Cambridge City Council hasn't got proper elections this year - the LibDems will be breathing a sigh of relief as they were crucified in the last two City elections and the only thing allowing them to keep control of local committees has been the Mayors casting vote - and the Mayor was a standing down councillor. Still, thats local 'democracy' for you, frequently an oxymoron. Next year? LibDems controlling Cambridge after that seems extraordinarily unlikely right now.
We do have County elections though. Unfortunately the Tories know they can put up any fool with a blue rosette across most of the county so they frequently do. As a result we've got a county devoted to climate change denial, car centric planning and insanely expensive bus routes that bypass the main roads without ever attaining the average speed thereof, and even the cycling champion they have picked waves the flag for failure and leaving in place murderous roads implemented to dissuade us from riding on pain of death. When even their cycling champion is anti-cyclist in such a way one might be tempted to vote Yellow, but if I'm honest the Liberal Democrats have been almost as bad, nodding through anti-cyclist measures such as prosecuting us for merely trying not to die, being more keen to tell children to play in traffic than they are to give us genuinely safe cycling facilities. I honesty don't know how they sleep at night.
I'd talk about Labour but I think there are only three of them and they're basically anonymous on this subject. And on others for that matter.
Now thats the venom out of the way; suffice to say our county council hates cyclists and does its best to fail us while spending supposed road safety cash on 'improvements' that are nothing of the sort. They collude with our frankly obsessive cyclist hating Commissioner as he directs the Police to quite aggressively target us while effectively motoring infractions. County councillors are demonstrably delusional regarding cycling.
But just because they've always been crap and those there now have stated a clear intention to continue lacking ambition for cyclists despite Bozza and his vision for London, doesn't mean we shouldn't grill the new batch of wannabes to see whether we can, for a change, get better.
So... How do we formulate questions for our wannabe councillors? Where do we start? How do we ascertain whether they're just giving us the same shitty platitudes they've always given us about prioritising cycling while not actually doing so?
I throw this question open...
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