Sunday 23 February 2020

GET CYCLING DONE, BORIS





We find out in this Question and Answer session if the Prime Minister will do for cycling what he did for Brexit, and “Get Cycling Done”.

Copenhagen, capital of Denmark and capital place for cyclists
Because we would all like to know how cycling can benefit from the recent announcement of £5bn funding to be spent on buses and cycling!


When in fact, it turns out cycling gets only £350m of that lump sum, which is no dam use at all if we are ever to aspire to the standards set in Holland and Denmark.

Especially when you compare this piddling amount to the £1.2bn needed
for Manchester’s proposed 1,800 miles of cycle lanes.


The facts of the matter are that funding for cycling alone needs to be between £6bn and £7bn across five years to be effective.


And the Great Britain Cycling Report produced by the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group in 2012 provides a thorough guide on how the roads are to be made safer for cycling. But nothing came that.

In this Q&A, Cycling OK, the national cyclists’ organisation, talks to the PM on that well-known imaginary cyclists’ channel, Skull Cinema.




As every racing cyclist knows, Skull Cinema is the go-to place when training. It allows us to imagine all manner of things in our little heads as we ride along. I still sometimes act out riding my local hills alongside the greatest cyclist of all time, Eddy Merckx. 
Other people might imagine they are listening to the great statesman Winston Churchill telling them how wonderful he thinks they are.



So, without more ado, over to Skull Cinema for this exclusive Q and A with the PM.


Question: Prime Minister, you will recall the sorry fate of the “Get Britain Cycling Report” published way back in 2012 when the PM at the time, your friend Dave, agreed it was a very good report but declined to give it Cabinet backing.


Prime Minister: Yes, Let’s Get Cycling Done. Bring it on. I must tell you I’ve brought with me my trusted Special Advisor. He’s a rather intense man and it might surprise you to know he has a nice smile, an image which is completely at odds with that presented by the press which paints a picture of a sinister looking snarler.


Ques: Yes, thank you, Prime Minister. But will you give the Get Britain Cycling Report the go-ahead with full cabinet backing?


PM:  Humph, ah, well piffle paffle. Cycling is, as we all know, fantastic way of getting around….  Fantastic, brilliant, as you know I used to be a cyclist….Now I ride indoors on a Zwift turbo trainer – virtual reality cycling. Roads far too dangerous. Can’t think why something isn’t done…


Ques: Turning to the Special Advisor (SA): 

Is the PM saying he will give the Get Britain Cycling Report full cabinet backing?

SPECIAL ADVISOR (SA): No.


Ques: Prime Minister, the Report calls for government to ensure that local and national bodies, such as the Highways Agency, Department for Transport and local government allocate funding to cycling. Will you do this?


PM: Ah, quite right to want this. Brilliant, fantastic…ah. And if I may I say so….Let’s get cycling done…


Ques: to the SA. Will he do this?


SA: No.


Ques: Prime Minister, should cycle funding also come from Health, Education, Sport Business budgets?


PM: I do think…er…yes. Let me tell you, we will, we will be building 40 new hospitals overnight…linked by 250 miles of cycle lanes…



Ques: turning again to SA, is that a yes from the PM?


SA: No.


Ques: Prime Minister, the GBCR calls for a statutory requirement that the needs of cyclists and pedestrians be considered at an early stage of all the new development schemes, from housing to business development, as well as traffic and transport schemes, including funding through the planning system. This isn’t happening. Can you implement this?


PM: Ah, can you repeat the question?


Ques: OK, Prime Minister, the ….


SA: No.


Ques: Prime Minister, existing design guidance needs to be revised to include more cycle parking, and an audit process to help planners, engineers and architects to think bike in all their work.

Will your government undertake to fulfil this?


PM. Hmm….I can only say….Let’s get cycling done…


SA: No.


Ques: The report calls for the Department for Transport to approve and update necessary new regulations, such as allowing separate traffic lights for cyclists.

