Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Haringey Council Road Safety Consultation ends Sunday - my chance to rant about Wightman pavements
Input into Haringey's Sustainable Transport Works Plan which identifies the highways, street lighting maintenance and improvement programmes to be delivered over the coming year by filling in this short survey
I highlighted the terrible state of Wightman Road's pavements. Walking there with my Dad who has mobility problems really brought home to me just how awful this road is to walk up and down; pavement obstructions, pavement parking, cracked pavements, speeding cars and unsafe crossing. This was my contribution:
Wightman Road must be looked at as a matter of urgency - it is a nightmare to walk down, pavements are broken and cracked, pavement parking takes up all the space, constant obstruction from wheelie bins because the houses have no front garden, road too fast and not enough safe crossings - I suggest you walk down there with an elderly person who has problems with mobility, someone with a buggy or someone in a wheelchair - this is a residential road with many residents but the pavement and pedestrian facilities are a disgrace.
Whether it will make much difference is hard to say but I don't miss any opportunity to complain about the neglected, unsafe state that is this key Ladder road which has many, many residents.
Survey here
If you're interested in Living Streets' campaign to reclaim our pavements for walking, especially but not only for those who have mobility issues/young children/a wheelchair, click here
Photo by Hugh on Flickr
Tags for Forum Posts: living streets, pavements, pedestrians, walking, wightman road
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Abi on
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Thanks for the heads-up, Liz, and good on you for highlighting this problem. I have also chimed in with some comments about the state of the pavements along Hermitage Road at the St Ann's end, where there are several broken slabs and trip hazards outside an old people's home.
I've been tripped up more than once there myself, so can only imagine this is an accident waiting to happen - if not simply a really unnecessary pain for anyone with mobility issues of which there'll obviously be quite a few.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Coincidentally, I tripped on a pavement access cover on Wightman yesterday evening and fell flat on my face.
Knees and right hand ache a bit today but otherwise OK.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I've put my ha'penneth worth in Liz.
Just yesterday there was a woman in front of me with a push chair who was confronted with what must have been a 20cm gap between a transit parked right up on the pavement and 3 wheelies. We had to move all of them further along the pavement and even then she just scraped through.
Walking to Harringay station I never take my eyes off the footpath, especially when keeping a look out for the dropped kerbs that seem to have subsided to almost vertical cliffs after being endless driven over as vehicles misjudge the turn out of the Ladder rung roads.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Liz, thanks for sign-posting this survey.
Although I don't see its format as inviting thoughtful, considered, fresh thinking.
Three questions. Predetermined categories and what seems to be an assumption that everyone is likely to be able to choose up to three priorities. And even just one street to make a comment on.
To be fair it's not a "Survey Monkey" questionnaire. I tend to ignore these. as I have the feeling that an infinite number of monkeys filling in an infinite number of the usual questionnaires will still not produce much of value.
No, it's worse than a Survey Monkey questionnaire.
But I'm not suggesting you don't have a go and see if you can influence the outcome. Though you are aware of the danger that Haringey's staff in the Sustainable Whatever team will use your - and my - participation to legitimate what they've decided. "We surveyed residents and they told us blah, blah."
P.S. Just as an experiment I filled it in twice. It thanked me both times.
P.P.S. Watching more videos by Ken Robinson I came across one where he describes the Dalai Lama being asked a question at a conference and staying silent while hundreds of people leaned forward awaiting his answer. Then, eventually, he said: "I don't know."
He hadn't thought about that question. Which, Ken Robinson suggests, can encourage all of us to say we don't know something.
I thought of Tuesday evening at the Council "Cabinet" rubber-stamping-the-budget meeting. Suppose that, after listening carefully to all the delegations, one of these brilliant sages had not trotted out a few of the 101 reasons they are entirely right. And instead had said:
"I think, Dear Leader, that several valid points have been made - crucially important points. Which we haven't properly considered. And frankly questions have been posed to which we simply don't know the answers. I think we're going to have to pause this process and come up urgently with a sensible and better informed plan."
And imagine that the Dear Leader had thought for a quiet minute. And then nodded slowly. Saying: "Yes. That's right. We don't know the answers. We need to give this more thought."
