I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
So, 10 years is time for Ella Kissi-Debrah to be conceived, born and die of air pollution, so it depends on the value of THAT much difference.
Thank God common sense seems to be breaking slowly through on Net Zero, ULEZ and other green crap anyway. I can see this being the big popular revolt of the 2020s, like leaving the EU was for the 2010s.
Half of Europe is on fire and the other half is flooded according to the news, so maybe green crap is not quite dea.d.
Tells you everything about how crap the news is and sfs about weather and climate
Are you saying that the whole of Rhodes catches fire every year and reporting it is just a passing fad? Are you not amazed by the photograph here, in peacetime Europe?
'Holidaymaker Emma Marsh said: 'We are currently in Rhodes - we landed today only to be told that our hotel has burnt down. No one from the airline informed us before we flew.";
LOL, but I imagine the tour operators won't refund until the actual hotel booked has caught fire, so you just board the plane and hope a different part of Rhodes is where the problem is. I have made a rule, no advance bookings in the med June July August, but I don't have term dates to stick to
I simply don't travel in the school holidays and don't go to the Med in midsummer as it is already too bloody hot. I had a pleasant time in the Baltics and Finland in June and I am next going away in September
I fear the north Norwegian riviera still has some heavy lifting to do, however…
This season has really pinpointed the dilemma we have for holidays in a warming Europe. There are very few short haul places now where you aren’t at a 50% risk of being in unpleasantly hot conditions, but can still be confident of good sunny warm weather.
Northern Europe is still too unreliable. Southern Europe is a furnace more often than not. Central Europe now alternates between furnace and wet.
North West Spain and Northern Portugal, Coastal Charente, and the high alpine regions of the Med and Spain are just about all that’s left.
I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
It is amazing how this issues has completely sidelined Starmer and Davey's successes, and confirmed just how weak Starmer is as a leader when he is demanding Khan changes the scheme rather than defending it
For all those claiming Starmer is a great leader then this last few days has demonstrated he is not a leader who makes hard decisions, but someone who just wants to be liked
Unfortunately for Starmer politics isn't like that
It hasn’t really. You won’t find anyone in the North East discussing the ULEZ, other than sados like me.
Agreed but the media are London centric and this story is all over it
There is a lesson in there somewhere but if it is anything other than "Fuck you" from the government, I'm damned if I can find it.
You presumably made a profit and they made a loss. But they will have paid tens of millions of VAT, Employers NI, rates, duties, licence fees, etc etc as well as being an unpaid tax collector of many millions more through PAYE, VAT and employees NI.
This is not a new problem but it is a growing one. Profits are so easily manipulated for large companies that they are perhaps not the correct answer as to how they contribute to the society in which they extract their gains. Its tricky though, especially when we want these large companies to invest a lot more into our economy rather than somewhere else.
I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
So, 10 years is time for Ella Kissi-Debrah to be conceived, born and die of air pollution, so it depends on the value of THAT much difference.
I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
So, 10 years is time for Ella Kissi-Debrah to be conceived, born and die of air pollution, so it depends on the value of THAT much difference.
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
So, 10 years is time for Ella Kissi-Debrah to be conceived, born and die of air pollution, so it depends on the value of THAT much difference.
Off topic, a little piece of interesting social commentary here, which touches if passingly on a few topical social and political issues, as well as being the counter-reaction to viewcode’s pointed-but not-without-truth post above:
Leaving aside the fact that I had to get the twelve foot ladder out to read it - Unherd has a paywall now? You have to pay to read it??? - rarely have I read an article so designed to make me get the trebuchet and burning pitch out from the cache. God, can't these people just get proper jobs?
I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
It is amazing how this issues has completely sidelined Starmer and Davey's successes, and confirmed just how weak Starmer is as a leader when he is demanding Khan changes the scheme rather than defending it
For all those claiming Starmer is a great leader then this last few days has demonstrated he is not a leader who makes hard decisions, but someone who just wants to be liked
Unfortunately for Starmer politics isn't like that
Who are these people claiming that Starmer is a great leader? For most of us his not being a Tory and not being Corbyn is enough to seal the deal.
Davey couldn't be clearer - the opposition is the Conservative Party. I do not expect any formal deals nor will one be needed. Labour will be able to rely on LibDem, Green, Alliance, even SNP votes once in government.
They won't follow a whip or vote for everything. But the agenda is very clear - keep the Tories out of power for a generation. So when some idiots suggest that a seat going Tory > LD doesn't help Labour, they are deluded. Same with Con > SNP.
But the clearer he is about this, the harder attracting con-LD switchers becomes.
Yes, but it does fit the "I'm not sure about the other parties but it's time to get the Tories out" mood. I would like Labour to have an exciting, clear agenda, but I concede that being boringly economically responsible as the first priority is doimg a good job in electoral terms. See the latest evidence (taken Wed-Fri):
Kubler Ross was a psychiatrist specialising in palliative care who produced a model to be applied on death. Not on changes to KPI's at an insurance firm.
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
I get that, but it's easy to see why poorer members of society then start to believe in conspiracy theories. The rich will always be able to drive or fly whenever they want, but those at the lower end of the wage scale can't afford to.
So, three years until every petrol or diesel car becomes non-exempt.
They wouldn’t have spend the hundreds of millions on the surveillance system, for a scheme that was only going to generate money for three years.
ULEZ is targeted on the NOx aspect of air quality, and I think that will be the measure.
The Conservative Govt set target for 2028, which I think they keep characterising as "legally binding", is driving this and requires a 40-50% fall in NOx on even the outermost Boroughs over 2020 figures.
It also seems a neat way of raising a bit of revenue from those who visit London but avoid the residence taxes !
I don't see why showman's vehicles, or 40+ year old vehicles, should be exempt though.
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
While road pricing isn't an inherently a bad idea in itself road pricing as proposed by the DfT civil servants I would have little confidence in. Back in around 2001 I worked at a company that did a lot of road stuff for the Dft. We saw a draft proposal for road charging that came out of the Dft. The general consensus in the office was that if implemented most of us would no longer be able to afford to work there anymore. For example under there proposed pricing model my daily 33 mile each way commute to the office would have weighed in at £30 a day. I was not even the most expensive journey by far.
Public transport was a non starter for that commute before anyone says it.
There is a lesson in there somewhere but if it is anything other than "Fuck you" from the government, I'm damned if I can find it.
You presumably made a profit and they made a loss. But they will have paid tens of millions of VAT, Employers NI, rates, duties, licence fees, etc etc as well as being an unpaid tax collector of many millions more through PAYE, VAT and employees NI.
This is not a new problem but it is a growing one. Profits are so easily manipulated for large companies that they are perhaps not the correct answer as to how they contribute to the society in which they extract their gains. Its tricky though, especially when we want these large companies to invest a lot more into our economy rather than somewhere else.
Morrisons wasn't making a loss before it was acquired. It was bought for a 60% premium and its net debt more than doubled 3.2 -7.5 billion.
Thousands of young European waiters, baristas and au pairs could be allowed to come to the UK for two years under plans to plug gaps in the British workforce.
The Home Office has begun discussions with some EU countries after being asked by Downing Street to agree more youth mobility schemes to help improve the economy without raising record levels of net migration.
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, and Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, have proposed deals to a number of their European counterparts in recent months.
2023: Conservative party: "Stop illegal migration! Stop the boats!"
2024: Conservative party: "Make migration legal! Bring in more boats!"
As good a reason as any to vote out the current government. They are addicted to cheap labour. Hence the nonsense about big pay increases being damaging for the economy.
If you have inflation at 4% (where it will be at year end) and pay increasing at 7%, that is excellent news for the typical worker. If you have inflation at 3%, but pay increasing at 1%, that is very bad news for the typical worker.
Off topic, a little piece of interesting social commentary here, which touches if passingly on a few topical social and political issues, as well as being the counter-reaction to viewcode’s pointed-but not-without-truth post above:
Leaving aside the fact that I had to get the twelve foot ladder out to read it - Unherd has a paywall now? You have to pay to read it??? - rarely have I read an article so designed to make me get the trebuchet and burning pitch out from the cache. God, can't these people just get proper jobs?
