Not Porty, People and Places

There are nine million bicycles in Beijing or so the song goes. Pro rata I believe it could apply equally to Copenhagen. The streets around the Central Station are lined as far as the eye can see with bicycles. (Actually, I even saw one, airside at Copenhagen airport this morning!) I found out yesterday that the bikes with these red tickets are the ones that no one seems to own anymore and they get recycled, pun intended, once their remove by date is up! How do they get here? Easy. They are the Danish version of the London "Boris " Bikes except no one pays for them! I have really enjoyed my Copenhagen assignment and would love to have spent longer here. There are so many things the Danes get right. One of them is that the pedestrian has the right of way at ALL times. The next priority goes to the cyclists. The lowly motor car drivers are made to know their third place and they really adhere to it. This has added poignance for us all in Scotland today with the Edinburgh High Court ruling against the imposition of a life time driving ban for the car driver who has now killed two cyclists. Our thoughts and respect are with the families of both these cyclists.