One silent killer we should be terrified of

I SEE the tireless lobby for horrible electric scooters and e-bikes has got to work again, trying to make out that the Government’s insane attack on public transport (too dangerous to use, allegedly, lest you find yourself sharing a carriage with a virus) means that such vehicles are the future.

What rubbish. These silent killers are a terrible danger to pedestrians and proper cyclists. They do nothing for the health of their users, who get no proper exercise from riding them, but clutter up cycle lanes.

They just shift their pollution to power stations, and the ingredients of their batteries require the rape of large parts of the Third World. They are the ideal means of transport for people who have lost their licences through drink or drugs and want to continue to use motor transport. Or for people who can’t or won’t pass driving tests but want to go fast anyway. Their supposed speed limiters are a joke, easily overcome. Those cities which have allowed e-scooters have bitterly regretted it, as their pavements have become as dangerous as the roads themselves.

Yet the excuse of the ‘new normal’ or ‘recovery from the virus crisis’ or ‘protecting the NHS’ will in the next few months be repeatedly used in a hundred such bad causes, from a Stalinist raid on savings (probably in the guise of an ‘NHS surcharge’ which will be impossible to oppose) to a bonfire of the remaining planning controls and green belts.

And people will fall for it, as they have fallen for the whole phoney crisis.