The Bristol Cycling Campaign object too -predictable

Well, it's predictable that the cycling campaign group would write in and object -which is why the council wisely announced this TRO in the most discreet way possible.Well, the tax-dodgers found out -but what you do expect from a group of unemployed people who have nothing better to do but go around the city at 5mph.

Below is the letter in full. Before getting to it, can we point out:

Today, Jan 15 is the last day to write in supporting the Clifton Expanded Parking Zone proposal.

We have prepared sample letters.for people to do this. The more people who write in -the better!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Martin McDonnell
Date: 14 January 2013 00:15
Subject: Objections to TRO proposal CAE/NMT/P/815
To: tro.comments@bristol.gov.uk
Cc: John Richfield , Jon Rogers


Re: TRO proposal CAE/NMT/P/815
Dear Sir/Madam,

The Bristol Cycling Campaign is a campaign group focused on making cycling safer and more popular within the city. We have many members, including those within the BS8 postcode.

We have been strongly supportive of the Cycling City programme - and ongoing work to develop a cycling culture in Bristol. It has focused not just on making commuting by bicycle better - it has also worked to encourage cycling to the local shops and schools. These short journeys when made by car constitute a significant amount of congestion and pollution within the city - yet are some of the easiest to switch to cycling due to their short distance.

With the recent announcements that "obesity is a new epidemic", and that exercise is the key to preventing this, encouraging walking and cycling is a key way to integrate exercise into the daily schedule of the population. Again, the Cycling City programme placed effort into this - and again, cycling and walking to the local shops was a key part of this.

Examples of the actions here include the provisioning of large quantities of cycle parking in the shopping streets, including Gloucester Road, Stokes Croft, Cotham Hill/Clifton Down shopping centre, and Southville. These have helped encourage cycle traffic, and have helped keep these streets vibrant and popular.

If there is one part of the inner-ring of shopping zones that has become a backwater to cycling, it is Clifton Village. A few cycle racks have reluctantly been placed around the outskirts of the village - yet the core area is, apart from a small rack on the Mall, entirely given over to car parking. Illegal parking is commonplace, while Caledonia Place suffers from continious double parking. The sole cycle park on Princess Victoria Street was at Clifton library, yet for reasons not fully explained, the secure "sheffield" racks have been replaced with four "wheel" racks that do nothing but ensure that when your bicycle is stolen, a wheel will remain.

As a result of this inadequate cycle parking, Clifton is a black hole to bicycles. This is despite the fact that the Suspension Bridge is incredibly popular with cycling traffic, both locals and visitors. The failure of Clifton to accomodate the needs of this traffic must have a tangible impact on the revenue of the area - something that appears to have missed the attention of the shops and the councillors.

Having reviewed CAE/NMT/P/815, we are supportive of the proposals to slightly increase the no-parking areas at the corners of junctions, as they improve visibility and so cycling safety. They also make ingress and egress easier, as it is easier to get past traffic coming in the opposite direction. We also support the proposed addition of more Car Club parking bays, as they encourage the use of pay-per-hour driving rather than owning a car. Even if the car club bays merely reduce the ownership of second cars, or discourage students from bringing their cars to the area - they will have a tangible affect in reducing the number of cars parked in the area.

We are, however, utterly opposed to the proposed parking changes on Princess Victoria Street. These changes will make cycling through the village harder and more dangerous - while completely failing to do anything to make shopping in the village by bicycle viable.

This proposal, therefore, violates the "hierarchy of provision" which the council has adopted as one of its core city planning philosophies. It runs counter to the Cycling City vision, and is intended to encourage driving to the shops. Yet the assumption that this will help retail sales is presented unquestioningly - though such a statement is indefensible without valid data.

The 2006 study of Gloucester Road conducted by Bristol City Council and Sustrans showed that shops overestimated the number of customers driving to their shops. The estimates of customer transport options were: car 41%, bus 11%, bicycle 6% and foot 42%. The actual numbers were: car 22%, bus 13%, bicycle 10% and foot 55%. The fact that shops in a nearby Bristol street estimated car use as a majority transport option, rather than a minority activity shows that retailers concerns about the lack of parking can be over 100% out - and that they should be effectively discounted.

Assuming the figures from Gloucester Road apply to Clifton - albeit with less bus traffic - then the focus of transport provisioning should be on pedestrians, with cycling, as 1/4 of the traffic of cars, awarded at least 25% of the parking capacity in the area as that provided for cars.

The Clifton TRO does not do this. Instead it actually proposes to remove a not-yet-imtlemented on-road cycle tarking erea in favour of anothev parking space.$By doing so, the TRO will set beck any ettempt to improve cycle$custom to the slops.

The TRO also proposes removmng the double yellow lined 'no$waiting' area on the north side of Princess Vigtoria Street, in both tle one wey and tle two wey section. The nustificetion fov this iw that tley "are no longer consmdered to be necessary". As cyclists, we consider them very necessary.  

• Adding parking on the N. side of the one-way stretch will make it impossible for any car to safely pass a bicycle, leading to dangerous overtaking attempts and risk to cyclists. 
• This same parking will ensure that there is no part of the road safe from "dooring", and hence safe to cycle even if there is no car behind trying to overtake.  
• The proposed parking additions on the north side of the two-way stretch will be even more dangerous -any cyclist heading west-to-east will be unable to be safely passed by an oncoming car. 

Instead we make the following proposals

1. The north side of the one-way stretch of Princess Victora street should be turned into a contraflow lane -ideally one segregated from traffic. This would permit the whole of the street to be turned into a two way route for bicycle. This will make cycling to and from the shopping area easier -so encouraging custom.

2. The cycle path on the road actually be built.

3. Enforcement of the no-parking area and zebra crossing markings in front of the Tesco Express outlet. The regular parking of HGVs here destroys visibility for bicycles trying turn right from Merchant's Road to Regent road -and then into the village.

4. The addition of cycling contraflows to Portland Street and the entirety of the Mall.

5. Adding more cycle parking build-outs in Caledonia Place -placed in precisely the point where illegal parking makes walking and cycling more dangerous.

