Tag: Council

January 20th – People seem to have their own realities, and nothing has brought out the selfishness and plain nastiness in some people as profoundly as the bad weather.

Ever since the snow came, people have been complaining about, and to, Walsall Council on social media. Horrified that they’ve been delayed, or that driving conditions are bad, they attack the local authority for not gritting, for being unprepared, or lazy. Time and time again I have seen people berate council employees because things aren’t as they expect and that’s what they apparently pay council tax for.

Sadly, the truth is a little more difficult. As a cyclist, I travel slowly. I intersect with gritters on the roads with startling (and often painful) frequency, because they move about twice as fast as me. I have seen them around Brownhills and on all major routes I use frequently, since just before the cold snap started. They have spread whatever the conditions, and pretty much continuously over the weekend. That’s good folk, working hard, in very difficult road conditions, to try and ameliorate the problems caused by the snow.

There is clearly a fundamental misunderstanding about how roadsalt works. It can take hours or even days to take effect, and relies on moisture and the passage of traffic to disperse it. Temperature severely affects it’s efficacy. It cannot deal with fast settling snow. A gritted road may take 24 hours to clear properly, even with continuous application. Road salt is not fairy dust. It doesn’t magically remove ice and snow. It’s a deicer, a slow one, and it’s an aid, not a total solution.

Walsall’s gritting operation costs each household about £2.50 per year.

The thing about using the roads in bad weather is to develop, and hone the skills required. It’s our responsibility to ensure we’re as safe as possible. We can’t abrogate that responsibility totally to a third party just because it snows. The man I watched slide round a corner into a kerb in Little Aston on Friday Morning probably now understands this. A £60,000 Range Rover is only as good as the driver’s skills.

Walsall Council does many things badly. Some things, a few, it does really well. They’ve always been among the best at gritting, and have worked hard to communicate their activities on social media. When met with abuse, petulance or idiocy, the public facing employees have been stoical, polite and workmanlike, often in unpaid, out of hours time.

When I see people being stupid, unpleasant or misguided on this, I will always step in to defend the council and it’s employees wherever I can. So far this weekend I’ve had hate mail, nearly had my Facebook account pulled in an infantile spite attack and been roundly abused by a noted local journalist. None of these people have shown a shred of humility towards those who are actually charged with the job they are expecting to be done.

There’s a widely held belief that gritters are not being sent out; that roads have gone untreated. That the powers that be cannot grit every inch of every road has been met with incredulity. It seems beyond many that the weather currently has control, and whilst we can mitigate it’s effects, nobody can actually make it go away.

This afternoon, at 4pm, on Anchor Bridge, I was passed by the grittier that, on social media 3 hours later, Walsall were being attacked for not sending to treat Brownhills High Street. Further down the road, at Silver Court, a team of council workmen had cleared the snow by hand from the frontage and steps, and then gritted it. At the other end of Brownhills, lorries were returning to the depot for refilling, before leaving again in series. 

Meanwhile, people are fretting on Facebook already as to weather their bins will be emptied tomorrow. As far as I’m aware, nobody has died in Walsall yet for the want of an empty dustbin. 

It’s bad weather, folks. We used to get it a lot. It’s not the end of days. The mark of humanity should be be grace under pressure, from all of us. Not just those there to serve us. 

January 7th – Talking of technology I’ve been interested to note of late that Birmingham Council – or rather, contractors working for them – are replacing street lighting on side routes with modern, low energy LED lights. I’ve been using LED lights on my bike for four or five years now, and they’ve improved massively. The lights being installed are an unexpected design, and seem to work really well. They give off a harsh, but clear white light. Interestingly tonight, when I left at 4:30, they were only just coming on, so the days are already lengthening considerably.

December 2nd – As I cycled down the bank and onto Apex Road, I noticed the council depot was silent. The roads had clearly already been gritted today, and there didn’t seem to be anyone about. The depot here is where all the gritting operations now take place from, and there’s a huge shelter here full of road salt. Walsall are generally very good at gritting the roads, and getting pebble dashed on the way home from work is now a nightly risk. The amount of machinery stored here to process and spread the deicer is startling, and makes you realise just what a huge operation this seemingly simple task actually is.

6th April – New camera day. I’ve been using Panasonic cameras for a while now – built like brick shithouses, they offer a good feature set, remarkable zoom range and good picture quality, all in a package small enough to pop into a pocket and always carry with you. I’d been eyeing up the TZ30 for a while – I’d had a TZ20, and liked it, but there were a few extra features in the new model – 20x optical zoom, sweep panorama, better low-light performance and so on – that I quite fancied. Able to hand down the old one, I found a camera store in Birmingham had stock and a decent offer, so I cycled into town and picked one up.

I always love a ride round Brum, and took advantage of the opportunity. Near Edgbaston Street, I realised how far Birmingham had come as a cycling city: the bike racks were full. This is in spite of, rather than because of anything the council have done. Birmingham City Council’s support for cyclists is legendarily awful, yet Brum is developing an engaging, active cycling community.

July 21st – Walsall has plenty of abandoned buildings of historical interest. Sadly, our civic masters don’t have the best record of caring for them, and seem to have learned little about protecting heritage from developer’s aspirations over the years. The parish church, dramatically built atop a hill overlooking the town, has it’s aspect sullied by The Overstrand restaurant, built four decades ago, and is now similarly blighted by a hideous Asda shed carelessly permitted five years ago. We never learn.

A couple of weeks ago, town officials were having a ‘crisis meeting’ about the last remnants of the workhouse that stand unloved and derelict outside the new hospital. Once part of the old one, this dramatic building is empty and rotting. I can see why a crisis meeting might be be necessary, after all it’s a bugger when Victorian buildings unexpectedly materialise overnight.

Fear not though, as Walsall has it’s own way of dealing with it’s inconvenient past, often it gets burned to the ground. Trembling before the arsonist’s zippo are several inconveniently located old buildings including Lime House and the former Walkways community centre. The council is now applying to demolish Lime House, but overactive firebugs will probably beat the developer vandals to it.

Welcome to Walsall where our past makes fine fuel.