Will you action this?


PM: Hmmm.


SA. No.


Ques: Prime Minister, Will you call for a major redesign of roundabouts on the lines of the Dutch system to provide cyclists with priority at roundabouts?


PM: I must say I do think …


SA: No.


Ques: Prime Minister. As you know, cycle commuting as distinct from leisure cycling, accounts for between only 1 to 2 per cent of journeys made in England – whereas in Holland it is 28 per cent. Will your government increase funding for cycling from around £7 per head to £20 per head (which is still less than the Dutch spend) to make cycling conditions safer and put more bums on bikes?


PM:  Ah, well……..


SA: No.


Ques: Prime Minister, will your government……………..


SA: No.


Ques: Prime Minister, will you say….?

SA: NO.


Ques: Prime Minister, Can you…?


SA: No.


Ques: Prime Minister, Can…?


SA: No.













Friday 14 February 2020

More half measures


Well, here’s a thing:  £5bn to spend on improving bus services and the roads for cycling.
More half measures!
This was the news on Tuesday when Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed that the controversial High Speed Railway 2, between London and Birmingham and points north, will go ahead.

He also announced £5bn across five years for cycling and buses. However, some will see this as a mere PR to deflect criticism from those opposed to HS2.
I read that the PM mistakenly told Parliament that cycling’s share of the £5bn was to be £350m. But he was corrected. The sum for cycling is to be £1bn over five years.  That’s a relief, from peanuts to small change.
(But wait, I've just read that the actual sum across five years is in fact £350m! So the PM was correct!
That's according to Cycling UK's Head of Campaigns Duncan Dollimore who is as frustrated as the rest of us at the continued under investment in cycling. If that is the case, time for a profanity - £350m is fuck all.)

But let's just imagine the funding was to be £1bn.
Because that's the figure, plus a bit, that is needed to build Manchester's proposed 1,800 miles of cycle ways,  Manchester cycling Tsar Chris Boardman told The Guardian this week. And he's still
waiting for Boris to provide him with the money.
So that pours cold water over the whole thing.

Good luck, Chris. The rest of the country is only getting £350m.

But In his other guise as British Cycling Policy Advisor, Boardman welcomed the government funding as a step in the right direction and praised the Prime Minister.
British Cycling said:
“The Government has now committed to 250 miles of new, high-quality separated cycle routes and safe junctions, dozens of new Mini-Holland schemes, working with local councils to reduce lorry traffic and ensuring all new routes are built to tough new design standards.”
It’s a start, I suppose.  But whose design standards, the cycle planning experts or government flunkies?

The tens of thousands of miles of other roads in need of this treatment will have to wait. However, there was no suggestion there was more money to come, year on year, for the massive restructuring of the road system that is required.

Being a sceptic who reported cycling policy false starts over four decades, I am wary that this latest government announcement will be another dead end.
The good news is that the Bikeability cycle training is to be extended to every child in England.
But dear oh dear, that will be waste of time if the hostile road system isn’t made safer for cycling according to comments made Cycling UK, the national cycling charity.

And I’m not impressed with the promised 250 miles of segregate cycle lanes…a few miles in different towns and cities?
Imagine having a motorway system built like that, 10 miles in the West Midlands,  five miles in Lancashire, 7 miles in North Yorkshire and five miles in South Yorkshire – big county,  is Yorkshire, that’s why they get two!

So this is all smoke and mirrors story to fix in people’s minds the idea that government is doing the right thing when the promised investment simply won’t go far enough.
They do seem unable to grasp this.  Well, they do grasp it completely. They're messing about!

And besides, I do wonder,  is there now the government mechanism whereby central government can now  tell the 160 Local Authorities  what to do as distinct from “advise”.    Because otherwise nothing very much gets done, with only the likes of  Bristol and now Manchester showing initiative and London are spending real money on cycling improvements. It’s all bits and pieces, no co-ordination.

