It might be hysterical, it might be a flash in the pan; but there is no doubt that Reform UK are currently riding high in the polls, and threatening (or deservedly preparing, depending on who you ask) to form the next UK government if nothing changes in the next four years.
As a responsible publication*, we need to give a proper, serious, and considered overview on what this might mean for cyclists. Here are my predictions thus far…
The Ministry of Cycling (and Tax Rises)
The esteemed leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, has repeatedly called for cyclists to be registered. In 2020, Mr Farage said: “The time has come for cyclists to be licensed – and to be forced to obey the Highway Code like the rest of us”.
Fantastic news! If Reform do win the next election, we can therefore expect them to build the ministry of cycling that will need to be created to set up the infrastructure to register every single bicycle in the land, record all bike sales on a centralised mega document, and make sure the road worthiness of all those bikes are also updated every year on another mega document.
They will also need to create the basic infrastructure to be able to do things like track the number plates on our bikes as we inevitably blast through the 100th red light of the day, effortlessly reaching speeds of 52mph as we chase Strava segments. If we just put those cameras on half of the traffic lights in the UK, that would mean around 17,000 cameras would be needed, which I am sure we will be able to pay for by… turning the small boats back around?
In the unlikely event that Reform UK have suggested an uncosted policy that doesn’t make any sense, would have almost no impact on the quality of life of people in the UK and is unaffordable, they could always just whack our taxes up by 10% like the freshly minted Reform council is trying to do in Worcestershire. Easy.
A strong focus on turn signals
If anybody believes that Reform are always against cyclists, then they clearly have not been spending much time researching them. I know for a fact there is a bit of cycling culture that Reform councillors and their supporters seem to enjoy more than almost anybody I’ve met: turn signals.
While there is definitely some appetite from them to warn people about potholes, and a surprising fixation on movements to the right, turn signals are the thing that I’ve noticed some Reform voters are particularly interested in.
I have seen many Reform supporters signalling – and even Reform councillors eagerly standing next to – people who drape flags around their neck, drink warm lager, and repeatedly signal that they’re about to turn slightly ahead, slightly upwards, and slightly to the right. They do this very clearly, and make it very obvious with how straight their arms are, pointing every finger on the hand straight in the same direction.
This kind of focus on turn signals, where they’re practising it even when not a bike, shows that this party really could take indicating etiquette to a whole new level.
Strategic flags
Perhaps those Reform supporters that I’ve seen who have a never-ending fascination with those turn signals are doing so because they want to see more bikes back on the road, and not on those pesky cycle lanes.
Our esteemed leader of Reform UK even said in April this year: “You look at where they spend the money — tens of millions being spent on cycle lanes that no one uses, huge departments of people dealing with climate change, but all people really want are proper, well-run local services.”
Setting aside that a lot of cycle lane funding comes from central government, this suggests that a Reform government would be looking to rip out as many cycle lanes as possible, not build more. This means cycling advocates need to get creative, so I believe the obvious way around this is to paint England – or at least Union Jack – flags all over the few cycle lanes we do have in Britain.
We’ve seen the anger that many Reform supporters have expressed at anybody taking flags down from public property, and that this is quite possibly their Achilles’ heel. Say a committed cohort of cyclists were to go round in the dead of the night, painting flags on cycle lanes? I reckon it’s a safe bet if we want to preserve them.
In fact, I believe this could be a tactic deployed far beyond cycling. NHS bosses will present their budgets on an English flag so they can’t be taken away. We’ll see social enterprises for disenfranchised youths, where everybody paints flags on their faces while learning to sew, or helping a granny.
The flag is both their source of strength, and their kryptonite. Cyclists can use this to their advantage.
We’ll need a bogeyman, and quickly
From where I’m standing, Reform’s schtick appears to be that the vast majority of issues in the UK are not caused by late-stage capitalism, Brexit, or a decade of austerity, but by foreigners.
