The state government is moving to take more control of traffic and transport planning in Sydney's CBD, as it ramps up a campaign against the city's bike lanes.

But the city's Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, says she is unsure how the new arrangements will be any different to what already exists.

The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, this morning announced he would legislate for a joint state government-council committee to take control of transport and traffic planning in the central city.

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Mr O'Farrell said the Central Sydney Traffic and Transport Committee would be chaired by the director-general of Transport for NSW, Les Wielinga, and include an extra six members, three nominated by the government and three by the council.

The premier said Sydney's transport issues were too important to be left to the council.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/ofarrell-slams-brakes-on-moores-cycling-city-vision-20120307-1ujn7.html#ixzz1oPT0VDy2

• Encourage cycling, don't punish it

Nearly 30 cyclists have been fined this morning for running red lights or not wearing helmets during a large police crackdown near the Pyrmont Bridge, renewing debate about riding in the city.

About a dozen police, some on bicycles, were targeting cyclists near Union and Murray Streets between 7.30 and 9.30a

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/a-bridge-too-fast-police-target--unsafe--cyclists--but-not-for-speeding-20120307-1uj6c.html#ixzz1oPduRMFv

 

O'Farrell's unfairly using his powers, Moore or less

So Barry O'Farrell and his Coalition colleagues spend 16 years in opposition and they now tell the voters of NSW that a priority for their first year in office is to legislate Clover Moore out of one of her elected positions (''Moore blasts O'Farrell for push to get her out of bearpit'', March 14).

I've never been much a fan of the upper house in NSW but it has an opportunity to show its worth. It must defend democracy and reject Barry O'Farrell's attempt to override the voters of Sydney.

Darryl Toohey Darlinghurst

If Barry O'Farrell is genuine in his assertion that his legislation to prohibit local councillors from also holding positions in State Parliament is not aimed at getting rid of Clover Moore, there is an easy and equitable way to prove it.

As has been done with many items of legislation at both state and federal level already, add a ''grandfather clause''. Exempt all current state MPs but apply it to all future parliamentarians. There is absolutely no honest need to forcibly oust popular and democratically elected MPs such as Clover Moore, Greg Piper and others.

Trevor and Anne Johnson Redfern

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/overwhelming-evidence-now-lets-face-the-facts-20120314-1v3q2.html#ixzz1pB3I401P
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We knew that, way before Bazza came along with the wrecking ball to destroy democracy... See after the morning dump...

 

Simultaneously, it fed into the stigma that cycling was dangerous. It must be if you have to wear a helmet. “A helmet saved my life,” is the favourite (albeit unscientific) claim of many cyclists who’ve had a spill. It makes us feel we’re in control of our fate. That a lump of foam can shield us against a one-tonne car.

But even if there were fewer cyclists, at least their rates of injury were lowered, yes? Well, researchers and scientists have been duking this out ever since. Curious – if mandatory helmet laws were such a lifesaving idea, you’d think the benefits would be easily quantifiable. It appears they’re not.

And I’ve never heard a European say: “You lucky country. I wish we had your helmet laws.” Mostly, they are bemused or aghast.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/fitness/blogs/on-your-bike/helmet-crackdown-makes-no-sense-20120322-1vl5v.html#ixzz1ppFqzjt8

Inspector Metcalfe also said cyclists should speak to police about any planning problems, including bike lanes, because officers can pass on suggestions to local councils or set up traffic operations.

"I'd like to know what's going on, if there's something we can do."

And while using social media and the internet to report crimes can be effective, Inspector Metcalfe said people should always get advice from police before they post something online because it can threaten the legal process.

"There are rules of evidence that we need to abide by," he said.

Mr Moore said he rarely experiences problems with drivers in Newtown.

"Not at all. 99 per cent of drivers re really polite and they know how to share the road.

"A lot of drivers are also cyclists and vice versa."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/who-are-sydneys-anticyclist-traffic-twins-20120327-1vvb2.html#ixzz1qHtffzlU

see toon at top...

A bill banning State MP's from serving on local councils while also holding a seat in state parliament has passed the NSW Upper House, angering the Sydney Lord Mayor and Member for Sydney Clover Moore.

