ReCycle

In 2008 Blackpool was officially named a Cycling Town. Apparently "The Cycling Towns programme aims to help Blackpool meet the challenge of the modern leisure market’s needs, by making cycling an essential part of its tourism offer."

It seems quite a tenuous link between tourism and cycling and I have yet to see a hen night cycling down the promenade, but I'll go with them since it's still a £6million work in progress to turn the town into this utopia of cycling.

The impression I gained from the name Cycling Town was that the town would be awash with people on two wheeled transport. It isn't: there aren't many cyclists at all in Blackpool at the moment. As a driver and motoring enthusiast I'm obviously happy about that given the general lack of respect for road rules that cyclists have, such as failure to signal properly, jumping red lights and riding on the pavement when it suits them, but as a taxpayer I'm questioning the allocation of funds. Where on earth has the money been spent?

Lets say for some bizarre reason I decided to get on my bike and cycle to the town centre to buy something. Once I got there, where could I put my bike? Off the top of my head I can't think of any bike shelters and bike parking areas like places such as Oxford have. The ridiculous thing is Oxford is not a Cycling City despite being flooded with students on bikes. This whole Cycling Town thing is starting to sound a bit gimmicky...

Cycling to work? For a kick off you would need somewhere to leave your bike at work and in addition to everything else carrying a suit in a bag to work isn't and never will be practical: it'd look terribly crumpled unless they decide to set up ironing and changing rooms there. Unlikely I feel. I also wouldn't want to run the risk of cycling down roads without proper provisions for cyclists such as cycle lanes. As a result I don't even think it would be possible to cycle to work.

I would seriously question the criteria by which a town is branded a Cycling Town. For a start, I'd expect a large percentage of roads to have cycle lanes either marked or constructed parallel to the roads. In Blackpool this is not the case. I don't want to have to cycle 50 miles out of my way in order to stay on a cycle lane for the duration of my journey. I would prefer for my journey to be at least equidistant to that in a car but preferably shorter.

I would prefer that Police officers enforce the law upon cyclists that abuse the pavement. Offenders can be issued a £30 fixed penalty, but the maximum if taken to court is £500.

When I was 16 and cycling on the pavement down Waterloo Road I was stopped by the Police and lectured about it being a danger to the public. The Police car proceeded to follow me as I cycled on the road and then in typical Police fashion decided to floor it past me and into the sunset (must have been their tea break then). Jollity aside, I'm not aware that the law on this has changed. People complain - rightly - about cars parking on the pavement and I find cyclists that use the pavement as a road to be no different.

The Promenade may well end up being a cyclist's paradise after all the current works are completed but it always has been as far as I can remember. Fundamentally since you can't cycle to work on the promenade and you can't cycle home on the promenade its value to locals is pleasure only.

For me I find the Cycling Town brand to be somewhat pointless, somewhat gimmicky and just another channel the Government can use to force councils into spending money on certain things. In this case the link is very weak and the money was allocated based on the resurfacing and in some places redesign of the Promenade.

Democracy - whats the point?

I spoke to a mate of mine the other day and asked him who he voted for in the European elections a few weeks ago. "I don't vote" was his defiant response, as if it was his way of protesting that he believed it didn't make any difference who he voted for.

It's quite sad that in Great Britain only 50% of the population - plus or minus 10% - can be bothered to vote; be it European elections, local elections or even general elections. In the recent European elections it was approximately 40% and in the last general election it was approximately 60%.

Taking the general election as an example: over 20 million people didn't vote.

Why?

Disillusionment?
Protest?
Main parties all have the same policies?
Assumption that Labour would get a majority anyway?

Personally I believe, like my friend said, it's because people feel their vote doesn't really count. What difference will it make to them? Will their lives improve, degrade or stay the same? When the Government says it's pumping money into something, who notices? Who benefits?

I've been thinking about this over these past few weeks as the misdemeanours of various MPs have become apparent thanks to the Telegraph and it's struck me that in the UK we really don't have a proper democracy in the true sense that the people have the power.

Does every vote count in a general election? The answer is it doesn't, due to the First Past the Post system. Let me give a quick example.

In a constituency of 24,001 people, 12001 people vote Labour and 12000 vote Conservative. Labour wins, the Conservative votes are discarded. Now, assume that the first 12001 people that went to the ballot box all ticked Labour candidates. At this point, it really doesn't matter who the other 12000 people vote for because Labour has already won. Therefore it can be said that their votes did not count.

