Nuxx:4e255c1d$0$2532$da0feed9@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!novia!feeder.news-service.com!tudelft.nl!txtfeed1.tudelft.nl!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!shaftesbury.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e255c1d$0$2532$da0feed9@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Boris rejects 20mph limit Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:27:40 +0100 References:  <1k4d86q.1ir1uh91sxgesgN%NEWS@sarlet.com>  <1k4dwn4.fiitxz17ojrogN%NEWS@sarlet.com>  <98bgrjFaamU1@mid.individual.net> Lines: 54 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <98bgrjFaamU1@mid.individual.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: c6de0e5e.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=?3`8ile_AgAZI?P@L9baFGnok4Z\ On 15/07/2011 18:45, Bertie Wooster wrote: > >> NEWS@sarlet.com (Roger Merriman) wrote: >>> Tom Crispin wrote: >>>> NEWS@sarlet.com (Roger Merriman) wrote: >>>>> Tom Crispin wrote: > >>>>>> In a shocking betrayal of cyclists, the London Mayor, Boris Johnson >>>>>> rejected calls to limit motorists' speed to 20mph, even though he >>>>>> accepts that motorists' average speed across the bridge is 12mph. >>>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H9SINEWUqY > >>>>> To be honest I've never got the issue with Blackfriars Bridge >>>>> regarding >>>>> 20 vs 30 mph. >>>>> partically when said bridge has bus lane and a bike lane depending on >>>>> ones pace and so on. > >>>> It's at the ends of the bridge where busses, HGVs, vans, cars, >>>> motorcycles and bikes all jostle to get into lane where conflict and >>>> fatalities occur. > >>> right, much like most bridges and a lot of central london roads which >>> are big and wide with sometimes curious junctions. > >> The BIG difference is that Blackfriars currently has a 20 mph limit, >> and Boris wants to increase that limit to 30 mph. > > The word is spelled: "r e  s  t  o  r  e". > > Not "i n  c  r  e  a  s  e". > > I suppose that on the same basis, you would regard the lifting of the > temporary 50mph restriction in motorway roadworks (when the work has > finished there) as an increase in the limit.

And no doubt reopening a road after it's been closed for roadworks is referred to as "building a new road" with all the screeching, ridiculously OTT protests which that entails, nutters up trees, habitats for rare species suddenly and mysteriously "found" conveniently right on the route, etc.

The car-haters have become so used to getting their way that *any* change which makes driving easier in any way (even just restoring the status quo after a temporary restriction), no matter how small, results in the most hysterical temper tantrums, reminiscent of a particularly spoilt 3-year-old who for once isn't getting what they want.

The solution, of course, is to stop giving in to the unrepresentative special interest loonies at every turn and give normal, voting drivers what they're asking for, so that the car-haters no longer keep expecting to get their way as if it's some kind of divine right (no matter what most taxpayers actually want).