Terror overcome!

As mentioned previously, I volunteered to to try to learn to ride a bike this weekend. I was just as scared as I thought I would be. I had a good go at it though and I made some good progress, although I am still some way off going onto the streets. You can see a short video of me making a fool of myself below - it was quite shaming to see all the little kids whizzing around without a thought and me teetering and wobbling around. You can probably see the terror in my face... though it wasn't as bad as all that.

As part of the Cycling City project, the Council is subsidising lessons for adults wanting to learn to ride a bike. They are just £5 an hour (plus £5 to hire bike) and my girlfriend and I are both going to give it a go. The training is offered through Bristol-based charity Life Cycle UK and I fully recommend them from what I experienced yesterday lunchtime!

Change you can't believe in

With less than a year to go before the General Elections, the Tories are still desperately trying to appeal to everyone at the same time. This is presumably to conceal the fact that they still have no policies to speak of other than attacking the Labour government's record. Even this falls flat when looked at with any care, as Polly Toynbee's recent clinical demolition of Tory attacks on crime and unemployment, both of which were actually far worse under the last Tory government.

Perhaps most ludicrous of all was Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's attempt to establish the Tories as a 'progressive' force in British politics. As my Lib Dem colleagues pointed out, he seems to have rather misunderstood the meaning of the word, it being the opposite of 'conservative'!

Events over the last few weeks have not be kind to poor George. Tory Shadow Commons Leader Alan Duncan was taped complaining about how badly MPs were treated over expenses, while veteran Tory Sir Patrick Cormack thought that MPs' pay should be doubled. Not very progressive there, especially when you remember that the worst excesses of the expenses scandal (duck ponds, moats, etc) were perpetrated by Tory MPs.

Meanwhile, odious Tory MEP Daniel Hannan has been busy making himself famous for 15 minutes (and presumably rich) by bad-mouthing the NHS in the United States and giving succour to those their who would deny healthcare to the poorest in society. He'd like to scrap the NHS in the UK - not very progressive as it would just wind the clock back sixty years. Hardly a surprise then when Hannan openly described his admiration for Enoch Powell, most famous for his misguided views on race and immigration.

To cap it all, Bristol Tory leader Richard Eddy (who appears in a book I own called Foolish Words: The Most Stupid Words Ever Spoken talking about his views on race) has chosen to come out with an ill-informed blast against a successful national charity (EACH - based in Bristol) that provides emotional support for teenagers who are bullied about their sexuality. The results of bullying of all types is well-known - low self-esteem, more mental health problems, higher suicide rate, poor educational achievement. So the Tories are not very progressive in Bristol either, while Eddy seems to be aiming for a second entry in the next edition of Foolish Words - perhaps he'll even manage a whole chapter like George W Bush!

Freewheeling - and sheer terror!

As hopefully the first event of many, Ladies Mile on the Downs will be closed to cars this coming Sunday (30th August) from 11am to 4pm - the event is called Freewheel and the flyer for it is to the left.

I have just done a photo shoot with me on a bike as I have undertaken to try riding a bike for the first time on Sunday. It was something that I was challenged to do by a couple of cycling campaigners a few months back and I am happy (if petrified!) to be rising to the challenge!

I never learned to ride a bike when I was a kid for safety reasons. As I've gotten older, it's seemed less and less possible to learn - I've just turned 36 and jumping on a bike for the first time is scaring me witless, if I'm honest.

However, the Council is encouraging people to cut their car use and so it's time to make an example of myself. I've halved my annual car mileage over the last couple of years, but learning to ride a bike would let me cut it back further still, especially for those little journeys that are just out of walking range. I am hoping that I can get the hang of it and show that I am only encouraging people to do what I have done myself.

Apparently I might have a film crew coming out to watch me make an idiot of myself - keep your fingers crossed for me...

A couple of quick updates

Apologies - I've been a little quiet on the blogging front of late. I have been busy with 'real life' work and a little under the weather. A couple of quick updates on some on-going casework :

1. Colston's School road safety - I met with residents and the manager of the housing for older and disabled people that is opposite the school last week. I hadn't realised, but they have road use and safety issues too. I am looking to see whether we can incorporate their ideas into what is planned for the school. In particular, we are looking at ways of protecting parking areas for their use so that they don't compromise the school safety (e.g. by delivery lorries parking on the zigzags) and so that the residents who are mobile are able to remain so.

2. Cotham School trees - I also met last week with senior planning and schools officers about the lost trees at Cotham School. After four months of kicking up a fuss, we are finally drawing towards some sort of closure. There is now an acceptance that mistakes were made both by the Council (failure to handle the paperwork correctly) and Skanska (failure to follow due process), although neither appears to have acted with deliberate malice now that all the facts are on the table. Local residents will be getting a formal written apology in the near future and will have a say in the remaining outstanding issues on the site. Also, the Council are taking a range of measures to help ensure that things like this don't happen again in the future.

What did worry me from the meeting, though, was the low premium placed on community involvement on school sites. There does not currently seem to be an acceptance that the wider community has a role in how schools develop and that they are a key part of the local landscape. This attitude seems to have come in particular from one senior officer who has now left the Council. I am hopeful that this debacle has helped to highlight the falseness of this viewpoint and that the Council will be more open and engaging in the future around school building projects.

Colston's Primary - road safety

Local residents have now been sent a copy of the proposed road safety works around Colston's Primary School on the junction of Cotham Park North and Redland Grove.

The map left shows the detail, but the essential plan that I have been helping parents to broker is to double yellow lines on the junctions on either end of Cotham Park North, plus a stretch on the northern side of Redland Grove to act as a drop-off point.

There will also be new disabled parking bays and the existing yellow zig-zags will be made mandatory (the law has only just changed to allow this), so that the Police can enforce it properly.

I'm very hopeful that these plans will make a big difference to pedestrian safety, especially for the children. It establishes some clear crossing points, while acknowledging that the unique catchment area of the school means that some parents will always drive and need somewhere safe to drop-off their children.