Travel Warning

The end of the world is likely to cause some disruption to motorists as a six metre rise in sea level is expected to result in some localised flooding.

Police have advised drivers not to use their cars unless absolutely necessary (such as going to the shops half a mile away for cigarettes and some cans of Heineken).

During the extinction of the human species cycle lanes will continue to be be available as usual for car parking.

Have a nice weekend!

Conservative Party links to fossil fuel lobbyists exposed (or: how decision-making happens in Europe)

Chris Huhne has ordered a private inquiry into which fossil fuel lobbyists "got to" the Conservative MEPs who defied David Cameron and voted down an ambitious carbon emissions target in the European parliament on 5 July.

New research by the Guardian and Greenpeace into lobby groups and businesses seen by Tory MEPs in 2010 reveals there were more than four times as many meetings with fossil fuel companies, carmakers and others against stronger action on global warming than with green businesses and those pushing for deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

The research by the Guardian and Greenpeace shows that the 25 Tory MEPs met at least 300 representatives from fossil fuel businesses and their lobbyists in 2010 at more than 200 meetings, compared with about 70 representatives from green industries or lobby groups. The research also found the Tory MEPs attended at least 100 meetings with gas and oil companies and 75 meetings with car manufacturers last year.

Ford was one of the most hospitable companies, enjoying meetings with at least nine of the MEPs, most of them more than once.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders was also popular, alongside Jaguar Land Rover.

The UK's Association of Electricity Producers, which has strongly opposed any increase in carbon emissions cuts, was well-represented among the numerous fossil fuel energy lobbyists, along with oil industry groups such as the UK Petroleum Industry Association.

Miscellaneous news

Children MUST wear helmets when crossing the road (see below)

It’s a sin: “cyclists weaving their way through traffic.”

Meanwhile, in a vicious trick designed for no other purpose than to steal from innocent road-tax-paying drivers Camden Council has put up signs on one road which read:

No motor vehicles between 07:00 - 10:00 and 15:00 - 19:00 except bank holidays.

This is totally baffling and you would need to be Einstein to understand it. Yes, shockingly,

Motorists have been fined a staggering £5 million for driving down a quiet residential street which has been dubbed ‘Britain’s most baffling road’.

You like zee statistics?

Brake said that in 2009 cyclists made up just 0.5% of traffic but accounted for 5% of road deaths and 11% of serious injuries.

It added that while road casualties overall had decreased, cyclist deaths and injuries had not.

Road safety. A cycling Nottingham University professor is encouraging all cyclists to wear helmets and high visibility clothing

And

A cyclist who was able to walk away from a head-on collision with a car is urging other bike riders to wear a helmet.

More road safety tips. This initiative demonstrates how children should cross the road: heavily supervised by adults; wearing crash helmets; carrying hi-viz signals; and tied to each other.

A pensioner driving a sports car mounted a pavement and slammed into a group of pedestrians killing a three year old child. The driver was arrested.

Meanwhile

THE driver of a people carrier that hit and fatally injured an elderly pedestrian told an inquest she did not see him at all before the impact. Great-grandfather Leslie Young, 86, of Fitzpaine Road, had sustained multiple injuries, including fractures to his skull. He later died in hospital.

He had been at the back of his parked Vauxhall Cavalier. The Chrysler then collided with the rear offside of the Vauxhall, pushing it into the back of a parked Renault Laguna.

District coroner Sheriff Payne noted that there were no direct witnesses and recorded the verdict that Mr Young’s death was due to an accident.

War on the motorist news. A “Traffic reform campaigner” has been cruelly persecuted: I wasn't doing 91 mph all the time, just to avoid delay down the other side of the hill..

Shock horror – some council car parking ticket machines don’t give change - huge frothing in the Torigraph (“This is absolutely outrageous).

The only speed camera on the southbound M11 is a cruel trick, impartially described in the Daily Mail as “infamous” for its success in catching out innocent drivers who can’t see a series of signs bearing the message 50 mph and SPEED CAMERA AHEAD, followed by a bright yellow object half a mile ahead on a straight road.

Britain’s poisonously car-centric cyclist-hating Department for Transport is exposed as trying to block a European ban on oil derived from the carbon-heavy tar sands of Canada.

By the way, the planet is fucked.

Greenpeace says “It will now be up to us to stop them.”

Britain to save planet from catastrophe!

