Commonsense has registered
By John Dickinson on 18th Jul 07
What I would really like to see emerge from this is a truly United body to represent motorcycle sport and leisure in the future
THE announcement that the dreaded proposed Off Road Vehicle (Registration) Bill has been withdrawn is surely a victory for common-sense. With the Government, Her Majesty's Opposition and the DVLA all firmly against the proposal it would have been hard indeed for the Bill's proposer, Graham Stringer, to have proceeded and the well-intentioned, but poorly thought out, bill has been dropped.
But that is not the end of the matter, nor should it be.
To start with, there is still the issue of the illegal riding of bikes, whether they be mini-motos, pit-bikes or full-on comp bikes. This is not going to go away and the authorities and the police will be looking at ways of making the problem easier to deal with.
Secondly, surely the compulsory registration of all off-road bikes - at point of sale - would be a good thing, if only by making bikes easier to track and trace should they be stolen. It would not be a foolproof system (otherwise road bikes and cars would not be going missing at seemingly ever-increasing rates) but it would be something. As the DVLA pointed out, you CAN already register your off-road bike with them.
Where the proposed Bill went wrong was, under current law, all the vehicles would have to have been made road legal, a crazy notion based on a complete lack of understanding of off-road sport. It was effectively the use of a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Not surprisingly, a number of organisations jumped out of the start gate to claim the glory for this 'victory'. I'm not blaming them, you grab what you can in this dog-eat-dog world and for me, they are welcome to their 15 minutes.
What I would really like to see emerge from this is a truly United body to represent motorcycle sport/leisure in the future.
It has been said many, many times: motorcycling is splintered into far too many pigeon-holes to be taken seriously in official circles. We are our own worst enemies. The list of bodies claiming to represent motorcycling is endless: ACU, AMCA, MCIA, MRA, BMF, LARA, MAG are just a few off the top of my head. Given that None Of The Above will give an inch of ground to the others, we are left looking for an Umbrella organisation to somehow represent us ALL when it comes to legal and official matters.
If all any individual organisation can come up with is a few thousand members to rail against officialdom we are sunk. But if we had an organisation to represent several million motorcyclists, it would take a particularly belligerent, arrogant government to take it on without being VERY sure of its facts.
All easier said than done of course and, rather sadly, I am resigned to the fact that motorcycling will, after this latest scare, slink back to its various individual niches, as before, until another monster comes over the hill and we are once more caught, like rabbits in the headlights, looking around desperately for someone to fight the corner...
ENJOYED reading various pieces of correspondence from readers regarding last week's JD's Shout which majored on the seasonal bad weather. Most who responded just wanted to add their thanks to all the organisers and volunteers who turn-out in the foulest conditions and all for someone else's - i.e the riders' - benefit.
There's been some great pictures from the various mudbaths this year though. I hardly dare say this but some of the MX pics look just like the old-time scrambles shots with riders and bikes covered from head to toe in the black stuff.
More ‘experienced' readers will remember the old television scrambles of the 1960s. Always held in winter, they were originally conceived - so I am told by a suitably ancient media source - to be broadcast should the racing from Haydock, or Blaydon or Fife or somewhere happen to be cancelled due to - bad weather.
It probably says a lot that the TV execs never for a moment thought that if the mud was too deep or the frost was too hard to risk the jocks and the gee-gees then it wouldn't be suitable to send out the lads on their motorbikes!
As it happened the boys were good in the mud and the TV scrambles made household names of Arthur Lampkin, Dave Bickers, Jeff Smith and a chap inevitably described by Murray Walker as Burly John Burton from Lutterworth. I never had a clue where Lutterworth was and if Murray did he never told us...
There's an idea for Channel 4: 100 Greatest TV Scrambles...