6. Adding cycle parking to the western end of Princess Victoria Street, and some on Sion Hill.

7. Enforcement of existing parking restrictions across the village.

These changes will transform the permeability of the village to cycling, and provide more parking to both shoppers and residents.

More subtly, by providing cycle parking in the village, they will encourage more cycling to school by those families whose parents continue on to the village for a morning coffee. We have anecdotal evidence that this is a common occurence.

Even if these changes are not implemented immediately, the incorporation of Clifton into the Cycling City plan will ultimately happen. It is also likely that as the resident parking zones expand to cover the whole of BS6, that they will be adopted in Clifton -initially in Cliftonwood and east Clifton, then later in central and north Clifton.

The addition of extra car parking places will merely make these changes harder to implement. By encouraging ownership and use of cars, they will make the transition to a limited number of cars per household more traumatic. Similarly, the "removal" of parking spaces to make Clifton Village permeable to bicycles will be controversial -not adding these spaces today will reduce the conflict when this happens.

Changes for improving cycling are inevitable, because the new mayor and the new cabinet are expanding their support for cycling as an attempt to address Bristol's congestion and parking problems. These local changes are clearly due to the neighbourhood planning group being encouraged to work against the strategic goals of the city -and, sadly, the acquiescence and support of the council. A number of our members were at the March 2011 meeting where this proposal was initially discussed -and we know that the Clifton councillors voted in favour of it. This was a shortsighted action that may make fixing Clifton's transport and parking problems significantly harder -which will delay their implementation.

For these reasons, we demand that all planned changes to Princess Victoria Street are cancelled -or at least suspended- until they can be discussed with the cycling officers and a cycling plan for Clifton developed.


[1] Shoppers and how they travel: http://bit.ly/ji5hgR

Martin McDonnell

Martin McDonnell, Secretary
Bristol Cycling Campaign
website: www.bristolcyclingcampaign.org.uk
Follow us on Facebook: Bristol Cycling Campaign Group or Twitter: BristolCycling

Who is objecting to the Expanded Parking zone!

We had expected out readers to write in supporting the Clifton Expanded Parking Zone. But instead someone copies us in on an objection they sent in


---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: David Date: 14 January 2013 16:06
Subject: Objections to TRO proposal CAE/NMT/P/815
To: "tro.comments@bristol.gov.uk" <tro.comments@bristol.gov.uk>
To whom it may concern,

I am a regular visitor to Clifton and would like to write in objecting to the proposed plans to add more car parking in Clifton.

These proposals are at odds with the council's main proposal of hierarchy which should be 'pedestrians, cycles, public-transport first'.

We are supposed to be a cycling city, yet at every turn the good work of that project is being eroded by short term proposals such as this. This change is a missed opportunity to implement some decent segregated infrastructure for bicycle users.

By providing extra residential and short stay car parking in the area, it will make walking and cycling worse and do nothing to improve the quality of life in this lovely area. The proposed intent to reduce anti-social parking should be achieved through better enforcement of existing traffic regulations rather than this expensive and backward step.

I urge you to reject this proposal.

Yours faithfully,

David

-----
This is as shocking as if the proprietor of the daily mail announced he was going to enter a civilian partnership with a muslim refugee on unemployment benefit.

We urge all our readers to write in demanding that the proposal is enacted in full.

The Clifton Expanded Parking Zone: what did Barbara say?

Readers! you have only two more days to email tro.comments@bristol.gov.uk with your praise for the TRO proposal CAE/NMT/P/815

It's important to do this, as we hear that the cycling troublemakers are going to oppose this, claiming the "unused" double yellow lines on Princess Victoria Street could be turned into  a (segregated) contraflow for cyclists, and that rather than kill plans to add on-street cycle parking -they should extend it!

If there is one thing that should stop the Clifton Expanded Parking Zone being derailed by any cyclists opposing -it is the support of the council staff and the local councillors

We know this -being a data driven organisation- by way of videos taken at the Neighbourhood Partnership meeting in 2011 where this went through



At the beginning, there's "residents have recommended to remove double yellow lines to increase the parking -so your council is fully supportive of these plans"

An initial troublemaker asks about timetables and when they could object to them -she's dismissed with a "later" rather than the secret "it'll be announced on lampposts over christmas and not on the council consultation RSS feed that you tax-dodgers subscribe to"

at 1:45 another troublemaker picks on the parking-for-traffic-calming story

"what amuses me is where it says we will increase the parking as a form of traffic calming -which seems to me, daft- ... the proposals are at odds with the council's main proposal of hierarchy which goes 'pedestrians, cycles, public-transport first'. And I'm curious how you reconcile that with this devolved planning"

That's one of those trick questions, as he's clearly implying that if you devolve planning to residents then they may come up with ideas about parking at the expense of possible cycling routes and parking -and how is the council going to deal with that situation.

At this point (2:24),  Barbara Janke, councillor for Clifton East subtly defects this line of attack not by directly saying "yes, it is utterly inconsistent, so what", but instead implying its such a small amount of money there's no point worrying about it.

"Basically, this is only a vary small part of the total highways and transport budget. There are strategic plans, ... this is a small part of the traffic budget which has been delegated so that we can try and get local people into the -um- various areas that we serve. So previously these things have been decided centrally by the executive member and .. implemented. Now the officers have brought what they would recommend -and there's opportunities for people here to input . But these are not the total budget, there are ... other proposals going on elsewhere, strategically, you know, but very localised subjects ... give an opportunity ...
Strategic considerations are part of a much bigger part...
(interruption by the troublemaker)

I understand that, but I think these tactical engagements are odd with the strategic ones. and also I dont see any involvement of people like Ed Plowden of cycling city in this proposal And finally do you consider walking or cycling to be strategic or not, that's the big question, because major transport was mentioned?

barbara: (deftly) No, we do! There are strategic plans being worked on, there is a walking plan ... ... (some dismission) a  much bigger -this is only a small section, ands its reactive to complaints in the local area. Some of it may not be necessarily long term either.

