There are, according to musician Katie Melua, six million bicycles in Bejing. There were, according to me, about 18 bicycles in Dublin, all of them belonging to members of the Green Party.

But not for long... If I rack my brain, I can probably think of something that gets my goat more than cyclists, but right now I couldn't be bothered. The ridiculous head gear. The laughable Spandex shorts. The embarrassing bicycle clips. The smug 'look at me, I'm saving the world' expression on their craggy faces, as they hurl abuse at someone in a brightly coloured sports car.

The fact that the two countries most closely associated with cycling -- China and the Netherlands -- are two of the most extreme incarnations of soul-less, work-obsessed totalitarianism on the one hand, and permanently stoned, perverted Godlessness on the other. And the splendid irony that amongst the participants in its flagship sporting event, the Tour de France, which should be a showcase for this most healthy of pastimes, half of them are revealed to be on drugs.

My dislike of cyclists probably started the first time that a bicycle, carelessly tied to a lamp post beside which I'd parked my car, blew over in the wind and scraped my paintwork. But my hatred is not simply petty and personal. Cyclists, you see, are the ultimate hypocrites. They want all the benefits of being a fully fledged road user -- courtesy from other drivers, their own private lanes -- but also want the freedom to break all the rules that car drivers must adhere to.

I've lost track of the number of times I've nearly been run down by a cyclist as I try to cross a one-way street, looking in the direction from which the traffic should be coming, only to be buzzed by a cyclist merrily riding up it the wrong way. I can't ever recall seeing a cyclist stop and wait at a red traffic light, or fail to treat the pavement as though it's something simply to be shared with pedestrians.

So if you ask me, 18 bicycles is still too many. This is all about to change for the worse, however, with the recent introduction of the Dublin bikes scheme. The idea seems to be that by placing 40 bicycle 'depots' around Dublin, and making use of the bikes free for the first half an hour, it will encourage people to ride from one location to another.

As I see it, there are two basic flaws with this scheme. The price of using the bikes goes up after the first 30 minutes, and rather steeply at that, which will inevitably lead to novice bike riders racing from one location to another to beat the 30 minutes curfew, therefore causing even more chaos on the roads, and pavements, than they usually do.

One journalist boasted in this newspaper last week about how he had tested the scheme, and was thrilled that he managed to go to a couple of meetings a short distance from his city centre office without having to use his car. I, however, have an alternative method of getting around town, which doesn't involve looking like a twat or being a permanent danger to pedestrians and car drivers. It's called walking. You might try it some time.

Michael O'Doherty is publisher of the VIP magazine group

- Michael O'Doherty