This strikes as a chord, as I was very irritated this morning while rushing to get my train to see an entitled mother and her brats steaming toward me on their bikes on the pavement. I refused to move, and the kids had to go up on the grass and the mother looked sheepish as I shot her a look.
Plus a few weeks ago my partner and I were nearly decapitated by a couple of cyclists tearing down a country hill and coming around a blind bend without making any attempt whatsoever to slow down.
They really are the most entitled people on the planet, and of course the whole thing has become yet another middle-class, Guardian status symbol with more and more elaborate bikes and cycling gear.
Well, I also heartily dislike automobiles as a dominant form of urban transport, but I dislike them for the Right Reasons. So of course a common, non-frowned-upon entertainment of the lockdown period has been to drive around in circles in lieu of actual entertainment.
As always, Japan dodges this insanity and avoids building bicycle lanes. Instead, bicycles are permitted to bicycle (slowly and politely) on sidewalks (in acquiescence to what will happen anyways), and sidewalks are made extra-wide in heavily bicycled areas of a large city. When bicycles are not around, the space naturally reverts to the ones truly entitled to it i.e. pedestrians.
Streetcar tracks in the road inconvenience cyclists, so it follows that streetcars (trams) are a Godly form of transportation. In fact, I have noted that any form of fixed infrastructure for street transport (tracks, trolleybus wires) is disliked by public officials with an unconscious and illogical fervour completely inexplicable in this-worldly terms (either due to economic calculations or lobbying by special interests), and leads to frantic and desperate efforts to tear it out in favour of non-working and even non-existent technologies (natural gas, battery-electric, hydrogen). Therefore, although electricity in general is associated with Ahrimanism, it would seem to follow that the electric wires in public transportation infrastructure act as some kind of paradoxical ward against demonic activity.
I have not deciphered the full meaning of this since the cities where such infrastructure is most intact are not necessarily havens of godliness. Since they are clearly quite painful for the Devil to contemplate, perhaps the retention of tram- and trolleybus-wires indicates an immune reaction of society in some cities where the Devil has been particularly active. It is a battle that is lost in some places and won in others.
28 October 2020 at 21:02
Dave said...
You're observing a tumor and mistaking it for a brain. As we inherit God's plan for a righteous life, each of your cells inherits a full copy of your DNA telling it how to do its little part to sustain that life. A cancer cell has scribbled over that DNA and replaced it with instructions that by natural selection evolve into "make more cancer cells".
There is no Grand Strategy of Evil, only a formless, hungry, seething, growing mass of bureaucrats all seeking more wealth, prestige, and power for themselves. They have no better chance of outliving the nation they are busily ruining than cancer has of outliving its host, but they wouldn't be where they are now if that fact bothered them.
@Dave - I will not try to persuade you! I presume that (like the mass of people, apparently) your assumptions do not allow you to see what is perhaps the most obvious thing in human history - there will never be more evidence than there has been in 2020.
One of the interesting points about Covid is how many diverse policies and narratives it has been used to justify, cycle lanes being one of them (supposedly for social distancing reasons). They and other bike related developments have been popping up all across the country, like symptoms of a disease. Although, being that it's 2020, cycling has been rebranded as 'Active Transport'.
The amount of lies and modernisms (like needlessly rebranding something because 'reasons') that are occuring because of Covid is mind boggling, both in number and scale. As you have pointed out, the fact that so few people have noticed these lies speaks volumes about where our hearts and minds are (either cowering away, or buried in the sand).
