BBC Cycling Controversy Tracker 2018

This post exists to track coverage of cycling on BBC, with special focus on regional services seeking controversy.

As has been covered by Peter Walker, the BBC has a problem with cycling. In particular, regional radio talk shows like to use the topic for dial-in audiences the way the regional papers do it for click bait commenters.

If you look at Peter's coverage, it implies that the BBC is actually getting worse.

• The BBC: still getting it wrong on cycling coverage (Nov 2014)
• The BBC has a problem with cyclists, and it doesn't want to talk about it (July 2015)
• Why does the BBC feel it’s OK to demonise cyclists? (November 2017)

We are getting to the point where the difference between the BBC and LBC cycling is more on regional accents than the content or themes for dial-in and in-studio audiences.

Jan 4: BBC Radio Kent:

Should there be more laws for cyclists? Should they be made to wear high-viz and have insurance? And what's the answer to the #NHSCrisis? Join the debate on @BBCRADIOKENT from 6 x @mrstevenallen

— Anna Cookson (@AnnaCookson) January 4, 2018

BBC Radio Kent. A history there, with topics like "Should cyclists be banned in cities?" designed to stir up click, and "Do we need more rules for cyclists?" (2012)

BBC Radio Kent managed to beat even BBC Ulster for getting the first article in, though we can expect them to not only get in their themselves, but go to such extremes it gets close to being a hate crime.

Jan 11: BBC Points West

Cyclists. Motorists. What do you think of this? 🚗🚙🚲🚲 pic.twitter.com/03LuRCWCUT

— BBC Points West (@bbcpointswest) January 11, 2018

Less vilificaton, but still on a theme of "is the cyclist in the wrong?", rather than, say "if you wonder why so few people cycle round Bristol, it's because they are expected to cycle with HGVs".
Not radio, probably not even on TV. Just local-paper-class controversy-bait.

Jan 28: Storm Huntley, Intermittent CBBC presenter, Twitter.

Cyclist who take up the whole road pretending they’re in the Tour de France are the worst!

Any more of that and you’ll be doing the Tour de hospital!!🤨

— Storm Huntley (@StormHuntley) January 27, 2018

The Cliche'd "Tour de France, Tour de Hospital!" attempt at wittiness. If she thought she was being original, she wasn't.

Update: tweet deleted. Here is the original post

This on a week three teenage boys were killed by speeding Audi driver —clearly threatening people trying to cycle home alive matters more.

@BBCNorfolk: encouraging hate for the sake of ratings

Transport taxes are not hypothecated. The main tax that is hypothecated is "the television tax"; the money everyone with a TV pays irrespective of whether or not they watch BBC TV. Or listen to BBC Norfolk. Something this article will return to at is end.

On Tuesday, BBC Norfolk dedicated their three hour talk show to, nominally, "should cyclists pay road tax".

Why? Over the weekend a cyclist got hit by a driver coming round the corner too fast -and ending up on the wrong side of the road. The driver didn't stop; she drove off and was only identified because she boasted about it on Twitter, saying they don't pay road tax.

That could have been an opportunity for a news channel to get the region to look at itself, to consider that driving off after injuring another person is no longer unusual. To consider how "road rage" has gone from being something that happened in the US, to something that happens every day somewhere in the county. To consider that the driving test may not be preparing the next generation of drivers to drive safely in the current generation of cars. To ask why the punishments for any act of dangerous driving is usually a gentle slap on the wrist.

That didn't happen. Instead, the way they treated the incident of a hit an run assault on a cyclist by having a three hour phone in on whether cyclists should be on the road at all.

They may gloss that over, to say they were "encouraging the debate" -but if you listened to any of that show, it was primarily an opportunity for cyclist-haters to come out of their caves, to phone in complaining about cyclists not using the paths to the side -and so endangering the drivers. To phone in complaining about a cyclist wobbling all over the road "whey they tapped their horn behind them". The radio show accepted these calls without ridiculing the caller "how many drivers were killed by cyclists last year". Without ridiculing the "all over the road" hater with "why did you sound your horn just because you were behind someone with the right to be there?". No. The station -our tax funded station- delegated all defence of the situation to the few people dialling in to make that defence.

Carlton Reid got to make a response, which he did, politely, on the topic of road tax. Yet even he didn't raise the fundamental issue with the program: why was the BBC reacting to a hit and run, not by looking at the issue of dangerous drivers, but instead effectively asking: should the cyclist have been there?

That is what they were asking, and they let the locals dial in to make the case that no, they shouldn't.

