Letter to the Prime Minister. (Circa 1999)

Below is a Letter, and an unveiled Tribute to our Hundreds of undiscovered, British Yellow Jersey and Rainbow jersey Wearers and Winners, thanks in full to a time immemorial biased and blinkered British media.  

Dear Prime Minister,

 

I’m sure that you are a very busy man, so I would like to help in any way that I can.

On hearing that there are further plans to expand and increase roads and their systems, - an action that only seems to fuel car use - I would like to suggest that the real root of the problem is a cultural one, and lies within today’s very powerful, and seemingly unrestrained, yet selectively blinkered media. For instance, reduce car advertisements and I’m sure it will follow that you will reduce car usage. Replace with similar, professionally choreographed cycle advertisements, and the message coming across would be, it is cool to ride a bike too! Not only would it help another British industry, it would also help our people in a much more beneficial way: a healthier nation, ‘with the option of driving!’ on less congested and polluted roads, in the long term; and this only serves to name but a few advantages for our society, should this new tack be taken.

Over many years, television, radio, cinema, magazines, billboards and the newspapers have glamorised the car and of course made it something more than fashionable - turning it into a pitiful and unjustified necessity. At thirty-seven years of age I cannot recall one t.v. advert for the bike that wasn’t more than an affordable flash. For a long time, the psychology of the public in this country towards cycling has only been influenced by some wobbly clown of an actor in the saddle. Lets have world-class bike riders promoting the bicycle, film stars, football players, music’s rappers. James Bond shouldn’t be seen without his bike, (a British one! of course.) because you don’t become as fit as him by just driving a car! Sounds far fetched but that is what is sorely needed, a sea change in how people perceive things. The public admire famous figures and will always follow in their fashionable ways.

Having started cycling with my mother and father from a very young age, over the next thirty years I have seen the sad decline of cycling in general on the public roads, especially in the last ten years! In direct contrast to an increase of motorized traffic. The saddest loss, in my opinion, has been the family club runs on Sundays. Where, thirty or so Mums and Dads, with their children, would meet from in and around Sheffield, and cycle into Derbyshire, - just one of a dozen cycling clubs in our area, and virtually every city in the United Kingdom used to have a good number of these clubs! - People wouldn’t dream of doing that today! because it is too dangerous! Instead, almost everyone goes in their cars, after driving to shop at Meadowhall they then drive out and fill Derbyshire in their droves, and there the vicious circle is complete. How sorry I feel for their children, our children! that have missed out and will be missing out on all that freedom, fresh air, fitness and fun! Those citizens who want to ride their bikes dare not! This being out of hand is an under statement. When the first cars were invented a man with a red flag had to run 50 yards in front to warn pedestrians, horse riders and cyclists alike of its arrival. The car now has pushed all such courtesies aside and forgotten its place behind these friendlier forerunners; motorists have taken these liberties for granted en mass over a relatively short period of time, and in doing so, they have almost scared off the roads all forms of alternative transport; a transport of which has more moral right and an even greater virtue to be on the roads! To get their own way, and be on it, car drivers are even starting to encroach onto the public footpaths; the car ads never show their cars stuck in traffic jams, only driving through car-less Capitols or wafting along unpopulated beaches!
 

Incredible! an obvious blind. You would think to any intelligent race that is supposedly in touch with the real world! Instead, it appears that they have all become trapped into a brainwashed mentality of the medias’ commercial designs; unwilling to admit to themselves that they have had a life style chosen for them! It would be unthinkable then, to see any of these alternative forms of transport as a socially acceptable option. How wrong is all of this? Owning a car myself, I could easily write a book on the benefits of alternatives to the car as a way of living, without feeling hypocritical, just by the use of my own common sense, (and by the use of my legs when ever possible!) not to be led along into believing that there’s only one way to travel, or should I say live!

Prime Minister, I would like you to help this cause. In parliament could you please consider looking at the various medias, and ask them to ‘hype’ the helpful good for a change! This land and its population deserve a better train of thought. Every child that has ever been born, (including you and me,) has eventually kicked a ball, and ridden a bicycle! All future commuters in one way or another, lets not forget this talent as they/we grow older. For example, regarding the sport of cycle racing, we have all tried writing to these media establishments to cover cycle sport and influence more people towards a useful and worthy pastime, and find that these companies are always biased to the ‘popular?’ especially the bbc or biased broadcasting company as I’ve come round to naming them.

The idea of giving incentives to the cycle industry, enabling it to raise its profile via t.v. and in the newspapers etcetera, maybe discussed; government funded ads could lead the way to this eventuality. Added together with the above broadcasting of cycle racing on one or more of the big four channels (not satellite channels, cycling has to be as familiar as coronation street! to capture the public’s attention and imagination.) only this kind of concerted and concentrated effort would be a major help towards decreasing car traffic. It has got to make better sense than the plethora of motorcar programmes, and much better viewing than watching big brother! The kind of effect on society that this mind numbing rubbish breeds is incalculable! And you yourself will go to and from your work much more smoothly within a much more balanced, wholesome and happier society.

There is no ulterior motive of personnel financial gain in the writing of this letter. I own and run a small family business, established now, at the same location in Sheffield, for 55 years, and making a steady living. We could not and would not want to take on any more work, brought on recently by the closure of a number of local cycle shops (selling bicycles that you can trust on the roads) mainly due to the supermarkets (selling bicycles you might trust in the park, if by some freak occurrence they had been assembled correctly!) and Far East imports. No, I truly want to help my country, because I believe the motorcar, at the moment, to be ruining this ‘free Isle’ and it’s people, who sit in it’s daily crush of traffic, stress and pollution. I have never seen such miserable faces, and so many! We have the most expensive cars and houses that can be afforded and are still far from being happy in our gilded cages; and those that don’t yet have such ‘glories’ seem to want to aspire to this! Having been brainwashed by a continuously unbalanced barrage of media hype, an ever-growing number of people have lost touch with their humanity. People, that I feel, to be missing some of the more simple joys of life. Joys that improve the person’s whole well being, something that money and it’s products can never buy or gain, because they are priceless lessons in free values, and do not harm any kind of environment, just the opposite!