Thrilling news. The government has just placed Britain

at the forefront of the global battle against climate change.

The new budget puts the government on target to meet a reduction by 2050 of 80% of carbon emissions compared with 1990 levels. The committee has said that to reach this carbon emissions should be cut by 60% by 2030.

It’s always good to set a target nineteen years in the future. Excitingly, 2030 is just four years after London will have achieved its dazzling cycling target of five per cent modal share, which will have been accomplished almost entirely by strips of blue paint and some rented bicycles.

Yes, things are looking up. As proof of the government’s commitment to walking no less than £371 million has just been spent giving some lucky pedestrians in Surrey a grand day out.

And the good news is you won’t have to give up your car. When Daily Mail readers are rounded up by the vicious Green Police, bear in mind that you can effortlessly escape this kind of persecution by using ‘clean diesel’.

Motorway madness

The Highways Agency mishandled the project to tackle congestion on Britain's busiest motorway in what has been described as probably the "worst case" of a private finance initiative scheme seen so far.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP who chairs the public accounts committee, lambasted the 30-year, £3.4bn private finance contract for widening the M25 and said the mishandling had cost the taxpayer as much as an extra £1bn.

A report by the public accounts committee said MPs had been "shocked" to learn that £80m was spent on consultants to advise the department on "how to build a road".

And there’s more exciting news of an underground tunnel and slip lane which will lead from the M25 to a petrol station, hotel, shops and 721 car parking spaces.

Philip Hammond MP and local government secretary Eric Pickles MP set aside objections today and gave the go ahead to the traffic order.

The decision by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in October 2005 to allow a service station was greeted with dismay after a decade of campaigns and planning inquiries by campaigners in Cobham.

He overturned concerns about the fact the farmland sold by the owners of the New Barn Farm was in Greenbelt pointing to the need for more service stations on the motorway for safety reasons.

Hammond horror

Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, told MPs the government needs to consider whether Britain is experiencing a "step change" in its weather which would justify continental-style winter equipment to keep roads and airports open.

Surely someone as sensible as Mr Hammond has not fallen for all that nonsense about global warming resulting in extreme weather variations?

Christmas lights

Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy will be holding a festive fund-raiser for Labour Party members this weekend. She’ll be bringing along a friend. The event will be at the Welcome Centre in Walthamstow Village on Sunday from 3pm to 6pm. And as they arrive at The Welcome Centre at 8 Church End, party members will be able to see for themselves just how seriously the Labour council takes its Energy Strategy:

Waltham Forest Council is working with local partners to take action on climate change through its Energy Strategy.

The energy strategy sets out how Waltham Forest will reduce energy and water consumption. Using less energy and water will not only save money, it will reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, which is the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. The energy strategy complements the climate change strategy.

Yes, just a short distance from The Welcome Centre is the lamp post at the St Mary Road end of Church Path which has been blazing away in daylight for most of the year and also the lamp post outside number one Orford Road which has been lit up in the daylight hours throughout 2010. And let’s not forget the extra large lamp post across the road from the Labour Party office on Orford Road, which has been blazing away in the daylight hours for months (see photo above). All a gross waste of electricity and what you might call blazing hypocrisy from a council which is always instructing local residents to switch it off.

This matter will surely be of particular interest to a passionate environmentalist like Dr Creasy, who previously brought this top climate expert to the borough.

In the case of Dr Creasy I do so hope it’s not a case of floods, famines and pollution losing their urgency once an election is over…

Yesterday, for a larf, I thought I’d see if I could photograph the blazing lamp post by the Labour Party office reflected in the sign. I think it’s come out rather well, don’t you?

Four degree future

"There is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global surface temperature at below 2C, despite repeated high-level statements to the contrary," said Kevin Anderson, from the University of Manchester.

But what would he know? He’s only a scientist. He wants energy rationing and less car use. If nutters like Anderson get their way we’ll all end up riding around on bicycles.

Fortunately this man’s madness doesn’t impress anyone, and the derision is global. In San Francisco they know a global warming fanatic when they see one. Here in the U.K. there’s a man on the Telegraph who knows one of the most monstrous con tricks in history when he sees it.

And as the Investors website cleverly spots, all this global warming nonsense is just a devious attempt to install

a socialist regime

There's no compelling reason for governments to limit consumption. The notion that the planet is heating dangerously due to human activity has crumbled under the weight of evidence to the contrary.

