BarM cakes. FFS Jim, at least try and make an effort to understand local customs.
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"Ee up Jim lad. In Sheffield we all like to drive huge inappropriate SUVs. Park on the pavement to piss off pedestrians. Sit in traffic for hours to get anywhere despite there being better alternatives, and love to pump pollution out into the environment. Particularly around schools and drop-off and pick-up times. If you're going to live here, you'll have to get with the program. Get down the Land Rover dealership with your flat cap on right this instant.".
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Only if your brain has been programmed in Colonel Blimp mode, and you choose to see the worst in everyone elses motivation (in line with your own?), and equally feel the need to immediately go into whataboutery mode to protect the status quo in all things. As your masters have decreed.
The alternative is actually thinking about what people are saying, analysing their case without prejudice, and engaging constructively in it. You should try it. It's ace. Even if all of us are not going to be very good at it (or right!) most of the time. Although I do understand that actually thinking is not seductive to most people.
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I was also not angry, just mildly piss-taking. I broadly agree with you that improving cycling infrastructure is usually going to be a net positive.
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Hurrah! How about extending this sort of thinking to trains (public transport) and essential services like water, power, and kids being able to eat?
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Fair enough. I'll add context to my own reply that at that time, I was reading on WhatsApp that a few people on our street have been messaging the rest of the street about asking the council to plant a few more trees (the neighbouring street have just had some put in) - and there were about 5 immediate replies saying no - as the trees might get in the way of them parking their cars (because most of the street park their cars half on the pavement, where the trees would possibly be planted). I counted yesterday - there's about 30 cars parked on our street of 70 hours. That's the capacity. So less than half the street drive - yet they take up probably 70% of the real estate down the street - and are causing a right fuss because the rest of the street want to use perhaps five or six 1m x 1m squares to plan some small trees. Selfish cunts. One of the objections from a driver was that the small trees would obstruct pedestrians! The irony when there's 30 cars already doing that but nobody says a word.
Don't even get me started on when a few of us messaged in the group about having a cycle hanger installed at the top of the road for bike storage.
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No. Maybe let's worry about Jim understanding local bakery customs properly before we move on to letting him upend transit policy, smash the system, and seize the means of production.
You're obviously at liberty to turn this into yet another of your tin foil Russian conspiracies to enslave us all and turn us into blood bags to keep the uber-wealthy eternally young, but I'm not letting you get in the way of a good old fashioned bit of Jim-mockery.
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Honestly I avoid those types of places. Can't understand a word they're bloody saying. There's a nice cafe near me staffed by a lovely lady who moved up here from Dalston, so I go there for my sourdough loaf and oat cappuccino each morning.
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....appreciate the sarcasm factor...but it's also instructive how people have been programmed to think that discussion of investment in social infrastructure is some sort of extreme marxist coup attempt.
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Jim, why the fuck would you join your street’s Whatsapp group? If you struggle on knowing what bin day it is just wait for one of the organised ones with it marked on their calendar to put their bin out first.
FWIW I’m always envious of the biking/walking infrastructure when I visit the Netherlands. Utrecht is a joy to get around.
But round my parts, it’s fucking suicidal on some roads. I gave up on biking to work sharpish after a couple of near misses. Narrow roads and careless drivers not a good mix. But everyone gets out of my way when the big fuck off SUV comes for them and I’m pretty sure I’d notice if I squashed any bikers. Maybe.
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Did you manage to get that blood off the wheel arch?
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This is a fair comment. Though it did provide some amusement shortly after moving in when there were accusations of racism, people sharing screenshots of slanderous DMs and people kicking each other out the group left, right and centre. It's disappointingly calmed down now.
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I’ll wait for it to rain same as everything else. I’ve given up on cleaning a black car.
I’ll just say I’ve been near Cotgrave and hit one of the many dead badgers on the road.
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Start a pseudonym acc. Be super helpful and worm your way into admin. Nuke the group from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
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Pretty sure that a street's whatsapp group is in one of Dante's circles of hell.
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Not really, when as I keep telling you I'm trying to have a discussion of Jim being the equivalent of one of those Brits who retires to Spain and then complains about people speaking Spanish and the lack of PG Tips. I agree with him and you about the principle of changing city development policies but that's not the point here, and your determination to once more ride the same hobby horse about how Taiwo's groin injury is in fact the latest move in a Machiavellian plot to keep us all downtrodden and you're the only one smart enough to see it isn't going to derail me from mocking Jim.
FFS, the swing dancing fop has moved to Yorkshire and immediately sought out another Londoner to whom he can cycle in order to purchase artisan sourdough bread and oat milk, because he doesn't understand what people are saying in Cooplands. If you think that this is somehow less important than the capitalist destruction of society then you're a lost cause.