Clover Moore says she's not the only one angry she's been prevented from holding both her Lord Mayor and State MP positions, she says her constituents are also angry.

"They elected me just a year ago to represent them in the seat of Sydney... they'll be denied their representative for the next three years.

"The people of NSW who've had the right since 1856 to choose who they want to represent them in their council and in their parliament... that right will be denied them into the future. I think it's outrageoues frankly," she says.

Clover Moore has been Lord Mayor since 2004 and an Independent MP since 1988. She says working in both roles is the best outcome for Sydney because it gives her access to government ministers.

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/04/04/3470838.htm?site=sydney&WT.svl=local0

 

A final attempt by Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore to kill a government bill that would ban her from also serving in Parliament has failed.

Governor Marie Bashir has declined a request from Cr Moore, who is also the MP for Sydney, not to give assent to a bill passed in Parliament last week that prevents MPs from also serving in local government.

Cr Moore wrote to the Governor last Thursday in a final attempt to prevent the bill from becoming law.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/moore-fails-in-bid-for-dual-roles-20120413-1wyie.html#ixzz1rv9VKaGs

Marie Bashir is a great governor and of all people she unfortunately had no choice but to sign what she would have to know is a bad law... Barrie O'Farrell and his band of liberals (conservatives pricks) are bastards... the world should know...

 

THE Liberal Party has pledged to cut City of Sydney council rates by 10 per cent as candidates for the job of Sydney's lord mayor step up their appeals to voters ahead of the September 8 local government elections.

The federal Member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, yesterday joined the lord mayoral candidate Edward Mandla for the announcement - a centrepiece of the party's pitch to wrest control of Sydney from the independent Clover Moore, who is running for her third term in the top job.
''It will appeal to every ratepayer, every resident, every business in the City of Sydney,'' Mr Turnbull said.
''The city is building up an enormous cash hoard, it's gigantic. It can well afford to cut the rates by 10 per cent.''

Another group campaigning to topple Cr Moore - Living Sydney, led by Angela Vithoulkas - wants to make bicycle registration compulsory for all cyclists aged over 13.
It also wants to set up a system of compulsory third party personal injury insurance, similar to green slip insurance for cars, to apply to all cyclists on the city's roads.
Ms Vithoulkas said she would use a ''citizens' jury'' of randomly selected residents and ratepayers to determine whether the cycleways should be pulled out.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/liberals-would-cut-sydney-rates-by-10-says-turnbull-20120817-24dxg.html#ixzz23rh8GcVH

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What does this mean?... It means Clover has done a good job for the city and has some money to do more... It means everyone related to the Liberals (conservatives) wants a slice of the pie or frittle the crust.... and puncture your bicycle tyres at the same time... Pulling the cycleways out means that the money spent on cycleways would have been in vain and that the removal of the cycleways would cost as much as placing them there in the first place... Get it: NOTHING FOR twice the cost of doing something... IDIOTS. Liberal IDIOTS!!!!....

And nothing against Mrs Vithoulkas, a small business advocate, who in all her modestly touted full website et al, (why not) supports many charities (how very generous) — except that of your right that allows you to cycle sydney without being run over...

If you own a small bicycle shop, you're not in her "advocacy" focus for small business...

 

see toon at top... read articles below it...

 

 

 

What is the sound of a dinosaur? History does not record. Increasingly, however, the sad, lost roarings of the O'Farrell government make plausible mimicry. Attacking cycleways, in contradiction even of its own roads experts, just sounds more prehistoric than ever.
At one level, it's a beware-the-ministerial-route-to-work story. One-time planning minister Bob Carr 's chauffeured commute through the redbrick walk-ups of Maroubra is why, a decade on, every Sydney apartment building looks like an inbred egg crate.
Now, it seems, the regular trip down College Street by the Roads Minister, Duncan Gay, might finally do for the cycle lanes.
But even saurian brains can't be that small. Bikes must occasionally leave bike lanes, just as buses occasionally leave bus lanes. And although rudeness and stupidity are as common among cyclists as others, a few random failures do not a catastrophe make.

