Now is (still) the winter of our discontent

There are lots of things I like about winter.  For a start, it has Christmas and New Year's Eve and My Birthday.  It's the time of presents and cosy open fires, snuggly jumpers and hot chocolate, bright winter sunshine and snowflakes that stay on your nose and eyelashes.  However, I think that it's entirely possible to have too much of a good thing, especially when there are quite a lot of bad things that go with the good.

Let's start with those eyelash-freezing snowflakes of doom.  We're still getting them.  It's freaking April!  Now, I'm not a fair weather cyclist - I've cycled in the freezing cold, in pelting rain and sweltering heat during my incredibly short cycling career, but I draw the line at snow.  Cycling in snow, even if it isn't settling, is silly.

One of the problems with cycling in snow is visibility - all those innocent-looking little white floaty bits do rather get in the way of looking where you're going, which leads to the next wintry thing that feeds my discontent - the state of the roads, and the potholes you can't see in the snow.  When I started cycling around this time last year, there were a fair few potholes on the roads, but you'd probably think of them more as mild indentations or slight undulations.  We had just had a winter, there had been some snow (although not as much as this year) and none of the five councils and authorities whose roads I habitually travel on was shouting particularly loudly about having loads of cash to spare.  This year, however, it's a different story.  There's still no money, we had loads of snow (and are still having it) and, this year, the roads are in a terrible state of disrepair.  Months and months of sporadic bad weather coupled with the lack of budget for repairs have turned London's thoroughfares into a disaster for cyclists, an accident (or probably several) waiting to happen.

In my little corner of London, Harringay (in the borough of Haringey - not at all confusing), we seem to have a pothole champion in Councillor Karen Alexander, who spent more than ought to have been necessary of her Easter break cycling up and down the roads to find all the more significant potholes in the hope that some of a mystery pothole-eliminating budget that has suddenly appeared on Haringey Council's books might be spent on fixing the roads in our neck of the woods.  While neighbouring Islington has spent the winter sprucing up a whole load of roads around Newington Green, Haringey seems to have been in hibernation, with the road surfaces getting worse and worse, not at all helped by the liberal sprinkling of unnecessary speed bumps throughout the area, with dents appearing where lorries over the weight limit and speeding cars land when they go down the hills.  The whole thing is made even worse by the Council's predilection for making shonky repairs which only last five minutes, rather than doing the job properly.

One of the most unpopular (with everyone but cyclists, and even with some cyclists) things that Boris Johnson has done as Mayor of London is to propose and, to a certain extent, implement a number of measures intended to increase the number of cyclists in London, to offer more cycling opportunities for everyone and to improve the cycling experience for bike riders.  There is nothing particularly wrong with the vast majority of his schemes - some are a bit half-arsed, some a bit pricey and others just a bit too shiny without any substance, but he has raised the profile of cycling in London (undoubtedly helped along by Sir Wiggo, the Olympics and the Paralympics) and encouraged more and more people to take it up as a method of transport, a leisure activity and/or a sport.  However, I can't help but feel that his unbounded enthusiasm, his endearing nonsensical foppish speeches and his (our) cash might be better placed in improving the roads for everyone.  This might see cyclists feeling the greatest benefit of all road-users (no more potholes, better sign-posting, clearer cycle lanes (and the elimination of dangerous or unnecessary ones)), while pedestrians and drivers have the double bonus of the better roads and the safer, happier cyclists that come with them.

If I were Boris (which, thank the Lord, I'm not), I would be redirecting whatever cash I'm spending on cycling initiatives so that it's spent on improving and maintaining the capital's roads to an acceptable standard, at least as a starting point, but I fear that BoJo is trying to unicycle backwards while blindfold before he's ready to take his stabilisers off his Chopper.  Obviously, it's not going to do anything to stop some cyclists from jumping lights or riding on pavements, but I fear it might take James' idea of installing neck height trip wires to accompany red traffic lights to do anything about that sort of thing.