A Challenge - EUR 44 per head for cycling?

With some amount of fanfare, the Scottish Government has published their Cycle Action Plan for Scotland 2013 which reviews and updates their 2010 plan.

They describe their target of 10% journeys by cycle as ambitious.  It is ambitious given the paucity of the plan.  But it's not ambitious by international standards. 

So what are the Scottish Government actually proposing?
One measure you can't escape from is cash.

Netherlands EUR 487m/ year - so EUR 30 per head of population each year


London is spending £104m/year - some EUR 21 per head of population each year.

The Peterhead Cycle Demostration project has a total budget of £185,000 - a one off-spend of EUR 13 per head over the three year life of the project.

So what is the Scottish Government proposing in their nice new shiny CyclingAction Plan?  Well it looks like there will be less than £47m over three years (part of the monies are for walking and safer streets) so that EUR 55m.  Sound greats - until you remember that between a population of 5.3m and over 3 years so that comes down to a miserly EUR 3.4 per head of population each year.

If the Government are serious about cycling, perhaps a good place to start would be allocating the 10% modal share aim in terms of the transport budget to cycling.    Transport Scotland has £2,000m a year.  So £200m a year for cycling from that budget.  Ok that's then  EUR 44 per head - but have a lot of catching up to do to get the type of infrastucture that people enjoy in the Netherlands and Denmark.

Winter cycling in Copenhagen






Bees

I have just come to the end of my first 48 hours as a beekeeper.  I kindly acquired a hive full - 11 frames with bees and stores across the frames.

I have thought about keeping bees for many years but was prompted to get myself organised due to the reports of declining populations.  I think this is probably a combination of factors: varroa mites, loss of habitat, pesticides, ... and public policy doesn't work well in multi-faceted situations.

We need robust research through 2014 and 2014 when the neonicotinoid temporary ban is in place and in my view, serious preventative action to ensure that no more bee diseases are imported.

Bees are simply too important to risk.

For those interested, here is a short video of my bees bringing in pollen today.  I'm hoping they have found sources other than the oil seed rape (which will have been treated with neonicotinoids) to the north - and as the pollen seems to be cream/pale yellow, I reckon they may have.


(and yes, the entrance block is ill-fitting and the pollen is in 'pollen baskets', specially adapted hairs on the back legs of the bees)