bike!, on your

views updated

bike!, on your go away! Take action! Used as an expression of annoyance, or to urge someone to do something; in this sense, it became a 1980s catchphrase in Britain, used as an exhortation to the unemployed to look for work. This derived from a speech by the Conservative politician Norman Tebbit, who said of his unemployed father in the 1930s, ‘He did not riot, he got on his bike and looked for work.’