You’ll never guess what those damned cyclists want to do now.

They are campaigning to - wait for it - ban tractors from country roads on Sundays.

Can you believe it?

Well I suggest you don’t.

Because it’s a lie.

Social media can be a positive force sometimes, but for some people it is just a vehicle for dividing us by stirring up pointless ‘culture wars’.

For some reason that I cannot fathom, Facebook thought I would be interested in joining a group that exists mainly to help speeding drivers dodge cameras, although they also spend time swapping the kind of ‘humour’ that most of us stopped giggling at when we grew out of short trousers.

And just lately they have taken to spreading the ridiculous notion that cyclists are so arrogant that we think we have more right to the roads than everybody else, especially farmers.

I was curious to find out more, so I made the mistake - and, trust me, this is always a mistake - of seeing what the public had to say on the matter.

Boy, were they angry with cyclists.

Absolutely fuming.

What few of them had thought to do, however, was to check whether this apparent war between cyclists and farmers was actually a thing.

But I had a couple of minutes to spare, and that was all it took to find out that Google knew absolutely nothing about it, and I think it’s fair to say that if Google doesn’t know about it, somebody has made it up.

It’s obvious what is happening here.

It’s another conspiracy theory, designed to demonise a minority, in this case cyclists, although these days any minority will do.

Some of us would say it is a deliberate attempt to distract us from the real problems we are all now facing.

And with some people it is working.

There really are gullible people out there who fall for this hatred and don’t understand how bad it is for their blood pressure when somebody feeds them something to get unnecessarily angry about.

It’s tough being a cyclist. I am not talking about battling the wind and the rain and the hills. I am talking about constantly having to counter the pathetic idea that because some people on two wheels aren’t perfect, we are all the enemy.

If I applied the same logic to motorists, I would hate you all for the sins of a small minority.

But what would be the point of that?

As much as some people don’t want to believe it, you would be surprised how much respect there is between good cyclists and good drivers in the real world.

By the way, I did find one petition proposing to ban tractors from certain roads.

But it wasn’t from cyclists. It was from impatient motorists.

So please don’t believe all the drivel you see on social media, and if you really must have enemies, make sure you choose the right ones.