David Cameron's cycling travails continued this morning when he stepped out of his home in Notting Hill to discover that his bike had been stolen for the second time in a year.
The Tory leader was spared the prospect of catching the bus to work when his Parliamentary aide offered up his own bicycle and told his boss that he would run to Westminster instead.
Desmond Swayne, the MP for New Forest West, said: "His need was greater; the party would have expected nothing less."
Mr Cameron arrived safely in time for his weekly briefing ahead of Prime Minister's Questions, riding into Parliament Square alongside George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor.
The same bicycle was stolen last summer when Mr Cameron chained it to a three-foot bollard outside a shop on Portobello Road. The opportunist simply lifted it off the post and disappeared.
After Mr Cameron was pictured in newspapers wandering around scratching his head at the loss, the bike was returned and the Conservative leader said: "It's priceless to me. I've done over a thousand miles on it and three sponsored bike rides of 250 miles each so it's like an old friend."
A Conservative spokeswoman said the silver and black Scott bike was still chained to railings at 7.10am this morning but an hour later it was gone. The theft has been reported to police.
Mr Cameron's keen cycling habits have caused him embarrassment in the past. Last year, he was forced to apologise for a series of highway code violations: he was photographed riding the wrong way down one-way street, going the wrong way around a keep left bollard and riding across a toucan crossing for cyclists and pedestrians while the signal was red.
It also emerged that Mr Cameron was followed on his environmentally-friendly ride to work by a chauffeur-driven car carrying his briefcase, documents and shoes - a practice he has now stopped.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6235286.ece
May 6, 2009