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news
Pedestrian zone cyclist.JPGUKIP leaflet says cyclists should stick to pavements
Cyclists should be forced to ride on the pavement rather than the road, says a UKIP parliamentary candidate. Lynton Yates also says that benefits claimants should not be allowed to drive and their licences should be taken away from them. UKIP says the remarks do not reflect party policy.
Mr Yates is the party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservative seat of Charnwood, Leicestershire and made his remarks in a leaflet distributed locally, with a picture of it posted to Twitter by @atosmiraclesfb.
Under the heading ‘UKIP response’ on the subject of traffic congestion, Mr Yates says in the leaflet: "As much as I applaud cycling as a form of exercise and past-time [sic] the already congested roads cannot cope with both bus lanes AND cyclists.
"Cycles should go back to the pavements yet give priority to pedestrians."
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Mr Yates, a councillor who sits on Leicestershire County Council’s transport committee, told The Mirror: "John Major made it unlawful to ride on the pavement. Since then the roads are twice as congested. It seems ludicrous to me."
As Bikehub’s Cycling and the Law article highlights, cycling on the footway has been illegal for rather longer than that; the relevant statute is Section 72 of the Highway Act 1835, as amended by Section 85(1) of the Local Government Act 1888.
Since 1988 – when Margaret Thatcher, not Mr Major, was Prime Minister – riding on the footway has been punishable by a fixed penalty notice, although official guidance reiterated last year by transport minister Robert Goodwill is for police officers to exercise their discretion.
In his leaflet, Mr Yates also says: "We could likely remove six million cars from the roads if benefits claimants were not driving. Why do they have the privilege to spend the tax payers' hard earned money on a car, when those in work are struggling to keep their own car on the road? These people really could catch a bus."
The latter seems aimed at the unemployed, although with around two million people claiming jobseekers’ allowance, by no means all of own a car, it’s unclear where that figure of six million comes from.
In terms of money spent by the government on benefits, unemployment ranks well behind those related pensions, family, disability and housing according to 2013 research from the Joseph Rowntree foundation.
A UKIP spokesperson told The Mirror that the comments in the leaflet "are not UKIP policies and they will not form part of the UKIP manifesto."
Despite that denial, Mr Yates told the newspaper that requiring unemployed people to surrender their driving licences was a “possibility.”
He said: "I'm sure people will say 'what if they've got a job interview'. Well I'm sure if you had nothing to do you could leave a bit earlier and get a bus."
Maybe the jobless could follow the example of Norman Tebbitt’s father, as recounted by the former cabinet minister in 1981, and get on their bikes instead? But only if they ride on the pavement, of course…
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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100 comments
ah, you're one of those types. read the article.
insufferable bellend, you keep voting for more of the same.
I am not voting for more of the same, I am a floating voter and you just reminded me that UKIP and their far right disillusioned Tories are such twats. I have read the article, I have also read UKIP voters claim this story is a conspiracy by Labour ignoring the fact the candidate has admitted to creating them and the party also has admitted it. Always the victim you UKIP voters, you sound like some of the minorities you are so against, you need George Galloway.
The other parties may be idiots, but are you trying to say that UKIP are a positive solution to anything?
you're saying that LAbour (paedo enablers), Tories (child abuse obfuscators) or the LibDems (Cyril Smith!) be better than they are???
Isn't there a Britain First Facebook post that needs your commentary somewhere rather than you fouling the boards here?
and what are UKIP? racists, bigots, hypocrites? Every party has its questionable members, granted. UKIP? what do they stand for? scrapping the NHS, scrapping any influence we might have with our biggest trading party, a desire to return to a fictional 1950s? Every day another story emerges of a party that doesn't have a clue what it stands for, except screwing the UK of course!
The British Empire has gone, now get over it!!!!!!!
Here's a game for you - get Daily Mail readers to implode by telling them that voting Tory is condoning child abuse but will ensure the value of their house increases...
Because advocating the killing of people you don't like is so much better.
2012 - compulsory abortion for Down’s syndrome
2005 - criminally insane people should be killed and their organs harvested
And racism is cool...
2007 - BNP donations
2013 - “bongo bongo land”
2014 - another of the party’s MEPs, Janice Atkinson, found herself in hot water after being caught on a recording describing a Thai constituent as “a ting tong from somewhere
Let's not forget the Misogyny:
2009 - “Amanda Knox? Would you…?”
