Ex-mayor of Brighton & Hove calls for two lanes of seafront road to be turned into bike lanes

ktache wrote:

Thanks for that Pete, that took a bit of writing and was very informative, good luck to your good lady.

My point, and I am beginning to regret it, is that when he did have a bit of Ooomph, he could have proposed it and then used the other parties innaction or obscurification to get at them at the hustings, rather than just pulling out the idea.

The person who has control of cycling policy in Reading, where I live and ride, is Tony Paige, who as you say makes the right noises, but seems incompetent in this role.  Wasting a lot of money, the investment in the Readibike scheme was very short term, and as of the end of March all the costly docks are empty.  He's put down a fair bit of pointless paint, some of which had to be removed at great expense as it did not even accord to council policy.  And he doesn't listen to the seemingly good advice from the riders of the Reading Cycle Campaign, who asked not quite unreasonably for a dedicated lane on the very flash and expensive new shared bridge, creating some uneccessary conflict between walkers and cyclists on what could have been magnificent infrastructure.

The Greens have a bit going for them in Brighton, having the only Green MP, and I have a lot of time for Caroline Lucas, good luck to them.  As I understand it Pete West ha already done some good things for transport in Brighton.

Getting at them at the hustings is a great idea, but you have to make sure you are banging a drum that the electorate wants to hear, or at least reaching out to the electorate that supports the idea and motivating them to turn out and put a cross in the right box(es). Cycling in general is not a huge vote winner because too many people are so pro-car and anti-cyclist - you see stories about this all the time on this forum, so you have to be careful how you pitch the idea.

My wife has gone down the families and children route as what family wouldn’t like to be able to take their 2.4 kids out on a Sunday morning, ride around our circular, segregated bike route, nipping off the route to the local farm shop/tea room/ lamb stroking section! Or cycling around it and into our wonderful Victorian park for a picnic? And then be able to send their kids on the ‘cycling bus’ to school where a couple of parents ride the route picking up various kids on the way to their primary school, swapping the chaperone duties between their own little organised group each day of the week.

Every parent loves this sort of idea as parents are much more receptive to the impact that the motor vehicle is having on their children’s future and they really do support individuals who stand up and be counted trying to make change for the better.

I know exactly where you are coming from regarding the lack of action, or worse than that the wasted inappropriate action regarding cycling routes - can you believe our unitary authority had a Cycling Champion who wasn’t even a bloody cyclist! I kid you not.

The problem with county councils is that those elected councillors do get paid - a nominal sum, something like £11k a year for ours I believe. They then get payments for each committee they sit on and more if they chair them and more if they take on roles such as Cycling Champion. Some of them are on £30k+ and the deputy and leader much more than that. Too many of them end up making it a job/ career - we overheard a town councillor wife of a county councillor last week commenting to someone how her husband ‘has to get re-elected, as it’s his job and only form of income’ - you reckon this sort of councillor is impartial and makes decisions that may be unpopular but are right? I don’t. He is head of finance at our county council (even though he/ his business was declared bankrupt owing Trafford Council about £150k several years ago!!!) How the hell can he be fit and proper for such a position? He has fobbed my wife off and actually lied to her that £47k of funding granted from DEFRA had been spent. My wife found out that the person holding this funding at the council has sat on it for 3 years and was about to send it back to DEFRA as it had not been allocated to a suitable (sustainability) project! I kid you not.

And yes, the gloves are off and she is exposing all this to the electorate, but the reality is, most people don’t care and even those who read it have very short memories... And another town councillor who is just obnoxious has just appeared on a video abusing a neighbour using the F word and ranting at them in the street, all in the same week that her election campaign leaflet and picture appeared in the local rag with her one liner about how she is ‘passionate about the residents of our town’... you couldn’t make it up. All requests for comment from the incumbent Conservative councillors must be referred to Conservative Party Central Office press team! I heard yesterday that the police are now investigating it as a possible hate crime!

