politics – Page 2 – Own The Road

alibi facilities

Images of crap cycle lanes are a well-established, and popular comic genre of the early internet-age but analysis of the logic behind the phenomenon is missing.

On Wednesday (23/01/13) the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group (APPCG) started taking oral evidence for an inquiry entitled “Get Britain Cycling”. There will be six sessions, over seven weeks, where a panel of MPs and Peers take verbal submissions from selected groups of witnesses, to supplement written evidence already collected.

A report with recommendations will be written by Professor Phil Goodwin of the University of the West of England and published in mid-April. What influence this will have on policy, and thence on conditions on the ground, we can wait and see. Informed opinion suggests that Central Government will float some pro-cycling initiatives this Spring – probably before the report comes out – to avoid any suspicion that they’re dancing to the tune of the bike-fancying parliamentarians of the APPCG.

The first session was ~~a significant milestone on Britain’s road toward bicycle paradise~~
~~the usual suspects stating the bleeding obvious~~ quite interesting, and – for a couple of hours – #getbritaincycling was the top trend on Twitter; a festival of brain-burps that offered some wisdom and plenty of terse foolishness…

“oh no! not more Wiggin’s wannabees slowing the traffic #getbritaincycling INDOORS!!”

“#getbritaincycling In this weather? You must be mental.”

“#GetBritainCycling For mass cycling to happen cycling needs to be made an option that ppl don’t need to think about it, just like taking car.”

It wasn’t long before laughable examples of current UK provision for cycling were being cited.

Images of crap cycle lanes are a well-established, and popular comic genre of the early internet-age but analysis of the logic behind the phenomenon is missing.

The people (mostly men) who design and approve ‘joke’ facilities are not fools. A crap cycle facility is not a mistake. To understand the logic behind, and function of, the ‘useless’ cycle facility it’s necessary to revisit a concept popular amongst Northern European cycle-campaigners in the later 20th Century, what the Germans used to call ‘alibi facilities’.

According to the APPCG their current inquiry will…

“…examine the barriers which are preventing more people from cycling in the UK.”

There is no doubt – as inquiry witness Carlton Reid put it – that there is “huge demand for cycling.” It is however a big mistake to imagine that the whole, or even a large part, of the population of Britain is currently in a precipitous, pre-cycling state, only waiting for conditions to change so they can start riding. Most people in the UK never consider practical cycle-travel as a realistic possibility for themselves or any other normal person. To talk about the ‘barriers’ preventing them from cycling is like asking why English people don’t – knowingly – eat horse-meat. They don’t do it because they’re normal and – everybody knows – normal people would never – knowingly – do it.

During yesterday’s session APPCG panel member Jeremy Corbyn MP recalled talking recently to a group of 30 local youngsters. Half currently cycled but only two planned to continue, they all aspired to own cars. Corbyn said: “One of them described it by saying cycling is for losers.”

A traffic-engineer is told to make changes to the streetscape that will ‘remove the barriers preventing people from cycling’. The traffic-engineer wants a quiet life, to do their job without controversy and then to go home and relax. Street space is limited. In the short-term the traffic-engineer knows they can’t make conditions easier for one mode of travel without taking space and green-time away from others. A dedicated cycle-lane may – for example – mean less space for parking motor-cars. The traffic-engineer might even feel sympathetic to the old, but by no means extinct, idea that people travelling by bike are ‘a vanishing tribe’.

The function of an alibi facility is not for cycling, not to encourage cycling. It’s function is to absorb any budget allocated to ‘removing the barriers preventing people from cycling’ without causing trouble among ‘normal’ people who just want to drive their children to school, themselves to work and home via the super-store on the by-pass. The point of the alibi facility is to enable bureaucrats to say ‘well we tried to encourage cycling but look what happened, nobody uses our new facility which cost £X00,000’. When a cycle facility is built for people to use, to make cycling easier, the more useful it is the better, and the less it costs the further any available funds can be spread.

