Value for money? On your bike - John McLellan
Over the years I’ve got into the swing of using my bike for as many journeys as I can, more about trying to keep my waistline under some semblance of control and my ticker from packing in, especially as my knees are pretty much done.
In fact, I’ve got two bikes, one of them a folding job so I can always get on the train even if the allocated space is already full. I didn’t go for a ludicrously expensive Brompton but a perfectly functional Tern model which cost less than £500.
The other one cost about the same, and when recently faced with a repair and service bill of nearly £300 I thought about changing it, but with a replacement likely to cost about £800 it wasn’t worth it.
What intrigues me, then, is how the SNP has managed to spend over £4 million on a free bike scheme for deprived schoolchildren which has distributed 3800 bikes over two years, meaning each one has cost around £1000.
Either the kids are riding around on race-quality Pinarellos or the mark-up for organising the scheme is considerable, but then that’s public sector procurement for you.
The intention is good enough, but value for money is another thing, and it’s not clear how many of the bikes have remained with their owners.
According to the Scottish Government, the scheme is being led by regional transport partnerships and funded by Transport Scotland which sounds very like a recipe for frittering away even more taxpayers’ money.