We know that once parking has been added, the locals will fight the council with sharp knives to have it removed. So does Barbara -but she's not daft enough to say it out loud.

Congratulations Barbara! We are confident that the addition of eight more parking spaces will tip the next election in your favour -as confident we are that none of the people trying to walk or cycling in the area are voters in your wards -or the high value customers the shops need.

Clifton EPZ -councillors vote

Following on from Barbara Janke's superb victory over the cyclist trying to catch her out on the small detail that the Expanded-Parking-Zone is at odds with the council's strategic walking and cycling goals, the meeting came to a vote by the four councillors.



The two Clifton councillors voted -as we hoped- for the extra parking spaces.

Not so loyal were the Cabot Ward councillors, Mark Wright and Alex Woodman.

Alex Woodman voted against this precisely because of the blatant conflict between the council's anti-motoring policy and this pro-parking plan.

Mark Wright? He said it was clearly in conflict, but to respect this Neighbourhood Planning concept, he was going to accept what the locals wanted, and vote for it.

a 3:1 majority was enough to get it through -but it was worrying that two councillors owned up to the fact that the plan -resolving our local parking issues with more spaces- were at odds with the strategic goals of the council. That sets a very bad precedent for the rest of the city.

As for the cyclists, they need to respect  the reality on the ground.

This is why it is so critical for everyone to write in and praise the Clifton Expanded Parking Zone plans.

Clifton Expanded Parking Zone: who objected in our name?

We are strongly in favour of the Clifton Expanded Parking Zone, not for the number of spaces it provides, but because it would set back any attempts to improve permeability for and parking of bicycles, that scourge of the city.

We were therefore horrified to discover that someone -and we have no idea who- appears to have sent an objection to the council in in our name.

To make things worse -they have used our photograph collection to criticise the parking behaviour of clifton residents!

We don't condemn the things people are forced to do to park near their homes, shops or places of work.




No, we, like the Clifton Mayoral Candidate, recognise that these are things we are forced to do in an anti-car city.

But what has happened? Someone has sent an email in our name -which fortunately we got a cc'd copy of, to see the travesty of our raison-d'etre.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bristol Traffic
Date: 6 January 2013 23:36
Subject: Objections to TRO proposal CAE/NMT/P/815
To: tro.comments@bristol.gov.uk
Cc: barbara.janke@bristol.gov.uk, simon.cook@bristol.gov.uk, alex.woodman@bristol.gov.uk, mark.wright@bristol.gov.uk, jon.rogers@bristol.gov.uk


Please find enclosed our objections to much of the TRO covering proposed new parking restrictions within Clifton and part of Cliftonwood.

As we state -backed up by photographic evidence- providing extra residential and short stay parking in the area, while making walking and cycling worse, will do nothing to improve the quality of life in clifton. It will merely supress walking and cycling -and so make congestion and parking worse.

Based on past experience, we fear that our feedback will be dismissed -despite the fact that our datasets are broader and more defensible than anyone else's in the city. We therefore close with a statement of intent: from the day that this consultation is closed, we will be reporting illegal parking to the police and/or council parking enforcement, depending on the location. This will do more to address Clifton's effective absence from the Cycling City project than anything in this TRO.

The actual document is even worse. It says -to quote one paragraph from the seven page document, 

Overall, our dataset implies that the problems that Clifton have is not "a lack of parking", it is the willingness of residents to park illegally, selfishly and dangerously -usually at the expense of pedestrians and cyclists. The near complete lack of enforcement has legitimised such actions.

These are harsh words coming from anyone! To have them come from us, Bristol's documentation of how the war-on-motoring makes our everyday drive to the shops round the corner, makes it even worse.

We have already sent an email denying responsibility for this document. However, we fear it is not enough.

Please, please please, can anyone who has not yet written in supporting the Clifton Expanded Parking Zone do so before the Jan 15 deadline!

Cyclists! Please support the Clifton Expanded Parking Zone!

As stated, the Clifton Expanded Parking Zone will add more car parking to Clifton -not only not adding space in the village for bicycles, but cancelling what appears to be a proposal for an on-road buildout cycle parking area in favour of another car bay.

At lot of cyclists read this blog -and we'd like them to write in supporting this proposal. We have prepared some drafts for residents of Bristol and visitors.



It may seem odd for us to ask cyclists to write in supporting council proposals -but if you look at the photograph above you will see that cyclists are mud-covered and smelly. Your very presence in the village lowers its quality and cachet as Bristol's premier village. Add four more bicycles and it would lose out to that other gem of the region, Avonmouth Village.

For this reason, please, please please can you cyclists write in to the  council, using the email address and subject as listed. You are free to ad-lib your own comments -the key thing to make clear is that tax dodgers do not belong in Clifton, and that you, as a tax-dodger recognise this.

If you submit these letters or others, please cc: barbara.janke@bristol.gov.uk, simon.cook@bristol.gov.uk, alex.woodman@bristol.gov.uk, mark.wright@bristol.gov.uk, jon.rogers@bristol.gov.uk -and of course bristol.traffic at  gmail dot com


Residents

To: tro.comments@bristol.gov.uk

Subject: Objections to TRO proposal CAE/NMT/P/815

I would like to write in supporting the proposed plans to add more car parking in Clifton, -while continuing to fail to prove anything for local cyclists much as myself.

The failure of the city to allow me to park my bicycle makes it clear that I cannot shop there. This is good, as the very fact that I am cycling around means that I am too poor to afford anything that Clifton has to offer.

The extra car parking you plan to provide will increase the parking opportunities that I will have once I have saved up enough money to buy a car.


Visitors

To: tro.comments@bristol.gov.uk

Subject: Objections to TRO proposal CAE/NMT/P/815

I would like to write in supporting the proposed plans to add more car parking in Clifton, -while continuing to fail to prove anything for cyclists much as myself.

Bristol has been working at hard at creating an image as a Cycling City, yet here this dream falls completely flat on its face due to the short-term thinking of its residents and the blind acquiescence of its councillors.

