I really don’t see what her physical appearance or gender has to do with anything. 🙄
Janet Street Porter is a highly intelligent, educated person. However, she’s really let herself down with this piss-poor article. It’s no better than a cabby’s rant about cyclists.
Stuff like this just makes her look like an uninformed reactionary idiot:
“The London Cycling Campaign claims that “thousands of Londoners would like to cycle”, but I wonder on what evidence it bases its claim. “
The ‘evidence’ of extensive questionnaires and surveys, I’d imagine. I know one or two people who do work for the LCC, and such research forms quite a significant part of their activity.
She does raise a reasonable point re infrastructure, but does it very badly. What she fails to recognise, is that the infrastructure is often ill thought out, and creates more problems than it solves. Without addressing the real issue, which is unnecessary motor vehicle journeys in cities, just squeezing cycling provision alongside existing roads is simply creating even more congestion. Using private vehicles to travel within cities, when there are perfectly good alternatives available (maybe just not quite so ‘convenient), is selfish and thoughtless in my opinion. We need to be looking at how to change people’s thinking about private personal transport, rather than simply trying to force more and more traffic to share the same space.
“Surprised the Independent even printed that to be honest.”
Really? Can you imagine the extra site traffic such clickbait creates? I’d guess there will be a good few hundred if not thousands of clickthroughs just from this thread alone. JS-P channelling the spirit of KT Hopkins…