In an alternative universe where Reform are somehow incorrect on this – but the same issues are inexplicably still present when they’ve succeeded in getting rid of all the foreigners – they will need someone else to blame. If the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the Daily Express manage to exert their influence on a future Reform UK government, then that scapegoat will almost certainly be cyclists.
I can see the headlines: ‘NHS failing because of carnage caused by cyclists’; ‘Cyclists causing potholes by skidding’; ‘Cyclists causing global warming by farting and pedalling too hard’… we need to counter these. Not with facts, experts, or basic logic, but by fighting fire with fire.
‘Footballers creating potholes by kicking balls too hard’; ‘NHS failing because of carnage caused by ginger people’; ‘Swimmers causing sea levels to rise’… sorted.
*Not actually the official line of this publication, all opinions expressed my own etc
69 thoughts on “What to expect for cycling if Reform UK get into power”
Reform UK MP (assuming the
Reform UK MP (assuming the people of Runcorn and Helsby are happy to re-elect an MP having a vocabulary of around 30 words) Sarah Pochin will no doubt proclaim that the disproportionately high number of black cyclists in the pro peleton “drives her mad” whenever she watches TNT.
And don’t get her started on
And don’t get her started on the numbers of black spectators watching the recent World Road Cycling Championships.
Hope she doesn’t watch
Hope she doesn’t watch football – the numbers of people that don’t have “good Cheshire names” would no doubt appal her. Hardly representative…
Another iteration of the
Another iteration of the Supehero dilemma I found. (4% refers to the proportion of British people of Afro-Caribbean origin.)
Surely the fact that they
Surely the fact that they want to “restore” things like “common sense”, social cohesion (do they just mean “fewer forins”?), fossil fuel use *, improve things for drivers etc…
… but *don’t* like cycling … suggests that their time machine is just set for the early 1970s (I think that was when transport cycling really tanked, though in the UK it was dropping since the 1950s, where is that graph again?)
All that suggests that you would do well mount a patriotic Raleigh Twenty or Bickerton, or a Holdsworth if you’re a roadie. And flares.
* is this right? I’m pretty sure that while we’ve cut down in places (some very successfully eg. some industries) it hasn’t gone away at all – and if you count what we now “emit elsewhere” it wouldn’t surprise me if it were rising again (analogous to Jevons Paradox)
It will be interesting to
It will be interesting to study the aerodynamic properties of tweed cycling jerseys and skinsuits once they are made compulsory.
It’s all a bit odd Reform
It’s all a bit odd Reform erecting cyclists as bogey men * because going back slightly further, Britain was the innovator or at least envy of many other places when it came to cycling!
The “Dutch bike” is basically a “English Roadster” design, and when the government proposed and started building a network of separate cycle lanes in the 1930s ** I believe it attracted favourable attention from eg. Dutch transport engineers.
Same with some of the infra in UK new towns like Stevenage / Milton Keynes. (Though again that turned out to function as “move the vulnerable road users out of the way of the motor traffic which gets the direct route”).
* I guess they’re the kind of populist party which runs on out-grouping so perhaps it doesn’t really matter who they are or why…
** Albeit the cyclists groups that objected that this was because they just wanted to get the bikes out of the way of cars… were right! But they simply couldn’t have guessed the vast growth in motoring and the fact that this would drive mass cycling to extinction regardless.
See Carlton Reid’s work: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/carltonreid/lets-rescue-britains-forgotten-1930s-protected-cyc
Reform have no real visions
Reform have no real visions for society. They align their policies to try and gain funding (eg Farage’s backing of cryptocurrency) or votes; whether these policies cause harm is not relevant.
Similarly, any bogeyman will serve their purpose, once seized upon by the mostly right wing media and TV news channels.
Instead of cyclists, it could be gas fitters or ballet dancers (Daily Telegraph – “They were performing a pas des deux on the pavement and Odile nearly had my wife’s eye out”, said Albert, 72), (The Sun – “The toy soldiers marched straight through a red light”, Linda, 22, wearing a short skirt and low cut top).
