I spent
the weekend with a road safety engineer. He chairs E.U. meetings and appears as
expert witness in accident investigations and court cases and writes reports for
the Transport Research Laboratory. One of those reports was used by Bexley council
to justify their narrowing of Abbey Road, Belvedere.
I doubt they read the report let alone understood it, but they thought it would be an easy way
to fob me off when I complained about their antics. Probably they didn’t expect a mere
resident to read an expensive report on road design. But I must get to the point…
I told my friend about the latest accident on Abbey Road and I shall quote
his response verbatim. “It is possible to get traffic to slow down by making a road
narrower, through cross-hatching or raised platforms, but to make a road narrower by
bringing the carriageways closer together is crass stupidity”. I think you mean Craske
stupidity I replied, but the pun was lost on him. I don’t suppose the girl who
ended up in hospital a week ago would raise a smile either but at least we know
that an expert in the field condemns Andrew Bashford (Bexley’s road designer)
and councillor Craske as guilty of “crass stupidity”.
Today is a bit of a red-letter day. It seems that someone has at last been
spurred into action and concreted in the hole in the pedestrian refuge which has
been featured here so many times bfore.
Two weeks ago my green bin wasn’t emptied, it rarely is when there is not much in it, and the council’s response was absolutely useless. For today’s collection I hooked my small amount of rubbish to the bin lid so that the poor dears didn’t have to over-reach themselves. Success! I also put out my new neighbour’s bin (moved in this week so probably doesn’t know the collection day). She wasn’t so lucky, her two small bags of rubbish were left at the bottom of the bin. Laziness and lack of pride in their work may be the almost acceptable norm for binmen but the real disgrace is Bexley council’s failure to address the problem.
Today
marks the first anniversary of the demolition of the keep left bollards
in Abbey Road, otherwise known as pedestrian refuges. This one has never been
restored to service although a half-hearted attempt was made to reconnect the
electricity supply six weeks ago. The green plastic barrier
used to protect the hole in the pavement still lies forlornly on the path but
the sign remains unlit.
When I last spoke to a council official about this dangerous neglect I was told
it had not been forgotten and maybe it hasn’t, but what possible reason can
there be for leaving a gaping unlit hole in the road for a whole year? I think
the time has come to name the council official who has been overseeing this
ridiculous and unwarranted delay. He is Rupert Cheeseman and the same man I
decided not to name on 18th September last year
when numerous cars were ticketed for parking after he stupidly placed temporary prohibition signs
outside the restricted area. When shown the problem he had created he merely shrugged and
walked away.
Contrast that attitude with a report I made today of a drain cover which had
lifted proud of the road surface and posed a minor hazard to traffic. Within
nine minutes my email was acknowledged and in rather less than three hours the
drain had been repaired. If the ‘Northern Area Manager’ can go out of his way to
care for motorists and the residents of Bexley, why is that useless individuals
like Andrew Bashford
and Cheeseman are allowed to treat them with total contempt?
We
don’t know which of Bexley’s many idiots said that
but we do know that it was a lie. Today the sound of poorly silenced exhausts and the smell
of two-stroke oil filled the woods at Lesnes Abbey for much of the day. This rider was
travelling at high speed along narrow paths occupied by walkers and families with dogs. It
is difficult to estimate his speed but it must have been at least 40 m.p.h.
The extensive fencing also seems to have created a ‘Forth Bridge’
scenario requiring
constant attention with preservatives. The short section fronting Abbey Road
took two men at least three days to paint last week and that is only a small
part of the entire folly and with the shortest posts. It’s a waste of money from every point of view. When
a car ploughed into the fence last year
and ripped it up, it was obvious that posts which appear to be in good condition were rotten below ground.
I
was returning on foot from a bit of shopping this afternoon when I saw a young boy cross
Abbey Road using the refuge opposite Carrill Way;
the one that has remained unlit since the road was turned into an accident black-spot last
year. He misjudged the speed of a passing car and was lucky to survive unscathed. Well not
entirely unscathed, he got a good telling off from his mother and since the lad couldn’t
have been any more than three I was inclined to think it wasn’t him who needed the talking
to. I’d not been home for more than 15 minutes (it was 5 p.m.) and I heard rather too
many emergency sirens for comfort and sure enough, this time there had been an accident.
It was obvious to anyone with more than half a brain that there were going to be
accidents on Abbey Road once the recovery space for drivers to take avoiding
action had been removed by the numbskulls who run Bexley council. I asked a
Transport Research Laboratory consultant to take a look and he confirmed it.
Today’s incident was a text book example of the accuracy of his prediction.
Quite recently I said it was inevitable after seeing near
misses during the Easter school holidays.
Fortunately the young girl who I believe came off her bike in front of a car
(a policeman’s initial verdict, not mine) will live to tell the
tale. Meanwhile Andrew Bashford and councillors John Davey and Peter Craske will
be basking in the praise heaped on them by
the cycling lobby on whom
they wasted half a million pounds of our money. The bloody scars on the road are
a small price to pay for political correctness.
As is always the case with accidents a small crowd gathered to watch events
unfold and there was just one topic of conversation. The speeding traffic and
the fact that Bexley council made things worse through their ineptitude.
For absolute accuracy I should add that councillor Davey thought narrowing the
road to benefit cyclists was a silly idea but despite being the vice-Chairman of
a Transport Sub-Committee he nodded it through to please fellow politicians and
thereby proved himself to be two-faced and in his own small way, corrupt.
Note. The cars shown in these photographs were not involved in the accident.
My green bin wasn’t emptied last Friday, an occurrence too frequent to be
worth mentioning here each time. The problem is that I don’t produce much
rubbish and a couple of supermarket carrier bags are not easy to reach at the bottom
of the bin, so it’s easier to walk on by rather than reach in or hitch the bin
to the van and get the hydraulic lift to do the job. It’s not a huge problem but
we pay nearly the highest taxes in London for a sub-standard service and I thought it
might be worth seeking advice from the council.
“My bin wasn’t emptied again last week and I am asking your advice on the best
way of persuading your men to empty it. The problem arises when there is not
much rubbish in the bin which lies at the bottom out of easy arm’s reach. What
do you suggest to overcome this persistent problem? Obviously such a small
amount of mainly cellophane wrappers can be kept another fortnight but it
doesn’t seem right to me that I pay for a collection I don’t get. Have you any
suggestions? The bin doesn’t need an emergency collection but it ought to go on
your record of misses.”
Next day I had a reply from Serge Poumo, Waste and Recycling Advisor.
“Thank you for contacting our department. Your property is on Enhanced Recycling
Services and your green bin should be emptied on a fortnightly basis. As you are
not really producing a lot of waste, we do not see a reason for why your
collection frequency should be changed.”
What’s that all about? I didn’t ask for more frequent collection and if I
want a reduced service I’d put my bin out every six weeks instead of two. What I
would have liked to know was whether there was anything I could do to help the
bin men overcome their fear of doing their job properly. It would make it easier
for them if I left my supermarket bag on the pavement but we know what they
they would do then! I corresponded with Mr. Poumo over a long period a
couple of years ago when someone in my road who didn’t speak English and came
from a country that probably didn’t understand the concept of refuse collection
always threw theirs out of the door on to the street. Mr. Puomo achieved
nothing over many months and eventually neighbours got together and took the huge
heap of rubbish to the dump themselves. How is it that councils attract so many useless employees?
Today’s newspapers report that several councils in London are thinking of
switching off some traffic lights at night to reduce delays and save
electricity. I suspect that may be a good idea.
Almost the only time I use my car is for a fortnightly late night trip to north
London. I used to return via Blackwall tunnel and with a clear road in the early
hours of the morning and observing all the speed limits the journey time was
entirely dependent on one’s luck with the traffic lights. None of them were in
Bexley but on a bad night they could add eight minutes to the journey.
After Boris Johnson reneged on his electoral promise to open Blackwall Tunnel
to two way working and then compounded his stupidity by closing it southbound
for six nights a week I’ve had to return home via the bridge at Dartford which
is a longer but faster route. At 1 a.m. there are just two sets of lights which
appear to be useless, both are in Bexley. The lights on the roundabout at the
junction of Thames Road, Northend Road and Perry Street (Slade Green) are a
minor inconvenience. I’ve been stopped there on about half my dozen journeys
over the last six months but only once to give way to another vehicle. All the
other stops were to satisfy the unintelligent controlling computer program.
However the junction of Queen’s Road and James Watt Way in Erith is something
else. Just once the lights went green as soon as I stopped there but on the
other eleven occasions I’ve been stuck on red for several minutes and never once
has anyone emerged from or go into the shopping area served by James Watt Way. What
else would you expect at one o’clock in the morning? Those lights really are a
waste of electricity. I imagine that as soon as councillor Craske realises that
switching off a few lights will help refill his expenses trough all sorts of lights
will be put out.
A
report in the Erith and Thamesmead Chronicle made me dig out the Summer issue Bexley magazine
first commented upon on 30th June for the dubious claims made for the
fencing placed around parks. “The new fencing has eradicated the problem” of
motorcycling in parks according to the fantasist who masterminded the expensive assault on
the wheel-chair bound. Anyone who lives close to the park will tell you this is the worst
year for motorcycle invasion for as long as can be remembered. The noise of badly silenced
bikes is heard almost daily.
The Chronicle highlights more magazine misinformation; that dumping rubbish on private ground
is punishable by a £50,000 fine. It reports that when a couple in Welling tried to get
something done about fly-tipping in their private back alley, even identifying
the culprit, Bexley council “did not want to have anything to do with it”. When
councillor John Waters (Danson Park ward) became involved he also washed his hands of the
matter. A council spokesman said “The article in the magazine is not incorrect”
which is tantamount to the council spokesman calling John Waters a liar but despite what
the Bexley magazine might say, that their website repeats, and their spokesman parrots, an
examination of the Environment Agency’s website and a number of anti-litter
websites reveals that it is councillor John Waters who tells the truth and the
council’s magazine and website which are wrong. How does Bexley manage to attract so
many incompetents to its midst? The Erith Chronicle devotes a page to the number of Bexley
snouts which are stuck deeply into the tax-payer filled trough and the massive pay increases
they have recently awarded themselves. So that’s how they do it. Rich rewards for total
incompetence and the occasional bit of corruption thrown in for good measure.