2004 - Bloom said: “If you’re a small business, you’d be a lunatic to hire a woman of child bearing age. If you want to have a baby, you hand in your resignation and free up a job for another young lady.
Irrespective of what my party is promising, I'm struggling to see anything but some quite sick people representing the party you are advocating.
http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/business-news/politics/shock-and-awe-...
Go on then, I know I shouldn't but I will react to your nasty reactionary bile. Foul ignorant pieces of shit like you were responsible for the death of millions in concentration camps. Your anti-intellectual position would make Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot very happy. Are you proud? I despise you and your ilk, you cunt.
Godwin's law...
You must be a leftie; they seem to be the type that most easily gets worked up into a violent frenzy when a political opinion is expressed that doesn't conform to their own.
Don't you have some free speech to quell elsewhere?
I'm proud to be a 'leftie' rather than thick scum like you. Happy for filth like you to express your opinion unlike your chums who want to put foreigners in gas chambers, but haven't got the balls to admit thats what they want.
That's exactly what I want. Oh wait, did I forget to mention I'm an immigrant? Where's the nearest gas chamber...
That's a bit harsh. He kind of has a point re the amount of child abuse that has taken place by people in high places, doesn't he?
Here I was, wondering when there would finally come a time when a UKIP fanboy would put together a calm, intelligent, coherent, reasoned and erudite response to any criticism of the party.
Well done you.
Oh, so the answer to the problem of child abuse must be reactionary shallow thinking and xenophobia. Got it.
I'm embarrassed by UKIP's selection of some prospective candidates.
But for all of you knocking UKIP, remember Labour has two ministers who pushed for paedophilia, and we now hear reports that the two Eds knew of the impending crash a year before it hit us in 08.
Lib Dems allowed a pervert to stalk childrens homes.
Tories blocked reports into child abuse.
Yet he without sin cast the first stone.
Yes, of course, because decades old idiocy should affect how we feel about today's idiocy going into a general election.
Makes perfect sense.
i'm wondering if Lantern is being ironic, or just being an idiot. Sadly UKIP is no laughing matter, nor are the Greens for that matter.
I wondering what you are talking about. Have you misread something or have you got the author of a comment confused?
"John Major made it unlawful to ride on the pavement. Since then the roads are twice as congested. It seems ludicrous to me."
Here are some other facts that relate just as much as the above:
* "In 1985 Rocky IV is released - we all remember how Rocky fights the commies on that movie. On the following year, Mikhail Gorbachev introduces Perestroika, a policy that leads eventually to the end of the Soviet Union".
*"In 2006, Pluto lost its status as a planet, and ever since it's considered a "dwarf planet". One year after that decision, the *planet* Earth was on its knees due to the Credit Crunch".
Coincidence? I don't think so.
So, how does one go about getting "On Yer Bike!" without being able to cycle?
I'm an unemployed graduate and can't afford to run a car as it is and rely on Trains and bike to get to interviews (most are at industrial estates and research centers in the countryside) as I got badly stung with a 20mi round trip with taxis.
This seems like classic UKIP jumping on an issue that riles lots of people to get mindless votes. The problem is those people don't realise how much worse it'll be under their policies.
He makes Al Murray's 'Pub Landlord' spoof political campaign actually look serious. Moron.
Lynton Yates apparently has absolutely no sense of irony - he suggests that six million cars could be taken off the roads, if the untermensch who drive them were banned.
Six million - now where have I heard that number before?
The giant turd on my lawn left by my dog this morning would be a better UKIP candidate. What a tool.
Was there actually a specific piece of legislation during the major government that banned cycling on the footway? Because I was led to believe that it was effectively banned before either bicycles or cars were invented, by banning carriages from the footway.
Regarding the revelation... "John Major made it unlawful to ride on the pavement. Since then the roads are twice as congested. It seems ludicrous to me."
Lets look at the number of cars on the road since John Major was last in power.
1996 - 25 Million Cars
2015 - 36 Million Cars
Has this not got anything to do with the congestion?
And it isn't even twice as many!
And it isn't even twice as many!
I think that was his point? When he states the law was passed to force cyclists to use the road, there were fewer cars on the road. Now due to the increase in traffic, cyclists should be forced off the roads. Not withstanding his factual inaccuracies.
they really are fucking mental, aren't they?
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