The Labour-run London Borough of Camden (LBC) has been forced to scrap a hugely controversial Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) scheme centred on Dartmouth Park on the eastern edge of Hampstead Heath – home to Ed Miliband, Benedict Cumberbatch and numerous other Labour luvvies. The plan had been to impose an 18-month ‘trial period’ with the least possible public consultation.
Attempting to put the best spin on it, LBC calls this a “pause”, but the scheme – a pet project of cycle-fanatic Cllr Adam Harrison, “Cabinet Member for Planning and a Sustainable Camden” and CBC’s Deputy Leader – was always unworkable. Uproar among locals, who discovered Camden’s brief ‘nonsultation’ was to be held during last summer’s holidays, was led by the Highgate Society which commissioned expert analysis of LBC’s dodgy metrics.
Locals packed protest meetings and deluged their council with complaints, not least about the scheme’s obvious potential for raising money by fines. With vehicle access from the north, east and south denied to thousands of homes in the LTN, voters demanded to know how ambulances, deliveries and visitors could reach them, or how anyone less than 100% fit would be able to get the shopping home?
Among many issues they highlighted were inevitable gridlock on Highgate Road, Highgate West Hill and other bus routes on the proposed LTN’s boundary, and increased air pollution on children’s walking routes to the area’s schools – ironically the same good schools which attract so many upwardly-mobile Labour supporters to leafy Dartmouth Park’s expensive homes.
Having wasted vast amounts of TfL’s money on consultants while plotting Dartmouth Park’s LTN in secret, Camden’s Labour regime has been handed an expensive lesson in not annoying one’s diehard voters. Its problems include a private company called Commonplace, and an unusually articulate local population.
Commonplace Digital Ltd is a privately-owned “citizen engagement platform” which claims to “inspire thriving places, powered by data and collaboration”. On its touchy-feely website rows of smiley, young and casually-dressed “customer success managers” and “business development managers” promote the platform.
What Commonplace actually does is to sell machine-readable online surveys to councils and developers – relieving them of the trudge of asking local people what they think and reading the responses properly, while still getting the result they first wanted via an ostensibly democratic process.
The snag, as we in Bedfordshire know to our cost, is in the questions asked and the boxes you’re allowed to tick. Our council’s Commonplace survey on local cycling and walking issues produced 826 responses, of which over 100 tried to explain – only possible in the “other comments” box – that by far our worst problem is how to get across the A1 safely into Biggleswade without using a car: a walk/cycle underpass is needed, obviously.
But in its published LCWIP plan, based on this “engagement”, Central Beds Council felt able to ignore the lethal risks run by locals trotting or wheeling their children across the A1 carriageways, because the online Commonplace survey had asked no machine-readable question about it. The metrics didn’t prove a need, which happily allowed CBC and National Highways to carry on ignoring the danger.
People are increasingly suspicious of the skewed questions asked in Commonplace surveys, and in the case of Camden’s proposed Dartmouth Park LTN, many refused to participate. Instead 773 locals emailed their council direct, as well as emailing individual councillors. Here in Beds our ward councillor just leafleted over 800 locals about our Biggleswade problem, asking what they need to get onto town safely, and the scores of replies were a revelation.
Ask people what they really think, without leading questions or tick-boxes, and what you get is ‘quote gold’. Many said roughly what was anticipated, though in their own inimitable words; others made important points that hadn’t even occurred to campaigners. Analysing genuine replies like these – as opposed to machine-readable surveys – takes time and thought, and Camden is now having to go back to the drawing board and read its hundreds of non-Commonplace responses, acutely aware that having wound up the Highgate Society and Dartmouth Park’s vigilant locals, its cunningly-worded online “consultation” cannot alone justify imposing a disastrous LTN.
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Anti Royalist sentiments. The msm is vociferously endorsing one of the family members and his wife, while for the last few years of the Duke’s and the Queens lives, that particular family member were expressing those sentiments for the world to hear and read for cash. To arrest anyone for expressing their own sentiments seems hypocritical
Trevor Sinclair should not lose his job, he should be given another go at apologising for his opinions.
Hmm. Not quite the pinnacle of sceptical thought.
I think Toby Young and Nick Dixon should listen to what they’ve said and maybe have another go themselves.
No matter how royalist you are, there is such a thing as overkill. We’ve still over 5 days of this compelled national woe to endure before HMQ’s funeral and it’s driving me nuts – and I was a fan of the Queen. I’m so glad I haven’t had an appointment cancelled, and it was a wrong move to do this.
It’s got so bad I’m actually starting to feel sorry for the Royals (unheard of!) This mawkish, overblown theatre of Britain in Gloom must grind their gears as well as some of ours. When Charles threw a tantrum over the leaky fountain-pen, I can only think it was symptomatic of the strain he’s under. OTOH, maybe he is just a prat, but I can’t imagine the Queen doing that. The enforced walking behind the coffin seems just cruel and now seems ingrained in the catalogue of What We Do.
I expect it’s all driven by a fear of being found wanting in respect, but I can’t bear cruelty, even when it’s being inflicted on people I don’t particularly like.
Well said.
Quite agree.
When talking about some of the tweets, e.g. from the professor at Carnegie Melon, the guys didn’t use the word obscene, although they maybe should’ve done. However what they didn’t say, and no one else has said, is that the burden placed on Charles and the other senior royals is nothing short of obscene. I’m not a moderate republican, and disagree with a lot of what certain royals (Charles and Harry in particular) have said in the recent and not so recent past. However I also see in them fellow human beings who have just experienced one of the worst things that could happen to anyone i.e. loosing a beloved member of their family. Surely they could’ve been allowed to grieve in private and not make a public appearance until the Queen’s funeral, after which Charles could’ve become King Charles III. Even the most ardent monarchist would have to admit that the country wouldn’t collapse into anarchy if we went for 2 weeks without an official head of state.
Something else that hasn’t been mentioned anywhere is the issue of virtue signalling, which the daily sceptic has rightly criticised in the past. Therefore I find it strange that they haven’t wondered how much of the public outpouring of grief over the Queen’s death can be explained by virtue signalling. I remember when Princess Diana died in 1997 and numerous commentators in the media were taken aback by the massive public show of grief. The term virtue signalling hadn’t been invented back then, so they talked about people doing what they felt they should do, and even wondered if it was a mild form of mass hysteria. It makes me wonder how many people queueing for 20+ hours to see the Queen’s coffin and/or travelling hundreds of miles to lay flowers in London are just doing what they think they should do, in other words virtue signalling.
On London Calling I am generally Team Toby but I may be moving towards the Delingpole view that Toby is a cuck on Liz Truss.
The nonsense from Truss about fracking “under the right circumstances” is just a mealy mouthed way of saying no while appearing to no longer be an opponent. Truss has enabled local councils to block fracking regardless of the national interest.
Truss’s energy subsidy might be a short-term political necessity but it would have been far better to have immediately suspended all net zero taxes, subsidies, mandates and associated regulations for a decade and then made net zero the focus of the next election.
Liz Truss clearly doesn’t grasp the enormity of the problem and isn’t up to the job of PM, we don’t have to wait for the results of the next election to see that Truss is the Kim Campbell of the UK Conservative Party. Campbell was briefly PM of Canada and led the Conservatives from a majority government to 2 seats after less than 100 days as PM.
It is hardly controversial being against the monarchy. Like every other institution, from Parliament, the Police, the Judiciary, the Clergy, they are all on board with the Great Reset.
The Queen was happy to meet Trudeau and therefore condone his action against the Canadian Truckers.
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