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London Bicycle Messenger Association: Radio 4 Documentary part 2

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    Radio 4 have just commissioned a follow up to City Messengers - the documentary that was broadcast in July about cycle couriers in London.

    So...if you are interested in taking part in this I'd be really pleased to hear from you. R4 want to see what impact the current economic situaion is having on cycle couriers, so I'd be particularly keen to hear from anyone who works in and around the City/Canary Wharf. The broadcast date is Friday 30th of January 2009, so I'd like to do most of the interviews before Christmas.

    As before, all contributors are paid for their time.

    Please contact me at:

    katie@fallingtree.co.uk

    or

    07525 164929

    Many thanks,

    Katie
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    City Messengers! Jesus! Don't mention them! That brings back really bad memories!
    I don't remember exactly where they were, though it was somewhere off the bottom of the City Road.
    I worked for them for about two days in the bleak midwinter in about 1988! They somehow had the BP account at what was then Britannic Tower - long since demolished and now replaced by City Point. Pre-Benjy's in "The Hole". Sat freezing my nads off in New Union Street for ages waiting for a job.
    I was a bit naive about cycle-firms then, having only ditched the engine for the first time in 1987 at West One and been spoilt rotten and fed to the tune of £400 p.w. (Stormed out - not for the last time at West One - when they fired a telephonist I was quite fond of.) There were very few genuinely crap motorbike firms back then and it was a bit of an eye-opener to inadvertantly blunder - very briefly - into bar stewards like City Messengers and Mayday to earn £20 per day! I went to OYB then... I wonder what happened to them?
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    Serious point for Bill.
    Perhaps I should e-mail Katie myself.
    Is there not something more than moderately eyebrow-raising about the Bolshevik Bullshitting Collective doing a documentary on London couriers?
    "Watchdog" ought to be looking at some of the things that go on out there... and most of the really bad things that go on out there are best exemplified by one biggish company: CDS.
    Who's the biggest client CDS have?
    Who pays bikes £92 to go from their Wood Lane HQ to Leeds in the snow? Auntie Beeb.
    Who pays £3.10 for a bike from Wood Lane to Soho? Auntie Beeb.
    There is no major account - not PWC, not Goldmans, not E&Y, not even Grey's - that insists on lower rates than the Bolshevik Bullshitting Collective.
    I'm about to e-mail this lady now!
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    CoUNT don't waste this poor ladies time with your hatred. Why don't you jump in the thames instead? I bet it's nice and warm in there, kind of like a bath but bigger, more leg room.
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    I don't "do" hatred, Speedo. Just cold-blooded Pagan practicality. It's not my bag. I ain't a fucking monotheist!
    I don't "do" baths either. I'm fond of showers - that's why I like MT's regular posters so much.

    She's a journo, for Christ's sake! She ought to be interested in stories like exploitation by the BBC. Doing commissioned documentaries is journalism only in the sense that working for Metro is being a courier.

    I think it's a point that should be raised.
    Is there any group of people more prone to pathetic, bleeding-heart "victim veneration" than the BBC?
    I can't think of one.
    They never shut the fuck up about Menezes, yet they pay their courier company such low prices that the only way their stuff gets delivered is for some poor Brazilian to do it for what amounts to 23p per mile.
    Cyclists don't have to take the crap the BBC produces by insisting on cut-priced deals for bikes and cabs from CDS/Wyndhams (and, to a lesser extent, Lancaster Cars). Our colleagues who are motorcyclists and van drivers - as well as mini-cab drivers do. Are we supposed to give a damn? Or are we supposed to care about them as much as I care about the wobbly so-called cyclists who keep ending up under cement mixers?

