Objection day, stand up and be counted
Objection Wednesday has got off to a flying start with very positive media coverage for today’s demonstration. The demonstration, against Westminster’s bike parking stealth tax will be starting at Golden Square between 5.45pm and 6.20pm, leaving at 6:30pm for ride to Westminster City Hall to arrive at 7pm. We hope to see thousands of bikes this evening filling up Victoria Street, in addition to the large numbers of protesters arriving on foot, all handing in their objections to City Hall.
At 7am today a group of protesters gathered in Golden Square to give interviews for the BBC’s breakfast Show, hosted by Paul Ross and JoAnne Good. The show, which ran from 7am until 9am was almost entirely devoted to the Westminster’s bike parking tax. After interviewing the protesters, the shows presenters invited the London public to phone, email and text in their views. The public were overwhelmingly in support of the protesters and of course against the ridiculous tax which Westminster are trying to impose on the public. Calls came in from car drivers, cab drivers and even cyclists all pointing out that bikes are the solution to our congested city’s traffic problems. It seems the only person who can’t understand this is Councillor Danny Chalkley.
10am Golden Square saw Warren Djanogly (Chairman of the No To Bike Parking Taxes campaign) and campaign press officer Charlie Lort-Philips giving interviews to More 4 News, which will be broadcast tonight at 8pm. The interview will also be published on the Channel 4 More 4 News website later today.
Following from Warren and Charlie’s interviews will be one with Danny Chalkley himself, who was known to be lurking in Golden Square. What a pity he didn’t feel confident enough to talk openly with the campaign organisers.
From the start of this campaign in August 2008 Westminster city council Labour Group have been opposed to what they see as a stealth tax. In stark contrast to Westminster’s Conservative councillors, the Labour Group have always put across clear and logical reasons for their opposition. Whereas the conservative councillors have ignored the views of the residents and the London public as a whole. The Conservative councillors now seem to have gone in to complete melt down refusing to answer any emails that have mention of the two poisonous words ‘bike parking’ in them.
Today is all about objections, you can download an objection template letter here , but if you absolutely cannot make it to City Hall tonight you can still do your bit by using the on-line objection form here.
We leave you with this excellent objection letter by Labour Councillor David Boothroyd:-
incompetently administered, divisive and the council’s behaviour is
wholly unbefitting of a local authority in 2009. My opposition comes
under seven headings.
1) It will wreck traffic management.
Charging for motorcycle parking which used to be free is bound to
discourage the use of bikes. As was recognized when all motorbikes
were exempted from the congestion charge, riding a bike relieves
congestion because bikes rarely get trapped in traffic jams. Bike
ridership in London has been going up because they are cheaper to run;
making it more expensive will put that process into reverse. Council
policy should encourage motorbikes not discourage them.
Furthermore the charge applies on Saturdays, when most resident bays
do not operate and are free. This means that motorbike riders will
park in respark bays on Saturdays instead of bike parking places,
taking up respark space for no real purpose.
2) The finances don’t stack up.
This scheme is supposed to be ‘revenue neutral’ but the amount
received (even if adjusted to a daily charge of £1) is massively,
overwhelmingly more than the peanuts spent on improved parking for
motorbikes. In any case the improvements which were proposed in the
trial scheme were one-off. Now that the scheme is supposed to become
permanent, does the council have a permanent programme of providing
more bike parking? Of course not, because it’s already marked out all
the road it can for other sorts of parking. In fact the council makes
more each year from parking fines on motorbikes who park illegally
(before charging for legal parking was thought of) than it spent on
the improvements under the trial scheme. How anyone can describe this
scheme as ‘revenue neutral’ with a straight face is one of the world’s
great unsolved mysteries.
It is plain that real reason this scheme is being proposed is that it
raises money for the council. That is not a valid traffic management
consideration.
3) It will harm the environment.
Statistics from the British Motorcycle Federation (http://www.bmf.co.uk/pages/briefing_room_archive.php?fullstory=432
) demonstrate consistently that motorbikes give out less pollution in
the form of Carbon Dioxide, or oxides of Nitrogen. Cars only do better
on hydrocarbons due to previous environmental legislation which has
not yet applied to motorbikes. By reducing the financial incentive to
ride a motorbike, this policy will lead to an increase in emissions.
4) There are no security devices.
The trial scheme was supposed to fund the installation of security
devices for motorbikes. However the provision has been utterly
inadequate and the council appears to have lost interest after an
early trial was adjudged a failure.
5) The payment options don’t work.
In order to pay for parking, motorbike riders have to have both a
mobile phone and a credit card. Many do not have one or the other and
some have neither. Even if they do have them, the system is very
insecure and security-conscious people will avoid giving their credit
card details away to an unknown company purely on the sayso of
Westminster having awarded them a contract. We ought to have a much
more flexible and secure system.
6) Motorcyclists hate it.
There can be no doubt from the extremely well-organized campaign,
supported by all major motorbike organizations and most major
companies in the field, together with thousands of emails copied to
every councillor, that when the council claims to have brought in this
policy in the interests of bikers, it is talking complete rubbish.
That there is no ’silent majority’ of bikers who support it was
confirmed by Westminster’s own on-street survey which found nearly 9
out of 10 bikers expressing complete opposition.
7) The council has played dirty.
Over the course of the debate, the council has been caught out trying
subtly to imply that bikers’ groups supported their policy, using
legal threats to close a bikers’ debate forum, denouncing the bikers
as ‘bullies’, obscuring the address to which objections could be sent,
distorting the actual cost to bikers, secretly organizing form emails
to undermine the bikers, fudging the finances of the scheme, and
holding a committee meeting at which the majority party members had
clearly agreed their response in advance of hearing the bikers’
concerns. If it was such a good policy it ought to have been possible
to advocate it fairly without these questionable tactics.
I am sending this objection by email but will follow up with a hard
copy.
Yours sincerely
Cllr David Boothroyd (Westbourne Ward, Labour)
To raise your own FOI simply and quickly, try www.whatdotheyknow.com
The official NoTo Facebook group can be found here.
The unofficial Forum (www.torytax.com), can be found here http://www.torytax.com
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I’ll be there tonight and I know my mates will too, I can’t wait to get there.
This report is right, it is ONLY Chalkley and their money grabbing Tory cohorts that want to force motorcyclists into parting with money to fund their lies.
Common sense will help beat this… And a shedload of demonstrators!