Should we fear the new mayor of City Hall?

A letter hits our inbox:

I know you may have concerns that our new mayor doesn't have the need of the city's important car drivers close to his heart.

Hopefully this picture of him parking his car on double yellow lines in a bus stop will put your mind at ease.

I'd feel more comfortable if he was driving a 4x4 or transit van rather than an electric Smart car, but you can't have everything.

Looks good to us: he's already got a bicycle and a pedestrian in front of the car, ready to run them over.

B.T. nearly-approved Candidate: Owain George

As we fear that Cllr Gollop will betray us, our next favourite candidate is Owain George, candidate for Clifton

.

He says clearly

• I will recognise that cars are the preferred means of travel & free up the city so they can move about again
• Stop the extension of bus & cycle lanes where they do not work, are counter-productive or actually dangerous
• Deal with problems affecting the flow of traffic in the city
• Welcome businesses with staff who need to park at work
• Create more on street parking so that independent shops & businesses can compete with shopping centres

We actually suspected that he was some spoof candidate, as he's almost the opposite of George Ferguson.

• George Ferguson: red trousers, runs a brewery, praises cycling
• Owain George: blue trousers, runs a pub, praises driving. Poses for a photo with his hand on his "tender parts" to show how sensitive he is.

Our real concern is something different: Owain George owns the Albion Pub, Clifton.

Albion Clifton used to be nice pub in Clifton to which you could drive, leave the engine running, pop in to have a swift 8 pints and then carry on with your HGV delivery schedule. Used to be.


Today, the has council needlessly blocked Boyce's Avenue to parking. Here we have a mayoral candidate that can not even stop the council taking away the parking spaces from outside his own pub. How can this person claim to be able to push back the anti-car actions of our city!

Worse than this though: today the Albion is a gastropub.

Gastropubs are a plague upon the hard-working delivery drivers in the city. Before, we could nip into places like the Albion, the Pump House and many other destinations, to take the edge off a tiring job. If you were really hungry: go to a cafe and have bacon and eggs.

Now those pub owners refuse to serve you unless you sit down and order veal with your quails eggs, and make you pay five pounds for some "authentic" beer.

Similarly, he offers to create more on-street parking. It's a nice promise, but where? Clifton has even run out of corners to corner park on -which would leave the zebra crossing between the Albion and Clifton Village proper -but that's where tesco's HGVs park for deliveries.


 


There we have it. The one openly cyclist hating, car parking advocate for the mayoral elections turns out to be a gastropub owner who can't even prevent the street in front of his gastropub becoming pedestrians only.


This is why we think that even though his opinions may be aligned with ours, his inability to execute on them renders him worthless even as the #1 'disposable' vote.


Who does that leave? Spud Murphy, who appears to have left a Wurzels concert after too much cider -and frankly would make Bristol's reputation for being provincial worse -or that traveller who cite his address as Stokes Croft and judging by the manifesto has clearly imbued too much of the Stokes Croft retail pharmaceutical portfolio. No, not Chris Chalkley -someone else.

Bristol Traffic Mayoral Election -Candidate Gollup: cycling city is safe in my hands:

We now have officially backed two candidates for the City for holding opinions that match with our goals: Cllr Gollop (cons) and Owain George (clifton)

Cllr Gollup has already been documented as the sole councillor prepared to denounce the cycle city program
 As he said in 2001:
"The Cycling City initiative brought in match-funding which has delivered new cycling routes but these have largely been achieved at the expense of the majority of road users - by reducing road space or capacity

That is precisely what we think. Except now he is either lying through his teeth to get elected, or he has completely betrayed us. He is quoted in the Evening Post this year:
"Getting more people cycling is absolutely key to the future of the city because it will also reduce the city's carbon footprint and congestion during the rush hour."

​

Councillor Geoff Gollop says as mayor he would encourage sport and cycling

We hope he's  just taken some advice from his London leaders, and is now is lying to get into power.

But how to know. We've tried to contact him to ask "are you really holding strong to your principles and just lying to get elected, or has something happened to your brain?"

No answer.

The Mayoral Elections

So far we've been silent on the topic of the elections -it's down to the conservative and UKIP candidates to see who gets the white-van vote. Although the tories are targeting the white van constituency at the national level, Cllr Gollop is now being pro-cycling city, which makes us worried. It could just be he's realised that the elves of Somerset and the dwarves of Gloucestershire have no vote, so there's no point promising anything to the commuters who keep this city afloat.

