprinting to get to the A4174, the BMW-ratrunners trying to go through Winterbourne on their way to their mock-rural semi.

We get the leftovers, while the nominal victors in the traffic planning, the drivers, get nothing but traffic jams.