Lamenting the passing of Biking Bernie

Eh? What happened to him?

Hi all,

BB, having my personal e-mail address and now being unable to post, has asked me to forward the following.

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Fellow 'forum type people'.

Thanks for the words of support (from some!) but I somehow doubt that Bernie / Aurelio will be permitted back on this forum, and perhaps that is for the best. Whatever the real reason for me being banned, I think that 'abuse of other forum members' is hardly the true reason, and I have certainly received far more abuse than I have ever handed out. Perhaps it was simply because I asked if the moderator's guidelines could be made public. This seems to be such an inflammatory thing to do that my request (over in the office section) was deleted: never question autocratic power! (And whether this was the work of Nick C, or another admin, or whether Nick C sent a PM asking that I be banned because he didn't have the balls to put his name to the action is neither here nor there.)

It could be that someone took exception to my pointing out some of the inconsistencies in the reason given for believing that 'Wiggo' and Sky are clean. As someone has pointed out, if Wiggo goes well this year this forum can expect lots of new posters and the 'powers that be' might well not want another 'Armstrong is doped / no he isn't' debate to rage and so spoil all the good feeling, which is fair enough. Not that I was planning on provoking such a debate anyhow!

I think that it was a similar situation, but in relation to Armstrong, that led 'Aurelio' to be banned by Jeff Jones. The 'official' reason give was that I referred to the abusive 'jackhammer' as 'jacking off thinking of Lance'. Hardly enough to justify a permanent ban one might have thought, especially given the much harsher abuse that both I and others have been subject to, but back then my insistence on highlighting all the evidence that showed Armstrong was a doper was not always welcome. In fact, I even got a PM from the editor of a 'well known cycling publication' asking me to take it easy on the criticism of Armstrong and the racing press for failing to be more critical of Armstrong, promising that they were 'working on' a big investigative piece. This never did materialize!

I see that some have not been slow to start to rewrite history, accusing me of many things that simply do not stand up to scrutiny. I feel that countering these would be rather a waste of time, in that if people want to believe nonsense, they will, so I won't bother.

I also note that others have suggested that I have Asperger's syndrome and that I 'need to get out more'. Well, ironically perhaps, whilst I do not have Asperger's syndrome (as far as I know) I do have to spend a lot of time indoors caring for my little boy who has speech, learning and behavioural problems and will shortly be assessed for possible autism. My posting on here has often been a break and much-needed intellectual stimulus from my everyday challenges, which are made no easier by living in a country where everything has to be conducted in what is, to a significant extent, still a foreign language to me. Of course, as people might have guessed, I also enjoy the stimulus of a bloody good argument! The main reason that I ended up arguing about bike racing is because, lets face it, it is all pretty much an irrelevance. Getting into debates about more serious issues such as politics or what is laughingly called 'road safety' is far too depressing and only acts to further undermine my already fairly pessimistic view of 'human nature'.

Anyhow, enjoy the Tour and don't ban TheYorkshireMan, who in any case has only a passing interest in this section of the forum. I have perhaps said too much about myself here and may decide to ask him to delete it!

BB.