This is true. It has been conclusively established by the Daily Express that climate change scare stories are a lot of silly nonsense.

It’s the Waltham Forest Energy Fair!

Two cars parked in the Town Square pedestrian zone – what’s going on here? Oh I see, another ‘Green’ marketing stunt. Might have guessed.

Come and find out ways of saving money, by being more energy efficient within your homes.

Doncha just love that plural? It's like they've forgotten we're not all on councillors' allowances.


















At 10.35 am the marquee was still being erected, even though this event was supposed to start at 10 am.

The man was there with his bicycle contraption but sadly no one was sitting on it in order to blend a smoothie. Riding a bicycle of any sort is a bit of an alien concept in car-sick Waltham Forest.

The hypocritical Council itself doesn't bother saving energy. Lamp posts are burning brightly in the daytime all over the borough, including this one a couple of hundred metres away from the Energy Fair, just down the High Street, which has been merrily lit up in the daytime for weeks.























Not that Green hypocrisy is unique to our crap council.

Hey, when it comes to combating climate change, why not jet off to sunny Mexico for an agreeable discussion about the importance of curbing air travel?

After a hard day at the negotiating table, what could be nicer than a soak in your personal double Jacuzzi with a view over the Caribbean?

Such luxury will greet Cabinet minister Chris Huhne – and 45 other British Government delegates – during international global warming talks in Mexico.

Mr Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Energy and Climate Change Secretary, will be enjoying the facilities of the £240-a-night Moon Palace Golf and Spa Resort in Cancun for the United Nations summit.

Should he be tempted to use his hot tub, however, he will be doing the environment no favours. A typical double Jacuzzi generates 35 times more carbon dioxide than an ordinary bath – and 80 times more than a five-minute shower.

Gore blimey!

He had asked his distinguished guests to attend the event by public transport in order to minimize CO2 emissions.

However, environmental website Climate Depot alleges that he arrived in a rental car from the airport and did not shut off the engine while he spoke.

Despite his active environmental campaigning, the former U.S. Vice President Gore has been criticised by other environmental campaigners in his career. On this occasion he was accused of 'stupidity and hypocrisy' by Marc Morano, Executive Editor of the Climate Depot website.

Now it might be true. It is also true that Greens have often been critical of Al Gore. But those last two sentences are deeply dishonest journalism because what the Daily Mail fails to tell its readers is that ‘Climate Depot’ is NOT a green organisation but, on the contrary a Greenwash outfit. Calling Climate Depot an environmental organisation is as misleading as calling Safe Speed a road safety campaign group (which is what the Express, Mail and BBC do all the time).

Marc Morano has become one of the leading conservative figures speaking out against the idea of global warming -- at least, the idea that oil companies, mining firms, etc., should not be held accountable for making products that contribute to global warming.

There’s more on Morano and what he truly represents here.

Why not jet off on a long haul flight and discuss global warming?

As an occasional student of Greenwash my attention was drawn by this:

This year saw the inaugural Hay Festival in the Maldives, which attracted some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers to debate the issues of democracy and climate change.

Hang on. It takes ten hours to fly to The Maldives. Not terribly Green.

Two heroes of the event were Mark Lynas, author and adviser to the Maldivian President on climate change, and Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project.

I used to like Mark Lynas and his book Six Degrees is an important one. But then he panicked about the future and developed an enthusiasm for nuclear power, which was roundly criticised. Then he became a paid adviser to the Maldives government and popped up at the Copenhagen summit, blaming its collapse on China. Naomi Klein, on the other hand, blamed Obama and the USA. Blaming China, India or even the USA seems a trifle hypocritical since Britain is just as complicit in global warming as other developed or developing states: Rather than cutting our contribution to global warming by 19% since 1990, as the government boasts, we have increased it by about 29%. It's the same story in most developed nations.

As for Tim Smit. The Eden Project has in the past been accused of some very dodgy links and things don’t seem to have changed much over the years:

The eco-town developers and the Eden Project spend a lot of time trumpeting their “Green” credentials, but this can be considered little more than “Greenwash” if they are happy to associate themselves with a 240,000 tonne incinerator.

The list of attending

environmental writers and campaigners

at the Maldives conference included

Montagu Don.

Who he?

Celebrity gardener Monty Don will teach the students how to create compost from waste and how to grow their own fruit and vegetables, with the aim of teaching islanders how to reduce dependency on the transportation of supplies.