I
don’t often use Alsike Road in Belvedere even though I can see it from
home; it’s the wrong side of the tracks. However 31st July was an exception and
I saw that every drain gully was missing and covered by a traffic cone. The
following Monday I spoke
to Tony Hughes at Bexley’s Works Direct about it and understandably he was
more than a little upset by the loss of 30 gullies in one night (more in
Greenwich apparently). It is certainly an appalling crime. I went to look again
last Saturday and nothing had changed except that some cones were now down the
drains rather than marking them. However nearly every lamp post was adorned with
a notice from Bexley council saying that Alsike Road would be totally closed (licence
valid 18 months from today) for drain “inspections”. Probably that is necessary
but once again we see Bexley council taking the easy option and maximising public
inconvenience (not forgetting the bus operator too) rather than exercise some traffic
management skill - I fear I have answered my own implied question there!
Guessing that the road would be closed from dawn I went there soon after 7 a.m
to find business as usual and the lamp post closure notices gone.
It seems unlikely that the council would remove their notices over the weekend but
perhaps it is significant that the bus stops did not say they were out of use. Maybe
they never intended to close the road today but equally possibly it’s
another Bexley council cock-up and they forgot to notify TfL. Meanwhile there are 30
open man-traps and vehicle wrecking holes in just one street.
Late in the afternoon I contacted Mr. Hughes to ask if he knew what was supposed to happen
and when. He said the notices must have been removed by vandals and that the work had gone
ahead today anyway. I took a look at 5.30 p.m. and there was no sign of any
activity and no new gullies. I took another photo (see gallery) but did manage to find two
Bexley closure notices in fairly obscure places. I suspect there must be a simple explanation,
Mr. Hughes is not from the usual Bexley council mould and won’t be deliberately
misleading anyone.
Following the incident with the No Entry sign where I saw a
suspicious looking scrap truck nearby I now carry a small pencil and a scrap of
paper in my back-pocket to note down the registration number. If we are to
tackle this potentially life threating crime perhaps everyone should do the same.
Bexley's
parks usually get favourable comment from me (except when their
‘Chief Works Officer’ implied I was a racist
for suggesting that the foreign language signposts - since removed - were discriminatory)
but things have gone badly wrong in recent weeks. The young trees in Lesnes Abbey park
which the council have nurtured and protected from the vandals at some expense have all
been allowed to wither for lack of water. The irrigation system has fallen into disuse and
after a few weeks without significant rainfall the trees have withered and probably
died. Bexley’s vandalism has been worse than that of the nocturnal visitors.
Never mind, it’s only your money they have wasted.
The larger photos provide a clearer view.
It’s been mentioned before that one of Bexley council’s new and inconvenient habits is to show contempt for those who pay their wages by completely closing roads whenever a minor repair is required. The old way of closing just one carriageway at a time seems to have been abandoned. The latest such closure reported is of The Grove, near Danson Park, which has both entrances closed.
Yesterday morning I was at Abbey Wood railway station around 6.30 and saw
that someone had pulled a No Entry sign and its pole out of the pavement on the
Bexley side of the borough boundary. It left a little pyramid of dislodged paving stones with a
circular hole in the middle and the pole was gone, possibly the latest example
of scrap metal thieving. I reported it by email to Bexley’s ‘Works Direct’ at
06.53 and at 11.51 received a reply to say the hazard would be attended to. This
morning I noted that the paving had been repaired and a new stone installed
where the hole used to be. I don’t think I’ve had to say a bad word about Works
Direct; how come they have a different attitude to most other departments?
While I am handing out accolades, I noticed on my trip down to Ruxley last
Sunday that a speed indicator had been installed just before the speed camera on
Gravel Hill. I imagine this fine example of common sense is the work of Mr. Filey who
looks after that department and who responded so well to my enquiry about the
Abbey Road speed indicators. One
odd thing I’ve noticed about all Bexley’s indicators that I have driven past is
that if I have my speedo on exactly 30 m.p.h. they register 31 but if I do
the same in any neighbouring borough they register 29 or even 28.
If Bexley council was all like my experience of Works Direct and of Mr. Filey this website would
quickly die but while we have malicious and idiotic councillors like Craske, Davey
and Campbell, incompetent Team Leaders like
Andrew Bashford and loons like Miss L. Cairns who twice threatened prosecution of
someone who couldn’t find an open bank on a bank holiday, then it seems I
won’t be out of a job any time soon.
Reports
came in this week, liberally peppered with the word “idiots”, of massive traffic queues in North Cray Road so I nipped down
there at 7 a.m. this morning to take a look. Sure enough, Bexley council
has been up to its usual carriageway reduction tricks. I am not familiar with
that junction and the last time I came down North Cray Road and turned left must
be more than ten years ago. It looks as though it has been very easy to make
that turn and clear the road quickly for following traffic and now it will
inevitably be much more difficult and possibly result in queues. Bexley council
loves queues. On the other hand the road must have been very wide for a pedestrian
to cross. What is indisputable is that a lot of money is being spent at a time when
everyone is supposed to be hard up. But when did Bexley council ever care about
wasting your hard-earned?
My journey to Ruxley corner was circuitous because the whole of Bexley village
had been cordoned off by the police so I returned via Sidcup and Welling. In
Upper Wickham Lane I stumbled across yet more road disruptions and closures. A
roundabout was being installed. To me it didn’t look as though it was placed
where it was most needed. There are some photographs in ’the gallery’.
Today’s News Shopper describes Bexley council as having been “taken over by a mob of nasty, evil people who seem to thrive on other people’s pain and hurt” and someone in the care department as “swine”, “a vulgar little maggot” and “a worthless bag of filth”. And I thought describing councillor Craske as a “malicious weasel” might be pushing the boundaries. The only time I came in contact with the council’s care department resulted in these pictures and some bragging that disadvantaged people needed to be punished.
Last
week the road was dug up alongside the unlit pedestrian refuge in Abbey Road, a conduit
installed , and the road surface left in a poor state. Over the hot weekend the pipe
drooped across the carriageway already too narrow for buses to pass each other
safely. I had thought that the bollard might not reach its first birthday in an
unlit state but Bexley council’s continued negligence may prove me wrong.
Today I watched the traffic swerving to avoid the conduit so I have secured it in the
hole behind the exposed kerbstones.
Quite often I read about proposals to end A&E services at Queen Mary’s
Hospital, Sidcup and to my shame, probably because I’ve rarely been there, and
never to A&E, I’m not sure I know exactly what is going on. I believe that the
proposals include shunting A&E patients to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich,
and yes I can understand why people may not like that! Six months ago
exactly I briefly mentioned how I was taken by ambulance to Q.E.H., where
they filled me full of morphine and saline and told me I would have to be kept
there overnight. Then they threw me out five minutes before the Labour
government’s four hour admissions target leaving me to writhe in agony on their
waiting room floor without any treatment whatever.
Not unnaturally I complained and although they commented on various aspects of
my treatment they neatly omitted any mention of my principal complaint.
i.e. Targets before patient care. So I complained again and a mere four months later
they replied. Along the way my times at A&E have been falsified when I and
friends know exactly what my admission and throw out times times were. Other
lies have led to the hospital’s letters being contradictory so there is plenty of scope to
complain again. This time, because the contradictions have naturally led me to it,
there is a more specific question about why I received no treatment at all for the condition
diagnosed with the help of X-ray, beyond ever more powerful morphine shots. For anyone
interested in the performance of Q.E.H. A&E I have put
the correspondence
on site. But don’t bother going there unless you have half an hour to spare and an
interest in our health services. In another four months I may have another instalment to report.
Anyone still stuck with a dial-up connection may wish to know that the
correspondence page amounts to about a megabyte of data.
I see that councillor Craske is keen to persecute motorists again. He is
raising the price of a resident’s parking permit from £35 to £100. The excuse is
that the price of “non-core services” must be increased to cover their costs.
Now I am totally sympathetic to the view that non-core services should not be
subsidised by little old ladies living alone or any other tax payer for that
matter. If that means paying more for a DVD borrowed from the library or to have
an old fridge taken away, then so be it, it is the price we pay for Gordon Brown’s
mismanagement of the economy. But parking outside your own house isn’t even a
service. The permit is a penalty charge for having the misfortune to live close to a
popular amenity.
It is as often as not the council’s idea to restrict parking to residents
which is not always a bad thing but how can it cost £35 a year to issue them with
a piece of paper to stick on their windscreen let alone £100? The restrictions
are already just a money-making scheme through extortionate parking fines. One
neighbouring borough that imposes far lower taxes than Bexley - I suppose that
covers all of them but this one is across the river - doesn’t charge for
residents’ parking permits at all, but then they do not have the expenses king
Craske to contend with. If the malicious weasel was serious about cutting costs he
would make the permits valid for two years and halve the cost of administering the
schemes at a stroke. But we all know that such a dramatic increase in price of a
paper permit is just a cynical ploy by the nasty little runt to help finance the
ever-deepening expenses trough into which he can plunge his greedy snout.
I had
planned to feature a first birthday event for the unlit pedestrian refuge in
Abbey Road but it seems the council has beaten me to it by five weeks. This
morning was marred by the sound of a nearby pneumatic drill and when I found time
to take a look just before 2p.m. I found the road dug up and a plastic
conduit installed. Unfortunately the hole and been filled in with wet concrete
and the traffic allowed to run through it. No workmen were in attendance and
every passing vehicle sent a resounding thump through the ground.
