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news
TfL logoTfL says board member should be "more restrained" after he called Twitter user "lying cow"
Transport for London (TfL) says board member Brian Cooke accepts that "he should be more restrained in his exchanges" after he called a Twitter user a "cow" in a heated discussion about road funding last week.
Mandy Hodgkinson, who tweets as @JustMandyH, complained to TfL after Cooke called her a "rude lying cow" for questioning his claim that cyclists contributed nothing to the roads.
This morning, Ms Hodgkinson received this reply from TfL:
The Tweets posted by Brian Cooke in relation to this issue were in a private capacity. Board members of TfL are entitled to have their own views on issues and we do not consider that any of the content calls into question Mr Cooke's suitability as a TfL Board Member.
However, Mr Cooke has accepted that he should be more restrained in his exchanges , particularly if they have some relevance to his role as a TfL Board Member.
Ms Hodgkinson was not the only one who complained to TfL. After she posted the response she'd received, BrumCity Cyclist tweeted: "I got that exact email last week!! Talk about copy and paste."
Since his acrimonious exchange with cyclists on Twitter, Brian Cooke has deleted his account. Cooke draws £24,000 per year for his part-time role at TfL, which has performed since 2012.
When he appointed Cooke, London mayor Boris Johnson said he would "bring considerable expertise in … customer experience to the Board".
Cooke is a former chair of London Travelwatch, the official independent watchdog representing the interests of transport users in and around the capital. He was sacked from the position in 2008 after coming out in favour of Boris Johnson in that year's mayoral contest.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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You didn't mention The Scottish Dodge, whereby if, by witchcraft, you manage to force your HD video upon the reluctant Scottish Police and they...
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Not particularly sure that follows.
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There's one that's always lurking outside our house at night.
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I should get onto the Guinness Book of Records people then, as they have the world record slowest heart rate for a healthy person down as 26bpm,...
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I made a complaint within an hour of the story being published. I have zero faith that they will amend anything....
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TBF I think that's before she saw the light and got on her bike. Not so great if her views have been informed by Mr. Briggs though.
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One less thing to clutter up your jersey pockets no? Though difficult to retrieve in a hurry...
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21 comments
He disappeared for a while but he's at it again today
Perhaps he is entitled to his own views but he's not entitled his own "facts". He is wrong about a basic, fundamental aspect of his job, plain and simple. And he's too cowardly or willfully ignorant to admit it.
Also, the views of somebody in his position should be based on facts, not bias and prejudice, and he is obliged to act professionally whether he's right or wrong. His behaviour satisifes none of those criteria and he's become an embarrassment to the organisation he is a part of. Personally, I'm ashamed to be a member of the same species as this neanderthal pillock.
This whole thing is crying out for a petition to Boris to remove this guy.
Is there an email address for TfL? I tried to contact them last week to complain about this fookwit but I don't know if the form was sent.
Is there an email address for TfL? I tried to contact them last week to complain about this fookwit but I don't know if the form was sent.
His Twitter account is back up, give it a day and he'll put another foot in his massive gub.
So this persons background is in travel agents, ie holiday travel and banking talk about a mafia,
He wasn't elected, he was appointed by Boris Johnson.
Eh? He demonstrated he is clueless about some pretty key aspects of transport in London. What is it that does make him suitable?
He doesn't have to be suitable. He stood for election and was elected to office. In office his grouping are allowed to fill their quota of slots on the various committees with their nominations (for obvious reasons ie you can't have your opponents picking your team). And that's it.
He is a total idiot but that's who the electors sent to represent them. Usually eejits like this sit on committees with their own party making sure that theykeep their gob shut and follow the party line. People like this do follow the party line because they wouldn't have been elected on their own merit and only get elected via a party machinery.
The good news is that having opened his mouth and been on Twitter with stupid remarks he's probably pissed off the party that helped het him elected. It will be interesting to know whether his party allow him to be their candidate again and if so whether the electors send him back again. Politics is fuull of folk like this but most of them just keep schtum pass go and collect their salary /attendance allowance.
He wasn't elected. He was appointed by Boris.
The fact he'll vote with the old guard and not question the status quo.
Hmmm, should be more restrained so he doesn't show his ignorance??
"We have investigated ourselves and found no sign of wrongdoing."
Compare this to the guy sacked for his (fictional) joke about knocking a cyclist off last week.
One rule for them.....
Compared and you're right - neither of these clueless half-wits are to be pitied - they are both the author of their own demise.
Who exactly would sack him? You see he isn't an employee, he's an elected office holder. And no matter how stupid and ignorant they are, there is a very good reason why elected office holders can't be removed from office for what they say or write. The only people that should be in a position to remove an elected official are the electors.
If someone other than their electors were able to sack a councillor, MP or other elected official because they didn't approve of what they said then you wouldn't be living in a democracy.
I hope the appropriate electors remove him at the next election and replace him with someone less stupid and offensive. But that's their job and no-one else's.
TFL Board terms of appointment section 9.1
Hang on.... i'm missing something here - how was he elected to a part-time, paid position in TfL, what and when was this 'election' ?
As pointed out on the previous thread on him - no he isn't. He's another guy with a seeming lack of knowledge of his field with a sinecure on a quango. We have too many of them.
So are you are saying we aren't living in a democracy?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4262833.stm
I personally think he should be less restrained. That way everybody can see where he stands and judge him accordingly.