Mr Blackbird wrote:
TBF under our current system parties that don’t follow what they think will be popular trends are rarely mentioned (positively), and keeping the big donors on-side is also a given.
Unless people overwhelmingly turn against a particular business sector. But note that at the outset of mass motoring it was very much “politicians backing the industry *against* the people”. At best you could say they were concerned “not to get left behind”. Shades of AI / the digital industries here?
(The role of “maintenance of order” – ruling systems keeping power – and indeed war / inter-state rivalry is also key. Motorised transport has been that during the last century. It’s now the turn of the latest round of tech. Chips (and connectivity) with everything, multispectral sensing, biometrics / mass data collection and processing, autonomous systems etc. So like the motor vehicle there will only be more of these, whatever the “side effects” for the population).
I know it’s Halloween but why
I know it’s Halloween but why are you giving Deformed wannabie fascists free publicity, just like the BBC? They are going to be royally Zacked, anyway.
Living in France I’m scared
Living in France I’m scared that Marine le Pen will take a leaf out of whatever bullshit idea Farage has to do with cycling and getting more votes.
Quote:
*Not actually the official line of this publication
So road.cc doesn’t consider itself to be responsible?
Of course it’s the official
Of course it’s the official line of this publication. They’re just not honest enough to say so. Even though it probably alienates half their readership, they just can’t contain their angry left wing views. It’s a shame because if they stuck to cycling it’d be a better site for all.
Dodonline wrote:
Are you saying road.cc are incompetently squandering half their potential market, or that you’re repeatedly here for the alienation (and presumably to gladly indulge your anger because of your non-left-wing views? )
“Half” lol. Even if we
“Half” lol. Even if we pretend for a moment to live in the fantasyland where the venn diagram of “people who vote Reform” and “people who haven’t ridden a pedal cycle since they were 5” wasn’t so close to a circle you’d need a microscope to detect the deviation, the notion that half of the populace are fans of Niggle Farrdige and his clownshow is a bad joke. They may well win the next election, but if they do it’ll be on the same ludicrous foundation that the current Labour government won with *maybe* a third of the votes somehow translated into a majority of the seats, an aberrant outcome of the fact we still insist on using FPTP when people clearly want more pluralism.
Even then, your premise is faulty bucko, since the prospect of a notoriously anti-cycling party winning the next election seems very much like it’s on-topic for a website about cycling to me.
Indeed – Reform are certainly
Indeed – Reform are certainly a topic of interest (and indeed their cycling policies, pro or con – of any party).
I wouldn’t object to a more measured comparative review across all the parties (because none – possibly excepting Greens and Welsh Labour – are particularly in favour of “nicer streets, liveable places”). And the knockabout style of the live blog grates a bit these days but … that appears to be the modern idiom, no matter what the politics of the publication.
(Wouldn’t object to electoral system reform – small R – either).
I agree on the reform. The
I agree on the reform. The combative nature of UK politics is counter productive and a waste of time. Can you imagine how much time and effort is spent on preparing for PMQ every week?
Proportional representation would introduce a more collaborative, productive govt and remove the need to have kneejerk responses to the media headlines.
I agree on the reform. The
Overall yes, but it’s not *all* win. For one,
politicians will still spend a lot of their time fighting for their parties and ultimately themselves. (And feeding a media with an ever- shorter attention span).
That’s an essential part of the feedback loop to keep them somewhat in tune with overall trends in public opinion. From a cynical viewpoint it also perhaps redirects some of the energies which might not necessarily go on making all our lives better (eg. dynasty-building, setting up advanced schemes for graft) by keeping them looking over their shoulder at the other energetic / smart / socially connected people who want their space.