I was reading in a recent issue of Cycling UK’s magazine that very little cycling or walking has been included in new housing or business developments in recent years.

This will suit the roads lobby who certainly don’t want too many cyclists nicking what they regard as their road space.  That’s what this is all about.





Wednesday 5 February 2020

Beastly times ahead


2020…facing up to it.

This survey of facial expressions identifies reader types of the nation’s favourite newspapers…

Daily Telegraph readers: authoritarian;

The Times: inscrutable;

The Guardian: knowing;

 The Sun: suspicious;

The Mirror: sullen;

Daily Mail: blank

Cycling Weekly: euphoric

ANON.


Warning! This beast of a piece clocks in at 666 words.

This Blog is all about cycling, except when it isn’t.

 It’s 2020 and the new road season is under way. But that’s not all.


There I was enjoying Eurosport’s review of the Tour Down Under won by home star Richie Porte only for my euphoria to be shattered at the stroke of not quite midnight; 11pm.


Yes, this was Friday night, January 31, when something totally unnecessary happened. The threat of Brexshit finally became reality and a small island divorced from the European Union to cries of joy from demented Leavers and sobbing from tortured Remainers.


Except of course nothing changes until the terms of the divorce are settled 11 months from now. When, depending upon what you believe, it will be all a bed of roses with lovely new trading deals across the world or chaos because the government, doing what they do best, didn’t have a plan.


So it has come to pass that 31 years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall – celebrating the reunification of Eastern and Western Germany - the world watches perplexed as Britain does the opposite and separates from the European Union.  And hides behind an imaginary barrier to make sure those pesky neighbours across the Channel cannot watch as we drift rudderless off the edge of the world.

I feel as sick now as I did three years ago at the referendum result to Leave the EU.


Until this new dawn I was in a good mood as a new season of bike racing got underway Down Under.  Not even sports dark history can dent my enthusiasm.  Not even my recent telling of Big George Hincapie’s story of how he doped for almost his entire professional career (see my previous blog).
The Mersey  Docks 
and Harbour Board building reflected
 in the black mirror-like façade of the modern edifice opposite
 at Liverpool's Pier Head. 
The city was  
Cultural Capital  of Europe in 2008 and voted
 strongly for Remain (58 percent).


Doping! It’s an occupational hazard. So I’ll be keenly studying the form and wondering how long we’ve got to wait for another positive. Positive, a good word gone bad in the case of sport.
And I can find nothing positive about Britain leaving the EU.


Maybe I should switch to reading the Daily Telegraph, see the world through rose tinted Specsavers.

But it was Sunday, so sister paper the Sunday Telegraph would have to do.  I found it full of the joys of spring for our prospects once free of the EU. I could almost believe it myself.

Reading it cover to cover in a corner of my local supermarket, I detected echoes of Empire, of British stubbornness, our famous laisser-faire, and a blunt negotiating style – give us what we want no compromise leave our fish alone!


I almost fell in love with the idea of Britain going it alone, no longer tied to the best trading block in the world; we’ll do it our way, at the food banks.


The Telegraph writers waxed lyrical, going on about how democracy won the day, how the people of Britain voted to Leave – well 17 million voted to leave and 16 million to remain. 

Nothing at all about the indisputable fact that it was all a con. That the four main issues which drove the Leave vote had nothing whatsoever to do with the EU.-


Austerity – wholly due to British policy;

Regional economic inequality - ditto;

Immigration – ditto;

NHS to get the £350m a week paid the EU – LIE.

We were wrong to say that – admitted the Brexshit campaign afterwards.  


And to compound the con, Prime Minister Johnson promised to fix all these things once Brexshit was done; a cunning ploy which reinforced the mistaken belief that it was all their fault, over the water.

Nothing about any of this in the Telegraph of course, gloating, like Johnson himself, in “abnormal self-admiration” as the dictionary defines narcissism.