• CAMDEN Council’s latest healthy streets proposals are both worrying and contradictory.

— Worrying because they talk about reducing “inessential motor vehicle ownership and use”.

Who is to decide what is “inessential”?

Getting out of London on a Sunday to visit friends?

Using a motorbike to get to work when you could take a bus, and twice as much time to get there?

Taking children (and their sports kit) to an away match?

— Contradictory because the proposed motorbike changes, for example, would introduce a daily charge for all sole motorbike parking bays, nearly double the cost of a resident permit for a petrol-powered bike, and take the cost of a permit for an electric motorbike from zero to £138.90.

Motorbikes are a great way to reduce road congestion and electric motorbikes are a great way to reduce emissions, but Camden don’t seem to see this.

Or perhaps they just have another agenda, moving towards the end of private ownership of any means of transport altogether.

For the rich these charges will be an irritation at worst; for poorer people it is another burden that Camden Council is determined to impose.

PAUL FARROW
Dartmouth Park Road, NW5