To be concerned about this....Oxford **You tube channel from Katie Hopkins** Title edited by MNHQ

[TarasHarp55]

fb.watch/hOHYM5ObFs/

Should we be concerned about this? It all seems very "Hunger Games", or is it a good thing? Would like to hear opinions. I don't normally like KH but she does seem to have a point.

If you want to see a great example of a car free city with integrated, cheap and efficient public transport, go to Zurich. Oxford's public transport is a joke by comparison.

For the occasional shopper /visitor, what is being implemented may make shopping in the centre more pleasant as less busy. However, it doesn't make working or living in Oxford better for many, in particular vulnerable groups who haven't yet got blue badges.

I have a friend who has multiple disabilities and despite being in a wheelchair, they tried to take her blue badge away recently. So, not having a blue badge doesn't mean you're not vulnerable. In fact those most vulnerable may well not have one.

I hope they will monitor the effect on pollution. I bet they don't though.

Yeah of course there is!!
(sarcasm)

I think it's going to be interesting what happens with this. Many sectors are struggling to find sufficient workers particularly care work, hospitality, retail etc. People relying on the income from these jobs alone can't afford central city rental or house/flat prices. There aren't enough teenagers wanting to do these jobs from the rich families living centrally. Making it ever more expensive and harder to commute into the city for those who can't afford to live there isn't going to end well.

One of my colleagues was telling me that his daughter (late teens) currently works in a restaurant in Oxford and he regularly ends up driving in to the city to pick her up when the bus doesn't arrive because otherwise she's waiting at 10.30pm for ages in the dark at the bus stop. He was telling me how worried he is for her safety and how he's started offering to pick her up rather than her getting the bus anyway, because it's such a regular occurrence. So this is at least a 7 mile round trip that is only happening because of how unreliable the bus is and a (legitimate) safety concern about a teen girl hanging around in the dark for ages as a result of no show buses. He is also trying to encourage her to find a restaurant that needs staff that is closer (out of the city) so he can be a taxi service with less inconvenience. I shouldn't think it will be difficult, everywhere's advertising for staff.

That is the basics. What about entertainment? Support groups? Friends?
Do they all have to be within 15 minutes too?

Xeno you will see your friends through a VR machine and be happy! (sarcasm, for posters blissfully unaware of all this).

This.

The 15 min city idea sounds great, if it is planned that way. Trying to impose it on an existing city without huge amounts of additional funding just simply isn't going to work.

When I lived abroad, I lived in a rapidly expanding town. They were building doctor surgeries, schools, dentists offices, grocery stores, affordable housing (for the employees of the schools, doctors surgeries etc) as fast as they could as well as sorting out the infrastructure (roads, drainage, sewerage, public transport etc). Here they're just saying 'you can't drive on these certain routes and have to go massively out of your way on the ring road / a34 instead' and doing sod all else.

As usual in the UK it will affect the poorest and most vulnerable the most and make their already very difficult lives even more difficult whilst the richer residents of Oxford get what they want.

The only plus is that jobs in retail, care etc have so many vacancies I think those who originally moved into commuting communities to do jobs in Oxford will find it easy to find jobs closer to home and just simply stop going into the city at all.

If you live in a rich area you wander down to the neighbourhood bistro. If you live in a poor area you are supposed to stick to Mcdonalds I guess.

The point being it was very busy, yet very few cars clogging up the city.

@NewPapaGuinea But this new scheme has not been put into practice yet. So you are commenting on how it is normally.

I'm not particularly for or against the LTNs - I would say it's for those living and working in East Oxford to have the biggest say on this - but I believe business owners opinions are mixed with some saying they've seen a huge drop in business.

THIS proposal I think is madness.

Just implementing punitive measures and doing nothing else at all to address the multitude of travel / environmental issues is just insane. It will likely result in increased pollution on the ring road and I'm betting more pollution overall.

They are currently doing this slowly where I live. No consulting residents when their streets get closed off to through traffic, closing the park and ride. Closing the best leisure centre and changing it into a 'sports centre', which will be the 5th one in town because we now have to have one in every area. They are chucking money at parks that have had new play equipment in the last 5-10 years and have been well kept and replacing it with what is quite frankly, plastic-y tat that neither kids or parents are attracted to.

In principle, it seems good for a healthy population walking and being active, less pollution but we're being boxed off in areas that don't have the correct infrastructure to start with, high levels of crime, etc. Maybe they should look at improving those things first before there's a MH crisis in these areas and no money left to tackle it.

Just to say that this is a trial, there will be a consultation running alongside it all the time.

I hope so, one of the local parks which has an association was blindsided with the changing of play equipment (I'm assuming so most of the parks have the same type of equipment), they were told last minute a few weeks before when it was in the paper. I could guarantee anyone who used it regularly would have disagreed with the intended plans as it had some quite special features.

No one has consulted any of us residents here about our roads being permanently changed to no through roads. It's radio silence from the council really.

Residents should be consulted but it doesn't always happen or happen effectively.

Residents should be consulted but it doesn't always happen or happen effectively.

This. I responded to the consultation online but it was a bit of a hassle, not exactly easy and user friendly and my elderly parents can't use the internet (in part because their eyesight is now too bad) and to my knowledge there haven't been non-online consultations. We've had nothing in the post at least and although we're not technically in Oxford, the changes could potentially affect us a lot, particularly in terms of how DH gets to work and the stress, physical burden and inconvenience of doing so given how shit and utterly unreliable the public transport is.

In fact those who are disabled enough to find walking or taking public transport difficult but not quite disabled enough to qualify for a blue badge may also be those who find the 'consultation' difficult to access.

I'd like to know what they've done to ensure these vulnerable groups are consulted.

Probably nothing. Consultation all seems to be online now meaning the most vulnerable are not consulted but rich people easily are.

Once again I'll repeat, it came up on my facebook feed so I then googled it. I didn't look at her as a source of information.