 
What we haven't seen from that candidate is any sign that he really does support these bicycle things, which is why we do think it is just a facade. It's the other candidates that worry us.

Here we are shocked to see Cllr John Rogers, LD candidate for the election, alongside his folding brompton bicycle and looking cheerful, here in the autonomous district of Montpelier, leaning his toy vehicle against the community bike rack put in to help the vans turn the corner.

The Bristol Traffic Project is considering conducting interviews with all the candidates, to see where they really stand on the issues that matter. What questions should we ask? And remember, they have to be questions that support our agenda, not some hippy-hobbist anti-motorist plot

Budget 2012: How motoring groups reacted

THE price of petrol will go up by around three pence a litre later this summer, motoring groups have warned this week after Chancellor George Osborne announced his Budget.

Among the changes the Conservative/Lib Dem Coalition announced this week were changes to car fuel benefit charges, a revision of how car company tax operates, and the announcement that the price of fuel will go up by around three pence in August.

Here's how a wide variety of motoring groups reacted to the announcements in the Commons:

"A free-flowing national network cannot be built without proper road charging. If the Prime Minister's advisors have not told him this simple fact he needs to replace them with people who understand the problem.
"A true leader will explain to motorists that we cannot expect a first-class strategic road network without paying for it."
- Environmental Transport Association

"The Chancellor has squandered a very real opportunity to support UK industry, jobs and economic recovery, by his Budget policy on fuel duty.
"Mr Osborne has lost an opportunity to benefit every household in the UK and he must be persuaded to change his policy."
- Freight Transport Association

“Future changes in company car tax rates and capital allowances will drive fleet managers and drivers into lower emission cars at a faster rate.
"We are, however, disappointed that the Chancellor has decided to press ahead with the August 1, 2012 3.02p per litre rise in fuel duty."
- The Association of Car Fleet Operators

“The Chancellor’s actions to improve research and development tax credits and develop a catapult for transport systems and future cities will help trigger substantial extra business investment in the years ahead."
"The UK automotive industry is attracting major levels of investment and creating real opportunities for engineering and manufacturing businesses."
- Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders

"At a time of record prices at the pumps the August increase in duty is a budget blow-out which will force drivers off the road and could bring a summer of discontent for many."
- AA

"George Osborne said that taxes should be fair, simple, predictable and support work. Motoring tax fails on at least three of these measures and it is time for a review of exactly what fuel duty is for and who it impacts most." - The RAC Foundation

Do you think the 2012 Budget has helped or hindered motorists? Share your thoughts by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com or call 01704 392404.

Walthamising Hotwells

One of the Clifton Traffic Calming proposals -voted for, with support from the Waltham Forest Faction of the ruling LibDem party, was to remove some yellow lines from this road "to calm traffic", with a key justification being this is near a school and it would improve safety. This perfect Walthamisation: to improve the facilities for us, the motorists, using the walking and cycling part of the council budget, and claiming it is for "their own good". Waltham Forest excels in this, such as in the downgrading of a route to the Olympics, though we are surprised at how much it cost to make it so easy to PavePark. We in Bristol don't need such help.

This is the road covered. There are some buildouts already, one positioned to protect the wingmirrors of cars, and room on the other side of the road to park. The target area must be further down the hill.

Ah yes, here it is. A narrow stretch, two chicanes and then a wide space -wide enough to get two small cars into.

But here's a question: is this worth spending political capital on? Barbara Janke, Cllr for Clifton (Waltham Forest Ward), is in charge of a minority council that often cites its green foundations as a way of differentiating it. To remove some double yellow lines "to calm traffic" is going to get bad press in the green-troublemaker news outlets (fortunately, not the BBC or Evening Post), and embarrass others in the council. For what? Two parking spaces.

It may seem odd, but we in the Bristol Traffic project are against the proposal for two reasons. One is this: there are more important places to add parking areas that a back road near Hotwells

The other --and this is key-- is this: double yellow lines provide Clifton parents with designated dropoff areas on the school run. Those two parking spaces would be wasted on residents or commuters, as only two people a day will benefit from each new space; four people per day on a weekday, dropping down to one person/day on a weekend. Twelve vehicles a week. Whereas as a short-stay parking area, you could have ten parents a morning queuing up to do dropoffs, push the kids out and carry straight on into the city, without having to get out the car.

