If anyone wants to call in....
Probably best to leave Jeremy Vine out of it:
Shortly after using Nick Freeman ('Mr Loophole') to get
her off a serious driving charge Emma Parker-Bowles, writing in The
Sun in 2006, called for the "humane extermination" of cyclists.
Similarly rabid comments could be added from a wide range of people
such as Tony Parsons ("I have always thought that it should be
cyclists that are chained to lamp -posts, and not their bikes...
Bicycles are like masturbation - something you should grow out of")
David Thomas of The Daily Mail ("Why I really hate cyclists" being
typical of his oeuvre );
Jeremy Clarkson (who wrote in The Sun that cyclists should stop at red
lights otherwise "if I'm coming the other way, I will run you down,
for fun".
On the other hand stopping would also seem to be a bad policy as he
added that if any cyclists were to stop in front of him at lights he
would "set off at normal speed and you will be crushed under my
wheels" concluding "You are a guest on roads that are paid for by
motorists so if we cut you up, shut up");
Bryan Appleyard (whose "One day I'll kill a lycra lout" was yet
another anti-cycling piece printed in The Times );
M.P. Kate Hoey ("The real menace on our roads are selfish, aggressive,
law breaking and infuriatingly smug lycra louts" was the Mail On
Sunday headline which summarised her rant.
Hoey also confessed to
using her vehicle as a weapon to bully cyclists off the roads.);
Jasper Gerard of The Daily Mail ("With the possible exception of Osama
Bin Laden, the greatest terrorist threat facing this country is from
cyclists.");
Damian Whitworth (motoring editor of The Times who described cyclists
as "a common pestilence" and argued that the lycra-wearing cyclist
should "pedal off to a shrink" in order to "explore the reasons for
his perversion at his own leisure and expense");
Jeremy Vine; Andrew Marr; Jon Gaunt; Nigel Havers; author Ruth
Brandon; Shelia Hancock; Nina Myskow; Bonnie Greer (who has said of
cyclists "they are PESTS, they are RODENTS".
Mmmm now who else was it who described human beings as being
'rodents'?) and so on ad-infinitum.
