CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
Seems things got... interesting...
http://www.indymediascotland.org/node/19979
All just backs up my problems with CM. Yes, I know, the police look pretty much in the wrong here, but as far as I'm concerned getting bikes accepted on the streets shouldn't involve this much antagonism (nor the use of terms like 'filth' and 'pigs' to refer to the police - oh how level-headed and sensible such comments make cyclists look, ah yes, just an ordinary Joe who happens to be on a bike).
The Guardian local blog guy said he was going...but doesn't seem to have written about it.
I personally don't think the CM is great idea BUT they weren't doing any thing actually illegal that we know about.
That copper looks properly scared though with his baton out :).
The comments on that are basically the mirror of the Daily mail.
Guardian guy put a couple of things on Twitter. This was the last one.
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One of the bike protesters has been detained by police. Bike and sound system confiscated.
It would be fascinating to know the story behind it all. Did someone complain? was he despatched to deal with it? or was this just someone on patrol deciding to intervene? I suppose we'll never know.
I missed it as I had a kite making at a summer fayre to prepare for...
How'd the fayre go? sorry we didn't make it - saw a few other forumers out and about though. We're in the red canoe in this pic (sorry have forgot how to make the IMG thing work again)
Rapidly veering OT...
@SRD - here's one of that guy with the bike on the boat.
Nice one. We've got some of him in the corracle too - like to have seen him fit the bike in that :) (the currach maybe...).
And who's that funny woman in front of him??! She's not wearing her helmet life-preserver.
:)
That's the guy who almost crashed into me the other week...lol!!
By the way to get back on topic ACAB!
the guy who went the wrong way up leith walk?
the posts on the link at the start of this page use some very intemperate language, further down the string some advice is given on not creating a critical mass for the police to arrest, someone also points out that a poster is guilty of verbal harassment in same way as police were harassing the CM. However, in general quite depressing, still there is always the guy in the boat with the beard and the bike who cycles wrong way up Leith Walk...
no not that guy I think he's probably dead by now.. The guy in the boat turned right across me when I was going down lothian road and nearly took us both to road rash centrum.
As far as critical mass and the police go I think it's totally unacceptable behavior on the part of the police. It seems perfectly acceptable for commuters to be held up by other cars but when it comes to bikes they arrest you for obstructing traffic with a trailer.....is that even an offence???? Whether or not you agree with CM or not we all have the right to ride our bikes on the road and when the police start arresting people for it it's just the thin end of the wedge.
In my dealings with the Edinburgh police I have found them to be more than useless.
so I will see you there next month?
Unfortunatly I'll be out of the country for the next one but it's a date for august.
we're away too. but i think you should try and get everyone towing trailers :)
I'm not against critical mass. I am amazed so many motorists can still get outraged by it. It has been going a while now. I would prefer a bit of ingenuity, e.g. instead of hanging about waiting for the lone polis car to get back up, why didn't some Cm folk create a diversion, others free the sound system guy then everybody cycle off in different directions? This is what Oor Wullie, Fat Boab, Wee Eck and Soapy Souter would have done after knocking PC Murdoch's hat off.
At least one person stays to video the arrest and say "look forward to News at Ten mr copper"
arrange a couple of redezvous points
Have a friendly cyclist lawyer hand out business cards before the ride
and sit on yer bucket at the end with a bag o granny sookers and a massive lolly pop while tossing yer spare change in the air with yer other hand.
I'm afraid it still won't get me going to Critical Mass. Yep, car drivers hold up traffic every morning, but there's a subtle difference - they're not doing it 'deliberately'.
Lots of cycle commuters at the front of a queue similarly wouldn't be doing it deliberately. CM, manifestly, does. I still fail to see how that gets people thinking "I should get on a bike", but rather reinforces the view and opinion that bikes 'get in the way'.
The police were wrong, obviously, very very obviously, but I don't think for one second that a lot of people taking part in that CM and hanging round would have passed the 'attitude test' that actually makes the police much easier to deal with and more willing to listen. Takes two to Tango, and without seeing film of the initial approach by the police we're also lacking the response from the CM cyclists to try and work out why things escalated.
"... when it comes to bikes they arrest you for obstructing traffic with a trailer.....is that even an offence????"
Technically you can aver anything on a charge sheet. Whether it sticks or not is another matter. Although obstructing the highway IS an offence. Note again that there is a difference between deliberate obstruction and merely being in a slow-moving/stopped queue. You may argue that CM is merely a slow-moving queue, and that everyone in that queue is incapable of moving faster than the 10mph at which it is travelling. That's not to say I'll believe you, but you can say it.
Having a trailer bike is not going to get you arrested from now on, and had he been cycling outwith CM he would never have been done - please can we differentiate between the two actions of cycling normally and cycling in CM. CM IS provocative, deliberately so, and will always, naturally, get people wound up. And in the situation in the video, quite frankly, no-one wins. And certainly not cycling! (I wouldn't want to have a driver do something on my commute and find out this cop was the first on the scene - not because I think he's anti-cyclist, but because recent events may have rendered him so).
I should add, for balance, that in my dealings with L&B Police they've normally been alright. Not perfect, but alright. But anecdote is not the plural of datum.
Have to say that I don't think there is anything in Anth's post with which I disagree.
As I said before, I would be very interested to know what the story was behind the police intervention.
It pains to say this but the time I joined in it did seem to be painfully slow... we were crawling along at about 3-4 mph which felt wrong to me. Maybe if they held a steady 10-15mph it would let them cover more ground (and upset drivers a little less, but I doubt that)
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New video and post on last weeks Critical Mass bike protest in Edinburgh - http://bit.ly/c135qp
Wot SRD said ...
I agree they should go a bit faster and I'm sort of with you on most of what you said.I don't think it excuses the dangerous overtaking maneuvers and aggressive policing in that video. As I've so often heard on these 'cops with cameras' style programs you have the right to film in a public place and those police officers were fairly aggressive towards that journalist
We all have the right to peaceful protest and we all have the right to ride our bikes on the road. The only aggression on the video is coming from the cops and the drivers. It may take two to tango but two wrongs don't make a right and if the police hadn't intervened in the way they did the ride would have ended without incident.
They really should have sought permission to hold a protest and followed the letter of the law though. eh?
The problem is that CM is often seen as a bunch of hippies getting in the way and in that respect I think they are often hoist by their own petard.
having just watched the video on the guardian website, I am really rather appalled at the way the police treated tom allen. Surely that is not how they are trained to deal with the public and/or journalists? the guy was asked a totally polite question and was rude and obnoxious in return, when all he needed to say was 'please contact my HQ' or something equally generic. I hope the guardian gets an explanation from L&B.
yup the public face of lothian and borders finest.....not the sharpest tools in the box but tools none the less.
"disappear"
yeah, nice one
<quote>Hard to disagree with CH's take*.
Hard too to see quite what this "CM" has to do with celebrating cycling or with cycling advocacy - it seems to me only to reinforce the sterotypical motorists' view of cyclists as slow and in the way. I cycle a modest distance on Edinburgh's streets pretty much every day. Right now my bike is my only mode of personal transport. I wouldn't want to think that an "Edinburgh Critical Mass" had contributed to the aggressiveness of *that* bit of overtaking, or *this* police officer's lack of interst in my justified complaint about it. Right now I'm not convinced.
Not in my name, people. Sorry.
* - comment on the indymedia site
</quote>
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