While some people may object to this, I, as a cycling visitor to the area, recognise that this is the correct approach.

The two main reasons to visit Clifton by bicycle are to see the suspension bridge or to go mountain biking in Ashton Court. Both these activities involve a lot of physical effort, while the mountain biking also includes water, mud and random pieces of vegetation.

Although Clifton could in theory be an ideal place for thirsty and hungry cyclists to stop and rest before continuing their journey, we believe this would have a detrimental effect on the village -as the presence of smelly and (for the MTBers) very, very dirty cyclists would scare away other visitors. This would damage the whole economy of the reason.

Furthermore, an increased presence of bicycles in the area will make it harder to drive in and around Clifton -and may discourage people from driving from their nearby houses to shops in the village. Again, this could damage the economy.

A single car may take up as much space as eight parked bicycles -but the driver of the car will not scare away other people.

For this reason -please consider this letter one of support for the proposed Clifton Expanded Parking Zone

Clifton Expanded Parking Opportunities -consultation

Back in 2011, we looked at the Neighbouhood Partnership proposals for Clifton, adding more parking under a guise which even we were impressed by "to calm traffic". That's a great lie -one to use the next time we get told off for double parking while delivering some of our special adult entertainment products to the Clifton area.

We looked at -and supported- proposals for

• The removal of two bays in Hotwells
• Adding parking in the bottom of Pembroke Road and  further up
• Removing the yellow lines on Clifton Park.
• Adding more parking anywhere it could be found in Princess Victoria Street

It's been nearly two years and we suspected this plan had fallen by the wayside, as the traffic planning officers cornered the councillors and pointed out that the political price of adding eight to ten more parking spaces to the area wasn't worth it. Assuming unrestricted parking on Pembroke road and Hope Chapel Hill, 6 more residents (i.e. voters) would get somewhere to park overnight. If the clifton village parking added an extra four spaces, with a 2h limit, then an eight hour day would add 24 parking opportunities. That's 30 votes overall -max. Yet the political capital spent up on trying to fight the cycling city in one part of the city would be high -because you'd be having to say "we won't spend any money providing safe crossings of Pembroke Road, or the east end of Clifton Park" -issues that also matter to Clifton voters -and potentially more than 30 a day.

Good news! Over Christmas -when the schoolparents would have been away, the consultation for the Traffic Regulation Order to add these spaces has arrived!

Not only that -they propose to add a space by taking away a proposed on-road cycle parking buildout! Finally a part of the city has stood up to this invasion of bicycles, by opting to provide a short stay parking opportunity for a car instead  -leaving cyclists with some insecure bollards that only the foolhardy would use.



To invest in adding 30 parking opportunities a day over making walking and cycling safe is a bold move -one for which we congratulate the two councillors for doing! They must have felt that those thirty votes may keep the two liberal democrat councillors safe, despite the fact that their Westminster colleagues are widely derided as the useless lap-dogs of George Osborne and David Cameron, Presumably they recognised that the people trying to walk or cycle in Clifton are poor people, unlikely to live in the area -or if they do, unlikely to vote.

We in the Bristol Traffic team are overjoyed that in one part the city, the people and the councillors have finally listened to what we have  been saying since 2008; pandering to the cyclists and pedestrians is a mistake!

Looking back at the old days, when the late Chris Hutt was our Clifton Correspondent, what was the third post in our history? Photographic proof that Range Rovers didn't have anywhere to park near the schools except the pavements.


Clifton has always been a special place for us -as much a centre of the driving and parking community as Stokes Croft -albeit with less run-down vehicles-so are excited about this new proposal, part of what we now term, the anticycling-city.

We strongly encourage everyone who supports us, who wants our streets clear of tax-dodging cyclists, for us not to be held up by pedestrians trying to get over zebra crossings, to read the TRO, and respond praising it fully.

We would particularly like for respondents to draw out the proposal "to remove the cycle parking place in Princess Victoria Street (not in force on-site)". This is the best example of how this TRO represents a bold action by the residents and councillors to do something nobody else in the inner city has done -to fight back!

Why torch bunker bikes?

Happy New Year to our readers! There may only be eight of you, but that still keeps us ahead of the Evening Post print run!

Back in October, we took a quick look at Bunker bikes, who fix up second hand bikes to sell at low cost to people in the city.
 
Somebody took the torch to their bike collection on New Year's Eve.

While our allies, the Association of British Drivers, will no doubt praise this, we are going to condemn it.

1. It does nothing to solve the city's traffic problem: too many cyclists, all it does it stop it get slightly worse.
2. It polarises society.
3. It's a waste of (expensive) petrol.

If someone is going to take some petrol and a match to part of our fair city, they would be best off torching something that would unite the community, places that nobody would miss.

In our opinions, that includes

• Broadmead. All of it.
• The Lewins Mead tower blocks
• The strip mall off st philips flyover -the Showcase cinema and associated shops.
• Any warehouse converted into an indoor play area, especially those somewhere near Cribbs Causeway or other obscure locations. All parents fear invites to children's birthday parties at these locations.
• Easton in Gordano motorway service station. 
• The outlet shops by MoD abbey wood. (So obscure, they won't be missed by their neighbours, let alone the rest of the city)
• The strip mall on the A4 after Bristlington
• Colston Tower in the centre.

See? There are lots of places that are both ugly, unpleasant and expendable. There are others that are ugly and unpleasant that we do need -which is why Asda Bedminster must, sadly, be left off the list. Tesco Cheltenham Road needs to be left off to stop the police blocking the road again.

Bunker Bikes? It doesn't merit a mention.

Also on the topic of NYE activities, someone nicked a few bunny rabbits from the St Werburgh's farm. It's the wrong time of year for lapin-aux-poivres -the lapins will be a bit stringy.  Wait until May and the next batch of piglets will be ready for the BBQ.