Marvellous.

Footnote

The Maldives is apparently also a great place to renew marriage vows!

Jet-setting environmentalism and colourful local folk customs – no wonder the Maldives is a natural focus for comedy.

What the government’s spending review means for transport and cycling

Money will continue to be poured into the infrastructure for drivers, with widening schemes on the M25, improvements to the M1, M4, M5 and an upgrading of the A11 in East Anglia.

The cost of rail travel will rise sharply, encouraging greater car use. The £50 million Better Stations programme has been junked. If you are pathetic enough to use trains you deserve overcrowded carriages and crap stations with smelly toilets. For God’s sake pull yourself together and get a car.

Bus travel will become more expensive, but frankly only losers, geriatrics and poor people travel by bus.

£17.2 million has been sliced from the road safety budget, which is why everyone should buy a Lexus 4X4 with eleven air bags. You owe it to your family to keep them safe, especially with so many drivers using mobile phones.

Cycling will continue to be discouraged at all costs. Britain is a European leader in discouraging cycling and the government is determined to maintain this proud tradition. We don't want foreigners like the Dutch and the Danes showing us how to change out shopping centres. Obesity rules OK.

Motor traffic is expected to rise dramatically. This is why it is important to keep spending money on road improvements to ease congestion.

The Department for Transport will continue not to deliver its long-promised integrated transport policy because Britain doesn’t have one and never will.

Er, that’s it.

Below: the present condition of the great British high street – and how it will look in the future.

car-centric Transport for London is the enemy of cycling

A year ago this was a cycle lane. Now this section of the A503 in Walthamstow has been re-allocated for car parking bays, with the cycle lane moved closer to overtaking traffic (below). A killer design.

























Here’s one small example of how Transport for London (TfL) wastes money. In a recent tube strike

at one Tube station - Brixton - three guides were paid £240 to escort one cyclist three miles to The Mall in central London.

At Clapham Common, four commuters on their bikes found themselves escorted by three guides and a Transport for London (TfL) traffic controller, whose job it was to ensure the roads were not blocked by the large numbers of people turning to their bikes.

These risibly low numbers (comparable to the Cycle Friday farce) show once again how few non-cycling Londoners actually want to try out cycling. But it’s also completely in character for car-centric Transport for London to fret about cyclists getting in the way of drivers.

Here’s the problem. Huge sums of money are being squandered promoting cycling in London, yet the infrastructure just isn’t there. Transport for London purports to be the friend of the cyclist but the one thing it won’t do is put the interests of cyclists before the interests of car drivers, or re-allocate road space from cars to cyclists. TfL is institutionally on the side of car dependency, and it continues actively to encourage greater car dependency. Cyclists (and pedestrians) are treated as a subordinate species, who must never be allowed to slow down motor vehicles. London’s entire transport infrastructure is designed to prioritise the car driver over the cyclist and the pedestrian.

Some examples.

It's striking how much cycle promotion there is around London these days. You can't get on a tube or bus without seeing posters exhorting you to cycle.

And lots of people do want to cycle. But then come the practicalities. A question we just received on our Yahoo! group was: "What is a good way to cycle from Dollis Hill to Stanmore?" This cyclist has been on the TfL journey planner, and selected "bike only", and got the suggestion to go up the A5 and over the 50mph (in practice 70mph) Staples Corner flyover with it's terrifying motorway-style slip roads. And one has to answer his question, sorry, but it isn't actually possible to cycle from Dollis Hill to Stanmore by an acceptably direct route without going through feasome motorway-style junctions, or breaking the law and riding on pedestrian bridges and pavements. Brent south of the A406 North Circular road is completely cut off from north Brent and the outer suburbs, that is the way it is.

The same message is coming in loud and clear from cycling bloggers across London.

Over in Kennington they talk about TfL’s invitation to die.

In the London Borough of Merton the complaint is that

TfL don't accept they have a problem. They are institutionally car-centric. Listening to them protest about what good they've done for cycling is like listening to an alcoholic say they don't have a drink problem.

I struggle to think of anywhere in London where the safety or convenience of cyclists has ever taken priority over motor traffic, except at the Stockwell Gyratory where they removed one general traffic lane. Yet despite this being the jewel in TfL's crown, Jenny Jones pointed out they've not even solved the problem, which is that the junction is still dangerous and intimidating in both directions, although slightly less so northbound.