It is far more valuable for parental dropoff than for resident and commuter parking, and if the councillors don't realise this, they are talking to the residents and not the school parents. If we sent our kids to this school, we'd be in touch with Barbara Janke and others defending our right to park here, instead of saying "yes, we think two more residents should park here." Who cares about the residents? That's four voters, compared to the possibly twenty that ten families could offer.

The other thing is that traffic calming claim looks, well, weak. You could push it for Pembroke Road -you can get up to speed. But here? Even with a buildout dropped enough to let vans go over it, you can't keep your speed up, you have to give way at the bottom anyway.

For the sake of twelve extra vehicle parking opportunities a week, Barbara and Terry are going to make enemies of everyone in the school, as well as devalue the entire "LibDem are green" brand. Admittedly, their Westminster School and Parliament compatriots are doing the same thing, but if you look at the recent election results, not only did the Green party take a LibDem seat, they came second in a few other wards. The cost of adding two parking spaces here -both financial and political - doesn't justify it. Two happy residents, some commuters who aren't even in the same ward as the councillors, and 40-50 annoyed parents plus the local green troublemakers blogging about it -and maybe even letting the evening post in on the joke, so that Barbara gets laughed at as much as Gary "bus stop" Hopkins did.

This is just political ineptitude.

Clifton Park: one possibility

We borrowed Quercus's Land Rover to drive over to Clifton Park one morning, to see where excessive parking restrictions were endangering people.

Well, it's not by Clifton High, as the excessive restrictions at this end (the zebra crossing zig-zags and the school keep clear zone) are both in use for child dropoff. These restrictions therefore provide an important feature for important school run parents, and so should be retained.

Looking the other way, no, no parking restrictions at all. What were these road safety campaigners going on about?

Then a bit further down we saw it. Can you see here? Where there is enough space for a bicycle to go safely along without fear of being hit by a car. Exactly. Without Fear. We don't want that, as it only encourages them.


Real road safety campaigners would actually push for a zebra crossing here, as that crossing by the school is the only way to cross this wide and busy road. But we don't want that, it will take away more long-stay parking spots. Instead we are going to pretend that it's all about safety, when really it's about convenience.

On this, large double yellow lined road, only the car X411WCG is bold enough to assert their rights to park here, even before the excessive restrictions have been removed.

If people are prepared to park here, even when they will get ticketed and fined (at least on those three days a year when the rule is enforced), then that's enough to justify. As it isn't right next to a school, making it residential parking wouldn't remove any school run parking opportunities. If it makes it more hazardous to cycle round the back streets of Clifton, well, if we cared about that, we wouldn't be pushing for more parking -and the ward wouldn't have voted Barbara and Terry back in, would they?

In a cycling city, this space would be turned into a segregated cycle path, before anyone got used to the idea of parking here.

But while Bristol is a Cycling City, Clifton is not part of the city -it's older- and so exempt from any of these changes.

Clifton Politicians: the imagination of Goldfishes

Back in March, we noted Clifton's proposals to sneak in some extra double yellow line removal, using "traffic calming" as the excuse. Well, it's been approved. More on that another day.

But before we look at the councillors actions, let's look at the opposing team, which in Clifton means the Conservative Party, leader one R. Murdoch. The losing candidate the May Election says "we need more imaginative thought to solve the problem" of parking. In particular, this ambitious politician is "undertaking a survey of the entire community, finding out where yellow lines are needed and where they can be taken away" and by doing so, he has found 100 metres of double yellow lines that aren't needed.

Well, Clifton certainly needs help if it is not to become like Montpelier, as LY52RKV and  S899ANW are forced to do. Yet these are nice cars, with wingmirrors -and Montpelier parking doesn't suit them.

We asked one of the tax dodgers what they thought of the proposals, and got this reply, which we quote unedited:

Those yellow lines aren't just wasted parking, they probably stop roads being blocked, helping through traffic, and make it easier to pass bicycles. Replace that with unrestricted parking and what do you get? 25 more cars.

That's not imaginative.

That's about as imaginative as a goldfish.

Imagination would be pushing for even one car club car bay in Clifton.

Imagination would be to put in bike parking in the village so that people don't need a car to drive from their house to the shops.

Imagination would be to discourage parents from driving their kids to school by enforcing rules about keep-clear and parking on pavements.

