Twit Her

Twitter provided an unexpected surprise this week. Though before I continue, why is that an acceptable sentence? Surely if it had been expected it would not have been a surprise?

Those of us in the UK can't have escaped the fact that Pope Benedict XVI is visiting our nation, and like many I have been appalled by the stories of abuse and the incumbent Pope's alleged role in assisting in keeping the perpetrators from justice. It is this background that inspired me to reacted to one of the seemingly endless newscasts of the Papal visit with the tweet:

Kid can't believe he saw Pope with his own two eyes. Makes sense, those priests usually approach from the rear.

Now I think that's funny, but I am also well aware that the only person who finds me funny, is me, and I would like to think that the people who follow my tweets accept me for the simple fool I am. The surprise I mentioned arrived a couple of minutes later when I received this from @_Boring1_:

When is it ever funny to make fun of a child that has been molested? Never,it makes you just as sick as the child molester.

I didn't recognise the name of @_Boring1_ as one of my followers so my initial reaction was one of wonder as to who this person was, and my second was to disagree with their reply on a number of levels. Firstly, if there is a victim in my tweet it is the institution that ordains priests, as the inference is that the priest or priests or indeed the whole institution is one of evildoers who would pray on the innocent. Secondly, following @_Boring1_'s logic, any act that has the potential to have a victim would become taboo for humour, which if @_Boring1_ has ever laughed at a Marx Brothers, Three Stooges or Laurel & Hardy movie, or comedians such as Bill Hicks, Eddie Murphy, Richard Prior and George Carlin, makes them a hypocrite, and if they haven't then I simply cannot be dictated to by someone so emotionally crippled. Thirdly, as @_Boring1_ neither follows me nor knows me personally they have no idea who I am or what motivates me to tweet. What if I am a victim of abuse and deal with it through humour, lashing out at the institution that allowed that abuse to happen?

I am now curious though as to who @_Boring1_ is, not only because they felt the need to reply to me but also because they clearly feel morally superior to me and in a position to dictate what I may or may not comment on. So off I pop to Jessica's Twitter page. Jessica describes herself as “a girl,a mom,29 years old.” A 29 year old girl? I would hope that by 29 years of age my daughter would be a woman. Also I notice that while she is proud to boast on her ability to breed, she does not mention a husband or partner. Not that either is a requirement or I believe is a necessity, but I did want to establish the grounds for Jessica's moral superiority claims and why she felt empowered to start dictating morality issues to others.

Having taken the time to search out my tweet and reply to it, I felt it only fair to correct Jessica on her error and so replied:

Phew, good job I didn't actually mock an abused child then. Happy trolling.

I should have known better than to feed the troll but having been attacked by Jessica, who took it upon herself to find my words remember, I never imposed them upon her, I wanted to point out that she was attacking me based on her misunderstanding of what I had written and not what I had actually written. Maybe calling her a troll, while accurate, was a bit rude, but I wasn't abusive and never felt the need to resort to inappropriate language.

Jessica replied again:

Thanks and Happy being a sick fuck.

Obviously Jessica was unable to restrain herself or couldn't articulate her feelings without resorting to abuse. Whichever is the case, how anyone can claim any kind of moral high ground while resorting to that kind of abuse is beyond me, and I would hope beyond any intelligent observer of human behaviour too.

Realising that Jessica would not or could not engage in a rational discussion and was clearly only in the mood to be abusive, I decided to return to the humour:

I'm sick? You're the one chatting up a stranger! Didn't even need to offer you sweets.

Jessica retweeted that. Possibly the most productive thing she's done in her 29 years.

Is it relevant that Jessica is American? Alabama no less!

Motorcyclic Argument

It is not without a sense of irony that my first post since Caught On HelmetCam should happen to be in the wake of me being involved in an accident that left my bike an insurance write off and me off work for a number of weeks recovering from my injuries.

First thing I think it's important to do is thank the North West Ambulance Service as well as the doctors and staff at Arrowe Park Hospital who were pleasant and considerate throughout my time with them, and the Merseyside Police Officer who attended the scene and was very helpful.

Fortunately, though battered, bruised and in a lot of pain, I came out of the accident intact. Communicating with various people and parties since the accident and I could be forgiven for feeling I should have expected the accident to happen simply because I ride a motorcycle. Certainly there have been a number of voices suggesting I should take this as a sign to give up two wheeled transport and shocked that I haven't dismissed the idea of ever riding again.

Having joined the wealth of statistics on road traffic accidents I've been digging a little deeper. Before I took up motorcycling I was aware that relatively speaking motorcyclists are involved in far more accidents than car drivers (I believe motorcycles account for 1% of traffic while being involved in around 20% of accidents) so motorcycling being unsafe is an easy conclusion to reach. That leads me to wondering why it is that when so much time and effort has been put into improving rider training with the emphasis on defensive riding, and a much stricter and difficult two part practical test for motorcyclists, there is still such a disparity?

One statistic that gets raised consistently is that 80% of motorcyclist fatalities involve the motorcyclist travelling at excessive speed, though in raising that it doesn't address the vast majority of the accidents as while 80% is a large proportion, the actual number of fatalities involving motorcycles is a fraction of that involving cars and larger vehicles. That's not to belittle fatalities or diminish their significance, just to give context.

Campaigns aimed at reducing speeds saw little reduction in the number of accidents because most accidents weren't caused by speeding motorcyclists, and it's looking at where safety campaigns are focused now and are seemingly having an impact, combined with the statistics from accident reports across Europe and America, you see the cause of most accidents is in car drivers' observations. Almost everyone I've shown my HelmetCam video has commented on how 'normal' those examples of inconsiderate driving are. Surely that's where the problem lies? While the vast majority of accidents involving motorcycles are the car drivers fault, and almost half of those are cars pulling out from junctions into approaching vehicle's path, the natural impulse seems to be to remove motorcycles from our roads rather than tackle the poor driving standards we've allowed to develop.

I have no doubt that those wishing me to hang up my helmet only have my best interests at heart, and I am grateful for the love expressed (particularly that little lump in the throat from Sheffield, despite him hitting the delete key), and when I am all healed and am able to get back on a bike I won't be doing so in deference to those expressions or because I feel I have some kind of right to be a biker. I'll be doing it because I enjoy it; it's low cost commuting; and because I have faith in you to look, and then look again.