Rattling around the garage A change is gonna come...
Bodger was so motivated to rant this month, he chose not one, but two topics to vent his spleen about. Now that is ‘Bang for Buck’!
You know the old adage ‘be careful what you wish for, you may actually get it’? Something I wrote about a while back has recently pretty much come to pass. Now I’m not claiming to be some sort of soothsayer; in a way it was sadly inevitable, but by now I’m sure that many of you will have seen the photograph from the gate on a small rally in the Midlands saying ‘car park full’ (well done to whoever added ‘buy a f**king scooter’ to the bottom!). The point, however, isn’t that the car park was full, it was that it was full because very few people had actually bothered to ride there. It’s not the first rally to have this problem, it won’t be the last.
As someone who wholeheartedly believes in the sanctity of the concept of ‘ride or don’t go’ I accept that there’s nothing we can do about it other than do what I suggested last time, and boycott any rally that isn’t a scooter-only event. But can we go further? For those of you with long enough memories, the name ‘CCI’ should ring a few bells. Back in the early Eighties, a group of Mod-inclined scooter riders and similarly orientated individuals became discontented with the state of the major scooter rallies of the day, and so they broke away and organised their own events which were more orientated towards their world.
Lasting for a good few years, they helped establish the ongoing Mod movement of today as a largely independent beast. Now, I’m not sure if I’d want to go quite as far as that, but if we take the basic concept of ‘us and them’ and drop it onto the current scooter scene, then I can’t help but feel that perhaps there is space for a comparable organisation today. Obviously it won’t be bothered about what you wear (just as long as you are there), but maybe there’s space now for some sort of organisation to pull together a calendar of ‘scooter only’ type events. There are already many events of this type around the country, and they seem to be increasing annually, and are drawing a consistent group of people who attend them. Now, to me, that sounds very much like what CCI did back in the day.
One thing it would give us is the ability to ensure that there isn’t more than one event of this type happening on any given weekend, or at least not more than one in any given area, as happens occasionally at the moment. Nothing worse than good events clashing. The only obligation that the organisers would be under would be to enforce the ‘no cars, vans, trucks, campers, boats, tractors’ etc. policy (as wonderfully overstated by VFM at their event) to ensure continuing membership of the organisation. Ideally, I’d see this as coming under the aegis of the BSRA, I can’t see any point in duplication of effort where the two overlap, but it would need to be given equal footing and value. While this could be seen as duplication by some, I prefer to look at it as offering an alternative. I can but dream…
Scooter crime
There has been a lot of talk in the press about the sudden outbreak of crime involving scooters (or ‘moped gangs’ as they seem to invariably be named), something that I feel needs addressing. I’m not going to get into the game of trying to pretend that I know what’s behind it, theories are ten a penny, but no one seems to know the cause for sure – however it’s becoming more and more obvious there is a serious issue here. People being attacked with machetes, or having acid thrown in their face, for a scooter? Now I know that there has been a lot of talk about going after the criminals ‘vigilante style’ but given that they’re not worried about causing serious bodily harm, I can’t see that this is going to end well. The way that I see it is this: I’ve only got one face. I’ve only got two arms. Both are pretty irreplaceable. Scooters, on the other hand, are pretty common in comparison.
If some bugger comes up to me with a sword demanding my keys, then I think that I’m more likely to hand them over, point out that it doesn’t like starting without choke, and leg it as fast as I can. At the end of the day, safety of life and limb is more precious than any scooter. Yes, it hurts when they’re stolen. I get that, I’ve been there too. But it’s not going to hurt anywhere near as much as having acid thrown at your face. I know some poor victims didn’t even put up a struggle and were still maimed; it’s a sad state of affairs, and something needs to change for sure. But my underlying thought is, until the situation is resolved… be careful out there my friends, it’s a mad world.
At the end of the day, safety of life and limb is more precious than any scooter.