This morning I relayed a message from freespeedlondon twitter account on my own timeline, on this blog and on a road.cc forum post. Richard Nye, editor at Sheen Gate for the Richmond Magazine wrote a truly appalling column in the September edition, but I wasn’t quite expecting to see the acerb comments and vilification of my forum post being made.

Let’s be very clear here: I’m not one to claim the man to resign, be sacked or web-lynched, and I have not. Some comments on this story have, and honestly, I disagree. But this information has to be known. To do so, and in the event that the issue gets pulled out or edited of their website, I have, like freespeed and the Richmond Cycling Campaign, saved it so it can still be accessed later on.

We’re pretty much all road users at some point: cyclists, motorists, pedestrians etc… or any combination of those. I’ll happily agree that on both sides there are a minority who don’t abide by the rules, don’t know them or simply don’t care, but by no means they are majority.

The kind of comments made by Richard Nye are just not acceptable. No matter how you want to read the context of the editorial, you cannot retract the words (exactly as they have been printed) “as a daily driver on busy roads, I tend towards the temperate view that the only good cyclist is a dead one”. In or out of context, I cannot see how his response on twitter later on can have any value, claiming to be “misunderstood”. The words are there, he has written them. I’m a daily cyclist, and I try as much as I can to abide by the rules. I’m not perfect either, but I’d like to be safe. And if you don’t even bat an eyelid at this kind of comment (even when made in the editorial of a 40000 copies publication), my guess is that your probably not in the category of road users who would like to share the road peacefully.

road.cc user tony_farelly has rightly pointed out the other distressing cycling news this week, but I also need to tell him the one he didn’t mention: The death of a 79 year old in Walton on Thames, neighbouring borough to Richmond, yesterday 5th September (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-19491400). Maybe that’s something worth spend a bit of time and bile on? I doubt anyone would joke about that.

Maybe, only maybe, the column intended to be humorous, but you’ve got to weigh your words for your audience, and this one wasn’t funny at all. In the most cycle friendly borough in London, with the best place to leisure cycle and train in the capital with Richmond Park in its centre, I think it’s fair enough to publicise it. It is after all our own right of free press too.

I read something quite alarming yesterday in the editor’s column of the September edition of the Richmond and Barnes magazine. Richard Nye (@TheRichmondMag on twitter, The Richmond Magazine / Sheen Gate on facebook) seems to think cyclists are a nuisance, and they should be dead.

Quoted straight from the editorial section of te September issue of the Richmond Magazine:

[…] as a daily driver on busy roads, I tend towards the temperate view that the only good cyclist is a dead one […]

The rest of the editorial is also worth a read. Appalling views.

Richmond Magazine September 2012 Editorial

The full editorial is available on page 11 of the swanky animated online edition, but if it gets magically removed for whatever reason, here’s a copy of page 11, and of the full September edition.

If you’re a business who’s advertised in this magazine, and especially if you’re a sports related one (Virgin Active, or Moore’s Cycles are in there), I urge you to consider removing your ads from a magazine who’s editor clearly thinks your clients should be dead…

Nothing more to add.

Thanks @freespeedlondon for the initial tip off.

Yup! That’s right, I’ve been found guilty of “cycling on the footway”…

Ok oficer, you got me. Jikes! I’m guilty as charged. yes, I was cycling on the small part at the top, south side, of the Teddigton lock footbridge at 7:20pm with absolutely no one in sight, and ready, like every day, to jump of my bike and walk. (I always walk when there are people coming)

Last Sunday was the Hillingdon triathlon. A short race, not a sprint, but not an Olympic either, and in a strange swim - run - bike format. I was going to go flat out, just to push the legs, the lungs, the heart, and the machine, and it all worked out well until 2K from the end.