"wafflycat" <w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com> wrote in message
news:
[email protected]...
> The CTC has made an unwise move, I think.
>
> According to the copy of Cycle which arrived this morning, Jon Snow is the
> new CTC president, having been invited to take the role once Phil Liggett
> steps down.
>
> This will be Jon Snow, the newsreader, who back in February on 'Richard &
> Judy' (13th February 2006) admitted he tells people not to take up cycling
> as "it's too dangerous out there" and that cyclists should be kept
> separate from traffic on separate facilities, so promoting the erroneous
> view that cycling is inherently dangerous. How long is it going to take
> before this comes back and bites the CTC in its organisational backside
> when the media picks up on how the CTC has a president who thinks cyclists
> should be kept off the roads, yet at the same time supporting Daniel
> Cadden, a CTC member who was fined for cycling on the road. Mixed messages
> from the CTC, anyone?
>
> I feel like handing in my CTC membership in disgust.
>
> Cheers, helen s
I'm not impressed either! The following is a letter to "Cycle" the CTC mag,
which I've just emailed to the editor.
"Dear sir,
I read with some disappointment of the accession of Jon Snow to the position
of President of my club. Not because he is a journalist, and only
politicians are held in less regard than them, but because I heard an
interview with Mr Snow, where he claimed that a cycle helmet had saved his
life, and that anyone sensible wore such a device. By implication, Mr Snow
considers that anyone not wearing a cycle helmet is an idiot.
I find it hard to accept that someone, supposedly professionally
questioning, is unhesitating in their acceptance that cycle helmets work. I
used to believe that helmets must work, but changed my mind after reading
the evidence, and I find Mr Snow's assertions to be as credible as the pot
of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The evidence is clear, compelling and undisputed: cycle helmets don't work.
Nowhere that has introduced helmet compulsion has shown any reduction in
risk to cyclists, and some show an increase in risk. None of the evidence
showing the lack of effect of helmets has been challenged, but most, if not
all, of the evidence supposedly demonstrating their effectiveness has been
shown to be biased and unreliable.
The CTC's position on cycle helmets has been clearly stated many times, that
it is a matter of individual choice, which should be made on the best
available evidence. Mr Snow, from his public pronouncements, appears not to
support this view.
Neither, Mr Editor, would you appear to. The matter of helmets and their
disproportionate numbers in pictures in "Cycle" have been commented on
several times, and you have made some rather feeble excuses for their
preponderance. You published a learned article about what helmets were
supposed to do, but I have waited in vain for an article explaining that, in
the real world, they don't do it.
Helmet wearing in the general population of cyclists is somewhere between 20
and 25%. The latest edition of "Cycle" has almost exactly the opposite
proportion, with the helmeted cyclist pictures being generally larger and in
more prominent positions than the un-helmeted. Previous editions under your
editorship have shown the same gross, unjustifiable and unrealistic
imbalance. As a national councilor, I voted for taking the magazine from
in-house production to the outsourced production it now is. Whilst this has
been successful in many ways, if I had known then that it would become
unrepresentative and helmet-obsessed, I would not have voted for the change.
All of which leaves me in a dilemma: do I really want to belong to a club
with a President who thinks that the majority of the members are idiots, and
which has a magazine editor who opposes the majority view of that club?
Yours sincerely
Richard Burton"
