Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Hello and welcome to the miniseries. We are now in the second half of the mini series of the shortlists for this year's Paul Foot Award. Let's find out with no further mucking about who today's shortlist is.
my name's Jim Watson and I am the editor of London Centric, a new London news publication.
And what is the Paul Foot Award shortlisted story that you've written this year?
the story is all about line bikes, which if you live in London or. Another major city in the uk you might know as those ubiquitous, green rent by the minute, e-bikes that are everywhere. And there's been a lot of moans about the fact that they can block pavements and things like that.
But the thing that I've really focused on is the, safety element and the sort of power of a company that just went, okay, we are gonna just flood a market with a load of devices that are basically unregulated and people will rent them and not know whether. A bit is going to fall off the bike, whether when they crash at high speed, the design is even suitable for falling on top of them and perhaps injuring them. And it all started 'cause one person said.
I've broken a leg and then a second reader got in touch to say it's also broken my leg. And then by the time a third and a fourth got in touch, it's like there's a story here. And so really it's as much about how I'm trying to do proper local journalism where you just listen to what the public are telling you and you go and find out why something's happening on the ground in the city that they live in.
So this is Reader generated. This is your readers of London Centric getting in touch.
This is readers of London Centric getting in touch. And at first I, I was a bit suspicious. I wasn't sure I used the things, and I wanted to know why this was. And I started phoning up consultants who work in trauma wards across London and they said. It's off the scale. We are just getting loads and loads of people coming in, flying off these bikes.
And the, obviously injuries happen in any form of transport, but the thing that's quite notable with this is that they said two things that people come off from. One, the bikes have a design which they believe might be a flaw, which means that when they fall on top of you, it basically acts like a pivot point and smashes your leg against the concrete and shatters it
Yeah.
in a way that's. heavy. They're really heavy
and the battery's often a heavy bit. They're all
combined with one
stalk. And if it lands, then your leg gets in the way.
And the other one was that when bits fall off them. They don't immediately get taken outta service. So and it's all part of this, who owns the public realm in a city like London? Who's in charge and who gets to set the rules because it isn't in this case, transport for London. It isn't the mayor, it isn't the boroughs. It's a private Californian company who said, look. We're gonna change the way that London operates. We're gonna flood the streets of these things.
and there was no oversight on the design or their safety or maintenance. And that just really interested me because who's in control when no one's in charge, no one's in charge, no one's really got the ability to limit these things on safety grounds.
And we should say, the details are incredibly grim. People nearly losing legs, people nearly severing their femoral artery, which can kill you easily. is not a simple fracture that we're dealing with. These are horrible incidents. These people are, cycling in daytime and sober.
they're described as motorcycle style incidents. some London surgeons now refer to it as line bike leg. They just get so many of them coming in that their wards are full of them.
And one particular rider made the point to me that it's easy to dismiss this in some ways, but they described it as 'a transfer of wealth from the NHS to a Californian tech company.' That the, The safety of the bike isn't up to the standards, which then means that the NHS has to pick up the bill of fixing these people's legs back together. And the irony is, and this is a really important part. Almost everyone I spoke to really likes the product.
Right?
This is not,
they shouldn't,
no, I'm, a regular line bike rider myself. The problem is that no one's really overseeing these things. It's a bit like the same way that Uber, about 10, 15 years ago, turned up in the UK cities and just went, we are going to, change the way the city operates. And, governments will need to catch up with how we are doing our unregulated approach to, a new form of transport. Lime have pretty much done the same thing.
They've gone, we are just going to flood a major capital city with these bikes and then the sort of effects will work out afterwards.
look, maybe this is a naive question, But if I wanted to set up a razor blade, pogo stick transportation company around London, are you saying no one would stop me with a dangerous product that can do people real harm?
there'd be consumer protection laws in general, but, and you might have the ability to sue the, operator of your razor blade, po stick operator. but the idea that it's not covered by existing regulatory systems. you can't just start a, a rival black cab operator or something like that. Yeah. But there's not much to stop you moving into the e-bike market at the moment. So it's just a case of the regulation hasn't kept up with the reality on the ground.
