Daily Mail hysterical backlash quelled as tree 'cut down' to make way for cycle lane successfully moved to new location; Zwift Everesting; Santa Claus is cycling to town! Dan Walker spots a famous festive face using a bike lane + more on the live blog

There should be a law that all retractions must be published at the same level of visibility as the original story. i.e. If you lie on the front page headline, you have to retract on the front page headline, if you post a fake story on your website that stays on the main page for 3 days, you have to have a retraction on the main page for 3 days. It would make editors think twice before publishing something which wasn't properly verified!

Patrick9-32 wrote:

 It would make editors think twice before publishing something which wasn't properly verified!

Depressingly, I don't think it would.

Patrick9-32 wrote:

There should be a law that all retractions must be published at the same level of visibility as the original story. i.e. If you lie on the front page headline, you have to retract on the front page headline...

Good luck with getting that law through when the lawmakers do the same thing. The government lies to the house of commons live on TV, then goes back and 'corrects the record' in Hansard and calls it job done. 

The old Yes Minister sketch of making the minutes of the meeting reflect what should have been said in the meeting is now the official procedure!

Journalists seem to think that there job is to inform the public. In reality their job is basically the same as everyone else's, it is to make money for someone else. They do this by telling a story that may or may not be linked to reality that people pay to read. When we were children we bought comics for entertainment, as adults we buy newspapers.

Promote that judge!

I wonder what the rumour was that was spread about the victim to make the killer think he was justified enough in his actions to publicly laugh about it. 

"Without slowing in any way, he drove straight through the deceased, who was still sitting astride his bicycle. The massive impact propelled Reece onto the bonnet and the windscreen of the car, and then into the road."

Boydell drove away at speed and made no attempt to stop or give any assistance. He later accepted that he intended to cause harm.

Boydell had previous convictions for aggravated vehicle taking, threatening behaviour, assault and possessing drugs.

Mitigating, Peter Moulson KC, said that Boydell did not intend to kill Mr Braithwaite

The laughing emoji was posted when Boydell did not know the extent of the injuries but it was an "isolated" incident of its type and he bitterly regretted it. He had written a letter of apology.

Judge Thackray said that he was satisfied that Boydell did not intend to kill Mr Braithwaite.....

No, the judge shouldn't be promoted, and although I'm generally against long prison sentences, I can't quibble with that one.

No, you've got that the wrong way round, I won't link to a Daily Mail article but you can see from road.cc's  article: https://road.cc/content/news/will-norman-hits-back-mp-duped-mail-bike-la... that Aiken shared the DM article and made an attack on Khan with it, the original lie came from the Mail and the story didn't mention Aiken at all.

Ok so assault someone from a vehicle and it's assault; assault someone with a vehicle and it's a 'traffic accident?'

We know a song about that!

Just wait until the mail hears how many trees have to be cut down for any road junction "improvements" let alone any new roads.

Ah - but they have to be cut down.  It's the two which need addressing for footway / cycle path (out of say the 5 which are left...) which it's then "insane" to move to make space "for some MAMILs' hobby".

Interesting to see how the other half live.  Much of what happens in NL doesn't seem particularly "green" to me (building on stuff is a feature...) but they're now trying to narrow / remove some roads and partly replace with green space [1] [2] [3].

I'm shocked that they haven't lost the plot in rage about the number of trees cut down for the Wisley junction 'improvements' in Surrey.

Don't worry, Susan hall will fix it as long as she doesn't lose it ( I mean as long as it's not stolen).

It's great to see more people cycling but I'm not sure why they need their own network. Why not just cycle with others, irrespective of skin colour?

MichaelWinnerRIP wrote:

It's great to see more people cycling but I'm not sure why they need their own network. Why not just cycle with others, irrespective of skin colour?

Possibly because they want to cycle with their friends and neighbours and they don't want the police continually stopping them for made up reasons.

Ethnic minorities tend to be under-represented amongst cyclists and so there should be extra effort spent to encourage them to cycle.

Exactly. Road riding is a white male dominated sport so the BCN are an advocacy group to try and change that. There are a number of barriers (and a lack of role models) that prevent ethnic minorities from choosing road cycling and the BCN are a great way to break some of those barriers down. Their founder was regularly stopped on solo rides by police because they didn't think his bike (which was I believe an S-Works model, possibly a Tarmac SL3 which was not that old at the time) was actually his. As top of the range bikes have gotten comparitively more expensive than their budget counterparts in recent years, it's possible such a type of incident could get worse.

There's no denying, it is irksome to think that a POC are all too often randomly stopped for such a reason based on their ethnicity, and there is the concern that the BCN club jersey is the reason that they might not get stopped.

The Black Cyclists Network is not aimed at me and I have no problem with it existing despite that fact, because its existence is not detrimental to anyone else.

Matthew Acton-Varian wrote:

Their founder was regularly stopped on solo rides by police because they didn't think his bike (which was I believe an S-Works model, possibly a Tarmac SL3 which was not that old at the time) was actually his.

He (Mani Arthur) was also infamously stopped and searched by a pig's bladder on a stick in uniform officer who decided, after Mani refused to put himself in danger by retreating behind a stop line to put himself alongside an HGV, that he smelled of marijuana. Mani was in full cycle race kit and was made to remove his helmet and shoes to prove he had nothing on him... https://road.cc/content/news/268777-metropolitan-police-officer-does-sto...

Matthew Acton-Varian wrote:

The Black Cyclists Network is not aimed at me and I have no problem with it existing despite that fact, because its existence is not detrimental to anyone else.

It's not aimed at me either but they're very welcoming, a black friend gifted me one of their jerseys a couple of years ago (which is a fabulously cool design) but I was a bit uneasy so I got in touch and asked what they felt about a white guy wearing it - "We welcome everyone, the more supporters the better, happy for you to wear our colours" was their attitude.

brooksby wrote:

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/mum-tells-parents-buy-...

Mum tells parents to buy kids a helmet for Christmas after bike crash leaves son in coma

Quote:

A mum has urged parents to get their kids a helmet with a bike this Christmas after her five-year-old boy spent nine days in a coma after a horror crash. Nikki Barnes, 28, said her son Marli Barnes suffered two skull fractures and a broken shoulder in the terrifying incident, which left him fighting for his life in hospital.

The lad had been playing yards from his home in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, when he jumped on a friend’s “rust bucket” bike and rode down a steep hill. But the bicycle had no brakes and he then went steaming into a 4ft high garden wall at the bottom, before being flung head-first into the side of a house.

I (really) don't want to start the usual war, but "Buy your kid a helmet" probably isn't the lesson that I would take away from this incident…

Yeah, I'd be more inclined to send a message to maintain kids' bikes and ensure that they have brakes on them. I suppose it takes a bit more care and attention for parents to examine the bike rather than just buying a bit of plastic/polystyrene, but it could be a useful lesson to show kids how to maintain a safe bike.