I see Cllr Cook has gone from "extreme measures would be ill advised" and "the comments from Green & SNP Cllrs in this very unhelpful. The economy is literally on pause." in relation to talking about better air quality to deciding we must cancel the tram extension. No hypocrisy there at all.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Today's Nick Cook frothing
(453 posts)-
Posted 5 years ago #
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Nick Cook @CllrNickCook
This is disgraceful & should be deleted.
Edinburgh is deserted because a global pandemic has swept the city, killing people,closing thousands of businesses and taking away livelihoods.
The Council shouldn't be packing this as means to advance it's extreme transport agenda.
(Helpfully retweets CEC's consultation on the draft City Mobility Plan - cheers Nick!)
Posted 5 years ago # -
Think Nick takes the money from BP and Ford?
Posted 5 years ago # -
An "extreme transport agenda" = "a normal state of affairs in many European cities".
What would an extreme transport agenda look like? Every one travelling in armoured cars and tanks?
Posted 5 years ago # -
“An "extreme transport agenda" = "a normal state of affairs in many European cities".“
I think that’s a fine definition.
Except that now many cities are getting even more “extreme”.
It’s easy to consider NC as a petrolhead/dinosaur but less clear how large a proportion of people he ‘represents’.
‘We’ find it easy to criticise CEC for being timid (and SG to be wholly negligent when it comes to dealing with transport ESPECIALLY in the context of ‘making a better post CV society’), but I’ve given up trying to work out how to get any sort of great leap forward.
Yes we have timid politicians, politicians with other priorities who don’t understand how things join up (and especially how things could/should join up better - even within the limits of the powers they actually have), obstructive officials, ones who devise rules and ignore them etc etc.
Politicians we have seem to assume ‘everyone wants to drive everywhere’ - which is less true than they choose to believe - and are largely unwilling to contemplate saying ‘it might be what you want, but actually you’ll thank us when we do something different’.
Posted 5 years ago # -
There’s a developing cosy relationship with “independent” councillor Lewis Ritchie. I’ll be honest, I really struggle to understand how that guy remains a councillor.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Here's one result of an "extreme" reduction in car use. Transport Researchers at UC Davis have calculated that the 55% reduction in traffic due to the lockdown in California is saving the state $40m a day in medical and policing costs. Plus - you know, less people being killed and injured.
Posted 5 years ago # -
The "extreme transport agenda" reminds me of the American right's response to "socialized medicine" i.e. a health service set-up that most developed countries have a form of. The next step to full-blown communism. Dark talk of "death panels".
"Extreme transport agenda" on the active travel side would be a kind of Pol Pot enforcement of Year Zero, or possibly Year 1930 (when a large percentage of people used cycling for every day transport).
A conscripted army of the young will be deployed with metal cutters confiscating motorised vehicles and re-purposing them into cycling frames. All car parks will be turned into allotments, car parking buildings will have a stacked version of this.
I volunteer to head the Front Paved Garden Brigade, armed with pneumatic drills and mattocks to destroy those wasters of growing space and flood enablers.
WHO IS WITH ME?
Posted 5 years ago # -
I’m in, Rosie
Posted 5 years ago # -
Yes Avengers Assemble
Posted 5 years ago # -
I repeat: in autumn of 2013 Mr Cook was unaware that Ireland had ever been an integral part of the UK of GB&I.
He's an affable chap, but very, very badly educated.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@Rosie
you're having better luck than my own extreme transport manifesto launched three years ago
perhaps a coalition partnership is in order
Posted 5 years ago # -
@Rosie, sounds an eminently sensible programme of reform if you ask me.
If we want to go full-on Cultural Revolution we could force drivers to wear placards round their necks emblazoned with a list of their crimes, while cyclists gather around and strike them with used inner tubes.
Then pack the drivers off on a forced march to distant re-education camps. Here they are forced to carry heavy bags of shopping for half a kilometre while confined to a narrow strip of uneven paving stones littered with street furniture, collapsed service access covers, and lethally slippery glass brick basement skylights. They next humph said shopping bags up five sets of tenement stairs to the top floor.
