A COOL AND LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BICYCLE MENACE: Julie Burchill: Do cyclists know how hated they are?

I’ve found that people who support green politics are slightly nastier than others in their everyday life, feeling that they had ticked the nice box and therefore somehow won the right to be nasty. When I was a volunteer at a blind home a while ago, I’d regularly take a couple of sightless ladies out for a walk; we’d set out along the bustling main streets of our city, one on each arm, only for me to have to shove them roughly into the nearest doorway as some hulking brute drove a bike at us right there on the pavement.

Inevitably, people have been killed by cyclists; when they are, sentencing is risible. Until last year it was based on legislation from 1861 only allowing for a maximum two-year sentence; things are better now, but cyclists who kill are still treated far more leniently than motorists.

It’s not being paranoid to believe that a lot of this behaviour is another form of male violence towards women, as female cyclists also report frequent harassment by their male counterparts. Victoria Pendleton said: ‘If I’m out about on my road bike and I overtake a man, I will hear a rapid crunching of gears as they try to “make amends for it”… usually followed with a pedal-mashing stomp past me.’

Funny, I would think male lefty cyclists would be uber-Alan Alda-style feminists, but as Kate of Small Dead Animals likes to say, “Scratch a leftist, find a misogynist.”

(Classical reference in headline.)