‘We cannot carry on like this’

We will have to change and we will all have to contribute to building a better country. But our political system is an obstacle to this kind of popular involvement because it is dominated by the rich and powerful. 

This heart-rending appeal for a better Britain comes from man of the people, left-winger Jon Cruddas MP.

A plucky defender of the rights of the little people, and a simple, plain man whose chosen means of mobility in central London is, er, a gigantic gas guzzling 4X4.

And that’s not all…

Jon Cruddas, 50, was driving a Land Rover Freelander near Hyde Park in central London on July 6 when he was pulled over by officers who noticed what appeared to be a defective brake light. The MP for Dagenham and Rainham, who is chairing Labour's policy review, was banned from driving for eight weeks for not having any insurance and fined £300 for an expired MOT. 

"When he was pulled over, he said 'sorry I don't have insurance'". The court heard that Cruddas already had six points on his license for speeding, so a further six points would have meant a compulsory driving ban. 

Mark McDonald, mitigating for the MP, said Cruddas put paying for everything on a "to-do" list, but simply forgot about it. "He drives round his constituency and there is an enormous amount to deal with. He has to go to his constituency, he has to go to Parliament so he will have to catch public transport." 

Referring to the six points Cruddas already had on his license, District Judge John Zani said "the trouble is six and six make 12" - the MP would get an automatic ban. 

Calling all Bolshevik cyclists

A CYCLING 'czar' has been appointed by Glasgow City Council to get more people on their bikes by 2020. 

Councillor Frank McAveety has been given the job of making cycling the most popular activity in the city. 

[Yes, cycling is destined to become even more popular in Glasgow than sex, drinking, fighting, or the consumption of fried Mars bars.]

The former sports minister said he was determined to see biking overtake walking, football, swimming and dancing as the city's favourite sport. 

Eh?

Now I must confess that I lead such a miserable and stunted existence that I had never previously heard of Frank McAveety.

But thanks to the interweb I now know a great deal.

Frankly, Frank doesn’t strike me as being someone who has ever been particularly interested in cycling.

Nor does his record as a tribune of the people inspire much confidence.

Yes, the job of Glasgow’s cycling Czar has gone to an overweight liar who also happens to be a sexist creep (or to put it another way, a political figure who puts a new gloss on the notion of ‘petitions’).

In the past Glasgow’s new cycling Czar has been very supportive of local Glasgow enterprise including a vehicle body shop repair company called Ferrymill Motors.

If Frank ever needs a career change I feel sure there's a place for him at Walthamstow Town Hall.

 The picture of Frank and his plate of food is borrowed from here.

deconstructing Edmund King and the AA cyclists

The helmets and vests will be handed out by AA president Edmund King and a crew of AA staffers. King is a keen cyclist, riding in cities on his Brompton and at home on his Whyte mountain bike.

The AA 'Cycle Safety Day' is a promotion organised by the AA Charitable Trust and is to highlight new research that shows that motorists want cyclists to wear helmets. Ninety seven per cent of AA members think cyclists should wear helmets, according to an AA Populus poll of almost 16,000 AA members

Edmund King, director of the AA Charitable Trust as well as being AA president, said: "Cycling has always been a part of the AA’s history. The first AA patrols rode bicycles from 1905 – some 40 years before patrol vans – and they were a regular sight on the nation's roads until the outbreak of the Second World War.

This stunt reminds me how much this blog has been neglecting its Edmund King Watch. (Catch up with our last educational EKW here.)

And before you get too carried away with that idyllic vision of friendly AA cyclists, do read Robert Davis’s comprehensive demolition job here.

Nick Clegg gets a new car

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has been given a £300,000 armoured Jaguar to protect him from anarchist protesters.

It can resist attacks with AK-47 assault rifles, CS gas and even hand grenades

But not even this may be able to protect Clegg from the war on the motorist.

4X4-sick London

17.8 per cent of vehicles in SW3, in Kensington and Chelsea, were 4x4s.

Nearby W8 was next with 17.4 per cent.

The preponderance of 4x4s in suburban areas of southern England was also shown by Guildford in Surrey, Wadhurst in Kent and Brentwood in Essex all featuring in the top 10.

Occupation-wise, those most likely to drive a 4x4 were haulage contractors, followed by bank directors, farmers and agricultural contractors.

‘Shared use’ for Waltham Forest cyclists

Cycling in Waltham Forest is all about sharing. The dedicated cycle path on Snaresbrook Road (a very British cycle path) is shared with pedestrians, who are obliged to step into it because their own reduced section of a footway which was once exclusively for them is currently blocked by this road contractor’s sign for motorists.

Cycle stands are shared with all manner of materiel, usually sacks of rubbish. But sometimes the tedium of daily obstruction is enlivened by a refreshing new variety, in this instance an Asda cart, far from home and ingeniously wedged between the two stands outside Sainsbury’s in Walthamstow High Street (below).


























