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Impact of prolonged uncertainty over spending attacked by Scottish Conservatives as "absolutely scandalous”.
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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Cycling News
‘Sustrans to cut 21 jobs because of Scottish Government funding hiatus’
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Posted 1 year ago #
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oh that's grim. that explains something that I heard recently about someone looking for a job :(
Posted 1 year ago # -
Have no inside info, but as I’ve have said before - SG/TS was looking at ‘best way’ to get money to LAs.
Review expected to be finished last year but still not done.
Unclear from this article whether SG thinks ‘soft’/community stuff is a bad idea/too hard to quantify/Sustrans not best org to deliver.
Good that there is still a commitment to infrastructure. I’m sure SG/TS find it more convenient to have Sustrans in the middle rather than directing LAs to do stuff. May or may not produce best/most consistent outcomes.
The whole process of competing for funds NOT efficient.
SG plan for ‘bikes for all children’ not well devised. I think TS advised against doing it the way it was done.
Without Sustrans many good things would never have happened.
It’s clear that parts of ‘its network’ are not great - partly because they don’t actually own most of it and partly ‘because resources’.
Being largely dependent on Gov money (especially in Scotland) means it may not be able to what it wants/is good at.
But Sustrans is far from alone in being in such a situation.
Generally SG has not been very good/consistent on ‘transport’ for decades. Being willing to ‘spend more money on Active Travel’ remains largely a fig leaf.
On the face of it engineering a cash flow crisis ahead of a policy change is bad governance or just more ineptitude.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Just got a 'chugging' pop-up from Sustrans on my FB feed asking me to donate to help the 'ageing' NCN network:
https://www.sustrans.org.uk/get-involved/donate-t12-ad05Not sure if I'm being uncharitable or possibly even verging into Tory-like territory by suggesting that there should be enough tax generated to fund this (what happened to the SNP's pledge of 10% of the travel budget to go towards active travel https://www.snp.org/policies/pb-how-will-the-snp-encouraging-active-travel/ ?).
IMO Sustrans as a charitable organisation should not exist. You don't see charities asking for donations to support the road network after all!
Posted 3 months ago # -
Certainly bit of bread buttered on both sides.? Funded by Govt, but will charity mug you on Canal Towpath.Shame staff losing jobs. I do like Daisy N in Edinburgh
Posted 3 months ago # -
In a civilised, people-orientated and socialist society, charities would not exist at all - they simply wouldn't be needed, as everyone would be provided an equitable and sufficient lifestyle by virtue of people paying their taxes and paying sufficient tax (especially billionaires and billionaire corporations).
The whole concept of, essentially, core services being provided by "charity" is neoliberalism, capitalism and consumer-culture gone mad
Posted 3 months ago # -
Sustrans was formed to provide for cycling (and walking) at a time when the country was very much pro-car, and had the bright idea to lease ex-railway permanent way and make it suitable for bikes. It might never have happened without so many closures of railway routes. I still tend to think of Sustrans as being the temporary custodian of the permament way until such time as the railways are actually interested in using them again.
I suppose one government after another has been all too happy to let Sustrans expand its design and project management expertise and then use the organisation as a de facto quango-cum-consultant-cum-contractor. At least Sustrans has kind of centralised that knowledge, even though DfT and SG/TS ought to have the final say on design and construction.
Posted 3 months ago # -
@neddie that's broadly in line with my thinking and thanks for confirming that I'm not spiralling into frothing Daily Mail-reading Tory territory in thinking this :-) Rather the opposite in fact. As German comedian Henning Wehn once said "We don’t do charity in Germany. We pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments’ responsibilities."
I know successive governments have erred away from the thorny issue of taxing billionaires/corporations but the other side of the coin is that their taxes would go towards funding the infrastructure that their distribution networks rely on, supporting the workers whose labour produce the iToys they sell (which applies in China just as much as in the UK) and indeed the consumers who buy their iToys and if those consumer's tax burden is sufficiently high that it affects their discretionary spending on iToys well....
Posted 3 months ago # -
Charity is a failure of governments’ responsibilities
^^^ This.
iToys are largely unnecessary (and often destructive) to having a happy and fulfilling life. And many people who can ill afford them, feel pushed into buying them because of peer-pressure, social media and advertising.
Advertising is mostly there to push unnecessary junk - when did you last see an advert for an apple, a walk in the park, or homemade dinner with friends?
Posted 3 months ago # -
I never thought that I would see
A pome as lovely as a treePosted 3 months ago #
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