I wrote this poem when I was preparing my report on Andrea Leadsom’s Dangerous Cycling Ten-minute Bill for The Pod Delusion. The report featured in Episode 83.
Spring is sprung, the grass is ris
I wonder what the cyclist is?
Fitter, happier, more productive?
Or furiously, wantonly destructive?
You won’t get balance from the papers
Or broadcast media about their capers.
They’re either being squashed by a lorry,
Or scaring pedestrians without a ‘sorry’.
That’s if they’re not on a charity ride.
UK media knows on which side
Its bread is buttered; The motor trade
Provides advertising revenue aid
To an ailing publishing industry
The reviews of cars keep the dead tree
Press from croaking and going under
So against alternatives they thunder.
“Pinko commies! Yoghurt knitters!
Freeloading scum!” Littlejohn titters.
But if you approach it rationally.
It’s seen that, internationally,
The countries travelling actively
Have no need for behaving reactively
To the current cycling revival.
They promote vulnerable road users’ survival.
By thinking properly, in proportion
To the cause of carnage and of caution:
The motor-vehicle, whose use has been
Growing to levels never seen.
So I would argue the most rational
Form of transport is the bicycle.
Low impact and low emission;
It needs no coal and needs no fission.
It provides necessary mobility
While helping postpone morbidity.
It will contribute to the task
Of making more civil cities; is that so much to ask?
