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Pimlico Plumbers founder Charlie Mullins suspended from Twitter after posting that “someone should kill” Sadiq Khan over ULEZ

The businessman, known for his staunch anti-cycling stance, also posted that “it’s time to dump the Muslim mayor”

Charlie Mullins, the Pimlico Plumbers founder who claimed in 2020 that “cycle fascists” were making van journeys longer, has been suspended from X, formerly known as Twitter, after posting a series of tweets attacking and appearing to threaten London mayor Sadiq Khan over this week’s expansion of the capital’s Ultra Low Emission Zone, writing that “it’s time to dump the Muslim mayor” and that “someone should kill him”.

Mullins’ racially charged tweets were posted within ten minutes of each other on Sunday night, two days before the ULEZ – inside which motorists are charged £12.50 a day for driving older, non-compliant, high-polluting vehicles – was extended to outer London, following months of political debate, protests, furious online discourse, and legal challenges over a policy described by Labour mayor Khan as “not easy but necessary to reduce the capital's toxic air pollution”.

Charlie Mullins Sadiq Khan tweets

Replying to tsuk78639968’s tweet calling for Mullins to stand at the next mayoral election, to “make London what it used to be”, the 70-year-old multimillionaire businessman tweeted: “I am on it, and it’s time to dump the Muslim mayor”.

Nine minutes later, Mullins replied to ChrisFi65328659’s post claiming that the “government is doing nothing to stop” Khan, tweeting: “Someone should kill him”.

Charlie Mullins Sadiq Khan tweets 2

The posts have led to Mullins’ account being suspended by X, due to a “violation” of the social media platform’s rules.

road.cc has contacted Mullins’ representatives about the suspension, but is yet to receive a response.

> Pimlico Plumbers publish article describing "cycle fascists whining about their precious road space" 

The posts, which have been described by other Twitter users as “racially motivated hate speech”, aren’t the first time Mullins has been put under the spotlight due to inflammatory comments concerning travel policies.

In 2020, the then-boss of Pimlico Plumbers, one of Britain’s largest plumbing firms, commissioned a Transport for London parody poster of a cyclist struggling to carry tools, which claimed that people on bikes were “taking f***ing liberties”.

An additional blog post, shared on the company’s website, then took aim at cycling infrastructure and “cycle fascists”, which Mullins’ PR team claimed were responsible for increasing the length of van journeys in the capital.

“I’ve had enough of cycle fascists whining about their precious road space when what they really want is to run all non-cycles off the road,” the blog, written in the first person as if by Mullins himself, said. “And I’m also sick of the bike bureaucrats who have taken over TFL, and who as we speak are painting great swathes of Central London’s roads blue, making it next to impossible to run any kind of service business.

“Businesses like mine, and many others that rely on the transport of large amounts of equipment, tools and goods about the city cannot operate on bicycles. It is a ridiculous proposition. Any fool can figure out it doesn’t work. And please don’t tell me to get a cargo bike because unless they are the size of a van or a lorry and can be made secure they are exactly as useful as a chocolate teapot.”

> Pimlico Plumbers worker caught using phone at the wheel by Cycling Mikey

The blog, which was subsequently watered down following an online backlash, concluded: “London is a city of commerce but that cannot continue if we hand the roads to these freeloading helmet heroes who believe they have a god given right to the roads to the detriment of all other users.”

Less than a month after that controversial blog post, Pimlico Plumbers then posted a video to Twitter calling for help in tracking down a cycling “criminal” who allegedly kicked out at a wing mirror on the Mullins’ Bentley.

> Pimlico Plumbers appeal to catch cycling ‘criminal’ – but get accused of faking footage

However, a number of users called out the footage as fake, with one accusing the firm of staging a publicity stunt and a “false flag” attack to whip up resentment against bike riders.

Mullins sold the company to US home services group Neighborly in a deal worth up to £145 million in September 2021, though his son remained involved as chief executive.

> Bike shop owner – who owns nine cars – says ULEZ expansion will cause “chaos”

These latest highly controversial posts from the London-born businessman, a former donor to the Conservative Party and business advisor to David Cameron and George Osborne, appear to represent the darker side of the politically charged opposition to the extended ULEZ, a scheme branded by Boris Johnson – who introduced the policy to London in 2015 during his stint as London Mayor – as a “mad lefty tax” on “hard-pressed motorists”.

At the end of July, a legal challenge launched by five Conservative-led councils, who claimed that the extension was “illegal”, was quashed by the High Court, while this week’s implementation of the scheme has been marked by confusion and misinformation.

> Bike brands bank on ULEZ expansion – but will enlarged clean air zone boost active travel?

Following the High Court ruling last month, Simon Munk from the London Cycling Campaign told road.cc: “It’s really good news that London’s ULEZ zone is now set to expand in August. London must act on pollution, at too high levels across the capital, and the expansion will be a positive step in not only delivering cleaner air but enabling people to use alternatives to cars.

“The legal action came primarily from councils that are among those who have done least on delivering action on air quality, climate emissions and walking, cycling and wheeling… We hope the leaders of the London boroughs involved reflect on what they have cost their own residents, and more, on how they now need to work with the rest of London on delivering cleaner air, lower emissions, and to enable residents to ditch car journeys whenever possible.

“ULEZ expanding is another step in the right direction for a healthier, cleaner, greener London.”

Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.

