Fancy that! The latest supporter of the mindless and ineffective ‘Choose Day’ Christian eco-scam is none other than Mark Bradshaw, Labour’s Transport exec.
He tells The Cancer: “Choose Day will help to make Bristol a leading city in addressing th[e] environmental challenge.”
Yeah right Mark. Really cutting edge. Trying to guilt trip the working people of the city on to your shitty, ramshackle old bus service run by corporate profiteers First.
Rather than engaging in doomed PR stunts with Christians, wouldn’t Bradshaw’s time be better spent getting together with his new super-rich Merchant Venturer buddies – who’ve made an awful lot of money out of this city- and creating the rapid transit system this city – if it was properly run – should have had 30 years ago?
Even The Cancer ain’t falling for Bradshaw’s latest “I’ll-support-anything-me-if-it’ll-get-in the-paper”cheap shot. Here’s their editorial on the matter:
What is the point of Bristol City Council backing a campaign encouraging people to choose to leave their cars at home to get to work?
Is their intention to prove that the vast majority of people who drive to work each day don’t have any choice?
Or is it that they are so prejudiced against car users that they will grasp at any opportunity to make them feel uncomfortable?
The truth is that campaigns like Chooseday will work only if people have a viable alternative to driving their cars. That means an efficient and cheap public transport system.
This is something we simply do not have. The choice is, therefore, drive your car or take a day off.
It really should not be left to individuals to sort out the city’s traffic problems. For running the city is, after all, why councillors seek office.
Rather than trying to pass the buck they should be coming up with innovative ideas to try to help people get to work.
Well done Bradshaw. You’ve associated yourself and the city with an idea so dumb even The Cancer says so!
Update: Charlie Bolton says on his blog that he too was there today along with Lib Dem leader Comer and Tory North West candidate Charlotte Leslie. What a shower of pathetics. Do your jobs properly, stop hectoring us and get us a decent transport system together you lazy tossers. Moral lectures and photo ops with vicars aren’t going to do shit for the planet are they? Although they’re cheap, easy and give the impression you’re doing something when you’re patently not don’t they?
Unbelievable.
Chooseday isn’t, as Charlie Bolton states on his blog, “awareness raising”. We’re all perfectly aware that we’ve got a shit transport system and how congested the city is, because we’re the poor, long suffering bastards who have to put up with it all.
The lack of a decent public transport system and congestion has been the number one issue in this city for donkey’s years (along with rubbish education). We don’t need any more frigging awareness raising, we simply want that shower of buffoons at the Counts Louse and the DfT to actually do something about it.
So what does Transport Failure in Chief Bradshaw do? Promote Christian bollocks about leaving your car at home on Tuesdays and throw yourself at the mercy of the abysmal First.
Well Mark, I tried that a couple of years ago when I used the bus to commute from Bedminster to Southmead Hospital. Came within one warning of losing my job as First CANNOT RUN BUSES TO TIMETABLE.
Never again. I’d rather sit in my car belching out fumes all the way up Bridge Valley Road than ever use one of those useless fuckers’ buses ever, ever again. And it’s cheaper.
The next wheeze that our Transport “Supremo” will churn out is Bonkers Kelly’s (what is it with Christians and transport?) idea of Personal Travel Plans. Where some nerd with a clipboard will come round to your house to tell you that you can get to work by taking a train, three different buses, walk two miles in a total of four hours instead of jumping in your car and driving there in 25 minutes. No thanks.
For the sake of the Lord (I’m at it now!), stop these totally pointless, sticking plaster initiatives and give us the necessary investment to develop a decent, affordable and reliable transport system. Something that this city has been starved of for far too long.
If you can’t do that, then shut the fuck up
The next time any politico, of whatever party, gives you the old flannel about being the ‘greenest’ party, ask them about the Portishead- Bristol railway, and watch them squirm. It will, of course, be everyone elses fault, and in a way they’ll be right-NONE of the partys, or statuary bodies, are really interested in a dirt cheap measure which could take thousands of cars off Bristol & North Somerset’s roads.
Meanwhile, if you really want to see which way the wind is blowing, follow the works of those charged with laying the infrastructure for the next 30 years- more roads, more cars.
Bluebaldee
The nerd with the clipboard idea has already happened in Bristol. In 2006 residents of Easton had to endure the attentions of a council-funded scheme called Travel Easton.
