IS there no end to the pious preaching and downright driver-hostile policies aimed at forcing Britain's 30 million motorists out of their cars?

Now, I see, the tree-huggers and health fascists are trying to make car-owners guilty for being a burden on the NHS because they are not fit.

This week, saw a government-backed charity called Going for Green claim that a 10 per cent increase in the number of people cycling would mean a four per cent decrease in the number getting heart disease and would save the NHS £200 million a year - enough to build two 500-bed hospitals.

At the same time, the Health Education Authority, the quango that promotes salads and condoms with your money, said cycling for as little as half an hour a day can halve the risk of heart disease.

Cynical old me not only wonders where they get their figures from - like the disapproving ones they had for alcohol consumption and were forced to loosen - but asks whether they are also actually barmy.

For if more people got on their bikes, the NHS would probably collapse and need more than a couple of new hospitals to cope. Cycling is the most dangerous form of transport there is.

At the last count, it resulted in the deaths of 183 people - and though they were outnumbered by 10 times as many car users who were killed, they were on the road for a hundredth of the time.

On top of this, 24,000 cyclists were injured, making them no small burden on the NHS either.

Do we really want an increase on those statistics?

That's what the greens and the bossy health bores are advocating, though they don't say so.

The truth is that travelling by car is - as was revealed last week by the European Transport Safety Council while our government was lending its support to national car-free day - eight times safer than cycling.

And don't fall for the healthy-green propaganda this Walk to Work Week - you are also eight times more likely to get killed as a pedestrian than in a car.

These anti-car cranks are not only deluded, they are dangerous.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.