In the evenings they will attend compulsory classes in bicycle maintenance, where they will assemble noble steeds for the masses. After three years of re-education each will be given one of the finished bicycles and told to make their way home unaided across the hills of Scotland.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@ Neddie - the Panzer cargo bike operation will be your command.
@ bax - I don't think the bowl of rice is culturally appropriate. Why not a baked tattie or a poke of chips a day? Nae brown sauce though - we mean business here.
@crowriver - definite possibilities. I would add that the unaided cycle would be via B roads and circuitous tree-rooted Sustrans national cycle route paths. We the elite will be occupying the A trunk roads and motorways with their gentle gradients, well-maintained surfaces and wide spaces.
Posted 5 years ago # -
ooh. I'm in. Where do I get my drill?
Posted 5 years ago # -
told to make their way home unaided across the hills of Scotland
Sounds wonderful.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@IWRATS, I kinda had you in mind when considering what a cycling re-education might involve. Bivouacing in glens, fixing a p******e with a piece of tarp, etc.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I consider myself duly appointed as Cycle Re-educator of All Caledonia.
Lesson 1: Spokes out of spruce roots.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@IWRATS i only taught him African politics...
Posted 5 years ago # -
@SRD
That's both funny and worrying. Mostly worrying. The guy will be sitting on the Scottish parliament in a year.
Posted 5 years ago # -
This thread might need retitling...
https://twitter.com/CllrNickCook/status/1254825709106757634?s=19
"THREAD: After almost seven years (!) as @EdinburghTories Transport spokesman, I'm pleased at our AGM to have handed over to my successor, the hugely able @SJWebber_PHW"
Posted 5 years ago # -
My favourite from the thread...
https://twitter.com/CllrNickCook/status/1254827830954856448?s=19
"Lastly, purely for sh*ts and giggles now...yesterday I *finally* bought my very own bicycle. Over and out "
Posted 5 years ago # -
Further down the thread he says he's bought himself a bicycle! Will wonders never cease?
Oh and @IWRATS, apparently he will not be standing for Holyrood in 2021...
Posted 5 years ago # -
“This thread might need retitling...”
Unlikely.
She might need her own thread though -
https://twitter.com/sjwebber_phw/status/1149946601475104768
Is she known to ‘have an interest’ in transport?
Posted 5 years ago # -
The SNP Govt like to give a lot of “free” stuff that many rightly question especially when H&SC is crying out for proper and appropriate fiscal support. And then vanity projects like trams and cycling take priority over less glam but essential services like waste, roads.
https://twitter.com/SJWebber_PHW/status/1075315413024677888?s=20
yet our SNP LAB council find money for Trams & Cycling and cut funding for invaluable projects such as this. It’s an absolute disgrace. Comments from my colleague
https://twitter.com/SJWebber_PHW/status/1149280836287705089
Well she seems delightful.
Posted 5 years ago # -
over and out
Radio operators will recognise this as meaning, "your turn to speak, but I'm no longer listening!"
Robert
Posted 5 years ago # -
She posts about potholes a lot, and the bypass. She does ride a bike. I get the impression she is considerably to the right of Nick Cook.
I fear we’ll be looking back at the last seven years as a golden age for Tory support of cycling in Edinburgh :-(
Posted 5 years ago # -
Yes she tells me every year she has a bike. At the balerno fair trade coffee morning. Both funded by oil and car manufacturers per chance
Posted 5 years ago # -
She's not been keen on the proposed (& implemented) changes at Gogarstone, but as far as I can tell she hasn't made much fuss about it recently despite plans progressing...
Posted 5 years ago # -
And she did answer my question to specify which 20mph street should have stayed at 30mph.
https://twitter.com/SJWebber_PHW/status/938538983524577281?s=19
Posted 5 years ago #
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