Love Bristol Go Brent #3

As we said, the pavement provides extra parking options. First, note the bollards, They aren't designed to stop vehicles getting on to the pavement so much as to make it clear to pedestrians that turning vehicles can cut over that corner. Vans that want to park can just get up onto the pavement past the bollards


Some viewers may think "this road is four lanes wide in every direction, and the pavement is perfectly wide enough to have a good, segregated bike lane". Those people are missing the point.

  
The four-lane-wide road provides enough space for an HGV to do a U-turn.
 d
So letting it get up and park on the pavement in the direction it's going.

You couldn't do that if there was a cycle path here.

The sheer provision of a vast off-road "pavement" here is a fantastic facility for motorists. It's wide enough that street furniture can be kept far enough back to make parking along here easy -regardless of the length of your vehicle.

Bristol just lacks the imagination. Even that "let them park on the pavements" mayoral candidate explicitly mentioned Gloucester road as an example place where paveparking shouldn't be permitted.

Yet Gloucester Road is a shopping street -like this one in London- the provisioning of more pavement parking area is what is critical to keep it alive. Look at the one here -even with all this excellent paveparking it's barely surviving.

Love Bristol -go Brent #2

Continuing our tour of the best ideas from Brent, we want to highlight side roads that don't let pedestrians cross them

by doing this on a "shopping street", Brent makes sure that nobody who actually -insanely tries to walk to the shops will feel as unwelcome as they should be.
  
All it takes is a continual line of traffic, pig-pen barriers to make you feel unsafe, and no attempt to provide anything other than a dropped kerb.
 
The best bit? That wide pavement provides extra parking opportunities.

Park like you've earned it

Being a rich and successful driver presents many opportunities for you to present your achievments to the lesser mortals. You have the car and the personalised plates and this gets the admiring looks, well for a while at least. But then what? How do you tell the world that you have really made it? Anyone can get a flash motor and personalised plates hide the age.

Well, nothing says that you can afford not to give a damn like illegal and downright inconsiderate parking. This car park had plenty of available spaces and at £1 an hour, surely it is within the means of anyone. But no, far better to take not one but TWO disabled parking bays to show you can afford not to care about tickets. No blue badge here nor even a pay and display ticket. That's for the little people.

R8 AMG does this with such finess that they even manage to do this next to a bicycle jumble sale! Let's show the poor people who can't even afford a new bicycle, let alone a car, what real achievement can bring!

Don't condemn this driver. They are giving us something to aim for.

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.

Shocking one-way contraflow cycling

As everyone knows -tax dodging cyclists love to cycle the wrong way up one way streets -streets put in by an anti-motorist council to make cycling more "convenient" than driving.

Once these tax-dodgers get used to contraflowing, they end up using those routes even when they drive a car -or in this case, a coach -as seen here in Fishponds.



Before anyone says "how do we know this coach driver is a cyclist?" -the answer is obvious. Only cyclists go the wrong way down one-way streets, so this driver is a cyclist.

THINK BIKE - DO CAR

Something is not right. The council are trying to brainwash our faithful Bristol driving masses. "THINK BIKE" messages on electronic boards on our commuter route from our country residences to our city waged jobs. Not local neighbourhoods that we are passing through. This is definitely first and foremost our commuter route.

 

So it's good to see Summerhill Motors sticking up for us, the intrepid commuters, and fighting the walking and cycling message that the City Council are trying so hard to push on us.

 

They've gone to the trouble to park not one, but two cars, successfully totally blocking the pavement and another third car in the bus / cycle lane. A double score! Giving a strong message to not only pedestrians that walking is just not acceptable, but also to those trying to use public transport or cycle too that their behaviour will not be tolerated.

To make it even better this is on the "Wesley Way" route that the council have created to encourage people by telling them that this is a safe walking and cycling route! It is also close to a local school, hopefully showing those that choose to walk or cycle to that school that such behaviour is just not right. They should be driving the school run, preferably in a car bought from Summerhill Motors.

 

It's good to see the local businesses sticking up for us, the not local people and helping us to remember to "Think Bike" but then to "Do Car".

Kate Alison Wrigley - Killed Sept 21, Ashley Road

When these photos were taken in October, flags and flowers marked where another Bristolian was killed walking across a road  - Ashley Hill -on the border between St Werburgh's and Montpelier. She was killed by someone driving a silver BMW -no further details are public at this point.


There is not even a traffic island on this stretch of road. There's one further up, but not a zebra crossing, even though a lot of schoolkids use it.

Here, although it says "20 mph", is a busy and often fast road. Cars heading up the hill are acellerating up something which, by virtue of the walls on either side "feels fast". Certain if you are on a bike, it feels safer to go on the old ashley road, parallel to this.

Kate lived on Milverton Gardens -you can see how pedestrian friendly that is.
If you live here, there is nowhere you can get to without crossing this road or walking all the way down the hill. 


On our last visit, the same cars were parked in the same places. They must be "their" bits of pavement.

Because this is just within the 20mph zone, the anti-20mph people will cite this as an example of how 20 mph zones don't work. Sadly, in this instance -it wasn't enough.

Clifton: take the corner!

The candidate for Clifton, Owain George, didn't get elected, so his plans to introduce more parking has failed.

Clifton Residents are forced to make do with what they can get.

From the distance, you can see it's cornerish parked but not the details.

Get closer, and you can see that they'vehad to take the pavement of people heading along the road

BG54OYD has also managed to assert their ownership of the adjacent corner

That's two pavements and a chunk of the road -enough that the Fiat Ka behind it may have a hard time getting out.
 
Other drivers just aren't in the same league

Final possible candidates: Dave Dobbs and Phil Plover

The election is here today, and it is everyone's duty to get down there and vote for someone.

One option is Dave Dobbs, who cites is place of residence as a van in Stokes Croft. That's his key positive feature. If you've seen the flyer about how he believes a great flood came from Mars, well, he's clearly barking mad. But so is Gideon Osborne! And Michael Gove! And they have even more power and influence.

Being totally off your rocker should not be a barrier to holding political positions.

Anyone else: Phil Plover.  He's the candidate from the Waltham Forest party.

We had a look at his transport "ideas", as it's the one we care about.

