4 June - Bexley Conservatives missed the bus. (And the train, and the bikes and taxis too)
Yesterday’s Press Release from the Bexley Labour Group argued that converting
26 of Bexley’s parking bays to electric vehicles only without listening to
objections ran the risk of harming business in the borough and they may well be
right. In the short term they almost certainly will be but eventually, if
government ambitions are to be realised, we are likely to see many more such
charging points. Within months new electric vehicles will become available
from Vauxhall (the Corsa), KIA (the Soul), BMW (The Mini) Citroën (the C-Zero), MG (the ZS),
Peugeot (e-208), Volkswagen (too many to mention) and Audi. More charging points will become essential.
Note the absence of Ford which has been sitting on the sidelines ignoring the
trend and hoping it will go away. They will surely pay the price.
Labour is on much firmer ground with
another Press Release. Each year Bexley
Council allocates Councillors to Committees, some of them London wide ones.
Naturally all the best jobs go to Conservatives.
A year ago they put forward three names for the London Councils Transport and
Environment Committee. Labour put forward three names too but fat chance!
2018/19 Committee appointees. Councillor Craske and Deputies Councillors Sawyer and Seymour.
As you will know. Bexley is particularly badly served by public transport; no Tube,
no tram, no DLR, no river crossings and no Crossrail - the terminating buffers
straddle the Greenwich/Bexley boundary.
The Chairman of Bexley’s Transport Users’ Sub-Committee regularly complains that TfL fails to show up at any of her meetings and rightly so but it would appear
that there is an element of hypocrisy about that.
It became clear at the last Council meeting that Bexley’s delegate to the
London-wide Committee never ever bothered to show up. And what about his two
Deputies? Exactly the same. Not a single meeting out of four attended!
How is Bexley ever going to get a fair crack of the whip if it is not
represented? We have had no say on electric car charging points, air quality,
fly tipping, dockless bikes for hire, concessionary fares and the Freedom Pass,
the TaxiCard and the Ultra Low Emission Zone which will soon be loading extra costs on most of us,
Looks to be a disgraceful state of affairs don’t you think?