Igor Clark

As Proudhon put it, "property is theft, so I'm nicking your mountain bike".

OK, I paraphrase - he was actually talking about the keys for the bedsits for which he was the property manager, and the fact that the people who built these bijoux spaces kept nicking said keys so that they could sneak in at night and really assert their natural rights of property on them, not mountain bikes - they didn't have mountain bikes back then. In fact the stupid penny farthing didn't even dare show its stupid face 'til about 30 years later than when Proudhon was moaning on about how bleeding unfair it all was, so never mind how visionary he might have been, he couldn't possibly have been complaining about people nicking bikes of any description really. Well, not proper ones with pedals and cranks and that.

OK, not really; I don't know whether this was a mountain bike that was nicked. Mind you, it probably was, because it seems to be the law that anyone riding bikes in London has to ride a mountain bike. 'Specially the ones with the big thick tyres and the bouncy suspensions, 'cos they're really good for slamming into the Olympian 6-inch kerbs on our treacherous city roads.

Anyway. Thieving bastards.