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Another NWN non-story with a catchy headline grabber, "West Berkshire roads have most crashes in county" |
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Oct 23 2014, 06:33 PM
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West Berkshire roads are bad for youQUOTE Last year 1,070 of collisions on Berkshire’s rural roads – 34 per cent – occurred on West Berkshire’s leafy lanes. Just how many miles of rural roads does Reading Borough Council have? Or Slough for that matter.. Lies, damm lies and then there's the local newspaper reports.... Why not compare apples and some sort of citrus fruits. Area sizes: West Berkshire - 271.88 sq mi Windsor & Maidenhead - 76.61 sq mi Wokinghan Borough - 69.10 sq mi Bracknell Forest - 42.23 sq mi Slough - 12.56 sq mi Reading - (no wiki figure available) By area comparison alone it's clear that at well over three times the size of the next biggest Berkshire authority and over 20 times the size of Slough there's bound to be some swing toward more accidents in this area. if you just look at the bare numbers on a spreadsheet, without seeing it in relative terms to number of miles of road then it's just garbage
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Oct 24 2014, 04:55 PM
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QUOTE (Exhausted @ Oct 24 2014, 04:58 PM) The headline that caught my eye was the upbeat quote from Mrs Taylor from the Visitor Information centre on the "Low uptake of town's bike hire" since the scheme started. I get really fed up with the Bikes, Bees and Bats brigade that impose their fads upon us and get paid for doing it. ... Give me strength If only more people lived life like you! Eh?
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Oct 24 2014, 06:37 PM
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QUOTE (Exhausted @ Oct 24 2014, 04:58 PM) The headline that caught my eye was the upbeat quote from Mrs Taylor from the Visitor Information centre on the "Low uptake of town's bike hire" since the scheme started. I get really fed up with the Bikes, Bees and Bats brigade that impose their fads upon us and get paid for doing it. It appears that a couple of ladies thought the suspension on the bikes was good and an American couple rode bikes to Donnington castle. That in itself leads me to believe the story was a bit of poetic licence. Americans go everywhere by car. Why would anybody in their right minds pay £14 a day to hire a bicycle to cycle around our dangerous roads, but Mrs Taylor has done a lot of research on the subject and considers the price is fair and the low take up is due to awareness rather than price. Give me strength How is offering a bike hire service impose their fads upon us?
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Oct 25 2014, 04:56 PM
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QUOTE (user23 @ Oct 24 2014, 07:37 PM) How is offering a bike hire service impose their fads upon us? Because it fits in well with the £90,000 well spent thread on Newbury News. I suspect from your reply that you will be hiring instead of driving your Golf.
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Oct 25 2014, 06:16 PM
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QUOTE (Exhausted @ Oct 24 2014, 04:58 PM) The headline that caught my eye was the upbeat quote from Mrs Taylor from the Visitor Information centre on the "Low uptake of town's bike hire" since the scheme started. I get really fed up with the Bikes, Bees and Bats brigade that impose their fads upon us and get paid for doing it. It appears that a couple of ladies thought the suspension on the bikes was good and an American couple rode bikes to Donnington castle. That in itself leads me to believe the story was a bit of poetic licence. Americans go everywhere by car. Why would anybody in their right minds pay £14 a day to hire a bicycle to cycle around our dangerous roads, but Mrs Taylor has done a lot of research on the subject and considers the price is fair and the low take up is due to awareness rather than price. Give me strength I'm just as frustrated by this, but I have a different take on it. I'm especially pro-bat and -bee, so I'm disappointed to see you conflate the problems highlighted in this story with what for me is the essential effort to preserve biodiversity and respect life, but that's really for another thread. The issue for me is that public money shouldn't be supporting this kind of hopeless commercial operation. Bike-hire is not an essential pubic service by any stretch of the imagination so there is no justification for public money being used to provide the service. If there is a need for bike-hire then the niche can easily be filled by a commercial operator, and if there is an argument to be made that a bike-hire service would benefit the town in some way then let the BID fill the niche.
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Right an injustice - give Simon Kirby his allotment back!