Imagine an immigrant had been victim in the hit and run. Would the channel have a broadcast "should immigrants be allowed on the road?". No, because they'd recognise that even though immigration is a core UKIP theme, to devolve it to a "should they be on the road" topic would be morally wrong.

Imagine a child had been the victim in the hit and run. Would the channel have had a three hour talk show "is it the children's own fault for being out there?". No. Because the victim blaming would have been blatantly obvious.

Yet here we have a channel where they were looking round for a local theme to keep the phone lines busy, and came up with "lets start a discussion about whether cyclists should be on the road".

Did anyone put their hand up in the planning for this and say "to do this two days after someone justified running over one as 'they shouldn't be there' is morally wrong". Did someone say "we are stirring up hate?". Well, they may have -but it didn't stop the show going ahead.

And now whoever measures the ratings will be feeling smug, "this was popular", and planning a rerun later this year.

If the radio station had chosen to make the theme anything stirring up hate against immigrants, the disabled, travellers, or similar, they'd be rightfully part of a national scandal, how a local channel was encouraging on-air abuse of a minority group. Not so for anything picking on cyclists. It is considered socially acceptable.

If the taxpayer-funded BBC radio and TV channels can do this, what hope do we have for the rest of the country. The BBC is legitimising the actions of those people who do "punishment passes" at "arrogant cyclists" who have the arrogance to hold up drivers who "have paid road tax". They are defending those people who lean out the window of their cars and should at the cyclists "you don't pay road tax" whenever their driving is criticised.

Why does the BBC consider doing this to be acceptable?

To close then, here is a suggestion for BBC Norfolk to cover one morning:
TV License fees: are they worth the money?

Walk, Cycle or Die: the Daily Mail vs the NHS

The Daily Mail loves its scare story, "lettuce gives you cancer", but one time there is something with a clear cut connection between action (driving everywhere) and outcome (10 years off your life), the DM refuses to acknowledge this, instead going for "Nanny State to increase parking costs".

If the DM news crew though it through -and believed the NHS reports- then they'd realise that shortening the lives of daily mail readers is bad for their long term income plans, unless they plan to "hook" another generation of daily mail readers. The demographics of printed press sales mean that isn't going to happen -unless they can convert this to page hits of people that don't use flashblock and adblock in their browsers, then even their web site's business plan is weak.

It should be in the DM's interest to get its readers to do some exercise, unless there's another goal. What? Well, there's the advertising revenue to think of; all the Car adverts. That hasn't stopped the Times.

It's most likely that the DM needs their agenda "europe to ban cheddar cheese", "asylum seekers groom teenage girls for sex", to sell papers. If there weren't scare stories on the headline, (or royalty joy stories), then people would leave the DM copies on the stalls as the newsagent, and so their paper sales -the ones they depend on the most- would fall.

That's something to consider as a tactic -if they could be switched into treating travesties of justice by law-breaking lorry drivers as something to put on the front page, then maybe they'd start to get through to an audience which, like it or not, represent a large proportion of suburban England (no comment on Wales, Scotland, NI),  But the DM isn't going to do that unless they think their audience would care -and if they don't, they won't. Maybe the tactic is that their children, and their grandchildren cycle.

BBC, getting "road tax" wrong again

Another complaint, this time to the BBC

Complaint about the Radio 4 programme, You and Yours, broadcast at 12:30 on Monday April 9, regarding the repeated use of the phrase "Road Tax".

The you and yours programme on small cars has both the presenter and the interviewee repeatedly using the phrase "road tax" as a misnomer for Vehicle Excise Duty. Such an erroneous uce reinforces the mistaken belief that cyclists do not pay for the road and therefore have no right to use them, which increases conflict between drivers who believe bicycles should be off the roads, and those of us who are trying to use a low-pollution,  low congestion solution to our cities' transport problems.

This use of the phrase "Road Tax" is a recurrent problem with BBC reporting. While it may  be considered acceptable in a slightly-comedic series such as Top Gear, to use it in a consumer journalism series implies inadequate factual review prior to broadcast.

In the past, BBC news programmes have published corrections to such errors
http://road.cc/content/news/17863-bbc-look-east-forced-set-record-straight-road-tax-%E2%80%A6-er-ved-video

Could you consider the you-and-yours reporters to do the same -after they have been correctly briefed on the funding model of roads and motor vehicles contributions thereof?

We complained: will you?

Our last complaint to the ASA was dismissed, though if you search for ASA and road tax, the organisations habit of dismissing such complaints is starting to make the organisation itself look as independent as News International's internal hacking investigations.