Alibi facilities are most effective when they don’t encourage anyone to cycle. It helps if they make cycling seem marginal, dangerous and problematic. The more they cost the better. ‘Oh yes we spent 100k on facilities for cycling but – you know – nobody really wants to do it.’

A conspiracy theory is always over-optimistic – relying as it does on the assumption that somewhere, somebody is in control of something and knows what they’re doing – but it can be a useful tool of analysis. We left the era of the vanishing tribe years ago and are now well into the era of mixed messages, old school highway-engineers are retiring and being replaced by those trained after it became necessary to, at least nod towards, sustainability, social-inclusion and the non-threatening modes of travel but – with Central Government poised to push for a ’90’s-retro road-building spree – we’re definitely not safe from the possibility that any new ‘pro-cycling’ programmes may be subverted into alibi facilities.

The unrestricted information super-highway has brought a welcome injection of energy into the toyland world of cycle politics. It’s brought in many new voices, some of whom naively imagine that this is a technical – rather than political – question. As if all we need do is send round pictures from our Dutch, Danish or Deutsche touring trips and the 97.2 per-cent of the population who don’t currently travel by bike will scatter rose-petals in our path before jumping onto their trusty rods and pedalling after us into bicycle paradise. The truth is – alas – more gritty.

The internet is great for our campaigns. It goes some way to re-balance the battle, by making communicating, organising and lobbying easier and cheaper; but ‘like-button culture’ is no substitute for the slow, dirty grind of politics. Supporting allies, isolating enemies, building coalitions, manoeuvring engineers, officers and politicians into positions where doing good becomes their line of least resistance.

The time-table for the remaining inquiry sessions is…

30 January – Safety
06 February – Planning and design
13 February – Active lifestyles
27 February – The local perspective
06 March – Government

Which may be interesting – or not – depending on your taste. Really the press-release from the first session says it all. “Political leadership is needed to transform Britain into a cycling nation”. And that won’t happen by accident. The outstanding questions remain, what are we each doing, what have we each done, what are we each going to do, to make our own streets and neighbourhoods more pleasant and convivial places?

‘cycling struggles’

Three network infrastructure can be a useful part of any exit strategy from motor-dependance but some people’s expectation of its ability to solve emotional problems about what people feel expected and entitled to do may be over-optimistic?

I’ve been reading the series ‘Cycling Struggles’ on the weblog of Dave Horton a sociologist based in Lancaster. Despite the gloomy title these accounts of testimony, from people of various backgrounds, on their attitudes to cycling, are useful.

In an area flooded with projection, hearsay and simple-minded theory – they present real people considering real problems and weighing up real solutions. In particular they clarify that those who are frightened of cycling, or the idea of cycling, are drawn from the same population that creates the threat; a useful antidote to lazy assumptions, that everyone who doesn’t cycle has taken an active decision not to, and that the factors informing any decision are the same for everyone.

Here’s my own anecdotal contribution to the genre. An account of a true conversation from the streets of London. A strange story which highlights the complexity of human motivation.

Tavistock Place WC1

We met in the basement garage of a grand office block near Holborn Circus, EC1. I checked his machine which was in good order. He’d recently started commuting – 5 kilometres throught the districts of Holborn, Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia and Marylebone – to Marylebone Station where he parked his bike overnight and caught a homeward train into the Chiltern Hills.

He was a strongly built, white man, in early middle age, smartly dressed in business clothes. I didn’t ask his job-description but guess it was salaried employment, legal or financial. He’d requested the meeting for guidance on riding from Holborn to Marylebone which he’d been doing for a couple of weeks. He told me he rode among the mighty Chilterns – on his other bike – at the weekends.

It was a dark Winter’s evening. We ran through the basics, how to choose where to ride on the road, passing junctions, overtaking parked cars. The guy was an easy student. His basic cycling skills were sound. As a qualified car-driver he understood the rules of traffic. He appeared socially confident.