The other pro/con with a wider distribution of political power is that it can make bolder decisions much harder – and it also involves much more “horse-trading” behind the scenes which can alienate the electorate. (Of course one might say that is what happens *within* the ruling party anyway in Westminster’s two-party system).
yodhrin wrote:
Pretty sure your analysis is off here – less than 2/3 people generally vote at all, and Reform are only on 20-something percent of that. I’d suggest the proportion of people who ride bikes is not >80%.
Whooosh.
Whooosh.
No one with an IQ above room
No one with an IQ above room temperature would vote for Reform UK. It is as simple as that.
Problem is, there are a lot of people around who are thicker than a submarine door.
As cyclists we encounter them driving motor vehicles on a regular basis.
Ah yes, the same kind of
Ah yes, the same kind of ignorant rhetoric we saw during the Brexit debate. Anyone not aligning with one’s opinion must therefore be thick.
Why not have a go at understanding why so many in this country feel upset at the relentless crusade against their values? Free speech is about letting people have an opinion and voice it, even if one doesn’t agree with it.
bobbinogs wrote:
What values do you think there is a “crusade” (shurely “jihad”?) against? Who is “relentlessly” doing so?
No doubt there are lots of people who don’t like “foreigners” over here – or just not “so many”. But as usual there will be far more people who just feel they’re left behind or that change is going in directions they don’t like (I’m sure we all have some complaints that way).
It’s of course not about the “facts” – we’re all doing relatively *slightly* better in most measurable ways than – say – several decades ago. And some of that is in fact due to the economic benefits of things like immigration (which is uneven, but overall far less than that experienced by many places). But that isn’t important to humans as we’re intensely focused on how we stand *relative* to others!
It’s a choice (which we *have* here, unlike some of those that some in Reform favour eg. Russia…). We can just decide that eg. we don’t want “non-local” folks over here, or want cheap polluting energy now and worry about consequences later, or crypto / gambling / fags and booze etc. The con is not being honest about the costs as well as the benefits. And our political systems mean that others will probably have to deal with those costs later…
“Free speech” is always contested – and it’s quite clear that the “defenders of free speech” are at least as sensitive to criticism of *their* view of it as those they decry.
bobbinogs wrote:
The problem is not so much that people are being called “thick” due to holding a particular belief, but people holding a particular belief without any understanding of the reasoning behind it and not being able to provide any kind of justification – that’s the “thick” behaviour that’s being called out.
For example, a lot of people voted for Brexit to help deal with immigration issues, but this is despite immigration being harder to control after Brexit as we no longer share information with nearby European countries (e.g. France). This is why some of us are so against Farage as he’s bleating on about immigration despite his Brexit campaign putting us in this position.
Since Brexit, we are excluded
Since Brexit, we are excluded from the Dublin Protocol. In this, the responsibility for the processing of an asylum claim was with the country where they first arrived in the EU. Any asylum claimant arriving in the UK, could legally be returned to the relevant EU country (where applicable).
I don’t know why this isn’t being more widely broadcast by the current government.
If a the majority of the public were aware of this, Farage would be finished.
Mr Blackbird wrote:
Our current government don’t seem to be very good at controlling messages (amongst other things). Also, many media outlets seem to be bankrolled by the people behind Farage – just look at the coverage the BBC gives to Reform/Farage compared to Reform’s number of MPs (5 – the same number as DUP and less than e.g. Sinn Fein and Scottish National Party).
You’ve not checked the
You’ve not checked the figures, or don’t know that the DA was two way and that overall move people were returned to the UK under it than were removed
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GL6_5y7W8AA26Ix?format=jpg&name=small
AmosH wrote:
This was covered on the BBC’s ‘More or Less’ programme, which – IIRC – agreed with you: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002jsw9
hawkinspeter wrote:
The problem is not so much that people are being called “thick” due to holding a particular belief, but people holding a particular belief without any understanding of the reasoning behind it and not being able to provide any kind of justification – that’s the “thick” behaviour that’s being called out.