29 October 2020 at 22:07
For the past decade and more, the road system of my ancient city (with London, the only modern major city in England that has been major since medieval times) is being systematically destroyed by the construction of more and yet-more bicycle lanes. (In fact, I should really write "bicycle lanes" in scare quotes - since they are nearly always empty of traffic). Recently, The Great North Road - that major artery which has, for hundreds of years, linked London to the south with Edinburgh to the north, has been reduced from two to a single lane of traffic; with predictable consequences. But the process is incremental and unrelenting, and affects roads of all kinds and sizes. Because the city is old, and expansion of roads often impossible, this sometimes involves making roads one-way (halving the traffic), blocking with bumps and chicanes, and sometimes removing pedestrian pavements - so cars and walkers are alike affected. Many, many roads of many sizes have been, are-being, closed-off, at great expense, for good reason or none. Congestion is worse, journeys are longer, fumes are worse, both driving and walking are more dangerous and less enjoyable. There are in fact extremely few cyclists, probably fewer than forty years ago; and those that are sighted are mostly sports and recreational bikers, or else people who have substituted cycling for walking. Extremely few people are able consistently to substitute a bike for a car (for many and - one would have thought - obvious reasons). And - cyclists being what they are (i.e. supremely entitled) they are more often to be found on the roads or 'sidewalks' than in their specially-contructed and allocated lanes. So why are billions of pounds being spent on this transformation nationally? Peeling-off the excuses to find the core truth is an interesting exercise (unlike cycling!). The official reason is to encourage cycling instead of motor vehicle usage, and thereby cut-down on CO2 (i.e. the gas of life) and thus 'save the planet'. The amount of CO2 actually saved is tiny or non-existent, and of course the entire Global Warming narrative is a Big Lie; but in such matters it is being seen to 'make the effort' that counts above everything. Behind this is a raft of legislation (mostly from the European Union) that pays local councils to install cycle lanes; regardless of the opportunity costs from lost time and wasted fuel (which would be even more billions of pounds, if counted). Behind this is the archetypal leftist political activist of our day, those who staff the local councils - for whom Global Warming from CO2 is a religion, cycling is good in itself; and who hate-hate-HATE motor vehicles and will do anything, and spend any amount of other-people's money, to pursue this vendetta. And behind this? Well, eventually we have the Global Establishment of multi-mega-billionnaires, international and national politicians, and media moguls; who are making trillions from the Green Energy scam - its vast subsidies and the regulations that destroy rivals and centralise power and wealth in ever fewer hands. Their attitude to the planet and its people is expolitative - either they are indifferent to human and environmental destruction and death, or else they actually enjoy inflicting it. Thus the The System is torn-down and pillaged for its resources. The two activities - deliberate economic collapse (currently by means of birdemic regulations) and the collosal spending on 'cycle lanes' from this rapidly shrinking economy - are merely two sides of the same coin. But what are these officially-looted resources to be used for? Here we approach the point where the noisy, polluting, expensive and misery-inducing destruction of my local roads; links-up with the Grand Strategy of the real rulers of this planet. Bad roads means that personal transport becomes more difficult, more expensive and ultimately almost impossible - and this needs to be achieved within the next decade, according to Agenda 2030; explaining the frantic, unprecedented and accelerating rate of destructive activity - even as the rest of the economy is strangled and collapses around it. Soon we really will not 'need' these roads, because there will be nothing allowed to drive on them, and anyway driving will not be allowed (except by specific permission for specific and approved reasons - enforced by enormous fines, arbitrarily enforced and without appeal). But neither will cycles be allowed, since the population will (again) be confined to their houses. (Of course, this was already the case for several months in early 2020, so we know what it will be like; and it will again be the case again soon; and soon permanently.) The destruction of roads/ construction of empty bike-lanes are part of a multi-pronged strategy towards a world where the mass of people are confined to their allocated living quarters; except when a minority of them are (compulsorily) engaged in officially-approved activities - under constant monitoring and psychologically separated by walls, distance, masks, whatever... Again we ask why? And now we begin to approach the deep, underlying reason; we begin to cross the line between human and demonic agency. Humans (most of us) need some kind of 'good reason' to do evil - although admittedly, some people don't need very much of a reason. But in the end, at the core of the onion, we reach supernatural, demonic evil - for whom evil is the explicit goal, and whose purpose is for Mankind to live in mutual resentment, fear and despair; in accordance with their system of value-inversion - in which bad is good, ugliness beautiful, and lies are truth: all this more-comprehesively and more-extremely so, with every passing day. (Because there is always more evil work to do in God's creation.) By which point (so the demons intend) the mass of Men - self cut-off from God and the spiritual, communicating only by censored electronic media, fed only demonic propaganda - will choose to reject Christ's salvation, refuse repentance, embrace Satan's goals; and thereby choose damnation. Thus can be seen that the proliferating yet empty cycles lanes of Newcastle upon Tyne are a microcosm of the Grand Strategy of evil on this planet; and their unrelenting expansion (with its multiple, layered and ramifying consequences) is an index of the triumph of Satan in the world today.