If you sit in a room full of cigarette smoke, chances are that you will smell revolting on exiting and probably die of lung cancer some time in the near future. If you sit in a room full of car emissions you will not leave that room under your own steam as you will be dead off the seat! Yet there is a government health warning attached to all forms of cigarette sales. Incredulously I see none for this deadlier pestilent! In fact the exact opposite! So not only are today’s compulsive drivers causing global warming, chaos and misery on the roads, they are now to be joined by the invisible spectre of a slow death! For themselves and no doubt, as gridlock escalates with today’s media led mentality washing over us, everyone else! As hourly bumper-to-bumper cueing, or in effect nose to exhaust pipe, starts to kick in; because at the moment I feel that the consequences for this kind of society are going to be ‘on going’ like any cancerous disease. In the meantime these drivers falling on their own swords are the last of my worries as I see the faces of children waiting innocently for their buses through huge palls of filthy traffic fumes, pedestrians too as I cycle by trying not to breathe! There are cleaner, healthier, less deadlier ways to create revenue for our Country. This serious problem needs addressing and reducing to a safe, practical balance. Water is good for you, but drink too much and it will eventually kill you! The same can be said for our ‘love’ of the car.

As in life, or on the roads, we are all Human Beings! The cyclist, first out of courtesy has ridden in the gutter for long enough! Today in our Country we all have equal human rites; cars and other machines obviously do not! driving a car does not give anyone more rites, neither does riding a bicycle. It should be safe enough to walk on the roads! If this sounds out of the ordinary it is a mark of how immersed many have become in this dogmatic worship of the cars’ own culture, to the highest of false esteems; wars have been fought, for much less than the freedom of one’s own nature! The motorways are the car’s domain, off these are where Human Beings ‘freely’ move and breathe! With cars taking a very careful third place, behind pedestrians, horse riders and or cyclists. Again, if this sounds in any way preposterous, ask yourself why?

Cycle paths only help to enhance the myth that cyclists should not be on the public roads! Unless, that is, they are built to the specification of cycle paths that are to be found in Holland, where they build cycle lanes down the middle of the road, and the car drivers are held to account for any accidents.

Following in my father’s wheel tracks, one of the many ways in which I have helped the sport of cycling (and continue to do so) in this country, is by the encouragement and sponsorship of junior, espoir and senior riders; looking after the sporting interests of these riders over the years has been immensely satisfying, along with road racing myself for the past twenty two years, the last eight as team rider - manager to all of these aforementioned riders that have progressed to the higher, racing team level. This year, myself and one other rider from the team, managed to gain selection to ride in the National Road Race Championships in Wales. Of the 150 riders in the ‘British’ Championships, we were the only two on completely hand-built British bicycles! How poor, and at the same time frustrating do I find this current state of affairs, when not so long ago Britain were the World leaders in innovative cycle frame building and design. For example my father putting weeks of craftsmanship into each hand built cycle frame, - an example that has been handed down to myself - frames that reappear for another re-spray fifty years after they were built! Unlike today’s disposable trash, designed to fail! so that these big companies (and generally from a foreign source to boot) can rip you off at the highest price once more, - in more ways than one - and as soon as possible! Again, this time the cycling media, showing and vouching for glossy foreign imports, (or tat disguised as quality in modern day media sheen!) have in their ignorant way slowly brainwashed our countrymen and women, until there has become hardly any other option in the market place, and our craftsmen have in their turn all but disappeared! Obviously a vast amount of this British money goes abroad which in turn helps other countries’ economies, and so their industries, British money that indirectly and directly funds their sports people! The difference is that these countries televise cycle racing, and in return each country becomes cycling friendly, more people relate to it, bringing more people into this arena. Some will be businessmen interested in sponsoring such a high profile sport; manufacturing enthusiasts would see a relatively new opening for commerce, proud to build for the riders of there own Country, others will be the young, future World Champions! Who inspire nations of other young people, and of course people of all ages to cycle for leisure, race or commute; but the point and fact is that they aren’t behind the wheel of their cars at the same time.

Cut off from all this by our blinkered and down right biased British media, on our island of car, football and soap broadcasts, I would like to finish by quoting something that my father used to say, which still stands as true today, “There’s a World Champion walking around down town right now!” “But he’ll never know it, and we’ll never know him, because he will never put his leg over a bike in anger, just because it will never come into his mind to do so”, (as a means of earning a living). We have always known that the talent is there in our Country! Sport as an industry has only reached its smallest potential in this Country. Each sport is a veritable gold mine! IT JUST NEEDS THE LONG AWAITED HELP OF TERRESTRAIL TELEVISION ET AL, WHICH HELPS TO FORM THE RIGHT SPORTING CULTURE AND ENVIROMENT, NURTURES CONFIDENCE, AND IN TURN, THE GROWTH OF ANY SPORT! The money, prestige and National pride that these people generate for their country is immeasurable, and there would be no need to widen any more roads! As, in a reversal, the car wouldn’t readily come into our people’s minds!

Thank you kindly for your valuable time, yours sincerely,

Nigel James Wilson