For example, a lot of people voted for Brexit to help deal with immigration issues, but this is despite immigration being harder to control after Brexit as we no longer share information with nearby European countries (e.g. France). This is why some of us are so against Farage as he’s bleating on about immigration despite his Brexit campaign putting us in this position.— bobbinogs
I was, and still am very much a Remainer, and while it is tempting to get all ‘told you so’ about various very predictable bad things coming to pass, if I’m honest, most who voted Remain didn’t do much more research than those who voted to Leave.
You can reasonably argue that the onus was on those campaigning to Leave to do their homework into how it would work, and for those voting to Leave to ensure there was a specific plan, and not just sunlit uplands based on a sense of nationalistic pride. Those voting to keep the status quo weren’t obliged to put the same effort into defining what it meant to remain (and David Cameron certainly didn’t), but I think a lot of people are kidding themselves if they think that Remain voters all went to the effort of learning about trade deals, or what it really meant to be in the single market, and everything that we’d lose by leaving.
I’d argue that the quality of the debate (from both sides) was poor. I’d place some blame on complacency by the Remain side, who didn’t take seriously the consequences of decades of cheap tabloid stories about bendy bananas or predictions of banning the Great British Banger. Even during the campaign, leaders of various ‘remain’ interests were more interested in self-promotion, pandering to their own supporters, and/or taking pot shots at each other, presumably because they were so blase about a remain result, they didn’t think it necessary to lay out the necessary arguments and to appeal to those who might be persuaded either way.
FionaJJ wrote:
The whole referendum was a complete shit-show. There was no declaration as to what would count as a significant result (e.g. a 5% gap) which is common in these kinds of votes. The “Leave” position was poorly defined and thus included those wanting a soft or hard Brexit (!) which then left us in a situation of not actually knowing what kind of Brexit had been voted for. “Vote Leave” broke the law according to the Electoral Commission, and of course there was a substantial amount of “dark money” that funded the Leave campaign – foreign money could just be funnelled through the DUP as Northern Ireland political donations are kept secret.
Ideally, everyone involved in the Brexit campaign on either side should be prevented from ever being involved with politics again. Especially Farage as he’s just a Trump-lite that is only interested in increasing his own wealth.
FionaJJ wrote:
You can argue that as much as you like but do you really think that even if they had thought long and hard about it they could have anticipated the chaos that followed the leave result? Cameron resigning, May almost losing an election to Corbyn and eventually Boris’s oven ready turkey with an EU border in the Irish sea? Anybody who could have forseen that would be a genius rather than a thicko!
Nobody could expect to get what they wanted from leaving the EU because it had to be negotiated with the EU and that was out of anybodies control, rather than still arguing with each other over it we should now all be trying to make the best of where we are because even if we do eventually rejoin it will be on different terms and conditions and many of the remainers will be unhappy all over again.
I still remember asking a
I still remember asking a brexthicker why he wanted to leave the EU. Because of all the EU laws, he replied. Which laws? I asked. All of them he replied. You don’t have to tell me all of them, I continued, just the top ten EU laws you can’t wait to be rid of. All of them, he parroted. Ok, I said, just tell me one. At which point he stormed off. I had this discussion countless times with brexthickers. They just parroted meaningless drivel about laws and ‘take back control’ and ” we want our country back’ but they couldn’t substantiate any of it. Or explain what they even meant. Even the 350 million a week was a total lie and didn’t explain why the number was a lie or even why the Uk paid it and what the UK received in return. . It’s like complaining about a 50 quid a month gym fee ‘every month I give the gym £50’ blah, blah without explaining that it gives free access to all the gyms in the country, all their swimming pools, yoga classes, changing rooms, equipment and showers. So, yes, Brexit voters were and remain thick.
The Brexit poll and result
The Brexit poll and result took place while the Euro 2016 football tournament was in progress.
I remember a work colleague (not sure which way he voted) asked me : “Does the leave result mean England have to pull out of the tournament?”
Peterborough, where I live voted 66% in favour of leave, mainly because many people believed it curb immigration.
The level of pre vote information provided by the idle, complacent Cameron led govt, was a joke.
But then again, their main aim was to unify the Conservative Party and to reduce their backers’ business costs by eliminating much EU workers rights legislation.
Many govt politicians had no idea of the fine detail implications of Brexit and didn’t care too much about finding out.
Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Farage disgracefully backed and promoted Brexit because it was a route for them to advance their political careers.
Mr Blackbird wrote:
That went well then.
And Blair, Hesletine and many
And Blair, Hesletine and many others disgracefully backed and promoted remain because it was a route for them to advance their political careers.
AmosH wrote:
Blair should be tried for his war crimes. It sickens me whenever I see his name in the news that he’s still free despite his lies about Iraq that he used to drag us into a needless war.
I haven’t seen any of them
I haven’t seen any of them stacking shelves at Lidl… Farage still seems to be happy running the Farage Party Company?
So … I have to ask … do
So … I have to ask … do you think your approach made your brexthicker acquaintainces more open to listening to a more balanced view of the pros and cons of being part of the EU, or do you think it made them more entrenched in their view that people pushing the remain vote were just the same bunch of smartarses who seem to benefit from political and economic constructs they (your acquaintances) don’t feel part of?
Focus on the outcome you want. If the outcome you want is to change someone’s opinion, then it’s usually better to start out by making them feel clever rather than making them feel stupid. Even if you think they are stupid.
The best way to get people currently aligned with Reform to become more determined to vote for them might be to get someone who is very well educated, can’t really point to anything on their CV that looks like a real job and comes across as thinking they’re much cleverer than everyone else (i.e. MPs) to basically say “anyone that intends to vote for Reform is a knuckle-dragging racist”. It just doesn’t help the cause.
The EU referendum was a classic case – if David Cameron is urging me to do something then from experience I expect it’s going to financially advantage his chums and financially disadvantage mine. Boy / Wolf.
Sheesh has the cycling news
Sheesh has the cycling news cycle (ho ho) reached such a low point already this off season (there is cyclocross you know, the 3 day London event etc etc) we have to delve in to fantasy politics, and even thats a stretch its more like fantasy 6th form politics, for something that at best or worst depending on your pov might be the best part of 4 years away.
what next a article about how to protect yourself cycling if the sun goes supernova ? what an ice age might mean for cycling ? how to gravel cycle away from a volcano when it erupts ? how to use a bicycle as flotation device if your cruise ship hits an iceberg ?
I want to still be rolling in
I want to still be rolling in 4+ years’ time. It’s an if, hopefully a very big “if” at that, but I think the threat to cycling from the Reform bandwagon is real.
Sorry to have departed from the light-hearted tone of the article.
The effect of Reform is
The effect of Reform is already being felt by cyclists in those councils they are (mis)managing, with their determination to scrap bike lanes, LTNs and 20mph zones. It’s not just a Reform government we should worry about, the lunatics have already taken over parts of the asylum.
Rendel Harris wrote:
On the plus side, having Reform coucils makes their incompetence more visible.
https://bylinetimes.com/2025/06/16/reform-uk-councillors-nigel-farage-chaos/
hawkinspeter wrote:
Much like having a Labour government has made their incompetence and lying more visible
AmosH wrote:
I kind of agree, but it’s a different situation really as we’ve long had Labour run councils (Bristol was one until the last vote when we turned Green) with mixed results. I think the current government highlights just how authoritarian and out of touch that Starmer is.
hawkinspeter wrote:
Wait – authoritarian? He’s bang on the zeitgeist! With all these threatening authoritarian regimes about, we clearly need a strongman to stand up to them! And make “Britain” grate again…
chrisonabike wrote:
— chrisonabike Wait – authoritarian? He’s bang on the zeitgeist! With all these threatening authoritarian regimes about, we clearly need a strongman to stand up to them! And make “Britain” grate again…— hawkinspeter
He seemed happy to crawl up Trump’s arse and praise him. I get that politics means that people have to pretend to like child abusers to wrangle some stupid reduction in tariffs, but there has to be some minimum standards.
hawkinspeter wrote:
TBF since the royal family got smaller it’s only former *friends* of child abusers (which also including our own former ambassador). But since we have been accustomed to play nice with the rulers of China (tricky subject there), Israel * and Saudia Arabia (nothing to see there I hasten to add) why draw the line at an autocratic sex offender when he’s probably the most powerful one?
