Pedalling Resentment
…local media, ‘balance’ and descent into hatebait
This section of Without Invitation is called The Counter Courier. I started it after trying to respond to the The Courier’s regular criticism of Arbroath’s A Place for Everyone scheme.
My reply made it onto the letters page — but only after all mention of who I was answering was stripped out. That’s how “balance” works in The Courier.
The Courier’s Version of Balance
The car-brain brigade throw grenades, while only Courier-safe cyclists get a platform — the kinds of pieces joking about digging the bike out of the shed, surprised to be pedalling at all. Or offering warm words about active travel — but from behind a windscreen.
Those voices are valid. But when it comes to fighting fire with fire — pointing to inequality, double standards, or the often absurd nature of the shtick — that gets buried. So I set out to answer Finan and friends here instead.
Counting Cyclists, Missing the Point
Take the claim that Dundee “isn’t a cycling city.” Whatever that means, I’d even agree. But not for the reasons they cite. Dundee lacks good infrastructure. One half-decent route does not a cycling city make.
Or the tired refrain about wind and hills. Yes, Dundee is hillier than Amsterdam. But it’s also Scotland’s sunniest city. And we have e-bikes now: they flatten climbs and tame headwinds. Expensive, yes — so are cars and rail tickets. But people won’t buy them until safe routes exist. Which brings us right back to infrastructure — and to attitudes.
And the recent “fact-finding mission”? Counting 14 cyclists in an hour at Grassy Beach. A neglected stretch of Dundee’s best route, part pavement, part car park — an odd place to measure return on investment. Fourteen in an hour there looks like appetite to me. Imagine if that route actually connected directly to Ninewells, the college, the universities — or more places people live and need to go.
And apparently, the fate of Arbroath High Street — on life support for at least a decade — now rests on cyclists, because Burnside Drive was turned into an active-travel corridor. Righto.
From Bias to Smear
I thought I would enjoy responding to arguments like these. But lately The Courier has shifted from predictable bias into something much darker.
Here it is, in black and white:
“Will you go out on a summer Sunday and cycle past a cancer patient, a dementia sufferer, a child who needs taught — smugly assured you need more spent on your hobby than they need to live?”
— Steve Finan, “I’m proud to have a car brain – Dundee’s latest cycle path plan won’t change my mind,” The Courier, September 3, 2025
That isn’t debate. It’s a smear — designed to inflame.
And rhetoric like that doesn’t stay trapped on the opinion page.
A few months ago, riding from St Andrews, I dropped off the shared path onto the A919 to let walkers pass. Seconds later, a van revved past. Passenger leaning out. Middle finger. “Get off the f***ing road.”
A Game Not Worth Playing
The Courier’s broadsides aren’t abstract. Suggesting cyclists don’t care about suffering crosses a line into a style of toxic social-media outrage. And it shapes how people treat neighbours, colleagues, strangers getting home from work — making it harder for communities to make healthier choices.
If that’s where the Courier’s “balance” game is going, it’s not just cyclists who have no reason to play — or to read. It’s anyone who still believes in fair, responsible discussion.
Michael Loudon — Without Invitation