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103 comments

Avatar
Brauchsel replied to Rendel Harris | 9 months ago
3 likes

Think you're wrong on this. Absolutely no fan of Thatcher, but even in her lifetime she got highly personalised abuse that went way beyond anything I can remember anyone else having. 

Wishing her dead was a mild and unproblematic sentiment, and I can't imagine a pop star of today with the clout of a mid-80s Elvis Costello releasing a song in which he/she looks forward to tramping the dirt down on Sadiq Khan's grave. 

I agree that the personalisation of the anti-ULEZ types' attacks on Khan is racist and extremely worrying. It's hyperbole though to claim it as the worst in our lifetimes. (Not forgetting that the murders of e.g. Mountbatten and others were not exactly seen as outrages by some mainstream sections of the left). 

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to Brauchsel | 9 months ago
4 likes

Brauchsel wrote:

Think you're wrong on this. Absolutely no fan of Thatcher, but even in her lifetime she got highly personalised abuse that went way beyond anything I can remember anyone else having.

This is the problem when people like Richcb start obfuscating and claiming that people have said things that they haven't, it somehow becomes an accepted narrative. I didn't say that Khan is receiving the worst abuse of anyone I can remember, and I would certainly agree that there is a case to say that Thatcher got worse. What I actually said was that I couldn't remember any specific issue (poll tax, Iraq, ULEZ) that had been fought in such a vicious and personalised way focusing on the policymaker rather than the policy. Screenshot below of my exact words otherwise one of the rightist cadre will doubtless try to say that I'm lying.

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Backladder replied to Rendel Harris | 9 months ago
5 likes

Rendel Harris wrote:

I honestly can't recall a single issue in my fairly long lifetime, not even Thatcher and the poll tax or Blair and the Iraq war, that has attracted such villification of the politician rather than the policy. 

You must be younger than me, Thatcher the milk snatcher's name was mud to us 11 year olds!

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to Backladder | 9 months ago
3 likes

Backladder wrote:

You must be younger than me, Thatcher the milk snatcher's name was mud to us 11 year olds!

I was alive but preschool I think, my older sibling remembers it! Don't recall prominent businesspeople saying somebody should kill Thatcher for it though...

Avatar
Cugel replied to Rendel Harris | 9 months ago
6 likes

Rendel Harris wrote:

Backladder wrote:

You must be younger than me, Thatcher the milk snatcher's name was mud to us 11 year olds!

I was alive but preschool I think, my older sibling remembers it! Don't recall prominent businesspeople saying somebody should kill Thatcher for it though...

Well, the IRA actually had a go. They were extremists, of course, egged on by a certain flavour of pseudo politics (the sort in which everyone is a tribal extremist and no one compromises, so not politics at all).

Nowadays, even cowboy plumbers made-good are extremists, it seems; along with vast swathes of Faecespuke and Twatter denizens, who have got used to Trump-talk and seem quite anxious to take up concomitant actions.

Don't forget either that a British MP was killed by a hate-loon not that long ago. I believe the hate-loon was upset about some small policy matter which he'd inflated into something Very Important Indeed (but only to a certain kind of loon).

Will CH4RLE have motivated such a loon to perform a similar act of self righteous indignation? There's plenty of loons about just needing a little tug on their hair-trigger.

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hawkinspeter replied to Backladder | 9 months ago
3 likes

Backladder wrote:

You must be younger than me, Thatcher the milk snatcher's name was mud to us 11 year olds!

Don't forget her using the police as her political enforcers or trashing the housing market with the Right-to-Buy policy: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/29/how-right-to-buy-ruined-british-housing

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Bill H replied to Rendel Harris | 9 months ago
1 like

You cannot reduce all the opponents to ULEZ or Sadiq Khan to a single, narrowly defined, straw man. There are many vocal opponents to ULEZ in Ilford for example with near identical backgrounds to the Mayor who vehemently attack any restrictions on their car use. 
 

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Rendel Harris replied to Bill H | 9 months ago
3 likes

Bill H wrote:

You cannot reduce all the opponents to ULEZ or Sadiq Khan to a single, narrowly defined, straw man. There are many vocal opponents to ULEZ in Ilford for example with near identical backgrounds to the Mayor who vehemently attack any restrictions on their car use.

Well it's a jolly good job I didn't do so then, isn't it? If you'll excuse me quoting my exact words (emphasis added):

Rendel Harris wrote:

It's funny because I was roundly castigated in these pages (mainly by people who are now banned) some months ago for suggesting that there was a racist, violent and Islamophobic element to a significant minority of the protests against the ULEZ

Avatar
NOtotheEU | 9 months ago
17 likes

. . . . tsuk78639968’s tweet calling for Mullins to stand at the next mayoral election, to “make London what it used to be”, . . . .

 

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Muddy Ford | 9 months ago
15 likes

He should be arrested and jailed. I hope Cycling UK pushes to get this done. He literally incited people to kill someone he earlier referred to in a derogatory manner as muslim. His OBE should be taken from him, unless the King supports his views. 

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Trevor Anderson | 9 months ago
17 likes

Back in 2011, a couple of teenagers posted on Twitter that, someone should come and loot their high street.

They received 4 years in jail.

Don't suppose the Police will act on this invitation?!

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Miller | 9 months ago
6 likes

Good God, you have to go some to get suspended nowadays from the channel formerly known as Twitter.

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eburtthebike replied to Miller | 9 months ago
3 likes

Miller wrote:

 the channel formerly known as Twitter.

Ex-Twitter.

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