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5. japan - bicycle society
7 months ago
First things first. Music, flung paint by the chuckle demographic - thanks, as always, R.
thechuckledemographic.com

While I was sellotaping these clips together I was reading about Please Call Me Dave Cameron's Big Society malarkey.

I am not in his parish, but I thought he could do with a bit of help on this one.

Start again. Call it Bicycle Society and aim to get every person in Britain on bicycles. As for the dissenters – I am thinking M Thatcher might poo-paw anything that smells of Society - put her and the others on a ship postmarked Middle of Australia.

According to my crude interpretation/analogy a society that cycles is more equal to the one that doesn’t.
Here in Japan grannies do it, kids do it, salary men do it, so do Yankees, the yakuza, teachers, nurses, office ladies, students, fashionistas, moms carrying an entire family, farmers, delivery men, chefs, the police, old men do it slowly with their knees sticking out, fixies, hipsters, local councilors, udon deliverers, students and anime characters do it too.

And they do it on the footpath and with out fancy lyrca, fancy bikes and helmets too. They just do it. People cycle because it makes sense.

And it’s not that they don’t like their cars in Japan. It’s just that cycling makes sense.

So that’s what Call Me Dave should be telling the people. Bicycle Society. Not this sound bite Big Society shite.

That ends my non-party political broadcast. ありがとう

Cycle on.

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  • Copenhagenize plus 2 months ago
    very cool. although any particular reason you chucked copenhagen and paris in there?
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  • jj o'donoghue 2 months ago
    not really - just had the footage and wanted to put my friends in there
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  • Jim Moore 2 months ago
    Margaret Thatcher sent here (Australia)!!! We don't even want the world's nuclear waste sent here to be buried - why would we want something even more toxic!

    Good video. Japan continues to be overlooked I suspect because they don't speak English as a second language like most Europeans seem to be able to do. The same probably goes for China and other Asian countries where utility cycling is still one of the most important transport modes. Hopefully your video is the start of a rush to come out of Asia and show the Anglosphere what can be achieved.

    Thanks for the link Mikhael.
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  • jj o'donoghue 2 months ago
    Toxic Thatcher - wa wa wa - sorry Middle of Australia - perhaps they could jettison her and all that would rehabilitate her legacy-my-arse to the newly discovered Black Holes

    You have a point Jim about Japan being overlooked because it's outside the English speaking sphere (this video being an example - it's been up half a year)

    The other thing I find is that compared to say when I lived in Ireland and England - there isn't the same antagonism around cycling- you know just because you cycle it therefore follows that you are a.b.c

    I guess that is achieved when there is a critical mass - I think policies aimed at getting people back on the bike are all well and good, but nothing works as well a dose of common sense - bicycles are the physical manifestation of common sense.
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  • Paddy Cahill plus 2 months ago
    Is that yourself JJ!?

    Lovely piece, just watched it again after seeing it over on copenhagenize. Ireland (well Dublin anyway) has hugely increased its cycling and common sense in the last few years, the city is getting noticeably domocratic in the sense you mention above.
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