And another councillor who is a solicitor by trade, chairs the planning committee and acted as conveyencing solicitor for an old pub that was being turned into a convenience store with a restaurant above. He never declared his conflict of interest. Planning permission was granted for a two storey development and they built three... he was reprimanded by the personnel committee for bringing the council into disrepute, had to write and open letter of apology and that was it. He is STILL chair of the planning committee!!! How can this be?

They just cover for each other as they are the majority party and he gets his little slap on the wrist but a big fat pay cheque for screwing over the system on behalf of his client. There appears to be NO accountability and my wife wants to change this. Especially the granting of funds for events and the like where there is no post event accountability for how the money that is dished out is actually spent, it is unbelievable.

If things like this don’t motivate members of the public to get involved, research the people who are standing and pick out the ones who are in it for the right reasons then nothing will. PP

ktache wrote:

Brilliant idea, shame he didn't think about doing something about it whilst Mayor or during his period as councillor.

He probably did, but since it was opposed by the tories and labour abstained, nothing happened.  Kind of hard to believe that someone so pro-cycling gets nasty little snipes like this on a cycling website.

Here's a thought; instead of attacking people who actually believe in cycling, we attack the people who oppose it at every turn?  Or we could just carry on like this and get decent cycling infra in about a thousand years.

ktache wrote:

Brilliant idea, shame he didn't think about doing something about it whilst Mayor or during his period as councillor.

Ktache, I think like most of the general public you don’t quite understand how Town Councils work. Individuals stand in local elections (this Thursday being a major day for local elections across the country). 

Local elections usually have a very poor turn out of the electorate, 20-30% is not untypical. Those that do turn out quite often vote based on national politics or to a give a good kicking to the incumbent government of our country. That is their choice.

However, what they are failing to understand is that Town Councils have limited powers, and very limited budgets. The unitary authority, which is usually a county council outside of the cities, have the powers and the budgets and the responsibility for most elements that people would associate with their town such as the highways, infrastructure, housing, refuse collection etc etc. County Councillors are also elected during local elections and many of these positions are also being contested this Thursday.

A town council has a certain number of councillor positions, the number of which doesn’t really follow anything like size of town, population etc. My town has 20 positions and 46 candidates standing this Thursday! Many have fewer, such as only 12 positions (another local town to me with a significantly larger population) and oftentimes these are not contested because only 12 (or less) candidates stand!

If one party gets a majority of councillors they can control the council (in theory) because they can pass a vote in the chamber if they all turn up and vote. The Mayor of a town is elected by the councillors to serve a term of office (1 year). This will usually be (but doesn’t have to be) one of the councillors from the majority party, as obviously they can win the vote if they all turn up and vote together.

The Mayor is usually (but not always) the de facto leader of the council. They get a casting vote in the event of a split vote (equal number for and against), so in effect two votes. They are still a councillor and sit on various committees and may chair such committees and chair full council meetings.

As for power to do anything during their term of office - well, as Mayor for one year they have little opportunity and certainly no more power to really do anything over what they have as a councillor already - change requires a democratic process where votes are taken and the majority wins, so unless any particular councillor (be it Mayor or not) gets support from other councillors for ideas and changes that are within the remit of the (very limited) powers of the town council, then that idea will not happen.

How do I know all this? Because my wife is Mayor of our town this year (term ends later this month when the new Mayor takes over) and as such her title is ‘First Citizen’ which is a representative of the town. This is where the ceremonial part comes in when she gets hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of invitations and requests to appear at functions be they charitable events, business events, local community events, schools, care homes etc etc etc, where they would like some formal attendance to mark the occasion, be it to open an event or a new building, or a charitable dinner, fund raiser etc etc. They will often ask the Mayor to carry out a function such as officially starting the event, or saying a few words, or handing out awards etc etc.

My wife has served 4 years on the town council and is up for re-election. She has a passion for health, fitness and wellbeing and has spent the four years trying to encourage and promote this. She is trying to get infrastructure changes like the one mentioned in the article to make safer, segregated cycling routes into and and of our town, with an orbital route which means that families can ride around and into town safely, kids can ride to school without having to ride on our main roads and generally make cycling and walking a more viable option for those who currently wouldn’t even contemplate it.

