The school run in St Werburgh's

Over abroad, they are going on about Cargo Bikes that take kids to school.

In Bristol, we have these things called Cars for that in most of the city.

It is only in St Werburgh's that the locals revert to pedestrian version of the cargo bike -the wheelbarrow. The kids seem happy -but where are their helmets?

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Observability

Our complainer from the past, "Slug" says they went to the PACT meeting to complain about some car on the pavement. Apparently the Police actually need to see someone obstructed before the vehicle is causing an obstruction.

This is a useful fact to know. From now on, whenever we park our car on the pavement -such as here BS51VDX does on a build-out by Cotham Brow, we shall wait for some family to get a push-chair past, and get a photograph of them as they pass.

With such a photograph, we can demonstrate that our parking did not cause any obstruction, hence is ineligible for any penalty.

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Monty week: cyclists endangering our paintwork

Our Monty week has gone on a bit, but that is because there are always shocking things to cover.

Last month, we were celebrating the loss of a bollard finally re-opened Picton Square to important people in their 4x4s, giving you somewhere in this narrow-laned part of the city to park where you could be confident that your mirrors and paintwork would be safe.

But look at how this selfish cyclist endangers the paintwork of the parked 4x4 P334OWP. By trying to scrape between the remaining bollard and the vehicle, her child wagon may brush against the vehicle and so cause damage. And would any cyclist -who is no doubt uninsured- stop and leave their contact details were this to happen? We doubt it!

Note also that we have evidence this helmet-less mother lets her children play in the street! We have informed Bristol Social Services.

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Bicycles on Nugent Hill. Again.

One day in the week, our drive up Nugent Hill was interrupted by this woman pushing a bicycle with a small child on it up the road.

Madam, if you are going to push the bike up a hill, could you make it Ninetree Hill, which, having already been closed to cars, is not disrupted by a cyclist walking up it.

Later on in the week, something worse. The entire road closed while officials -in hi-viz- make some film shoot which apparently required no adults in the shot, and cars blocked from this road while these teenagers pretended to play.

Such media coverage will only reinforce the myth that teenagers should ride bicycles and roads are a safe place for them to do it. It is a an affront for our TV licensing tax to be frittered away on pro-cycling propaganda!

Still, if there is one thing that takes the edge of this offence, it's the Copenhagen Cycle Chic people complaining their roads were taken away for car adverts.  That evens things out.

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We care, we really do

Some web sites have been a bit critical of us, arguing that we should obscure the number plates of photographs of vehicles in our coverage area, rather what we normally do -type in the registration number without spacing for easier indexing, then tag the entry with the road and district within the city or "abroad" for anywhere out of town.

Sadly for those privacy activists, registration numbers doesn't constitute private personal data, and EU/UK data protection legislation doesn't kick in. And as it's a public street, privacy rules and human rights stuff doesn't either. Were, say the son of Oswald Mosley to pay prostitutes to dress up in army uniforms and beat him while speaking in German on a street in Bristol, he wouldn't be able to argue that it was an invasion of his privacy to put the pics up online. So there you go. You want privacy, do things like that at home, with the shutters closed.

Our biggest issue is not just that cyclists don't have number plates, but that pedestrians don't either. Take this small child enjoying the swings in lower Kingsdown -an area to be covered in the RPZ. There are two cameras covering this play area to make sure that no children misbehave by doing something hazardous like using a swing without a helmet.

Yet how can you enforce non-misbehaving legislation without every child, every adult, having a machine readable registration number? How else can you see if they are paying their fare share of road and council tax, that they don't have a track record of hit-and-walk scrapes against parked cars on the pavement, and other crimes which pedestrians are capable of?

We are with Crap Cycling and Walking in Waltham Forest here: not only should every pedestrian have a registration number (apart from those walking directly between their car and destination), but that the council and schools should run special Walkability courses teaching schoolkids how to safely walk round our city -and that they should only be allowed to walk round if they and their parents have their licenses. And they have third-party insurance for any damage they cause!

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