Seeking common ground

For those people who haven't seen yesterday's shocking video yet, Cllr Jon Rogers was caught promising to increase the number of trees walking round the city by 100% within 12 months.

Well, if the council is letting these tax-dodging tree people out into our city, we should at least find out a way to keep them out of our way. One of our reporters drove up to the Highbury Vaults to interview one of the tree festival people to try and understand why they don't stay on the pavement. The goal was to identify common problems, such as bicycles and old people trying to use zebra crossings.

It turns out there are some areas of mutual interest

Problem	Trees	Cars
Bollards	block access	block parking
Street furniture	force onto road	block parking
Cafes and tables	force onto road	block parking
Theft	missing flowers	insurance premiums

We think there may be enough commonality here to start working together. If we can convince them to drop the entourage, the pedestrians, the bicycles, and go for hi-viz, it may be possible to co-exist and fight the real problem in the city, which is the street furniture and bollards forcing cars and trees off the pavements. We both need more parking! Give us back our pavements!