Boardman: government's cycling record "very disappointing"

It's much simpler than that. The government made promises, but they were lying. Politicians do this. Mr Cameron said that he wanted to see a cycling revolution; he had no such desire, but he knew it sounded good.

That's all there is to it. Your elected representatives lie to you to make themselves electable. They want power. They don't want to give you want YOU want, they want you to put them in a position to give them what THEY want.

We live in a representative democracy. Once every four or five years we all get to choose between a small selection of puppets who claim to have particular views on particular issues. What the majority of the public want (or even vote for) doesn't enter into it: see the number of Green or UKIP MPs vs how many people actually voted for them, or  see how people voted Lib Dem as an anti Tory vote only for the Coalition to be formed because LD leaders thought it was a chance at power ...

So the trick is to give a choice between controlled alternatives ; other options are labelled populist, nationalist or whatever . In a case where an uncontrolled alternative emerge, the controlled alternatives suddenly form an alliance to save , you know what, the democracy !!!

C'mon, britons, you should know; "Modern" democracy has been invented by the british nobility when they saw theirs peers in France losing their heads in the French revolution. So they thought : why not give a choice between puppet A and puppet B to the ignorant masses? It's like catch fighters, you think they are really fighting but only the manager runs the show ...

So only the oil industry and car manufacturers are running the show and they give politicians pocket change for doing what they are told to do.

"Cycling Minister Robert Goodwill emphasising the onus is on local government to allocate money to cycling"

There are two issues - local government have been given the responsbility, but not the ability - central government has cut funding greatly. Central government has passed the buck, but not passed the bucks. Yet at the same time, you could go further than Chris B has, and point out that central government does allocate local funding to transport, to some extent, e.g. ring fenced funding for roads, and indeed for the Cycle City Ambition fund. They just choose to give relative peanuts for cycling funding.

Shoddy government.

The government keeps telling us that they want to increas cycle use. As far as I'm concerned it's all just lip service to keep the cycling looby quiet.

I have spent several years and countless emails writing to my local councils, local councillors, tweeting them on twitter, filling in consulations, questionaires and surveys. Everytime, the response is the same. "We'd love to do more, but there is no budget".

As usual Chris is 100% correct but the simple truth is that Britain isn't all that democratic. We have a government driven by ideology and obsessed with austerity to the point where they have practically abandoned investment in the future in a myriad of ways. I really think that their short sighted, economically illiterate approach has put us in a position where they cannot afford to see a decline in tax reciepts from motorised traffic.

We all know that cycling as an activity represents a net gain to society but our government is not really concerned with society in general - they care only about a privileged elite and wealthy older voters.