Mass arrests 'Critical Mass' cycle ride during Olympics opening

[toroddf]

Procreating though is one of the main purposes of the mankind, though. Beer probably produced hundreds of miles away and then sent by gas guzzling lorries, pressing us cyclists of the road in the process, is not one of our main purposes. If it was, we would had been born with a dozen livers.

Sorry to be such a boring nitpicker though. I am off to the naughty corner now...

 

[MissTillyFlop]

Procreating though is one of the main purposes of the mankind, though. Beer probably produced hundreds of miles away and then sent by gas guzzling lorries, pressing us cyclists of the road in the process, is not one of our main purposes. If it was, we would had been born with a dozen livers.

Sorry to be such a boring nitpicker though. I am off to the naughty corner now...

Actually, in many cases (my own included), procreation is greatly assisted by beer.

 

[Hover Fly]

... All of a sudden two neanderthal security guards hove in to view, guided by earpieces connected to a control room somewhere - for all I know a warehouse in Essex...

For future reference, ask the security guards if they know that radio transmissions have been shown to set off exploding bridge wire detonators such as the MOD's L2A1, and if they do know, why are they using radio equipment (such as their cracklephones) near potential IEDs? If they don't know, why aren't they properly trained?

 

[ComedyPilot]

Procreating though is one of the main purposes of the mankind, though. Beer probably produced hundreds of miles away and then sent by gas guzzling lorries, pressing us cyclists of the road in the process, is not one of our main purposes. If it was, we would had been born with a dozen livers.

Sorry to be such a boring nitpicker though. I am off to the naughty corner now...

No, don't go.

You are a valid contributor to the thread and forum.

Just because your view is wrong doesn't mean it's any less valid a point..........even though it is less valid.............










Before you do a Linf/Joe/BFF, please understand I was joking

 

[pubrunner]

- we're safer in numbers

Living in a village with only a few hundred inhabitants, how many more cyclists would make it 'safer' for me ?

 

[dellzeqq]

Achievements in what? Life? Love? .

cycling. As in what have you done to help?

I'll get the popcorn....

 

[ufkacbln]

middleagecyclist said:
I think sir you'll find there are plenty of places outside the M25 which are hosting Olympic events.

Arch is correct...the sad thing though is that not only is it ironic, but also true

The events held outside London are all listed and named as London 2012

Look up Old Trafford and you will see London 2012 as the strap line

In fact the Olympic website even bills the matches as London 2012

 

[toroddf]

Achievements in what? Life? Love? Or some sort of botched ideal about everyone living in harmony and getting on peacefully?
I don't have to list anything because I wasn't the one coming onto what is actually a very decent forum and making grand statements about reclaiming the streets. Do you guys really think that its just cyclists who get a hard time in rush hour traffic? What about all the people on the bus who are being held up by congestion? Should they happily sit back and let you cycle on through the traffic ignoring red lights and using any lane you like while they bcome late for work? Should the cabbie or the delivery man or the wagon driver bow down to you and your friends because you feel you have some sort of divine right to get to where your going before everyone else?
We have all as cyclists encountered dangerous and inconsiderate drivers but we have all encountered these same idiots as pedestrians, bus passengers and drivers. An idiot is an idiot whether he is on foot, on two wheels or driving an articulated lorry.
Critical Mass can't even get thier story staight on here! Some of you say it was a ride out with friends that just happened to go into the Olympic lanes, some of your "members" say it wasn't a protest and some of you say it was deliberately planned to cause a nuisance so which is it?
Up until this point which is over 100 posts we still don't have a clear indication of what it was you people were trying to achieve. So why don't you tell us what it is you are trying to achieve and then maybe you will get some agreement from us.
Everything I have seen and read over the last few days just make your "movement" look like a joke. I was wondering why I had never heard of Critical Mass up here in Liverpool and I honestly think that its because we have a bit more sense than to turn up in a mob in order to bring the city to a standstill.
You will never achieve your illusive goals by pissing off ordinary members of the public and antagonising the police.
Watch the full video of your so called "poor disabled man" and you will see him pin the copper down before denying that he even touched him! Critical Mass have done themseleves no favours with this one and I feel rather than attracting potential followers they have alienated a lot of cyclists.
By the way five years in the Parachute Regiment was quite an achievement but thats just one of the things I did I don't tend to brag about in order to make myself or my posts hold some weight.

I think we are owed a reply to this.

 

[dawesome]

182 arrests:

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/9843898.OLYMPICS__182_arrested_during_Olympic_cycle_protest/

Blimey.

