Why does the Guardian Hate Cycling?

Guardian columnists Linda Grant, Michele Hanson and Dave Hill take a stab at road safety

So the mythology goes: The Guardian is a beacon of lefty hope shining from a more or less fascist UK press without which the nation would slide to a blackhole of interment camps and Murdoch hegemony. Why is it then on the issue of cycling editorial policy appears indistinguishable from some right-wing tabloid like the Daily Mail? In general, media attacks on cycling are fashionable especially from overtly conservative sources which correlates with a political will keen on transitioning to private electric vehicles and saving an industry in decline. One might expect a Guardian, liberal with lattes, vegan shoes and carbon footprints to mount a defence but not so, instead they have taken seat with the prosecution.

The US motoring industry from the 1920's onwards did indeed pay publishers and police to demonise victims of road violence and are responsible for a legal system largely tuned towards driver impunity. They were so successful jay-walking which can be translated as “hobo-walking” or “country-bumpkin walking” became codified in law. First they came for the pedestrian and now does the same economic interest have cycling against the wall? Australia seems lost and with the help of a number of Guardian writers, Britain has similar trajectory.

In public conversation two months ago with war propagandist David Aaronovitch, resident Guardian opinionist Linda Grant declared how she is “terrified of them” (or maybe us depending where you sit). Using the language of racism and against a minority suffering extreme violence was always going to provoke reaction. The community politely clapped back with various statistics to correct her perversion of reality, which means now she’s formalised her defence for the neglected pedestrian Grant cannot plead ignorance on the subject of road safety.

As is typical with media hit-pieces of any sort, the author has constructed an article around a personal anecdote describing a scenario where stepping out into the road from between cars nearly caused a collision with someone cycling who had priority. Without contact Grant stumbles and nothing seems outside the ordinary because government data suggests pedestrians cause two-thirds of such collisions. She admits to the reader she suffers “terrible depth perception” — describing something like dyspraxia, and this is not the first time her pride has been injured. In a book assuaging Israeli genocide Grant described how Jerusalem “sat on [her] like a lead helmet”…

“…if I didn’t watch my step, I’d fall down a hole any minute into the fourth century BC, and however much I shouted, no one would come and rescue me from that horrible crevasse.”

It would make sense then for a vulnerable road user — especially a self-described walking calamity — to applaud all perceived negligence on two wheels because the alternative is being mown down by the same person with four. One could have sympathy with an apparent victim of circumstance struggling with a hostile environment, however, all is lost as she misdirects animosity mounting an attack worthy of any tabloid:

There is a new frightening dimension: the cyclist, the most morally pure of road users, the ethical standard-bearer for healthy living, a challenge to climate change, and the ones who are starting to completely terrify me for their unpredictability and aggression.

Firstly cycling predates the car, has been popular in London for some time so is nothing new, and now the language of racism has become a language of terrorism. In a book review from 2006, The Age complained about Grant’s style of journalism stating there’s “nothing particularly scientific about the way she [goes] about gathering her impressions” and little seems to have changed. Instead of sharing robust research, analysis or insight she favours polluting the minds of her readers with petty hackneyed grievances. As a creative writer she should be ashamed at such unimaginative cliche and as she’s well trained in manipulating reader perception it’s hard to understate agency. I don’t believe there are any mistakes here. Grant employs various rhetorical tricks including a clever sleight of pen where ‘I suffer this, I suffer that’ transitions to the royal ‘we’— “we pedestrians are their most vulnerable”, “we don’t exist”. She condemns “the cyclist” for lack of bells, lack of signalling, being a “bloody menace on the roads” (rather than a bloody victim), and even warps further by likening the “Lycra-clad cult” to paedophiles but cleverly only indirectly.

Any sympathy one may have had has definitely been run-over at this point. This is not an article raising awareness of the victimised pedestrian, real threats are quickly skipped to even blame the group she purports to defend:

Not that pedestrians are without our daily transgressions. Walking diagonally across intersections, stepping out into traffic, wandering around with headphones on so we can’t hear cars coming: all of these are hazards to other road users.

Other than a brief link to the danger posed by heavy goods vehicles, the motorist who’s the main existential threat to all road users goes unnamed. An uncontentious but naive response would be to conclude Grant is a writer with an axe to grind. However, no article gets published without various levels of editorial approval, input and direction.

Accompanying her prose was a picture of a dozen law abiding riders staring at a red light as some suit dashes across the road. Instead of an honest description someone chose to strain artistic license beyond breaking point: “Running the gauntlet …a pedestrian-cyclist stand-off in London”. Grant has a policy of ignoring difficult questions preferring to pathologise her critics as trolls, but on this issue she gave the game away. She claims to have “not been consulted on the photo” which confirms suspicions that the Guardian has a problem with cycling not just at a columnist level but in editorial.