Seeing me with a camera the nearest resident rushed out and told me he had
phoned the council four times about the thump shaking his foundations and been
given the run-around. Apparently no one knew of any work going on in Abbey Road.
The resident told me his lunch time glass of beer had jumped off his
table when a bus went by and it, the beer that is, went all over his carpet. I can
well believe it, even small cars were making quite a thud. While we were talking a
council man turned up and said he had come to investigate and he hoped the problem would be fixed
before the day was done. It would have made more sense if he had supervised the
earlier work and ensured it was properly done.
He was evasive when asked why it had taken best part of
a year to address this safety problem but claimed it hadn’t been forgotten.
If it wasn’t forgotten doesn’t that make the council’s failure wilful and
therefore a worse bit of negligence?
By 5p.m. nothing had happened but by six a Conway lorry and a single man showed up.
To attempt to repair the road with no protection would be foolhardy and I
watched from a distance as he made a phone call. Immediately afterwards he
backed his lorry alongside the refuge and blocked the road. No traffic warning signs
were put out and the rush hour traffic had to directly face that coming in the opposite
direction. I don’t blame the man, he had been sent out totally unequipped to
tackle the job and chose to take his life in his hands to try to stop the thumps rather
than go home as he might have been justified in doing, leaving nearby residents
with little chance of any sleep.
By 7p.m. a temporary resurfacing had been completed and Conway had gone. Totally
unprofessional it might look but it was surprisingly effective at suppressing
the thuds. Will it still be intact in the morning?
The unlit refuge was previously reported on 17 February and
28 January and last year on
18 December and
1 December.
On
30 June I mentioned that Bexley council were bragging in their magazine about putting
metal railings around Lesnes Abbey woods (and several other parks in the North of the borough) in a vain
attempt to exclude motorcyclists. They are ugly and do not comply with disability law
and similar fences in Bromley have killed motorists who collide with them. If the fences fail in their
objective then this massive expenditure has to be a total waste of taxpayers’ money as well as being a
considerable inconvenience to the law-abiding. Would any sensible person ever believe it is possible to allow
most people free access to a park but exclude others without installing military style security permanently
patrolled by armed guards? Of course not, but Bexley council is not noted for common-sense or logical thought.
This afternoon I was strolling through the woods with a friend who was carrying his video camera. As these two lads
passed by he had the presence of mind to press the record button. The images are not perfect but they capture the
registration number well enough. LX05 XKD. Look at the larger images to see for yourself.
A
beautifully produced booklet has dropped through Bexley’s letterboxes this
week and the vast majority, mine included, is headed straight for the recycling
bin. Goodness knows what the cost is especially as my friends in Bromley tell me
they have all received copies too. Obviously some sort of catalogue of adult
education classes has to be produced but why can’t it be more carefully
targeted? One to every household in the borough, and Bromley too apparently,
seems grossly extravagant.
When I first moved to this borough some 23 years ago, when Bexley’s council tax
(rates) was the third lowest in London and not almost the highest as it is now,
the adult education booklet was produced entirely on telephone directory grade
paper and served its purpose just as well. There is no need for such a
publication to look as though it has come off the same presses as Vogue or
Cosmopolitan. Such muddled thinking and downright profligacy by Bexley council
goes a long way towards explaining why local taxes are five times as high as
they were 20 years ago.
The
Summer 2010 issue
has just arrived and compared with the other two London council magazines I regularly see
it is far less like a propaganda sheet. Bexley’s magazine under the previous
Labour administration seemed to be little more than an ego trip for
councillor Ball with his face peering out from innumerable pages. The current
issue is guilty of no more than peering through rose tinted spectacles. Take the
article (page 4) headed “Cheaper rail travel for Bexley residents”. It says
that “Bexley residents using an Oyster card to travel by train can (save) up to
40% particularly during the off-peak period”. No mention that the saving is
made because off-peak travel cards have been withdrawn and evening peak
hour restrictions have been introduced.
Maybe some people do benefit but I know of a young family who no longer get to
London as a little treat for the children because it has become far too
expensive. And twice I’ve heard of an occasional traveller who has loaded her
Pay As You Go Card with £20 for a day in London and become marooned when the
card has run out of money. It makes me realise what a boon my Freedom Pass is.
Another example of ‘rose tinted spectacles’ is the feature (page 14) on fencing
in Lesnes Abbey Woods which I mentioned on 1st May. Bexley
council boasts that it keeps out motorcyclists. As I said, I’ve never
actually seen any in the woods though I accept that they sometimes visit because
I can hear the noise from home. I’ll admit to having heard them over recent hot
summer days and even seen them heading off, generally ‘sans helmet’,
in the direction of Lesnes Abbey. So all the indications are that the huge
expense of installing the ugly and dangerous barriers has been another abject
failure by Bexley council.
I’m sure the tall thin man I saw wriggling in sideways through the narrow access
point at the foot of Knee Hill would agree that the scheme is totally stupid and
does nothing positive apart from line the fencing contractor’s pocket. It
would be interesting to hear what the disabled think about it.
I am getting quite seriously worried about the number of injustices and
illegal acts by Bexley council that are reported to me. Yesterday evening I had
another left on my answering machine. Unfortunately the message becomes so
distorted after the first sentence that I only caught the lady’s name and the
words Bexley council and if I heard correctly, a mention of offences against the
Data Protection Act. Everything else was so badly corrupted by what I imagine is
a mobile telephone connection that I am in the dark as to what it was really
about and don’t have a phone number.
At present all I can do here is report the stupidity and law-breaking of Bexley council
in the hope that when the list of shameful activity gets big enough someone may see fit
to try to curtail it. I haven’t the highest of hopes as the mismanagement and
persecution of too many residents has been going on for at least twelve years to my
certain knowledge, through administrations of both political persuasions. Legal advice
cannot be given except perhaps that two people concerned with parking issues have been
in contact to offer help. However their expert advice is already available elsewhere
on the web.
Because of the expense of running the site’s
telephone contact arrangements I have
had to modify the conditions a little.
Earlier this week I reported that Bexley council were
delaying responses to parking appeals so that the appellant would have to pay a
higher fine. Whilst I am slowly getting used to the idea that Bexley council is the
epitome of bad practice and management by spite, a bit of me still finds it hard to
believe, so I have been searching around the web for whether what they are doing is
legal or not.
The parking adjudicator’s website says “Please note, challenging the PCN before
the end of the 14 day period may, in some cases freeze the discounted rate but this is
not always the case - you need to check with your individual council”. So
it seems that councils who believe in fairness will say something like
“Currently we are unable to specify a date for our response but during this time
the case will be placed on hold to stop it progressing any further. You will not
be disadvantaged by any delay on our part. Please accept our apologies for any
inconvenience this delay may cause you.” and councils intent on being evil
bastards at every opportunity will penalise you for having the temerity to
exercise the legal right of appeal. Given that choice it’s pretty obvious what a
dictatorial council which doesn’t really believe in democracy will do.
Perhaps Bexley should be played at its own game. If the fine is doubled because
Bexley council contrives to take longer than 14 days to respond there is
absolutely no reason not to take the case to appeal. The fine cannot be
increased, but it is further deferred and it helps keep the nasty individuals
who infest Bexley council bogged down in extra paperwork. Best of all, the
parking adjudicator won’t be happy with Bexley council if the number of appeals
keeps rising.
As if to confirm Bexley council as being fundamentally corrupt I have overnight
received another catalogue of their malpractice detailing lies,
cover-ups and
refusals to fulfil statutory obligations. I have a feeling that this
particular case is far from over and could possibly find it’s way to court so I
have decided it might be best to put publication on ice for a while. I once had
a council blatantly ask me for a back-hander to look favourably on a planning
application and was astounded when my employer (a multi-national company) was
asked for the same and simply didn’t know how to handle the situation, but I
have never before known a council to be so keen to declare war on its residents as
Bexley appears to have done.
This week’s News Shopper reports that Thamesmead’s new M.P., Teresa Pearce made her
maiden speech in the Commons
pleading for retention of the Crossrail line to Abbeywood.
Well done Teresa; my relatives in east London are all spoilt for choice of fast railway
connections to central London and we have nothing but an expensive Southeastern trains
connection which is 20%-25% slower than it was 20 years ago.
If anything is to be cancelled it should be Crossrail’s Shenfield branch.
The Shopper also reports Bexley’s councillor Bacon stating the obvious at the
London Assembly; that the way to get people recycling is to make it easy for them,
not fine them. Quite right too Gareth. I manage to recycle almost everything and
as you might guess, it’s nothing to do with a love-in with Bexley council;
it’s because it is as easy to recycle as it is not to. Easier in
some respects. It doesn’t stop the bin men finding any excuse not to empty a
bin though, I see many warning tags on bins when taking my early morning walk to Abbey
Wood station on bin day. What the ‘offences’ are I don’t know.
A reader’s letter says that the road planning clowns have made a “ridiculous
mess” of Faraday Avenue in Sidcup. I must pop down there with a camera.
P.S. It seems it was tempting fate to complain about the lack of alternative rail
routes to London from this area because I reached London Bridge at nine o’clock
tonight and decided I couldn’t be bothered to run for the 9.01 as there was a
faster train due in a few minutes. Bad mistake. The 9.01 and the following train
were the last to leave London Bridge today. Someone fell under a train at New
Cross and that following train heading for Lewisham blocked the Deptford
junction. After an hour’s worth of announcements which couldn’t give much
advice to those wishing to travel past Greenwich. I decided that the Jubilee to
Canning Town, DLR to Woolwich and a bus was the only alternative. Three hours from
Farringdon to Abbey Wood station. Crossrail, if it is ever built, would be
a quarter of an hour. Southeastern’s website was still showing no trains to or
from London Bridge at midnight.
