So much so quick to unpack, but let’s focus on the word “myth” that Walker quacks. In his retelling, dirty social media seems to have infected the virgin Press.

[Walker’s heart] sank not so much because of an ill-informed article about cycling in the national press — that’s almost to be expected — but for another reason. This was another example of what you might call post-truth journalism, which has leaped the fence from the internet to the mass media. […] As with many similar ideas, it began as the most fringe of activist memes, mainly expounded through social media.

This is many things:

(a very long winded way of saying “these guys are lying arseholes”;)

the implication of journalism as a natural bubbling up of story arcs and information;

a reapplication of the bourgeois myth that the mob cannot be trusted with self governence;

and affirmation of the need for a priestly journalistic class tasked to gate reality.

However, any researcher in the pond worth his breadcrumbs would laugh at his account. The media is a top-down projection of corporate interests, and for another, the Daily Mail already detailed two organisations spreading this “fringe activist meme”. Walker judiciously avoided mention of the London Taxi Driver’s Association (who have relentless attacked cycling to the point of calling it a terrorist threat) and London First, whose agenda is particularly transparent because their members include:

major banks;

various car insurers like Aviva;

bus company First Group PLC ;

; road builders like Skanksa, Kier Group and McAlpine (of pedo-not-pedo infamy if that name is familiar);

along with various hauliers like Asda, Sainsburys, and M&S (who regular kill people with their unsafe vehicles and overworked drivers).

London First partners include oil/auto construction operation NY, the Crown Estates, Canary Wharf, and KPMG. Incidentally up until last year, Guardian’s parent company, The Scott Trust had Jonathon Scott on board, and he was also a director at KPMG Corporate Finance. His younger relative, Russel Scott, now has since succeeded him as the seated family representative.

Apparently none of this matters.

Back to the Guardian, Guardian “writer” Dave Hill, Guardian colleage of Guardian editor, Peter Walker (who runs the Guardian bikeblog) had this to say about the cycling/congestion/pollution “meme”. This was back in July, printed in the Guardian:

[Building cycle lanes] lead to clogged, narrowed and blocked roads with obvious implications, as the same amount of traffic seeks to pass through a reduced amount of space.

Hill would also spread the “new internet meme” of key London road capacity being “reduced by 25%”, which came from Daniel Begg, non-executive director of bus company, First Group PLC, itself represented by London First. Hill would hide this relationship just calling Begg a “transport expert”. So this ugly lurch from social media, appearing in the Guardian and the Daily Mail, is actually a payload driven by people with money to lose should people opt for bike over bus.

Labour London Councillor, Vincent “this cycle infrastructure” Stops and his partner, Rita “shit spy infiltrating cycle campaign groups” Krishna, have also been infected with this “internet meme”. Unsuprisingly they have links with London First, and shamelessly promote the interests of bus companies across social media whilst sabotaging cycling.

Even earlier in May 2015, Guardian “writer”, Dave Hill in the Guardian newspaper, still Guardian Colleague of Guardian editor, Peter Walker, platformed 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. She had this to say on congestion:

We’ve found it very difficult to work out what the real consequences of the cycling superhighway are for congestion. […] We’re now going back to gridlock. I think it’s incumbent on the GLA and TfL to just be sure that they are taking everybody’s concerns properly into account. I’m not clear whether that’s being done.

London First which only represents the interests of its members and partners in the ROAD BUILDING INDUSTRY, wants ROAD BUILDING, ROAD PRIVATISATION and UBIQUITOUS ROAD TOLLS as the solution to congestion. Various sorts including Conservative Think Tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, call this “road pricing”.

I’ll let Dave Hill describe Valentine’s description of a future London dystopia:

[She] is radical on road space management in a way no mayoral contender for 2016 is likely to dare to be, except perhaps whoever runs for the Greens. “You need pan-London road pricing,” she says. “Probably not right out to the M25, but to the north and south circular. The population’s growing, the roads are never going to keep up with the natural growth in demand, so you’ve got to ration it in some way. I would do more sophisticated road pricing than we have at present more widely. You’ll get a version of it with the new river crossings, if those are ever built.” Again, she thinks the sums would soon add up: “If you relieve congestion in London, that produces economic benefits and the Treasury benefits too.” What about putting roads in underground tunnels, as Johnson has proposed? “It wouldn’t solve everything, but perhaps we could make it happen in a few places. The Hammersmith flyover becoming a flyunder would just be a way of sorting out that flyover. I’d like an intelligent approach.”

One could of course ration the size and speed of vehicle, but alas, building cycle lanes that provide freedom of movement destroys the profitability of road pricing schemes, but these lobby groups cannot give this as their motive, and instead hide behind some fake humanitarian cause: CYCLE LANES CAUSE AIR POLLUTION STOP BUILDING THEM.

Despite this and these, Peter Walker quacked the lamest of conspiracies, to unexplain away the Daily Mail hystericies. He reduced an editor pushing the story to national front-page news, misinformation from two lobbying groups, junk science, dodgy lobbyists, a complex of over-lapping business interest, and PR interference, down to what he calls “a more plausible explanation”:

A freelance feature writer spinning an extremely tenuous story, which began as a conclusion borrowed from the fringes of the internet, with the evidence then sought out, not very successfully.

Just like the Mail tables story without evidence, so does Walker. He didn’t even bother to ask the “freelance writer” about his motivation, yarning instead more myth. Walker neither accounts for why the Mail would be receptive to anti-cycling editorials, how anyone became “ill-informed”, nor why obvious truth didn’t matter.

The Daily Mail is on the wrong side of history [Walker continues]. Its former sister paper, London’s Evening Standard, used to be similarly sceptical but is now far more balanced. Such is often the way with ideas which originate on the internet. A cheap myth can be much more convenient for people to absorb than a more difficult argument, one backed up by actual facts.

How dare Walker call paid-for propaganda scepticism? While there is truth in how The Standard presents itself, difference is just one of tone. They still re-brand the same payloads just gift-wrapped (as it’s thought) to a ‘more sophisticated’ audience, but anyone could think Walker is running reputation management for companies discredited.

I can feel for an answer of why he presented argument defanged, didn’t follow a single lead, and asked zero questions. The Guardian media hits on cycling unravel a similar business interest, and that’s statistically proven. To out the Daily Mail would out himself because his company relies on the same PR eco-system for content, similar advertising streams, similar product placement (especially cars), and a similar governing board that blurs into aristocracy. Favoured is this stage-managed to-and-fro where one publishes objectionables and the other gums rebuttal as either cranky old-man racist or toothless liberal wh-imp.