We worked North and West taking it in turns to go ahead. The strange moment came as we moved into the university district of Bloomsbury, WC1 in the southern part of the London Borough of Camden.

As we turned on to Tavistock Place – where you have the option to travel on a narrow two-way, green-tarmac cycle-track on the North side of the road – my client exclaimed enthusiastically. “I like this bit.”

When I cautioned him not to ‘switch off’, that there was still potential danger, from turning traffic at every junction. I was shocked by his reply.

“Oh yeah” he said with a chuckle “I know it’s more dangerous, but I like it.” He continued to recount near-misses he’d witnessed – between turning motor-traffic and cycle-traffic on the side-path – in the few days he’d been riding the route.

I was too bemused to ask why he particularly liked riding on the green tarmac when he thought it held more danger than the rest of the route. And anyway he was paying me money to help him, not to interrogate the apparent contradictions of his feelings. Here was a person near the top of the pile. A man, white, English, prosperous, comfortable, at the peak of his powers, not the kind of person you’d expect to be willing to submit to extra perceived danger to avoid the risk of social conflict?

The rad-weg along Tavistock Place is sub-standard. I don’t recount this story to suggest that all side-path infrastructure for pedal-cycles and low-powered vehicles creates danger. It’s also worth noting that dangerous conflict between motor-traffic using the main carriageway and traffic on this newest layer of infrastructure – slotted between the footpath and the carriageway – seems to have reduced over the years, as people have got used to the third fragmentary network in South Camden. When it first went in some people told me how much they liked it, others complained what a nuisance it was. I was happy for the first group and told those who complained about it not to use it if they didn’t like it. To stay on the carriageway and stop moaning. That way there’d be more space for riders who wanted ‘their own’ strip of road.

A significant number of those killed or injured by motor-vehicles while walking are on the dedicated network of the sidewalk, pavements. A 100 millimetre kerb may make people feel safe but if the driver of a heavy motor-vehicle goes out of control it may not be much help?

Redesigning street furniture doesn’t necessarily make people more careful or considerate. That can be a quicker, cheaper, more complicated process.

the bell?

After 9(NINE) years of campaigning, broken promises and attempted sell-outs by the blazer brigade, it seems we will end up with a comparable facility to the old race-track that combines space for Mountain Bike and Cyclo-Cross racing with a usable road circuit.

The ‘Velo Park’ – promised as part of the Olympic Legacy, restitution for the stolen lands of Eastway – is under construction.

There’s no room for complacency but a phased hand-back is currently planned to begin in September 2013 through to early 2014. The Park is planned to be open from 08:00 to 22:00 seven days a week, the road and BMX circuits may be floodlit after dark.

There’s an outstanding issue regarding the judges cabin. As currently planned it won’t work. The consultation for this detail of the design is open until Thursday 13 December. Find more details and how to comment here.

You can comment by post or email. If not you who? If not now when?

98 per cent?

Top class association football has recently been rocked by problems of bad behaviour. Louis Suarez, John Terry, Mark Clattenburg – Serbian ultras, have all attracted allegations, in some cases proven and punished, for racist abuse and language.

WARNING

THE FOLLOWING CLIP CONTAINS SCENES OF MEN – SOME QUITE UNPHOTOGENIC – SINGING TUNELESSLY. If you can’t identify the melody it’s taken from the traditional air ‘Robin van Persie he scores when he wants’.

Boisterous celebrations of the criminal conduct of André Clarindo dos Santos have attracted no such opprobrium. Andre – an attack-minded left-back signed by Arsenal FC in 2011 from Fenerbahçe in Turkey for €7 million – was late for work one morning last Summer when he was clocked doing 220 kph in his Maserati GranTurismo. A high speed chase ensued. He escaped prison by a combination of grovelling apology and our country’s indulgent attitude to motor-crime.