If there was a prize for the sheer multiplicity and variety of ‘shared use’ condensed into a single location, it would surely have to be awarded to the off-road cycle route which links Walthamstow with South Woodford at the so-called ‘waterworks roundabout’ (where the A503, A104 and the A406 North Circular Road all meet). Here, a complex combination of subways and roadside cycle paths has been designed so that drivers do not have the distressing experience of having to wait at a red light in order to allow cyclists and pedestrians to cross.

This infrastructure, recommended by Sustrans as providing a magnificent ready-to-use section for an ‘Olympic Greenway’, allows users to share the experience of cycling with rats, litter thrown from vehicles, graffiti artists, the aftermath of an earthquake which has cracked open the earth’s crust all along the cycle path, all in a rich tropical habitat. This is just the kind of ‘quiet route’ which will ensure the success of the ‘cycling revolution’ in Outer London for those novices too timid to cycle on major roads.

Welcome to a cycle route that gets the thumbs-up from Sustrans.


























(Above) Abandon hope all ye who enter here. One of a number of subways in this vast and creepy complex.

(Below) Rubbish thrown from vehicles on the North Circular slip road provides a colourful display along the edge of the cycle path.












































(Below) The 'shared use' pathway for pedestrians and cyclists on the Woodford New Road section of this route. Notice the beautifully clear and well-maintained markings. The path extends to the fence which is buried away in the darkness of the overgrown vegetation. This is actually a scrap of Epping Forest and is under the control of the Corporation of London, which has no interest in maintaining its property when the only people affected are the cycling and walking peasants of East London. The London Borough of Waltham Forest has the power to force the Corporation of London to cut back this vegetation but is totally indifferent, and this obstruction happens every summer, year after year.










































A tip for anyone interested in seeing the local wildlife. This is the spot where you are most likely to encounter a rat. (Below) Enjoy.

Naz Sarkar: shocking revelation

Why did the infinitely talented Naz Sarkar fail to be elected as an MP? Against the national trend, the Labour vote in Reading West slumped fourteen and a half per cent.

The mystery has been solved.

Naz was a councillor in Waltham Forest, in London, and had done a fantastic job in proving that he was the best man for the job.

While we had plenty of A4 posters which carried Naz’s name we had no garden stakes which contained the name, and no billboards whatsoever.

Heartbreaking.

Every day is Critical Mass for drivers

(Above) Markhouse Road E17. Don't try getting past these cars on a bike because you can't.

(Below) This woman is her gas guzzling jag quite deliberately cruised into the cyclists’ Advanced Stop Line on Great Newport Street WC2. It’s quite absurd that anyone should be allowed to drive a private car around this part of central London but London’s entire car-centric transport culture is built around pampering toxic anti-social car criminals like this, who are not even required to obey basic road traffic law.


























(Below) This woman on Cranbourn Street WC2 is allowed to drive around central London in her sports car suppressing walking and cycling and poisoning the air. The pedestrian crossing is obstructed by a black cab.

Sadly they were not inside it

The Top Gear team scaled new heights after hurling a motor home off the top of a sheer cliff in their latest stunt.

Presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond were seen rolling the Citroen to its destruction in the picturesque coastal village of Hartland, North Devon.

Chris Evans: 1D10T

Chris Evans – and others like him – can have their million pound cars. But they have to attach state-issued licence plates reading "1D10T" or "S3LF1SH" or "1NAD3QUATE".

Pest Control to Major Tom

‘I have now arrived at The Mall shopping centre and I am parked by the Town Square entrance.’

‘You did remember to use the unmarked vehicle, didn’t you? People might not like knowing there’s a vermin problem.’

‘Crikey, I forgot! Anway, who cares? Everybody knows there are rats everywhere round here!’

(The Town Square. Today.)

Taxi drivers

In Wolverhampton, a man who between 1985 and 2005 had carried out more than 30 offences was, in 2006, deemed suitable to become a taxi driver.

There are no official rules about licensing taxi drivers. Instead, councils tend to follow various guidelines, one of which is issued by the Department of Transport.

More checks to police authorities revealed that 250 crimes had been carried out by licensed taxi drivers over the past three years, including rape and making threats to kill.

So why are councils so relaxed about giving taxi licences to convicted criminals?

Councils across the West Midlands region took £4.5m in taxi licensing fees.

Rat watch

There are now thought to be around 80 million rats in Britain, a rise of more than 200 per cent since 2007.


The Selborne Road approach to the pedestrianised Town Square, Walthamstow, is lined with demolished bollards, which are a tribute to the spectacular skill some drivers display in colliding with stationary objects (although obviously the bollards must bear some responsibility for not wearing helmets and luminous yellow jackets).