The author Louis Elton describes themself as "a theological anthropologist, strategy consultant and conceptual artist". There was a time when the cretinous overprivileged children of the idle rich had the decency to become restaurant critics and hide in the pages of the Sunday supplements where they could do no real harm. Now they're theological bloody anthropologists. Have they no shame?
I don't see why showman's vehicles, or 40+ year old vehicles, should be exempt though.
There are so few of them that they might as well exempt them, I suppose. There must be vanishingly few people who are daily driving a pre-1983 car in London.
Off topic, a little piece of interesting social commentary here, which touches if passingly on a few topical social and political issues, as well as being the counter-reaction to viewcode’s pointed-but not-without-truth post above:
Leaving aside the fact that I had to get the twelve foot ladder out to read it - Unherd has a paywall now? You have to pay to read it??? - rarely have I read an article so designed to make me get the trebuchet and burning pitch out from the cache. God, can't these people just get proper jobs?
The author Louis Elton describes themself as "a theological anthropologist, strategy consultant and conceptual artist". There was a time when the cretinous overprivileged children of the idle rich had the decency to become restaurant critics and hide in the pages of the Sunday supplements where they could do no real harm. Now they're theological bloody anthropologists. Have they no shame?
Is theological anthropologist just a synonym for tosser?
Today’s Sunday Rawnsley, arriving via a bright but drizzly morning on my island near the Arctic Circle:
Most people assume [Starmer] will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge.
..both these byelections demonstrated, as did the local elections in May, that explicit collaboration between the opposition parties isn’t required to get anti-Tory voters to mobilise behind the anti-Tory candidate who is best-placed to win.
Sir Keir had to scrap his plans to do a victory lap in west London while the prime minister hurried to the seat to proclaim that this proved that a Tory defeat at the general election was “not a done deal”. It has given the Conservatives a scrap of hope and left Labour with some crucial lessons to learn.
Tory campaign literature suggested that everyone in Uxbridge, not the minority with the dirtiest vehicles, would be paying £12.50 a day to drive. “We had people with a Tesla in the driveway saying it was outrageous that they would have to pay,” reports one Labour campaigner. Labour flailed around when it should have crafted a robust response. Rather than take on the Tory attack, the Labour candidate suggested that the Ulez expansion should be halted, a timorous response which essentially endorsed his opponent’s position.
“Their byelection machine was not so smart,” says a Lib Dem campaigner. “When the Tories come at you, you have to punch back and punch hard. They could have fought the Ulez thing.”
There’s another cause for some Labour disquiet. We know that public alienation from the Conservatives runs deep, but there is still not that much enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s party. Between here and election day, Labour has to convince people that it will be both a responsible government and one that delivers change. It is a tricky balancing act, but if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Keir doesn't know how to fight. Politics is winning the argument. You have to engage with people you don't like and who don't like you, and get them (or the people watching) to change their mind and vote for you. It is hard and not many people can do it, but it's part of the job. If he can't do it he can subcontract the job to a minister or party spokesman or something, but it has to be done.
Kubler Ross was a psychiatrist specialising in palliative care who produced a model to be applied on death. Not on changes to KPI's at an insurance firm.
But I think he was dead wrong about death, and exactly right about when you make a shit investment or reverse your car into a gatepost. Perhaps Americans are different because they all believe in God, but I wouldn't know who to bargain *with* after a death.
Thousands of young European waiters, baristas and au pairs could be allowed to come to the UK for two years under plans to plug gaps in the British workforce.
The Home Office has begun discussions with some EU countries after being asked by Downing Street to agree more youth mobility schemes to help improve the economy without raising record levels of net migration.
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, and Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, have proposed deals to a number of their European counterparts in recent months.
The bigger picture being to drive the wages of British workers down even further to enable a growing population of pensioners with paid-of mortgages and index-linked pensions to get cheaper lattes? That bigger picture? You do realise that other Brits have a function other than continually paying taxes to keep you alive?
I recognise the point of supporting our old people thru their twilight years, but there is such a thing as taking the piss, sir.
That's not very nice for a Sunday morning but as far as any scheme to help growth is concerned it should be supported
It is a bit odd, though.
Stopping businesses from importing low paid workers and the resulting increases in pay at the bottom was one of the few plausible Brexit benefits the government has been able to point to.
Cheap childcare for wealthy couples returning to the office via Starbucks. It's not bus drivers and shelf-stackers who have been demanding progress on au pairs and baristas.
For me, the most surprising thing is to see the word "shameful" applied by Mr Eagles to a Conservative policy decision. Not so much the word, as the person using it - for until recently our Mr Eagles was almost a part of the inner circle of top Conservative politicians.
The decision to scrap the voting system for elected mayors and crime commissioners is not only shameful, but also short-sighted. Many people felt uncomfortable about giving very considerable - almost dictatorial - powers to these people in the first place.
This concern was eased only by the fact that the voting system - effectively the Alternative Vote - ensured that would-be dictators did not take power when supported by only 20% of the electorate. Now the Conservatives have unilaterally swept that away.
Would people have gone along with the introduction of elected mayors, if they had known that within a few years they were going to be elected by the failed winner-grab-all FPTP voting system?
£150m for ULEZ infrastructure. Greater London population around 9.5m. £15 per Londoner for better air quality?
Am I missing something here? That sounds like fantastic value for money.
God Tories are such gigantic whoppers.
Sure for the vast majority ULEZ is a positive change. But its a small non vote changing positive.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
Generally speaking, I suppose that the test of an effective politician is the ability to get things that are beneficial for the people as a whole done in the face of opposition from those who lose out.
Off topic, a little piece of interesting social commentary here, which touches if passingly on a few topical social and political issues, as well as being the counter-reaction to viewcode’s pointed-but not-without-truth post above:
Leaving aside the fact that I had to get the twelve foot ladder out to read it - Unherd has a paywall now? You have to pay to read it??? - rarely have I read an article so designed to make me get the trebuchet and burning pitch out from the cache. God, can't these people just get proper jobs?
The author Louis Elton describes themself as "a theological anthropologist, strategy consultant and conceptual artist". There was a time when the cretinous overprivileged children of the idle rich had the decency to become restaurant critics and hide in the pages of the Sunday supplements where they could do no real harm. Now they're theological bloody anthropologists. Have they no shame?
Is theological anthropologist just a synonym for tosser?
I don't think they have the energy to w**k themselves off, tbh. I think they subcontract it to the House Fluffer whilst they draw a yurt.
Thinking about what I do if not going to London on the train, which I couldn't do with her whilst mum was still alive, since my EMML mainline railway station is still not accessible 30 years after the barrow crossing was removed, and to cross from Platform 1 to Platform 2 requires a 1 hr out-and-back railway journey to use the lift at Chesterfield or Nottingham.
I used to park up somewhere in Edgware, or at Highgate Station car park (which still seems to be advertising £3.00 on a Saturday or £7.00 in the week without a time period), and get the tube in when visiting the Smoke.
More recently it has tended to be park near Luton station then a 30 minute rail journey in, though ParkAtMyHouse is an option.
It's also tempting to park on an MP's driveway, since the laws they passed in a fit of pique around 2011 mean there is nothing they can do to enforce.
£150m for ULEZ infrastructure. Greater London population around 9.5m. £15 per Londoner for better air quality?
Am I missing something here? That sounds like fantastic value for money.
God Tories are such gigantic whoppers.
Sure for the vast majority ULEZ is a positive change. But its a small non vote changing positive.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
Generally speaking, I suppose that the test of an effective politician is the ability to get things that are beneficial for the people as a whole done in the face of opposition from those who lose out.
Something that’s much easier to do when the losers are in the top 10% by income, rather than the skilled working class and lower-middle-class JAMs who can’t afford to replace their old car at the moment.