A
recurrent theme of correspondence, apart from the regular complaints about bad
road design, concerns the arrogance of far too many Bexley council employees
and their enthusiasm for going out of their way to be as obnoxious as possible.
Presumably that tone is set from the top. Certainly we have councillor Craske who
delights in making the worst possible decision
if he can in the process blight someone’s life and bank balance, and
councillor Davey who speaks with a forked tongue and would rather see residents
unfairly fined than stand up for
justice. I could also mention the social services department who believe in
punishing the mentally disabled for being difficult to handle.
Miss Cairns, jobsworth extraordinaire, who
twice threatened to prosecute when a council tax payment was delayed solely by a bank
holiday. And did I mention the undersized parking bays
and Bexley’s retort that they could do pretty much what they liked and if you didn’t
like it challenge the parking fine in court?
The latest episode to come my way is another concerning a parking fine. Due to a
medical emergency while transferring an elderly lady to hospital a driver had
to pull over and stop for a few seconds, well under a minute. The road was
congested because someone had inconsiderately parked in an awkward place so the
driver stopped with his wheels up the kerb so as not to congest the road
further. Unfortunately the awkwardly parked vehicle was Bexley’s
moron-mobile which photographed the brief incident.
A few days later the penalty notice arrived in the post.
The driver decided to appeal against the fine on the grounds that it was a very brief
transgression, there was a medical emergency to deal with and the problem was largely caused by
the council’s gestapo camcar. Despite a number of emailed ‘chasers’ the
council did not bother to reply for more than a month and as one might expect
from such an obnoxious bunch of sub-humans they rejected the appeal.
By this time the fine had doubled and Bexley council simply didn’t care that the delay
was entirely of its own making. These so-called public servants unreasonably insisted
that the driver had to pay extra for the dubious privilege of appealing against being
forced up the kerb by the council’s own vehicle. Contrast that appalling attitude
with a letter issued in similar circumstances by a nearby borough.
“Currently
we are unable to specify a date for our response but during this time
the case will be placed on hold to stop it progressing any further. You will not
be disadvantaged by any delay on our part. Please accept our apologies for any
inconvenience this delay may cause you”. What a refreshing change from the
diabolical attitude Bexley council has on any matter involving roads or money.
The doubled fine was paid on the day the appeal was rejected. The receipt came
back with the words “To avoid incurring further charges please do not send any
further correspondence as it may not be responded to, however, it may result in
further recovery action being taken.” What is that nonsense doing on a receipt
for payment in full? My correspondent thinks it is “just another of their snide
digs”. It almost certainly is another of their attempts to hound residents
whenever possible, like when my bank made one error after 20 years of perfectly on time
council tax payments, I was given two days to pay or be prosecuted.
It not only adds to Bexley council’s reputation for being
bloody-minded but
confirms their total incompetence too.
The spycam shown here is for illustration purposes only. This one is
delaying buses and causing mayhem in Northumberland Heath; not the site of the
incident reported above.
Today’s Times repeats the report from The News Shopper dated 26 May about pubs
in Bexley being willing to serve amateur thespians who were acting drunk. When I
first saw the story ten days ago I decided it didn't have a strong enough Bexley council
connection to be featured here but I have had my arm twisted by regular readers who have
pointed out that the performance was re-enacted at Bexley’s civic offices so the
council’s fingerprints are all over this crime against common-sense too. To send
am-drams into pubs and get them to slur their words was a mad scheme likely to be
ridiculed and it is good that The Times thought it sufficiently idiotic to give it space.
It surely cannot be in any way illegal, even after the 3,000 odd new ways to be a
criminal introduced by our last government, to serve someone who is pretending to be
drunk? Just imagine what any half decent barrister would make of that if the
police or Bexley council took action against any licensee because he was serving
alcohol to someone who was completely sober.
Embarking on stupid and totally over-the-top courses of action has become the
hallmark of too many public bodies. It was revealed this week that Bexley
council has used anti-terrorist powers against residents 13 times in the last
two years, none of whom were ever suspected of being terrorists. Allowing a dog
to foul a park is most definitely anti-social behaviour but it is not in the
same league as packing your shirt full of explosives and getting on a bus.
Bexley council, intelligent as ever, seems to think it is.
Reports
have come in from the south of the borough complaining yet again of Bexley council’s constant
unnecessary fiddling with road layouts. Albany Park and Steynton Avenue is not an
area I am very familiar with, having been there only once before today, but it
is a very pleasant and busy village-like shopping area outside Albany Park
railway station. Road works were still in evidence today as were the new
one-way
street signs. As a stranger to the area it didn’t look so very bad to me but
neither could I see any benefit the scheme should have introduced; and this is the
point of the complaints that have come my way. Everything worked well enough
before Bexley council splashed our money around at a time when budgets are supposed to
be cut. The only conceivable reason for it is to keep themselves in work.
It is said that the road, a loop leading to and from the station, has been as it is for
longer than anyone can remember and because it is a little on the narrow side,
locals tended to use it as a one-way system. Not good enough for the control
freaks who infest Bexley’s road planning department! They had to place traffic
orders and enforce one-way traffic and just to show who was in charge they reversed the
natural flow direction adopted by the locals. Naturally, because they are Bexley
council with their reputation for hammering struggling businesses whenever they
can, they reduced the car parking facilities outside the shops.
It is hard to get inside the head of a bureaucrat just as it is difficult to
understand the mind of any other lunatic but I am coming to the conclusion that
road planning is solely driven by job creation and the justification thereof. If
bureaucrats left well alone we would have much less need of them, so they manufacture
unnecessary schemes to make themselves look busy. The phoney industry goes beyond that,
having installed something for no good reason at all they have automatically created
something that can be legitimately removed a few years down the line.
Brampton Road is the latest such example and even with the
million pound nonsense inflicted on Abbey Road,
its incompetent designer, Andrew Bashford, admitted to it being a stab in the dark that
may have to be reviewed later. Why can’t Bexley council employ people who aren’t
just in it for themselves and are sufficiently skilled to get things right first time?
The fourth photograph is another illustration of Bexley council’s contempt for
the population. Whenever they need to resurface a road they close it completely.
This example is within a couple of minutes walk of Albany Park station. On my
way there I encountered the effects of another, a stream of double deck buses in
Brampton Road diverted by the complete closure of Pickford Lane;
for resurfacing works again.
It
seems from discussions with neighbours that none of us got a copy of this year’s
recycling guide. Maybe someone used the same circulation list as Andrew Bashford did when
he conducted his sham consultation
on his Abbey Road desecration. My copy came from the Recycling team last Monday so I’ll
post the calendar here so my neighbours (and half the borough!) can check it easily.
If they compare it closely with last year’s issue they will see that the recycling of
cooking oil which was new for 2009 is new for 2010 too. What I’d really like to see is the
recycling of a greater variety of plastic. It’s not easy to tell one type from another.
I
didn’t get a copy of the recycling guide this year, the one that includes a calendar
of the scheduled fortnightly collection dates. A copy kept near the front door is a useful
reassurance when a neighbour puts out their bins on what I think may be the wrong day. So I
emailed the appropriate department via the link on the council website and was told within
hours that the 2010/2011 issue had been popped in the post for me. As I have said before;
why can’t all of Bexley council be as helpful as the recycling people?
Something else that happened today is that another bus shelter was
moved in Abbey Road after council works left it marooned in the middle of the pavement.
Actually it’s a completely new and bigger shelter. Maybe Bexley council should move
the lamp posts which have been left in the middle of the pavement too. Perhaps they will
do it when they get around to wiring up the keep left bollard which remains a
hazard to night time traffic nine months or more after it was moved
as part of the wrecking of Abbey Road.
Finally I see that today’s News Shopper says that Bexley council, having taken
over some aspects of parking control from Vinci Parking Services, is no longer bothering to
remind residents when their yearly parking permits expire so that more penalty notices
can be issued. I suspect another crafty little scam by Craske.
Brampton
Road is one of the main North-South thoroughfares across the borough and being straight it
may be too much of a temptation for impatient drivers and being narrow it may
over-stretch
the skills of some. Having said that I used it regularly for more than 15 years and never
saw an accident until Bexley council installed three closely spaced mini-roundabouts.
It must have been six or more years ago that the council put up a sign saying there had been
32 accident casualties in Brampton Road over the previous three years which they used as an
excuse to build obstacles at several road junctions and a year or two later amended the
figure to 44 and built three mini-roundabouts. Did it not occur to them that the increase
might warrant removal of obstacles designed to force vehicles into the path of on-coming
traffic? The roundabouts always look very dangerous to me and to be approached with great care.
The demolished wall and damaged car shown here may indicate that not everyone
takes the care needed to safely negotiate the danger points and exposes the
Achilles’ heel of Bexley’s lamentable road planning. It frustrates careful
drivers and disregards the reckless to whom obstacles present a challenge.
However the other pictures suggest that the planners may have recognised their
own stupidity and the dangerous obstacles placed at junctions are
on the way out; they show the new kerb and where the old one was defined by the black patch and
the double yellow lines. Both may be seen more clearly in the ‘photo gallery’.
A correspondent in Welling has reported something that didn’t make the local
newspapers as far as I know. A quad-bike rider hit and demolished his neighbour’s
garden wall and may have demolished his own neck and spine too. The ambulance
crew said it was too dangerous to drive the seriously injured rider to hospital
because of all the speed humps and had to call out the air-ambulance from the
London Hospital in Whitechapel. What extra costs did Bexley cause the NHS? I’m
told that last July a near identical situation arose close by.
Do speed humps really save lives? There have been
reports that they damage tyres
and kill more people through high-speed
blow-outs than they can ever save by
encouraging slow speeds. More enlightened councils have removed speed humps.
Barnet council removed its speed humps and found the accident rate dropped by 14.9%.
But the words enlightened and Bexley council are not often seen in the same sentence.
