Why is he doing this to us?

Despite their initial " like it or lump it " attitude, the Department of the Environment relented on Friday (Feb 15, 2002) and gave the following as inspiration for Michael Meacher’s action.

The links here will take you to the three pieces of evidence the Department of the Environment has subsequently come up with as " reasons " for Micheal Meacher’s course of action.

The first is an article published by the Telegraph, which even has a pop at MCN for riding bikes in Snowdonia (with, it seems, no sense of irony)… It quotes a parish councillor complaining about large number of motorcyclists descending on his village (we’ve heard from hoteliers and tourist authorities who say they can’t get enough riders visiting them and spending money). Read it for yourself at: http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/07/08/nbike08.xml

Then there’s a story from the Guardian which mis-quotes MCN’s Marc Potter (the paper has since accepted that Marc never said anything about passing cars and lorries at twice the speed limit… pity they haven’t bothered to update their story on the web). Read it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4234086,00.html

And finally, there’s a parliamentary question. The answer to which begs questions about where his recent thoughts about banning bikes could have come from. Follow the link, right.