British Cycling has a hell of a lot to answer for. Twenty-five or so years ago, the only people you ever saw riding a bicycle were children, paedophiles and freaks. There were few, if any, cycle lanes and nobody really cared very much if the occasional cretin, pedalling like billyo in the gutter, was decapitated by the wing mirror of a passing lorry. When this happened, we agreed, the national gene pool had been marginally improved. Happy days.
But fast-forward to 2016. Walk for five minutes in any big UK city and some self-righteous, Lycra-clad hipster with a fatuous water bottle affixed to the frame of his £10,000 Pinarello will knock you through the window of Topshop and then hurl abuse at you for getting in his way. Stand at the traffic lights and watch them slow down to make sure the lights are red before they whizz through! Watch them riding three abreast to annoy car drivers! We even have a Tory mayor of London who is intent on indulging these maniacs with more and more space for them to annoy the hell out of everyone else. A proper Tory, Boris, would have taken the same approach to discouraging cycling as Lord Baden-Powell did to discourage masturbation: exercise and cold showers.
And the cyclists are all self-righteous because they are saving the planet. And combating a national obesity epidemic. And they are the heirs of Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Bradley Wiggins, supreme athletes, British champions. And it’s not just that. Once upon a time, watching sport on TV meant football, rugby or cricket. Now, because we are so blindingly good at it as a country, we have to watch weasel-faced Scotsmen cycling around a ring endlessly and pretend that it’s interesting.
So thank you, British Cycling, for what you have done; it has been a quite staggering success story. Sixteen gold medals at the last Olympics and Paralympics. Sixteen! That’s more than we used to get across every Olympic event. And we win the Tour de France these days with nonchalant ease. It has been given money, for sure, but you can’t deny that British Cycling has been enormously successful.
It may all be coming to an end, though. A rather, uh, abrupt Australian, Shane Sutton, has been forced out as technical director of British Cycling for a host of exquisitely modern transgressions: bullying, racism, sexism, even disablism. Sutton, who has managed Britain’s greatest cycling triumphs, is alleged to have referred to disabled athletes as “gimps” and “wobblies”. And to women cyclists as “sheilas” and “bitches”. And to an Asian cyclist as a “boatie”. We are told Sutton was at least partly responsible for engendering a “toxic atmosphere” in the velodrome. He could be a little harsh, apparently. All this comes largely from cyclists who didn’t quite cut the mustard.
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So that could be it for British Cycling. Because henceforth a new regime will be installed that is consensual, caring, diverse and respectful. Perhaps henceforth the cyclists will all wear anti-bullying wristbands. They will be led in future not by people who bring to mind, in their refusal to suffer failure gladly, Sir Alex Ferguson or Jose Mourinho or Pep Guardiola. Or maybe the steely Judy Murray or the borderline crazed Richard Williams, dad of Venus and Serena. Or Geoff Boycott or JPR Williams.
Show me a hugely successful sports team and I’ll show you a tyrant running it. Henceforth British Cycling will most likely be led by someone who brings to mind Nick Clegg. A good thing, because having been pipped to sixth place by Moldova in Rio’s Olympic velodrome, maybe cycling will begin to lose its allure.
How to raise Fido’s hackles: give him a hug
The debate rages on: do dogs hate it when you hug them or are they gagging for it, so to speak?
Last week, a leading doggy expert, Dr Stanley Coren, asserted that while you may believe otherwise, your pet spaniel Erdogan feels stressed and unhappy when you hug and kiss him. An “animal companion behaviour therapist”, Corey Cohen, now says Coren is talking rubbish — dogs love it when you cuddle them.
I’m with Coren, not Cohen. I never hug my dog, not even when I am drunk. She is happiest when ripping her toy stoat to bits. “Where’s Corbyn?” we say to her, as she begins tearing its throat out.
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Today’s lesson is crushing despair...
A headmistress reduced her primary school children to tears when she informed them that the local council had banned play time. Rachel Pattison was actually telling the pupils at Marpool School, in Exmouth, Devon, a lie. Or, to put it in Pattison’s words, she was “using role-play to encourage them to express emotion and problem-solve”.
I’m telling you, if I’d been informed at the age of six that play time had been banned, I would have been so traumatised I would almost certainly have transitioned, immediately, into a girl called Roberta.
I wish our teachers would be a bit less imaginative and right-on and just teach the brats how to spell their own names and count past five. Do very young children need to be taught how to express emotion? I would have thought it might be better if they were taught how to restrain it.
...followed by being teased about your name
Meanwhile, a school in Austin, Texas, has decided to change its name from Robert E Lee Elementary because Lee, having been a Confederate general, was a bit gamey on the issue of slavery. By and large he thought it a good idea, all things considered. So the school — perhaps unwisely — has decided to ask the public for suggestions for a new name.
Coming first by a mile, so far, is Donald J Trump Elementary, while a short way down the list is the Adolf Hitler School for Friendship and Tolerance. And yes, of course, Schooly McSchoolface is in the running too.
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A decade or so from now, whatever name is chosen will be considered de trop and politically incorrect.