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
While road pricing isn't an inherently a bad idea in itself road pricing as proposed by the DfT civil servants I would have little confidence in. Back in around 2001 I worked at a company that did a lot of road stuff for the Dft. We saw a draft proposal for road charging that came out of the Dft. The general consensus in the office was that if implemented most of us would no longer be able to afford to work there anymore. For example under there proposed pricing model my daily 33 mile each way commute to the office would have weighed in at £30 a day. I was not even the most expensive journey by far.
Public transport was a non starter for that commute before anyone says it.
The whole point of road pricing is to improve throughput. Congested roads have less throughput, mean people's journeys are much longer, and are disasterous for air quality.
If the journey you take isn't busy, then there shouldn't be charging. If it is busy, then there should be charging.
Thank God common sense seems to be breaking slowly through on Net Zero, ULEZ and other green crap anyway. I can see this being the big popular revolt of the 2020s, like leaving the EU was for the 2010s.
Half of Europe is on fire and the other half is flooded according to the news, so maybe green crap is not quite dea.d.
Tells you everything about how crap the news is and sfs about weather and climate
Are you saying that the whole of Rhodes catches fire every year and reporting it is just a passing fad? Are you not amazed by the photograph here, in peacetime Europe?
'Holidaymaker Emma Marsh said: 'We are currently in Rhodes - we landed today only to be told that our hotel has burnt down. No one from the airline informed us before we flew.";
LOL, but I imagine the tour operators won't refund until the actual hotel booked has caught fire, so you just board the plane and hope a different part of Rhodes is where the problem is. I have made a rule, no advance bookings in the med June July August, but I don't have term dates to stick to
I simply don't travel in the school holidays and don't go to the Med in midsummer as it is already too bloody hot. I had a pleasant time in the Baltics and Finland in June and I am next going away in September
I fear the north Norwegian riviera still has some heavy lifting to do, however…
This season has really pinpointed the dilemma we have for holidays in a warming Europe. There are very few short haul places now where you aren’t at a 50% risk of being in unpleasantly hot conditions, but can still be confident of good sunny warm weather.
Northern Europe is still too unreliable. Southern Europe is a furnace more often than not. Central Europe now alternates between furnace and wet.
North West Spain and Northern Portugal, Coastal Charente, and the high alpine regions of the Med and Spain are just about all that’s left.
I can recommend Ukraine? Specifically, Lviv, where it is warm bright and sunny, with a 3% chance of missiles, and a light, pleasant, probably-not-radioactive breeze
I once led a boarding party on a North Sea trawler as a pink cheeked Sub Lt. It seemed like the most squalid and uncomfortable way possible to go to sea with more than half the crew being more than half drunk at 1pm.
Good morning
As someone closely bound to the NE Scotland fishing community, and having been to sea in a seine net boat skippered by my nieces grandfather, you do the fishermen a great disservice in your comment
For 5 days we battled the North Sea with high seas hauling the net from a very low stern gunwale with the waves high above us and then way below us. It was incredibly hard work and dangerous and I did not see any alcohol the whole time we were away
Fishermen deserve great respect, and having experienced the pain of family members drowned at sea and their bodies lost in the deep, I will always jump to the defence of these brave men
I would just comment that fishermen have always been anti EU and there are increased opportunities from this year
I've been in Mallaig on a Friday and Saturday night in its fishing heyday, when I'd go home the next morning on the train with a big parcel of kippers in the luggage rack, and there were more fisherfolk fu as pairtans* staggering across the road like the crab migrations on Easter Island. Which is fair enough when they've been working like slaves all week in the Minch. And many fisherfolk won't touch alcohol at all anyway, being sober and God-fearing folk.
But more than half the crew were more than half drunk at sea? DA doesn't say whether this was the morning after and they'd just stood out from harbour at dawn for the fishing grounds - in which case it is just about comprehensible, but not great. And if it was a normal day at sea it's a Darwin award application on a par, in terms of numbers all at once, with the legendary postal voting returns from Labour-controlled local authority dementia homes.
Off topic, a little piece of interesting social commentary here, which touches if passingly on a few topical social and political issues, as well as being the counter-reaction to viewcode’s pointed-but not-without-truth post above:
Leaving aside the fact that I had to get the twelve foot ladder out to read it - Unherd has a paywall now? You have to pay to read it??? - rarely have I read an article so designed to make me get the trebuchet and burning pitch out from the cache. God, can't these people just get proper jobs?
Unherd let me read the whole thing, or at least scroll to the bottom as my eyes had already glazed over. If there is a paywall, maybe it is implemented with a limited number of free articles.
Kubler Ross was a psychiatrist specialising in palliative care who produced a model to be applied on death. Not on changes to KPI's at an insurance firm.
But I think he was dead wrong about death, and exactly right about when you make a shit investment or reverse your car into a gatepost. Perhaps Americans are different because they all believe in God, but I wouldn't know who to bargain *with* after a death.
Kubler Ross was a psychiatrist specialising in palliative care who produced a model to be applied on death. Not on changes to KPI's at an insurance firm.
But I think he was dead wrong about death, and exactly right about when you make a shit investment or reverse your car into a gatepost. Perhaps Americans are different because they all believe in God, but I wouldn't know who to bargain *with* after a death.
I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
It is amazing how this issues has completely sidelined Starmer and Davey's successes, and confirmed just how weak Starmer is as a leader when he is demanding Khan changes the scheme rather than defending it
For all those claiming Starmer is a great leader then this last few days has demonstrated he is not a leader who makes hard decisions, but someone who just wants to be liked
Unfortunately for Starmer politics isn't like that
It hasn’t really. You won’t find anyone in the North East discussing the ULEZ, other than sados like me.
I tend to agree. As regards the political big picture Uxbridge/Ulez is a storm in a teacup, a flea on the lawn, a pimple on the bum. The astonishing Selby result, otoh, is a hard steer. It'll be very difficult for Labour to blow the GE from here.
There is a lesson in there somewhere but if it is anything other than "Fuck you" from the government, I'm damned if I can find it.
You presumably made a profit and they made a loss. But they will have paid tens of millions of VAT, Employers NI, rates, duties, licence fees, etc etc as well as being an unpaid tax collector of many millions more through PAYE, VAT and employees NI.
This is not a new problem but it is a growing one. Profits are so easily manipulated for large companies that they are perhaps not the correct answer as to how they contribute to the society in which they extract their gains. Its tricky though, especially when we want these large companies to invest a lot more into our economy rather than somewhere else.
They dumped debt on the company to take out a dividend.
I also pay NI, VAT (both as a business and personally), council tax, and income tax.
My point is that big companies manipulate the system to avoid paying tax that fools like me and my business don't or can't. That system is not frankly fair and that sense of government and big business saying "fuck you" to ordinary voters who try to do the right thing is, if left unchecked, deeply corrosive of our society.
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
While road pricing isn't an inherently a bad idea in itself road pricing as proposed by the DfT civil servants I would have little confidence in. Back in around 2001 I worked at a company that did a lot of road stuff for the Dft. We saw a draft proposal for road charging that came out of the Dft. The general consensus in the office was that if implemented most of us would no longer be able to afford to work there anymore. For example under there proposed pricing model my daily 33 mile each way commute to the office would have weighed in at £30 a day. I was not even the most expensive journey by far.
Public transport was a non starter for that commute before anyone says it.
The whole point of road pricing is to improve throughput. Congested roads have less throughput, mean people's journeys are much longer, and are disasterous for air quality.
If the journey you take isn't busy, then there shouldn't be charging. If it is busy, then there should be charging.
It's just surge pricing for roads.
And it should mean we all benefit.
Yes, although if we want to increase throughput, why are we putting 20mph zones anywhere within driving distance of a school? Basically, it's complex, but an honest debate about conflicting aims might be useful.
Off topic, a little piece of interesting social commentary here, which touches if passingly on a few topical social and political issues, as well as being the counter-reaction to viewcode’s pointed-but not-without-truth post above:
Leaving aside the fact that I had to get the twelve foot ladder out to read it - Unherd has a paywall now? You have to pay to read it??? - rarely have I read an article so designed to make me get the trebuchet and burning pitch out from the cache. God, can't these people just get proper jobs?
