Zebedee Tring

The chaos if they closed Townley, Calton, Court Lane and Melbourne Grove would be beyond belief. Wulfhund, you are clearly living in an unrealistic, idealistic dreamworld if this is your approach and you are doing a disservice to the main body of reasonable cyclists.

If a ?250K expenditure of cycling money results in only a marginal improvement for cyclists, then to my mind this represents a massive misuse of public money when local government is more strapped for cash than at any time in living memory. Though we shouldn't be surprised when this comes from a budget that is the responsibility of the same Mayor of London who is throwing shedloads of dosh at his useless new Routemaster bus and the ludicrous Garden Bridge.

This costly fiasco of a scheme was not supposed to be for the benefit of schoolchildren from two private schools (and it would be surprising if a Labour Council had these primarily in mind anyway). It was supposed to benefit cyclists (the funding purportedly coming from a cycling budget) as well as motorists and pedestrians in general.

Slarti b,@Woodwarde and others, on this thread and by email, have warned Southwark officers and senior Councillors about these potential problems but everything that they have said has been rejected or ignored. Who will be held accountable for this totally foreseeable fiasco?

But surely the text of the draft minutes could have been revealed at any time after the June meeting, particularly as there was so much doubt as to what had been agreed on what was turning out to be a very controversial subject. This could have happened on the basis that the draft minutes were subject to the Chair's approval at the September meeting. Otherwise how could officers take action on any of the other items agreed at the June meeting? Surely they wouldn't have had to wait until the approval of the minutes at the next meeting? Catch 22? Alice In Wonderland would be a better literary analogy.

I still cannot understand why someone didn't obtain the Committee Secretary's version of what had happened. She after all was taking the minutes. I was a Monitoring Officer until the late 1990s. The suggestion that a Councillor, or indeed any member of the public, would not have then been able to obtain chapter and verse of a controversial Committee decision would have been beyond belief.

What I cannot understand is why the wording of the 24 June decision wasn't available until early September. Surely at the very least a Council member could have insisted on this, particularly in the light of the controversial nature of the decision, even if the minutes hadn't been formally approved. If they couldn't have done this (which I very much doubt), local government has certainly changed since I worked in it.

What fazer? You hate The Guardian? I'm really surprised -I had you down as an out and out old fashioned leftist.

Very illuminating to see anoTher in action on another thread. An example of "Kids Rule OK" to the exclusion of everyone else?

Thanks, Tessmo. A number of people have warned Matt Hill and others at Southwark, by email and on this thread, that there would be left hand turn problems if the scheme was built as proposed, but we were ignored. So how are Southwark going to resolve this problem? By removing the build out that they have just constructed and thereby waste even more scarce funds?

No recent comment yet on difficulties for coaches turning left into EDG. Is this still a problem or isn't it?

Who at Southwark writes these contracts? When I worked in local government, the lawyers and client officers made sure that the terms were as tight as possible. This doesn't seem to be the case at Southwark.

But what about the coaches turning left into EDG? That was a problem the other day. Has that been resolved?

What did Matt Hill have to say about the problems that coaches are having turning left into EDG?

You were certainly right about the cock up and waste of money. On that we can agree.

Come on fazer, please tell us what you really think of socialists. Don't hold back!

I know that you're talking about Southwark. My point is that they aren't socialists, at least not by my definition. And tFL is run by that celebrated socialist Boris Johnson.

Fazer, this lot are incompetent, but please don't call them "socialists", which they clearly aren't, what with their apparent accommodation of the distictly non socialist Alleyns and JAGS as well as skyscraper building developers. From your post, it seems that you regard anyone to the left of John Major as a socialist.

When someone describes other people as "bed-wetters", it says more about him/her than the people being insulted and is totally unacceptable language. Clearly the blame for what has happened falls fairly and squarely on Southwark. And had pressure not been applied by local residents, we would have been faced with a no right turn from Townley Road into EDG, which would have proved even more chaotic than the present outcome.

Just as importantly Matt H should be quizzed about the apparent difficulty for coaches in turning left into EDG. He should not be allowed to suggest that the solution to this problem is a right turn ban.

Judging from his/her posting record, kibris is someone who thinks that he/she is funny but who isn't.

Just have a look at kibris' posting history. You will see a series of smart arse negative comments.

Stevie, when you say that it seems "very nice", I assume that you are being ironic. From your posting history, I would guess so.

Who are "the original Melbourne Grove residents"? Do you mean "the self appointed group of Melbourne Grove residents who want to impose a barrier on all the other residents"?

OK James, so long as you stop slagging off Labour at every opportunity and telling us how great the Lib Dems are by comparison.