Ex-cabinet minister Liam Fox protests against planned seafront bike lane funded by government money

Here is a link to Liam Fox giving his views on the proposed scheme.

https://www.liamfox.co.uk/news/protecting-clevedons-seafront

The sound quality is not good but I will leave it to you to decide whether he has given any valid reasons for his objections.

You can also find a written article on his website where he details his opposition to the plan to close certain local country lanes to traffic. There is also a link to the details of the plan.

Thanks for that, and as you say, the sound quality isn't good, but still better than his objections, none of which are valid; so he does just hate cyclists.

I think it's just what happens when you've been the MP for twenty odd years in a constituency which would elect a flower pot if you stuck a blue rosette to it...

He's always been a bit unhinged.

Well said - there seems to be a belief these days (usually by those opoosed to the scheme in hand) that a consultation is just a numbers based referendum.

Amen. If you're having a consultation on "should we do this or not" you didn't do the prep work. That means that you have no idea what people want and / or you haven't persuaded them that a certain scheme will align with their wants / needs - to the benefit of the majority of them.

The consultation part should be around "how we best do this" not "yes / no" - and it must be genuine.

I do sometimes wish that authorities would have the courage of their convictions on issues where they've said "this is a good thing".  Saying and not doing makes them look as bad as doing regardless.  Engagement relies on people's trust in them - and the lack of that is where things often start.

mdavidford wrote:

Quote:

Clevedon active travel scheme in his North Somerset Constituency was backed 50 per cent vs 42 per cent in consultation last year

Without wishing to cast any judgement on this scheme, that's really not how consultations are supposed to work, and I don't think it's particularly helpful to report them in that way. It just entrenches the worst kind of 'government by pressure group and petition'.

Consultation responses shouldn't be assessed on sheer weight of numbers, but on the validity and salience of the arguments and opinions put forward in them. They should be a way of shaping policy in a way that best suits the community and responds to their concerns - not a facile 'yay' or 'nay' exercise.

Brexit.

eburtthebike wrote:

mdavidford wrote:

[...]

Consultation responses shouldn't be assessed on sheer weight of numbers, but on the validity and salience of the arguments and opinions put forward in them. They should be a way of shaping policy in a way that best suits the community and responds to their concerns - not a facile 'yay' or 'nay' exercise.

Brexit.

That wasn't a consultation, that was just a way of forcing and losing a Conservative party vote of confidence in the leader.

chrisonatrike wrote:

eburtthebike wrote:

mdavidford wrote:

[...]

Consultation responses shouldn't be assessed on sheer weight of numbers, but on the validity and salience of the arguments and opinions put forward in them. They should be a way of shaping policy in a way that best suits the community and responds to their concerns - not a facile 'yay' or 'nay' exercise.

Brexit.

That wasn't a consultation, that was just a way of forcing and losing a Conservative party vote of confidence in the leader.

No I think it was an attempt to put the swivel eyed loons on the right back in their box, but it was lost leaving the swivel eyed loons to take over the country. Perhaps it could have been held earlier before leave gained support, perhaps it could have been put off for a few years, but it was essentially inevitable.

I don't think sweeping a major issue under the carpet is the right approach ina  deomcracy, there number of people voting for a party with no policy except get out out of europe, showed the issue was not going to go away.

In my view the debate needed to be had and it needed to be won. I blame those that didn't vote because they thought no was safe, and those that voted out to give Cameron a kicking, and of course the remain campaign which was poor. 

The parety voted to have a referumdum at the conference, it went in the manifesto and they won the election. That's democracy. I don't hold with parties putting something in their manifesto and not delivering because they don't want to. This is essentially the entire basis of party politics. The party agree their policies, they put them to the people and then if elected they action them.

This.
In a consultation on Brighton's Old Shoreham Road's temporary cycle path there was an 'any other comments' box.

After, when trying to quantify these comments, they would break them down into positive and/or negative with multiple points per comment. So for example someone saying "I love it but it would be safer if it were better segregated from traffic, and it should be better connected with the rest of the city" would be counted as one positive and two negative points. Also worth noting they only published the top ten most common comments.

It didn't take very long for amateur statisticians to start making wild claims like 91% of all consultation responses were negative, despite the rest of the consultation results making these claims obvious bs.

the disgraced former defence Secretary Liam Fox, you say?