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Quite an interesting little thought provoker - look where people drive in slush to see which areas of the carriageway are "redundant". And therefore - in my head - which bits that we can consider recovering for pedestrians.


It is a piece from Robert Weetman, who is a designer of streets:
https://robertweetman.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/redundant-carriageway/

That's a very car-centric attitude. Why should everyone else have to accommodate the motorist? How about looking at where people want to walk and cycle, and then designing the roads so as to allow them to do do?

Ban all cars !!

Not at all. But designing our roads to make it easy to get around with or without a car makes good sense. Better that than regarding anything other than car transport as an afterthought.

Yes but whining about roads designed many years ago when priorities were different achieves nothing.

I'm expressing an opinion, not "whining". Also, your point makes no sense. It is perfectly possible to change our priorities with regard to future road development. My home city of Birmingham is an example. The city centre is a much more pleasant place than it was in the 1980s since prioritisation shifted back towards pedestrians.

Quite an interesting little thought provoker - look where people drive in slush to see which areas of the carriageway are "redundant". And therefore - in my head - which bits that we can consider recovering for pedestrians.


It is a piece from Robert Weetman, who is a designer of streets:
https://robertweetman.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/redundant-carriageway/

That's a very car-centric attitude. Why should everyone else have to accommodate the motorist? How about looking at where people want to walk and cycle, and then designing the roads so as to allow them to do do?

Fine - when you pay as much as motorists for the privelege.

At them moment, your walkers and cyclists are freeloading. Shall we say £250 a year for a cycling licence?

That seems a bit steep. I'd go for scaling the charge to the 4th power of the weight in accordance with the damage caused to the road surface.

We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal.
We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't.
We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't.
We all do.

The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.

But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.

So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.

A difficulty is that one person's indisputable fact is someone else's disputable opinion. Has immigration fallen, to give your example? Almost certainly yes, according to official statistics, but someone who dislikes it will often say that the statistics are simply wrong, ignore the small boats and overstays and so on. Get into a detailed discussion and you often end up with mutual irritation rather than either conceding the point. I've been involved in politics all my adult life, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that anyone in personal discussion has said "Hmm, yes, you're right and I was wrong". Obviously that could be because I'm always wrong, but more plausibly people don't like changing positions. More common is shifting from "Hmm, I can see there are two sides to it", which may be genuine or just politeness.

What tends to work is hearing the same counter-arguments in different contexts over a long period. So one can contribute to the process, but shouldn't expect instant conversion (not least as one may be at least partly wrong oneself).

I agree with you.

MAGA supporters in the US really believed Trump would make their lives better and "drain the swamp".
In spite of all the evidence that he has failed them, most still support Trump. Their emotions are totally in charge.

Our rational mind is the Rider sitting on top of the Elephant (our emotions) and thinks it is the master directing the journey.
But the Rider's control is an illusion.
Because the Elephant is so much bigger, whenever the two disagree on which way to go, the Elephant wins every time. The Rider's actual job isn't to master the Elephant; instead, the Rider acts like a public relations consultant or a lawyer. Once the Elephant stubbornly marches in a certain direction, the Rider quickly invents clever, rational-sounding justifications to explain why going that way was a "rational choice" all along.

Credit to Jonathan Haidt for the metaphor.

I suppose one might argue that the acceleration of human civilisation over the last few centuries is down to some of the Riders managing to achieve some degree of control over their Elephants through the development of the scientific method. However, this control could be pretty tenuous and may easily be lost again. Those Elephants can be very stubborn.

Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.

Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)

Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.

The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.

I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.

The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.

Classic correlation not causation.

Or post hoc ergo propter hoc as we say around here.

In Dundee?

Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.

Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)

Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.

The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.

I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.

The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.

Classic correlation not causation.

Or post hoc ergo propter hoc as we say around here.

In Dundee?

In Dundee they say pehst hehc prehpter hehc.

Sounds like it was some Rugger player with a rep who attacked the England cricketers.

https://x.com/nhoultcricket/status/2064096366154924041?s=61

So as I understand it there is a 12pm curfew during matches. Or is it when on England duty? Point is the game was won and the next match not until a week wednesday, so I have no issue with them being out celebrating.

There is a different issue around Stokes. He has been magnificent as a player. I will never forget 2019, nor the double in SA. He is a superb leader of the team. He hasn't always got it right. We drew the home ashes last time but ought to have won 3-1 or 4-0 but he wanted to gamble on a declaration in the first test, and one or two Aussies had fallen that night he would have lauded.

But at 35 I think he is coming to the end. He is very fit, but his batting is struggling (all time average still 35 mind). He is the 4th bowler. Is he worth it in the team for his influence? Maybe. He will hate not scoring runs and contributing.

I don’t know the ins and outs but he’s getting a lot of condemnation and blame for the end of James Anderson’s career as an England player. As a consequence there are quite a few knives out.

It wasn't just his choice though. The selectors etc wanted a set of tall, pacy, fast bowlers. Anderson was the worlds best bowler in English conditions, but no-one would claim he was most suited to Australian pitches with little swing. So the plans were laid to get a cohort of the 'right' bowlers ready for the Ashes down under, and that meant not picking Anderson for games when he might have felt he should have played. Sport is tough and when your time is over its over.

Indeed.

I guess when you’ve been at the top so long it’s hard to accept it’s over.

I got a troll flag last night for genuinely defending Badenoch.

I won't be doing that again.

Totally deserved.

Pete is one of the finest posters on this board. Giving him a troll flag is pathetic.

Should have been a permanent ban.

What do you mean? I answer your every query. I reiterate. Feargal Sharkey's RX7 was an FB!

I'm being whimsical. Enjoy it.

Most unlike you. Did you fall out of bed the wrong side?

Taken a punt on a €XX,XXX engine from the Netherlands and went light headed.

Not excitement at the new EV land rovers ?

Not my sort of thing because I prefer my vehicles not to have a random number generator for an electrical system. They will sell fucking loads though.

PB Brains Trust.

Can I do a straw poll?

I'm just putting in an objection to a planning proposal. Along the way I have discovered that Erewash Borough Council do not publish objections they receive on their website; to see them you have to make a trip during opening hours to the Council Office, or perhaps put in an FOI - which I think would not deliver a response within the consultation period.

My own Council in Ashfield have published them with names and addresses redacted for about 20 years.

What do other places do?

(My interest is piqued because this makes it more difficult for disabled people to engage, as they are lumped with driving to the Council office - but 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, or taking a taxi / Uber trip each way, which costs up to £20, and disabled people are more often in poverty. Or they can find another method, such as a long mobility aid trip, which up here is dodgy because of road conditions).

All documents relevent to a planning application should be made available for public inspection during said process. I don't believe there is a legal requirement to put them on a website.

If someone writes a letter, for example, a copy of the letter with personal details redacted, should be available for anyone to look at during the consultation.

There are lots of documents (reports, surveys and the like) which are an integral part of the process and these are nowadays routinely digital but there's no assumption everyone has digital access so they need to be available in alternative formats.