‘I rarely see any police officers on the street, just in cars screaming their way with flashing blue lights’

• AS a former cyclist I have some sympathy for those who have had their bikes stolen and find the police no help.

But then the police don’t do much about the vastly more serious offence: cyclists riding on pavements, often stupidly fast.

And they do b***** all about motorists zapping through Swiss Cottage at speeds well in excess of 50mph, even the National Express coaches routinely bomb through the area at 40+mph with apparent immunity!

So what do the police do all day?

I rarely see any police officers on the street, just in cars screaming their way with flashing blue lights; are they so busy stopping and searching black teenagers they have no time for these other crimes?

As for the bike theft issue, here in Swiss Cottage over the last few years I have watched dozens of chained-up bicycles slowly being dismantled until one now only has its frame and the lock left… but at £50 or so for the lock and maybe £200 for the frame, why don’t the owners collect the bits?

Even if their insurance paid up, surely it would be worth doing this? And initially only one wheel was taken… a new one would only have been about £50.

It’s a long time since I had my bike nicked from where I worked in Manchester and, weirdly, just a few days later as I was getting my old bike ready to hit the road, I saw a guy passing with the frame of my fancy sports bike.

So I followed him for a few miles to his home and then called the police, and they did arrive and I got the bike back, missing my fancy wheels, but more or less intact.

The guy said he bought it off a bloke in a pub, so the police couldn’t take it much further, but at least I got most of it back.

As for the millions being spent on making roads safer for cyclists, I have to question the wisdom of this.

No more than 10 per cent of the population will use bikes on a daily basis, and I bet the bike lane being created on Haverstock Hill will not see more than a dozen bikes an hour. There’s a clue in the name!

The real solution is to make car use prohibitively expensive and then create a public transport system which caters for all, including those who really need cars: the disabled and the Range-Rover owners with one little kid to get to school!

DAVID REED
Eton Avenue, NW3