As Grant has refused to answer basic criticism of her work one can only speculate how these stories get published. It is unknown whether the author pitches the idea to the editor or whether the editor has a writer target cycling, but regardless, both scenarios require that any article must conform to Guardian policy in terms content, tone and subject. It may even be the case that some third-party commissions zero-evidence journalism providing the mission brief, photo and caption. All they need is some willing author to deny reality and provide the angry personal anecdote.

Olga was cycling along with a chum last week, two abreast, when the driver of a passing car called out, “You shouldn’t ride like that. It’s dangerous. “Fuck off!” bellowed Olga, as usual. But this time she’d made a big mistake. The motorist was a policewoman. Olga had to stop and be told off by two officers who looked very young indeed, which she found galling, but didn’t dare be rude, and for once had to grovel and apologise. Good. Olga deserved a drubbing. I am sick of kamikaze cyclists.

A “drubbing”, a beating. A beating or thrashing, as with a stick, cudgel or blunt instrument. They exist, happen regularly, and weapon of choice generally has the shape of a car.

Michele Hanson is another author much like Grant: a resident Guardian columnist and purveyor of fact-free anecdotes that conform to editorial policy. Quite simply this piece exists to legitimise the deaths of those who cycle and couldn’t be more blatant. In a crass display of victim blaming Hanson insists people who cycle are suicidal, even straining a reader’s patience for hyperbole. Such creative writing wouldn’t even pass the scrutiny of an A-Level professor without demerit yet appears in one of the UK’s most acclaimed broadsheets (however undeserving such praise is).

Olivia, Rosemary, the dog and I have nearly been sliced through as we stepped out of our front doors in the gloom, by cyclists in dark clothes on dark bikes, with no lights, who can’t be bothered to ring a bell. I am in a cold sweat on every drive, with them winging up in my blind spot, doing wheelies or hands-free swirls, coming at me from all sides.

Like Grant, Hanson echoes the language of racism and war completely inverting reality. The victims are an anonymous dark, existential threat terrifying the poor motorist who only has a 4000lb blunt weapon to carry into battle and a roll cage for protection. However comic and self-parodying this first appears, there are clear social effects that echo outside this or any article. A false reality repeated often enough will inevitably be carried into court by judge and jury as negative prejudices. This is legalised, industrialised and externalised perjury.

Previously we saw the editor working in an agenda and the same formula is seen here. Fellow Guardian journalist Peter Walker — similarly disinclined to engage with difficult questions — will continually pretend there’s no evidence of coordination, instead he may scratch his head as he feigns dismay at a clearly hostile press. He’s stupid enough to provide zero analysis or perhaps smart enough not to challenge his peers or superiors. Again, some editor or third party wanted to reinforce Hanson’s fantasy world with a staged visual and melodramatic caption. (The image was produced in the 90's and is available under license from Getty for 350£ to 1500£ depending on use.) If this is all clickbait then why would you provoke a minority or expend so much effort? Why is it journalists don’t have a capacity to see real danger on Britain’s roads like a trend of Audi drivers breaking and entering?

In fact the Guardian had the gall to run Grant’s hit-piece a day after a rich white man (pictured above) drove his Audi saloon through the window of a coffee shop killing one person and seriously injuring five. No one has yet thought to fill a single column inch bemoaning a new breed of “killer driver” keen on home invasions. However, social scientists have long studied how perceptions of higher social status predicts increased unethical behaviour so no anecdotes are necessary: people who buy vanity cars are prone to lawlessness and aggression which makes the next author look something of a fool.

Guardian readers are only slightly more sophisticated than their Daily Mail counterparts — at least that would be the opinion of staff. A strange dual-reality exists where both houses claim superiority over the other. Smug broadsheet trumps tabloid and common sense trumps wet liberalism. If one can create silos based on identity politics where robust principles are left occluded or ignored, multiple groups can be sold the same ideology. Crass appeals to patriotism might work on one but for the other marketeers have to find a humanitarian wedge. Enter Dave Hill.

For some time this seasoned writer with Guardian tenure has been engaged in a media offensive. In a slight twist from the previous writers, a wildly hostile social media presence has seen more reservedness when formalised. To Hill cycling exists as “a middle class cult that will not tolerate anything short of adulation”. He claims there are thousands that bemoan “a smug, self-righteous pain” and that many regard cycling as having “a clannish and alienating social type”. As early as 2013 Hill declared himself strongly against those “asshole cyclists” yet now has the temerity to claim the community has an image problem and “activists should think about why”. Yes, perhaps think why but don’t be persuaded by Hill’s strained academic posturing when the reality is an opinionist as partisan as any neo-con.

