Wanted: Marshals for Ealing Skyride, 18 July

http://www.ealingtoday.co.uk/default.asp?section=info&page=evskyride007.htm

Religious leaders unhappy about arrangements

   This Sunday sees a mass cycle ride in Ealing  with many roads closed to traffic. Thousands are expected to attend as  they did in Hounslow last year but the arrangements for Ealing's SkyRide  have been criticised.
   Local residents and religious leaders have  complained to the Mayor that there has not been enough consultation  leading up to Sunday's event. We reprint an open letter from Reverend Graham Weeks from the    International Presbyterian Church, Ealing.

Dear Mr. Mayor,

   I write concerning the Mayor of London’s Skyride  in Ealing this coming Sunday.
   I cycled regularly in London from my  undergraduate days in Bloomsbury in the Sixties until the Nineties when I  was a Conservative councilor in this borough for eight years. Commuting  by cycle was healthier, cheaper and usually quicker than by motorised  public or private transport.
   But I never expected roads to be closed for me,  parking suspended, buses diverted and other people inconvenienced so  that I could cycle with fewer safety concerns.
   I have in the past few days spent several hours  ascertaining how the congregation of our church will be able to get to  our meeting place off The Park. Public information has been very sparse  for those of us who live outside the Skyride area but wish to travel  into it to worship. I have had to search the websites of Skyride, Ealing  Council and Transport for London to find information, which has  sometimes been unclear and contradictory. I have had to phone the town  hall so that a disabled member can drive to church and park there. Hers  will be the only car in the car park. The rest of the motoring  congregation will have to find spaces on streets crammed with  displacement parking.
   There has been to my knowledge no consideration  given neither to the needs of worshipping Christians nor to those  businesses operating on Sunday. I hope It has not escaped your notice  that there is Sunday trading these days as well as Christian worship.  Tell me Mr. Mayor, would you close roads around a mosque on a Friday  without telling the Imam? So why this secularist and anti-business  approach to this coming Sunday in Ealing?
   You, sir, will not I trust have forgotten how  your predecessor in the office of mayor lost many votes in this borough  with his unlamented failed plan for trams along the Uxbridge Road. Do  you really think that Skyride will be a vote winner? 
   Yours faithfully,
   The Reverend Graham Weeks
    (Chairman of the Borough of Ealing Environment Committee  1992-93.)
   P.S. I will be informing Sky that if they  continue to inconvenience me in this way they will lose my custom like  you will lose my vote.