I may be fairly new to this whole ‘living in London’ lark, but there are some things that I’m starting to get a grip on. The attitude on the road, for one.

I’ve only had cause to drive into the centre of London once, but even out here in the wilds of zone three, the drivers are lunatics. Roundabouts are insane, truckers are mentalists and bus-drivers all need lessons in using the middle pedal. But the absolute worst are the cyclists and their motorised brethren.

The cyclists, as even the Commons is aware of are largely immune to such things as “red lights” and “lane discipline”, and that’s before they tart diving onto the pavement just to avoid a bit of traffic. However, the politicians probably want to do something silly lie enact new laws that won’t work – my solution i just to have an occasional patch of upurned drawing pins on the pavement at strategic points. Pedestrians would see them and avoid, but the faster cyclists wouldn’t, and would thusly end up out of pocket until they learned to use the road. Win-win.

As for the motorcyclists, they’re often as bad. Actually, the proper motorcyclists are OK, it’s the mopedists that annoy me. Because they’re in an unhappy space between the motorcycles (who have to do a test and everything, and are generally aware of their limits and the limits of their machine) and the cyclists (who aren’t, but who aren’t heavy enough to kill someone under normal circumstances and traffic speeds). Mopedists are generally still on their L plate, and many of them are to be found on the pavement on occasion (well, I’ve nearly been knocked down by them twice this week on my walk to work. And I’ve only walked twice…).

They’re a menace. And my solution is to paint all mopeds with L plates day-glo pink and replace the horn with a big loudspeaker that says “anyone driving this conveyance is a twit”. Can’t go wrong, can you?