Thursday 30 June 2011

Just fancy that! The cycling news the CTC didn’t mention

The CTC website has a regularly updated page of online links to cycling news and stories from the national and local press, entitled ‘News From The World Of Cycling’.

I was glancing at the news for this month when it suddenly struck me what was missing.

The CTC rolling news is filed in chronological order. If you scroll down you’ll see that there were four links listed for 2 June 2011. These were (i) a story from the Independent about Olympic athletes who missed out on tickets, (ii) and (iii) the same story about how most British workers take less than half an hour to get to work, from the Daily Telegraph and Guardian Work blog, and (iv) a letter in the Oxford Times about statistics relating to cyclist-pedestrian collisions.

The next day’s cycling news, 3 June, recycles a classic local authority press release, bringing exciting news from oop north about tempting young people out of their cars: People will be urged to take up options, such as walking and cycling with grants for the introduction of bike parking at factories and offices.

There is no more news linked to until 8 June, when there’s a link to this inspirational revelation: The CTC, the national cyclists' organisation, has named Britain's best-performing pothole-filling council - and the award goes to Cheshire West and Chester Council. CWCC filled all 47 holes that were reported by cyclists via the CTC's www.fillthathole.org.uk website.

What I am leading to is very simple. There were two items relating to cycling in a national newspaper on 3 June which the CTC’s ‘News From The World Of Cycling’ chose not to mention. The first one was this and the second one was this.

Funny, that, wouldn’t you say?