* Imagine his surprise when he learned that they weren’t being very nice to a large fraction of the population.
hawkinspeter wrote:
But at least they are looking after the kiddies…credit to “Men Behaving Dadly” on Facebook for this picture, the Reform council in Kent has repainted the SCHOOL KEEP CLEAR markings outside Halfway Houses primary school on the Isle of Sheppey to make sure the children are safe…which would be commendable if the school in question wasn’t closed in 2016…
Aren’t Reform just a Russian
Aren’t Reform just a Russian sponsored rip-off of Trump?
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/nov/01/reform-a-russian-spy-and-the-bribes-the-inside-story-of-nathan-gill
If they get any power, they’ll just asset strip the UK and the public will end up with like Thames Water customers – shitty service and all their money taken.
I don’t think they’ll actually do anything meaningful to affect cyclists as they’re far too lazy. Farage doesn’t lift a finger to represent Clacton.
The drivers seem to be
The drivers seem to be influence, attention, money and its trappings. I don’t credit most of them with being that interested either way in Russia/its agenda – it just offers the aforesaid honeypots.
David9694 wrote:
They may not be interested in Russia, but they’re happy to take money from them and repeat their propaganda and push Russian interests. (The Tories also did a lot of this)
The drivers seem to be
The drivers seem to be influence, attention, money and its trappings. I don’t credit most of them with being that interested either way in Russia/its agenda – it just offers the aforesaid honeypots.
The drivers seem to be
The drivers seem to be influence, attention, money and its trappings. I don’t credit most of them with being that interested either way in Russia/its agenda – it just offers the aforesaid honeypots.
hawkinspeter wrote:
After 50 years of constant Neolibertarianism selling the silver in the name of “growth”, I don’t know what assets are left to strip; public services are owned by the private sector, councils are going broke, central govt are pretending they’re not going broke, and the NHS is being failed.
I don’t want to know what they’d try to wring the last pennies out of, but I know they’ll damn well try.
Join us in the Forum Tea Shop
Join us in the Forum Tea Shop for more on Reform and Their Problems!
You’d think Reform would
You’d think Reform would embrace cycling; they are always wamting to take Britain back to 1930s and I believe cycling was the peak mode back then.
On the flip side of a Reform
On the flip side of a Reform win is Labour losing. This is a long Substack from Ian Dunt, which I’d summarise as:
https://iandunt.substack.com/p/a-world-without-keir-starmer-2fd?utm_source=unread-posts-digest-email&inbox=true&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
3rd on the ‘hit list’.
3rd on the ‘hit list’.
Coloured and Homeless top their list. A republican even suggested euthenasing all the homeless but luckily cyclists are a little bit lower on the fascist radar.
“they will need someone else
“they will need someone else to blame” They’ve been blaming trans people for the past 8+ years, I don’t see why that would change.
To hammer home the point, and
To hammer home the point, and to go along with what I presume is their policy against preferred-pronouns…
Is it worth all (progressive) media referring to it via it’s full name “Reform UK Ltd/Reform 2025 Ltd” and their Head of Policy also being referred to by his full name… ?
I wonder how well that would go down with the party’s fan base.
Faridge is an Apex Bellend!
Faridge is an Apex Bellend!
Well hey all.. these comments
Well hey all.. these comments didn’t disappoint.
Let me just remind everyone regardless of how you feel now, that we’ve had, in effect ‘awful’ government for a very long time (there’s really no point shouting blame at one or the other of the two parties we’ve voted in to be subservient to). If this was about ‘cycling’ we’d have all voted for and be banging on about the Greens years ago.
