Shapps launches anti-cycling crusade

 

Derision greeted Transport Secretary Grant Shapps’ proposal calling for cyclists to have mandatory insurance, registration and for all cycles to carry number plates.

Then three days later he retracted some of what he said, insisting that the government has

 “No plans to introduce registration plates” for cyclists.

Which probably means they are thinking about it but have yet to move to the planning stage.  

Anyway, the point is if he didn’t say it, why all the fuss and reaction from across the nation.

Is he pitching for a new job as rabble rouser in the new prime minister’s government? Or is he trying to get sacked?  Impossible to say? Probably just keeping himself in the public eye, sowing confusion, this government’s speciality, which conman Boris Johnson turned into an art form, making misleading statements and getting away with it.

Transport groups and opposition parties, even his own Department  for Transport, reacted with disbelief when Shapps revealed  his thoughts to the Daily Mail, a right wing organ which likes to think it influences government policy and  whose readership dances to the whatever tune they decide to play. On this occasion, it was the well-known ballad “Bash the cyclist”.

These ideas have been rejected in the past as unworkable and unnecessary. They would create a mountain of bureaucracy which in turn would deter people from cycling and undermine the government’s Active Travel Policy.

Perhaps that’s the idea? 

 If so, the Daily Mail was the ideal place to plant the rot.

What else did Shapps say? Oh yes, he wants to extend speed limits to cyclists!

A speedy cyclist.

Well, quite right, no one should exceed the 60mph limit on trunk roads?

To quote the Greens’ Transport spokesman Matt Edwards commenting on these proposals in The Guardian: “an expensive folly impossible to administer. Most road traffic accidents in the UK, especially those with fatalities, are caused by reckless car drivers, not cyclists.”

He added that Shapps is pushing an anti-cycling narrative, making things far more dangerous for cyclists.

Duncan Dollimore, head of Campaigns at Cycling UK, said the plans were impractical and unworkable, and have been dismissed by successive governments.

He added that this was a complete U-turn on current government policy.

The DfT says there is no plan in place for what Shapps proposes.

In any case it would be a matter for whoever was transport secretary under the new prime minister.

So what is Shapps’ game?

We cannot know. One moment he’s cycling’s friend, the next, he’s the foe.

This is the man who can find £27bn for roads but nowhere near enough funding for making the roads safer for cycling.

Shapps continues to blow hot and cold on cycling, leading cycling lobbyists a merry dance.

This so-called “Active Travel Policy” has been costed at between £6bn and £8bn.

Shapps has offered £2bn.

*INSURANCE.

Many cyclists are insured, as I am.

I have had Cycling UK insurance for 33 years. It provides me with £10m liability cover.

 

 

Government turn deaf ear

 

What a laugh,  cycling campaign news these days.

Sarcasm knows no bounds on Freedom Cycle.

Here we go.

You will not be surprised to learn that the government continues to massively under fund their own Active Travel Policy for cycling and walking, providing only £2bn when between £6bn and £8bn is required.

This follows the unveiling of England's second Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy recently. I think this was a reworking of the first strategy which became necessary as a result of the government tweaking their forecasts upwards  for the projected increase in numbers cycling.

Pointless, if the whole show remains underfunded, as it does.

I can only imagine that ministers put their fingers in their ears when they ask how much a project cost. They are told, between £6bn and £8bn. And they say, Ah, £2bn.

You say, no, between £6bn and £8bn.

They say, right, that's £2bn.

And so it goes on.

The national cyclists' organisation,  Cycling UK have once again seen fit to inform their membership  that the government continues to under fund cycling, as they have done since the beginning of time.

In response, Cycling UK promise to do what they can with the help of the Department for Transport’s cycling team working their magic and who remain steadfast.

Cycling UK’s Policy Director, Roger Geffen complained last week that the government’s plans include “warm words but lack cash.”  Nothing new there.

He gives a very full and account of the intricate and detailed studies underpinning the government’s target to increase cycling over a number of years. You can sense his frustration in trying to understand just why it is the government repeatedly comes up short with the cash.

Geffen has been tirelessly lobbying ministers for years over this.

Anyone else fighting this hopeless war would by now have handed in their notice claiming post traumatic stress.

Although funding has dramatically increased from the dark 90s, when the national cycling policy was launched with no money, it has consistently fallen well short of what is required.

There is no explanation fcr this. Government has frequently stated it agrees with all the increased benefits to be had from having greater numbers cycling. It even goes so far as to announce grand targets, setting government staff to work with Cycling UK to make it happen. 

But then they fail to come up with enough money to see the job through.

It was ever thus. In my book providing a side-long look at our sport and pastime I say that Britain, which has never had a transport policy, will never provide decent funding to make the roads safer for cycling.

The chapter “The marriage of success to failure” recalls how British cycling’s meteoric rise to become Tour de France champions and top ranked Olympic nation in 2012 contrasts with the woeful and continuing lack of funding to make the roads safer.

Meanwhile, another load of bollocks at local level, as Eastbourne (not Littlehampton as mistakenly written when this was first posted)  has included cycling in a traffic ban from Terminus Street, an   important shopping centre in the town centre.

Cycling UK is looking into this matter and will likely mount a legal challenge in a bid to overturn the decision. Meanwhile, there is to be judicial review of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s hasty decision to take out a popular Pop-Up cycling lane. They did this to pacify local resistance stirred up by their local VIP – or should that be RIP - the actor Nigel Havers known for his portrayal of classical English gentlemen with a hatred of cyclists.

 On the world stage a story which broke this week informs us that Oil giants Exxon and Mobil, in partnership with President Bush,  30 years ago began running a successful PR campaign to discredit Climate Change Science which pins the blame for the extreme weather and heat we are now beginning to experience on 200 years of burning carbon.

The rich fuel companies, fearing poverty if we give up the oil fields, have been sowing seeds of doubt in the science and are trying to convince us all we can’t live without oil.

 They promote America for Prosperity, fuelling (no pun intended) fears that cutting carbon use will drastically reduce quality of life – which it will of course.  Whereas the other course of action they recommend, to do nothing, will, according to the science, eventually kill us.

 They are saying that talk of wild fires, flooding as the sea rises, increased heat waves killing crops, the likely massive migration from the south, which will bear the brunt of this first,  to the north, has got nothing to do with burning oil. I’d love to believe them.

I read recently that the popular press here in the UK is also to begin a campaign discrediting the scientists.

These are same newspapers who champion Brexshit which, according to sane newspapers few in the UK read, is responsible for the Dover chaos. Those long delays for travellers at the Port of Dover are the result, it is claimed, of Brexit which ended freedom of travel and has led to increased bureaucracy at custom checks.

Finally, the recent Tour de France did its “green” credentials no good when officials aggressively removed teenage climate change protestors who blocked the route delaying the race. Once upon a time, Tour organisers embraced protestors who routinely stopped the race to bring their woes to the wider public.

But not French star Bernard Hinault who, when Paris-Nice was stopped by striking dock workers, rode full tilt into the human blockage and landed a punch on their spokesman saying: “I don’t interfere with your work, so don’t you interfere with mine.”