And another Labour councillor jumps ship and rejects their own transport boss’s BRT plan for the Railway path …
This time, after only 40-odd years in the Labour Party, Labour’s Lawrence Hill councillor, Brenda Hugill finally manages an entirely sane, rational and commonsensical view on something.
She tells Bristol Indymedia:
“The people of Lawrence Hill are overwhelmingly against this proposal which seeks to destroy one of the few amenities they have. We have already seen the community divided by the M32 and the inner ring road. Now is the time to stop carving this area up.”
Brenda’s joined in her independent media photocall by Easton Councillor Faruk Choudhury and Bristol West PPC Paul Smith.
Smith is once again flogging his tired “This BRT plan’s got nothing to do with the Labour Party, honest guv” line, telling, what he hopes must be some very credulous readers, “The Path has been put under threat by consultants working for the West of England Partnership.”
As if.
Maybe Paul’s secretive consultants entered Bristol under the cover of night in order to evade all known authorities as well? And perhaps they drew up their evil, secret BRT plans using the blood of virgins on parchment made from the skin of innocent socialists from a top secret cave hidden somewhere deep beneath the Clifton Gorge too? And maybe these plans were then passed, via a complex network of agents sworn to secrecy, to those shadowy bureaucrats-of-the-night at the West of England Partnership?
Alternatively it could be that the consultants were invited by our local politicians to draw up the plans on their behalf because that’s how the system actually works.
Dear Mr Blogger
of course everything you say is true, the consultants were invited in by local politicians – to be precise Cllr Dennis Brown Lib Dem (who appears to have been locked in a cupboard somewhere in Henleaze for the last three months unable to make any public statements even though he is the lib dem transport spokesperson on the council).
This debate seems to be going round in circles. The Lib Dems and Green have come out against the cycle-path proposal, as have a few Labour councillors. It would be nice if the Labour and Tory groups announced that they will not be supporting it so the idea is killed off.
“The Lib Dems … have come out against the cycle-path proposal”. Not necessarily, according to Gary Hopkins. He maintains that their press release of 9th Feb still represents their position. Although worded to sound like a rejection of the Railway Path route, it wasn’t actually, if you take it literally.
The Lib Dems are certainly not stating a clear position against putting BRT on the railway path. Consider this complacent and patronising reply from their party whip, Mark Bailey, posted on ‘save the railway path’ yahoogroup.
Having stated that the proposal is just a ‘vague aspiration’ not a detailed plan, he says he is ‘minded to oppose’ it. He goes on to say ‘With so little information on the table it is practically impossible to make an informed decision. So while you are right to be on your guard, any threat to the cycle path, in our opinion, is many years away.
The LibDems need to reread the documents. They should also ask themselves why, if the threat is so vague and distant, the West of England Partnership put a new glossy download on their website in the middle of last month, stating unequivocally that the BRT route ‘would run alongside the Bristol & Bath Railway Path’.