JUST ACROSS from Mill Street and the river Thames is the West Oxford Democrats Club – it has no affiliation with any political party. Some wizard has revamped the web site very recently.
A PDF here has some information about the Island of Frogs, as the locals call it. The nearest bus stop is here.
If you look closely at the picture on its web page, there is a very famous bench, that was moved, obliquely, and reported on previously in the Oxford News. ♠
Residents of Mill Street had a missive from Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) in early February headed “improvements at Frideswide Square” and penned by Owen Jenkins, the grandly named director for infrastructure delivery.
You can find the details of the seven week scheme to repair Frideswide Square at this link, – although you won’t find the letter, I don’t think.
West Oxford is being “regenerated” and some people might think that’s a good thing – certainly house prices here in Mill Street continue to go through the roof.
Owen said, in his billet doux, that cyclists will “benefit” from “new dropped kerbs” while OCC is is providing “tactile paving” for “visually impaired users” at all crossing points.
Now, here’s the thing. Pedestrians and motorists don’t really know whether people or cars have any right of way, so people don’t know whether these “crossing points” are safe.
Owen is, no doubt, too young to remember this, but in the 1930s Hore Belisha (pictured, above) had a bright idea to put lights and stripes on roads – “zebra crossings” – and introduced the driving test. The “crossing points” at Frideswide Square don’t have any stripes so we are all taking a bit of a risk, or maybe “dicing with death”.
Why does that matter? Well, because the square is close to the railway station and also funnels a considerable amount of motor traffic into Oxford using the already congested Botley Road, motorists and pedestrians unfamiliar with the weirdness have every chance of being confused by what’s going on. Even us local residents are confuseniks.
The scheme starts on the 11th of February and finishes on the 23rd of March 2018, if we’re lucky. ♦
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Tagged Belisha Beacons, colin cook, confuseniks, cyclists, frideswide square, Gibbs Crescent, Hore Belisha, mill street, Owen Jenkins, Oxford, oxford railway station, Oxfordshire County Council, pedestrians, Pelican crossing, repairs, susanna pressel, the giant badger of mill street, Yorkstone slabs, zebra crossing
DESPITE A TORRENTIAL downpour this evening, we managed to capture a wonderful pic of how crap Oxford City Council is. Bowing under pressure, to a local, the apparatchiks bowed to pressure and moved a bench, in a post preposition that would ensure any man+dog would gaze left, rather than right! What is on the right to see that made Crappy Oxford City Council move the bench? We are investigating with our powerful 42X digicam and our Freedom of Information stuff. It must have cost something to move! ♥
THE RAIN is unrelenting here in West Oxford, but thank the gods for the badgers of Mill Street – they do their best to undermine the foundations of civilisation.
In other news, the Oxford Mail reports that travailliste councillor Susanna Pressel, who was a mayor of this little town er sorry city a while back, has scored a significant win against the forces of civilisation and has persuaded Network Rail, or whoever, to keep the west gate of Oxford Railway station operational.
The Oxford Mail reported it somewhat differently from the New Osney residents’ associations alert – which came on Wednesday. The newsletter said: “The official statement — after discussions late into the night last night:
‘We’ve decided in the light of customer and stakeholder feedback, and the emergence of a number of potential alternative approaches, to defer closure of the Oxford Platform 2 gate until further notice. In the meantime, we will be reviewing the usage of the gate and its interaction with the wider station environment. This will help inform the decisions that we’re making about access to this entrance in future. We will also be discussing the future access to the gate with the Department of Transport in the context of potential wider plans for the station.
Courtsey (surely curtsey) of Susanna Pressel City Councillor for Jericho and Osney Ward County Councillor for West Central Oxford Division.'”
Well, all power to Susanna’s elbow, but it is still hard to understand how the Oxford Mail waited two days before running the story, which also suggested, rather said, it was a coup the minute Susanna Pressel walked in. We suspect the OxMail is a paper tiger, while said Susanna Pressel is obviously a tigress. The paper quotes her as saying when she gets cross, she gets really cross. ♣
Dūrgā Devī