    I wouldn't mind betting the BBC has no idea that the cost of their cut-priced deal with Slaggy Sullivan and his Spastic Sprog is passed on to Brazzos who earn £3 per hour. Perhaps it might be an idea to make them aware of the fact.
    You don't think so, huh?
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      CommentAuthorwill
    • CommentTimeDec 1st 2008
     
    There is more chance of me appearing on Celebrity Love Island than there is of you appearing in this new documentary Baisie you malevolent nonentity.
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    Correct, Will!
    I most certainly won't be appearing on anything so ridiculous. I probably should be, as I'm the longest-serving courier riding a pushie out there at the moment, but it ain't really me.

    By the way, which side would you be batting for on Celebrity Love Island?
    • CommentAuthorFesterban
    • CommentTimeDec 1st 2008
     
    Prime candidate for bike getting WAC stickered?
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      CommentAuthorwill
    • CommentTimeDec 1st 2008
     
    Bozo; you regularly post about how despicable the industry is and both patronise us by writing as if you're the only one who's figured that out and insult us by saying it's ultimately the riders' own fault. But then you can't resist boasting about how long you've been in the industry and you're such a dullard that you can't see the irony or how pitiful that shows you to be.
    I love the idea that you might choose not to be in a documentary. It's not your choice; you wouldn't be in it because any half awake person can see through your bluster and recognise you as the unoriginal, self deluded bore that you are. And they probably wouldn't be too impressed with the way your affected use of language keeps giving way like a badly made corset: "It's not my bag", "It ain't really me". Gosh, that's some vibrant prose you write Count Cliche.
    Count B, the fearless truth teller who still hides behind his internet pseudonym.
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    Been to the pseudonym base lots and lots of times before, Will. No point going there again.

    If I posted on here that cycle couriers generally prefer round wheels, you, Rummy & Overdose would reply that couriers actually use square ones - simply because anything I say has to be wrong.

    As for the shit riders take being their wn fault, you can't be so far gone as to believe that anyone else is to blame, can you?
    A group of idiots who can't even form a union (Last time Dave Gurman tried to start a union, he advertised the start-up meeting well and even went so far as to include a free first drink. How many turned up? Errr...just Dave Gurman!), working for a bunch of morons who can't even form a trade association. Both groups existing almost wholly outside the law and somehow thinking it's clever that they work for 1980s rates and don't pay tax.
    Yeah, Will... someone else is definitely to blame.

    If you lot did the job the way I do it - i.e. use the parasites ONLY when absolutely necessary; otherwise deal with clients and their queries personally, truthfully and on a face-to-face basis, ringing directories if necessary - our problems would disappear pretty darned quickly.
    But no... every time there's a minor problem you lot continue to dutifully tell clients to ring the office (so they'll be given bullshit and told lies of the "Cheque's in the post" / "I won't come in your mouth" variety), and cover up for the fact that the parasites aren't doing the job you're paying them 50% of your wages to do.

    I'm not boasting about things, Will. It's just that one might have thought that people with a wide range of experience would be worth the programme. I can't see a lot of informative stuff coming from you lot - even if you're not stoned when th emike's shoved under your hooter.

    We have a journo doing a piece on the industry, for the BBC - THE most exploitative client in the whole of London - and you lot are going to meekly offer your usual social-stereotype, "I'm a non-conformist rebel" comments, rather than to exploit what seems to me an obvious opportuninty. To each his own.
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    BBC pays shit rates to all its suppliers, whether they are couriers, journalists, editors etc. Unless they happen to be in that charmed circle called 'quality performers'.

    So you didn't go to the union meeting either, then?
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      CommentAuthoroverdrive
    • CommentTimeDec 2nd 2008
     
    Basie,the BBC are crying out for light entertainers.Imagine the exposure you'll get!
    Now I've found out your real name I'll put a word in for you.:thumbup:
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    Are the Beeb worse than Goldies? Don't know what they pay now, but they were paying SD £2.50 for SW1 w/rtn. (The rider got £1.95). One way was £1.95 to Goldies, so the return cost 55p.
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    wait...

    are you saying your paying 50% of your income to people that you won't even ask to sort shit out for you when it goes pear shaped?

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