Last week, Sky broadcast a debate involving the three main challengers for the post of Mayor of London… and for the first time I can remember, I engaged in the “new way” of watching television. By not actually watching it.
Although I’m an avid member of it, Twitter is quickly becoming overbearing whenever you watch TV. As a wrestling fan, I’ve become numb to the constant mentions to Twitter on the WWE products – handles as a part of the wrestler’s entrances, Trending Topic graphics during shows, and even instructions to wrestlers about what hashtags to use and when. But for it to bleed into mainstream television is another thing: hashtags flashing up during Britain’s Got Talent, nudging you to tweet about an off-handed comment and join in the debate with other folks who are talking about #newonedirection or #they’llbeforgotteninthemorning (don’t fall for it! don’t become one of “them”).
Anyway, during the London Mayor debate, the hashtag #skylondondebate appeared in quite a few of my tweets, and somehow ended up in a discussion between cyclists and motorists. I’m not that big into politics, being one of those “I know what I stand for, and I’ll vote for whomever comes closest to those ideals”. At the moment, those ideals are pretty much “anyone but Ken Livingstone” – even if you ignore his prior run as mayor, his CV in politics would seem to make him difficult to believe in. Which is saying something for a politician!
As one of the millions of commuters, I’d apparently stand to benefit from Ken’s fare cuts if he got re-elected. Price cuts that would be paid for by using TfL’s budget surplus… which sounds great now, but what happens in 12 months time when that surplus is gone and the running costs rise? Yup – HUGE fare increases, with three years left of Ken as mayor. And that’s discounting the “what if” scenario if there was an emergency that required money to fix (say, large scale engineering work). If the surplus was gone, and no money was in the kitty to pay for it… Yup, huge fare rises. Be warned. There’s never such a thing as a free lunch.
Then came the issue of cyclists. Yes, in a large city such as London, cycling is a good way to get about, especially when roads are busy to the point of gridlock. Only thing is, why should motorists be subsidizing them? As a car owner who pays £200 a year just to use the roads, I really resent cyclists being able to use said roads for free. Even more so when my car insurance gets renewed (another costs cyclists don’t have to bear). Now, I understand that not all cyclists are careless, inconsiderate and generally a menace to drivers, much like how every driver isn’t a maniac who goes out with the intention of running over a cyclist. But if a cyclist goes too close to me and scrapes my car, who do I claim from? Yup, my own insurance, mostly because there’s little way of identifying the cyclist, and even if they did, they’ll likely have no insurance.
Whilst imposing a national system of bike tax and bike insurance would be prohibitively expensive, I’ll end this lightning rod of a topic with this: how about adding a charge to all new bikes? A charge that would go into a pot that would effectively act as road tax and insurance for cyclists, that people can claim from in the case of a cyclist scratching their car, or (God forbid) cyclists crashing into each other.
Just a thought.