Plus, they're popular where it counts. If city voters didn't support bike lanes they wouldn't keep increasing the majority of the administration that created them. (Yes, more on this in a couple of weeks.)
So is the state just playing to a different audience? Is all this cycle-rage chest-beating really aimed at the talkback sector, out beyond the bike line?
My taxi-driver test supports this interpretation. Stoked by shock-jock demagoguery, car-on-bike hatred rages on - as though cycling is some guilty pleasure indulged in only by some inner-city gluten-free intellectual elite. As though roads were for cars, not people. As though, out in the burbs, real men drive SUVs. Stuff health. Stuff cost. Certainly, stuff the environment.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/bike-haters-parked-in-the-jurassic-20120822-24mni.html#ixzz24JbPU4yo

 

 

 

It's 8pm in Alexandria, and a weary-looking Clover Moore sits - again - before a small crowd of those voters engaged or enraged enough to spend their evening talking local government.
Next to her is Edward Mandla, a software entrepreneur and the Liberal candidate for mayor. Mandla described Moore's bearing at a similar ''meet the candidates'' event for City of Sydney council in 2008 as ''regal''.
But not tonight. Tonight, the only adjective the Liberal candidate is using - and using often - is "nutty".

''Clover Moore's been treating the ratepayers and businesses as a money tree for nutty schemes,'' he says. ''She's lost her way, strangling this tree with random spending.''

As he speaks, Moore stares at the ceiling, her mouth a grim line by the word's third airing, at which point she blanches, reddens - and then her eyes appear to moisten.
Council politics can be as nasty as any and, as the pointy end of the local government electoral cycle starts to draw blood, Moore's critics say that after two terms as mayor she is autocratic, bored and out of ideas.
But the diminutive - and divisive - figure, with her trademark spiked hair, dog collars and slash of red lipstick, has cast such a shadow over Sydney in her three decades in politics that the electoral dialogue is dominated by ideas she has championed - bike paths, urban infill development, sustainability and the night-time economy.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/pedalling-hard-in-the-battle-for-sydney-20120907-25jn2.html#ixzz25pMOdaPi

The claptrap from the rite wingnutterry is a giant bulldust heap, but then this is politics.... see toon at top...
Bazza O'Feral is promoting cars everywhere... Planning more expressway to soon become long cark parks since their destination would become fuller sooner.... The Transport Blueprint for Sydney is, I have decided, a disgrace... It's full of frenzied arrows and colours and going nowhere near the real nitty-gritty of what works and does not... The vision is not for "better" but more of the same in triplicate... Let's not forget that peak oil is not a fantasy and this is why there is a frenzy in trying to find new field to exploit in the Arctic as global warming is opening new sea floor to exploit and accelerate global warming... By 2030, the export Saudi pipeline will be shut. The Saudis will start to IMPORT oil then, as their demand will outpace the possibly diminishing production...

 

 

 

 

An emotional Clover Moore has lashed out at "odious" laws forcing her out of state politics and criticised a "cowardly and bullying media" during her final speech to the NSW Parliament.
Vocal supporters of the popular Sydney MP packed the public gallery of the state's lower house, wearing Clover Moore T-shirts and waving placards emblazoned with her image.
They gave her a standing ovation when she entered the lower house, cheered repeatedly during her 20-minute valedictory speech and giving her another ovation when she finished.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/moore-slams-get-clover--laws-20120920-268mn.html#ixzz26z9zVjtg

 

 

 

The NSW government has shrugged off criticism that changes to City of Sydney businesses' voting rights are grossly undemocratic, and has backed a move to grant businesses double the voting power of residents.  

There had been speculation the government would seek substantial changes to a controversial Shooters and Fishers Party bill that forces businesses to vote in the council's elections and gives businesses two votes.

But the government proposed only minor amendments on Tuesday, and the two-vote rule has been retained.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/baird-government-ignores-disquiet-on-city-of-sydney-business-voting-rights-20140916-10hrhw.html#ixzz3DT1PzVu4

Here, democracy is being thrashed for political gain. It's akin to corruption. WE SHOULD OPPOSE THIS SORT OF UNDEMOCRATIC CRAP with the loudest voice possible. Kick Baird in the balls. a least 10 of his Liberal (CONservative) members of parliament have been shown being corrupt by ICAC.

 

Clover is hated by the Liberals... nothing new. See toon at top...