Desperate Tories

Out of Touch and Ill-informed

"Extract from the recent Tory election leaflet".
The Tory candidate in Battle ward thinks there will be a
cycle and pedestrian bridge built over the railway lines, what a joker.

In a desperate and badly disguised attempt to gain credibility and votes the Tory candidate in Battle ward is claiming responsibility for sorting out Cow Lane bridges.

Sadly, he, or rather those who write his publicity, didn’t do their research thoroughly enough. Anyone who has been the slightest bit interested or involved in getting the bridges sorted out would know that the foot/cycle bridge is not part of the final solution.

In 2008 Network Rail wanted to drop the northern bridge to ground level and construct a foot/cycle bridge over the railway lines. This would have blocked off Cow Lane to traffic and would have made it even harder for pedestrians and cyclists to access Rivermead and beyond. Battle councillors in partnership with Martin Salter MP campaigned against this and insisted both bridges were replaced and that is what is going to happen.

If the Tory candidate or Alok Sharma had taken the time and trouble to look at our councillor reports from 2005/2006 and 2008/2009 plus the spring edition of Into Battle, all of which are freely available to view under councillor reports and Into Battle at:

www.cllrgulkhan.blogspot.com

www.cllrsarahhacker.blogspot.com

www.cllrchrismaskell.wordpress.com

If either of them had been bothered to do any research themselves instead of leaving it to others they could have fully acquainted themselves with the work Labour councillors, under a Labour council, have been doing over the last 7 years to get the bridges sorted out. They would also have discovered that a project of this size and complexity takes longer than a year to conceive, plan, secure funding and reach the advanced stage the whole scheme has reached today. 

Incidentally the last Labour Government granted the funding for the work being carried out by Network Rail. However, Reading people will remember that for a short time the project was under threat from Coalition cuts. Thankfully the work had reached an advanced stage which meant cutting the project would have wasted the millions already spent and would have seriously impacted on the efficiency of our national rail network.