And there's both the sort of clutter around London element and I think, to be honest, more importantly, the safety element.
so Consumers are clearly not being protected.
There's a growing number of lawsuits about this. people are getting payouts from Lyme.
but if I've broken my, leg, I don't wanna have to do the suing myself. I want someone, I want what's provided to be at least reasonably safe. We all know that accidents
And
cycling in London is sometimes not for the faint
Fainthearted.
But I'd like the thing that's injuring me to be a car rather than my own hired bike.
this is the final bit really. I took out a train mechanic, on the streets of London and we hired 50 line bikes and we found about, 10 to 12% were. so dangerous that he'd want them taken off the street immediately. And it was interesting 'cause we talked to people riding them around. They said, yeah, that fits with my experience. quite often these bits fall off quite often A kid has knocked them out. argument from the operator is, what can we do? People are gonna kick the hell outta these things.
And the argument from the lawyers and the victims is, you've basically sold me a defective product that isn't safe when I'm riding around.
Okay.
And I think that's, the interesting thing to unpick here, like what's the level of risk and if there is gonna be a risk, what I feel I've done with this story is at least alert people to it and tell them to. Give a bike a good check over before they ride off at 15 miles an hour.
we should say the bikes weigh about 39 kilos and they're
They're very heavy
the
four
of what a normal bike weighs.
Yeah,
the irony is these were introduced partly because e scooters, which are popular in lots of European cities, are not legal on the road or on the pavement in the uk. So it was a perfect opportunity to say, here's some personal transportation. Because e scooters are so dangerous.
like half of all Londoners take a line bike. it's basically a defacto new form of transport, which is probably good. but people just need to know what the risks are. Yeah.
You're being very cautious and, as, you should be in reporting this, I guess your next step, once you'd found the readers. And the trauma, surgeons was to contact Lyme. And what did they say when you got in touch?
I think one of my favorite things with it, as a publication, as a startup publication was that initially they asked if I was a, print weekly, publication and I got a local FOB off, and by the end it was the global head of comms who was responding to my questions. So I think they realized that this was actually gonna be a bit of a problem for them as the stories progressed and as they got more and more pickup.
seen all of the national papers follow this up and it's become a bit of a talking point around, the bikes. that sort of shows the benefit of actually having someone on the ground who is able to dedicate a few days at a time to each of these stories in this series going around, checking things out and making sure that, there's actual reporting done and not just repeating the press release.
It's 'cause so much local journalism online and all of these things is, just basically copying and pasting the press release. At best, maybe adding in a comment from an irate person on Twitter. there's no one just kicking, literally kicking the tiles in this case and seeing what's going on.
can I just check, what did they say to you when you asked them about this spate of leg smashing that's been going on?
in almost all cases people don't get their legs smashed, which is definitely true. But I think the people who are in a and e for weeks at a time, who now have multiple metal pins holding their legs together, who spend an hour on the floor in, a busy London street having come off, seemingly for no particular reason or in one particular video I've seen having multiple bones sticking out of their leg. I literally couldn't publish that one even though it was particularly shocking.
these people say, I just want them to get their act together basically, and they need to actually put more money back into maintenance and not going to their investors back in the States.
What about their tires?
And their tires. They also, shifted from a German model to a, Chinese model. the implication being that they were in some way moving to a cheaper model, whether or not that's actually, more dangerous or not is something lime of pushback strongly on, but there's definitely a thing that they are like all tech companies going for growth at all costs and some of the cost of that growth at all costs is coming onto the British taxpayer who's paying to piece people back together.
And also the poor unfortunates who are wandering around with a bit of a hobble. Now,
I know that you've reported that Lyme do pay for. injuries, they do payouts, but the stipulations are quite strict, aren't they? they? say, you need to be disabled really thoroughly, including, for example. Complete loss of one kidney.
