Doesn’t the Government just make you want to scream? Not content with spending £1.3 trillion bailing out decades of corrupt market economics, they have now decided to give drivers £2,000 as an incentive to trade in their old cars for new ones.

Half the money will come from central government and half from the car industry itself. That’s a ‘grand’ of public money for upgrading your private car, so that you can continue to drive around like there’s no tomorrow.

Indeed, climate-wise there will be no tomorrow at this rate.

Scrappage schemes are deemed “environmentally friendly” because they replace older vehicles with the newer models. But (huge but) this assumes that the new car is less polluting than the one it replaces and overlooks the environmental impact of scrapping the old car and building the new one. Plus most of the cash will go abroad, quite pointlessly.

The idiocy of the idea aside, what will it cost? Over £4bn has been allocated to a similar scheme in Germany after the government there received over a million applications. How many billion will it cost us? And why on earth should taxpayers pay for this lunacy?

If the Government had just two brain cells to rub together, it would surely have given everyone £100 towards a new bike. People need encouragement to move their legs a bit and cycle. They don’t need any encouragement to sit on their backsides in lengthening city traffic queues.

Happily, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced plans to reduce vehicle speeds nationally.

Perhaps they copied the idea from Oxfordshire County Council, which has just approved plans to make most roads in Oxford city 20mph.

Paradoxically, the arterials that are busiest with cars, buses, cyclists and pedestrians remain at 30 mph.

The police have said they will be policing the limits though, which is fantastic.

Nationally, the DfT wants to reduce 60mph limits on rural roads to 50mph and 30mph limits in cities to 20mph.

As someone who has just cycled to Henley, I can assure you that none of the charmers who passed me at 70+, and especially the drivers of Range Rover Sports, gave two hoots about anybody but themselves.

My wife asked me why drivers of big-engined cars rev and accelerate past her when she’s cycling. It’s because they have small genitals (with a tiny apology to female drivers of big cars).

Talking of politicos, there are county council elections on June 4. To this end, Cyclox has organised a public meeting called Candidates on Bikes for tomorrow, from 7.30-9.30pm, at the Friends’ Meeting House, 43 St Giles, Oxford.

This is your opportunity to ask representatives of the four main parties in Oxfordshire what their party will do for cyclists, what they want to happen to bikes when the ‘pedestrianisation’ of the city centre happens (get off and walk, or shared space?), and what promises can the parties make about better provision of cycle parking – and decrepit cycle routes?

Come and ask what they will do for you.