The vice-chairman of their Traffic Scrutiny Committee no less, councillor John Davey,
has said that Bexley’s road planning is bonkers, and it most certainly is.
Most
mornings I walk along Abbey Road around 7 a.m. but this morning I was 30
minutes early and I could hardly believe the amount of traffic using it. Westbound
vehicles were nose to tail and those heading towards Erith were at a standstill
due to buses not being able to pass each other on the narrowest sections; they
wait for each other to clear the bottlenecks before proceeding due to the design
errors made by Andrew Bashford.
Four hours later things had not improved and I looked for the reason.
The News Shopper website told me that a lorry had overturned on Eastern Way, Thamesmead,
blocking the junction with Yarnton Way. The situation wasn’t helped by Transport for London
(TfL) who had unluckily chosen today to reposition the bus stop opposite Lesnes Abbey. Something
made necessary by the almost unused cycle track foisted on us last year by Bexley council following
its carefully rigged and dishonest consultation. So we had all the traffic from Eastern Way
from about 5 a.m. and the road restricted to a single track due to the bus stop works and the
lorry-mounted hoist that was needed to move it. I saw three 180 buses and a 401
in convoy all held up so I decided it might be worth photographing the unusual
routing. Within minutes I had collected my camera and started snapping away at
the half demolished bus stop and some of the buses.
I was then confronted by one of the TfL workmen who told me that photography in
the street was forbidden. I told him it wasn’t. He then asked why I had not
asked his permission to photograph him. I told him that was unnecessary in a
public place and in any case I had been careful to ensure that no one would be
identifiable in the photos. He then told me that it was illegal to photograph TfL
staff. I told him he was wrong and suggested that if he thought it was he should
call the police to report a crime.
Why is it that people in public service are almost always jobsworths who like to
throw their weight around? Something to do with their lack of intelligence I
suspect. As soon as I got home I loaded all the photos on to a web-server as a
precaution but I didn’t expect to hear any more and I haven’t.
Additional photos and information is available by clicking any of the images. The
180 and 401 buses were still using Abbey Road at 3.30 in the afternoon.
At 6 p.m. Bexley council’s website was still reporting “counting in
progress” for the local elections held yesterday.
Later… Pretty much unchanged. Labour have picked up the lone independent’s seat
and another in Erith; the Mayor’s, Bernard Clewes. The Tories took one from
Labour in Belvedere; that of Daniel Francis
who wanted me labelled a vexatious correspondent back in 2000 when I queried the imposition of a
bus lane which the council admitted did not satisfy the
criteria for one. In Lesnes Abbey ward the lowest scoring Tory beat the Labour candidate by only
six votes. One of them was mine!
…of election literature that is. Over the past month or thereabouts I have
received 12 different items about the general election from the Conservatives
and none at all from Labour. I’ve also had one each from the BNP, Christian People’s
Alliance, English Democrats, Greens, an Independent, Liberals and UKIP. Weird
that nothing came from Labour; I was a “don’t know” when the election was called
but Labour seems to be complacent in Erith & Thamesmead this time around. Just by
chance I’ve bumped into rosette wearing Conservatives three times in as many weeks while
walking around locally. No others.
I think I found the Christian People’s Alliance leaflet the most interesting
read but there are more important things at stake than their complaints and the
Independent candidate rather blew it for me by picturing himself alongside the now
deceased former MP, Bernie Grant. I used to work on the same job as Bernie Grant and
his brother in the 1970s. One was a hard working and decent man and the other
was a rogue who was eventually dismissed for dishonesty. You can guess which one
went on to become an MP.
With two days to go I’ve still not managed to find out anything useful about
all the local election candidates. I know the names of the three Labour candidates
from the only communication
I have from them. It is two months old and tells me almost nothing about their plans.
I also know the names of the Conservative candidates because they piggy-backed one of the
parliamentary leaflets, but what I’d really
like to see is the policies of all the candidates. The council website says there are eight candidates in the Lesnes
Abbey ward (but doesn’t divulge their parties) and two of those names don’t appear on the main party lists.
viz. Nicola Finch and Peter Townsend. Google eventually told me that Nicola represents the BNP
but I drew a blank with Peter Townsend.
Mr. H. who told me on 30 April that councillor Craske helped him “overcome
some serious problems” has emailed again but failed to let me know the page on which he alleged I had boasted
about being cleverer than Craske and instead complained about me replying to his first email. Surely if you
don’t want to get involved in a conversation you don’t start one?
One
of the few redeeming features of Bexley is the public parks. I am fortunate to
live near to Lesnes Abbey and Bexley council does a pretty good job of making it
a pleasant place to visit. Opening the public toilets would improve matters but
on the whole one cannot complain. But why is Bexley council so keen to restrict
access and how can it justify the enormous expense of several miles of barriers
at the same time as complaining about money shortages when they raised council
tax yet again last month?
The main justification apparently is to deter motorcyclists. Bit of a
sledge-hammer to crack a nut isn’t it? In my 23 years of daily walking around
the abbey grounds I have only once encountered motorcyclists and that was when two
policemen on council-funded bikes stopped to ask me and two other ‘senior
citizens’ what we were doing. Pretty obvious I thought but I suppose they have a job to
do. On a handful of occasions I have heard motorcyclists in the woods but I
doubt it amounts to more than a handful of times a year; so why waste so much of our money
putting up obstacles that exclude the disabled and those blessed with a less
than sylph-like figure and create an objectionable eye-sore?
A friend from Bromley has told me that the same sort of fence was put around
Bromley Common a couple of years ago but was withdrawn after two motorists were
killed by the unforgiving scaffold bar when their cars ran off the road.
For more details and photographs click on any of the images.
I had an email today from a Mr. H. who said that councillor Craske had helped
him “overcome some serious problems”. Glad to hear that; up until now only his
detractors have seen fit to make contact maybe because the website doesn’t look for
stories that affect only single individuals except perhaps if they are featured in the
local news media too. Naturally Mr. H. went on to rudely accuse me of boasting about
my own superiority and I am absolutely positive he is making it up. I’ve asked
Mr. H. to provide me with the offending page(s) and if he is right or anywhere near
right they will be removed pronto.
Perhaps the first pro-Craske message justifies repeating why this site is here. A year ago
I was in correspondence with Bexley’s Traffic Department and councillor John Davey.
Mr. Davey started off by being helpful but as my research progressed and showed the
council in a bad light and acting not a little dishonestly the correspondence dried up. I
told Mr. Davey that I had in mind a website to highlight the council’s failure if he
continued to dodge the issues and if that course was taken he should expect to be portrayed
negatively whenever possible. He chose not to reply. Councillor Craske had put his signature
to the scheme I and an expert in the field had shown to be ill-judged; hence those two being
regularly featured here. There are no plans to dig the dirt on any other councillor, unless
of course evidence is handed to me on a plate. e.g. councillor Colin Campbell
who seeks to restrict residents’ use of the Freedom of Information Act.
The site is just a pastime to me. I don’t care if no one reads it, though I am
amazed at the number of hits it gets and its Google ranking. I won’t deny that
if it irritates my favourite two councillors and Bexley council as a whole when
they do silly things I’ll regard it as a definite bonus but most of my satisfaction is
derived from taking the photos and tinkering with the computer code. Sad but true.
I shall make unflattering comments whenever the opportunity arises but it is
only possible when Bexley council provides the ammunition; it’s not me who makes up the
stories, most can be found elsewhere too. I collect them together, not invent them,
and I’m prevented from straying too far from the straight and narrow by a friend who
used to “legal” contributions to the BBC’s website. I’m told I sometimes
offend against OFCOM rules but I am not a broadcaster and that in the world of on-line
blogging I am really rather mild.
This
week’s News Shopper contains the perfect illustration of the sheer wickedness of
Bexley council staff and the evil little runt, councillor Craske. It would seem
that Mr. Felix Akele from Northumberland Heath was misled by Bexley council into
thinking that any contractor could lower the kerb outside his house after he
obtained permission to have a pavement crossover installed. In fact, Bexley
council insists on the contractor being one they have approved but that wasn’t
made clear to Mr. Akele. So he hired a contractor to do the job for £600. This
may or may not have been Mr. Akele’s fault but whoever was to blame the solution
was obvious. Get an approved contractor to strip out the allegedly substandard
work and replace it with something more to Craske’s liking. The work involved
would be the same as working from a ‘clean slate’, less perhaps if the
original job wasn’t good enough and came apart easily. But such a solution does
nothing to assuage Craske’s rage and constant need to throw his weight
around. Perhaps he has read too many history books about Germany’s S.S.
Craske’s solution was to restore the pavement to its original condition and
charge Mr. Akele £550 when any sensible public servant, even one with
his snout in the expenses trough to the tune of £22k a year, would have spent that
£550 on modifying the work already done to create a crossover that met the
council’s standards.
Craske; you really are a stupid little man. How much damage has your idiocy
done to the Conservative party a week before the election?
I’d
expected to see more election literature through my letterbox by now; a neighbour received an A3
sized leaflet from Labour but a copy didn’t reach me and I have had to wait to see
anything other than the criticism of local council tax increases and recycling policies from
Labour’s parliamentary candidate delivered to me on 3rd March.
Bexley’s Conservative council, blessed as it has been with incompetents and criminals
should be an easy target for Labour’s prospective M.P. but to not mention national matters was idiotic.
Today’s Conservative election leaflet looks to me a very much more professional
affair than Labour’s effort, saying and claiming all the things you might expect
in defence of Bexley council but naturally omitting their failures, their
assault on motorists, their tax-payer funded meals for girlfriends and expenses
for long absent councillors. What really spoils it for me is the fact that it is
“promoted” by councillor John Davey, the man who said Bexley’s road planning was
“bonkers” but as vice-chairman of the Traffic Scrutiny Committee does nothing to stop the crazy
schemes. And then there is the fact that he stood idly by when parking fines
were levied in circumstances he knew to be dishonest, misleading and almost
certainly illegal. When you know the man is as useless and unscrupulous as that
you just can’t vote for him can you?
