Farewell to cynicism
We have choices in this country. We can parrot the tired cliches opposite and grumble defeatist noises down the pub like the vast majority, or we can get involved. MAG can’t promise to win all the time but we do the very best we can and with the help of a few more of the motorcycle-riding population we will do a great deal more. Ian Mutch looks at the big picture.
There are millions or people in this world who have very little say in how they are governed. Many don’t get to vote at all or have only one party to vote for. Under some sham democracies those who even organise opposition are intimated or made to ‘disappear.’ Here in Great Britain, and this is a great country for many reasons, we have free speech, we have access to our politicians; anyone can walk into the Houses of Parliament and sit in on committee meetings if there is space. The police do not shoot protesters in the streets for shouting and waving banners. We even had protestors camped opposite parliament for years displaying banners calling our government murderers.
Whatever you think of those protests they prove one thing. As the world at large goes, we are very lucky to live in an extremely tolerant country. You can believe the sceptics who will tell you that our
government is simply more subtle in the control of our society or that dark manipulative forces hold the real power that even governments are subject to in practical ways.
There has to be some truth in that but the fact remains that we can get rid of governments and regularly do. It is also likely that the kind of global self interest groups who clearly do sway governments have bigger fish than us to fry. There may be kabuls galore bending ears, greasing palms and issuing threats in the course of thier elitist interests but you can bet your bottom off-shore dollar that they don’t give a stuff about hi- viz vests and super MOT’s. What MAG is up against is not any consortium of tax dodging
52 The ROAD
oligarchs. There are some self interested bodies like the vehicle test house lot that want the Super MOT enforced throughout Europe but they are hilariously transparent.
No what we are not up against hit men in dark glasses or the thugs of military dictatorships. We are simply up against a bunch of do-gooders out to save us from ourselves.
These are people with strange priorities in today’s precarious world.
Rather than tackle world poverty, war, famine or the time bomb of overpopulation, they choose to focus their energies on us. And who are we? A miniscule number of ‘foolish’ free spirits who want to ride on two wheels instead of four and wear what we
like while doing it. End of the world as we know it!
Against the spectrum of world issues we are a but a pin prick. The point I am moving toward here is that we do not have a giant wealthy enemy or Darth Vader to challenge. For the most part we are up against a rabble of poorly informed obsessive nannies. Nannies who feel it is their duty and destiny on earth to pass laws ensuring that no one does anything even an incy wincy little bit risky. Certainly nothing as mad as riding one of those pesky motorcycles which, had they only just been invented would not stand a chance of being allowed on the roads today. We can defeat these people. We have voting power; we can be fearless in expressing ourselves
in any form of media. With email we can communicate more easily than ever with our MPs or MEPs. We can even meet them face to face.
No one is going to come knocking on our doors at night to drag us off to a subterranean interrogation room. Our families will not vanish is we leave the country and criticise from afar. Our tea is not going to be poisoned with plutonium. Why? Because we aren’t that important. We aren’t a threat to the people who use those kinds of tactics. We just want to ride our motorcycles.
So why do we still have so much trouble getting our way? Well the biggest reason is that the overwhelming majority of riders in this country and the rest of
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