HOW jolly and magnificent of Lancashire County Council to offer employees interest-free loans of up to £700 to buy bicycles for them to ride to work on instead of coming in those nasty, politically-incorrect motor cars.

Of course, some might question splashing out on such niceties when our priorities for local government spending would include such things as roads free of potholes, a social services system that does not contemplate uprooting hundreds of old folk from their care homes and schools that turn out pupils sufficiently equipped with the basics.

But if the noble minds at County Hall consider it is a good thing for some 40 per cent of its payroll to be subsidised for coming to work by pedal power, where might this thinking end?

You can imagine the row at the annual meeting of a private-sector company if shareholders were asked to fund employees' travel to work, so what gives the county council the right to spend the money of its shareholders - the taxpayers - in this way?

It's none of the bosses' business how you get to work and none, really, of the county council's, despite the piety of its green transport policy.