A letter in Cycling Weekly (August 18) implored us all to write to The Sunday Times Magazine and the Press Complaints Commission concerning an article by columnist Daisy Waugh. She wrote about how she fantasised driving her car into cyclists!
So I did my bit and wrote to her personally.
"Dear Ms Waugh,
Following your piece in The Sunday Times Magazine (July 17) in which you fantasised about jumping into your car to mow cyclists onto the pavement, be advised there are enough dimwits driving about who do this already, as a result of dangerous driving, without the need for further incitement.
Yesterday, Paralympic cyclist, the Beijing double gold medallist Simon Richardson was seriously injured on the A48 in South Wales when he was struck by a white van which did not stop. A 59-year-old man was later arrested.
Richardson suffered multiple fractures of the spine, a broken pelvis and broken breast bone.
Try fantasising about that."
What I should have added, had I realised it at the time, was to inform Waugh, the fantasist, that this was the second time Richardson has been seriously injured by a car. The first time, 10 years ago, was when he was fit and whole. That collision left him permanently disabled with serious leg and back injuries.
It was a miracle he survived and nothing short of remarkable that he should resume cycling and seven years later win gold at the Beijing Paralympics. He was awarded the MBE.
What is it about Waugh and others of her ilk – fellow Times columnists and cyclist haters Matthew Paris and Jeremy Clarkson for instance – which allows them to make such terrible threats against cyclists in a newspaper or magazine?
Their rants are not being read in a novel, a work of fiction, but in newspapers carrying news, views and, we are led to suppose, valid comments on the real world.
That is what makes Waugh’s lines so offensive.
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