Imagination would be to use a resident permit scheme to limit car ownership, eliminate commuter parking and ensure that "sustainable" housing has an even harder limit on the number of cars per household.

Imagination would be to encourage the residents to use the bus, instead of trying to reduce the number of hours the new bus lane will be running.

This shows no imagination whatsoever and is painful to read. Are you sure the Clifton Conservatives web site isn't some kind of spoof?

Obviously, we don't agree with any of the actions, but we have to agree with their comments about imagination. It is the lack of action from the authorities that are forcing the residents to act for themselves. Such as here, where DV60XJL is forced to park on the yellow lines and pavements outside Tesco Express.

But even that is fiddling around the edges. As the tax-dodger notes, 100m of yellow lines only transfers into 25 spaces for important vehicles. Noise. And more to the point, we are already using a lot of that space already. It's not "unused parking", it's parking areas reserved for important people in a hurry -such as the Mercedes N445CRP.

Even if we don't want people thinking outside the box, we do want our councillors to think of a much bigger box than adding 25 more cars to Clifton. Or maybe thirty if you force the cars in hard enough.

We want much, much more. Here's what we propose

• Making the downs all year round car parking, rather than a pay-to-use luxury on summer weekends
• Removing  zebra crossings, school keep clear zones, and that bit outside the church, as they all take up space. 
• Adding a multi-storey car park somewhere within the area. Yes, it's full of old listed buildings, but that didn't stop a large car park going up on the edge of St Pauls, did it?

Faffing around with 100m of yellow lines isn't going to solve the problems the area has. At least the locals are already imagining more than this so-called-contender has to offer. This is important, as the councillors in charge share the same limited imagination; it is down to us citizens to act.

For the next few days, we're going to cover Clifton!

The bikelash has arrived!

Over in New York, there's a fantastic power struggle going on, as important politicians fight troublemaking cyclists, to try and get a segregated bike path removed. There's a good summary online, by the economist John Cassidy. Sadly he, gets criticised not just by the usual activists, but by other economists. That worries us. If the people we trust to run the banks and get the global economy out of the mess the banks and the economists got it into can't even agree on how bad bicycles are for a city, well, it's not a good start. How can they come with a plan for the global economy that works if they can't even agree that bicycles and pedestrians don't belong in modern cities.

Here in Bristol, Cllr Gollop is one person who has taken a public stance, denouncing the Cycling City program for spending money, not increasing the number of cyclists they promised, and for taking away road space from us, the important people.:

"The Cycling City initiative brought in match-funding which has delivered new cycling routes but these have largely been achieved at the expense of the majority of road users - by reducing road space or capacity.

This is why Cllr -soon to be Mayor- Gollop is in the lead for the 2010 Bristol Traffic "councillor of the year" award. He's our kind of councillor.

Some of the cycling troublemakers have been asking "where are all the bits of road that Cllr Glossop said had been taken away for bicycles". That's tough -we had to nip out and get one of those cycle bristol maps and do some research.

1. Bike lanes? Same as ever: short stay parking.
2. Keep clear zones at school? Same as ever, though some yellow lines are going in -lines we can't blame on the bicycles.
3. The Kingsdown RPZ? The locals voted it for it so they'd have the opportunity to park after going for a drive. Selfish actions by inner city troublemakers, but not cycling-city work.
4. Bike Parking? Yes, this has taken space away, something to cover later.
5. 20 mph zones? A topic for another day.

What about the dedicated routes? In the city, the Farm Pub Path (tm) and the Eastville Park to UWE route all go through parks. We'd like roads there, so you could say it's a wasted opportunity, but it's not really taking up space. For economists, that's "opportunity cost", what you could have done with the money instead. Still, every segregated bike path is a bus route in waiting, as we and West of England Partnership say. As for the Hartcliffe way route -we've found that provides extra parking.

It seems to us, the things that have got worse over the cycling city timescale then are

• The removal of paveparking opportunities
• The 20 mph zone
• The increased cost of driving
• The showcase bus routes.

None of the cycling facilities have directly taken away any roadspace from cars.

What then was Cllr Glossop trying to say -what did he really mean? He meant this

To us, the important people of the city, the Cycling City program is a failure because the number of people on bicycles and hence in our way has increased.

It doesn't matter that no direct road space has been taken away in the inner city apart from eight paid parking spaces --the mere presence of bicycles slows us down. The fact that these people pay nothing while the cost of driving continually increases makes us even more angry.

