I was intrigued by your correspondent’s suggestion that taxing bicycles could make a dent in the £ hundreds of billions that the current pandemic crisis is costing the country.

Let’s have a think about how this could work.

Current vehicle excise duty is on the basis of CO2 emissions. Certainly, when I’m cycling, I breathe a bit more heavily, thus taxing this would seem fair (let’s ignore the fact that some electric cars are zero tax - despite the audacity of the occupants still breathing). Why, this could raise literally hundreds of pounds and would probably only cost a few million to administer.

Hey let’s go the whole hog. Pavements and zebra crossings cost money to maintain. Let’s start taxing shoe leather and other pedestrian paraphernalia as well.

Keep the good ideas coming!

Mark Gugan

Dorchester