@FionaRadic @eddiemurphy4pcc View of cathedral will be gone. View of trains on the railway will be gone. And people will be unseen + unsafe.
— New Listener (@New_Listener) March 13, 2016
@FionaRadic @eddiemurphy4pcc Part of the railside barrier is to conceal trunking. The raised roadside barrier is completely unnecessary.
— New Listener (@New_Listener) March 13, 2016
On the 21st April 2015 a hustings was held in All Saints Church Hall, Park Road Peterborough. This is a rare thing in Peterborough: a ward hustings. As far as I am aware Park Ward is the only ward in the unitary authority of Peterborough which holds a regular hustings events. Here, voters are invited, either by the residents’ associations or by whoever leaflets the ward. Park Ward has begun to view them as an important part of the run up to election day. I am a big fan of hustings, as a glimpse at my blog will confirm. I’d like to see several in every ward, since they give people chances to thrash out where candidates stand on different issues, and how they perform, and what they are like.
Anyway every candidate appearing on the ballot paper in May had been invited to the Church Hall by a local residents’ association and the turnout was small, but respectable and well informed. John Peach, CON, was the last candidate to arrive. I would probably have been taking my seat and organising bits of paper when there was the very slightest flutter of excitement in the audience. The hustings proceeded without incident.
One of the most true and telling observations of the 2015 election campaign was made by a man at the back of the audience. He pointed out that climate change had disappeared from all the parties’ election campaigns.
After the event someone else came up to me and asked me to accompany him into the car park to see how John Peach had parked his car. He claimed to have felt an impact, but I am pretty sure his tongue was in his cheek and I have to say the wall did not move for me. But naturally I had a look. And of course I took a photo.
I couldn’t see the wall behind the rear bumper at all. Can you?
I realised that had there been the sort of penetrative event you see in a crazy American road movie, instead of talking to a man in a car park, I might have seen a man flying across my field of vision and just for a second I imagined him fly, hanging on to his church hall chair as a massive black car skidded across the parquet floor in a hail of bricks and plaster dust. But that was just me imagining something which certainly did not happen that evening. Thank goodness.
What I did observe is that Cllr John Peach, (who was reelected and has since been crowned Mayor of our fair city) had proved himself capable of parking his car next to a wall in such a way that there is not a single millimetre between the car and the bricks. Not a single one.
I blog this now only because the antique Jaguar, the mayoral vehicle EG1 is reportedly:
and I for one would like to know how #PossibleRightOff happened.
And what it costs to keep this particular mayor in maintenance and insurance.
Perhaps Conservative councillors could tell the voters exactly what they each spend on driving around the city in very fancy cars, and how much of that expense is funded by residents?
The previous cycle route ran to the RIGHT of the vehicular one. (It was one of two city centre roads which require moving to the wrong side of the roads and was a top local knowledge quiz question.) It was used by cyclists to EXIT Long Causeway onto Broadway. During recent new surfacing work, inexplicably the old route has been blocked off by a new bit of fence.
Long Causeway is one way for vehicles but two way for cyclists.
No entry signs at the EXIT of Long Causeway don’t make sense, even to car drivers, who wouldn’t see them, if they were driving in the right direction. The road is one way for cars, (isn’t it?) which would be coming towards you in this picture. The only vehicular exit is via Cathedral Square. Which is behind you.
Only council permitted vehicles are allowed in past the rising bollards. Although they are not currently working, it looks as if a new monitor has been installed.
An exit is required onto Broadway for cyclists. At the moment cyclists are cycling straight past the completely pointless no entry sign and over the potentially rising bollards.
Is the council planning to
We did have a Council Leader who wanted to abolish cycling in the whole city centre. He lost his seat in May.
While he is gone, I for one am hoping the Council will be able to resolve this particular road sign nonsense quickly, sensibly and constructively. And if whoever is responsible for traffic signs in the city wants to comment below, he or she is very welcome.
There is hope. The view in the other direction makes a little bit more sense, (except for the temporary signage).
I’ve blogged before about Peterborough and the attitude to cyclists held by the Leader of the Council and the centre of the city has just experienced “aggressive pavement cyclists” targeted by police. (I deplore the use of a word like “aggressive” to stereotype a wide community which cycles on pavements.)
But here we go again, this time with a word which suggests one superior tribe (maybe driving Chelsea tractors?) looking down on another primitive and uncivilised group (maybe all these things because they can’t afford a Chelsea tractor?).
Given that bicycles can’t really eat one another, I assume the police peep believes that the cyclists are stealing each others’ bicycles? I’m really not sure how such a useless assertion will help the police catch thieves. What I can tell the police is that this use of language is calculated to annoy cyclists with even the smallest bit of linguistic and political sensitivity. Like me.
I wonder when Peterborough’s leading political and police peeps will make it into the twentieth century and or cycling enlightenment?