"It might be good if Bristol gets some sort of rapid transport system – maybe trams or some sort of monorail. "

A monorail. People would laugh at as. Has never tried the one at Birmingham Airport?

" Open up bus-lanes - these are typically empty most of the day whilst the lane next to them is chock-full of slow-moving congestion, spewing pollution out for twice as long as necessary!
  Trams never needed a whole lane to themselves, laying empty 99.5% of the time. So, treating car drivers as sensible people who do care about the environment for them and their children, I would like to suggest a deal with Bristol motorists: when you see a bus behind you, pull in and let it pass - like you would an ambulance. It adds only seconds to your journey time!
  That way, we don't need to waste roadspace on separate bus lanes springing up all over the place, and ALL lanes can be available to ALL traffic, ALL of the time.   Simple, safe and sensible. 

This is good. the exclamation marks show him as one of those evening post commenters who can solve the city's issues with the word "simple!!!" at the end of every sentence.

His key idea here is that people should drive down a bus lane, but when a bus comes up behind them, to get out of the way. It's an interesting idea, let down by his naivety

1. Bus lanes are for short stay parking; you can't drive down them for that reason. This is why buses are usually in the car lane.
2. If you've ever seen an ambulance trying to get up Stokes Croft to Cheltenham Road in the evening rush hour, you'll see that people don't get out of the way for it. When they do, each lane pulls to one side, the left hand side half up on the pavement. Nobody is going to do that for a bus, unless it too has sirens and flashing lights.

"Make junctions more efficient ("1 in – 2 out") - to avoid delays and make travelling more efficient for everybody, where there is room, divide traffic approaching a junction into two lanes."

What he seems to mean here is actually have two lanes approaching a junction -as this will make it more efficient.

unfortunately, he appears not to understand basic queue theory -not even the wikipedia article. For Mr Plover then:

1. A queue develops whenever the number of items leaving a channel (i.e a road) is less than the number entering it.
2. Widening the approach to a junction is simply "making a wider queue". It does nothing to the overall throughput.
3. With a wider queue, the jam may not appear as long, but it has the same number of vehicles, the same egress rate -and hence the wait time is the same.

Or to summarise: making the approach to a narrow road wider makes no difference whatsoever to your journey time -unless it encourages more people to drive that route in the belief it will -which will then make things worse.

People complain that politicians have no understanding of maths and science -this person is, sadly, an example.

"Where pavements are excessively wide, reduce them to 4-6 feet and create free parking space, where possible (except where large pavements are used by the community eg Gloucester Rd)"

We don't know where he lives, but in the inner city we view all pavements as parking spaces

Increase free parking wherever safely possible - I believe there are a lot of parking restrictions (double yellow lines and meters) where they don’t need to be – consequently, that roadspace is often underutilised while motorists drive round and round, increasing congestion and pollution, seeking an alternative.

We love this "its the restrictions that cause pollution" -theme, we'll have to use it ourselves. It implies that we do care about pollution as we drive our diesel van with the broken exhaust round the city, leave it running while we deliver some special toys to our customers -and it's all down to the fault of the council that small children die of asthma.


  Open up as much roadspace as possible so people can do what they need to do and go home again

we find parking restrictions like double yellow lines no barrier to "doing what we need to do:
 

Controlled Parking Zones (CPZ) – personally, I would find the idea of having to pay to park in my own road very frustrating. It’s mainly a problem where parking is very badly restricted. If parking were freer, it might not be a problem at all. 

No, this is one naive little bunny. Those residents of the expanding CPZ zone aren't paying 30 quid a year for the right to park outside their house -they are paying for the right to use their car during the day -because they can be confident there will be somewhere near their house when they come home. As for the "problem where parking is restricted", no -is where there isn't enough room for all the residents and commuters, even when the pavements are fully utilised (e.g. montpelier)

There' s a risk here that the "motorists drive round and round, increasing congestion and pollution" theme could come back to haunt him here -in a CPZ, there is no point driving round. Hence the pollution and congestion falls.

The whole theme of this manifesto is that the author doesn't live in the city -he lives in one of the suburbs and gets really frustrated sitting in a traffic jam by an empty bus lane, when he gets into town gets angry the only free spaces have double yellow lines, or you have to pay to use -and that his secret near-centre parking zones are being made residents only in a deliberate attempt to make his life harder

Remove large slabs of concrete - Surely squashing vehicles closer together can't make sense. If there's room to keep vehicles further apart, that reduces the risk of collision and means you have somewhere to go in case of emergency (eg a child or elderly person falling into the road).

It turns out this means "remove the build outs that force you to slow down entering quieter roads"

There's some interesting maths here; a mix of game theory (conflict and reactions to collision risk), and probability. Specifically that "somewhere to go in case an elderly person falls into the road"

With a wider buildout, there is more pavement for the elderly person to fall onto, so P(fall-into-road) is reduced; with the reduced cornering speed the energy in the collision is also reduced. Phil's assertion "you have nowhere to go in an emergency" implies that swerving is the tactic, not braking, and that there is no oncoming traffic, so swerving is a viable action.

If you do swerver, not break, then the original amount of energy going into a person falling into the road depends on the probability of you hitting them

e = P(falling)*(1-P(swerving))*mass*velocity^2

In  the new layout
e' = P(falling')*(1-P(swerving'))*mass*velocity'^2

We'll leave it to the readers to work this out -the quick summary is obviously that the velocity-squared variable is the main factor in damage; the probability of swerving out the way would have to get four times worse to result in the same damage reduction as cutting vehicle speed in half.

Sadly, as Phil Plover doesn't get queue theory, probability and statistics will be beyond him too.

There we have it then. The candidate for the evening post commenters. Someone whose entire world view is based on "obvious" answers, yet without the basic mathematical underpinnings to recognise that his obvious is, to us, obviously wrong.

Dave Dobbs it is then!

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.

Love Bristol -go Brent

We went over in our van to see how leading edge councils were improving motoring conditions.

Brent, initially.