We were shown another advertisement, this time in Sport Magazine; a Fiat advert, "Avoid Road Tax without being arrested". Another complaint. This time, we'd like everyone else to complain too. We know that single complaints do get ignored. What is unknown is how many people does it take to complain before the ASA recognise that this is a problem that won't go away, pass the news up to the advertisers, and have them change their prose.

Here is the text of the complaint

The article says "Avoid Road Tax without being arrested". As road tax was abolished in the 1930s, it is clearly confusing Vehicle Excise Duty -a car tax- with some hypothetical and hypothecated fee that gives motor vehicles the right to use roads, and which does not confer rights onto any other users, such as cyclists. 

Furthermore, if it did mistakenly refer to VED, that's not an arrestable offence.
This article is repeating in its headline a myth: that paying for VED gives motor vehicle owners exclusive rights to the road.

You will no doubt reply with some dismissive stock "we don't expect the readers to be that stupid" reply, but be aware of two details

1. Some of the readers are that stupid, and are now appearing on video assaulting cyclists for being on the road without paying road tax.
2. Every time the ASA dismisses these complaints, it makes the ASA look weaker -it makes you look as effective as a voluntary regulatory body as the press complains commission. 

Please recognise that road tax does not exist, that such advertisements repeat myths that do have dangerous consequences in this country, and that your inability or unwillingness to address this issue is detrimental to your own organisation.

Remember -if you don't complain, things won't change.

A reply from the ASA: fuck off.

The team has been exploring the issue of complaining to the ASA that the concept "road tax" is not only non-existent, it helps encourage the belief (as seen in evening post/daily mail comments, Top Gear and video harassment of cyclists), that people on bicycles have no right to be on the road

The complaint was about an advert for a hybrid lexus that was "exempt from Road Tax":

In the advertisement the phrase "road tax" is used to mean "zero-rated Vehicle Excise Duty". While using the term "road tax" may be viewed as a simplification of the truth, those of us who cycle round the UK are continually harassed -in the press and the streets, due to our failure "to pay road tax" -in the belief that we do not do so and hence have no rights to the road.

Car advertisements provide an opportunity to actually educate the customer, rather than re-inforce mistaken beliefs which many motorists -and perhaps the copywrighter- appears to hold, and so reduce conflict between people cycling and driving.

Given that your organisation recently forbade a car advertisement showing adults cycling without a helmet before 21:00 as it may give children a bad impression, it seems only fair that car advertisements that give drivers a bad impression -that we cyclists do not pay for the country's roads- get frowned upon.

The reply

YOUR COMPLAINT ABOUT LEXUS UK AD

Thank you for contacting the ASA.

We have assessed the ad and your complaint but consider that there are insufficient grounds for ASA intervention on this occasion. Our role as an organisation is to help ensure that advertising is legal, decent, honest and truthful. We can intervene if an ad that has been broadcast appears likely to be in breach of the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising by, for example, being likely to cause serious or widespread offence, being materially misleading or risking causing significant harm.

While I appreciate your point, the ASA has no influence over the creative decisions taken by advertisers (or the agencies that work on their behalf) to use a particular character, situation or theme in their ad campaigns. As long as the content of an ad does not breach our Code, it is really up to the advertisers what they want to put in them. In this case, although we acknowledge that the correct term is “Vehicle Excise Duty”, more commonly used phrases such as “Road Tax” are often used by advertisers to convey a message in a way that will be understood by the widest audience. We also note that this ad makes no direct or implied comments about cyclists or their right to use public roads. I further note that you have made reference to a previous scheduling restriction we required for an ad which showed potentially unsafe cycling practices which could result in harm to children. In that case, we were concerned about the potentially harmful effect of glamorising cycling without a helmet to children. We do not have similarly pressing concerns in relation to this particular ad. We consider that this ad is unlikely to mislead consumers to their detriment or promote a view that only motorists pay for road building and maintenance. For these reasons we will not be taking any further action on this occasion.

I realise this outcome may disappoint you, however we will continue to monitor the public response to this ad.

A shorter summary is: "fuck off"

There is one subtle extra point, that hint that  the more people who complain, the more likely they are to react. Yet the ASA blocked the showing before 21:00 of advert that included adults cycling without a helmet after only a single complaint.

Let's summarise then

1. Single complaint about adults on bicycles: immediate reaction.
2. Single complaint about use of "road tax" term: fuck off.

Perhaps if more people were to complain they may react better. Or equally importantly -the more people who complain, the harder it is for them to defend their hypocrisy.

