Thousands of blue bicycles appeared across the capital last week, as Boris Johnson launched the Barclays bike hire scheme.
However you feel about the man known variously as Bojo, Boris the Menace or Bozza, the Mayor of London’s 6000 trusty new steeds are a talking point across the capital. The king of cycle super highways, Boris is known for his passion for two wheels and spending on cycling in London is at record levels. ‘Knight on a shining bicycle’ was how 38 year old Franny Armstrong described Boris after he rescued her from a bunch of muggers.
A regular, but not enthusiastic, cyclist, I was keen to try out the new models, and have been using one to get to my meetings around London this week. Apparently, BBH agency is also using the bike scheme and Google staff are apparently on the same pedal powered band wagon. And why not? An antidote to both environmental issues and the credit crunch, the only serious critics to the bike sharing scheme are the city’s cabbies, who could be hit in the pocket.
With 11 offices across the UK, I am often on the road and last week I visited our Cardiff office. Cardiff is such a compact city with the splendid Stadium right in the heart of the city, it occurred to me that Boris’s bikes would go down well with the visitors and the residents of Cardiff. After all, I don’t want to (pedal) push it. As Woody Allen says, “I had two heart attacks before I bought this exercise bicycle. And since then? I’ve had two more.”
Chris Lovell
Golley Slater, Group Chief Executive
August 18th, 2010
