Islington Tribune - by SIMON WROE Published: 10 August 2007
Boris Johnson with Bridgette Peacock at a meeting of the Islington Cycle Action Group at the Town Hall in March
Gulp! Boris lashes out at cowardly little bike fiends
BORIS Johnson has vented his anger over the theft of his beloved bicycle after he left it chained to railings. The Tory mayoral candidate for London blasted the thief as a “cowardly little fiend”.
It is the seventh time that Mr Johnson, who lives in Furlong Road, Holloway, has had his bike pinched.
He wrote in his Daily Telegraph column last Thursday: “They uprooted a large stake that was being used to encourage the growth of some sapling, and they jemmied it into the railing and heaved and heaved until they snapped the bar, and then scarpered with my bike and left their wreckage contemptuously on the pavement.”
Police figures show that an average of five bikes are stolen every day in Islington.
This works out at more than 1,800 in the last year with the ‘hotspots’ being Exmouth Market in Clerkenwell and Islington Green. More bicycles are stolen in Angel than anywhere else in the borough.
Mr Johnson has previously called for strict “Sharia law for bicycle thieves”.
He said: “No matter how often it has happened to you, it is always a gulp-making thing to look at the railings where you left your bike, and see that for the seventh time in as many years some cowardly little fiend has used a combination of violence and ingenuity to steal it.”