Monthly Archives: May 2012

Parking

PM had an item claiming traffic wardens are welcome back after a break from duty (no April Fool apparently). No-one minds reasonable regulation, but parking enforcement is overwhelmingly unreasonable, vexatious, even extortionate. How many times have we been ticketed, clamped or … Continue reading

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Brick walls

Our traffic control system makes roads dangerous, causes congestion, generates ill-will, encourages delinquency, damages air quality, damages our health, and costs a fortune. Despite my efforts to enlighten government and media (over the years I’ve emailed the Today programme a … Continue reading

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Strange brew

In her Four Thought, Kate Smurthwaite told us that donkeys receive more in charity than homeless humans. The acres of newsprint and hours of airtime devoted to phone hacking also reveal eccentric priorities, considering the dearth of coverage devoted to … Continue reading

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Box ticking

Until recently, domestic news was all about the inevitability of painful cuts. As often stated here, traffic system reform offers vast scope for kind cuts. These days, domestic news is all about the need for growth. Leaving aside the Transition movement, … Continue reading

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Fear of the unknown

“Most of us have a hard-wired fear of all things unusual,” says gym instructor-turned-author Venice A Fulton in a piece in today’s Observer about his diet book, Six Weeks to OMG. This is the only way I can understand the … Continue reading

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Corporate manslaughter

My Radio 4 piece is over and done, but I should have denounced the purveyors of traffic control in stronger terms. By making roads dangerous in the first place (with the unequal priority system), and for presiding over tens of … Continue reading

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Thought for the Day

Jonathan Sacks is always worth listening to. Today it was about justice, achieved through collective responsibility and collective action. The parallel with Equality Streets is clear. On the road, individual and collective responsibility are illegal. We have to submit to … Continue reading

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Four Thought – correction

The conclusion I meant to draw about the amber light and hidden pedestrian was that given no lights and no traffic light poles obscuring the view and concealing the pedestrian, I would have been driving according to human context rather … Continue reading

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Radio 4 Four Thought

The programme is OK, but I’ve written better about the subject elsewhere. This summary on the BBC website had 1034 comments when I last looked. I have only skimmed a few, but it’s surprising to see the widespread support there still … Continue reading

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Police and red lights

In Four Thought on Radio 4, I described being stopped by police for cycling through red lights and then being released without charge. The point I meant to make is that on our over-regulated roads, the police are the last refuge of … Continue reading

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