And I don't quite know how you'd manage to lose a kidney in one of these accidents. That would be, very impressive. the end effect basically is, unless you really smash yourself up permanently, you're not really insured on one of these things. And that's why people are having to turn to lawyers to try and get payouts for the loss of earnings for the time off work. I've spoken to people who are still unable to walk. A couple of years later. Couple years later.
Yeah. it's really permanently messed up their life. Obviously you can injure yourself in all manner of ways, and as something gets more popular, the, there's gonna be a risk this happening. But I just think that people need to be aware of what product they're using and the attitudes of the company that are running it.
I wanna ask a couple of questions about London centric, because this is. the, I think newest of the outlets shortlisted for the awards this year. It's, this is your outfit that you set up. can you just tell us a bit about the. genesis of London centric 'cause I think it's really interesting about how journalism is changing. and,
Yeah. So I used to be the media editor of The Guardian. I covered a lot of the declining, terrible state of the local press in the uk and eventually I went, I probably ought to do something about it. I, left my job at The Guardian. basically bought a laptop and went right. How do we do local news then?
And what I decided to focus on was a handful of things, really in depth power, accountability, interesting things not being boring, and definitely not reproducing press releases just for the hell of it. So where is your average local news website's just covered in ads? it's chasing clicks. Your reporters are being told to do eight stories a day. Half of them are about something unrelated that they've seen on Twitter or the middle aisle or oldie or whatever.
Yeah.
London centric promises, just a handful of in-depth things, covered really well by someone who actually knows how to do journalism. and crucially that works because people are willing to pay for it. Some of the stuff is free, some of it you got to pay for. I try not to be dull. I try to make it interesting. And the crucial thing is that thousands of people have gone, okay, we really like the pitch. We really like what you're producing,
Yeah.
and we'll pay to read it. And that gives me the freedom and ability to actually go in depth, to not worry about doing that clickbait headline that clogs up your social feed to do complete rubbish that the council's putting out. And to hold people like Sade Khan to account, and yeah, there's definitely a touch of the private eye attitude in terms of digging into the financials for people, not just accepting the press release line.
and trying to Piece together, the people I've already had my fair number of legal threats. It is terrifying. It is slightly terrifying to be operating essentially as a sole operator. I've got one reporter working with me now, but I am the editor, chief reporter, chief content officer, the chief marketing officer, the legal representative, the social media manager, everything rolled into one. How are
dealing with these legal threats when they
in? So you answer
as the lawyer, the in-house lawyer,
the, old job of the pa picking up the phone and pretending to be someone else? No, you just have to deal with them. did pay one lawyer with a very expensive lunch, an old legal friend to give some advice and I've now put things on a more formal footing. 'cause I think that's a bit sensible.
Yeah.
but I think it shows two things. One, it is possible. Running an absolute bare bones operation to do proper journalism, that not everything is an end of days race to the bottom, and that people will support things that they believe in. , I also think it's enormously stressful and overwhelming at the same time, and that I do slightly miss the days where a whole office of learned colleagues could guide me through various proceeds, take things off my plate and help, get a story out.
as the chief reporter of London Centric, Jim Waterton, would you like to thank your editor,
Jim Water, for all the support he's given you? I think that, yeah, I think that'll be, I think that would have to be the, the acceptance speech when inevitably this, story wins the award. No, I, there's some incredibly strong entries here and, without sounding too cheesy, I'm slightly overwhelmed to even be in the same category with a publication that I launched only seven months ago, which is still run on, a shoestring. Doesn't quite. Describe it.
It's, it's, we're just about holding it together.
it's a terrific story. I can't wait to find out what happens next with Lime as well. And I'll be bringing my own bike into the center of town from now on. Thank you very much, Jim.
Thank you.
Thanks to Jim. Do cycle safely and we'll see you tomorrow for episode five.