Actions, not words (and other reasons why I bought an ebike)

A FEW years ago, I found myself in the same room as a senior councillor who was boasting (yes, boasting!) that he had never once caught a Cardiff bus. Imagine!

- SARA ROBINSON

Sara Robinson with her new electric bike

This came from a person with actual influence (although not directly) over local transport policy in the capital city.

He was apparently proud of never having used the service that thousands of people rely on every single day to get to work, to the hospital, to school, and to manage their lives. A dinosaur, in other words. And not self-aware enough to know it.

Personally, if that were me, I'd have kept that schtum. But there’s no accounting for white man confidence, is there? No wonder voters are fed up.

There's a particular kind of political arrogance that comes with telling people what to do while doing the opposite yourself, and it has the shelf life of a prawn in a heatwave.

It's not a new attitude, either. Margaret Thatcher reportedly said any man who finds himself on a bus past the age of 26 can count himself a failure in life. It is, of course, an appalling thing to say and to believe. Some politicians, it seems, never got that memo.

Contrast that with the speech Dafydd Trystan Davies gave from the podium after winning a Senedd seat for Plaid Cymru in Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf. It was, for me, one of the standout moments of the election results coverage.