You can see the Conservative’s lavish A3 double-sided leaflet by clicking on the image
and for completeness and balance I have belatedly put the whole of the
Labour party’s leaflet
on line too; previously only the first page was available. They haven’t
even named the constituency, what did they think they were playing at? There are other Labour
leaflets in circulation but that party has a long-standing habit of ignoring my letterbox,
possibly because it is at the end of a cul-de-sac and represents too long a walk for them.
Of
all the comments I am sent about Bexley council, complaints relating to roads
and traffic are by far the most numerous. I know from correspondence sent to me
by Bexley council that they are perfectly happy to break the law if the result is
additional fines and I know that councillor Davey supports the fining of
motorists even when shown evidence that the signing is illegal. Just around the
corner from where I live is an example of Bexley council’s neglect and cynicism
when it comes to motoring matters. For a long time there has been a single yellow
line in Fossington Road, Belvedere that allowed residents to park there at any time
without fear of a penalty. It was only big enough for one car but this week it has been
changed to a double yellow line. No notices announcing a change to the traffic regulations,
just out with the paint brush and to hell with any legal niceties. The central photograph
shows where the double line used to end and how it has been surreptitiously extended.
Not far away is a parking bay with an adjacent yellow line. It is in such bad condition
that you can only guess where the line ends and the parking bay begins. For the record,
the only visible part of the bay marking is the white blob in the middle of the third
photograph.
A message reached me today to the effect that in a further assault on motorists,
Bexley council has reintroduced a summer season charge for parking within Danson Park and
employs two men to collect the cash. Now that’s really efficient isn’t it?
Paying staff to stand around collecting money and wide open to any opportunist
thief. My correspondent says that there were four security men not far away but they were
too busy talking and smoking to be much use in the event of any trouble. It’s not very
friendly to discourage people from enjoying the recreational facilities by introducing a
charge when we already pay the third highest council taxes in London and there is
no justification for it. On-street parking restrictions are justified by the need to
maintain traffic flow and paying for the enforcement, even though it is all too often a
council lie, but money grabbing in a park is nothing but exploitation of motorists,
particularly the elderly and infirm who could not otherwise get there - and
these jokers will expect to be shown our gratitude with a vote for them in two weeks time!
Apparently the charge was only £1 last year but what’s a 50% rise when you can
help yourself to £20k and more a year in expenses? Cretinous Craske strikes
again presumably.
Getting
pages to the top of Google is a black art and even when a page does get there it
tends to change a bit on a daily basis. However it is gratifying, especially
with an election approaching, to see that the crazy antics of our vindictive
council are still
readily available to be read by anyone who cares to put “Bexley politics” into a major
search engine.
The last few days have provided some welcome sunshine while the children are
still off school bringing many of them to the Lesnes Abbey park and playground.
Nice as it is to see them enjoying themselves, the number congregating on the
pavements of Abbey Road is frightening
as vehicles speed through the obstacles installed by Bexley council acting on
the advice of the incompetent Andrew Bashford. He promised his political masters
that making the road more dangerous would cause traffic to slow down. A few
minutes spent by the speed indicator sign will show that few drivers observe the
speed limit, around a quarter are exceeding 40 m.p.h. and 50+ is not all that
uncommon. There is no more than a couple of feet margin to spare as vehicles pass
pedestrian refuges some of which have been engineered to be mid-way between two
changes of direction. We will be fortunate indeed to get through the summer without
the addition of someone’s tiny mistake to Bexley’s huge one resulting
in disaster.
Before 8 a.m. this morning the police were out in force on Abbey Road, four
vehicles and twice as many coppers. It looked like a speed trap but they told me it
wasn’t. They were simply pulling people in at random, checking their paperwork
and breathalysing them. A policeman explained that too many people have too much to
drink on a Saturday night and are still over the limit in the morning. It was all
very low-tech. I thought that these days a number plate recognition camera linked to
the D.V.L.A. database signalled which vehicles should be pulled over but there was
none of that. It’s been a long time since I saw any police activity in local
roads; maybe they should come back and bring a radar gun with them next time.
Lesnes Abbey park provides a wonderful opportunity for some well-needed exercise so
I went for a stroll this afternoon among the picnickers, dog exercisers and
children’s game playing. As I climbed the hill and the abbey ruins came into
view I slowed down so that I could read the tattoos that despoiled the body of the
young woman in front of me. By her side was a lad of about six years who enquired
about the ruins. “It’s an old castle; it got bombed”. “When was
that?” said the boy. “I think around the 1700s or 1800s” came the reply.
“Was it bombed by a jet?” “I dunno what sort of plane it was”;
replied mother. Should I be shocked? They don’t teach pre-Victorian history in schools any
more do they?
It transpired later that the pair were climbing the hill in search of the public
toilets having followed the sign at the park
entrance. Needless to say the toilets were shut.
The election campaigns have kicked off in earnest and for the first time
ever I have not decided who I should vote for, nationally or locally. I shall
have to pay special attention to what the candidates say. A communication received
yesterday is from Teresa Pearce, Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Erith and
Thamesmead. In it she berates Bexley council and omits to mention national
issues at all. Nothing about Gordon Brown’s achievements, the economy, the EU,
immigration or any number of issues worrying people. Perhaps she has forgotten
that she is trying to become an MP not a local councillor. More likely she is
trying to confuse and deceive her electorate.
It’s easy to understand why a Labour politician would want to overlook the
present government’s record in office but criticising Bexley Conservatives for
raising council tax by 9% over four years smacks of desperation. The previous
Labour administration raised taxes on average by more than that amount every
single year they were in office and their leader told me personally that he was
proud of that record and wished he could spend even more.
Bexley’s Tory council has proved to be a grave disappointment in many ways and
has the whiff of corruption around it; surely a Labour candidate anxious to
avoid talking about the mess the country is in should be able to criticise
Conservative councillors for something more serious than doing four times better than her
own party did?
If you run an incompetent and sometimes dishonest outfit such as Bexley council, the Freedom of Information Act must be the bane of your life
as interested individuals strive to prise the truth out of an organisation
unfamiliar with the concept. So naturally Bexley council puts obstacles in the
way and their latest is to publish the names of applicants on its website. That
puts a legal FOI request into the same category usually reserved for fugitives
from justice and bus vandals. How long before the same technique is applied to
late library books or bin lids left slightly open?
Councillor Colin Campbell, cabinet member for corporate affairs is the bright
spark who has dreamed up this latest assault on democracy. He says that FOI
requests are costing more than the council leader’s salary. Perhaps he should ask
himself which provides the best value for the money.
Personally I’m not convinced that putting names on a website is much of a
disincentive and I hope that Colin Campbell’s authoritarian scheme fails.
Does anyone have any idea why so-called Conservatives are so keen to act like
left-wing dictators these days? I suspect that it’s not unconnected with the
party’s abysmal poll ratings. If the choice is between two sets of idiots you
might as well vote for the party which is the acknowledged expert in that field.
I’ve not yet found any FOI names on the council website even though they
are said to be there. My name won’t be included, I’ve not made any FOI requests.
The News Shopper which has just arrived reports Councillor Alex Sawyer
expressing justifiable concerns about the spread of CCTV across the borough. How
refreshing to hear a Conservative speaking as if he is not ashamed to be one. He
also reminds us that the German electronics company Siemens has been contracted to
update Bexley’s CCTV system which causes me some concern. Howard Dawber (Labour
candidate for the Bexleyheath and Crayford Parliamentary constituency) has some
interesting things to say about the Siemen’s contract and how much money it is likely to waste.
Read it here.
Back in 2004 Siemens took over all the IT functions of the BBC, a responsibility
that extends from office systems to the transmission network - and as a bit of a
radio enthusiast myself I believe that to have been a disaster. BBC radio now falls
off the air far too often due to stupid errors that never used to happen when BBC
engineers were in charge. What sort of idiot puts the main system and its back-up
in the same room, so when one air conditioning unit goes down both transmission
systems fail at the same time?
A close family member works at BBC White City and tells me that even the phone
system doesn’t work properly and that the unreliability is causing the BBC to
rethink its contract with Siemens. Trust Bexley council to get into bed with a bunch of
incompetents. For the record I have a large Siemens fridge and it came with a
bottle rack inside. 2 litre drink bottles are too big to fit and 75cl. wine bottles are
small enough to fall through the gaps. Fortunately my supplier agreed the shelf was
useless and obtained a standard glass shelf as a replacement free of charge.
The electioneering has started;
a glossy leaflet from
Labour’s ‘Lesnes Abbey Action Team’ bearing the slogan ‘What
a load of rubbish’ has dropped on to my doormat. And they are not wrong. It
is certainly a load of rubbish. Apparently a Labour governed Bexley would
“reintroduce weekly refuse collection and a balanced approach to recycling”.
Have they forgotten that it is the Labour government that pushed councils into
degraded refuse services both directly and indirectly through massively increased
taxation on rubbish disposal? I suppose that the constant lying in high places within
the Labour party permeates down to every level and it just comes naturally to them.
And what does “a balanced approach to recycling” mean anyway?
The leaflet then goes on to say that they will restore the Meals on Wheels service
and complains about parking charges, promising to get rid of some altogether. They
imply they will increase expenditure on the Abbey ruins and complain about cuts in
street cleaning. They don’t actually say they will change those things, so it’s
nothing but the smoke and mirrors we’ve come to expect from Labour. The Labour
Party has a long and uninterrupted history of believing that all problems are solved
by throwing our money at them so maybe they are casting envious eyes back to the days
of the 17% tax hikes that they were proud to impose when they last ruled the roost
locally. But no; they say that they will freeze council tax. Heaven knows; the Tories
in Bexley have been a massive disappointment with their incompetence, corruption and
disregard for justice and the law but do we really want to swap that for the same sort
of Mickey Mouse economics with which their boss in Downing Street brought this
country to its knees?