The author Louis Elton describes themself as "a theological anthropologist, strategy consultant and conceptual artist". There was a time when the cretinous overprivileged children of the idle rich had the decency to become restaurant critics and hide in the pages of the Sunday supplements where they could do no real harm. Now they're theological bloody anthropologists. Have they no shame?
What's wrong? He got it written and published, and paid for (presumably), which is, on sound empirical grounds, no different from, say, Mr Johnson or (soon to be?) Lady Dorries.
Though it does begin ...
'It is a drab Wednesday in April and I am sat naked in a transparent plastic shed. Tucked away in a forest near the sleepy town of Uckfield, a woman starts to hit me in the face with some birch twigs, while another incants tales of Sussex’s dragons. “Beware the dragons of St Leonard’s Forest,” she wails. “They’re not like the winged dragons of Wales. These ones are like serpents, slithering and squirting a deadly and smelly slime that torments the people of Horsham.”'
Today’s Sunday Rawnsley, arriving via a bright but drizzly morning on my island near the Arctic Circle:
Most people assume [Starmer] will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge.
..both these byelections demonstrated, as did the local elections in May, that explicit collaboration between the opposition parties isn’t required to get anti-Tory voters to mobilise behind the anti-Tory candidate who is best-placed to win.
Sir Keir had to scrap his plans to do a victory lap in west London while the prime minister hurried to the seat to proclaim that this proved that a Tory defeat at the general election was “not a done deal”. It has given the Conservatives a scrap of hope and left Labour with some crucial lessons to learn.
Tory campaign literature suggested that everyone in Uxbridge, not the minority with the dirtiest vehicles, would be paying £12.50 a day to drive. “We had people with a Tesla in the driveway saying it was outrageous that they would have to pay,” reports one Labour campaigner. Labour flailed around when it should have crafted a robust response. Rather than take on the Tory attack, the Labour candidate suggested that the Ulez expansion should be halted, a timorous response which essentially endorsed his opponent’s position.
“Their byelection machine was not so smart,” says a Lib Dem campaigner. “When the Tories come at you, you have to punch back and punch hard. They could have fought the Ulez thing.”
There’s another cause for some Labour disquiet. We know that public alienation from the Conservatives runs deep, but there is still not that much enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s party. Between here and election day, Labour has to convince people that it will be both a responsible government and one that delivers change. It is a tricky balancing act, but if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Keir doesn't know how to fight. Politics is winning the argument. You have to engage with people you don't like and who don't like you, and get them (or the people watching) to change their mind and vote for you. It is hard and not many people can do it, but it's part of the job. If he can't do it he can subcontract the job to a minister or party spokesman or something, but it has to be done.
Labour should have delivered a leaflet like this:
1) Yes, it was introduced by the Tories, and apparently you think it's a good thing. That does not mean the extension is automatically a good idea.
2) Why does TfL need a subsidy? Might it be in part due to electoral bribes such as Labour's fare freezes?
3) So you're saying sod-you to more than 10% of the electorate. Well done!
I don't see why showman's vehicles, or 40+ year old vehicles, should be exempt though.
There are so few of them that they might as well exempt them, I suppose. There must be vanishingly few people who are daily driving a pre-1983 car in London.
Perhaps a few more in the next few years?
We're getting to the time (1973) when certain modern cars were being introduced and will be free of various taxes. Resurgence of interest in Austin Landcrabs !
£150m for ULEZ infrastructure. Greater London population around 9.5m. £15 per Londoner for better air quality?
Am I missing something here? That sounds like fantastic value for money.
God Tories are such gigantic whoppers.
Sure for the vast majority ULEZ is a positive change. But its a small non vote changing positive.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
Generally speaking, I suppose that the test of an effective politician is the ability to get things that are beneficial for the people as a whole done in the face of opposition from those who lose out.
And the test for an effective left of centre politician is to do all that whilst making it fiscally progressive......
Today’s Sunday Rawnsley, arriving via a bright but drizzly morning on my island near the Arctic Circle:
Most people assume [Starmer] will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge.
..both these byelections demonstrated, as did the local elections in May, that explicit collaboration between the opposition parties isn’t required to get anti-Tory voters to mobilise behind the anti-Tory candidate who is best-placed to win.
Sir Keir had to scrap his plans to do a victory lap in west London while the prime minister hurried to the seat to proclaim that this proved that a Tory defeat at the general election was “not a done deal”. It has given the Conservatives a scrap of hope and left Labour with some crucial lessons to learn.
Tory campaign literature suggested that everyone in Uxbridge, not the minority with the dirtiest vehicles, would be paying £12.50 a day to drive. “We had people with a Tesla in the driveway saying it was outrageous that they would have to pay,” reports one Labour campaigner. Labour flailed around when it should have crafted a robust response. Rather than take on the Tory attack, the Labour candidate suggested that the Ulez expansion should be halted, a timorous response which essentially endorsed his opponent’s position.
“Their byelection machine was not so smart,” says a Lib Dem campaigner. “When the Tories come at you, you have to punch back and punch hard. They could have fought the Ulez thing.”
There’s another cause for some Labour disquiet. We know that public alienation from the Conservatives runs deep, but there is still not that much enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s party. Between here and election day, Labour has to convince people that it will be both a responsible government and one that delivers change. It is a tricky balancing act, but if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Keir doesn't know how to fight. Politics is winning the argument. You have to engage with people you don't like and who don't like you, and get them (or the people watching) to change their mind and vote for you. It is hard and not many people can do it, but it's part of the job. If he can't do it he can subcontract the job to a minister or party spokesman or something, but it has to be done.
Labour should have delivered a leaflet like this:
1) Yes, it was introduced by the Tories, and apparently you think it's a good thing. That does not mean the extension is automatically a good idea.
2) Why does TfL need a subsidy? Might it be in part due to electoral bribes such as Labour's fare freezes?
3) So you're saying sod-you to more than 10% of the electorate. Well done!
The pandemic and subsequent WFH drop in commuting meant a dramatic loss in income from fares and (less obviously) advertising.
The washing is out in the back garden of Stodge Towers and perhaps the covers are off at Old Trafford? Who knows, who cares?
On ULEZ, as someone living in Inner London, the phrase "what's all the fuss about?" springs readily to mind. Yes, I was initially concerned but once I checked, my car (2009) was compliant as, so I'm led to believe, were 96% of Inner London vehicles.
Expanding the scheme to Outer London was always going to be a different kettle of worms. Notwithstanding higher rates of car ownership, the truth is the necessity for owning a car is much greater for Outer London than for Inner London - I'll be honest, my car is practically an ornament, it gets so little used and I suspect the insurance renewal due any day will prompt another intra-Stodge Towers debate of "do we really need the car?".
The problem seems less to be with car owners who, once they see their own vehicle is compliant, will be content (and if I were Labour, I'd be spreading the word about checking the compliance of your vehicle) than with small businesses and the eponymous "white van man" whose white van is sometimes an old particulate pumping diesel.
As I've argued elsewhere, there's a balance of carrot and stick needed - Mrs Stodge's issue with ULEZ isn't about cleaning the air but that ULEZ is a money-grabbing tax for Khan and City Hall. Add in the vehicles from Surrey (for example) who come in to London and suddenly ULEZ is a lot more. If I lived in Reigate or Woking and drove my old car to Croydon or Surbiton, I'm not sure I'd feel chuffed about paying £12.50 for the privilege.
You already have to pay congestion charge to drive into parts of central London now and for many in Outer London, the drive is to the nearest tube or train station to park up (if you can). ULEZ isn't an issue but it is if it becomes £12.50 to reach the train or tube station it becomes an issue.
Don't get me wrong - there's a good idea in all of this and we can support the ends but the means are the problem. The approach in Inner London has worked - no argument - but simply trying to take the same approach to Outer London won't. This is probably true for most towns and cities.
I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
Had no idea that Boris Johnson and Grant Shapps were socialists.
£150m for ULEZ infrastructure. Greater London population around 9.5m. £15 per Londoner for better air quality?
Am I missing something here? That sounds like fantastic value for money.