In her four years she has drawn together the various cycling groups and come up with a cycling master plan which a town needs before a county council will look at assisting. She has had over 400 meetings at town and county council level. She took up my idea of hosting a pro bike race in the town and we pitched it all the way up to county level, which culminated in us hosting the most successful stage of the Tour of Britain ever back in 2016. She has started and organised a ‘come and try it’ town triathlon which has grown over the last three years and has been met with nothing but praise from entrants, especially kids.

She has pushed the county council to apply for over £470k of government funding that was available through various grants to be spent on sustainable projects, cycling and walking etc etc.

And where has she got? Absolutely nowhere. The others on the town council just don’t get it and find her threatening because she does so much and they do sweet FA. It makes them look crap so they don’t really support her. The county council councillors just make one excuse after another for why something can’t be done and tie her up in red tape whilst proclaiming that her ideas are great and it’s really fantastic what she is doing etc etc...they applied for NONE of the funding that was available. They have a ‘mission statement’ and glossy brochure about the council which sets out their aims and objectives, one of which on the sustainability front includes supporting the uptake of cycling and walking to increase health and well-being and to reduce emissions. The brochure has 20 pictures of people cycling, 18 of which are on segregated cycle ways. They have pulled these of the web or from stock photos. How many segregated cycleways have the put in over the last four years? NONE. Because the county councillors (the ones with the budget and the powers and some 80 in number) just don’t get it. There are slaves to their cars, say all the right political words supporting such schemes, but do not really support them and certainly don’t allocate budget or deliver real change.

So this is what town councillors are up against trying to make change. My wife has had enough of them and has decided to stand as an independent candidate and has formed a group of ten others, from various different political backgrounds (I mean supporting national parties, not previous experience in politics) who are all going to stand as independents because at town level national politics shouldn’t come into it - it’s about improving your town and the incumbents who are party political are not all in it for this reason. Too many are in it for themselves.

If she is successful they could potentially control the town council and then there is a possibility of making change. If she gets voted in and none of the others do she will be a lone voice against the controlling party and will get absolutely nowhere. It is a gamble, but people locally want change so if she can get the message out to enough of the electorate she may pull it off.

So there you go, it’s not quite as easy as the general public think to ‘just do it as you are Mayor’. The system doesn’t work like that and this lack of understanding leads to apathy amongst the electorate who claim ‘they’re all the same’, ‘in it for themselves’, ‘doing it for the money’ (town councillors DO NOT get paid!), ‘it won’t make any difference’, ‘are you pro or anti Brexit?’ (Which is insignificant, has nothing to do with town council, makes no difference as town councillors are about your town, not Theresa May’s policies!) and generally speaking, the vast majority of the electorate who turn out to vote just tick the box of the national party that they support for centralised government... you deserve what you get with such apathy.

PP

Pilot Pete wrote:

And where has she got? Absolutely nowhere. The others on the town council just don’t get it and find her threatening because she does so much and they do sweet FA. It makes them look crap so they don’t really support her. The county council councillors just make one excuse after another for why something can’t be done and tie her up in red tape whilst proclaiming that her ideas are great and it’s really fantastic what she is doing etc etc...they applied for NONE of the funding that was available. They have a ‘mission statement’ and glossy brochure about the council which sets out their aims and objectives, one of which on the sustainability front includes supporting the uptake of cycling and walking to increase health and well-being and to reduce emissions.

A situation mirrored across the UK.  Glossy brochures, policies, strategies, but no actual action.  Literally every applicable policy in most local authorities supports cycling; environment, pollution, health, climate change, obesity etc, etc, and there is nothing, literally nothing that makes 10% of the difference that increases in cycling would achieve to meet their self-defined targets, but all the money gets spent on anything else.

And as anyone who has tried knows, trying to get them to change is a bit like asking the sun not to rise in the morning.  The only local councillors who get it are the Greens, but sadly, where I live, there aren't any.