Pickford
Lane has been closed all week. Signs at its extremities on Long Lane and Crook
Log tell drivers that the road ahead is closed and it is, totally, with side
roads blocked off too. And the reason for this council imposed inconvenience and
attack on local businesses? A simple resurfacing job. I assume the resurfacing
was essential; if it was anything like Abbey Road with its myriad
depressions, subsidence and ineffective drains
it would have been a nightmare for pedestrians hoping to avoid a drenching on wet days.
But why close the whole road instead of keeping one carriageway open with traffic
controls? To suit Bexley council’s convenience probably. With few of the staff
having the initiative to have ever managed a business and suited only to protected jobs
with gold-plated pensions they wouldn’t have a clue about trying to make an honest
living as a businessman. Much the same goes for the parasites who call themselves
politicians. Few would have a clue what it is like to live without the sugar coating of
endless expenses claims.
As
I left home at 7.30 this morning the thought crossed my mind that I should take
my camera with me every time I go out which turned out to be somewhat
prophetic because as I approached Fossington Road I spotted a van parked
across the cycle path and a man up a ladder. As I passed I guessed he might be
swapping the cycling signs which as I reported on
17 November last year, several were
mirror images of what they should have been. By the time I returned ten minutes
later the van had moved on to change the sign opposite Lesnes Abbey but as I
got close it drove off to the sign by the junction with Carrill Way. You can see
the sign there removed prior to replacement with a new one because I ran home to grab my camera.
Given the narrowness of the road, thanks to the idiocy of Conservative
councillor Craske, the man had little option but to park on the pavement while
he carried out council orders. If only Bexley council were competent and things
got done right the first time we would all be a bit richer. And if only the
numbskull Craske had not authorised Andrew Bashford’s flawed
case for narrowing the road without engaging what little brain power he
possesses, the council might not have to raise £1m. of extra taxes because it claims
to have lost out over government Freedom Pass funding.
For the record, on my minimum of two trips a day along this footpath, I have
so far this month not seen a cyclist. Councillor
Davey said the same.
Today’s
News Shopper provides a rich store of council related stories. The
front page tells us that aluminium panels are being stolen from lamp posts in
huge quantities and that the electrical components are left exposed and
dangerous. This is I suppose an extension of last year’s
gully thefts and I have seen one
or two lamp posts with exposed wiring. In future I had better let the council
know. Councillor Craske is quoted by the newspaper and for once it is hard to
disagree with him. It’s a pity that the comedian doesn’t follow his own advice
because the work he inflicted on Abbey Road has left the public exposed to bare
electricity cables for six months or more. (Photograph taken 19th February.)
Among the paper’s reports of Bexley council’s failure to fund community centres, failure
to clear snow and failure to deal with dog mess there is a report that a nationally renowned
sculptor has been commissioned to erect a public work of art in lower Belvedere, on a
roundabout near the industrial estates away from the residential areas. It will presumably
complement Erith’s fish and whilst Belvedere is certainly in need of some sort of
revamp after years of council neglect and worse, one must wonder in a time of austerity
whether the money could be better spent. At least the money won’t come directly from
your council tax but I bet the London Development Agency which is responsible for it filches
the money from us one way or another.
At the beginning of the year Bexley ditched Vinci Parking Services
in favour of NSL Services Group which now employs the traffic wardens patrolling our
streets. One of my contributors has today drawn my attention to the situation in other
London boroughs where the same company operates.
Press reports indicate they have warned wardens that they may be disciplined
if they don’t meet the company’s target of a minimum of 0·9 tickets an
hour. Kensington and Chelsea’s councillors are reported to have accused NSL
of “breaking statutory guidelines which ban target setting”. Soon after
the news broke nearby Westminster stripped NSL of their contract.
Here in Bexley we presumably suffer the same treatment as the Royal Borough. It
is perhaps to be expected that a council with a long history of paying scant
regard to parking regulations and which tops the
revenue raising league
tables, should cosy up to a company with similar habits.
Bexley
councillors have complained in the past about the lack of a tube line in the borough,
but there are eight London boroughs without a tube station. What makes Bexley almost
unique and the complaint more valid is that it has no DLR, no TfL Overground and no
Tramlink either. Soon Crossrail will be added to the list but how ironic is it that
the council complains about its poor transport links while its own priorities appear
to be dismantling the system we do have and campaigning against plans to improve links
across the Thames? The photos show the changes currently being inflicted on Pickford Lane.
On 30 November last year roads throughout Bexley were affected by a vehicle
fire in Blackwall tunnel and its
subsequent closure and now the tunnel is
again set for overnight closure starting next Monday for three whole years. It can’t be much more
than a couple of years since the southbound tunnel was fully opened after several years
of refurbishment and overnight closures and I had expected that sooner or later ‘the
northerners’ would suffer the same problems getting home while their homeward
tunnel was upgraded as we south Londoners did for such a long time. But that would be too
simple. Mayor Boris blasted Johnson has dictated that his favoured north cannot be
inconvenienced but it is OK to bash south London dwellers again. His promise to
reintroduce the tunnel contra-flow proved to be another of his lies so there is no prospect of
keeping both traffic flows running through the night and he blithely tells us to get
ourselves down to Dartford instead. I bet the highly educated imbecile won’t ever be put
to that massive inconvenience, let alone every night, as will countless shift and night
workers who try against the odds to keep London ticking over.
I confess to being absolutely furious about Boris’s crass decision; all my London based
relations live in the East and North East and I visit them at least weekly and return late.
It’s an impossible journey by public transport which as a Freedom Pass holder I am keen to
use whenever I can, and doubling the journey time so late at night is not really a practical
proposition, especially for three long years. The previous closure was bad enough but at least
it wasn’t every night. A similarly affected friend thinks Boris should be publicly strung
up for his sins against south Londoners, and I’m not surprised because the tunnel is not
only impassable southbound, it will be restricted to 20 m.p.h. for the ‘lucky’
northerners.
If Bexley’s stupid Conservative council hadn’t be so keen on short term political
expediency and if it wasn’t totally devoid of road planning expertise we might have had a
new Thames crossing to look forward to in just a couple of years time, instead
all we will have is average speed cameras in Blackwall tunnel and toll-booths.
Blackwalltunnel.com. What others have to say about it.
The
News Shopper came late this week so I’ve only just
noticed the latest announcement from that nasty piece of work, councillor Craske. It has
been possible until recently to deal with parking issues in a variety of ways; on
line, by phone, by post, with cash in Erith or in person at the ‘Parking Shop’ in Bexleyheath
Broadway. However on 29th January the shop closed. According to the council the reduced access to
parking services is to “make services easier to access” and Craske, the council’s
transport motormouth reminds us that, “Instead of having to go to pay their penalty
charge notices, motorists can now do so from the comfort of their own home”.
Notice how Craske’s statement implies that paying parking penalties is a
civic honour that we should be proud to be paying, but even on the most optimistic
interpretation of the council’s own statistics one in six tickets are issued
wrongly, and that’s only counting those who decide to challenge them. How
is Craske’s grand plan going to help that one in six? Things can only be made more
difficult by the total loss of face to face contact. Emailing and writing is fraught with
difficulty because Bexley council cannot resist
lying and law breaking. For Craske to present
this change as an improvement illustrates only too well why he is not fit for office.
The photographs above come from a resident of Northumberland Heath and show the
council’s gestapo car parked on a yellow line last week while videoing
anyone who stopped for a moment. They are supposed to put up warning signs when
doing this but in my experience only one sign is ever displayed. I can’t see it
in either
photograph but I expect one is around somewhere. When
I spoke to the driver
last December she said the car didn’t monitor yellow line offences,
only bus stops and school zigzags etc.
It is interesting that the car is still emblazoned with the Vinci Parking
Services logo when Bexley’s website says that they were ditched in favour of NSL
Services Group at the end of last year.
It
has taken fewer than four months for this site to become the first choice at both Google and
Yahoo for searches for ‘Bexley council’. Top that is apart from the council’s
own site which is almost certainly top because they use your money to buy that
position. Being placed directly beneath the council’s own site means
that everyone who Googles for Bexley council has the opportunity to see what a useless
bunch of incompetent petty dictators they are. The high ranking presumably explains the
steadily rising number of contacts being made. One thing that strikes me about the contacts,
sometimes consisting of no more than a handful of words of encouragement, but occasionally
including documents and photos, is the almost universal disdain for cretinous Craske, the so
called Cabinet Member for Transport, the post that rakes in more than £20k a year in
expenses alone.
My labelling of him an obnoxious little twerp seems to have gone down
particularly well although in the interest of fairness I must report that
someone objected on the grounds that I had failed to provide evidence that he
was little. That may well be true although I might claim it was a reference to
his intellect. But if that excuse is not accepted I shall have to refer to a publicity shot of all
the Conservative councillors standing in a group in which Craske’s presence is not immediately
obvious. However a pair of eyes peer over the shoulder of the second
shortest woman in the front row and they look as though they could belong to the face that never
tires of getting itself into the pages of the News Shopper.
I made an almost unbelievable blog entry on 17 January which said that Bexley council threatened to prosecute a resident for not paying his council tax instalment due on 1st January 2010 until the banks re-opened on the 4th. You’d think it was one of those damn-fool mistakes and errors of judgement for which the borough is famed, but apparently it’s not that simple. Their response to a complaint says they will graciously restore the instalment plan which the original letter summarily withdrew but they still insist that payments must be made on the first of the month even when it falls on a bank holiday (or, by implication a weekend) and that if it isn’t prosecution will surely follow. I was expecting an apology for the mistake but there is no sign of one, they simply cannot get their thick heads around how silly this makes them look. I have documented a bit more detail on a new council tax page and I think the perpetrator of this ridiculous piece of idiocy, one Miss L. Cairns, deserves the honour of a listing on the Bexley Hall of Shame, don’t you?