Funnily enough as I approached this bollard on Thursday a rat came whizzing out of the grass area beside the cycle stands, saw me, and dived into the gap underneath the bollard. It then emerged on the far side, its nose pointing out, eyeing me with its beady eyes, assessing what kind of a threat I posed. It decided I wasn't worth bothering with, emerged, and then scampered into these bushes (below) next to The Mall. It all happened too fast for me to get a picture of the brute.

I only mention this because that Orwellian contraption nearby known as The Big Screen, which has spent the past year broadcasting the weather forecast and the semi-finals of the Belgian netball second division league, will soon be showing a complete opera. Local residents are urged to 'picnic in the square and watch'. And who would not want to unfold a mat on a waste of concrete, take out their sandwiches, and gaze in rapture at a gigantic figure emoting in Italian? I merely caution spectators to watch out for anything which might appear and want to nibble their sandwiches or their toes.

Enjoy!

Another bogus Sustrans 'Greenway'

The Sustrans North East Greenways consultation document states:

Although the A104 creates a barrier for east-west connections, there are cycle facilities at the Waterworks Corner and Greenman (sic) Roundabout gyratorys (sic) which pass under the road network.

Or to put it another way: because cycling and walking come last in all transport planning, cyclists and walkers are forced into seedy underpass systems so as not to inconvenience traffic flow. Sustrans does nothing at all about challenging this discrimination. On the contrary, it accommodates it.

Let me concentrate today on the Waterworks underpass system. This is a filthy, remote, vandalised and inconvenient series of routes in a location which is quite literally infested by rats, and where personal security is minimal. There is no CCTV and from time to time serious assaults occur here.

If you want to travel between Walthamstow and South Woodford, either on foot or on a bicycle, you are denied a crossing at the junction shown in the first photograph below. In order not to slow down traffic, pedestrians and cyclists are diverted into the squalid and circuitous Waterworks underpass systems.

The Sustrans North East Greenways document promises a brand new 'Greenway'. It will incorporate the Waterworks underpass system, run a cycle path across the open grassy area leading to Beacontree Avenue E17, thread through the quiet residential streets of Upper Walthamstow, cross Hale End Road (where the 20 mph limit is a total farce), go down MacDonald Road, cross Fulbourne Road, go down Victoria Road, then cut across behind the college and the Town Hall, emerging by Farnham Avenue. But who is going to use this Greenway, assuming it ever gets built? It is not a leisure cycling route, because at least half of it is on urban streets, and the off-road section is scarcely very idyllic. And since many cyclists prefer the most direct route, it will have no advantages at all over the Forest Road route, which will remain much, much quicker.

In short, Sustrans are evading the problems which afflict cyclists, instead substituting futile and cosmetic 'Greenways'. For better cycling between South Woodford and Walthamstow three simple things are needed. Firstly, a signalled crossing for pedestrians and cyclists at the junction of the A503 and A104. Secondly, speed cameras all the way along Forest Road where, in spite of an appalling record of collisions, drivers are still permitted to hurtle along at 40-50 mph in a dense residential area with a 30 mph speed limit. Thirdly, enforcement of Advanced Stop Lines for cyclists.

(Below) The lights turn to green, and traffic surges out of the A503 on to the A104. Here, there is no crossing of the A104 for cyclists or pedestrians. The 4X4 is king.





















(Below) Welcome to a Sustrans-approved cycling and walking facility!


















(Below) A smashed lighting panel, with accompanying graffiti.


















(Below) A fractured pathway with a tyre-wide crack.

















(Below) crap signing


















(below) Unsuitable for those of a nervous disposition...

Autumn comes to the Crooked Billet underpass

Yes, autumn has arrived at “Probably the best single cycle facility in the borough”

There are lots of slimy, slippery leaves to add an extra bit of fun to those inclines and sharp turns. And talented local artists have enhanced that stylish tiled wall.






































(Below) And what's that in the cycle lane, just to the left of this couple pushing their baby?




















(Below) Yes, it's the Year of the Rat!

Of rats and cats

Last Wednesday I spotted rats on Storey Road and when I pedalled past yesterday the mound of rubbish was still there and the rats were still very visibly active. The council’s indifference to public health is amazing.

At the weekend I went to Lloyd Park to check out the art exhibition here (abstracts, nudes, portraits... and a memorably spooky painting of a bunch of hanged people) and also to the William Morris Gallery to look at an impressive display of Miah’s photographs, exuberant creatively adapted photos from the Beaumont Estate and the more sombre black and white photographs in Decades. I went to the moat to look at the Floating Sculpture but I couldn't find it, though I did spot a sunken traffic cone. And while I was admiring the ducks on one of the little islands, suddenly there appeared… a rat. Mindful of my responsibilities to this blog I took a couple of wildlife pics. In the first pic ratty is crouched behind the stones, staring at the camera; in the second running along the top of them.






































