Mailwatch(ed) Forum

News from my old manor.

That great guy, Lutfur Rahman, has been in touch with my tenant. "You know the last council removed a load of traffic from here? Made a road with 3 large council estates in it feel calm and leafy, and much nicer for the kids who attend the 3 secondary and 2 primary schools? Well, I'm bringing the traffic back. I have a mandate from my campaign".

Can one of the media's Wolfie Smith twats who cheered his win on please explain to us how this is actually good? Please pay special attention to the children affected, most of whom are below the poverty line.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 5:14 pm News from my old manor.

That great guy, Lutfur Rahman, has been in touch with my tenant. "You know the last council removed a load of traffic from here? Made a road with 3 large council estates in it feel calm and leafy, and much nicer for the kids who attend the 3 secondary and 2 primary schools? Well, I'm bringing the traffic back. I have a mandate from my campaign".

Can one of the media's Wolfie Smith twats who cheered his win on please explain to us how this is actually good? Please pay special attention to the children affected, most of whom are below the poverty line.

How the fuck did he get back in? I thought he was found guilty and as such couldn't stand again.

It wasn't a criminal court, and the ban was for a few years. Some of the evidence against him looked pretty weak from what I saw.

I noticed at the time he was going for car drivers. What a guy.

He seems to be making an argument which many have made against traffic management schemes - the cars just end up going somewhere else, usually a less affluent area, and increasing atmospheric pollution there. Making ratruns.

Other solutions to the school run need to be found. And no, I don't know what they are.

I don't think the school run is a factor here, judging by the kids and parents of the schools. Unless the local kids are going out of area, and a load of Muslim kids are being driven in from outside.

The argument he's made is that Hackney Road and Bethnal Green Road are too busy and the air quality there is bad for kids. Bethnal Green Road is a shopping street, so that's a fair point. But Hackney Road is mostly a through road. Lots of houses are set back from it. So I'm calling bollocks on that.

Appealing to "oppressed" motorists is the lowest of low hanging electoral fruit. Once you've hooked them with "road tax" you can feed them any old shite

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 6:38 pm He seems to be making an argument which many have made against traffic management schemes - the cars just end up going somewhere else, usually a less affluent area, and increasing atmospheric pollution there. Making ratruns.

Other solutions to the school run need to be found. And no, I don't know what they are.

Would making it harder to apply to schools on the other side of town help?

MisterMuncher wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 10:03 pm Appealing to "oppressed" motorists is the lowest of low hanging electoral fruit. Once you've hooked them with "road tax" you can feed them any old shite

Of all the places you'd think that this wouldn't work, Tower Hamlets would be pretty high on the list. Central, good public transport, lots of poor families who can't afford cars, lots of "green" young professionals, but with loads of through traffic.

@davidjay
Ah yes, the Greenwich Judgement. Essentially schools were not allowed to refuse pupils on the basis of where they lived , ie catchment areas were nixed.

Applies really to big secondaries, which don't have the school run problem as much. Round here the traffic problems are at primaries, most of which recruit from within a radius of a kilometre (our school is a touch over 900m). That will be different in less densely populated areas. Even so we have parent parking problems, and no possibility of a no-go zone as the school is off a main road.

Answers might include better and cheaper public transport, parents less anxious about older kids (Y5 and Y6) travelling alone because safer streets and visible rozzers who aren't likely to rape or assault kids, school buses (yeah...) or cycling routes. But all those involve cost and public education, so...

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I really don't know the answer to this and it has puzzled me - when and why did schools go from you went to the nearest to the current model of frenzied competition to get the little darlings into the one you want?

League tables, originally...

Apparently quite a reaction to Rahman trying to pull out LTNs in Tower Hamlets.

Maybe a few more of those people could have showed up to vote. But anyway, sounds hopeful.

Rahman is pressing ahead with the Clarkson act. Not all that many families in Tower Hamlets have cars. This is Tory standard evocation of families