What’s smug and deserves to be decapitated?

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Great tag line. Gotta love it.

What’s smug and deserves to be decapitated?
Matthew Parris: My Week

A festive custom we could do worse than foster would be stringing piano wire across country lanes to decapitate cyclists. It’s not just the Lycra, though Heaven knows this atrocity alone should be a capital offence; nor the helmets, though these ludicrous items of headgear are designed to protect the only part of a cyclist that is not usefully employed; nor the self-righteousness, though a small band of sports cyclists on winter’s morning emits more of that than a cathedral at evensong; nor even the brutish disregard for all other road users, though the lynching of a cyclist by a mob of mothers with pushchairs would be a joy to witness.

No, yet another cyclist-generated horror – and a new one – has come to my attention this Christmas. They’re chucking their empty cans of hi-energy drinks into hedgerows as they pass.
Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

If I threw all the garbage in the world into the front lawn of Mr. Parris, it would not be enough. He complains of cyclist-generated horrors… What of automobile-generated horrors? He writes as if an empty bottle jettisoned into the hedges was indeed worth of capital punishment. And, of course, no chance anyone in a car threw anything out the window. Had to be someone on a bicycle. Surly no-one else would stoop to littering.

And stop calling me Shirley.

For those of us who have tasted the losing end of automobile-cyclist altercations, this ignorant rant is nothing short of offensive.

I am hard pressed to better the first response in the comment section following the piece:

Change the word “cyclist” in your article, Mr Parris, to read “gay” or “black” and you’ll see the article for the nasty, violence-inciting rant it is. For a man supposed to be a serious journalist, you have just joined the gutter press. Do you really think it funny to incite murder, Mr Parris? There are idiots out there who take words such as those you’ve written to justify their violence towards others. You are a fool of the highest order. In case you just haven’t got it into your nasty brain just how bad your hatred is, two friends of mine could have been killed by sort of actions you incite. One was seriously injured by such a wire strung across a cycle path and it left a nasty wound round his neck. Another was pushed off his bike by the passenger of an overtaking car. My friend ended up in a ditch with crushed vertebrae in his neck. He was lucky not to be made a quadriplegic: or worse. No, Mr Parris, your article is not funny: it’s pathetic.

Helen Simmons, Norfolk, UK

Well said, Ms. Simmons. Well said.

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