Next time you hear some naive – so self-righteous you might imagine he (they’re mostly men) invented the bicycle himself – wittering about the 98 per cent who don’t cycle because the bollards are in the wrong places don’t forget he’s talking – amongst others – about the bulky Brazilian International and all those who glory in his foolishness.

In keeping with our editorial policy of not too much moaning it must be added that the blokes in the choir are not all that serious and if nice people like us find them offensive – even scary – that’s exactly what they want. If you ran over one of their kiddies in your Range Rover they’d probably think it was ‘bang out of order” or even “a right fuckin’ liberty.”

Also there is free secure, off-street match-day parking at the Emirates Stadium. Which you don’t – yet – get here.

And also the Andre Santos song may not be heard too often in future. As the young fellow has upset the goonerati with a serious – maybe irredeemable – wardrobe faux-pas.

Now that’s really bad behaviour.

…97.3 per cent?

In the UK there is suppressed demand for cycling. There are people who want to travel by bicycle who are prevented, or limited, by the threat and severance consequent on the current acceptance of motor-dependence and hyper-mobility.
There’s a cliched discourse stemming from this unfortunate circumstance that relies on an unstated, unexamined faith that most – maybe all – of the people who don’t currently travel by bike are in some precipitous pre-cycling state, only waiting for conditions to change so they can start riding.

For example here’s a reader’s comment from earlier in the year…

“…the argument is that bike lanes should be good enough that all cyclists will want to use them, you, me and the 98% of the population who do not ride bikes right now, and never will unless they feel safe.”

A wise and effective comrade once gave me the following advice:- “In politics never use the word ‘should’.” ‘Could’ has the ring of truth, ‘must’ is dynamic but ‘should’ always sounds ineffectual, even desperate.

The compelling attraction of the ‘98 per cent are pre-cyclists‘ theory is that it’s adherents can envisage a future in which bicycle paradise arrives without attritional street-by-street struggle. If you believe in the ’98 percent’ theory the political question of what streets are for is replaced by technical issues. If only we can get the policy sorted the rest will be coasting downhill, because really everyone is just waiting to throw a leg over their rod and hit the rad-weg.

When others have no interest in stuff that we feel is very important there’s temptation to project our own feelings on to their blank apathy. I used to imagine that people didn’t cycle because – back in the era of the vanishing tribe – cycle-traffic was definitely being designed out of the system.

In the very early 1990’s – when fixed gears were for old codgers and Mountain Bikes still a new idea – I was writing for, long-gone, ‘New Cyclist’. A quarterly, that became a bi-monthly, that became a monthly, which carried the portentous sub-title “the magazine for all cyclists”; like working on the magazine for all shoe-wearers or all air-breathers.

Transport was a hot subject, ‘Roads to Prosperity’ the biggest programme of highway construction since the Romans was going down in flames under a pincer movement from disobedient eco-warriors and Betjeman–esque conservatives. The Conservative Government’s attitude to public-transport was not unlike Count Dracula’s feelings for garlic so it seemed like bicycle paradise might be just over the next hill.

symbolic redevelopment of the secretary of state for Transport’s house in Muswell Hill

I had the innocent idea of surveying Members of the House of Commons to uncover their attitudes to cycling. Who rode, who rode where and what were their attitudes? All of them – except Gerry Adams the abstentionist Sinn Féin member for West Belfast – had current experience of London streets, where cycling was the most reliable mode.

I can’t recall the exact details. It was all many kilometres ago, maybe one day I’ll stooge up Watling Street to Colindale and recapture the full story. Younger readers may be interested to know that ‘going to the library’ is what people in olden days did when they wanted to find out about something, like Wikipedia only less convenient and more reliable.

The MP’s questionnaire was multiple-choice and elicited the desired response. On the cover of the magazine the editor was able to write…

“Why MPs want to cycle but are too frightened.”

What happened next? Was there a cross-party surge of political will to provide the space, green-time and finance to reconfigure the World so the timid souls could hit the streets? It began to dawn on me that things might be more complicated than I had imagined.

