Saturday 17 December 2016

Roadkill Grayling doors himself into a corner

The timeline appears to be as follows:
  1. Roadkill Grayling knocks someone off a bike by opening a door on his ministerial LR discovery, while it is stuck in stationary traffic.
  2. After telling off the injured Londoner, Roadkill Grayling continues on his way-unaware that the whole incident was videoed.
  3. Roadkill Grayling has an interview with the evening standard, is fairly critical of cyclists in London, still unaware his footing of him knocking someone down was videoed.
  4. The holder of the video, sees the interview, recognises the speaker, reads the patronising bollocks and hands the video to The Guardian.
  5. Roadkill Grayling's minions are left struggling for excuses, in what must have seemed like an episode of The Thick of It for those involved.
  6. BBC Radio 2 has a dial in debating who is to blame: the person on the bike or the person committing a criminal offence?
  7. Cycling UK has offered to fund a private prosecution, to compensate for the indifference the Metropolitan Police show for such incidents.
  8. Other politicians are saying "Guaranteed to backfire on cyclists in terms of public opinion"
No: it isn't bad for cyclists. It is a documentary of the failings of our streets and our elected representatives.
  1. It has shown precisely how today's streets don't work for vulnerable road users.
  2. It shows how those politicians who could make our cities safer don't give a fuck about safety.
  3. It shows how politicians are prepared to dismiss and ignore their own crimes, when blaming people on bikes for their injuries.
  4. It shows how free parking and chauffeured driving isolates senior politicians from the ways people get round cities: foot, tube, bus, bike and, when they can, Southern Rail.
  5. It shows how modern cities don't even suit people trying to drive, to the extent that the passengers just give up and walk to their destination.
  6. It shows that helmet cameras are so ubiquitous that "getting away with it" is over. The CMP prosecutions from helmet videos will only encourage this and shame those police forces who currently don't give a fuck into some form of action.
  7. It shows how rapidly even the BBC comes to the defence of a criminal caught on camera injuring someone. The DM? Predictable. But the BBC? They could have taken the opportunity and looked at how cities let vulnerable people down, how councils from Westminster to Coventry are doing nothing for pedestrians or cyclists —and link that up with our pollution crisis.
Roadkill Grayling's attitude to all cycling infrastructure proposals are now going to come in the spotlight, and be reviewed in the context of his own actions. The ES interview must be the last time where his response to questions about cycling safety is dismissed. Whenever he tries that, someone needs to go for the jugular: "how do we protect cyclists from people like you?"

It is certainly the last time he can say "we don't need safe space for cycling" -whenever he tries someone needs to point him at the video of of his own actions, which show how critical that need is.

Congratulations, to Roadkill Grayling, who, in one single action and a followup interview, has shown to all the failings of our cities and our politicians, and has implicitly committed him on a path of atonement. Because now he has no choice.