In the City a group of cyclists complain:

The problem for cycling in the City is that TfL's understanding of "traffic" equals "motor vehicles". Cycles aren’t part of the traffic, apparently.

If you think London Bridge or Victoria Embankment aren't nice places to cycle, it’s TfL that you have to thank for the road design and not the City. The City wanted to implement some more two-way streets for cycling recently. It was TfL that prevented this.

When it comes to urban road and street space, TfL seems a bit stuck in the dark.

In Haringey there’s the little matter of the Tottenham Hale gyratory redesign.

Question: Why has the scheme not been designed to reduce motor traffic or give preference to walking and cycling?

Answer from Transport for London:

We want to make Tottenham Hale a better place to be. The proposals have been developed with the needs of all modes of transport being important. Removing the one-way system will allow the transformation of the area, making the area a more attractive place to live, work and visit. Our proposals will provide an opportunity to meet the needs of proposed future developments in the area.

One can read this response any number of times and be completely mystified about its meaning. It is the pinnacle of ecofluff nonsense.

Meanwhile TfL and the London Borough of Waltham Forest’s Forest Road Corridor Scheme nears completion.

The spurious justification for this scheme was that it was intended to reduce vehicle speeds in a 30 mph zone. At the last moment, long after the consultation period was over, Waltham Forest’s car-centric transport planners slipped in a little extra to the traffic order – raising the speed limit to 40 mph on a section by a school and where cyclists are forced out closer to overtaking traffic.

Naturally there is no evidence whatsoever that speeds have been reduced. All that has happened is that conditions for cyclists have drastically deteriorated on a major route, further ensuring that cycling in the London Borough of Waltham Forest will never get above a modal share of one per cent. Because no one would want to send their child to school on a bicycle on what was previously an unsafe road and is now, thanks to TfL and Waltham Forest, twice as unsafe.

The only people to benefit from this insane scheme are drivers, who were previously not allowed to park in the road, but who have now had parking bays created specially for them. If you wonder why car ownership in Britain grew from just over 26 million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009, a rise of nearly 20% in just four years, look no further than schemes like this.

The cost of this scheme is £222,357 which makes these some of the most expensive parking bays in London. What’s more parking is free and without restrictions of any sort. And some of these new bays have been created outside houses with garages and drives (below).
























This scheme was approved by Transport for London – the same TfL whose Director of Integrated Programme Delivery at Transport for London, Ben Plowden, has the impudence to say

It’s staggering that half of all car trips in outer London are less than two miles in length, a distance you can cover on a bike in around 10 minutes.

There’s nothing at all ‘staggering’ about it when bodies like TfL and the London Borough of Waltham Forest implement anti-cycling pro-car projects like the Forest Road Corridor Scheme.

Half a mile down the road incidentally is Wood Street library, one of the many public buildings in the borough which lacks even a single cycle stand. While vast sums are spent on motor vehicle infrastructure, even the most rudimentary cycling infrastructure remains neglected.

And in a final two-fingers to the spurious road safety justification for this insane scheme, the advisory flashing speed sign on Forest Road at the junction with Fernhill Court E17 remains broken. It’s been like that for over two years, but obviously with over £200,000 to spend building car parking bays there’s no money to repair a speed sign.

Parking for 13 cars and 2 bicycles

Orford Road, Walthamstow, between Eden Road and Beulah Road (these last two names underlining how close we locals are to paradise). This is the heart of old Walthamstow, otherwise known as ‘the village’ and where you’ll find some of the area's most popular pubs and restaurants. Cycle parking is almost non-existent, even though the local Labour Party has been waffling about its passion for the environment for years. Indeed, the HQ of Walthamstow Labour Party is in the row of buildings in this photo.

In this short length of street there is parking here for 13 cars (in the road) and two bicycles (on the pavement) (or three bicycles, if you count the one round the corner in Beulah Road, sited where you might not want to leave it when night has fallen).

My recent sarcastic comments about the street light blazing all day long by the Labour Party office attracted defence from the friends of Stella Creasy MP in the comments here.

One excuse offered is that Labour Party people only come out at night (which might give rise to suspicion). However, having recently seen Stella posing for a photographer at mid-day on Eden Road, I know this isn’t true. Now it is perfectly true that it is the local Labour council, not the local Labour MP, who is responsible for maintaining street lights, but I know Stella is passionate about making this a better world, and she has herself said how much she looks forward to hearing your views on how we can support action to address climate change here in Walthamstow.