Yes, this can work to the advantage of any party and you could say where one party gains in one place another gains in another place, so it's swings and roundabouts. It's still not a truly democratic and fair system though, because it can be manipulated. If there are two constituencies next to each other whereby one is traditionally weak and one is strong in terms of a party's domination of the vote, parties can orchestrate some voters from the strong constituency to vote in the weak one.

For the past 12 years we've been in a position where Labour, who got only 3% more of the total vote share than the Conservatives in the 2005 general election, have had a huge majority in the House of Commons and therefore you can say that all the other parties and all the other votes were irrelevant.

The result of first past the post is that representation in the House of Commons does not reflect the actual vote. You could have come second or third in the overall vote share yet still end up dominating the House of Commons because you won more constituencies.

I don't believe it's a great system, I don't believe it promotes democracy and lately with Labour's domination in the House of Commons it has given the Prime Minister an almost presidential role, though Mr Brown is falling from this pedestal quite rapidly (if he ever really climbed on to it in the first place).

So what do we need to sort it out?

Michael Jackson coming back from the dead to sing us all into the sunlight?

Kim Jong Il to nuke us into oblivion?

The other popular alternative to first past the post is proportional representation which shares the seats in the House of Commons proportionally to the number of votes for each party.

This means that every vote counts so radical parties, racist parties, one-policy parties and lots of independents will get seats there, and the domination of the big two parties will be lessened.

It sounds good on paper, but in practise it means that anything passing through the House of Commons would be voted on by these minority parties and their votes could make or break the outcome.

Some say that's a good thing, and some don't. The Government is against it: they say it would be a pointless coalition of a large number of small parties that never got anything done. Whilst that might be correct, it would in my view still be more representative than the current system.

It's not something I believe will happen unless the voting figures drop even more than they have already. I do believe that when the Prime Minister calls the next election, we will see a rise in voting simply to get him out but it could easily go the other way.

There can't be many people that still won't vote Conservative "because Thatcher closed the mines", can there?

Am I bovvered?

Everyone's got a website these days, haven't they? I once swore I'd never make a blog, but here we are.

Blackpool Council has not one, not two, but ten websites. Ten.

That might not be such a surprise to some; large companies have more than that in some cases. It was, however, a surprise to me, a lifelong resident, because I had only heard of one of them.

Here's a list:

Visit Blackpool
The official tourism website for Blackpool

Blackpool4Me
Has the amazing hook line, "where local people and communities create the site". This site allows local clubs and organisations to have a page on it. From the site, "Blackpool4Me is not your average website - it is loads better! It is a website of websites, in fact its the website of websites." Ok.

BSafe
Blackpool Community Safety and Drugs Partnership. Lots of pictures of Police officers on the street. Sightings of the loch ness monster are more common. "BSafe Blackpool is committed to reducing crime, disorder and substance misuse in the town, reassuring the public through a series of innovative projects and sophisticated intelligence." Not very good at it then, looking at the figures.

Blackpool Coastal Housing
An "Arms Length Management Organisation" created by Blackpool Council. They soon wont be arms length when they move into the town centre. Manages Council houses.

Blackpool Unlimited
An online portal supporting business in the town.

ReBlackpool
Site listing various projects relating to the regeneration of Blackpool.

Blackpool CPS
No, not Crown Prosecution Service, but Corporate Print Services.

Blackpool Build Up
A 3-year project run by Blackpool Borough Council and Blackpool and The Fylde College, aimed at training adults in construction skills.

R U Bothered
Aimed primarily at Blackpool's yoof with some forums and some information about yoof services.

BSFBlackpool
Building Schools for the Future. Where these schools are I do not know, but according to them it's a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Am I about to start slagging them off for having loads of sites? Surprisingly, no, I'm not. I will say, however, that despite some of them sporting web design company names at the bottom, none of them are particularly well designed and there is no house style, indicative of delegation to various Council departments to do their own thing.

The main issue I have really is the underpublication of these sites. I had a look on the R U Bothered site, as I had no idea what it would be but assumed it would have something that related to youth issues. There's a forum on there with 10 topics spanning around 18 months. Thats how under used it is, because nobody knows about it.

