The trials and tribulations of London life

Published: 21 April, 2011

• THE architect Richard Rogers once wrote: “In Amsterdam there is a clear domain for cycles as there is for cars; we are very backward in that respect.”

It has already been stated in your Letters pages about the dangers for cyclists, pedestrians and particularly children in our neighbourhoods, but, for cyclists, please, always think: what is the most stupid thing the drivers ahead of you can do, whether in a six-wheel building site lorry or a Mercedes-Benz, and allow for that driver’s idiocy.

Every day the people who live in Holborn, Bloomsbury, Finsbury, for example, are swamped by outsiders. Former mayor Ken Livingstone and now Boris Johnson, give rat-runners priority through our streets. 

The death of our citizens, be they a child knocked down by the driver of a posh media vehicle or a cyclist killed by an east European lorry driver (on cheap wages) is apparently just one of the joys of living in a capital that will be the centre of the world in 2012. Citizens will be over the moon to know that the area round Russell Square will be the “Media Hub” during the Olympics of 2012. 

That means that instead of a single Irish whiskey costing  £5.25 in the bar of a famous international chain of hotels as it does now it will go up to terrifying heights as international journalists, on expense accounts, get “borissed”.

This is an expression, incidentally, I first heard on St Patrick’s Day as we were celebrating the saint. Somebody said that his pal was “absolutely borissed”. 

BOB DAVENPORT,  WC1