This is of course the Daily Mail commenter line, but everyone is afraid to come out and say it. Not us, not John Cassidy -and not a lot of Evening Post commenters, but they don't make the proper economic argument. We shall.

Every bicycle holds up traffic, so while the private costs of a bicycle are low, the external cost is high. A bicycle occupying a whole lane takes up as much space as a car -and because it's going at half the speed, it slows down the cars behind it more than a single car would. The congestion cost of a bicycle is therefore higher than that of a motor car!

That's the real issue with the Cycling City. Not the infrastructure, not just the parking -taking away our pavements. It's the increase in bicycles on what the cycle planners call the key cycle routes to the city, but for which we have a different name: the main roads.

We've been saying this since 2008. Us, on our own, sometimes with help a couple of times a week from the niche papers the Evening Post and the Daily Mail. The BBC, they're on our side with Top Gear, but that's relegated to BBC2 now, and in their news broadcasts they don't often have people that speak our language. Even the AA, the RAC and the Association of British Drivers don't come out and spell out the real costs that cycling imposes on our city. As far as politics goes, we have Glossop and the Ministers Hammond and Pickles on our side -but the only party that wants to ban bicycles from important roads was the UK Independence Party. Nobody else speaks our language.

This is changing. Welcome to the bikelash.

[For anyone wishing to congratulate the councillor, his contact details are online. Why not email him and congratulate him for being on our side!]

The politics of copyright

We see that the "Turning Bristol Red" blog is using one of our photographs of Jon Rogers. Not just embedding, but putting a complete new copy up on their own server: http://turningbristolred.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/p1030249.jpg.

That was a photograph staged as part of the ongoing treegate story. Yes, like Top Gear, sometimes things are rigged. It was Chris Hutt's funeral, Jon was one of the people who stood up said nice things about Chris: it was a year today that we were all down at the Zetland Road junction, where Chris presented Jon with the second place in the Antibicycle awards.

It's bit of a shame, therefore, that what was a deliberately staged photograph at Chris's funeral has become, well politicised. This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the text, it's worth a read and the audience can come to their own conclusions, only that the Bristol Traffic team doesn't like making enemies, as it interferes with our strategic plans. We sometimes see Jon in the street, he stops and says hello. And last week one of our reporters bumped into Paul Smith over in Portishead, where Paul was polite, despite the fairly muddy condition of the reporter. If someone we know and respect -such as the Bristol Blogger- had wanted the pic, we'd have said "yes, go for it", but we're not so bemused by someone using it who hasn't yet done anything to help us, and without even asking.

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This site doesn't make any declaration of how our pictures can be re-used. There's an implicit declaration of copyright there -that it is retained by the original photographers. If people want to use our photographs elsewhere, it is not merely polite to ask, it is a requirement -something that someone trained in law should realise. We are pleased that our work has ended up being used in the campaign leaflets of the Labour, Green and LD parties over the past few years -everyone who asked got the response "yes". But they asked, they didn't just take.

This is particularly ironic given one of the last acts of the labour government was the Digital Economy Bill, which has some pretty awful provisions on copyright in the internet era, as record and DVD companies don't understand about how networks work, and would rather we all sat at home paying a premium to consume whatever Sky TV beams to us, with the little TV box then uploading statistics on what we watched. Not, say uploading our own photographs or videos to youtube, to become our own media reporters, whether it's on traffic issues in the city centre or -far better and braver- filming the overthrow of dictatorships from your mobile phones as you stand up to rulers that have declared a state of emergency for forty years.


It's also amusing given the experience of Crap Walking and Cycling in Waltham Forest, who had some of their artwork used by their Local Labour party; quite a story [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], though we suspect Freewheeler would be happier if they actually addressed some of the issues that the photographs raise.

Darren, you can re-use the four photos on this posting. That's two of you, one of Gary Hopkins and one of the Eastville ward results where Glenn Vowles is not that far behind the conservatives.

But not the current Jon pic you are using, and if you want any of our others, email us first.

Next time we're at an election we'll try and get some less blurred ones of you. We hear Charlie Bolton will be standing again, and he shared his chips with us. Nobody else did that.

Trouble in the Trees

Our coverage of forest sell off issues continues. Last week, how locking up the generally open forestry commission car parks will prevent us Bristolians from driving out of town to engage in casual sex with complete strangers.

