Burnt Oak - Dumped Mattress Central (an humorous blogpost for Friday)

Bloggers occasionally like to share with their readers the search terms that people use to hit on their blog.

This evening's haul is fairly typical for my blog. I can imagine which of my previous blogposts the search terms have landed searchers on - most of them quite appropriate, luckily.

museum london Aeronauts Interactive Centre - That's easy: a blogpost I wrote about Grahame Park and the RAF Museum.

Andrew Travers Barnet - Innumerable posts about Barnet council and town hall tax dodgers.

relaxing at work - Ha, ha, ha! That picture of Brian Coleman asleep at his desk.

slogan on circulatory system - Bit obscure that one, but I did once try my hand at cartooning, none too successfully.

misandry - ah, yes...

famous children campaigners - I confess I have never written on this subject.

oak hill park barnet funfair - Fun fairs everywhere you turn in Barnet. Makes money for the council, y'see.

jonathan lovett pcs union - Yes, the former Father of the NUJ Chapel at the Barnet Press has gone to work for the PCS union.

valley logos - Dollis Valley Green Walk? I'm sure there are more famous valleys!

library cum cafe - I think - I hope - they are thinking of the tendency of councils such as Barnet to shove every public service they can into the one building, in order to save on the electricity bill. This drive has already ruined Burnt Oak library, and more are sure to follow.

boris johnson birthday card - Aaaah!

small funfairs - You've come to the right place, coming to Barnet!

boris johnson ugly - Oh... well, never mind.

Burnt Oak is a Shithole - At last! Some of the most popular search terms drawing people to my blog.

A little more on that last one. To be fair, I always say that while Burnt Oak is not much to look at, it is not a demoralised place. "Alright, as shitholes go," I think, is what I wrote. I have seen this said of Burnt Oak by other people.

Now someone has started a blog, "Fly Tipping in Burnt Oak", with pictures of the flytipping that takes place in this area.

I think this probably has fairly limited appeal, even to people who live in Burnt Oak and want to complain about fly tipping.

But let's see whether, in time, this blogger branches out to treat of other topics.

If the author of this blog wants to get in touch with me, please email publicity@barnettuc.org.uk, which is my Barnet trades council email. Perhaps we can think of some way to tackle the problem of flytipping in Barnet together...

Boris Johnson's Friday doughnut #4: The Dollis Valley Green Walk

Dollis Valley Green Walk - what is Barnet council playing at?

Where's the bike?

A while ago the Mayor of London granted £400,000 to do up the Dollis Valley Green Walk.

Barnet council even ran a competition to choose a new logo for the revamped walk. The competition was completely absurd, asking residents to choose between five nearly identical logos. Don't say Barnet council never consults its residents on anything important!

Now they appear to have cooked up some scheme with TfL to turn part of the Green Walk into a shared cycle and pedestrian path and local campaigners, Friends of Windsor Open Space (FoWOS), who helped to win the money for the scheme, are protesting. What they say sounds reasonable to me.

[Barnet's] Greenspaces Manager then entered into an arrangement with TfL to turn most of the walk into a joint walk/cycle path. “As TfL came waving a cheque for £250,000 it’s easy to see the temptation”, says FoWOS chairman Dennis Pepper, “but not the decision to renege on voters. It is quite clear what people voted for and it wasn’t to have cyclists on the walk.”

FoWOS approached Pam Wharfe, Interim Director of Environment, who came up with the ingenious solution that it is all right if cycling is permitted so long as it’s not promoted. Not as far as walkers are concerned it isn’t.

Brian Coleman, Barnet’s controversial councillor for the Environment, signed off the agreement with the GLA even though it incorporated cycling alongside walking....

Dennis Pepper points out that Cllr Coleman will be asking for votes if he stands for re-election to the London Assembly next year. “Will he expect to take his place if he secures the most votes, or will he be happy for officers to arrange for someone else to do so if they think this would benefit more residents?”

FoWOS say they are not anti-bike, just that Dollis Valley Green Walk is... a walk, not a cyclepath, and it should stay that way. I'm not anti-bike either, but it is nice to have some places that are just kept for walking.

And what of that competition to choose the new logo for the refurbished Green Walk? None of them had a cycle in it...