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A year ago, as the students arrived for Oxford's new academic year, four dockless bike companies flung hundreds of bikes, red, orange, green and yellow, onto the streets. Since then tens of thousands of dockless-bike rides have happened round the city, the previous shared bike scheme has gone out of business, one of the four newbies has also given up and disappeared, the other three have all brought more bikes in, and pedestrians and cyclists have picked our way round badly parked bikes - splayed across pavements, dumped in roads, blocking access to the bike racks that ordinary bikes need...

Yesterday, one of the companies, Mobike, announced that as Mancunian scallies have managed to steal or vandalise 10% of its stock every month this summer (in addition to the very many Mobikes nicked or dumped in canals every month before that) it was abandoning Manchester and the remaining bikes would be transferred to other cities, including Oxford.

On my short journey home this evening, with a slight detour to the supermarket, I counted the dockless bikes I came across. 3 green Ponies, 4 yellow Ofos and 87 orange Mobikes. I didn't see any of them being ridden. I'm not convinced that Oxford needs the Manchester bikes.