God Tories are such gigantic whoppers.
Sure for the vast majority ULEZ is a positive change. But its a small non vote changing positive.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
Generally speaking, I suppose that the test of an effective politician is the ability to get things that are beneficial for the people as a whole done in the face of opposition from those who lose out.
Something that’s much easier to do when the losers are in the top 10% by income, rather than the skilled working class and lower-middle-class JAMs who can’t afford to replace their old car at the moment.
I don't believe this claim.
Car ownership in London is low and skews heavily towards the wealthy. The 'poorer vehicle owner' claim imo is mainly them being used as a human shield, as anti-LTN campaigns use a minority of people with disabilities, ignoring the majority.
Bart did this yesterday when he assumed that 10% of vehicles being non-compliant means that 10% of the population were under attack, and that was in some way outrageous.
In reality, nearly half of London households do not even own a motor vehicle, and that is a third even in the Outer Boroughs. From the latest not very recent figures I have seen (old TFL technical briefing note - I would welcome more recent numbers) 30-40% of cars in London are owned by about 15% of households.
The numbers who will actually drive non-compliant cars in London will be tiny.
I wonder how the skilled working classes will react when they realise they are being sold a pup?
But more than half the crew were more than half drunk at sea? DA doesn't say whether this was the morning after and they'd just stood out from harbour at dawn for the fishing grounds - in which case it is just about comprehensible, but not great.
It was a 25 footer ex Seaham and it was 1pm when we boarded in sea state 4. I have no idea why they were having a piss up but there wasn't much fishing going on. My captain told me to board her after I made the dreadful faux pas of hailing her to ask WTF was going on as she seemed to be on a collision course with our Type 23. If the OOW (me) follows the RN COLREGS then it is IMPOSSIBLE to have a collision so asking for another vessel's intentions by radio is a failure to understand and apply the "Rules of the Road" at sea. My punishment was to lead the boarding party. It was my first and only boarding action so I wore my sword to amuse the other raiders of the party. The head on the trawler was full of shit, puke and parsnips.
Thank God common sense seems to be breaking slowly through on Net Zero, ULEZ and other green crap anyway. I can see this being the big popular revolt of the 2020s, like leaving the EU was for the 2010s.
Half of Europe is on fire and the other half is flooded according to the news, so maybe green crap is not quite dea.d.
Tells you everything about how crap the news is and sfs about weather and climate
Are you saying that the whole of Rhodes catches fire every year and reporting it is just a passing fad? Are you not amazed by the photograph here, in peacetime Europe?
'Holidaymaker Emma Marsh said: 'We are currently in Rhodes - we landed today only to be told that our hotel has burnt down. No one from the airline informed us before we flew.";
LOL, but I imagine the tour operators won't refund until the actual hotel booked has caught fire, so you just board the plane and hope a different part of Rhodes is where the problem is. I have made a rule, no advance bookings in the med June July August, but I don't have term dates to stick to
I simply don't travel in the school holidays and don't go to the Med in midsummer as it is already too bloody hot. I had a pleasant time in the Baltics and Finland in June and I am next going away in September
I fear the north Norwegian riviera still has some heavy lifting to do, however…
This season has really pinpointed the dilemma we have for holidays in a warming Europe. There are very few short haul places now where you aren’t at a 50% risk of being in unpleasantly hot conditions, but can still be confident of good sunny warm weather.
Northern Europe is still too unreliable. Southern Europe is a furnace more often than not. Central Europe now alternates between furnace and wet.
North West Spain and Northern Portugal, Coastal Charente, and the high alpine regions of the Med and Spain are just about all that’s left.
I can recommend Ukraine? Specifically, Lviv, where it is warm bright and sunny, with a 3% chance of missiles, and a light, pleasant, probably-not-radioactive breeze
We sit outside and drink our кава, contentedly
I'm looking forward to the photos of empty bottles of wine (one glass) from the front line in Bakhmut.
Kubler Ross was a psychiatrist specialising in palliative care who produced a model to be applied on death. Not on changes to KPI's at an insurance firm.
But I think he was dead wrong about death, and exactly right about when you make a shit investment or reverse your car into a gatepost. Perhaps Americans are different because they all believe in God, but I wouldn't know who to bargain *with* after a death.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's pronouns are she/her.
Why do you automatically assume that?
Because Kubler-Ross is not some 14th Century mystic but was alive and kicking well past when I was studying psychology. We can (thanks to modern technology) see how she was referred to and how she referred to herself.
There is a lesson in there somewhere but if it is anything other than "Fuck you" from the government, I'm damned if I can find it.
You presumably made a profit and they made a loss. But they will have paid tens of millions of VAT, Employers NI, rates, duties, licence fees, etc etc as well as being an unpaid tax collector of many millions more through PAYE, VAT and employees NI.
This is not a new problem but it is a growing one. Profits are so easily manipulated for large companies that they are perhaps not the correct answer as to how they contribute to the society in which they extract their gains. Its tricky though, especially when we want these large companies to invest a lot more into our economy rather than somewhere else.
They dumped debt on the company to take out a dividend.
I also pay NI, VAT (both as a business and personally), council tax, and income tax.
My point is that big companies manipulate the system to avoid paying tax that fools like me and my business don't or can't. That system is not frankly fair and that sense of government and big business saying "fuck you" to ordinary voters who try to do the right thing is, if left unchecked, deeply corrosive of our society.
One of the most incredulous things this government have done, and there is fierce competition for stupidity, was to have introduced a digital services tax which Amazon were exempt from. Bonkers as conkers.
Today’s Sunday Rawnsley, arriving via a bright but drizzly morning on my island near the Arctic Circle:
Most people assume [Starmer] will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge.
..both these byelections demonstrated, as did the local elections in May, that explicit collaboration between the opposition parties isn’t required to get anti-Tory voters to mobilise behind the anti-Tory candidate who is best-placed to win.
Sir Keir had to scrap his plans to do a victory lap in west London while the prime minister hurried to the seat to proclaim that this proved that a Tory defeat at the general election was “not a done deal”. It has given the Conservatives a scrap of hope and left Labour with some crucial lessons to learn.
Tory campaign literature suggested that everyone in Uxbridge, not the minority with the dirtiest vehicles, would be paying £12.50 a day to drive. “We had people with a Tesla in the driveway saying it was outrageous that they would have to pay,” reports one Labour campaigner. Labour flailed around when it should have crafted a robust response. Rather than take on the Tory attack, the Labour candidate suggested that the Ulez expansion should be halted, a timorous response which essentially endorsed his opponent’s position.
“Their byelection machine was not so smart,” says a Lib Dem campaigner. “When the Tories come at you, you have to punch back and punch hard. They could have fought the Ulez thing.”
There’s another cause for some Labour disquiet. We know that public alienation from the Conservatives runs deep, but there is still not that much enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s party. Between here and election day, Labour has to convince people that it will be both a responsible government and one that delivers change. It is a tricky balancing act, but if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Keir doesn't know how to fight. Politics is winning the argument. You have to engage with people you don't like and who don't like you, and get them (or the people watching) to change their mind and vote for you. It is hard and not many people can do it, but it's part of the job. If he can't do it he can subcontract the job to a minister or party spokesman or something, but it has to be done.
Labour should have delivered a leaflet like this:
1) Yes, it was introduced by the Tories, and apparently you think it's a good thing. That does not mean the extension is automatically a good idea.
2) Why does TfL need a subsidy? Might it be in part due to electoral bribes such as Labour's fare freezes?
3) So you're saying sod-you to more than 10% of the electorate. Well done!
In a political leaflet, you just repeat the key message without hesitation or deviation.
There is a lesson in there somewhere but if it is anything other than "Fuck you" from the government, I'm damned if I can find it.
You presumably made a profit and they made a loss. But they will have paid tens of millions of VAT, Employers NI, rates, duties, licence fees, etc etc as well as being an unpaid tax collector of many millions more through PAYE, VAT and employees NI.
