Back to school - the school run - a little plea

Francis Hirzel cycles to school daily (Gabriel Szabo/Guzelian)
from Independent article linked below

As the start of the school year is only just around the corner, a little plea. 

A growing number of children would like to cycle to school and indeed are. For some it will be their first time cycling regularly on our roads. Please give our young people who are starting to cycle some space, and be considerate if they wobble or make what may seem to be an erratic decision. 

We all make mistakes, particularly when doing something new for the first time. It makes it even more important for those who have to drive their children to school that you take extra care over the next couple of weeks. 

The same goes incidentally for taking care around adults on bikes too. 

Thanks for reading, and hope that it's a good start to the new school year for everyone!

Fishponds - a different take on the consultation responses

The whole Fishponds saga for me is a microcosm of the political challenges that we face as a community if we genuinely wish to see progress. Taken at face value the responses from the consultation seemed to give an overwhelming rejection of the trial approach which my Lib Dem colleagues and I were advocating.

There is cross party consensus that there is a problem, the challenge is doing anything to actually fix it. The pie chart shown above is from the data provided from the consultation (I put in an FOI request to get the breakdown - view pdf here) . I've added an extra layer, which broadly categorises the comments into people who agree there is a problem, those who think there isn't one, those who are undecided, and people using the consultation to flag other issues.

It is worth, in my view, re-visiting part of the conclusion made by the highway engineers/officers who wrote report 13-741:

There is a possibility that there will be a increase in traffic flows in some residential roads due to transfer of traffic on account of the point closures, but this will be offset by the forecasted reduction in traffic over the larger area.

In my view, the officers are stating that resident concerns of an increase in traffic are unlikely to be realised because of the forecasted reduction in traffic over the larger area.

Labour and Conservative councillors on the committee were unanimous in their view that nothing more should be done here in supporting the recommendations in paper 14-371. I should also add, that in my view officers made exactly the right recommendation. Officers work in a political environment where they need to respond to the councillors who are elected to represent us.

It does beg the question, can local people really be too surprised if long standing problems aren't fixed when neither of the two elected parties are prepared to call for any real action? This was the 4th consultation for the same problem in 12 years. No action has been suggested to date (that I'm aware of) by either of the elected parties to resolve this.

With my Lib Dem colleagues we will continue to work hard to get action to fix long standing local problems. That frustration was what led me to stand in the local elections. Officers frequently know how to fix local issues, but all too often our politicians get in the way.

If you are tired and frustrated by the lack of any real action do get in touch. There is a group of people locally who really do want to make a difference. I hope that in future elections people will be able to scrutinise the record of action, or lack thereof, to sort out local problems by those political groups who currently represent us. Maybe in the future we'll have a few more people supporting the Lib Dems locally, and we can really start to fix some of these issues.

Decaying van rusting to bits in the street

It's coming up for two years since I first came to view the property that is now my home in Furzedown. Fairly confident betting that it's been a little longer that this van has been parked on my street.

Thanks to the pro-active nature of the Labour team in Tooting & Furzedown that represent us locally I'm left wondering if they are waiting for the van to naturally decay and then claim that it's as a result of their work!

Another issue on Mitcham Lane is the cars that are regularly parked there for sale, clearly not private re-sellers. If local people keep on voting Labour, we can't be surprised if we keep the same problems.

A Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) would probably help. Even though the lead councillor locally, Cllr Leonie Cooper, is co-chair of SERA (Labour's environmental group), you would have thought that a CPZ might have already been put in place given how long she has been a councillor. Doesn't really say much for her local action/credentials on the environment.

Given the lack of action shown by Labour, with my Lib Dem colleagues we are working to tackle issues such as this. If you'd like to get involved and help out do get in touch.