Which is what I am doing. This is a parochial blog with some parochial suggestions for improvement. One would be to properly maintain street lights which have been blazing in prominent positions during the daylight hours for over a year (which are featured on this blog from time to time). It is hypocritical of the council to tell residents to save energy by switching off unnecessary lights, when its own streetlights blaze during the daylight hours all over the borough.

Another modest suggestion of mine is to provide lots of bike stands in places like the village.

Instead of devoting road space to cars, including menacing gas guzzlers like this one parked on Orford Road near the Labour Party office, you could substitute some imaginative bike parking. Yes, why not remove just one car parking space and substitute a colourful, imaginative and environmentally-friendly set of bike stands?

































Bike stand picture credit: Mark

It’s oil over (plus Paris pipeline pension protest promotes petrol pump panic)

Crikey!

Climate change activists yesterday blockaded an Essex oil refinery:

'We are here at the source of the problem, at the UK's busiest oil refinery, to stop the flow of oil to London,' she explained.

The protesters say they stopped 375,000 gallons of fuel from leaving the depot.

There’s a bit of video here

The Crude Awakening website can be found here.

And there are also shocking scenes from France, where

motorists have begun panic-buying of petrol.

Transport minister Dominque Bussereau tried to reassure drivers that fuel would not run out - but petrol station owners said his message only sent more people rushing to fill up.

Goodbye ‘Cycling England’ – and the CfIT

Ah, it seems like only yesterday that the London Cycling Campaign’s chief executive Koy Thomson was fizzing with enthusiasm at the prospect of Britain’s first ‘cycling prime minister’. But then Koy was always someone who believed that behind-the-scenes campaigning was what worked best – ‘making friends within the system’. And hasn't that strategy worked well, making London the paradise that it is for cyclists. And hasn't our cycling prime minister David Cameron also made a difference. Yes, he appointed a petrolhead buffoon as his Transport Minister, a man who when appointed breezily remarked:

“I've never actually cycled in London. I'd have to take a deep breath. I think you need to know what you are doing to cycle in London.”

Which is the view of most Londoners too – but then none of them is responsible for the nation’s policy on cycling.

Next, speed camera funding was axed, even though, as any Daily Mail reader kno, they generate lots of lovely dosh from those zillions of lawless drivers out there. A fiscal contradiction there, shurely… And now Cycling England has been axed.

Cycling England was created by the Department for Transport in 2005 to promote the growth of cycling. The body introduced the Bikeability programme, and the bike-friendly Cycling Town and Cycling City awards.

The board of Cycling England was made up of leading figures in the cycling industry and cycling campaign bodies, town planning, pubic health, environment and sustainable transport.

That was a central weakness of Cycling England. It represented the cycling establishment – an establishment which has been signally failing cycling for decades by promoting vehicular cycling instead of the ONLY strategy with a proven record of success – the Dutch and Danish models, involving safe, convenient, direct segregated cycling. Sadly, British campaign organisations are rarely short of excuses as to why the Dutch model would never work here.

In the absence of a coherent philosophy we get statements like this:

"Cycling England has been a crucial conduit for funding which has touched the lives of millions of people by making it possible for people to cycle for everyday journeys," stated Malcolm Shepherd, Sustrans chief executive. 


You’d never know from guff like this that cycling was nationally in decline, and has been for decades.

The body also provides a unified voice for cycling at national level, one that is now set to be silenced at a time when it is perhaps more needed than ever before to prevent the work taken to increase levels of cycling in England in recent years being undone.

But that ‘work taken to increase levels of cycling’ DIDN’T – unless, of course, you prefer to talk about percentages on cherry-picked commuter routes, rather than modal share.

Of course what is being substituted for Cycling England is even more ludicrous:

"We want to give more power and more flexibility to local authorities as we strongly believe that they know best what is right for their communities."

As one commenter points out:

Do they? Obviously Norman Baker MP has not been to Hereford on his bike where we are still waiting for a river crossing over the Wye which had lottery funding two years ago and has not yet got off the drawing board. Our local authority has been telling its council tax payers what they know is best for them for many years and what a popular bunch of councillors they are! A lot of money spent behind the scenes and nothing to show for it on the ground.

If you want to email your MP and complain, Tim Lennon has some suggestions.