Clearly Farage is a pariah of sorts and to his credit a decent orator, but he’s no friend of cycling.
Don’t turn this into a witch hunt in the comments though. However anyone feels about one party or another, we are all living under a wholly unfit for purpose political system. Political career pigs feeding from the trough, even this current lot can’t help themselves, Rayner should have been the perfect totem for Labour, but power/wealth corrupts. A state which is growing increasingly large, public institutions which make private companies rich at the cost working families and generations to come. We’ve thrown ourselves at the feet of global capitalism. Public institutions which are failling daily to do the basics.
The only way this country can change is if the politcal system changes, the civil service changes.
Calling any disgruntled citizen thick or racist, left or right or any of the other commonly used platitudes simply demeens us and diminishes the actual problems we are faced with.
I can almost hear some people shouting ‘but brexit’ from here.. everyone wants a trading partner, everyone reconises the issues from leaving, (it’s been a shit show) but no one (I’ve met anyway) wants to give sovereignty to the European Commission. It’s difficult enough to change anything in our own country as it is.
..anyway thank you road.cc… I’ve not been about for a while, y’know, life stuff. But you’ve given me an outlet this morning.
Probably the most sensible
Probably the most sensible thing I’ve read around here in months…
Welcome back!
Welcome back!
A Reform voter: someone who
A Reform voter: someone who hates everything about thier country except its flag
jaymack wrote:
Clearly not the whole truth – they like their country at some point in the past of the mind’s eye – was it 1995, or 1975, or 1945, or 1837…
Or possibly ( a minority of those supporters) in the imagined future which looks a bit like today but with less … diversity, and somehow we’ve escaped the consequences of our prior decisions *.
As so many things the main driver would seem to be fear, with a Great Man stoking it but also saying “but you don’t deserve it because you are the best…”
* Which seems to be the vision of lots of the current more authoritarian / socially conservative European parties, perhaps inspired by the US. Jam today, don’t worry about tomorrow. We can just tell everyone else exactly what we think of them. No “meddling in others’ affairs” – except when we think it’s our business – and there’s no chance they’d do the same, if we’re strong enough…
I think peted76 has a good
I think peted76 has a good point (though though I would take it in a slightly different direction) – often what divides is … division.
The vast majority of “problems” people have (once you take a step back from “my journey to work time has gone up because that cycle path”) are in the human sphere. While there *are* still “the poor who are always with us” – people struggling with the fundamentals of life eg. food and shelter – I suspect that a greater percentage are above that level than most prior points in history. The average age is up, childhood mortality is down etc.
But “poor” is a relative term, and inequality keeps the treadwheel spinning, and that is still growing. And humans have “us and them” and “they’re cheating / treacherous” sensibly designed into our systems by evolution, always available to be triggered.
And with one fag-smoking
And with one fag-smoking exception, Brexit comes for all its children. This will include the Labour Govt if it remains complicit. No brexiter could ever tell me before 2021 what would be better* people’s lives for Brexit and so the fact that nothing is better four years in shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
* e.g. cheaper, simpler, easier, more choice, quicker – it fails at the pragmatic consumer level, never mind the ideology/ future/ international side.
People used to believe that
My teacher, Mrs Harris-Tweed, told me that Victorian people thought that swallows hibernated in ponds during winter.
Does Mr Farage also hibernate in ponds whenever there is a bad Reform UK story on the telly? Or when the newspapers say his ideas are silly?
Daddy doesn’t think he goes to Clacton.
Is Sarah Pochin also hiding in a pond? I think it would be a pond that had no black people in it, or she would get cross and say nasty things on the radio.
My grandpa has a bad leg and limps. He wrote a letter to Lee Anderson, the man that swears a lot, to see if he would give him one of those funny little blue cars that catch fire and blow over in the wind.
Richard Smith, aged 8,
Runcorn,
Cheshire.