 

[toroddf]

A normal bike ride, you said ?

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Beer itself, the manufacturing and the distribution is accelerating the demise of our planet. Nice one ! Not so nice one for those of us who want this planet to be of any use to our grand-children, though.

As is the natural law of forum discussions I'm going to claim an exception here - I make homebrew beer, and it just so happens that most of the ingredients are made in Stowmarket, which is a handful of miles from where I live in Ipswich


Seriously though, please don't leave; on the whole this discussion has been nearly free of the sweeping statements that tend to muddy and confuse intelligent discussions.

To quote Jonny 'I like butter money' Lydon 'changing your mind is a sign of intelligence'.


__________________________________________________________________________________
Sent from a recumbent.... settee.

 

[dawesome]

A normal bike ride, you said ?

I don't think I did, actually.

I wouldn't have gone on that one, no way Jose, I heard getting hit by a GTA missile really stings.

 

[toroddf]

I am not leaving. But Tiberius Baltar has raised some very, very good questions which seriously need an answer. Make that good answers. The same has those 182 arrests. But most important of all: Mother Nature has raised a very important question about the use of cars and all other gas guzzling devices. We can debate until we get orange, green and blue in our faces. But we need to do something now. I have, as you are fed up to hear about, written and released an online book (please note; no woodpecker was displaced in this process) set to year 2035('ish). I don't think that year will be a good year for us all due to things happens now. Those of us making it to 2035, may have good reasons to envy those who for different reasons passed away in 2012. Sorry to be so frank and brutal on a Sunday afternoon, but I see plenty of evidence to back up this view.

Hence; I want the likes of CM to succeed and to become a big movement. This is about environment and our planet. This is about sustainable transport in cities. The only sustainable personal transports in cities and towns is the bike. We need bike lanes and we need respect for us bike riders. It is not about being arrested and bashing some police officers for the hell of it or because of some loony political ideas.

There is serious questions to be answered. See Tiberius Baltar's questions, quoted by me above.

 

[dawesome]

Scotland Yard today
defended itself against criticism that it is being heavy-handed in policing
protests around the Olympics following the arrest of nearly 200 cyclists.
The Metropolitan Police insisted it recognised the right of demonstrators to stage protests around the Games but said it required prior notification of any attempt by protesters to gather around London 2012 venues.
Campaigners accused police of “criminalising cycling” this weekend after 182 people taking part in a monthly protest by the Critical Mass group strayed beyond the agreed route to the periphery of the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, shortly before Friday night's opening ceremony.

http://www.standard.co.uk/olympics/...which-led-to-hundreds-of-arrests-7985830.html

 

[stowie]

Let me tell you all that I am furious about how cycling - as a transport mode - has been marginalised by the "improvements" to Stratford and environs. I am pretty livid about the "improvements" as a pedestrian as well. An opportunity to turn this area into a more civilised space has been squandered in favour of "traffic flow", some "luxury" apartments and a large, anonymous shopping mall. Stratford high street could be so much more than a multi-lane gyratory, if only there had been a bit of vision. It isn't even as if the route after Bow flyover is a main arterial road any longer - the through traffic pretty much all uses the A12 / M11 link route instead. The changes could even happen without impeding "traffic flow" unless by impeding you mean making the average car speed somewhat near the 30mph limit.

I have been on protest rides such as Blackfriars and "Tour du Danger". I would be ecstatic if we could have protest rides in this area to highlight the utter horlicks that is Bow Roundabout, or the complete dearth of cycle parking in Stratford, or the insane and utterly unpoliced speeds many drivers achieve around Stratford. Or maybe to highlight the pedestrian "kettling" that occurs at the sole crossing between the station and Stratford centre - something which hasn't changed one bit for the Olympics. Hell, I would probably cheer if someone added a muck sprayer attachment to their hybrid and let "Sir" Robin Wells know what we thought of his attitude to cyclists in his borough through the medium of sh!t sprayed over his lovely (and very expensive) new council offices.

But fighting the law on the eve of one of the biggest London events in a generation by deciding that CM should go to Stratford for the first time ever is just really stooopid. I am all for a celebration of cycling, riding around London at the end of the month sounds like fun. But getting in a confrontation with the police and having a bit of a rumble with them sounds like the work of numpties. Especially since I think I am right in saying that CM has not had any arrests or even much of a police presence previously. If this is forwarding the cause of cycling in cities then we are really f*ck*d.