What has attracted virtually no attention at all is the government’s abolition of the Commission for Integrated Transport. You can see why this body would annoy the car-centric Conservative Party.

The Commission suggests raising an extra £1.5bn a year from taxes in the form of higher fuel duty, air passenger duty and a system of charging for foreign lorries to use Britain’s roads. It justifies higher motoring taxes by asserting that the marginal cost of car use is “generally lower than the cost which that use imposes on society”.

That’s a perspective you’ll never get in Britain’s car-centric media.

Naturally the petrolhead community is jubilant.

Today is the climate change day of action!

The latest issue of the Council’s newspaper says that today is The Climate Change Day of Action, and it has some top tips how vegetarians can best reduce their carbon footprint:





























But, hey, don’t stop there! Why not stroll along to Orford Road, Walthamstow, stand on the corner with Beulah Road, and admire this massive street light (below) which burns brightly all day long, in defiance of our Labour Council’s insistence that residents and businesses save energy by not wastefully burning lights in the daytime. Then turn your head, look across the road, and see what you can see.



















Yes, a whole window devoted to a passionate environmentalist who last April was praised by Energy and climate change minister Ed Miliband but who then ungratefully backed his brother (though she has since been desperately trying to repair the damage).

You’d think Stella Creasy MP would have noticed the lampposts in the village, two of which have now been burning brightly through the daylight hours for well over a year. Like the one further up Orford Road, and the one at the entrance to Church Path. The mystery remains: is it that Dr Creasy just doesn’t notice this profligate waste of electricity, or is that she spends very little time in Walthamstow? The same questions apply to all Labour councillors and party members who pour in and out of Labour’s HQ on Orford Road.

































Meanwhile today's Independent reports that

Britons are less environmentally conscious than they were five years ago, with twice as many people now "bored" by talk of climate change as in 2005. Four in 10 take no action at all to reduce their household carbon dioxide emissions.

A new report, by market researchers Mintel, shows that many of Britain's 26 million homes fail to make simple adjustments such as turning down thermostats, switching off lights and switching off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.

Other evidence of waning public interest in consumers' carbon footprint includes a rise in air and car travel. The number of cars on UK roads has risen from just over 26 million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009. Air travel has also increased, the number of passengers rising from 227 million in 2005 to 235 million in 2008.

Experts warn that green fatigue is a major reason why there are more cars on the roads.

But it’s not ‘green fatigue’ that is putting more cars on the roads. It’s the concrete, tangible policies of councils like the London Borough of Waltham Forest, which for many years has been pursuing anti-cycling and anti-walking policies and creating an ever better infrastructure for drivers by seizing road space and even pavements for car parking, while simultaneously smoothing motor vehicle flow by creating one-way streets and gyratories without any interest whatsoever in the impact such car-centric transport planning has on cycling.

More global warming greenwash

In her first speech on climate change since taking office Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, will speak about the need for Britain to adapt to rising temperatures.

“It is vital that we carry on working to drastically cut our greenhouse gas emissions to stop the problem getting any worse,” she will say.

One simple way of cutting emissions would be a national 50 mph speed limit, rigorously enforced, with massive penalties for ignoring it. It would also see a significant reduction in road crash fatalities. Naturally the ConDem petrolhead government has absolutely no intention of doing any such thing, even though lowering the speed limit to 50 mph would cut transportation-related CO2 emissions by 30 percent.

Wayne and the art of bicycle maintenance

It is completely out of character for me to read the sex scandal stories in the Daily Mail. I only did it in a moment of madness and I now deeply regret my actions.

On the other hand… hey, this is AMAZING, and I was totally ASTONISHED to read this REVELATION.

She and Wayne met when she was 12, and they started dating after he helped to fix her bicycle chain.

It is shocking to think that Coleen once used to cycle and now uses vast gas-guzzling 4X4s to travel around in, bringing shame on her family by spreading airborne filth through her shameless addiction to fossil fuels. Crap Cycling says: it’s time to curb your emissions, Coleen.

Day for night

The growing number of councils across the UK that are switching off street lights has prompted criticism from MPs and road safety groups.

Thankfully this is not a problem in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, where a progressive council insists on its street lights burning all through the day, as well as at night.

(Below) Orford Road, not far from the Labour Party office, the base of passionate environmentalist Stella Creasy, MP. Compare the photograph taken below last Sunday with this one!