Will CAZ benefits be worth the cost?
Last week Guy Hodgson mounted a spirited defence of the Liberal’s assault on cars spearheaded by, “I saved the world”, Councillor Joanna Wright.
Has he considered whether the CAZ health benefits and modest safety improvements could have been achieved by other less expensive, less draconian means than the five drastic and hugely expensive traffic schemes now being introduced? And this is quite apart from disruption to our local economy.
One suspects this is just a prelude to the introduction of road pricing to increase local taxation. Hey ho - here we go again - revenue is lost through economic decline which is then replaced by more taxes which create further decline. Ken Cookes
Bear Flat
We are writing to you after learning on social media of Keir Starmer’s visit to Bath (April 19).
The coronavirus pandemic has affected everyone very heavily over the past year with the UK suffering from both the worst death rate and worst economic impact of any major economy.
This represents a doublewhammy of terrible outcomes from this Conservative government’s appalling policy agenda which appears to be focussed on how ministers and their friends can benefit financially from the situation, not how they can best mitigate the impacts of the worst public health crisis in a century.
The confrontation between the landlord of The Raven pub and Keir Starmer was badly mishandled and interest has been centred on the security guard’s extreme response and the landlord’s attack on Keir Starmer’s opposition to the government.
However, rather than simply labelling the landlord a “Coviddenier”which does nothing to persuade or convince, we at Bath Labour would rather shift the focus on to the catastrophic political and policy choices made by this Conservative government throughout the pandemic.
Boris Johnson’s slow and inadequate response is a hallmark of his dangerous premiership.
Boris Johnson skipped multiple Cobra security meetings early on in the pandemic thereby failing to take notice of the impending crisis, delayed each and every lockdown and even ended up being hospitalised himself having publicly displayed a dismissive attitude to the threat of infection.
These decisions, with full support from local Conservative MP for North East Somerset and member of the government, Jacob Rees Mogg, led to a horrific death toll that undoubtedly would have been far lower had the government taken even the most basic steps of implementing lockdowns when scientific advisors recommended.
Instead, as always, the government vacillated, concerned for the effect on the economy more than the effect on hundreds of thousands deprived of their loved ones.
Whilst the UK is not alone in suffering appallingly, had the government taken seriously alternative approaches - for example from countries in the Asia-pacific region with experience of pandemic management, or left-wing governments like New Zealand’s, perhaps we could have restricted death count here to the low thousands, not the low hundreds of thousands.
A swift and radical lockdown would have avoided a prolonged and severe economic hit as well as the associated distress, anguish and anger of people struggling to make a living.
Ultimately, we must argue that the responsibility for the effect of this pandemic on the UK lies at the door of a decade of Conservative
government for the few, not the many and not at the door of The Raven pub.
The executive committee of Bath Constituency Labour Party