May 31st, 2015

In May 2015, Hill used the comments of Baroness Jo Valentine, chief executive of London First, to spread the idea that protected space for cycling is unwanted, unwarranted and more dangerous than mixing with tipper trucks. To introduce London First: they are a privately funded for-profit non-profit promising to make London “the best city in the world in which to do business” as they serve client demands in energy, finance, transport and construction. The operation is overseen by chairman John Allan (CBE) former executive of Royal Mail, Deutsche Post DHL, HSBC, National Grid and non-executive director of the Home Office Supervisory Board. Unsurprisingly, Valentine is a strong supporter of road pricing and opposes protected space for vulnerable road users describing such an experience as being “herded liked cattle”. Hill was on hand managing the interview but apparently had no taste for the obvious question:

If the desired goal is road pricing or in other words, pay-as-you-go transport, would building infrastructure enabling freedom of movement deny profit from the businesses Valentine represents? Businesses like road builders Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska, and bus company First Group. That might explain how they arrived at ‘stupid’ company policy.

September 7th, 2015

Through Autumn, Hill changes gears:

Whitechapel High Street Cycle Superhighway Bus Stop Bypass is a Mess — One of the more conspicuous of Boris Johnson’s cycling infrastructure initiatives is doing little for the East End high street it has carved up

Cycling campaigners have successfully shifted London’s street management policies away from measures that simultaneously assist all “sustainable modes” and foster truly living streets towards favouring a certain sort of London cyclist at the expense of everyone else.

With a crass sycophancy typical of a London press engineered to present bootlicking as telling truth to power, Hill uncritically delivers the talking points of Hackney councillor Vincent Stops to his broadsheet audience despite having logical holes wide enough to accommodate a double-decker. It’s perhaps written in a way that could appeal to a naive Labour voter, seemingly an attack on the Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson. Hill no doubt seeks to leverage possible animosity and transfer that emotion on to his actual target: freedom of movement. Stops is a curious fellow, he markets his constituency as being extremely encouraging to cycling yet also has a girlfriend-partner who has infiltrated a local cycling campaign group. Rita Krishna, a former Labour councillor now sits as an executive level saboteur promoting buses. Strange bed fellows all round. Stops is also policy adviser for London Travelwatch, a government organisation which claims to represent the interests of consumers and to get back to where we started, board-member Richard Dilks is also transport programme director for London First. What should be a critical organisation holding power to account suffers a blatant conflict of interest — the liberal fox is very keen on guarding the hen house.

It’s plausible then, that Hill positions cycling as a socially regressive barrier to democratic values, is just an expression of the network of business interests that trickle down from aristocracy. Anyone reading the Guardian might believe a giant cycle lobby has infiltrated all levels of government rather than a set of motoring concerns.

October 12th, 2015

It took a month but a sophisticated false-narrative hooked into the language of social justice has emerged. Hill asks the question: why are London cyclists so white, male and middle class? Compared to his other hit-pieces this was the first to see significant audience receiving four-thousand shares (as measured by the Guardian) and half as many comments. This is roughly equal to the popularity of major stories reaching the front page so the story likely saw heavy promotion. With a wide enough lens one can see an interesting contradiction here because the conservative media have at the same time been pushing in the opposite direction spreading the idea of cycling as an underclass rather than an elite — “work harder, get a car”. So who to believe? Well, neither. Both attempt to shepherd two demographics toward the same end: you have the impoverished hating cycling by exploiting latent animosity for the rich, and the rich or aspiring rich hating cycling by exploiting a latent snobbery.

Everything in London has been engineered as a playground for rich white men, from the 80% male unelected house of Lords to the rolling gentlemen’s clubs chauffeuring patriarchs like Allan Sugar or Nigel Lawson. Is it a surprise that cycling suffers a similar gender disparity? White males supported by greater access to sport during youth and higher tolerance of risk are commuting to well paid jobs designed just for them in places like Westminster. It is precisely because London authorities only build for men that they get men, and it is protected cycling infrastructure that levels the playing field. Build a unisex toilet just with urinals, you’d still get men pissing up the outside wall but women would sensibly keep themselves and their children away. It is therefore perverse for two white male bourgeois clerks — Hill and Stops—to actively deny extending freedom of movement to more demographics. Instead they want money spent “say…”, Hill muses, “…on the night bus service”. This being advantageous to First Group or oil traders is never mentioned.

Selective outrage is one way of sifting out posers: nearly half of UK national newspaper columnists graduated from Oxford or Cambridge. At the executive level gender disparity is even worse as viscounts, oligarchs, and media barons like Murdoch dominate — even the Guardian is overseen by an all white, two-third male board of trustees. To my knowledge in the many decades of Hill’s career this affront to feminism and social mobility hasn’t yet been deserving of comment. Someone with principles might’ve resigned.

