Birmingham city council knows how to waste public money. The Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) scheme installed in Kings Heath is supposed to reduce the number of cars on the road, although in reality all it has done is funnel them onto fewer roads, increasing congestion and raising the emissions levels on those roads. The Council says the project will make roads safer, quieter and better for neighbours ‘to stop and have a chat in’.

Somehow Kings Heath and York Road are going to be transformed into Venice Beach for Councillor Trickett & Co. to hang about and share stories from their cycling holidays over a Venti Soy Quadruple Shot Latte with No Foam.

This scheme is an unmitigated disaster for working class people:

• Congestion will increase on main roads
• Emissions will increase on main roads
• Working class people who rely on the bus will be sat in more traffic for longer
• Emergency services will take longer to get to you

Lisa Trickett likes spending your money

Asked by the Birmingham Mail about the LTN Councillor Trickett said: “It’s not a cheap way of making policy.”[i]

Lisa Trickett knows how to waste public money. In 2017 she was responsible for a war waged on binmen. For a saving of £300,000 a year Lisa Trickett and the Labour Party spent more than £6million in an attack on bin men causing a strike that lasted months.

Now Trickett and our Labour council are chasing cash being offered by the government to those who introduce these ludicrous measures. To get their hands on the cash they had to act fast, which is why they dumped these giant wooden boxes in Kings Heath:

“Birmingham City Council said it would have to implement them before the end of August to secure government funds having been allocated £1 million from the first tranche of the Department of Transport’s (DfT) Emergency Active Travel Fund, with match-funding bringing the total to £1.6 million.[ii]

That’s Labour party consultation for you. Not a cheap way of working for the taxpayer, but pretty lucrative for the Council.

What is the solution?

If the problem is congestion then the solution is better public transport. Instead of making bus travel for all children FREE in the city, as it is for children in London, Labour pushed for changes to the law to make it a criminal offence if children jump the bus and skip the fare. Despite the fact our city is gripped by poverty, we have high levels of child poverty and we bury more paupers than any other British city, this Labour council won’t make it affordable for working class people to move about by public transport![iii]

For an additional £7m (out of a budget exceeding £300m) we could have had FREE bus travel for all children in the West Midlands. Instead, millions are to be pocketed by the council for its overpaid executives and councillors once a trifle is spent dumping wooden boxes in our streets.

What can you do?

Three simple steps:

1. Join the campaign and fight back against the Venti Soy Quadruple Shot Latte with No Foam brigade masquerading as a Labour party
2. Sack Lisa Trickett at the next election by voting Birmingham Worker
3. Join the local Kings Heath section of the Birmingham Workers Party

CHANGE.ORG https://www.change.org/p/birmingham-city-council-abolish-the-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-ltn-street-barriers-in-kings-heath

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[i] https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/kings-heath-low-traffic-neighbourhood-19053050

[ii] https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/kings-heath-high-street-road-18684171

[iii] https://birminghamworker.org/2019/01/11/birmingham-spends-more-burying-the-poor-than-any-other-city/