London, Saturday thirteenth October 2018
Nationwide Funeral for the Unknown Bike owner
I’ve been a bicycle owner since my sixth birthday, when my dad and mom purchased me a second-hand two wheeler to interchange the trikes I’d been on since earlier than I may stroll. By the tip of the day I may experience it, if relatively unsteadily, alongside the pavement of our road.
The bicycle gave youngsters like me a brand new freedom, and inside a few years I used to be driving miles both alone or with a few mates to play each in native parks and inexperienced areas and additional afield. We cycled away from our dusty streets into the countryside, typically going alongside among the busiest roads within the nation, the A30, A4 and A3 out west from our gray suburbs.
We didn’t assume a lot about security again then, and although visitors was heavy, automobiles had been smaller and speeds had been decrease. Drivers had been I feel extra thoughtful again then, and virtually all could have been cyclists earlier than getting behind the wheel. So I survived, although there have been just a few shut shaves, later primarily because of teenage stupidity.
Over seventy years later I nonetheless experience a motorbike, although with relatively bigger wheels, and normally simply to the native retailers, however I really feel much less secure on the roads. I’ve been knocked off it a few instances up to now twenty years or so, each instances by drivers who had been extraordinarily apologetic and confessed they hadn’t seen me as they drove out onto a essential street or got here up behind me on a roundabout. I used to be fortunate and solely sustained minor cuts and bruises and the motorists paid for the repairs to my bike.
Throughout the first Covid lockdown the roads had been virtually empty and I went out every weekday morning for a ten-mile experience to maintain match. However then visitors started to come back again and the fumes and too many shut passes put me off the roads once more.
Previously few years we appear to have come out of the lengthy period the place cyclists had been virtually fully disregarded by way of visitors planning (and pedestrians too) however nonetheless we’re largely failing to get the form of separate provision to make biking extra secure that we see in some European international locations.
Some councils are nonetheless dementedly anti-cyclist, and too many drivers see cyclists as an obstacle to their progress relatively than as fellow road-users. Some nonetheless speed up previous me then lower in throughout me to show left at junctions, some move the place there may be clearly not sufficient room to take action safely and a few even shout insults because the drive previous.
Biking is nice for particular person well being and for the well being system as an entire, although lower than it needs to be due to the air pollution from visitors. By lowering automobile journeys it’s good for the setting too, and good for motorists as folks switching to bikes cuts congestion in cities. As a rustic we needs to be spending much more to encourage it and make it safer. Particularly meaning extra separate provision – fears over security when bikes are on busy roads is among the essential issues that stops many getting on bike, but in addition driver schooling and enhancements in automobile and street design.
Amongst these on the protest had been a lot of households whose members had been killed on our roads, together with some from Tony Spink’s household. He was killed biking via Wakefield metropolis centre by a lorry driver who didn’t cease, dragging him beneath his lorry as he hung onto the windscreen wipers and thumped on the facet of the truck. His mangled bike was pulled from the lorry by the driving force at a layby after which dumped in bushes miles away. The motive force was jailed for 2 years. This was an excessive case however the sentence appeared risibly quick, as are most of the sentences given to drivers who kill each cyclists and pedestrians.
Protests by Cease Killing Cyclists comparable to this Nationwide Funeral for the Unknown Bike owner have publicised the issue and the organisation lobbies for £3 billion a 12 months to be invested in a nationwide protected biking community and for pressing motion to scale back the poisonous air air pollution from diesel and petrol automobiles which kills tens of 1000’s of individuals yearly, and disables tons of of 1000’s.
A number of hundred protesters on bicycles met in Lincolns Inn Fields earlier than driving in a funeral procession behind a horse-drawn hearse to Westminster the place as a substitute of following the route the police needed throughout Westminster Bridge they changed into Parliament Sq. and staged a ten minute die-in earlier than continuing to a rally in Smith Sq..
Nationwide Funeral for the Unknown Bike owner
Rally opposes Islamophobic DFLA – Parliament St
I left the Nationwide Funeral for the Unknown Bike owner because it went on to Smith Sq. and walked up Parliament Road to a rally opposing the racist, Islamophobic Democratic Soccer Lads Alliance who had been ending their march with a rally at Downing St.
Stand Up To Racism and Unite In opposition to Fascism had organise a rally right here, however the DFLA marchers had not arrived on the anticipated time. Far fewer than anticipated had turned up for his or her march, and it had been blocked for a while by extra militant anti-fascist protesters on the route.
A number of the DFLA had given up and gone to pubs alongside the route, however just a few had walked throughout St James’s Park to Parliament Sq. from the place they shouted for some time on the SUTR/UAF protest as police stopped them from getting nearer, and after some time persuaded them to maneuver away. The quantity who lastly arrived for his or her rally was relatively small and it didn’t appear worthwhile to take an extended stroll across the police barricade to attempt to {photograph} them.
Rally opposes Islamophobic DFLA
Ahwazi protest Iranian repression – Parliament Sq.
As a substitute I went again to Parliament Sq. the place I met Ahwazi protesters marching into the sq. carrying Ahwaz independence flags. They protested noisily dealing with the Homes of Parliament calling for Iran to finish the repression of their folks and to get out of their land.
Al Ahwaz, the oil-rich northern facet of the Persian Gulf was beneath British management till 1925, with the inhabitants having fun with appreciable autonomy as Arabistan. The emirate was dissolved by the Persian regime following a rise up in 1924 and the world occupied by Persian troops, and a technique of ‘Persianisation’ imposed on the world, making an attempt to destroy its Arab tradition. They renamed the world Khuzestan.
Discrimination towards the Ahwazi elevated beneath the Islamic Regime, impoverishing the world which accommodates a lot of Iran’s pure sources and there was widespread civil unrest since 2015, with large protests in April 2018 on the anniversary of the 2011 Ahwaz Day of Rage, itself an anniversary of the 2005 unrest. In September 2018 militants from the
Ahwaz Nationwide Resistance attacked an Iranian Revolutionary Guard parade within the metropolis of Ahvaz, killing 25 troopers and civilians.
Ahwazi protest Iranian repression
Tags: Ahwazi, Ahwazi protesters, Al Ahwaz, armed battle, bicycles, civil unres, cyclists, DFLA, die-in, discrimination, Donnachadh McCarthy, Iran, Islamic Regime, Islamophobia, Islamophobic, London, march, Nationwide Funeral for the Unknown Bike owner, oil, parliament, peter Marshall, police, protest, stand as much as racism, Cease Killing Cyclists, SUTR, Tony Spink, UAF, Unite In opposition to Fascism
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