This week, the mountain bikers join in. No, not with the casual sex with van drivers -they are too muddy and dress strange-  but with the sell off.

This time, it is the Bristol Trails Group, the people who build and maintain the MTB trails in Ashton Court, 50 acre wood, Leigh Woods and nearby, complaining that this will mean that most of the woods will be closed off to them. The problem is liability insurance, more than anything else. Who wants to pay for the insurance for letting bicycles in. Far more profitable to turn it over to private shooting facilities instead, for important people. This will ruin the plans to have a mountain bike centre near Bristol. While we obviously don't engage in any such actions ourselves, every MTB-er who cycles over to Ashton Court not only means one less car on the M4 heading to Wales, it provides entertainment for us in the city to see these people coming home again covered in mud.

We note the Conservative MP for the Forest of Dean will be appearing at a meeting in Coleford, at 7pm tonight. This sell off matters as much to Bristol as it does to the Forest of Dean, so attendance there may be fun.


We also note that there is a public consultation on the proposals, a consultation which invites feedback. And what is the address for feedback?

Forestry Commission England
620 Bristol Business Park
Coldharbour Lane
Bristol
BS16 1EJ

By our estimate, that is just over the Recognised Pedestrian Route from the UWE campus. If some ukuncut/no-to-tuition-fee-rises/no-to-forest-sell-off-event were to take place up there one weekday afternoon, it could be, well, entertaining.

Fun in the Forest

We're a bit concerned about government plans to privatise the forests. This is not because we have taken up mountain biking -even though we appreciate such activities do not get in our way, we fear that they encourage the riders to get fit during the week by commuting.


We're slightly worried that even our papers, like the Daily Telegraph, are expressing doubts. But frankly we don't care that much about dog walking, horse riding or other daytime leisure activities.
 
Some people may think we would be in favour of cutting down the trees, putting in more shopping malls, new suburbs. Motorways. But remember, we are part of a big society that uses those forests for night time activities too.

Who hasn't nipped up the M4, over the old bridge and up to the Forest of Dean, pulled in one of the laybys and had an intimate encounter with a complete stranger from time to time? It doesn't matter about your sexual preferences, it's classless: MP, priest, van driver, housewife, TV presenter of football or car shows -it's all the same in the dark. Anonymous entertainment, with only the bridge tax to stop us doing more than three or four times a week.


And with our van being a roaming retail outlet for the city's sex life's accessories, those trips can a big business for us. Selling safe sex accessories in the 'dean can be a nice little earner -some of those TV presenters have been round the block a few times, and you need all the protection we can sell you.

The proposals to sell of the country's forest to the highest bidder will interfere with small businesses all round the country. 

There's a national campaign against this organising a petition; everyone should sign. There's also a local group, Hands off our Forest, working for the Forest of Dean itself.

These people have been very active, and have this lovely quote from their conservative MP Mark Harper on Jan 3 2011:

there are not and never have been any plans to sell off the Forest of Dean to developers who would cut down the Forest to replace it with recreation parks.

This is beautiful. If they say, sell off half the forest to developers who cut it down and replace it with recreation parks, the MP was being honest. If they say, sell of the entire forest, cut it down and replace it with suburban housing estates, the MP can say they were speaking truthfully. And if if they do sell of the entire forest and have it cut down and replaced with recreation parks, provided the documentation shows the planning didn't begin until Jan 4, then again, he was telling the truth at the time.

For some reason it reminds of Bill Clinton's "technically we did not have sex" claims, or Tony Blairs' "The legal opinion was that we didn't need a second resolution". A statement which, from a legal perspective is honest, but means something entirely different at the time. We'll have to remember something similar the next time one of the team's drivers is caught in a compromising situation with a local MP up near the Forest of Dean.




This is why we not only support the Hood campaing, we propose a new slogan for the campaign " Fuck in the forest, not with the forest"

Breaking news: congestion in the city centre

"Mike" sends us a note to point out that the Evening Post has finally stopped going on about football stadiums and cyclists in shopping streets in nailsea, and instead focused on the key problem of the city: congestion caused by hundreds of students.

As usual, we got our coverage in days earlier. If somebody is now surprised that it takes a while to get out of town by the M32 at 17:00, they don't know the secret routes through Broadmead or St Pauls. Tourists.

