Celebrating Colchester's City Status

Jumbo on the Hill

The people of Colchester are so proud of their one and only hill that they have named it four times: from the south it is Headgate, from the west, Balkerne Hill and, from the other two compass points, it is North Hill and East Hill.

Carmageddon hubcap sculpture

Carmageddon – the hubcap sculpture. Is there anyone with artistic inclination among my friends who would like to collaborate with me on making a sculpture? I call it Carmageddon and it is basically a large sphere covered in hubcaps. Thinks of it as a rollerball coming down the road to crush cyclists, pedestrians and any other kind of non-motorised traffic. The sculpture is a protest against car culture, obviously.

​Colchester Orbital Route Project

​The route is around 13 miles. View it at www.walkcolchester.org.uk. 

Electric Vehicles 18/9/2016 Firstsite

Electric Vehicle (EV) workshop with presentation from Nissan and opportunity to drive an EV: Sunday 18 September at 3pm at Firstsite, meeting hosted by Colchester Green Party. My friend WB writes:

Lexden Road Bus Stop

Following my blog on 24 June, here are various objections to the proposed scheme for a bus lane along Lexden Road, edited from various sources.

No to Lexden Road Bus Lane

I'm not opposed to bus lanes in principle, far from it, but this plan to remove the two cycle lanes on Lexden Road to make way for an unnecessary bus lane is driving me round the bend.

Air pollution in Colchester

Letter to Essex County Standard, Friday 4 March 2016

air pollution kills one thousand people in UK every week

Brilliant website at www.opendemocracy.net

Horrendous news - one thousand people are killed every week in the UK by air pollution. Remember last year's fixing of emissions tests by VW?

Read more at An urgent struggle: our tainted air: The deadliness of air pollution is all too often overlooked; a national action campaign is long overdue...

20s plenty for us Annual Conference in Cambridge 12.03.2015

Cambridge Green Party transport greenprint includes 20 mph limits roll-out.
Rupert Read as Green rep on Norwich Highways Committee secured roll-out of 20mph limits to cover a third of Norwich.

Save Cymbeline Crossing

From Colchester Gazette Wednesday 21 January 2015: A PEDESTRIAN crossing on one of Colchester’s most congested roads looks set to be scrapped. Essex County Council wants to remove the crossing in Cymbeline Way, near the Colne Bank roundabout and the junction with Westway, claiming it aggravates congestion.

money wasted building "bigger, better" roads

Think of all the money our councils have wasted over the years by building "bigger, better" roads — and they're still not cured of the "disease". We've spent 50 years trying to emulate the US (and now nearly everyone in Britain drives to shop "out of town"), only for the Americans to show us it's been a huge waste of time and cash.

Road tax was abolished 74 years ago

copied from http://ipayroadtax.com/
Road tax doesn't exist. It's car tax, a tax on cars and other vehicles, not a tax on roads or a fee to use them. Motorists do not pay directly for the roads. Roads are paid for via general and local taxation. In 1926, Winston Churchill started the process to abolish road tax. It was finally culled in 1937. The ironically-named iPayRoadTax.com helps spread this message on cycle jerseys. Car tax is based on amount of CO2 emitted so, if a fee had to be paid, cyclists - who are sometimes branded as 'tax dodgers' - would pay the same as 'tax-dodgers' such as disabled drivers, police cars, the Royal family, and band A motorists, ie £0. Most cyclists are also car-owners, too, so pay VED. Many of those who believe road tax exists, want cyclists off the roads or, at least registered, but bicycle licensing is an expensive folly.