September 7th, 2015

Waltham Forest ‘mini-Holland’ row: politics, protests and house prices— Boris Johnson’s east London suburban cycling scheme is meeting strong opposition, though estate agents seem very keen on it

With the democratic support of residents an insignificant one hundred metre road was closed to motor vehicles, yet Hill chose to boost the false fears of reactionaries. These seemed mostly a militant group of hysterical London cab drivers demanding their rat-run be reinstated but one couldn’t help but get the impression that they fronted for vested interests that wanted to remain low key.

Out of nowhere and without evidence Hill continues his perversion of social justice and cycling is now menaced as a weapon of gentrification — after all only “cafe-dwellers, loft-converters, gentrifiers [are] the sort of people who ride bicycles”. (Again, no rage against the limousine.) It is true to say that elsewhere in the world providing for cycling has correlated with higher property prices but this makes makes sense: the suburban bourgeois have enjoyed largely traffic free residential zones for some time whilst demanding right of commute through neighbourhoods occupied by those further down the social ladder. No one wants to live next to an urban motorway — quelle surprise — and it was at such a location Hill seemed to draw his three month campaign to a close.

September 28th, 2015

With video camera in hand Hill stood counting people using a brand new stretch of cycle infrastructure to contrive a fifth hit-piece and the idea that such provision is an under-used waste of money. Being brand new this rare example of ‘investigative’ journalism seems a little premature and worryingly obsessive. It could be the case that Hill has been exploiting his media privilege to push a personal vendetta, one that’s clearly been over indulged by editors. Perhaps though these are the actions of a journalistic sleaze laundering the socio-economic interests of a class he pretends to lobby against with full approval of The Guardian. Why might that be the case?

Those at a lower end of a social hierarchy tasked with details may not be fully aware of the role they play, but traversing higher where bureaucrats have much greater understanding of how pieces interlock then an analysis of useless or useful idiocy is increasingly harder to make. Perhaps before getting to the very top there is a Guardian technology editor whose very modest proposals deserve special mention. To his audience of seventy-thousand followers, Jonathan Haynes has been running the same gag agitating for cycle licensing, number plates, and general police crack down for years. He’s only joking though and people shouldn’t “wilfully misconstrue” any of his hyperbole nor should they be so easily offended.

There were two guys this morning on bikes wolf whistling women walking to work — [obviously they are] not representative of [cycling]…

…but he thought he’d share anyway along with all the other anec-jokes that litter his time-line as he forever whinges about a loutish Lycra lawlessness. Haynes wants bikes crushed and people cycling electronically tagged as if under some permanent out-of-house arrest. He “hates cycling” but none of this is to be taken seriously. Haynes superiors certainly don’t, or don’t care either way… maybe. At any time this man-child could be reigned in on an issue: it might be toning down rhetoric here or focusing certain topics there but much slack is given to run down cycling. As columnist echoes editor, does this editor echo owners?

There are no owners per se, but the next level of Guardian-ship is the GMG Board of Directors which has a familiar gender divide favouring the distinguished gent eight to three over women in all white cast with typical bourgeois interests. There’s a dame, lawyer, financier and banker, but no tinker, tailor, nor candlestick maker. Two stand out: Nick Backhouse is a former Chief Financial Officer of National Car Parks and Brent Hoberman sits on the board of Easycar.com. It was only in 2014 when GMG completed a sale having been a long time shareholder in AutoTrader magazine so links to the motoring industry a certainly deeper than one might think. If Guardian revenue is typical of commercial publishing in general then motoring will be the chief source of banner and native advertising. (I’m not aware of any publicly available data that can confirm or deny — talking to Guardian writers have so for been fruitless.)

The final check on Guardian policy is The Scott Trust which may be a trust in name but limited corporation by nature, law and tax ‘minimizing’ practice. With the middle class already left far behind ultimate editorial policy rests with millionaire bankers, insurers, and financiers. Eton. Oxbridge. Bloomsbury. Warburg. Rothschild. Am I really supposed to believe people with such connections and influence over billionsin assets are going to allow one business to jeopardise another concern? Could any journalist whilst writing for the Guardian campaign against “asshole boy racer Audis hurtling through red lights” to reword Hill’s mission statement? However left leaning one might think Owen Jones is, will there ever be an actual anti-capitalist at the Guardian, and does such an incestuous ecosystem explain his weird habit of supporting every NATO aggression since leaving Oxford for BBC prime-time? “Apart from a few nutters [on the left] we all want Gaddafi taken dead or alive” according to Owen Jones.