Tories for off-road biking

On Saturday, we'll have Lord Mayor Geoff Gollop here in Stockwood for the Grand Opening of the new bike track, set into the slopes behind the Whittock Road allotments. It's rumoured (well, I'm starting a rumour...) that he'll hurtle down the course on a penny-farthing borrowed from the M-Shed, to symbolise our rapid descent into the Tory World of Victorian Values.

No doubt our own Conservative ward councillors will be there too. The real credit for the new course, though, should go to the young people who put such effort into creating and improving the old one. It was enought to earn themselves Youth Opportunity Fund backing, to pay for all the earthworks on this impressive new run.

Question 1 is - will this new-found Tory enthusiasm for bikes off the road be matched by keeping their own cars on the road?

The new track's a good 100m off Whittock Road, across level grassland. It was always going to be tempting for those arriving by car (and it looks like there'll be plenty, this won't be a wholly 'Stockwood' track) to drive those final 100m over the grass, summer and winter. Will Bristol's Conservatives set them a permissive example on Saturday?
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It certainly seems that Bristol's Tories are wedded to their cars. They've been pretty silent, but (like their Labour and LibDem counterparts) generally supportive of plans for Bus Rapid Transit for the city. Until, that is, they got round to reading the Cabinet papers for last week and realised that the cost wouldn't come out of general taxation - a big chunk of it must now (thanks to George Osborne) come from Bristol itself. And the only realistic way of doing that is to levy those businesses in the central area that have workplace parking, at a rate of (wait for it....) a pound a day a parking spot. Cue Tory Shock Horror.

Of course, there was no plan B from the Tories; why bother when you're not in power, and there's some easy political point-scoring that's there for the taking?

So Question 2 is, does the Tory reluctance to raise funds from those car-driving commuters blessed with free workplace parking in the city centre stretch as far as opposition to the South Bristol Ring Road which is an integral part of the BRT bid package? I think we should be told. After all, that road would have a far greater impact on the quantity of traffic in Bristol than all three BRT schemes put together. IMHO.
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Back to the bikes. The conservatives' enthusiasm for the off-road bike track riders clearly doesn't extend to the safety of those who cycle to get from A to B on real roads. Stockwood Cllr David Morris, who's written to BaneS about proposed new housing development between Whitchurch and Stockwood, takes the opportunity in his objection to blame congestion on Wells Road on "the installation of cycle tracks along the A37 reducing the flow of traffic into and out of Bristol".

And there I was, thinking it was caused by too many cars and heavy lorries!

Ashley goes to Europe

It's just three weeks until Ashley Fox, Conservative councillor for Westbury-on-Trym, takes up his seat in the European Parliament. Congratulations and good luck to him. Ashley took the last of the three seats won by south-west Tories, with UKIP having taken a couple more, and the LibDems taking one.

Our Green lead candidate, Ricky Knight, polled 144,000 votes across the region - 12,000 short of taking that sixth seat that would have kept Ashley as a solicitor and councillor in Bristol.

Apparently, Ashley intends seeing out his term as a local councillor until next May, while at the same time carrying out his European Parliamentary duties on behalf of the people of south-west England and Gibraltar. That's not a good start, especially after his own party has been calling for action against those councillors who fail to attend council meetings!

Today saw another ominous cloud threatening our Tory MEPs' ability to represent us in Brussels. They've formed an alliance (in order to win funds from the Brussels pot as a recognised political grouping) with a ragbag of small parties across 7 other states, some with very dubious records. For instance, the 15 MEPs of Poland's homophobic 'Law and Justice' party (PiS), which has strong links with the misogynistic and anti-Semitic Catholic radio station, Radio Maryja. There's also the MEP from Holland's Dutch Christian Union, with a religious agenda that includes opposition to abortion, euthanasia, and gay marriage.

So much for David Cameron's professed conversion to 'progressive conservatism'.
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In the run-up to the election, I deputised for the Green candidates at a local hustings. What came over most strongly from the audience was that they didn't feel they knew enough about the EU to make informed judgements in the election. And this was a small group of people who'd taken the trouble to try to find out! They're right, of course. The media ignore Europe - unless it's some 'straight banana story) - being obsessed with Westminster politics. The MEPs themselves barely attempt any dialogue with their constituents. Maybe that accounts for our woefully poor choice of MEPs.

I know that Ricky Knight fully intended to set up an office in Bristol if he'd been elected (you may well have seen the office he provided in Old Market in the weeks before the election). In the past, when MEPs had single constituencies, it was customary to have an office base there.

We've got three Tory MEPs now, all on very comfortable salaries and with access to funds to provide offices and staff. Can we hope they might use some of it to provide a local presence here in Bristol?