Thomas Cranmer lives on in Oxford

Archbishop Cranmer met his end on this day in 1556. This is not a religious blog – see Cranmer (No 1 in the Top 10 Religious Blogs in the UK) if that is what you want – but if, like me, you had a proper C of E education with chapel every Sunday and have spent most of your life in Oxford, you find him the most tangible of historical figures.

For one thing, you can stand exactly where he died in agony, the spot marked by a brass cross in the middle of Broad Street. You can’t say that of anyone else (yes all right, we know exactly where Anne Boleyn and Dick Turpin died, but Cranmer’s end was right here in the street). Not far away, in the University Church, is the pillar with a cleft cut in it where hung the stage on which he stood during his trial.

All work and no brain in Oxford City centre

It is obviously right that people can still make public protests about things they feel strongly about. A Saturday is a good time to arrange a march through Oxford City centre. Saturday’s march went down Parks Road, obviously causing some congestion there.

It is right, too, that Oxfordshire County Council should choose a Saturday to resurface St Giles. When St Giles is blocked, all the buses and other traffic are routed down Parks Road.

Modest inconvenience all round caused by either of these events. All you have to ensure, of course, is that you don’t let both happen at once. It would be obvious incompetence to force the traffic down Parks Road on the same day as a protest march is blocking up Parks Road. Wouldn’t it? I mean, you would not need much of a brain to realise what chaos would result. Would you?

Signs obscuring the sights of Oxford

The photograph shows the Clarendon Building in Oxford, a fine stone building erected in 1711-1713 to the designs of Nicholas Hawksmoor. Hawksmoor was responsible for the towers of All Souls, for the front to Westminster Abbey, for some beautiful East London churches and for finishing off Blenheim Palace.

It is beautiful. It is important for itself, for its architect and for the man after whom it was named, Lord Clarendon, whose History of the Great Rebellion partly paid for it.

To the thick oaf in charge of signage and street furniture in central Oxford , it is just a building, a pile of old stone. He has split the view of its facade with a tall pole adorned with big bright signs.The really obtrusive one, the big blue cycle route sign pointing to the left, is new.

People (and street works) cause accidents

As the mob continues to bay for street works at the King’s Arms, we look at the real cause of urban accidents – people and thoughtless tinkering with road layouts.

We are still no clearer as to the cause of the accident at the King’s Arms junction in central Oxford in which a student cyclist was dragged under the wheels of a dust-cart and killed. The arguments continue as to what (if anything) should be done at the junction.

We have the usual cries of “something must be done”, generally from people whose ignorance of the circumstances matches their lack of logic and their inability to relate an effect to its cause. They would have major works done here with lots of signs, lines, barriers and lights. See the Oxford Inciter post A cyclist dies at the lights – no action required for an critique of this approach.

More on Oxford’s cycling “blackspots”

I commented adversely yesterday on the casual use by the student newspaper Cherwell of the word “blackspot” to describe the junction where a student was killed under a lorry last week.

By chance, I today came across a Cherwell article of 27 January 2006 headed “Risk factors for student cyclists” which was about a report by Oxford City Council on cycling hazards in the city. A number of “blackspots” were highlighted. They did not include the King’s Arms junction.

Black Spot for Student Journalists

I wrote yesterday (A cyclist dies at the lights – no action required) about the student killed at the end of Broad Street, commenting on how reason gets drowned out by the squeals of those who claim to have predicted and warned of this very thing, by demands that something must be done, and by the clatter of coins as highways officers and councillors rush to spend money so that they can be seen to be doing something.

Cherwell, the student magazine headlines the story with “Student killed at accident blackspot”. I am not sure how many casualties there are to one blackspot – more than a few are needed, I would say, before a stretch of road gets elevated to the status of “blackspot”, or we would need a new screamer word for somewhere really dangerous.

A cyclist dies at the lights – no action required

The usual response to an accident is that the authorities are to blame, that they were “warned” about just this risk and that something – anything – must be done urgently to make sure that this “death-trap”, this “accident waiting to happen”, is fixed. Clichés apart, that may have been true of the recent drowning at Medley, but it is not true at the King’s Arms cross-roads.

On 18 April a student cyclist died under the wheels of a rubbish truck at the cross-roads where Broad Street, Parks Road, Holywell Street and Catte Street meet by the Kings Arms. One gets rather cynical about the encomia poured over those who die young, but they seem to be justified in this case.

The facts and the result of the police investigation are not yet known. Like the talents and qualities of the deceased they are not relevant to the comments which have filled the on-line pages of the Oxford Mail. These fall into three broad categories:

Nonsense at the lights?

P.S. When I next passed this way, the notice described in this post had gone. I do not necessarily claim that Oxfordshire Highways scuttled out and removed it as soon as I published the photograph – it may well have gone between my photographing it and writing about it. The notice had stood there uselessly for at least two years, so this post remains as a record and an encouragement to readers to report similar nonsense elsewhere.

Can anyone help me as to the purpose of this sign? It stands at the south end of Parks Road, outside Wadham at the beginning of one of those silly little cycle lanes which start and stop at random round Oxford.