This is not a new problem but it is a growing one. Profits are so easily manipulated for large companies that they are perhaps not the correct answer as to how they contribute to the society in which they extract their gains. Its tricky though, especially when we want these large companies to invest a lot more into our economy rather than somewhere else.
They dumped debt on the company to take out a dividend.
I also pay NI, VAT (both as a business and personally), council tax, and income tax.
My point is that big companies manipulate the system to avoid paying tax that fools like me and my business don't or can't. That system is not frankly fair and that sense of government and big business saying "fuck you" to ordinary voters who try to do the right thing is, if left unchecked, deeply corrosive of our society.
And what happens to the creditors (including, presumably, suppliers and contractors) if and when the firm goes bust?
ULEZ is something I fully support, but....over the next few years, most sane people who regularly have to go through the zone or actually live in the zone will get a ULEZ compliant car. What will London do next to generate the revenue that it loses? As far as I can see, it makes about 200 million quid a year, which is a lot of money to replace .
Two things: 1) the primary driver to expand ULEZ was to fund the hole in TfL as directed by Grant Shapps. With TfL's farebox recovering after COVID there is less of a hole to fill 2) ULEZ will bring more cars into its grip. And before anyone starts to wail and gnash, we are all used to this. Remember EURO 3/4/5/6 compliance law. Same thing. People replace cars as they age for cost and reliability reasons, this is no different
Today’s Sunday Rawnsley, arriving via a bright but drizzly morning on my island near the Arctic Circle:
Most people assume [Starmer] will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge.
..both these byelections demonstrated, as did the local elections in May, that explicit collaboration between the opposition parties isn’t required to get anti-Tory voters to mobilise behind the anti-Tory candidate who is best-placed to win.
Sir Keir had to scrap his plans to do a victory lap in west London while the prime minister hurried to the seat to proclaim that this proved that a Tory defeat at the general election was “not a done deal”. It has given the Conservatives a scrap of hope and left Labour with some crucial lessons to learn.
Tory campaign literature suggested that everyone in Uxbridge, not the minority with the dirtiest vehicles, would be paying £12.50 a day to drive. “We had people with a Tesla in the driveway saying it was outrageous that they would have to pay,” reports one Labour campaigner. Labour flailed around when it should have crafted a robust response. Rather than take on the Tory attack, the Labour candidate suggested that the Ulez expansion should be halted, a timorous response which essentially endorsed his opponent’s position.
“Their byelection machine was not so smart,” says a Lib Dem campaigner. “When the Tories come at you, you have to punch back and punch hard. They could have fought the Ulez thing.”
There’s another cause for some Labour disquiet. We know that public alienation from the Conservatives runs deep, but there is still not that much enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s party. Between here and election day, Labour has to convince people that it will be both a responsible government and one that delivers change. It is a tricky balancing act, but if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Keir doesn't know how to fight. Politics is winning the argument. You have to engage with people you don't like and who don't like you, and get them (or the people watching) to change their mind and vote for you. It is hard and not many people can do it, but it's part of the job. If he can't do it he can subcontract the job to a minister or party spokesman or something, but it has to be done.
Labour should have delivered a leaflet like this:
1) Yes, it was introduced by the Tories, and apparently you think it's a good thing. That does not mean the extension is automatically a good idea.
2) Why does TfL need a subsidy? Might it be in part due to electoral bribes such as Labour's fare freezes?
3) So you're saying sod-you to more than 10% of the electorate. Well done!
The pandemic and subsequent WFH drop in commuting meant a dramatic loss in income from fares and (less obviously) advertising.
That would be a good retort, aside from the fact that TfL's finances have been poor well before Covid. Something that, AIUI, the fair freeze wheeze did not help. They may make an operational profit next year, but costs are much greater than pure 'operational' costs.
Fair freezes are interesting ideas - I'm unsure if anything can be made from Khan's expensive gambit due to Covid intervening. Much more interesting to me is the bus £3 single freeze, which keeps on getting extended. Will it increase bus usage considerably, and will it reduce car journeys?
Today’s Sunday Rawnsley, arriving via a bright but drizzly morning on my island near the Arctic Circle:
Most people assume [Starmer] will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge.
..both these byelections demonstrated, as did the local elections in May, that explicit collaboration between the opposition parties isn’t required to get anti-Tory voters to mobilise behind the anti-Tory candidate who is best-placed to win.
Sir Keir had to scrap his plans to do a victory lap in west London while the prime minister hurried to the seat to proclaim that this proved that a Tory defeat at the general election was “not a done deal”. It has given the Conservatives a scrap of hope and left Labour with some crucial lessons to learn.
Tory campaign literature suggested that everyone in Uxbridge, not the minority with the dirtiest vehicles, would be paying £12.50 a day to drive. “We had people with a Tesla in the driveway saying it was outrageous that they would have to pay,” reports one Labour campaigner. Labour flailed around when it should have crafted a robust response. Rather than take on the Tory attack, the Labour candidate suggested that the Ulez expansion should be halted, a timorous response which essentially endorsed his opponent’s position.
“Their byelection machine was not so smart,” says a Lib Dem campaigner. “When the Tories come at you, you have to punch back and punch hard. They could have fought the Ulez thing.”
There’s another cause for some Labour disquiet. We know that public alienation from the Conservatives runs deep, but there is still not that much enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s party. Between here and election day, Labour has to convince people that it will be both a responsible government and one that delivers change. It is a tricky balancing act, but if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Keir doesn't know how to fight. Politics is winning the argument. You have to engage with people you don't like and who don't like you, and get them (or the people watching) to change their mind and vote for you. It is hard and not many people can do it, but it's part of the job. If he can't do it he can subcontract the job to a minister or party spokesman or something, but it has to be done.
Labour should have delivered a leaflet like this:
1) Yes, it was introduced by the Tories, and apparently you think it's a good thing. That does not mean the extension is automatically a good idea.
2) Why does TfL need a subsidy? Might it be in part due to electoral bribes such as Labour's fare freezes?
3) So you're saying sod-you to more than 10% of the electorate. Well done!
In a political leaflet, you just repeat the key message without hesitation or deviation.
It might just about help with get out of the vote of current supporters. It won't change the mind of anyone switching to Tories because of ULEZ.
£150m for ULEZ infrastructure. Greater London population around 9.5m. £15 per Londoner for better air quality?
Am I missing something here? That sounds like fantastic value for money.
God Tories are such gigantic whoppers.
Sure for the vast majority ULEZ is a positive change. But its a small non vote changing positive.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
Generally speaking, I suppose that the test of an effective politician is the ability to get things that are beneficial for the people as a whole done in the face of opposition from those who lose out.
Something that’s much easier to do when the losers are in the top 10% by income, rather than the skilled working class and lower-middle-class JAMs who can’t afford to replace their old car at the moment.
I don't believe this claim.
Car ownership in London is low and skews heavily towards the wealthy. The 'poorer vehicle owner' claim imo is mainly them being used as a human shield, as anti-LTN campaigns use a minority of people with disabilities, ignoring the majority.
Bart did this yesterday when he assumed that 10% of vehicles being non-compliant means that 10% of the population were under attack, and that was in some way outrageous.
In reality, nearly half of London households do not even own a motor vehicle, and that is a third even in the Outer Boroughs. From the latest not very recent figures I have seen (old TFL technical briefing note - welcome more recent numbers) around 40% of cars in London are owned by about 15% of households.
The numbers who will actually drive non-compliant cars in London will be tiny.
I wonder how the skilled working classes will react when they realise they are being sold a pup?
One problem with LTNs as often implemented is they effectively bar cabs, so there is an effect on the car-less and disabled. They can make life harder for the emergency services too.
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
While road pricing isn't an inherently a bad idea in itself road pricing as proposed by the DfT civil servants I would have little confidence in. Back in around 2001 I worked at a company that did a lot of road stuff for the Dft. We saw a draft proposal for road charging that came out of the Dft. The general consensus in the office was that if implemented most of us would no longer be able to afford to work there anymore. For example under there proposed pricing model my daily 33 mile each way commute to the office would have weighed in at £30 a day. I was not even the most expensive journey by far.
