"I hate cyclists"

Following on from my recent post on The Times' Cities fit for Cyclists campaign, I have been inspired to write another post. "I hate cyclists" is a statement which will probably be all too familiar to anyone who sometimes uses a bike to get from A-to-B, generally said by someone who generally does not use a cycle. When you stop and think about this statement, it really is quite extraordinarily stupid. 

A cyclist is defined as "A person who rides a bicycle." Even in a country such as the UK, where cycling rates are very low, most people still own and have at some point ridden a bicycle. Beyond the fact that I sometimes use a bicycle to go shopping or get to the train station, I may have very little in common with someone else who does the same. As with most groupings of people, people who ride a bike are a diverse bunch. Of the ones I've met, some of them I have liked, others I have not. For the next time someone you know says "I hate cyclists," let's have a quick look at some of the people they hate:

David Cameron (picture from The Overgraduate)

Arnold Schwarzenegger (picture from Zimbio)

Neil Kinnock (picture from Super Stock)

James May (picture from The Telegraph)

Tony Blair (picture from the BBC)

Albert Einstein (picture from The Argonauts)

George W. Bush (picture from About.com)

Barack Obama (Picture from Sunlit Uplands)

John Lennon (picture from Raleigh DL-1 Fan Blog)

Boris Johnson & Philip Hammond (picture from This is London)

Vin Diesel (picture from Celebuzz)

Justine Greening (picture from Wandsworth Cyclists)

Richard Hammond (picture from BikeRadar)

The Prince of Wales (picture from Who2)

Hillary & Bill Clinton (picture from 43Bikes)

Madonna (picture from Christiana About Town)

There are people in this list I admire or like, and there are people in this list I don't like. They are a diverse group of people who just happen to have ridden bicycles. Making generalisations about cyclists, when they are such a diverse bunch is completely absurd, but then bigotry generally is absurd.