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Brilliant: [url= http://adrianshort.co.uk/2009/08/24/456/ ]Save the planet — ban cycle helmets[/url]
my proposed ban on cycle helmets might be a little more problematic. For a long time I’ve harboured the suspicion in my more paranoid moments that there’s some kind of collusion between the road/oil lobby and elements of the cycling fraternity to ensure that cycling in Britain remains a marginalised, unpleasant and largely despised activity.
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Cycling is cheap? Can’t have that. Now, let’s see. Let’s start at the obvious place by making bikes more expensive. Load them with features that cost more to build (complex braking systems, gears, suspension) and require expensive expert maintenance rather than DIY. Turn the bike from an everyday utilitarian thing, a utensil, and make it a product. Desirable. Fashionable. Consumerable. There’s a lot of choice, so shop around. Read reviews. Get recommendations. Worry, because it matters. Who’d want to be seen riding a cheap bike? An unfashionable bike? A tatty bike? Now accessorise. That expensive bike needs an expensive lock — or two. Got to protect your investment. Buy insurance. (Shop around, shop around.) Compare the tensile strengths and style options and get a helmet. A bone dome. A skid lid. Don’t be cheap — your skull could depend on it. Get a hi-viz jacket that’s more breathable than a string vest and only fifty times the price. Padded shorts for that tiny, bony saddle. Special shoes to couple perfectly with your special pedals. A messenger bag from this week’s premium brand.
Some people have too much time on their hands!
Like it.
Although it's not really saying much, just using bikes as an illustration of capitalism.
I think the general gear-whore mentality in cycling goes a bit further than capitalism/consumerism - you'll get people who would balk at paying £1.20 for a cup of tea telling you that you "need" a certain bit of kit.
There's a lot of received wisdom out there, and some wider contraints imposed by society too: I can't sit in work in my casual comfortable cycling clothes, because clients expect us to be wearing suits.
It's amusingly written.
Beyond that, er, dunno. He makes a general point, somethimes pithily, but it doesn't alter anything or challenge anything that hasn't been thought or dsaid a thosaund times before.
Sometimes I wear a helmet, somethimes I don't.
Save the planet - dont wear a helmet. That way more people are likely to die of head injurys thereby lowering the population. Over population being the main cause of the current economic problems.
Trimix - or wearing helmets puts people off cycling and thus banning helmets would get more people cycling thus not travelling in cars. There has never been an huge number of cyclists dying of head injuries in the UK. Countries where people don't wear helmets have a lower head injury rate. One of the conundrums of this debate.
Death from head injury sounds a tempting option compared to reading any more of that stream of conciousness drivel...
I like the fat part lol
Are you fat? Don’t cycle. You don’t, do you? Fit people cycle. Fat people do not cycle. (Fat people do not swim. Fat people do not run. Soon, fat people will not walk.) Cycling is about fitness. Fat people, un-fit people, do not cycle. Fat people look ridiculous on bikes. Fat people look crap in lycra. Fat people look even more fat in lycra, if such a tragically hilarious thing could be possible. Fat people can only go slowly but cyclists must go fast. They must race. They must perform. They must compete. Fat people are not fast off the lights. Fat people do not look like Lance ****ingarm****ingstrong. Fat people must enshroud themselves in cars as a prophylactic against polite society’s sight of their ungainly self-propelled movement. Fat people must squeeze themselves onto buses and trains and tubes with all the other huffers and puffers, the children and the old people, the timid and the nearly dead. They say obese but you read fat. People like you are an epidemic. You are contagious and the things you must do to make the rest of us safe you are not allowed to do. Fat is getting thinner all the time. If you are fat, don’t cycle. You don’t, do you?
Fattist!
i was only wondering this morning how i should re-cycle my old lid.
this has not answered my question.
This guy definitely needs to get laid and stop worrying about shite