Had I wanted to start a business, would I have known about Blackpool Unlimited? No. Did I know what the Blackpool Build Up project was? No. Did I know that Blackpool was apparently building next generation schools? No.

Branson Pickle

According to the Evening Gazette, Blackpool's "broadband connection" is about to become "one of the best in the country".

These opening words in the article left me a bit confused. Is journalist Nick Hyde telling us that Blackpool is so behind the times that it has only one broadband connection? Or maybe, just maybe, he is a lousy reporter that has been fed by Virgin Media's publicity machine and knows absolutely nothing about the subject he is writing about.

The latter, I think.

So lets digest the article. Mr Hyde is saying that people in Blackpool can now acquire "one of the best" connections in the country. Best in terms of what?

I can tell you now that Virgin Media is far from the best Internet Service Provider in the UK at the time of writing. My history with them is well documented on this blog: to summarise:

• I've been a customer since the year dot
  
  
• I was very happy to pay premium price with Telewest due to second to none reliability and completely unlimited connection.
  
  
• Virgin took over and offered me a 20MBit package, then applied throttling across the board once I was locked in a 12 month contract.
  
  
• Their Chief Executive declared that net neutrality is "a load of bollocks".
  
  
• They proceeded to sign deals with music/film lobby groups to monitor internet usage.
  
  
• They are more interested in sucking up to lobby groups and the Government than they are about their customers' privacy.
  

Anyhoo, according to the article in the Gazette we "have only been able to get broadband speeds of between 8Mbs and 20Mbs" in Blackpool. What the hell is a Mbs? A Major bullshit story? I'm sure we get more than 20Mbs in Blackpool from the Gazette alone if that is the case. Another sign that the author, Nick Hyde, is completely clueless about the subject and by this point his journalistic oesophagus was probably full of the advertising that Virgin had sent him.

Next we have a cracking technical case for Virgin being a "massive boost" for business.

Steve Pye, chairman of the Blackpool-based Federation of Small Businesses, said: "My connection at the moment is 8Mb and sometimes it can be a little slow and even crash." Time you switched from Virgin then Steve? Internet connections don't crash: computers do.

He follows on to say: "When you are part way through putting a deal together this ("crashing") is not a good thing." How is 50MBit going to help then? If your connection sucks, increasing the bandwidth will make no difference; you will just be paying more for a connection that still sucks.

I'll give him the benefit on that but it's still not all good with Virgin. Lets say the 50MBit was needed to conclude the deal: with Virgin Media's Stalinist throttling policies the deal could similarly be lost if the connection was used for for more than 30 minutes at full speed. This is because after that point Virgin Media has decided that you are in the top 5% of users and as a result your bandwidth is cut by 75% for the next five hours. It's automatic, there is no discretion and it will not be revoked. Bye bye deal.

I am absolutely baffled as to why our local newspaper is freely advertising Virgin Media and clearly the article writer has done very little of his own research. Given that it's not uncommon for the Gazette to publish Government policy and agenda as news, a part of me believes it's an active push for Virgin to be the preferred provider of broadband services because they are currently the only ISP to have caved in to the Government and the BPI.

Virgin's 50MBit rollout isn't even news. It has been available for ages and in fact I was offered it a few months back when I left them. The only reason to have it is if you have lots of money to waste on having the "fastest".

For normal web browsing and average iTunes use, you don't need it.

For heavy downloading, there are much better and significantly (5 or 6 times) cheaper products around.

Andy Murray Top 10

I accept Andy Murray is a good tennis player, even though he may be about to be despatched from Wimbledon by some guy I have never heard of.

Regardless, here are my top 10 reasons to hate Andy Murray.

10. His fake American accent.

9. His annoying fist pumping.

8. His typical dour Scot personality.

7. The "Come on Tim" annoying middle class toffs that for some reason are waving Union Jacks at him.

6. He hates England.

5. "Murray Mount"

4. His clone like failed tennis player mother that groomed him because she was crap.

3. His gold digging girlfriend.

2. The fact that they are touting him as the winner of Wimbledon and it's only the third round. For the Scots, it's like England being touted as World Cup winners before a match has been played. And I know how much you hate that.

1. That if he does ever win any Grand Slam competitions, particularly Wimbledon, we'll never be allowed to forget it.