It’s not even that some people want conditions for cycle traffic improved and others don’t, for many the dissonance is personal. Here’s an instructive parable from the turn of the Century lifted from the Guardian…

“For years residents of two Somerset villages complained to police about motorists speeding past their homes.

When a police speed trap was set up on a 30mph stretch of the A368 between Compton Martin and Bishop Sutton, the locals were delighted.

Their euphoria turned to shame when it emerged yesterday that a large proportion of the drivers caught speeding by the laser camera were the very same villagers.

Of 133 motorists caught in a fortnight, 30 were from the two villages. They are being prosecuted by police along with the others.

Sergeant Mike Smalley, who set up the trap, said: “It’s often the case that we catch a high proportion of locals, and some of those will have expressed concern about speeding in the first instance.”

Pensioner John Wilkes, who has lived near Compton Martin for 18 years, described it as being more like Piccadilly Circus than a peaceful village.

“I think local people should have known better. We are complaining about speeding, but how can you complain if you don’t abide by it? It has got a lot worse as time has gone by.”

Katie Court, whose partner was one of those caught, said she thought that the lorries were more of a problem. “My husband was only doing 35mph and I don’t think he deserved it.”

“I don’t want to be a speed hump”

Under current conditions there are plenty of riders, plenty of would-be riders, who don’t have the necessary combination of control skills, technical knowledge and social presence to own the road with sufficient confidence to enjoy sharing it with others using clumsier modes. Children are one obvious example of this.

A clichéd response from someone who rides but doesn’t like it, or would like to ride more but is put off by people in cars, or would like to ride but is fearful of current conditions – to the idea that a person on a bike can be an active and civilising influence on the prevailng, often brutal, road traffic environment – goes something like…

“I don’t want to be used as traffic calming.”

This is a sensible position that does not need to be defended.

It’s also much easier to be a civilising influence on streets whose layout makes riding a bicycle obviously advantageous. In places where the highway network is engineered to accommodate and enable motor-dependence it takes more skill, morale and operatic presence to defend a space and there are usually fewer opportunities to help others grow.

In a ‘traffic’ context active citizenship – taking the courtesy and consideration considered normal in motor-free space out into the dog-eat-dog World of motor-dependance – is an opportunity not an obligation.

There is no shame in not being able to, not wanting to, or not enjoying, riding in current conditions. Even the World’s greatest living Welsh person has been quoted thus…

“I certainly wouldn’t fancy riding across Vauxhall Cross or Elephant and Castle in rush hour…”

Nicole Cooke

Olympic Champion 2008

“I don’t want to be used as traffic calming.” Is a sensible position that does not need to be defended but the position is also passive and asocial.

There is a lot of inertia in the cheap-energy economy. Motor-dependence has been a dominating social force for most of the last half Century and we are only just emerging from a period when questioning the idea – that everyone is, aspires to be, or thinks like, a motorist – put you beyond the pale of sanity.

Even in the current new era of mixed messages it’s easy for we – with a critique of motor-dependance – to become demoralised, bitter and apathetic. This may be especially true if going for a bike ride is more of an ordeal than a convenient and utilitarian outlet for frustration. More of a horror than a chance to take a rest, from cooking up grand theories of how best to enforce bicycle paradise. More of a nightmare than an opportunity to pretend, for a few jolly kilometres, that the happy day has already dawned.

Changing the World one bike ride at a time may be like trying to stop a bulldozer with a pea-shooter but if the peas are hard enough and we fire enough…

…well it can’t do any harm can it?

Ron Binns’ extended series of pessimistic prophesies – “What won’t bring about mass cycling…” can be extended to infinity.

Nothing will make people travel by pedal cycle until they decide it’s what they want to do. Once that’s what they’ve decided nothing will stop them. Trying to reduce this circular statement of the obvious, to any kind of Newtonian equation, is like investigating the workings of a watch with a 15lb hammer.

