A Brighton Boy Blogs

This unadvertised special offer from Brighton & Hove City Council occurred on… yes you guessed it, April 1st. So how many others received PCNs (Penalty Charge Notices) erroneously? How much has it all cost to sort out?

Just to explain, for some reason some Brighton parking ticket machines were issuing one-hour tickets when they should have been issuing two-hour tickets. Yes it’s all so easy to sort out, but why should I have to spend my valuable time sorting out yet another Brighton & Hove City Council bureaucratic cock-up? It might help if they employed Parking Wardens with brains… sorry, “Civil Enforcement Officers”.

Oh dear, now I’ll probably be chastised & hated for insulting council workers… but let’s face it, it doesn’t take much brain power to work out that a parking machine saying “£3 for up to 2 hours” and a parking ticket saying £3 paid for 13:12 to 14:12 means that no PCN should have been issued in the first place!

Sometimes, just occasionally, inspiration comes along and in a flash you have the answer to a whole raft of problems, all at once. It was a bit like that for me one morning as I fought my way up the A23/A27 slip road trying desperately to move from the right hand lane across three lanes of traffic to the left hand filter lane for the A27 Westbound whilst the other drivers coming up the inside aggressively accelerated to prevent me from doing so.

We all know that our roads are too crowded. We all know that there are many, many bad drivers on the road. Most of us know that we’re killing the planet by driving too many cars, and that we should stop. Many of us aspire to improving our health and that of the planet by cycling everywhere, but it’s made harder by belligerent car drivers and dangerous cyclists, as well as the Great British Weather. We also know in our heart of hearts that it would be better for the environment, and probably for our souls, if we all took public transport but we’re also aware that it’s a less than perfect transport solution for a number of reasons. First, there’s the underinvestment, partly caused by a lack of bums on seats; second the fact that it has to share space with all the other more dominant forms of transport including all those idiot bad drivers in their cars… who, incidentally also make our roads more dangerous, cause more accidents, cost the NHS, emergency services and British businesses lots of money, and generally cause misery and stress.

So where’s the inspiration in all this? It’s quite simple actually. Just get the UK Government’s so-called Driving Standards Agency to do its job: raise driving standards. In short, make the driving test a lot more difficult, and the required standard of driving far higher. Then less people will pass, and there’ll be less drivers on the roads. Anyone who has had a road traffic accident in which fault was either theirs or inconclusive should be forced to retake the driving test, as should the elderly, annually. Anyone who took their driving test before, for example, 1985, should also retake their test, and the general population should take a fresh test every 10 years.

The result: less cars on the road, more use of public transport, more income to public transport, more investment in public transport; safer roads, less cost to NHS, less disruption to surgical schedules by emergencies; and the nation would be far more likely to hit its carbon emission targets with fewer cars sitting in traffic jams caused by selfish twats who drive like morons on our overcrowded roads.

So, over to you… what do you think?

Years ago – in 1981 – when I was a mere fourteen years of age, I started doing the London to Brighton Bike Ride. Living in Brighton, we’d get up very early, catch one of the special trains to Clapham Junction, and proudly start the ride. Depending on the mood of our little group of friends, we’d either complete the thing in a few hours, or take our time, make loads of stops for Women’s Institute doughnuts and so on, and get into Brighton sometime in the afternoon. We’d be able to ride home to freshen up, then go out for a quick meal in the evening. It’s an annual event that holds a fond place in my memory over many consecutive years.

At some point in the late 80’s I stopped doing the ride. I had seen it get more over-crowded and dangerous, with so many people doing the ride unofficially that fast downhill sections like Slugwash Lane had become scenes of many inevitable accidents – one year I remember seeing the road awash with blood – and narrow uphill sections were turning the event into the London to Brighton Bike Shuffle.

I did the ride with my wife & friends a couple of years during the late 90s & early 2000s, but things weren’t much better. So it was goodbye L2B from me.

Yesterday I experienced once again the utter farce of what the London to Brighton Bike Ride does to Brighton. Road closures would be OK. Diversions fine. But when tens of thousands of extra cars (many of them 4×4 domestic trucks) are coming into Brighton for the sole reason that they’re picking up one or more cyclists, something is badly wrong. Traffic down a 15-mile stretch of the A23 came to a virtual standstill. Doesn’t the British Heart Foundation care about it? Surely the pollution alone should tell them that something has to change – it certainly can’t be good for the heart, and I wonder what the British Lung Foundation would say on the matter. And making it the day of countless other summer events, village fetes, and indeed Father’s Day – that’s just asking for trouble.

I daresay nothing will change next year. It’s a stupid, overhyped event which has become unmanageable. Sure it had noble roots and a great cause behind it, but nowadays it’s just a menace. At the very least it needs a new route, a major rethink, better public transport coordination, and a ban on pickups by car. The London to Brighton Bike Ride has gone bad.

Having witnessed the Police presence in Brighton today for the “Smash EDO” protest, which led me to have to drive a 10-mile diversion to deliver my girlfriend to work, I read with interest the statement issued by the Brighton & Hove City Commander, Chief Supt Graham Bartlett, as follows: Read more…

Incredible. This morning (about half an hour ago actually) I witnessed an Adur Council refuse collection vehicle being driven into my childrens’ school at we arrived. The driver was self-righteously waving away parents dropping their kids off at school as he drove the wrong way up a narrow road which everyone voluntarily treats as a one-way street, and tried to maneuvre the lorry into the narrow driveway. I stayed clear, allowing him to pass.

A few minutes later, Read more…

Some people reading my writings about food might think I’m a bit of a food snob. I can see how that might be misconstrued, so here’s something that might redress the balance. Read more…

15th September 2008: It was a Monday evening in Brighton, it was getting late for dinner, and we fancied sushi. Moshi Moshi would have been our usual destination, but being closed on Mondays we remembered YO! Sushi in Jubilee Street and decided to give it a try. Perhaps a little glimpse at the competition might prove eye-opening.

Read more…