"Understanding bicycle lanes - What is at the centre of the onion?"
5 Comments -
This strikes as a chord, as I was very irritated this morning while rushing to get my train to see an entitled mother and her brats steaming toward me on their bikes on the pavement. I refused to move, and the kids had to go up on the grass and the mother looked sheepish as I shot her a look.
Plus a few weeks ago my partner and I were nearly decapitated by a couple of cyclists tearing down a country hill and coming around a blind bend without making any attempt whatsoever to slow down.
They really are the most entitled people on the planet, and of course the whole thing has become yet another middle-class, Guardian status symbol with more and more elaborate bikes and cycling gear.
A pox on them all!:-)
28 October 2020 at 20:02
Well, I also heartily dislike automobiles as a dominant form of urban transport, but I dislike them for the Right Reasons. So of course a common, non-frowned-upon entertainment of the lockdown period has been to drive around in circles in lieu of actual entertainment.
As always, Japan dodges this insanity and avoids building bicycle lanes. Instead, bicycles are permitted to bicycle (slowly and politely) on sidewalks (in acquiescence to what will happen anyways), and sidewalks are made extra-wide in heavily bicycled areas of a large city. When bicycles are not around, the space naturally reverts to the ones truly entitled to it i.e. pedestrians.
Streetcar tracks in the road inconvenience cyclists, so it follows that streetcars (trams) are a Godly form of transportation. In fact, I have noted that any form of fixed infrastructure for street transport (tracks, trolleybus wires) is disliked by public officials with an unconscious and illogical fervour completely inexplicable in this-worldly terms (either due to economic calculations or lobbying by special interests), and leads to frantic and desperate efforts to tear it out in favour of non-working and even non-existent technologies (natural gas, battery-electric, hydrogen). Therefore, although electricity in general is associated with Ahrimanism, it would seem to follow that the electric wires in public transportation infrastructure act as some kind of paradoxical ward against demonic activity.
I have not deciphered the full meaning of this since the cities where such infrastructure is most intact are not necessarily havens of godliness. Since they are clearly quite painful for the Devil to contemplate, perhaps the retention of tram- and trolleybus-wires indicates an immune reaction of society in some cities where the Devil has been particularly active. It is a battle that is lost in some places and won in others.
28 October 2020 at 21:02
You're observing a tumor and mistaking it for a brain. As we inherit God's plan for a righteous life, each of your cells inherits a full copy of your DNA telling it how to do its little part to sustain that life. A cancer cell has scribbled over that DNA and replaced it with instructions that by natural selection evolve into "make more cancer cells".
There is no Grand Strategy of Evil, only a formless, hungry, seething, growing mass of bureaucrats all seeking more wealth, prestige, and power for themselves. They have no better chance of outliving the nation they are busily ruining than cancer has of outliving its host, but they wouldn't be where they are now if that fact bothered them.
29 October 2020 at 20:37
@Dave - I will not try to persuade you! I presume that (like the mass of people, apparently) your assumptions do not allow you to see what is perhaps the most obvious thing in human history - there will never be more evidence than there has been in 2020.
29 October 2020 at 21:06
One of the interesting points about Covid is how many diverse policies and narratives it has been used to justify, cycle lanes being one of them (supposedly for social distancing reasons). They and other bike related developments have been popping up all across the country, like symptoms of a disease. Although, being that it's 2020, cycling has been rebranded as 'Active Transport'.
The amount of lies and modernisms (like needlessly rebranding something because 'reasons') that are occuring because of Covid is mind boggling, both in number and scale. As you have pointed out, the fact that so few people have noticed these lies speaks volumes about where our hearts and minds are (either cowering away, or buried in the sand).
29 October 2020 at 22:07