Personally speaking Paul that's not what I ever want to see, i.e. Councillors following the vox populi.Maybe it's because I'm rather like the late Peter Sallis, his sad death the other say reminding me of his line about how he found himself in the middle of Michael Bates, who was somewhere to the right of Thatcher, and Bill Owen, who was somewhere to the left of Lenin, whereas Sallis had never had a political thought in his life.Indeed I cringe at the volume of posts on CW4 in particular about tomorrow's election and what drivel people post in support of different candidates, as though whoever gets elected is going to make a huge difference to the future of the UK - I don't believe so for a minute.But going back to the Church Street issue, I don't like the closure myself and I was a vocal moaner about the initial works done to Twickenham Road, like the South Street roundabout and the poor approach to it from the south.However, looking at the bigger picture, the world faces environmental disaster through 2 problems, 1 being climate change of which over-reliance on the private car is a key element, and 2 being uncontrolled population growth. Now sadly (from my perspective) there's this laughable and selfish notion in the world that the children are our future and it's great to have lots of kids, and no western government will ever have the balls (unfortunate pun) to tackle that.However over-reliance on the private car, especially in major cities, can be addressed, and the way to start doing that is to make it as unattractive as possible for people to use their cars.It's as good as a certainty that the vast majority of drivers using Twickenham Road could use alternative/more sustainable forms of transport, or car share, or simply cut down on their journeys. But they don't because getting people out of their cars is extremely hard (which is precisely why the consultation came back as 72% in favour of leaving Church Street open, indeed I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been higher) - and therein lies the need, in my view, to make driving as unpleasant an experience as possible.Hence why personally speaking I've come to conclude that I really don't have a problem with the Church Street closure, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest that the vast majority disagree with me - because I see it that they are driven by selfishness about their journeys being slightly delayed, journeys that often aren't necessary or could be shared or done by more sustainable modes of travel or on foot.They're the people causing the "environmental disaster" by not getting off their backsides !.
Adam Beamish ● 2989d