Yesterday footballer John Terry was banned for four matches and fined £220,000 for racist comments he made on the pitch. Another footballer with racist views is John Thompson: he’s not in John Terry’s league. Er, he’s in the Liverpool CMS league. Thompson plays for AFC Kirkby. He has made hateful remarks on Twitter about Jews, the police officers of Yorkshire and cyclists. (Not that you can see them anymore, he has now protected his twitter account).
In March, Swansea student Liam Stacey was sentenced to 56 days in jail for a “racially aggravated public order offence” after tweeting a very poor taste joke about footballer Fabrice Muamba.
No doubt John Thompson won’t suffer a similar fate: that is unless you know of a Yorkshire-born Jewish police officer who likes to cycle and is now based on Merseyside.
I’ve touched on the irrational hatred of cyclists elsewhere recently and it always surprises me how such a benign form of transport attracts such an amazing amount of real-world and online vitriol.
Does Thompson genuinely believe that cyclists should get out of his way until they “pay road tax?” If he found out that roads were paid for by all tax payers, rather than just motorists, do you think that would that alter his point of view? Or do you think someone with this much hate to give out might not be terribly good at nuanced arguments about what does and doesn’t pay for transport infrastructure?