Public transport was a non starter for that commute before anyone says it.
The whole point of road pricing is to improve throughput. Congested roads have less throughput, mean people's journeys are much longer, and are disasterous for air quality.
If the journey you take isn't busy, then there shouldn't be charging. If it is busy, then there should be charging.
It's just surge pricing for roads.
And it should mean we all benefit.
Yes, although if we want to increase throughput, why are we putting 20mph zones anywhere within driving distance of a school? Basically, it's complex, but an honest debate about conflicting aims might be useful.
Road speed doesn't affect throughput much- faster cars have to be further apart and the two factors basically cancel out. Hence the two second rule. (You've still got 30 cars per lane per minute max).
What lowering speeds does do is reduce perceived and actual danger for walkers and cyclists. Probably at the cost of a reduction in engine efficiency, though smooth flow vs stop start is more important there.
I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
It is amazing how this issues has completely sidelined Starmer and Davey's successes, and confirmed just how weak Starmer is as a leader when he is demanding Khan changes the scheme rather than defending it
For all those claiming Starmer is a great leader then this last few days has demonstrated he is not a leader who makes hard decisions, but someone who just wants to be liked
Unfortunately for Starmer politics isn't like that
It hasn’t really. You won’t find anyone in the North East discussing the ULEZ, other than sados like me.
I tend to agree. As regards the political big picture Uxbridge/Ulez is a storm in a teacup, a flea on the lawn, a pimple on the bum. The astonishing Selby result, otoh, is a hard steer. It'll be very difficult for Labour to blow the GE from here.
No consolation that we will replace crap with more crap , no matter which of teh lying useless clowns get in it is a loss for Scotland, as a colony we are lumbered with whatever bag of shit England picks.
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
While road pricing isn't an inherently a bad idea in itself road pricing as proposed by the DfT civil servants I would have little confidence in. Back in around 2001 I worked at a company that did a lot of road stuff for the Dft. We saw a draft proposal for road charging that came out of the Dft. The general consensus in the office was that if implemented most of us would no longer be able to afford to work there anymore. For example under there proposed pricing model my daily 33 mile each way commute to the office would have weighed in at £30 a day. I was not even the most expensive journey by far.
Public transport was a non starter for that commute before anyone says it.
The whole point of road pricing is to improve throughput. Congested roads have less throughput, mean people's journeys are much longer, and are disasterous for air quality.
If the journey you take isn't busy, then there shouldn't be charging. If it is busy, then there should be charging.
It's just surge pricing for roads.
And it should mean we all benefit.
Yes, although if we want to increase throughput, why are we putting 20mph zones anywhere within driving distance of a school? Basically, it's complex, but an honest debate about conflicting aims might be useful.
Road speed doesn't affect throughput much- faster cars have to be further apart and the two factors basically cancel out. Hence the two second rule. (You've still got 30 cars per lane per minute max).
What lowering speeds does do is reduce perceived and actual danger for walkers and cyclists. Probably at the cost of a reduction in engine efficiency, though smooth flow vs stop start is more important there.
I'm not convinced by your second point. Pedestrians cross roads in gaps in the traffic and slowing traffic down (whether by speed limits or bad weather) has the effect of smoothing out traffic flow and eliminating safe gaps for pedestrians. That is why it is harder to cross a busy road when it rains.
I've been chatting again to my London born and resident brother. Ulez is a stupid action by Sadiq Khan. Not necessarily the principle of the thing but the Draconian manner in which it has been implemented.
Would it really have made THAT much difference to give people, say, 10 years to make the switch? Answer = no. And there should have been far more consultation.
And the outer areas are not so well served for public transport as the inner ring.
Politically it's phenomenally stupid. Typical arrogant socialism. Always happens. They never learn.
It is amazing how this issues has completely sidelined Starmer and Davey's successes, and confirmed just how weak Starmer is as a leader when he is demanding Khan changes the scheme rather than defending it
For all those claiming Starmer is a great leader then this last few days has demonstrated he is not a leader who makes hard decisions, but someone who just wants to be liked
Unfortunately for Starmer politics isn't like that
It hasn’t really. You won’t find anyone in the North East discussing the ULEZ, other than sados like me.
I tend to agree. As regards the political big picture Uxbridge/Ulez is a storm in a teacup, a flea on the lawn, a pimple on the bum. The astonishing Selby result, otoh, is a hard steer. It'll be very difficult for Labour to blow the GE from here.
No consolation that we will replace crap with more crap , no matter which of teh lying useless clowns get in it is a loss for Scotland, as a colony we are lumbered with whatever bag of shit England picks.
Well you need to get that Ref and win it. Only a matter of time imo - but of course this applies to most things.
Off topic, a little piece of interesting social commentary here, which touches if passingly on a few topical social and political issues, as well as being the counter-reaction to viewcode’s pointed-but not-without-truth post above:
Leaving aside the fact that I had to get the twelve foot ladder out to read it - Unherd has a paywall now? You have to pay to read it??? - rarely have I read an article so designed to make me get the trebuchet and burning pitch out from the cache. God, can't these people just get proper jobs?
The author Louis Elton describes themself as "a theological anthropologist, strategy consultant and conceptual artist". There was a time when the cretinous overprivileged children of the idle rich had the decency to become restaurant critics and hide in the pages of the Sunday supplements where they could do no real harm. Now they're theological bloody anthropologists. Have they no shame?
What's wrong? He got it written and published, and paid for (presumably), which is, on sound empirical grounds, no different from, say, Mr Johnson or (soon to be?) Lady Dorries.
Though it does begin ...
'It is a drab Wednesday in April and I am sat naked in a transparent plastic shed. Tucked away in a forest near the sleepy town of Uckfield, a woman starts to hit me in the face with some birch twigs, while another incants tales of Sussex’s dragons. “Beware the dragons of St Leonard’s Forest,” she wails. “They’re not like the winged dragons of Wales. These ones are like serpents, slithering and squirting a deadly and smelly slime that torments the people of Horsham.”'
Jeremy Corbyn may even win the Mayoralty as an Independent. Remember in 2000 Livingstone won as an Independent with Steve Norris the Tory 2nd + Dobson as Labour candidate 3rd.
Corbyn won London in 2019 too even as he lost the UK
But more than half the crew were more than half drunk at sea? DA doesn't say whether this was the morning after and they'd just stood out from harbour at dawn for the fishing grounds - in which case it is just about comprehensible, but not great.
It was a 25 footer ex Seaham and it was 1pm when we boarded in sea state 4. I have no idea why they were having a piss up but there wasn't much fishing going on. My captain told me to board her after I made the dreadful faux pas of hailing her to ask WTF was going on as she seemed to be on a collision course with our Type 23. If the OOW (me) follows the RN COLREGS then it is IMPOSSIBLE to have a collision so asking for another vessel's intentions by radio is a failure to understand and apply the "Rules of the Road" at sea. My punishment was to lead the boarding party. It was my first and only boarding action so I wore my sword to amuse the other raiders of the party. The head on the trawler was full of shit, puke and parsnips.
Quite right, you should have given 5 short blasts of the horn.
Today’s Sunday Rawnsley, arriving via a bright but drizzly morning on my island near the Arctic Circle:
Most people assume [Starmer] will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge.
..both these byelections demonstrated, as did the local elections in May, that explicit collaboration between the opposition parties isn’t required to get anti-Tory voters to mobilise behind the anti-Tory candidate who is best-placed to win.
Sir Keir had to scrap his plans to do a victory lap in west London while the prime minister hurried to the seat to proclaim that this proved that a Tory defeat at the general election was “not a done deal”. It has given the Conservatives a scrap of hope and left Labour with some crucial lessons to learn.
Tory campaign literature suggested that everyone in Uxbridge, not the minority with the dirtiest vehicles, would be paying £12.50 a day to drive. “We had people with a Tesla in the driveway saying it was outrageous that they would have to pay,” reports one Labour campaigner. Labour flailed around when it should have crafted a robust response. Rather than take on the Tory attack, the Labour candidate suggested that the Ulez expansion should be halted, a timorous response which essentially endorsed his opponent’s position.