Bristol Indymedia has some more coverage. While we are against students, obviously, some of them may go on to earn enough to afford decent cars -but with these proposed funding changes, they may be forced to walk, cycle or use public transport for many years after graduating.

Police work over the University

For some reason we could not get our van down Whiteladies Road and over to the M32 this afternoon, so had to divert up the hill and hit the Highbury Vaults for a few beers before continuing. One thing we could see was this police helicopter circling the university quarter, which may be a sign of student unrest.

Students! Yes the government is going to massively increase fees for all future degree students, and take away the attendee allowance for anyone in higher education colleges. But the collapse of the economy implies the chances of you being in the payback part of the scheme is much less likely than you think! Furthermore, this government has abolished all funding for speed cameras! For that reason alone, we cannot come out and support you. That and the traffic jams you have created today!

The Wye Valley Sustrans Path Proposal

Now that even the cycling world has picked up on the Wye Valley Sustrans Path proposal, and Tidenham Parish's opposition, we have to own up to something. We drove our white van over the sea to Wales to lend our support for the "Say Yes" photoshoot. Not because it will increase Tidenham Parish council tax rates by 40% -apparently- or because it will encourage cycling, but for some other reasons.

1. There are many fine pubs along this path, including the Bridge Inn, Chepstow at the rear of the photograph below. Fine pubs, with proper English beer on one side of the river (Stella Artois and Kronenbourg), and strange Welsh beers (Brains SA) on the other.
2. Having a bike path that goes all the way up the valley will offer us excellent pub crawl opportunities - a trip from Chepstow to Symond's Yat and back would earn about nine pints.
3. The path will go all the way to Chepstow, and, through Bulwark, over the Severn Bridge to Aust.
4. If you park and pedal from Aust, you don't have to pay the bridge tax, which costs you about two pints.

Therefore, we support it not for those cycle commuters or family rides, but for lowering the costs of pub crawls up the Wye valley. The fact that it will be funded from Lottery money, charity donations and Tidenham Parish makes it even better.

Therefore we encourage everyone who fancies a pub crawl across two countries to lend their support to these plans.

Note also that the supporters all came out with their helmets on, heartwarming. The joyful sight of a small child scootering along at walking pace in full body armour gives us hope for the future.

Returning to Tidenham Parish Council, note their web site encourages visitors,  advocates visiting nature and promises the cycle path will improve the area:

"Nature reserves, walking routes, cliffs for climbing, caves for exploring are only a few of the attractions available to both residents and visitors and there are plans for more such as the Wye Valley Cycle Path Scheme."

It is interesting, then, that the parish council is against the proposal. -and their key complaint is the increase in parking. Well, its our inalienable right to park the Bristol Traffic White Van wherever we want, be it the city or the countryside, so that offends us -that's war on motorist speak there. Furthermore, as we note, the pub crawl will start in Aust, because that saves car drivers 6 quid, and us van people £10.90. 


Why then, are they really anti cyclist? Well, the obvious reason is that cyclists are strange people with funny clothes, helmets and personal hygiene who don't pay their own way. Which is something we know already. But why is Tidenham Parish Council scared to come out and say the truth, why is still living in a war-on-motorist, political correctness era where it shuffles politely and complains about parking, instead of saying what they really think, which is they don't want people on bicycles through their parish?

The Park selloff -creating a new batch of troublemakers

We drove over to the Council House on the day the parkland selloff was discussed, as part of our campaign for a dual carriageway from Lockleaze to the M32. Nobody else, no other  Evening Post commenters were there to support us and our van with it's "Make Muller Road an M-Way" sign on the side, and we didn't get into the local paper either.

There was someone with a horse who did, which gives us ideas for the future.

Nor were there any police FIT teams out recording these subversives, so we did their work. Welcome to the Big Society, where we are forced to spy on subversives without even the allowances the DDR used to give their reporters.

And who are these people we we were taking note of? Well on the right of the photos there some green party people already in the database for being potentially socialist ,but in the foreground, we were horrified to see the stockwood conservative councillor

These people should be on our side in the war of the motorists, yet they won't help us with our Lockleaze dual carriageway plans -no cash, they say- and are even starting to worry about parkland.

Looking at the video, it had a real 1980s feel to it. There's some union people up by the building entrance opposing cuts, people in the foreground shouting out against selloffs of council-owned assets. Ah, the old days are back again!