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Oct 26 2014, 12:30 AM
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QUOTE (Simon Kirby @ Oct 25 2014, 07:16 PM) .... The issue for me is that public money shouldn't be supporting this kind of hopeless commercial operation. Bike-hire is not an essential pubic service by any stretch of the imagination so there is no justification for public money being used to provide the service. If there is a need for bike-hire then the niche can easily be filled by a commercial operator, and if there is an argument to be made that a bike-hire service would benefit the town in some way then let the BID fill the niche. I am sure they got a good deal on the bikes. Judging by our local authorities previous commercial acumen I am sure they didn't pay more than £20k per bike.
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Oct 26 2014, 09:20 AM
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QUOTE (Simon Kirby @ Oct 25 2014, 06:16 PM) I'm just as frustrated by this, but I have a different take on it. I'm especially pro-bat and -bee, so I'm disappointed to see you conflate the problems highlighted in this story with what for me is the essential effort to preserve biodiversity and respect life, but that's really for another thread. I agree that our natural wildlife needs to be sustained and my grouping wasn't aimed at their protection and perhaps bees, apart from the alliteration should not have been included. Bats are probably important but no more than any other insect gatherer. My frustration is around every planning application having some council jobsworth creating expensive requirements just in case a few bats or slow worms might be disturbed. They are not endangered and will find their own solution I'm sure. As you say, another thread perhaps.
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Oct 26 2014, 10:18 AM
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QUOTE (JeffG @ Oct 25 2014, 07:07 PM) Who knew that Newbury had a bike-hire service? The readers of the NWN http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/2014/bike-hi...ched-in-newburyand WBC http://info.westberks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=30392Interesting that since 2009, it was probably the one thing that most people asked for. Not "where can I stay" or "what is there to do." It appears that the scheme will tackle congestion and encourage cycling in the area. Cyclists cause more congestion on our roads than anything else other than overloaded farm tractors.
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Oct 26 2014, 10:23 AM
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QUOTE (Exhausted @ Oct 26 2014, 10:20 AM) I agree that our natural wildlife needs to be sustained and my grouping wasn't aimed at their protection and perhaps bees, apart from the alliteration should not have been included. Bats are probably important but no more than any other insect gatherer. My frustration is around every planning application having some council jobsworth creating expensive requirements just in case a few bats or slow worms might be disturbed. They are not endangered and will find their own solution I'm sure. As you say, another thread perhaps. Your view is absurd; I don't think we should wait until a species is endangered before we impose planning restrictions.
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Oct 26 2014, 10:26 AM
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QUOTE (Andy Capp @ Oct 26 2014, 10:23 AM) Your view is absurd; I don't think we should wait until a species is endangered before we impose planning restrictions. Tell that to the people waiting for a home.
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Oct 26 2014, 10:34 AM
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QUOTE (Exhausted @ Oct 26 2014, 11:26 AM) Tell that to the people waiting for a home. Cobblers, there are other reason that is happening. I understand that the bat population has been in big decline for the last half century.
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Oct 26 2014, 11:04 AM
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QUOTE (Andy Capp @ Oct 26 2014, 10:34 AM) Cobblers, there are other reason that is happening. I understand that the bat population has been in big decline for the last half century. That maybe true but building in urban areas is a very small percentage of the reason for the overall decline. Could it have anything to do with insect decline due to pesticides along with changes to farming practices, major decrease in the cereals crops and the loss of our hedgerows. We could mention, and it's always a good one, climate change, which may also have had a detrimental effect on insect population. Perhaps a better solution might be to turn over fields to the production of buddleia, that would be good for all our natural resources, bees, butterflies, bats but not bikes. Have you noticed that the swift and swallow visitation has also been in decline, they are insect eaters too. I'm sure that as we are a bit short of caves in the UK, we might need to control the change of use of barns and the like out in the countryside but developments like Parkway were never bat habitats and if they were, the occupants would surely move on.
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Oct 26 2014, 03:18 PM
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QUOTE (Exhausted @ Oct 26 2014, 11:26 AM) Tell that to the people waiting for a home. Your attitude is truly astonishing.
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There their, loose loser!
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Oct 26 2014, 04:11 PM
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QUOTE (x2lls @ Oct 26 2014, 03:18 PM) Your attitude is truly astonishing. attitude to what ?
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