Riding like you own the road won’t bring about mass cycling. Helping others do likewise won’t either. But it can change their World. Riding a bike on roads busy with motor-traffic can be free assertion training.

Ron denounces cycle training because it’s subjects…

“…must be taught how, as a cyclist, to adapt your behaviour to this [hostile and dangerous] environment.”

Well it wouldn’t be much use if it taught people how best to behave in circumstances other than those that currently prevail, would it? Ron’s critique of cycle training echoes the old joke about a village idiot giving a stranger directions.

“If I were you I wouldn’t start from here.”

“I don’t want to be used as traffic calming.” Is a sensible position that does not need to be defended. You can’t calm traffic without calming people. Attacking those who aspire to calm and civilise other people – just because you don’t want to and you know they are very unlikely to hit back – is neither kind nor progressive.

super-storm Sandy

weather event blowing in New Yorker and noted amateur stunt artist Casey Neistat rode Downtown to see the sights. His record of the trip is a timely reminder that simple systems are more robust, harder to defeat. Apparently in the super-storm’s chaotic aftermath bicycles are proving the only reliable form of mechanical transport. There’s a surprise.

With a ‘once-in-a-Century’ weather event blowing in New Yorker and noted amateur stunt artist Casey Neistat rode Downtown to see the sights.

His record of the trip is a timely reminder that simple systems are more robust, harder to defeat. Apparently in the super-storm’s chaotic aftermath bicycles are proving the only reliable form of mechanical transport. There’s a surprise.

Once on a Critical Mass in London the rabble pulled up outside Buckingham Palace. When a tall-biker started riding around inside the artificial pool around the fountain I suddenly realised what those contrivances are really designed for. If this individual had one he’d have got through with dry feet. The fact that modern day flood water isn’t just clean rain, river or ocean may account for the low-grade finish on your average, everyday tall-bike?

Once upon a time nature was our adversary, a buffer for our excesses. Not any more. You don’t even need to be convinced that man-made climate-change exists, just asking the question – “Is this storm an act of God or was it triggered by the cheap-energy economy?” – changes our philosophical relationship to the World.

During most of human history the problem was furious bears in the un-mapped woods. Our organisation consisted of building a nice warm campfire to scare away the bears. Now the bears are our furry friends and the threat comes only from the campfire.

good news

Pleased to announce that the unlovely sheds thrown up on at short notice on Leyton Marsh – as part of the great festival of running and jumping – are gone. The deadline for removal was missed, and the area of public open land is still fenced off, but the sheds are gone. The ground is level and new – monocultural – turf is being laid.

Pleased to announce that the unlovely sheds thrown up on at short notice on Leyton Marsh – as part of the great festival of running and jumping – are gone.

The deadline for removal was missed, and the area of public open land is still fenced off, but the sheds are gone. The ground is level and new – monocultural – turf is being laid.

Last Summer…

Last week…

Back in September when I lifted the ‘before’ picture from Ron Binns’ prolific web-log ‘Crap Cycling & Walking in Waltham Forest’ he wrote…

“15th of October.

By this date these temporary and highly controversial structures built for the Olympics on green open space in the Lea Valley (including, naturally, a tarmac car park), will have been demolished and the entire site will have been returned to green, grassy space where local residents are free to wander. Nothing can possibly go wrong and there is no reason to believe that this deadline will not be met. Trust them – they’re Waltham Forest Council.”

I’ve been waiting for him to announce the good news, with some acid comments about the delay. ‘Bad weather’ is the given excuse, which didn’t seem to stop them getting the party ready on time? It’s always politic to congratulate people for doing what you want. Even when you’ve made them do it when they didn’t want to.

Whenever you make a pushy MDV* wait for your priority always try and thank them. Patronising politeness is so much crueler than anger, and not giving them an outlet for their frustration might just leave them with space and energy to mature into a less selfish and desperate traveller?

