1 May - The barricades go up - click any image for photo gallery (7 images)
One of the few redeeming features of Bexley is its public parks. I am fortunate to
live near to Lesnes Abbey and Bexley council does a pretty good job of making it
a pleasant place to visit. Opening the public toilets would improve matters but
on the whole one cannot complain. But why is Bexley council so keen to restrict
access and how can it justify the enormous expense of several miles of barriers
at the same time as complaining about money shortages when they raised council
tax yet again last month?
The main justification apparently is to deter motorcyclists. Bit of a
sledge-hammer to crack a nut isn’t it?
In my 23 years of daily walking around the abbey grounds I have only once encountered motorcyclists and that was when two
policemen on council-funded bikes stopped to ask me and two other ‘senior
citizens’ what we were doing. Pretty obvious I thought but I suppose they have a job to do.
On a handful of occasions I have heard motorcyclists in the woods but I
doubt it amounts to more than a handful of times a year; so why waste so much of our money
putting up obstacles that exclude the disabled and those blessed with a less
than sylph-like figure and create an objectionable
eye-sore?
A friend from Bromley has told me that the same sort of fence was put around
Bromley Common a couple of years ago but was withdrawn after two motorists were
killed by the unforgiving scaffold bar when their cars ran off the road.