Suddenly the rat went down into the water and swam across to my side, vanishing from view below the embankment. Any fears of it coming closer were quelled by the sudden arrival of this (below).





















Later I went to 6 Beulah Road to check out Teresa Deacon’s engaging display of photographs of E17 cats

Spot the rat and win a prize!

Look carefully and see if you can spot the large rat. (If you click on the photo it should enlarge.)

If you can spot the rat, draw a circle round it and send a copy to: Councillor Clyde Loakes, Leader of the Council, The Town Hall, Forest Road, London E17 4JF.

Just complete the sentence below and you might be the lucky winner of a signed copy of the Audit Commission report into the London Borough of Waltham Forest proving that this is a four star council where things just go on getting better and better!

I think the existence of a vast putrefying pile of refuse infested by numerous scampering rats on Storey Road E17 just ten metres from Walthamstow High Street and the market, just across the road from the Chequers pub, adjacent to a grocery store, and close to a restaurant, shows that this council is....



















(Below) Bonus rat picture! Spot it as it scurries into the road. All pics taken yesterday morning.




















If you can be bothered to enlarge this pic, you'll see a rat just behind the plastic bag to the left of the market trader's stall. I wonder why no one ever seems to use this cycle stand? (below).





















I spotted a collection of rats in a cavity underneath this market trader's stall, dumped at the side of Storey Road. But they don't show up in the photograph. And frankly this was as close as I felt like going.

‘Too dangerous’

Giant spiders have been banned from a roundabout because of fears they could scare drivers into crashing. The Highways Agency is forcing Arundel Gallery Trail to remove the sculptures from the A27 roundabout only ten days after they were installed because of concerns they could cause an accident. The Causeway roundabout has been used as a gallery for up-and-coming artists for more than a decade. But an agency investigation, sparked by one complaint, concluded the arachnoid art was too dangerous because it could distract motorists.

The absurdity and hyprocrisy of the car-obsessed Highways Agency doesn't get much richer than this, does it? The Highways Agency would never dream of preventing local authorities from installing advertising panels on pavements, designed to attract the attention of passing motorists. These panels are ugly, they are blatantly obstructive for pedestrians, and they are dangerous when sited like the one below, which conceals pedestrians from vehicles turning left into the Walthamstow station drop-off bay.

Earlier this year a violent gust of wind (another symptom of extreme weather associated with climate change?) brought wooden panelling crashing down on to the pavement. Any pedestrian passing at the time, and forced towards the panelling by that crap advertising panel, would have been crushed. Luckily no one was passing at the time. The panelling was put back up and that obstructive and distracting advertising panel is still there. But don't expect this crap council or the car supremacist Highways Agency to give a toss about danger to pedestrians.




















The hypocrisy of the Highways Agency is underlined by the presence of this massive advertising board (below), placed at the Crooked Billet roundabout, which has been the scene of many crashes. Its capacity to distract is enhanced by the fact that it is an automated board, which changes every thirty seconds as the metal slats turn over to reveal a different advert.




















The Highways Agency has always loathed cyclists and pedestrians and been indifferent to their safety. It forces them into subterranean transport sewers like this one (below), at the Waterworks roundabout. Which is not only unpleasant, neglected, badly maintained, and home to a family of rats, but also, in terms of its isolation, a dangerous and threatening location, with the ever-present risk of assault and robbery.

Corporate neglect

The Corporation of London is responsible for managing Epping Forest, which appears in the first two photos. When it comes to cutting back vegetation which impinges on the public highway the Corporation’s interest only extends to roads. Every year the shared use footway/cycle track on Woodford New Road is obstructed by vegetation which the Corporation should cut back but doesn’t. The London Borough of Waltham Forest has an equal responsibility in this matter, but as maintaining the walking and cycling infrastructure is not important to either the crap Corporation or this crap council, the same situation occurs summer after summer after summer.




















(Above) 'Shared use' on Woodford New Road. The markings have almost completely faded and three quarters of the space for pedestrians and cyclists has vanished into the undergrowth. If you look carefully on the left of the photo you can just see a scrap of the wooden fencing which marks the edge of this 'shared use' facility.

Once past the jungle, you are free to enter another top class cycling facility, the waterworks roundabout underpass system (below). Have your mobile phone and personal alarm ready, and watch out for the family of rats who live here. This labyrinth of desolate, circuitous underpasses was built so that cyclists wouldn't get in the way of drivers at the roundabout, and because pedestrian crossings would only slow down the traffic. So let the bipeds and the two-wheelers go underground - motorized transport is the top priority.

Objets trouvées

Pedalling along the Forest Road cycle lane I encountered:

some sacks of rubbish, and...





















a Sainsbury's trolley...




















and one dead rat (squashed):




















First two pics taken yesterday, the last one taken on Friday.