I tried, but e-scooter menace is here to stay

E-SCOOTERS will soon be a major curse. Because they appeal to human selfishness and laziness, they will be a huge commercial success once they become fully legal, as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps plainly means them to be. I tried quite hard to warn against this and was sneered at on social media for doing so. I was told it was not important. I wonder how many will think this when there are hundreds of thousands of them, often in the hands of drunken or drugged people, careering along pavements, unrestrained by absent police, smashing into children and old people, terrifying the blind, and providing perfect getaway vehicles.

I was sure that Mr Shapps’s so-called ‘trials’ were just a way of getting us used to them. There was never any serious intention to listen to the public or to examine their grave dangers. I can pretty much prove this. On March 3, I received a letter from Huw Merriman MP, chairman of Parliament’s Transport Committee, in which he assured me that the ‘trials’ were set to continue until November 30 this year. Yet Mr Shapps has announced that legislation to permit these death traps will be in the next Queen’s Speech on May 10, long before that date. Well, I tried. I hope those who attacked me have the grace to apologise when the reality becomes obvious.