Cycling in the time of Corona

Whats different here?

Nothing. I think you’re right on this, it’s only a matter of time.

because of a perception that cyclists were taking the piss

This is the part of your argument that I take issue with. I don't see any evidence of this. Yes RLJ and generally the red tops love to give cyclist a kick any chance they get. But currently there's a lot of other shit going on and I can't see any evidence that cyclist taking the piss is something that's being reported on or discussed in the wider community at all.

If cycling gets stopped because of a further general lock down then fair enough, but your suggest that changing our actions now will have an bearing on this rubbish. cyclist will just be caught up in stopping motorists moving about.

Right now there doesn't seam to be any suggestion that a further lock down is coming. Matt Hancock doubled down on the get out and get some exercise line last night and also said driving to walk the dog is also fine. If anything that's the rules being relaxed from the general perception of the rules from a week ago.

Does anybody have an opinion on why they think that the UK won't heavily restrict recreational cycling in the same way that Italy, France and Spain has? All three of them started with the same guidelines as the UK, and all three of them decided to take further action because of a perception that cyclists were taking the piss despite it being unlikely that it caused any problems.

Whats different here?

I don't know about Spain but I do know about Italy and the situation is really quite different to here.

This Cycling Podcast episode where they interview Marco Pinotti gives a pretty good summary of how the ban there ended up coming about (Bergamo is pretty much ground zero for coronavirus in Italy).
https://thecyclingpodcast.com/podcast/marco-pinotti-and-jonathan-vaughters-on-covid-19