The first step is competely remove all front gardens and replace them with cars. This not only increass parking capacity by 50-100%, it makes it far more obvious to passers by who is the wealthiest. The house on the right with the Porsche, the 4x4 and the Audi is clearly more important than the toyota owners next door.
 
The other key isse is infrastructure provisioning.

Together with TfL, Brent and Harrow councils have made sure that the shopping areas are very accessible by cars, with laybys and two lanes on this, Kenton Road, for the shopping traffic.

As you can see, there are no cyclists and very few pedestrians -so that car traffic is essential to the livelihood of the remaning shops.

Bedminster Gentrification

A saturday lunchtime and what do we see parallel to East Street?

Not one, but two BMW SUVs on double yellow lines: MV06FUE and SG04TRU. This road, "Little paradise" is on the malago cycle route, hence the small bicycles on the road, showing where cyclists need to be if they want to get doored by the BMWs

If any doubted the fact that Bedminster was now becoming part of the greater southville gentrification quarter -or that residents of Southville didn't secretly drive over to Bedminster to shop, they are wrong
 
What you don't get is people cycling there, as apart from the 12 bicycles filling the six racks that Asda provides, there are no more bicycles in the entire, vast, car park

Clifton Cornerish Parking

The reason the Clifton residents have fought so strenuously against residents parking in the rest of the city is not for the sake of those residents, but for the sake of clifton.

They know that the parking problem in Clifton is the residents -and if an RPZ was ever rolled out here, traditional corners would be taken away, instead of effectively used by WU59TUX

They'd have yellow paint on them, and you'd get tickets for using them, even on a quiet saturday
 
But corners are sometimes the only places left to park.
   
Why should a residents parking zone make cornerish-parking for residents like the owner of WP59LGN a crime?

Search Terms

Here's one of our intermittent lists of search terms that bring visitors to the site. No particular order, just interesting ones

• readers wifes at #9. New one this. Popular. Who knew?
• clevedon viewers wives. special interests. Clevedon is very dark at night.
• mod abbey wood, abbey wood mod, mod abbey wood parking, parking at abbeywood: the exclusion zone is still there.
• bri bristol parking,
• site:.com inurl:blogspot "post a comment" -"comments closed" -"you must be logged in" "driving schools" -got a lot of comment spam on the 2nd2none driving schools argument.
• parking near cabot circus, free parking near cabot circus, free parking bristol city centre, secret parking near cabot circus: as if.
• are quads allowed in bus lanes in bristol - good q. Don't know. Maybe if they are minicabs.
• can you get a speeding ticket in a 20mph zone. Theoretically.
• cotham cpz progress: the paint is up
• found all four tyres slashed in wordsworth road, bristol. Not good. 
• how bad is the traffic on the ringroad around bristol. just dont.
• accident in ashley hill bristol: going to cover this. Pedestrian death, not in the 20mph stretch.
• learner driver on strange three wheeler motorbike on henleaze road bristol uk shouting at drivers. News to us, but we can believe it.
• men take up too much space. The country is split 50/50 on this one.
• my car has been towed by dvla avonmouth Better visit Avonmouth then.
• short cuts fishponds to bristol airport: ask a minicab driver.
• the bristolian cafe: re-opening soon
• unicycle lessons bristol. Why?
• was the bearpit bristol used as a bear pit: it still is on a friday night.
• what does a yellow hatched box mean painted on the road. Somewhere you can stop and legally text.
• why has ashley road bristol uk became so congested with traffic. Become? You've not lived here long enough.
• how to complain against a ticket parked with one or more wheels on the pavement if my car don't fit. Tell the judge you need the range rover to get to the family estate during the grouse season -and would he like to come? Works every time.
• 4x4 funeral car where the coffin goes. On the roof. Deer Body bags work here. If stopped, tell the polis you are returning from a trip to estate.
• bristol escorts 24/7 yate. Fuel costs making city trips too expensive?
• safe dismounting a horse correctly. No idea.
• persecution for parking on a dropped kerb. Exactly. It's the war on motorists. 
• mighty banana van -that's Chris Chakley's -emperor for life of the PRSC. Often found in St Werburghs too.
• traveller vans st werburghs. See above
• news college road clifton bristol car wing mirror. Wing mirror "events" aren't news in the rest of the city. Maybe clifton is being anti-gentrified. 

Referral-wise:

1. google.co.uk
2. waronthemotorist.wordpress.com.
3. google.com
4. crapwalthamforest.blogspot.co.uk
5. thisisbristol.co.uk
6. facebook.com
7. blogger.com
8. t.co (twitter redirects)
9. cycling-embassy.org.uk
10. madcyclelanesofmanchester.blogspot.co.uk

It's only taken a month or two and Crap Walking and Cycling is up there as a key referrer; Joe Dunkley's War on the Motorist site still ahead.

Not participating in the daily mail survelliance infrastructure

The Bristol Traffic Project is, as we have repeatedly declared, a community-sourced police state, using the datacentre infrastructure of our strategic partners Google. Google have published some of their datacentre photographs, for people to look at while reading about how google use atomic clocks to implement causal consistency between locations. The reason that Google's "Spanner" system does this is to ensure that all their computers round the world have a consistent view of "when" they are.

The Bristol Evening Post, with whom we no longer have any strategic relationship, hasn't needed atomic clocks to implement a global-scale consistency model; indeed their articles do not usually implement causal consistency; the notion that actions (e.g burning carbon fuels) have side effects that happen afterwards (climate change). Nor are they eventually Consistent: at no point in the future will the various articles and newspapers of the daily mail portfolio ever make coherent sense.

This is not news; it is not important. Except now, anyone logging in to the thisisbristol web site to add a balanced comment about how Cllr Gollop is going back on his word of being an anti-cycling councillor and now pandering to the lycra-criminals is, if they use a gmail.com email address, asked to sign in with their "google ID".

