STUPID: lacking intelligence; unable to think clearly.
The council of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead are stupid, say Cycling Weekly in their editorial (August 15).
Cyclists have been threatened with legal action if they meet up at the Velolife Café to go riding!!!
Apparently, a number of local residents had complained they were being disturbed by cyclists.
It’s an amazing story and you can’t help but wonder if being stupid is part of the wider condition which has given rise to discrimination against “others”.
Is this stupidity in the Royal Borough part of the contagion spreading rapidly across the planet? Stupidity on the grand scale was first identified in the USA a few years ago when Trump was on the ascendancy to the presidency. There was a tee-shirt with this warning message, “Never underestimate the power of the stupid.”
And so it proved. The stupid condition then spread to the UK effecting 17 million people who voted to “Leave” the European Union.
If this is so, the tentacles of the stupid are now spreading like bind weed across the nation.
A particularly virulent strain seems to have wrapped itself about the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the form of discrimination against cycling.
So what has the Royal Borough done? Cycling Weekly report they threatened cyclists “with legal action for just meeting for a ride, claiming they were a nuisance” and then the council clarified this further by adding “around Velolife Café near Reading”.
You couldn’t make this up.
The café is a former pub and the issue centres on its new use as a café with a “cycling theme”. It includes a workshop and some retail sales.
The council wanted the former pub to be used as a community facility, and they say its use as a cycling facility has not complied with planning permission.
Surely, it has! It’s a community facility with a cycling theme!
This did not cut any ice with the council and a certificate of lawfulness was served in the enforcement notice.
This is bureaucracy gone mad. You might think it could be sorted without resorting to the threat of legal action. We don’t practice black magic, or rev our cars up in the car park. Well, I don’t even have a car.
Perhaps the council were influenced by Channel 5 tvs stupid programme casting cyclists as the enemy of motorists.
On the other hand, perhaps this is the work of THE computer.
Planning application is fed into computer. Computer reveals that not all the boxes are ticked according to whatever. Alarms go off. Lights flash. A Dalek voice barks “Ex-ter-min-ate, Ex-ter-min-ate”.
Council employee with instructions not to question the computer does as the computer bids, hits a red button. In a trice legal letters fly across an executive’s desk and, coming as they do from the computer which knows no wrong, dutifully signs them off and out they go first class.
Or maybe not. Perhaps there really is a Mr Halfwit directing this operation.
I can recall no such council hostility shown Bike Beans Cycle Café in Ashtead, Surrey, a wonderful café which once operated a cycling club and became a cycling centre for led rides. When it closed after a number of years it was because the proprietor had other business ventures to pursue.
The Windsor and Maidenhead council made themselves look even more foolish when they sought to clarify their first declaration - by saying cyclists are welcome to use the facilities “but must not arrange organised meets that start, end or stop at the café.”
So in other words cyclists can use the café just so long as they don’t cycle there!
This would be a laugh if it had not caused the proprietor so much stress.
It all smacks of authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, since all this kicked off the council leader has paid the café a visit, so perhaps there is hope. Apparently not.
BREAKING NEWS:
After meeting with cycling organisations Cycling UK and British Cycling, a few days ago at which it seemed matters had been partly resolved, the council then issued another statement rowing back on their first.
This from Cycling UK, defenders of cyclists’ rights dated August 15.
"Cycling UK was informed a few hours ago that the Council had informed Mr Goodwin (Proprietor of Velolife) today that, notwithstanding their statement that no action would be taken against clubs attending Velolife, Mr Goodwin still needed to ensure that clubs did not use the café as a stop before, during or after organised rides, and that to do so would breach the terms of the draft injunction the Council has sought.
BREAKING NEWS 2.
The ghost of F. T. Bidlake (The Father of Time Trialling a century ago) makes a timely appearance to suggest cyclists visiting Velolife dress all in black and leave at one minute intervals so as not to draw attention to themselves – just as they did time trialling in Victorian times to avoid detection when road racing was banned.
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