Not only does Crap Cycling not seem to do good news he’s also trying to wish away – long established – glad tidings. Way back in 1992 the impish Mayer Hillman’s revolutionary work Cycling Towards Health and Safety

signalled the beginning of the end of the ‘Vanishing Tribe’ era, the first glimmer of dawn for the current epoch of Mixed Messages.

Ron’s uncompromising stance on motor-danger and motor-slaughter is laudable. In an era when most commentators still moan about ‘dangerous roads’ or ‘nightmare traffic’ like they were natural phenomena – avalanche, hurricane, shark attack – Crap Cycling keeps the focus resolutely on human agency. The danger doesn’t come from cars or trucks or junctions or roads; it comes from people like you and me.

But isn’t it possible to keep stating that obvious fact without denying the known epidemiological truth that people who ride bikes live longer? I’d like to ask Ron myself but he doesn’t take comments.

*MDV = victim of motor dependence

mixed messages (part 2)

The division of history into periods is not a fact, but a necessary hypothesis or tool of thought, valid in so far as it is illuminating, and dependent for its validity on interpretation

“The division of history into periods is not a fact, but a necessary hypothesis or tool of thought, valid in so far as it is illuminating, and dependent for its validity on interpretation.”

E.H. Carr ‘What is History?’

For anyone who doubts we are living in the era of mixed messages consider this un-photoshopped image, captured in Stanhope Gardens, London, N4, 29/09/2012.

smarter travel?

barriers to cycling (part 1)

In a week of waffle – on the ugly spat between Andrew Mitchell and his gate-keepers – there’s been exactly zero comment on the fact that a senior member of the Government might choose to travel by bike. Fifteen years ago such zany behaviour would have had him labelled as an odd and remarkable fellow; ‘the bicycling whip’. A first lesson to draw from the affair is that a posh person choosing to get about on an – insert compulsory adjective – humble bicycle is now a non-story.

It’s now unworthy of comment to find toffs travelling by bike, after all their social status is inviolable. This may not be much help to others who had less money spent on their education and whose parents were not Government ministers, but it’s still a positive development. In all the talk of contempt and condescension, even though bicycle-travel is a key element in the narrative – nobody has denounced Andrew Mitchell as a cyclist.

The tale of hot-temper has another lesson; that authority has trouble categorising bicycle-traffic. In this period in history, in the UK, if you enjoy the simple luxury of cycle-travel, you have to get used to occasional, ritual humiliation.

The third lesson is that Andrew Mitchell is clearly not much of a politician. When confronted with injustice an activist has three basic choices…

To fight, Mitchell has a military background but clearly shooting his way out of the vehicle gate was not a practical option. The streets of SW1 are made for tanks, there are barracks of elite troops standing very close by. If he’d gone for the Maoist option – “political power comes from the barrel of a gun” – he may have got away with his life but it probably wouldn’t have helped his career?

To defer, politely to ‘jobsworth’ authority and make, in due course, reasoned complaint, to the proper authorities, that the new Downing Street Gate policy is both unfair and inconvenient.

To take non-violent direct action; on being told that the riding gate could not be opened, that ‘for reasons of security’ he’d have to dismount and walk back to the pedestrian gate, Mr. Mitchell could have explained courteously to his obstructors that they were clearly discriminating against human-powered vehicular traffic and calmly insist that they arrest him so he could make his case in court. If this demand had been refused he could have used his handy ‘D’ lock to shackle himself to the gates and wait for something to happen. If convicted he could have refused to take any conditional discharge, refused to pay any fine, gone to jail and started a hunger-strike.

All he actually did was rant. The exact terms of his discourse are still contested but nobody is denying he lost control. He became impolite which is impolitic.

Mitchell’s verbal incontinence has obscured the real issue. His grovelling apologies say nothing of the injustice that provoked his childish wrath. His lack of self-control means an opportunity, to focus national debate on whether it’s OK to force people on push bikes to WALK, when those in limousines get to ride, has been lost.

He must resign.