Just wow. Wrong.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
BT cycling hate piece
(24 posts)-
Posted 10 years ago #
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Iain Dooley
Motoring writer, BT.com
Iain is more comfortable dealing with the latest tech than the intricacies of fitting a sub woofer in a Vauxhall Nova. His interests are firmly rooted in the business of making cars and sorting the good from the not so great.
Iain Dooley is the Senior Motoring Writer for Press Association. He enjoys the countryside at a reasonable speed.
Iain Dooley is the Senior Motoring Writer for the Press Association. He can often be found circling his local town centre to grab that sought-after parking space.
Other things he doesn't like are speed limits, average speed cameras, speed bumps and parking regulations. He thinks that speed limits "neuter" rural roads.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"Winter is a miserable time for everyone - rubbish weather, short days and long, dark nights"
Good to know that he isn't just wrong about cycling, but about most things - winter is awesome.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Iain Dooley can just go and do one. End of.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Wow what a tube, I don't usually like Sky for its big corporate stuff but at least it sponsors cycling. Maybe its time I ditched BT and went with Sky?
Posted 10 years ago # -
You might have hit the nail on the head there, DaveC - just another skirmish in the BT/Sky war?
I recently chucked BT and their ridiculously poor levels of service in favour of Virgin - reading drivel like this makes me even more glad.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Sadly we don't have Virgin in the sticks, or I would have changed ages ago.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I love his use of language:
Granted, not all cyclists are this badly behaved. However...
It's like me saying, "Not all car journalists are child molesters. However, real world experience would tell us some of them must be..."
if you're going to use the road then you really need to play by the rules. That means bright, reflective clothing
Based on this, would he say that cars with dark paintwork shouldn't be allowed on the road when it's dark?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Bit strange for a corporate to put an article like that up. Surely they realise that it may put many completely off them. Dim-witted indeed - pot kettle black.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I saw a matt black car yesterday. Only just - because it was dark & parked (i.e lights off)
Downright dangerous ;)
Posted 10 years ago # -
I've been saying this for ages. Happy to be forced to wear bright yellow for safety/visibility reasons when cars are all painted that same colour for the same reason. Fair's fair... :-)
Posted 10 years ago # -
I once wrote to Nationwide Autocentre to complain about their newsletter email's suddenly-adopted strident right wing "us motorists" tone. I'm your customer and am offended by this, I wrote. Really very sorry, they replied, won't happen again. And it never did. They became very apolitical and upbeat from then on.
It's worth writing to bt. These people try on the shapes of the angry tabloids but they can falter magnificently if they realise they don't have your support. I suppose they don't get many letters so you have some sway.
Posted 10 years ago # -
When I see articles like that, I start to get annoyed but end up just sighing, wondering what it will take for people just to be reasonable towards one another.
I totally agree cyclists should be making themselves visible, that stands to reason. But that rant is so ill-conceived on so many levels that I'm just left shaking my head.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"I can deal with the red light and queue jumping antics because I get it..."
one of these is legal and the other isn't - bit daft to put them both into the same category. If he's annoyed at filtering then perhaps he would benefit from reading something about what cyclists are taught, or even get on a bike himself.... I also frankly don't believe he always looks before he opens his door every time- hardly anyone does in my experience.
Posted 10 years ago # -
He sounds like a bit of a tw4t:
Iain Dooley @iainpdooley 8 Nov
My scribblings appear to have annoyed some cyclists. It's not been a bad week after all
Posted 10 years ago # -
So, if by 'annoy', you mean we saw right through your nonsense and provided a robust rebuttal/countertroll to your scribblings, then yes.....
We'll ignore the fact it wasn't just 'cyclists' getting peeved at it then?
Posted 10 years ago # -
So, another rant with a wind-up agenda how original.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Aye, don't be fooled by a few provocative tweets from someone whose livelihood it is to get you riled up. They're professionals.
Virtual footfall means big ad money - I can't be alone in being the only person who's *never* been to BT online until this article was linked from CCE, so courting controversy is a big earner from their advertisers... so long as they don't go too far...
It would help if the CTC and other cycling organisations were more proactive on these issues. If the CTC wrote publicly to all members asking them to boycott BT, regardless of how many followed through the PR damage would be far too high to tolerate and Dooley wouldn't be paid to write similar things again.
Sadly, we never see any weight of numbers action from cycling orgs (even ones that claim to be national cycling charities). At their most upset, they might mildly request an individual apology...
Posted 10 years ago # -
Surprisingly, no adverts on that page, though.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@ Coxy
Check their cookie policy at the bottom of the page:
"This site will: Send information to other websites so that advertising is more relevant to you"
Stealth advertising.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Of course! Why the websites I view all have shoe adverts after my wife has been browsing!
Posted 10 years ago # -
You need to get AdBlock! Which has just reminded me to disable it for CCE.
Posted 10 years ago # -
There are two prominent ads on the BT site for me, in the sidebar. Both are pretty well targeted in terms of things I've recently searched for on Amazon, eBay and Wiggle (everything is interconnected it seems).
Aviva offer a £60 flat commission to anyone who refers them a home insurance customer, while you can get £40 for referring someone to British Gas homecare. Or there's the simpler pay per click / impression model. Either way, it's big money.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Fortunately, I already run AdBlock (though you have to be more alert on Android devices as newer versions of Android prevent AdBlock working), so I don't get the ads showing.
You can change the cookies that work on BT.com with the slider accessible from the bottom of the page, but it presumably needs a cookie stored to remember that setting. So if you routinely delete all cookies, it'll go back to the default setting again! Not many people are all that savvy about cookies so they'll likely get caught out.
Posted 10 years ago #
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