CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
Just what 'we' need on the front page...
(35 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
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Good old ENN to promote the bike v car war :(
I personally would prefer them to fill in a lot of the potholes and cracks in the road rather than paint more bike lanes that will be ususable for cyclists due to a lack of enforcement.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Must have nicked that headline from Daily Mail....
Posted 11 years ago # -
Mmm. According to the EEN this years budget £26m, was double last years, ie £13m. Council planning future spend of £15m minus £1m for cycling = £14m.
Therefore headline should have read " £1 million pound increase in budget for city's roads"Posted 11 years ago # -
You have to feel for the cooncil, sometimes. Even the bike riders in the comments section are saying "we'd rather the potholes were filled in".
Yet another own-goal from our illustrious leaders [rollseyes]
Posted 11 years ago # -
Maths, facts and accuracy were never the EEN's strongpoints.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Ha!! I hope this gets all the motorised mo*ons blood boiling!
Posted 11 years ago # -
How can you cut a budget that hasn't been set? The expnediture for pothole repair in 2014/15 might be less than this year, but that doesn't mean it is a cut. It is only a cut if a budget has been set and then a decision is made to reduce that budget - which hasn't happened in this case.
I suppose the headline "Council reprioritises transport expnediture - road repairs still biggest expenditure" doesn't have the same ring to it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Its a serious problem that headlines such as these are designed to provoke conflict, enabling drivers to be increasingly aggressive, and to feel justified in their antagonism.
Offhand, I can't think of another area where it would be deemed acceptable for local media to polarise the community in this way.
Posted 11 years ago # -
o_0: "I can't think of another area where it would be deemed acceptable "
It's the hard won unacceptability of those other areas* that has driven people to pick on cyclists imo.
*racism, homophobia, sexism, ageism etc.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Mr Greig added: “Over 90 per cent of journeys are still made by car ... you have to invest in the mode of transport people use.”
But Mr Greig, 7% of the transport budget is much less than 100-90 = 10%. So you're saying funding for cycling should almost double, to 10%?
Posted 11 years ago # -
@ Dave, Mr Greig said car and not HGV or Bus. But I do wonder where they get their data from, and whether its specific to inner cities or the UK as a whole, which includes very rural areas and motorways (<-where cycling is not allowed).
Posted 11 years ago # -
A portion of the 6.4% of Edinburgh's population which read the chipwrapper will be fuming. Then they'll move on and forget about it as there will be some other grumpy person on the front page pointing at something tomorrow.
And the paper probably wonders why it has lost 54% of its readership in 10 years and has the worst rate of readership decline of all UK regional papers. At the rate it is currently shedding readers it will have a circulation of just under 10,000 in 10 years time. Pretty impressive considering it was at about 100,000 in 1990.
Posted 11 years ago # -
from the other thread;
Threefromleith: Surprisingly little anti-cycling abuse, which I thought it'd be rife with the moment I saw the comment-baiting headline!You must understand that cyclists fall well below trams, the council and anything related to the Festival in the Chipwrapper hierarchy of commenter abuse
Posted 11 years ago # -
There was a tweet from a journalist on Twitter last week implying that things were bad things were afoot at the EEN/Scotsman.
I think they're in their death throes and going to be put out of their misery soon.
Posted 11 years ago # -
You must understand that cyclists fall well below trams, the council and anything related to the Festival in the Chipwrapperhierarchy of commenter abuse
I thought that the fact they could pounce on all three of their pet peeves in one handy story would have had them foaming at the mouth and attacking us all :-)
Posted 11 years ago # -
Dave - the average Scottish person makes approximately 63% of their annual trips as the driver or passenger of a car, which accounts for approximately 76% of the total mileage they travel. (Figures derived from tables 11.1 and 11.2 of Scottish Transport Statistics 2012.)
The IAM guy is talking rubbish - statistically speaking, of oourse. Usual caveats about averages, data sources etc - but these are the best statistics available on this topic.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Incredibly irresponsible journalism - I imagine they feel they're attracting a readership by inciting angry division like this. I suppose a reasonable article with cyclists advocating fixing the atrocious road surfaces would have seemed pretty boring by comparison. I do have the sense they realise from the comments what people are responding to and are pandering to that...
Posted 11 years ago # -
I'll wager that their commenters online don't even buy the paper and just troll the site.
Posted 11 years ago # -
The traditional printed newspapers are all in their death throes, although some are further down the road than others. Most are resorting to this kind of click-bait to try and get some web hits for their advertisers (Comment is Free on the Guardian website is particularly bad for this). As web-based advertisers become smarter in their ad placements and recognise the limited returns they get purely from site views then even this above-the-line trolling won't be effective.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I personally would prefer them to fill in a lot of the potholes and cracks in the road rather than paint more bike lanes that will be ususable for cyclists due to a lack of enforcement.
Those red areas are cycle lanes? I thought they were parking/stopping zones... :0
Personally, what would keep me safer is if the left side of the road was fit to cycle on. So, I'm with you: I'd rather the money was spent on road repair.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Interestingly that picture is of the infamous lethal cycle lane by the Missoni - good choice of picture....
Posted 11 years ago # -
In terms of pothole filling vs cycle facilities, the first is maintenance and the second is investment. These should be seen as different types of budget.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Incredibly irresponsible journalism - I imagine they feel they're attracting a readership by inciting angry division like this.
The EEN has quite a healthy readership from CCE, ironically!
Posted 11 years ago # -
But how much money do they make from us? I certainly don't buy the rag and I have an ad-blocker so neither see nor read any advertising on the site. Then again, I suppose it depends on whether advertising programs can tell if a visitor is viewing a page with ads blocked. If not, the advertisers are paying for site hits rather than the more important site hits without ads being blocked.
As for the choiuce of articles, journalism has become much easier. Before the internet, the only feedback a paper got was from a page or less devoted to readers' letters. Now, they can gauge what their readership reacts to via comments which are so much easier, quicker and require less formal structure, meaning even the least grammatically-schooled can sound off.
Journalism as a whole has been dumbed down. Just look at how new programmes and the like are clamouring to "involve us" by asking for tweets and mobile phone images. No longer does a journalist have to go out and get the story as often, no longer must they phone somebody. Instead, they just check Twitter and get the public to do the job for them.
Just how many quotes nowadays have actually been obtained directly from the person in question rather than lifted off the internet?
This "involving the public" is akin to visiting a relative in hospital and having the nurse give you the needle to inject the patient for them under the guise of "involving the public".
Posted 11 years ago # -
As for the article itself, if it's one or the other, I'd go for fixing potholes first, over the half-baked cycling infrastructure we have been getting lately. What's the point in painting a red lane over a potholed road?
I dream of the day my own street - currently potholed, rutted, bumpy and unevenly surfaced, with almost invisible cycle lane markings - becomes a smooth, well-demarcated nirvana to ride along but sadly I think it would take a combined visit by the queen, Dalai Lama and the pope to get that to be reality.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I suppose the point is, it is not either or. The council have allocated a budget for road maintenance and a budget for cycling infrastructure. There is no connection between the two. (Except in the EEN).
Posted 11 years ago # -
Of course, hence my "if" rather than "as". But that wouldn't fit with the EEN's agenda! ;-)
Posted 11 years ago # -
Has anyone suggested keeping both sides happy and paving over the potholes with new cycle lanes?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Inaccurate and misleading headline? Breaches article 1.i of the PCC's Editorial Code of Practice.
Consider it "Clarenced" :)
Posted 11 years ago #
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