Forum topic: Cllr Hurer on cycle lanes and quieter neighbourhoods

£350m extra weekly for the NHS via the big red bus, Turkey, and so 70 million potential UK migrants to join the EU, and now, Enfield Council funded the cycle lanes. There is a real democratic issue in politicians spouting such popularist matter in the hope of getting across the election line. Damage is long term, not only to their personal credibility but to the wider population left to live with the misinformation.

Conservative councillor Ertan Hurer writes in the latest Palmers Green Life.

For a number of years he has suggested I take a close look at the council’s budget. Let me now refer him to Cabinet minutes of April 2015 (copied below) – a position I have little doubt he is well aware of. Very clearly a TFL funded project.

Remember the numerous “send the money back to the Mayor” yellow posters. I wonder just what was meant in this parallel world of misinformation and u turns. Maybe they meant back to the mayor of Enfield?

Before him declaring a ”white elephant” and “waste of money”, it’s probably worth reflecting that the first of the segregated lanes was not even complete when his piece was written and none of the near 40 quieter neighbourhoods expected across the borough had even started. Jumping the gun?

Divisive within our community he claims – yes and due to what ongoing approach to this long term programme his party once fully endorsed before they lost the election and therefore management of the TFL money I wonder? Division which resulted in the end of such free activities as Palmers Scream, Proms in the Park and others then in train for why was I to throw so much effort into a community many were intent on simply ripping apart. Calm, rationale debate never had a chance.

“If I had been in control” then our money would have been spent on Broomfield House. Well the same councillor was Cabinet Member for Finance for two whole terms. And?

Last time his conservative party turned aside huge central London funding, secured by a joint residents / council effort to improve our streets, it took him a full decade to confess, “Karl, we were wrong a decade ago”. This time I was expecting a u turn on the u turn to take much less time, but no, it seems that while the world hasn’t ended, the public realm is more attractive, congestion is not the forecast disaster, shops haven’t closed, more cyclists are in evidence as each day goers by and so forth, the answer is to dig even deeper in the hole of your own making in the hope something, just anything crops up. Maybe it’s the orcas, maybe it’s the occasional open car door, maybe it’s the. Well let’s see what comes next.

And he signs off as a retiring councillor soon to be “on the other side of the fence. Oh, but forgetting to mention that he’s actually standing as a councillor again. Just perfectly sums it all up.

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Enfield Council Cabinet Minutes 29 April 2015
4. CYCLE ENFIELD PROPOSALS
4.1 The total estimated cost of the Cycle Enfield project is £42M
4.2 The funding package assembled for this project comprises of the following:
Source Contribution £M
TfL Mini Holland programme 30.000
LIP/other GLA 7.726
Developer contributions 1.000
Network Rail 1.500
Borough resources 2.150
Total 42.376
4.3 The £2.150 million of Borough resources identified above is from an existing or planned borough source. The Mini Holland bid assumed that some of the proposed cycle routes are on Borough Roads and Principal Roads that would be resurfaced over the next five years