9 April (Part 4) - Bexley. An increasingly unpleasant place to be
Yesterday’s cabinet meeting had only two items on the Agenda. Schools and persecuting motorists. It should not be left without mention that the public area was laid out perfectly and someone with a clue about setting up sound systems had adjusted it to perfection, or was it just that everyone used the microphones properly? Another good thing was that it was all over in 52 minutes.
The schools
debate was basically a back-slapping exercise and not totally without reason.
Bexley compares quite well under cabinet member John Fuller who does not waste time
pursuing political vendettas. In several respects Bexley rates better than similar
boroughs both locally and nationally. Unfortunately OFSTED dropped two schools from
‘Good’ to ‘Requires Improvement’ in the past year so there is still work to be done.
The proposal to use the CCTV cars for tracking errant motorists was first touted
by councillor Peter Craske before his fall from grace and is back on the agenda
because the spy cars can no longer be used against drivers who drop off a passenger for a few seconds and move on.
The legislation allows the fixed CCTV system is to be diverted from crime prevention to
revenue generation too. How long before Bexley does that? It should have been an interesting debate but it wasn’t.
That is because there was no debate.
As usual the decision to spread more misery must have been made behind closed doors long ago or more
likely came as a decree from the Great Dictator herself. Instead there was nine minutes of excuses,
or rather the same public relations excuse repeated but dressed up in different ways.
Bexley’s Big Brother is to be given new powers not as a money making exercise but to
“improve traffic flow and road safety”. If Bexley council had the slightest
interest in traffic flow it wouldn’t have
narrowed Abbey Road, or
reduced the
exit from Penhill Road from two lanes to one. Nor would we have seen the pinch points
introduced to Bellegrove Road (see
also the associated video) which have caused so many accidents.
I can’t honestly say I see a lot of bad driving in and around Bexley. Failure to
stay in lane on roundabouts or direction indicate is too common but
on the other hand Bexley council builds roundabouts where keeping in lane is
impossible. Such offences are not as far as I can see subject to the new regime
so maybe Bexley council won’t make as much money as it hopes but
constant surveillance with malevolent intent is another step towards an
unpleasant environment.
There is no real excuse for driving the wrong way up one-way streets or ignoring No Right
Turn signs but expect to see an increasing number of U turn bans and cycle spaces at traffic
lights. Because they are not universal they are easily overlooked. They should be good for a few quid.
Box junctions of which there are ten in Bexley are in a class of their own and
frequently impossible to obey. I regularly negotiate one on a roundabout on the
Newham Barking boundary and if I obeyed it totally when it is busy I would
bring the whole of East London to a standstill.
You can’t see the far side exit and however clear you think it might be
for a brief moment, someone will barge in from the left, ignoring the usual
roundabout rules, and blocking your exit. I suspect that Newham drivers watch
rather too many films and documentaries that remind them of home.
A list of enforcement sites has been created from the council’s provisional list.