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Yes, I'm reminded of the old saying "Don't vote, it only encourages them" - it is a dilemma whether or not to take part in flawed consultations on the same principle that if you participate they think they've fulfilled their obligations and carry on doing what they want to anyway.
In a similar vein, Ken Livingstone's quote "If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it" comes to mind in that if our input really had the power to change their minds, they wouldn't allow us anywhere near the survey/council chamber/area forum.
Still, I like to think that someone somewhere has to read the damn things and that they might decide that I have a point.
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Long before Ken Livingstone, I think it was the anarchists who first popularised the slogan.
There's an old Emma Goldman poster. In "Mother Earth" a journal she co-edited, Élisée Reclus was quoted:
"Electors do certainly believe in the honesty of the candidates, and this is to a certain extent existing while the fervor and the heat of the contest remains.
But every day has its to-morrow. As soon as the conditions alter, likewise do men change. To-day your candidate bows humbly before your presence; to-morrow he will say "pish" to you. From a cadger of votes he has turned to be a master of yours.
How can a worker, enrolled by you amongst the ruling class, be the same as before, since now he can speak in terms of equality with the other oppressors? Look at the servility of any one of them, written all over his face, after paying a call to a "captain of industry," or when the King invites him to the ante-chamber of his court !
The atmosphere of the "House" is not for deep breathing; it is corrupt. If you send one of yourselves in a foul place, you must not be surprised afterwards if he comes back in a rotten condition."
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Yes, it's attributed to Ken in that form but naturally the sentiment is a lot older -there's also that story I'm fond of you that told us a while back after the last election but one about a person choosing whether to go heaven and hell, the promises made and the nasty shock they got the day after the "election" - very much comes to mind after the last year's elections where the electorate were sold a Party line that claimed to oppose the worse depredations of this current government but who are now implementing these cuts using Maggie's very own mantra of TINA...
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I remember a cartoon with two generals dripping with medals. One's says "Power tends to corrupt." The other, smiling broadly, replies Yea! And I can feel it working""
Watching Kober and her revolting chums on the video of the "cabinet" meeting and you see the hubris of cold, arrogant power.
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Permalink Reply by Karen Alexander on
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Thanks for flagging this up Liz. I've contributed my thoughts to the survey. Wightman Road N4/N8 - this residential road is used as a rat run. It needs more HGV enforcement and further speed enforcement. It needs a pedestrian crossing at Alroy Road. The pavements along vast sections need replacing as they are in very poor condition. There are too many wheelie bins on the pavements (even though most can be accommodated within the boundaries of the properties) so more enforcement needed here. The pavement parking needs remarking in lots of places. I chuckled at Michael's comment about constantly looking at the foot path - I do too not least so that I don't tread in the vast amount of dog poo (which the sweeper walks straight past)!
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Karen, it's a few months since I walked along Wightman Road. But I don't doubt a word you and others say.
Even so, at some point don't committed and honest LibDems like you need to make common cause with Labour supporters like me, who are appalled by both the Tories who are running the country and the red-rosetted Tory Privatisers who are running our Council? Shouldn't you be protesting to your fellow Party members as strongly as I do to mine?
The deep and savage Government cuts are a fact. They don't excuse the poor judgements, waste and incompetence of the KoberTories. But they are real constraints on what any Party running Haringey Council could do right now.
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Maybe so Alan, but it shouldn't stop the picking up of dog turds.
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Of course not, Michael. Nor - if heavy snow and ice arrive this winter - Ladder residents helping to clear it - or spread salt. Nor reporting dumping. Nor planting and weeding raised flowerbeds. And all the other voluntary/community things that are reported and often organised on this website.
And all the other things which people do for one another without pay - perhaps for love; or for family; or for friendship; or out of civic duty; or mutuality. And which create common-wealth and the richness of our society. Values with no quoted market price.
Its just that I'm trying to encourage anyone and everyone - whatever their Party affiliation, or without one, to take at least a small public stand. To speak against the thinking that says that public expenditure is always waste and must be cut and cut and cut again. And that private profit is always good and right.
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