Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sat, 25 Jul 2009, Tom Barry wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 24 Jul 2009, John B wrote:

On Jul 24, 3:34 pm, wrote:
[accurate and correct things]

Bloody hell, that's a Boltar post that I completely, 100% agree with.
Must be the end times...

I chafed a bit at 'idiot cyclists', but if you read that as saying
that cyclists who complain about bendies are idiots, rather than that
all cyclists are idiots and complain about bendies, then it's spot on.

I read it as being 'zealot cyclists who think the road should be
rearranged for their benefit',

Add 'and have mistaken ideas about what arrangement would be most to
their benefit'.

The dreaded 'common sense' of the selfish individual, as expressed by a)
I don't like waiting at traffic lights b) therefore I should be allowed
to ignore them c) therefore I shall arrive at my destination faster d)
therefore the world is a better place. This is often allied to a hatred
of 'experts', possibly because there's an unconscious fear of being
shown up to be a loud-mouthed know-nothing, possibly because that
implies intellectualism, which is associated with undesirable foreign
things like the French. Boris, famously, got his bottom firmly smacked
by London's businessmen over portraying Ken's spending on overseas
embassies as waste, and still maintains that adding a bend to a Citaro
makes it fit only for 'Scandinavian airports'. As I understand it,
Scandinavian airports work rather well, not that I've ever used one, so
it's just rhetorical xenophobia and wilful refusal to examine how the
modern world works. The candidate for the fearful ignorant who want to
be lied to soothingly, is our Boris.


leavened by old-fashioned Tory car-worship*.

Are motorismists anti-bendy?


Yes, certainly the more militant ones - poking a few random people on
Twitter who were applauding Boris on the bendy issue, it turned out very
quickly that they were basically motorists (or in one case a
motorcyclist) for whom a bendy is an impediment to getting about London
in their tin cans - obviously there's sa strong Clarkson
'why-should-the-poor-get-about-faster-than-me' element to this. What's
notable is that they use the same bendy myths ('not built for London's
roads', 'great in Berlin/Amsterdam/wherever, but not British') when what
they actually mean is 'I don't like 100+ people of lower social class in
a bus getting in my way when I'm driving'. Obviously 72 slow-boarding
double deckers on the 38 from November isn't really going to help them,
but it requires more faith in their self-awareness than I can currently
summon up to suppose they'll actually notice what's holding them up.

On the other hand, perhaps spending millions on bendy replacements every
year helps selfish motorists by drying up funds for the expansion of the
network? Maybe that's the plan?

Tom