I rarely produce much rubbish, don’t know why, maybe it’s because I’m not an
enthusiastic shopper so don’t accumulate all that useless cellophane and plastic
but it seems to lead directly to my bin not being emptied. There were only three
Tesco bags of rubbish nestling at the bottom of my green bin this morning and one of those
was only half full. Although the bin was placed alongside those of two neighbours,
mine alone wasn’t emptied, though the bin had been moved. My guess is that a
Tesco bag at the bottom of a bin is beyond arm’s reach and it’s not worth
taking a near empty bin to the lorry and engaging the hydraulic lift; so they take a leaf
out of the useless councillor Davey’s book and walk idly by as he does
whenever he sees a problem or one is reported to him.
A missed collection doesn’t matter much to me though it’s galling that the only
useful service Bexley council provides for my £1,500 a year is the refuse
collection and it makes me wonder how many bins are missed. The last failure at
my address was as recently as last November
so failures are two out of six collections. 33%!
If
you read the Woolwich Road or
Penhill Road reports you will see
that Bexley council witters on about protecting pedestrians crossing roads which
is all very laudable except that their incompetence leads to unforeseen
consequences - consequences that their meagre intelligence can’t
predict anyway. In Abbey Road their attempts to do the same is
resulting in
pedestrian injury because the central refuges bring them to within inches of
traffic that can only just squeeze by on what carriageway remains after they
spent half a million pounds of our money on turning a previously safe road into
an accident black spot.
But implementing stupid plans is not enough for Bexley council, they have to implement
them badly. Here is the scene in Abbey Road three
months after the contractor supposedly finished the job. Unlit pedestrian refuges. So much
for Bexley’s vacuous claims to be making things safer for pedestrians. The first of
the photographs is at the junction with Carrill Way where there isn’t even an
electricity supply and the second by Fossington Road where the danger is compounded by
the fact that the nearby street light hasn’t worked all year. Your caring listening
council! What a joke; they’d rather risk your life than get off their fat arses.
Lesnes
Abbey Conservatives poked their latest newssheet through my letterbox today. It doesn’t
really say much, full of trite platitudes which steer a careful non-controversial course
designed not to upset too many people and try to convince us that Conservatives spend our money
more wisely than the last administration - which shouldn’t have been too be difficult. Naturally
it glosses over the fact that Bexley’s taxes have still been rising faster than elsewhere in London.
One bit did catch my eye however and that is that the big-spending Tories have thrown money at the
Metropolitan Police so they can go around spying on the populace where no fixed C.C.T.V. cameras operate.
Presumably that explains why a police van was parked outside my house for much of the afternoon of 7th
January. It was marked with the words ‘Police C.C.T.V.’ and that it was working for Bexley
council. Goodness knows what they were expecting to find. It parked at the end of a cul-de-sac where
nothing happens all day long once the postman has come and gone and being a cul-de-sac there are few
homes to be looked at. The only trouble we ever see is the occasional yob who takes a short cut
across a neighbour’s garden, hops the fence and sometimes damages it in the process. It makes
the journey to Abbey Wood station a bit shorter. However my neighbour already has the fence under 24/7
C.C.T.V. recording so if the police were taking an interest it was a bit of a waste of time and money.
And surely there must be higher priorities for the police than parking in a quiet cul-de-sac looking
out for a minor misdemeanour that might happen twice a week or less?
You can see the police snoopercam above the driver’s position. At one time there were two vans,
even just one of them being enough to totally block access to the drives and parking spaces of nine
dwellings. But when did the police or Bexley council ever care about legal niceties?
It’s
not only Abbey Road that has had accidents engineered into it by the arrogant, undemocratic and
incompetent Bexley council. A traffic calming exercise - putting obstacles in the way of motorists
may be a more accurate description - immediately resulted in accidents in nearby
Woolwich Road.
Our once near accident free B213 has suffered yet another smash up. I
don’t know the reason but I have seen the remains of a Ford Focus and the debris
on the road. I can imagine that the morons responsible for making so many
changes to Abbey Road are already
planning humps, more chicanes and 20 m.p.h. speed limits when they should be
looking into mirrors for the culprits and resigning.
A consultant at the world renowned Transport Research Laboratories told me he
regarded the plan for Abbey Road as a recipe for head on collisions. Barmy
Bashford of bonkers Bexley council was sure he knew better when in reality he is
a clueless wonder. He probably expects the world to beat a path to his door
seeking advice and be chosen to chair safety meetings in Brussels as it does for
those who really do know better.
I have just failed by a few weeks to get through two thirds of a century without being rushed into hospital by ambulance feeling very unwell indeed. My destination was Q.E. Hospital, Woolwich and what a murderous outfit that is! Presumably other Bexley residents suffer a similar fate daily. I’ve no complaint about the medical staff but what sort of administration can have you on drips and morphine for three hours and fifty five minutes but as their four hour target looms disconnects the lot and dumps you back in the waiting area with no money to get home, no one available to get you home and lets you lie collapsed on the floor unattended and in desperate need of more pain killers? Full report.
Today I received documents to confirm something I first heard about a week
ago. The specific case involves a couple of pensionable age who like many of us
were due to make their last council tax payment of the current financial year on
1st January. As almost everyone must know, 1st January is a bank holiday and
this year it fell on a Friday. It does not take a lot of intelligence to work
out that business life was not likely to start again until Monday 4th January
and on that day the final tax instalment was paid. On the very same day Bexley
council sent the couple a letter saying no payment had been received by the 4th
of the month and as a result the agreement to pay monthly had been cancelled.
Payment in full was demanded by the 14th on pain of court action and costs of
£95.
Whilst the arrival of this letter must have come as a shock to someone who had
paid promptly and not had any previous communication on the subject it was
nothing like as offensive as one I received in 2007
but it remains completely unforgiving for a first letter. What if a lack of payment has
been caused by death? How insensitive can the imbeciles who run Bexley council be?
It is my understanding that local taxation is contracted to the company
popularly known as Crapita and I’m not sure why we are expected to deal with
such a shower. We don’t have to write to Serco (the current waste contractor) when our
bins get missed or to the electricity company when street or traffic lights
fail. However the couple have replied to Capita’s Erith address and in due
course we may see what excuse they come up with.
The Taxpayer’s Alliance has once again singled out Bexley Council for their ‘biggest bunch of money wasting idiots’ award. Their first of 2010. It seems Bexley wants to recruit a biodiversity charlatan. I do wonder what sort of graduate would be attracted to a post paying only £15k a year. I know things are hard on the employment front but surely the best candidates would be looking for something better than that? Perhaps the final salary index linked pension is the attraction - remember those? Or maybe it goes some way to explain why Bexley council operates so inefficiently. Could it be monkey and peanut syndrome? But let’s not be too negative, Bexley council has won an award! Well done the innumerable profligate clowns who run Bexley and who are intent on pushing up our taxes relentlessly. More.
The local news media has been reporting that the obnoxious little twerp, Craske,
is planning to spend £1.8 million on traffic improvements for Sidcup. These plans
include a reduction in the number of traffic lights. Councillor Peter Craske (cabinet
member for transport), as far as we can tell, has no qualifications whatever in road
design or safety and has a track record of gullibly accepting everything his
incompetent staff put in front of him for signature; the changes to
Abbey Road, Belvedere being a recent example.
If Craske does for Sidcup what he has done for lower Belvedere then look forward to a
year of traffic chaos followed by regular accidents.
I rarely go to Sidcup any more but I do get a report from someone who drives
through it twice daily and it claims the situation is much improved after some
of the earlier council idiocies were removed, such as the traffic lights it was
so keen on in the first place. When, around ten years ago, Bexley council (under
an equally stupid Labour administration) first decided to interfere with traffic
flow in Sidcup I took my Transport Research Laboratory consultant friend around
town for his verdict. I remember his response well. He said “whoever did this was
either malicious or incompetent”. I have been able to quote that to a
number of Sidcup residents over the years and without exception they have come back
to say the verdict was wrong. Those Sidcup residents thought that Bexley council’s
road planning department was “malicious and incompetent”.
All the evidence points that way.
The only possible justification for the council’s vandalising of Abbey Road in Belvedere was that cyclists would be safer, albeit at the expense of pedestrian safety, motorists who have since suffered far more accidents and residents who complain about the predicted increase in damage to their parked cars and property. However in the current icy conditions it seems that even the cyclists are put at extra risk. Their path is covered with ice and the road is clear so naturally they use that. But the road is ten feet narrower than it was so they are at even greater risk from motorists contending with the poor conditions than they were before.
An inch of snow fell overnight and unlike last month’s two snowfalls when untouched roads were left to develop into ice rinks, Bexley council managed to get its gritters out. At 7am the B213 from Abbey Wood to Erith was entirely free of snow and ice.
Yet
another road accident in Abbey Road. Reports are that a driver
lost control at the bend opposite Elstree Gardens, missed the people waiting at the bus stop and ran away
from the scene. What caused the accident is unknown; probably the lack of gritting didn’t help and
presumably the police will be investigating. However we do know that a Transport Research Laboratory
consultant said the plan to narrow Abbey Road was a recipe for collisions and that Andrew Bashford, the
road planning clown who takes pride in making Bexley’s roads difficult for motorists, was aware of
the likely consequences. We also know that our cretinous transport supremo, councillor Peter Craske,
approved the plan and took no notice at all of any of the wise words of dissent from residents. And we
also know that the local ward councillor John Davey thought that the plan was without justification but
decided to do what he is does best; standing idly by doing nothing at all. We can only take consolation
in the fact that so far no one has been killed by their total lack of common sense and that there is to
be an election soon.