Penguin68

The business of the crossing attendant on the Underhill: Dunstan's junction would suggest that they do. And your comment 'little darlings' suggests that you are inimical towards parental care and love - and possibly children themselves. The younger ones at least, if delivered by public transport have a quite long (and in some instances hilly) walk to get to these schools, unless the P13 is on their route. But I entirely agree that ignoring road restrictions (and indeed leaving cars with engines running) is not acceptable behaviour.

It was a response to long and at times clearly unhelpful, not to say insulting, comments including ones implying that the initial report was madey-uppy.

You clearly have a fantasy that you're a KC in a Court. Your questions are mainly rhetorical and aimed to obfuscate. As a one note Samba you have a great capacity to annoy, but to no real purpose.

And I am not standing in your way to address that for you, but you are not appointed to address that for me, or anyone else. Actually, not a lot locally, considering the weight of traffic. And our roads (overall in the UK) are substantially safer (accidents per traveller mile) than in many comparable countries. Injuries and road deaths have been (thank goodness) generally on the decline in the UK. You don't know that for the schools in question, and frankly neither do I. My guess would be that the majority fall in the quarter to three quarter mile radii - but that's just an estimate. There are those who argue these have been exacerbated by traffic blocking measures locally.

Up to about a mile, frequently (some do have much smaller catchment areas) but for a young child a mile is not the 10 to 12 minute walk of an adult but perhaps 20 to 25 minutes. Which can be quite a tiring start to a school day. And the adult may then need to get off to work, possibly in a different direction. Which significantly adds to the commute time. A couple of minutes drive to the school may be saving 30-40 minutes of the adults time at the start of the working day.

I think the point is that it was a mistake that the child's parent made, who should have been observing his child, training and teaching it appropriate and safe cycling and been seen apologising for what was obviously not intentional but still 'wrong' cycling. His attitude didn't correct, but rather endorsed poor cycling behaviour.

And you know that how?

You need to get medical attention if you haven't already. Dog's mouths, where bites have penetrated the skin, can be riddled with nasties. You need an antibiotic shot from A&E.

Another real problem is road works, with buses being delayed or diverted. As a traveller I need to choose routes with some certainty, buses are not at the moment, and for some time, a good choice for that. And there seems no coordination or planning for even 'planned' works. And no encouragement from fiscal penalties to do these fast

Agree with this. He's stood down from his role in Cabinet having left the Party, but he was elected as a representative of all the constituents in his ward and logic suggests that he should continue to represent them as a councillor for his remaining 3 months. He might wish to stand again, as a Green, in that ward (if he's chosen) and hope that personal loyalty to him might transfer, but that's now the call of his (new) party and him. He will have to balance that with a view about how many of his Labour supporters will feel sufficiently betrayed to continue to support Labour. I suspect, I may be wrong, that he will not have a cabinet position open to him after May (unless the Greens sweep in locally) so presumably he will have to consider his next career move, and whether that's back to full-time primary teaching.

When a car is left damaged by the road-side it may be that the insurer is tasked with recovering the vehicle to assess it and (possibly) take it for repair. Only if it is in a dangerous position will the police recover it - which saves money for the tax-payer. You may also have some recovery options with e.g. the AA (other organisations are available). Were the car to have been stolen or abandoned then it will take some time to sort this out, and again unless the vehicle is in a dangerous position the police won't be rushing to deal with that. Not sure who the 'they' are in this case.

I suppose I'd assume that Councillor McCash, who is, as I recall, a self-confessed revolutionary Marxist, had hoped to take Southwark Labour down his chosen route - when he lost his leadership bid he must then have been looking for a party which shared his ultra-left views (ultra-left at least in the light of Starmer's interpretation of socialism). The Greens, for him, clearly fit that role. After that his timing was all about benefiting his chosen (new) party - at least he didn't stand for Labour and then defect giving the Greens an unexpected 3 year seat. As someone who doesn't share the wings of his political position I don't wish him well (politically) - but neither do I wish him ill as a 'punishment' for his defection.

How naive. And, by the way, organisations don't initially submit proposals, in this type of instance, they respond to a brief proposed by the commissioning organisation. You are confusing this with academic research where academics submit proposals looking for funding. In this instance funding was already available for a proposal which met the brief. And the commissioners you can be pretty clear, knew the answer they were looking for.

I write as someone who has both taught and assessed academic research. One of the 'bias' problems with research, and it particularly reflects social research, is what is called 'confirmation bias' - 'A cognitive bias where researchers consciously or unconsciously focus on data that supports their hypothesis while ignoring contradictory evidence.'. Ms Aldred is a committed activist and it would be incredibly difficult to avoid such bias in any work she designed and undertook, even unconsciously, which makes her as a primary source of research evidence a very poor choice. This does not mean that her findings could not additionally be presented to help decision making, but it would be understood to come from a particular viewpoint. It is, in my view, inappropriate for her to be chosen as the primary research vehicle for an issue which sits directly with an area where she is an activist. If you wanted to undertake an assessment of the impact of the current Labour Government, you wouldn't turn to Starmer as your key source, or to Boris as your source for the impact of the Tory Government on the Covid pandemic. And if you want to look at the impact of LTNs or similar traffic measures, looking for an active travel enthusiast as your key researcher is equally concerning, however 'good' her research skills might otherwise be. The failure actually doesn't lie with Aldred (she is who she is) but on those who commissioned her, who I suspect knew exactly what sort of result they would get. For them, again I suspect, confirmation bias wasn't an issue.

And still is, and hopefully will continue to be with changed ownership, should that happen.