Offensive?

User may be called many things - and is - but offensive?

I'd say this is offensive:

Simon does have a point; the statement says: “The success rate of our TA’s when they speak to someone at the door is 44 per cent. This is above the expected figure of 33 per cent overall,”

What needs clarification is what 'overall' means. Overall means either 1,050, or 721 (the implication is that it is 721). If it is 721, then the word 'overall' is superfluous and causes confusion. Perhaps it is a journalistic error.

What do you understand from the word "uptake" and what do WBC understand by it ?.

My understanding would be that there was a confirmation that they would give up the car and jump on a bus or buy a bike. That would be uptake. How many of the punters agreed to that.

The large proportion of people are quite nice when you ring their doorbell but most would be saying to themselves, as they do when a Jehovah's witness calls, "Hurry up, my favourite TV program is on and I want you to go."

If the canvasser sees a notice on the door saying that they do not want sales callers, do they go away or just press on regardless as the request doesn't apply to them.

Total waste of taxpayers hard earned money. IMO.

Quite.

The Council may well have reasoned that 44% of those who answered their doors was a good uptake and that they were justified in comparing it favourably to the target 33% of doors knocked on the basis that there would be no difference in the response rate of the 721 who answered their door and the 329 who didn't, but as has been said, that's not likely to be true because of those 329 who didn't answer their door there'll be a significant number who just didn't want to answer their door to a canvasser and will be even less bothered when the TA's return again. Of course it would only take 31 of those 329 who didn't answer their door to request a pack on a subsequent visit for the overall uptake to beat the target of 33% so there's a good chance the target will eventually be met, but it remains that the wording of the press release dishonestly suggests that the current 44% uptake (of those cats who expressed a preference) is already better than the 33% overall target, because it isn't.

There's a but of wriggle room with 'overall' - but I would assume that the doors weren't answered will be knocked again and won't be included in the statistics until someone answers or the researchers give up after multiple visits.

It would be premature to include them until they have made several attempts over a period of weeks.

Eh? Which bit of which response did you find offensive?

If the supposed offence was directed at me I certainly didn't take any.

There may or may not be, but contrary to Simon, I believe it is more likely a slip-up, than council deceit. Anyway, I think it could have been worded better. I would take overall to mean all attempted visits. It seems a rather meaningless figure to say that you hope to get 33% acceptance of people who agree to the doorstep questionnaire if few people agree to it in the first place.

I'd imagine it was this:


This isn't the most violent thing ever posted on this forum, but it is unnecessarily rude, never the less.

Of course they don't give a breakdown of those who have accepted packs. If they are mainly pensioners whose main travel is to the shops it probably won't have a great impact.

A greater reduction to the pollution at the BK roundabout (which is said to be the aim of the scheme) might be achieved bt turning off the Sainsbury's roundabout traffic lights. But that wouldn't cost £90,000

Blimey. I didn't realise the word "silly" was so offensive.

Sorry Simon, if you're upset about it, that wasn't my intent.

On its own it probably isn't. I would imagine Simon is well versed in your forum behaviour by now.


I wonder what your intent was when you posted:

Can't do that. Has a pedestrian crossing on it.
Also I believe during normal hours it would cause large tailbacks in both Bear Lane and Kings Road (East).
Thus pollution may be decreased at the BK roundabout but would be increased in these two areas.
In addition to this, the lights, I believe, do reduce accidents because many drivers do not either understand or ignore the protocol on roundabouts in order to save a few seconds.
So, because the lights are there to improve traffic flow, protect pedestrians and reduce accidents their removal is not really realistic (except perhaps during the night).

I am not convinced that it would cause more problems. I have frequently stopped at the lights whilst no traffic goes around from Bear Lane, and similarly seen the northbound clog up if more than about four cars wish to turn into Mill Lane/Kings Road and similar but not so frequently southbound.
Perhaps better fazing would help. The pedestrians are catered for with an underpass.

The Kings Road issue may be further improved if the link road goes ahead - the Bear Lane issue is due to short sited councillors only allowing buses over an inadequately built bridge.

There is no doubt that a roundabout can handle more traffic if lights aren't stopping the flow all the time, the problem is that the north/south traffic will dominate - not a huge problem for Bear Lane but it could really mess up King's Road.


Fazing? The pedestrian underpass has been supplemented by the pelican crossings for a reason - I guess because Sainsburys has been built in the corner the underpass doesn't serve. And it doesn't help that the underpass floods pretty often.


King's Road will only get busier - the link road will add traffic to the A339 junction not reduce it.

But Bear Lane is far less of a problem since the bridge was closed (before which Wharf Road was a nightmare).

Should have been phasing!

The link road will reduce traffic from Sainsbury's/Scatts that does a circuit at the Roundabout and goes back down Mill Lane it may take some traffic that goes down Greenham Road (is that the correct name) dependent on how busy Boundary Road becomes.

I don't see why it would have any major increase in traffic at the A339 junction.

Any road that eases the traffic flow will attract more traffic - in the case of the proposed link road there is also the small matter of over 1,000 new homes on the racecourse. But the point about the traffic aiming for Mill Lane is a good one - providing they make the link road two-way.

The Kings Road relief through the old Sterling Cables site starting at the Scats road to nowhere, has a considerable importance as far as the WBC highways are concerned. The planners have already turned down two applications for Sterling Estate, the last one because the road wasn't fully catered for. The latest application, which is pending, fits everything that the highways wanted. They are due to complete their application for a grant fairly soon so it should go ahead if it is granted. A planning application refusal might put the project back years though.