The powers that be seem to like lecturing those of us in poor and deprived communities on how they should behave; bet they wouldn’t try it in Clifton or Sneyd Park 😉
Woodsy
They tried it in Redland. When I told them I worked on the edge of Cardiff and asked them how they suggested I got to work using public transport they suggested I changed jobs. When I said I could get to work a bus, train, train and then a bus plus a 15 minute walk. Between 2 1/2 and three hours. If the bus was there at the start of the journey on time.
They were sure I should change jobs.
It just that simple.
Jozer,
Please don’t mention the Portishead railway – it makes my blood pressure increase to highly dangerous levels.
Portishead – one of the most rapidly expanding towns in the UK.
Portishead – described in Parliament as “the biggest cul-de-sac in Britain”. Park an artic across the Portbury Hundred and no-one can get in or out.
Solution – re-lay track from the Portbury freight line for a couple of miles and build a modest park and ride railway station.
Cost? About £7 million. Or 1/2000th of the cost of Crossrail. Or 1/3000th of the cost of Trident. Or just a couple of million more than the cost of one Shitcase bus route.
Can it be funded? Of course not! After all, this is the Bristol area where good transport ideas are buried under a pile of cock-eyed bollocks like Jam Busting June, Personal Travel Plans and Chooseday. Where failure and the leadership of congenital idiots are the norm.
The Council and First have even reneged on promises made to increase the frequency of the well-used Severn Beach Line. It’s going to be December, no May, or maybe not at all.
The biggest joke of all is that they want to bring in a Congestion Charge. The worst public transport of any major city in Britain and they want to charge us to drive around the city!
Oh stop, my sides hurt.
I sincerely hope that there will be mass civil disobedience if that is instigated.
Woody and Overayard,
I do hope that you dispatched the nerd with a clipboard with a flea in his/her ear.
Change jobs indeed. The best way to get decent public transport is to change cities. Or is that what they really want?
That should of course read “Woodsy”. Apologies!
Actually, I entirely endorse the need for cheap, reliable public transport – although I will be interested to hear how you think it will be paid for.
I merely don’t think Chooseday excludes that need.
I know you endorse the need for cheap, reliable public transport, Charlie, any sane person would.
It can be paid for by Bristol City Councillors actually standing up for the city that they purport to represent.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, there’s plenty of money available in this country, it just needs our local politicians to develop the balls to obtain it for the good of Bristol.
An example: A few years ago Manchester applied for Government money to expand their light rail system, the Metrolink. The Government initially agreed and then strung them along for a few years before reneging on that agreement. Councillors in the Greater Manchester area kicked up a right old stink and made various veiled threats which happily coincided with the last General Election.
Result? The Government backed down and agreed to fund the Metrolink expansion to the tune of over £600 million. The same thing happenned in Nottingham when they wanted their tram system expanded, and they got it – £450 million worth.
Let’s go further North up to Edinburgh. The good citizens of the Scottish capital slung Congestion Charging out on its ear in a referendum – something that’s being denied to us poor sods in Bristol – yet it’s full steam ahead for Edinburgh’s tram system, they’re building it right now.
What does Bristol get? £42 million for Shitcase buses, run by the execrable First that will share most of their routes with the rest of the traffic. They’ve got as much chance of getting people out of their cars than bloody Chooseday. Even Bath got £54 million and there’s only 90,000 of them!
This is because you and your BCC colleagues are utterly useless at seeking what all Bristolians desperately want and need – a decent and reliable public transport system. Instead we’ve got the totally crap excuse for one that does this beautiful city such a disservice, leading to pollution and social inequality.
Hiding behind pointless initiatives like Chooseday is just pure cowardice and makes it look as if you’re doing something, when you’re not.
Lobby Government, scrap the doomed Local Transport Plan, appeal to the DfT for funding for our local rail lines – just bloody well do something that will make a qualitative difference to public transport.
And forget Chooseday.
Clearly if the city of Bristol wants to take on other worldclass major cities such as Stuttgart, Zurich, Bordeaux, Berlin, Brussels and Barcelona, it needs a effecient and CHEAP transport system.
Photo opps, expensive consultation and meetings will not get the job done.
If you want effective, results driven PR you should try http://www.montagecomms.com.
Cheers
Matt
Matt