EU citizens begin petition for 20mph urban speed limit

Lambeth council has resisted calls for a 20mph speed limit across the borough which would help traffic flow, reduce pollution and of course reduce collisions and fatalities. This is particularly important as road deaths in Lambeth have trebled.

However there is now an initiative at EU level. Gathering 1 million petition signatures will require serious consideration of this by the EU Commission. 55,000 UK names are needed.

The EU Parliament has already endorsed its Road Safety Strategy that "strongly recommends 20mph limits for urban roads where no separate facilities exist for cyclists"

The safety campaign 20's Plenty for Us, are using the new European Citizen's Initiative (ECI) "30kmh - making streets liveable!" to ask that 20mph/30kmh speed limits become the norm for all urban and residential roads. The EU Commission must
consider this initiative seriously when 1 million signatures are submitted.

20's Plenty for Us are on a pan-European "citizen's committee" who have one year to gain a minimum of 1m signatures (on paper or on-line) across at least 7 EU countries, including a minimum of 54,750 in the UK.

8.3m people in some of the UK's most iconic cities already live in communities adopting this policy. 30mph limits are deemed inappropriate for most of their roads. With 170 local campaign branches around the UK, 20's Plenty for Us works with many community, health, transport and safety organisations across the private, public and voluntary sectors.

This comes in time for Road Safety Week 2012 - 19-26 November with its Go20 campaign in support of 20mph limits. Our aim is for 1m signatures by Road Safety Week 2013.

You can find out more by visiting the www.30kmh.eu website.

Lambeth Labour's deception in Brixton Hill

The Labour party in Lambeth appear to be concerned about the rise in the Green vote in the borough.

Their latest leaflet distributed to Brixton Hill ward - championing Labour's freeze on council tax which is hurting the most vulnerable in Lambeth - contains a graph of the results from the London Mayoral elections in 2012. Although the Greens came second in the ward on both the party list and with the individual assembly candidate (you can see the full results here), the graph produced by Labour mysteriously fails to show the Green vote at all.

Not only were the Greens in second place in Brixton Hill in the London Assembly election, but the Greens in Brixton Hill have been in second place in council elections there for years (see the results for 2002 and for 2006 on the Lambeth Council website).

This does beg the question why Lambeth Labour are suddenly trying to deceive local people.

Labour has a habit of running dirty tricks campaigns against the Greens when it is feeling threatened - as it did against a Green councillor in Herne Hill. They have recently been embarrassed and forced into a u-turn on the Living Wage after their initial opposition to the proposal by a Green councillor that it be extended to subcontractors. (It was a Green Lambeth councillor who originally tabled the motion to get Lambeth to become a Living Wage employer). The Greens have also recently been active in the ward itself. It is not surprising therefore that Labour is scared.

Brixton Hill is of course leader of Lambeth council Steve Reed’s Ward. Council tax payers are still paying him £50,000 a year, while he campaigns full time in Croydon to win a Parliamentary seat, with the support of Lambeth Labour. If Reed does get elected to Parliament, there will be a by-election in Brixton Hill, and voters will get a chance to express how they feel about all this.