Old Filton Road: this is what they give us

Old Filton Road is the road where cycling city money was wasted putting in a cycle lane "hint" on one side of the road, and a shit cycle/walk path on the other, purely so that the road could be re-opened as a rat-run, something the councillors were proud to take credit for. This is how South Gloucester council spent their part of the cycling city money, improvements which they say were "designed to improve the environment for cyclists and pedestrians". Exactly how turning a dead end road into a through route while giving a shit bit of pavement to the side for the walkers and cyclists to bicker over escapes us.

Before:

1. A closed road with room for people to cycle in either direction on safely.
2. No pavement, but no need to worry about rat-running cars.
3. Room for pedestrians and lots of lunchtime runners.

After

1. A road that cars can sprint along to avoid the traffic jam that is the A4174. Yes, it's left turn only at the end, but that gets you to UWE and the science park.
2. A pavement that hasn't had any gardening budget spent on it since it was installed.
3. Traffic calming in the form of some signs and one of those 30mph signs that lights up to remind people who were unintentionally -as opposed to knowingly- breaking the speed limit.

Say what you like about Bristol City Council, it didn't add something this awful and then stand up and be proud of it. Admittedly, S Gloucs council didn't either, not to the cyclists -they sold the entire scheme as "a road re-opens", with a sob story of how "drivers who had used the route were forced on to the already congested ring road instead.", missing the point that it was people choosing to drive were the problem, not the victims.

Some people are unhappy that not everyone cycles along this newly designated path. If the UKIP -the official party of the Association of British Drivers- got their way, it would be mandatory to cycle along the path.

That's the path that is getting slowly overgrown after two years of utter neglect; the trees overhanging the path while the vegetation curves back in. Of course anyone in their right mind would cycle on the road, such as the person vanishing into the distance.

Which raises the question: what was the fucking point in spending all this money on "cycle safety" in the first place. If you are going to build something so awful that nobody will use it, then neglect it utterly, it isn't worth bothering about.

Note that to reduce the risk of head on collisions on a cycle path so shite nobody uses it, there is a big sign on the west end of the path saying "No cycles". That just about sums it up for the entire S Gloucs council cycling plans: No cycles.

Given that the bollards are missing, this photo is probably going to become the official site logo.

BBC on Cycling City

The BBC is doing a post mortem of the Cycling City program on the radio, and in print

On the one hand, the BBC are saying "It's failed because it didn't reach its goals", then we have the Bristol Council Conservative Party leader saying "It's failed because all the features they added have taken away road space from people who choose to drive. Choose to Drive, remember that. It is optional within the inner city, despite what some people think:

The leader of the opposition Conservative group on Bristol City Council, Geoff Gollop, said the new cycle routes were to the detriment of motorists.


He said: "The Cycling City initiative brought in match-funding which has delivered new cycling routes but these have largely been achieved at the expense of the majority of road users - by reducing road space or capacity.


"Whilst we recognise the merits of promoting cycling as a leisure activity for the individual - delivering personal health benefits and helping to improve the environment for all - this form of travel is unlikely in the near future to be a major means of commuting.


"We do not believe the £22m project can be said to have been successful even in its own terms."

From this, "the Clarkson perspective", anyone cycling is (a) a loser and (b) in their way. While the conservative party are a mostly irrelevant minority in Bristol -where the power has mostly been held by Labour, now LibDems (though elections in May might change things, the nightmare scenario is the cons party hold the balance of power.).

For all the criticism the BBC points at the council, the Bristol council leadership and the traffic team has embraced cycling. You don't see that in S Gloucs. They will be with Geoff Gollop: they want the money, but don't want it to take any space from roads, because commuting is what cars are for.

There's discussion about "what next", and proposals for more funding. We in the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire don't believe that any funding should go to the S Gloucs team unless there are fundamental changes not just in their engineering team, but in the council themselves. They will never embrace Dutch Infrastructure when they view cycling as an odd hobby for outcasts.

If you think Bristol City cycling is a failure, then you haven't tried to go round S Gloucs. And here is the joke: They have the space. This isn't the inner city, with its windy hills, residents parking on the pavements because there's no room for anything else. No, this is the quiet suburbs where you park your cars on the pavements because you can, where mediocre cycle paths are designed to keep them out of sight and out of mind. Yet these lanes aren't designed to cope with a doubling in the numbers of people using them, as they couldn't even begin to cope.


The People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire will change this. All who stand in our way shall be defeated. They shall fear our very name!