And when you do that, what rights does Google say the thisisbristol web site -hence the Evening Post and the rest of the Daily Mail portfolio say that they want to have to your account:

TINReg is requesting permission to:

•     Manage your tasks
•     View your email address
•     View basic information about your account
•     Manage your contacts
•     Know who you are on Google

What does that mean? It means the Daily Mail/this-is- set of web sites want to:

Manage your tasks
Have the ability to read and update your todo list in google calendar.

View your email address
See your email address

View basic information about your account
See what your claimed gender and age is.

Manage your contacts
see below

Know who you are on Google
See who you say you are

It's that "Manage your contacts" one that worries us. Because Gmail builds up a list of contacts automatically, based who sends you email and who you email yourself, the google contact list is really "a list of who you communicate with".

That's a really interesting piece of information. Know that and they can start comparing your contacts list with the other people who comment on the paper.  And because they have the contacts list of those commenters, the site could even find common contacts between two commenters  -even in the case where the two commenters do not know each other directly. That is, in graph-theory terms, one degree of separation. Before long they'll have built up a graph of the communications between people in the city, which is pretty valuable stuff. Facebook have that to an extent, but only between people who explicitly declare each other as friends. Even so, that subset of links was enough for Facebook to show that there is usually a four-hop connection between any two people in the US: four degrees of separation. 

If the entire portfolio of the Daily Mail web sites start collecting your email address and those of all you talk to, they stand a good chance of building up a map of who talks to who amongst all people who log in and comment in any of their web sites.

We don't trust the organisation. It's not that we don't agree with their political objectives: the imprisonment of subversives, the stance they take against lycra-criminals, 20 mph speed limits and other potential criminals. It's just that we don't see why they need to go behind our backs and build up a graph of everyone who comments on the paper to achieve those goals. It's the people who don't read the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, the Evening Post, and their other regional counterparts that we need to worry about.

This is what Bristol Traffic is: a police state run by volunteers! There is no need for the DM sites to spy on us -not when we report the anti-motoring activities that the city is up to.

The Danger of Twitter

Twitter alert!!!

Now, here at Bristol Traffic, none of us do Twitter.

It's not our thing, so we leave that to others like @ipayroadtax to point out how cyclists continuously get in our way, without contributing to the costs of our roads.

More importantly, we don't do twitter because we know how it can be used to persecute us.

Take this example: here's an innocent tweet from a motorist (@andythomas365), sitting waiting for the lights to change just north of Stokes Croft:

Nothing wrong with this, you might think, except some clever clog spotted it and has now alerted the Police to the use of a mobile device to take photos whilst driving...

See that? 

The Police are straight on to it, even pointing out where to go to find out how many points you may get for using a phone while waiting at the lights.

Our advice: stay away from Twitter!

2nd2none Driving School -paying for placement

As our commenting policy states, we reserve the right to make fun or criticise anyone who leaves comment spam.

Today though, we see some ready-for-moderation comments that surprised even us -not by the content, but the destination:

Lakisha Clogston has left a new comment on your post "Discussions with the BSM and other Bristol Driving...":

Hi, just a moment back I was searching for the information on the same topic and now I am here. So much information, really well executed blog. This is really informative and I will for sure refer my friends the same. Thanks
driving lessons bath

And

Lakisha Clogston has left a new comment on your post "Eric Pickles Declares war on the voices he keeps h...":

Nice start guys...I went through the website and I found that you made decent point here. Keep up the topic that everyone can choose one of the best. Thanks...

driving lessons Bristol 

Where are the Links to? Why 2nd2none driving school! Proud owners of WR08HXK!



This driving school has already featured in

• March 2010: Coverage.
• November 2010, 2nd2none shows how it's done
• December 2010: A local driving school discusses the highway code.
• July 2011, Discussions with the BSM and other Bristol Driving Schools.

The last of these is one of the articles our little web page spammer actually tried to comment on. 

Isn't that fantastic? 2nd2none are paying some second-tier spam idiot to leave comments on our pages, comments that because of the rel=nofollow tag that blogspot added, would never have brought them higher up search indexes. And because of our comment moderation policy, would get picked up as spam and promptly deleted -from pages that already mentioned the brand!

We have been giving 2nd2none free coverage! All this time they would have been willing to pay for placement!

This is going to change our entire business plan. Up until now, we've been accepting money in exchange for not putting their vehicles or brands up on our site. Now we are so successful that things have changed.

In future, driving schools will be expected to pay for coverage.

Eric Pickles Declares war on the voices he keeps hearing in his head

A new daily mail article has used the title "Eric Pickles Declares War", this time "war on Tory Councils who oppose his planning reforms".  As such we have dropped in ranking to #2 in google searches for that term.

We have been in consultation with an "consultant" who claims to "work in the same building as Eric Pickles". This person, who used the clearly fake name Grant Shapp MP, is says the solution to this problem is to regurgitate our existing content and seek new links.

Well, there's not a lot to regurgitate except to observe that Eric Pickles regularly declares war -but never seems to win them. 

• War on Motorists: lost.
• War on Street Clutter (August 2010) -look at any street and you can see he lost there
• War on Town Hall Pravdas (November 2010): gone all quiet in the hope nobody realises that he isn't winning: the Afghanistan strategy. 
• War on council trade unions (October 2011): again, silence. 
• War on unauthorized protest camps (august 2012): not until pleb- and traveller- culling is legalised will this go away. 
• War on Conservative Town halls who use their decentralised authority to oppose a decision that comes from central government (Sept 2012).  To early to tell.

That's a pretty awful track record. Hasn't anyone noticed this? That whenever a press release or article comes out starting "Eric Pickles Declare War" -then the war is lost.

We could almost use that as a weapon itself: threaten to deploy him on behalf of the other side. Imagine how Iran would react if the UK government said they'd get Eric Pickles to declare war on Israel and the US -because the moment Eric did that Iran would be doomed.  Or if the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis was celebrated by having Eric Pickles declare war against the capitalist oppressor of the cuban people -there'd be starbucks on the corner of every street in Havana before the ink was try on the press release.


If there's a failing of this government, it's not that Eric's declarations of war have all been complete failures -it's that they haven't realised that he could be used as the country's last-resort strategic armament.