BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
You and Yours is BBC Radio 4’s flagship consumer programme.
Today’s show – hear it again via BBC.co.uk, from 3pm for one week – featured the usual roll call of malcontents who wanted to hang cyclists who rode on pavements. But most of the contents were positive, bordering on life affirming.
A snippet from the CTC’s Cycle Hero cinema advert started the hour and this was soon followed by Matt Seaton of The Guardian with a paean to two-wheeled self-propulsion. Watch a video of a similar version of this intro, including an appeal for red-light rectitude, on YouTube.
The one hour of Radio 4 primetime also featured Phillip Darnton of Cycling England and Carlton Reid of BikeBiz.com. The government’s salary-sacrificing, half price bikes scheme – Cycle to Work – got a big fat plug.
And London mayor Ken Livingstone – not a cyclist because of the danger he said he faces from disgruntled C-charge motorists – got a great many compliments for his steady, big-budget championing of cycling.
Darnton said the same amount of political will was needed from the UK government. Given this commitment, Darnton said the rest of the UK could experience a London-style resurgence in cycling.
