St peters Ward Councillors had another excellent day today on our stall at the Angel Canal Festival. We met lots of people, many of them local residents, and spent time talking about the Canal, Labour policy for the next election, the hidden underground theatre on the corner of Essex Road and Islington Green, and trying not to get drawn into talking about Syria, amongst other things. We were supported by Nick, Felix, David, Sue and Ian, all of whom worked hard throughout the day to make it a success.
Our petition this year was to make the canal and towpath safer. We are lobbying the Canal and River Trust (CaRT) to introduce cycle calming measures on the towpath that force speeding cyclists to slow down, to enforce their license conditions against the small minority of boaters that cause a nuisance, either with noisy smelly generators, or by holding noisy late-night parties and events that disturb residents and other boaters, and to keep the bins emptied. The response to the petition was very positive, and we collected over 100 signatures.
We had a visit from the chief executive of the CaRT, and we had an interesting and useful discussion with him about ways in which we can work together between the Council, the Police and the Trust to try and resolve some of the towpath issues, but we also stressed to them that residents want to see a real difference in the levels of nuisance and disturbance that they experience from the minority of disruptive boaters, and other disruptive persons that are currently being attracted to the canal.
We were also visited by the Angel of the festival, who blessed us (in a rather modern way), and who within the same blessing also damned the Tories, for which we were most grateful.
