Electric scooters?? Fucking death traps!! People die on them. Are they supposed to ride on the roads? Where they’re in the way and a nuisance, or on the pavements? Where they’re in the way and a nuisance?? We’ll show Bird what its all about.

Bird is the company who rent these things. These killer machines of misery and… death!! They’re from Los Angeles. Typical!! And they rent their electric scooters all over the world, with their company rising in ‘value’ to one billion dollars!!!! in less than their 2 years in existence. But NOT IN OUR COUNTRY, MATEY!!!! Because we’re not some godless, 3rd worldy place where you can just… just… just do things! No, this is England! This knife of Sheffield steel. (For Clash fans, everyone else feel free to ignore that remark).

And we have the solution. Because an act from 1998 bans such vehicles (?) from the roads, and now they’ve unearthed another act, this one from 1835, which bans such things from the pavements. SO WE FUCKING WIN!!!!! Keep your scooters away from these shores (not sure if there’s any antiquated, anachronistic law banning them from beaches, but I’m sure we can find one in the Bayeux tapestry or the doomsday book specifically mentioning rechargeable vehicular transportation.) Keep them to yourselves, in LA, Berlin, New York… all the… all the kind of cool places where they’re stupid and death-loving and… and… and prepared to embrace the novel, the unusual, the pretty useful and most importantly, the things people want to do, with an open mind and some kind of solution.

I hate the smugness and sneering satisfaction that politicians and the press use when they find such a ‘solution to a problem’, which is basically a legal framework to ban things. I don’t like banning anything. Even if they can be dangerous. Cars can be dangerous. Buses catch fire, people fall in front of trains, get knocked off pushbikes, die in plane crashes, get… errrr… hit by boats on Oxford Street. Travel is dangerous. In fact movement in any direction by any means can be dangerous. Add into that mix the massive overcrowding in all British cities and before the first tube train driver has even rolled his first joint of the day, getting around is precarious. Riddled with uncertainty and insecurity. Have you seen me cross a road? Holy shit, it even scares me.

Banning things just because they’re new and different and their place in society hasn’t been worked out yet is just the knee-jerk Daily Mailistic reaction to novelty. And novelty which can be useful and fun.

I’ve never been on an electric scooter. But I want the chance to do so. And if it seems dangerous then I won’t do it again. But it’ll be MY choice. Because in case anyone hasn’t noticed, getting around in London in particular is never easy. We need options. Not rejections by the jobsworth tossers in City Hall.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx