6 December (Part 1) - More crookedness
I don’t often look at the local Labour or Conservative party websites, the
latter in particular can be years out of date, so what is the point? However there is an interesting
new
page on the Labour site about how Bexley Council sets out to fleece the motorist. It implies that Bexley Council did not have police agreement to
their seven new yellow box junctions and failed to give any publicity that
might warn the unwary of their presence. The Council hopes that residents will be poorer by close to £400,000 each year.
The only use of CCTV in Bexley for any form of crime prevention is for enforcing
those box junctions plus school zig-zags,
U-turns and No entry signs.
Parking charges were raised by 30% and a 20 m.p.h. Zone was imposed on Albion Road,
“a policy opposed by Rishi Sunak”. (The fact that one preceded the other by about seven years is overlooked.)
The road maintenance budget is now less than it was in 2017 which is pretty obvious to anyone who leaves home.
There is the obligatory support for ULEZ, obviously some forms of fleecing are more acceptable than others, and a reference to
a Council Leader who
could not quite bring herself to condemn the camera vandals.
My first impression was that it was a decent enough page of political knockabout
but it made me think about my weekly drive across Greenwich to Waltham Forest.
Both Labour controlled and both far worse for bus lanes and 20 limits than
Bexley, although Greenwich appears to be rather lax on enforcement.
Waltham Forest puts cameras everywhere and last night a friend there told me how
turning right out of his own road before 9:30 in the morning had provoked a £65
bill that very day. Another decent bloke who now hates his Council - which to my mind is a very good thing.
Waltham Forest has 20 limits more or less everywhere, well sort of. They paint
the figure 20 in a circle on the road and install lots of flashing things by the
side of the road which go off if you should dare to do 21 - and then remove all
the traditional repeating 30 signs. However the standard red circled 30 signs on
entry are still there and my car reads them and therefore tells me that the whole area is still legally a 30 zone.
In just one place on the edge of Epping Forest there is a single algae covered
30 repeater sign hidden by a tree which they forgot to take away. I really don’t know
what the legal limit is in Waltham Forest. Some bits are definitely 20 but
elsewhere motorists are expected to play a guessing game.