“Their byelection machine was not so smart,” says a Lib Dem campaigner. “When the Tories come at you, you have to punch back and punch hard. They could have fought the Ulez thing.”
There’s another cause for some Labour disquiet. We know that public alienation from the Conservatives runs deep, but there is still not that much enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s party. Between here and election day, Labour has to convince people that it will be both a responsible government and one that delivers change. It is a tricky balancing act, but if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Keir doesn't know how to fight. Politics is winning the argument. You have to engage with people you don't like and who don't like you, and get them (or the people watching) to change their mind and vote for you. It is hard and not many people can do it, but it's part of the job. If he can't do it he can subcontract the job to a minister or party spokesman or something, but it has to be done.
Labour should have delivered a leaflet like this:
1) Yes, it was introduced by the Tories, and apparently you think it's a good thing. That does not mean the extension is automatically a good idea.
2) Why does TfL need a subsidy? Might it be in part due to electoral bribes such as Labour's fare freezes?
3) So you're saying sod-you to more than 10% of the electorate. Well done!
The pandemic and subsequent WFH drop in commuting meant a dramatic loss in income from fares and (less obviously) advertising.
That would be a good retort, aside from the fact that TfL's finances have been poor well before Covid. Something that, AIUI, the fair freeze wheeze did not help. They may make an operational profit next year, but costs are much greater than pure 'operational' costs.
Fair freezes are interesting ideas - I'm unsure if anything can be made from Khan's expensive gambit due to Covid intervening. Much more interesting to me is the bus £3 single freeze, which keeps on getting extended. Will it increase bus usage considerably, and will it reduce car journeys?
It's not just baristas, au pairs and waiters that have been added to the shortage occupation list. Last week, a whole raft of construction workers were added to that list, making it easier for them to come here. Welcome back, Romanian roofers!
£150m for ULEZ infrastructure. Greater London population around 9.5m. £15 per Londoner for better air quality?
Am I missing something here? That sounds like fantastic value for money.
God Tories are such gigantic whoppers.
Sure for the vast majority ULEZ is a positive change. But its a small non vote changing positive.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
Generally speaking, I suppose that the test of an effective politician is the ability to get things that are beneficial for the people as a whole done in the face of opposition from those who lose out.
Something that’s much easier to do when the losers are in the top 10% by income, rather than the skilled working class and lower-middle-class JAMs who can’t afford to replace their old car at the moment.
I don't believe this claim.
Car ownership in London is low and skews heavily towards the wealthy. The 'poorer vehicle owner' claim imo is mainly them being used as a human shield, as anti-LTN campaigns use a minority of people with disabilities, ignoring the majority.
Bart did this yesterday when he assumed that 10% of vehicles being non-compliant means that 10% of the population were under attack, and that was in some way outrageous.
In reality, nearly half of London households do not even own a motor vehicle, and that is a third even in the Outer Boroughs. From the latest not very recent figures I have seen (old TFL technical briefing note - welcome more recent numbers) around 40% of cars in London are owned by about 15% of households.
The numbers who will actually drive non-compliant cars in London will be tiny.
I wonder how the skilled working classes will react when they realise they are being sold a pup?
One problem with LTNs as often implemented is they effectively bar cabs, so there is an effect on the car-less and disabled. They can make life harder for the emergency services too.
You can still access an LTN with a vehicle - they don't bar cabs or any sort of vehicle at all.
There is no evidence whatsoever that they delay the emergency services. Indeed, congestion is the main reason why there are delayed in cities, and the whole point of LTNs is reduce traffic, both within the LTN and more generally. See https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/incident-response-times-fire-facts
Anyone who has ever played a city simulator knows that reducing the number and proximity of junctions is key for reducing congestion. This is actually a problem with the design of the Queensferry Crossing - the junction for S.Queensferry is too close to the junctions for the M8 etc.
Thank God common sense seems to be breaking slowly through on Net Zero, ULEZ and other green crap anyway. I can see this being the big popular revolt of the 2020s, like leaving the EU was for the 2010s.
Half of Europe is on fire and the other half is flooded according to the news, so maybe green crap is not quite dea.d.
Tells you everything about how crap the news is and sfs about weather and climate
Are you saying that the whole of Rhodes catches fire every year and reporting it is just a passing fad? Are you not amazed by the photograph here, in peacetime Europe?
'Holidaymaker Emma Marsh said: 'We are currently in Rhodes - we landed today only to be told that our hotel has burnt down. No one from the airline informed us before we flew.";
LOL, but I imagine the tour operators won't refund until the actual hotel booked has caught fire, so you just board the plane and hope a different part of Rhodes is where the problem is. I have made a rule, no advance bookings in the med June July August, but I don't have term dates to stick to
I simply don't travel in the school holidays and don't go to the Med in midsummer as it is already too bloody hot. I had a pleasant time in the Baltics and Finland in June and I am next going away in September
I fear the north Norwegian riviera still has some heavy lifting to do, however…
This season has really pinpointed the dilemma we have for holidays in a warming Europe. There are very few short haul places now where you aren’t at a 50% risk of being in unpleasantly hot conditions, but can still be confident of good sunny warm weather.
Northern Europe is still too unreliable. Southern Europe is a furnace more often than not. Central Europe now alternates between furnace and wet.
North West Spain and Northern Portugal, Coastal Charente, and the high alpine regions of the Med and Spain are just about all that’s left.
I can recommend Ukraine? Specifically, Lviv, where it is warm bright and sunny, with a 3% chance of missiles, and a light, pleasant, probably-not-radioactive breeze
We sit outside and drink our кава, contentedly
I'm looking forward to the photos of empty bottles of wine (one glass) from the front line in Bakhmut.
Cut me some slack. I just got here
I’ve already had some hairy moments - eg when the passport people found the Russian visa in my heavily stamped passport (I clean forgot my visit to St Petersburg and the Russian Arctic in 2019, or I would have used my other passport)
Then we arrived at 2am during curfew. I have press accreditation from the Ukrainian MOD (they love flints here) which means I can break curfew - and go into combat zones! - but still a bit hairy
It’s also true that they love the Brits. The weary guy taking me to my 3am hotel room asked me dutifully “where are you from” and I told him and he turned and his eyes lit up and he said “Great Britain! Your country has really helped us!”
I got a bit of a patriotic tingle. He was genuine. Apparently they love us and the Poles first, and the Americans are third and everyone else is Meh or Putin
Jeremy Corbyn may even win the Mayoralty as an Independent. Remember in 2000 Livingstone won as an Independent with Steve Norris the Tory 2nd + Dobson as Labour candidate 3rd.
Corbyn won London in 2019 too even as he lost the UK
I wasn't in London at the time... What was the reason/excuse for keeping Ken off the candidate's list? Was it any better than Blair not liking the cut of his jib?
I can see why lefties might have backed Livingstone then, but how many would commit career suicide for Corbyn now?
£150m for ULEZ infrastructure. Greater London population around 9.5m. £15 per Londoner for better air quality?
Am I missing something here? That sounds like fantastic value for money.
God Tories are such gigantic whoppers.
Sure for the vast majority ULEZ is a positive change. But its a small non vote changing positive.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
Generally speaking, I suppose that the test of an effective politician is the ability to get things that are beneficial for the people as a whole done in the face of opposition from those who lose out.
Something that’s much easier to do when the losers are in the top 10% by income, rather than the skilled working class and lower-middle-class JAMs who can’t afford to replace their old car at the moment.
I don't believe this claim.
Car ownership in London is low and skews heavily towards the wealthy. The 'poorer vehicle owner' claim imo is mainly them being used as a human shield, as anti-LTN campaigns use a minority of people with disabilities, ignoring the majority.
Bart did this yesterday when he assumed that 10% of vehicles being non-compliant means that 10% of the population were under attack, and that was in some way outrageous.
In reality, nearly half of London households do not even own a motor vehicle, and that is a third even in the Outer Boroughs. From the latest not very recent figures I have seen (old TFL technical briefing note - welcome more recent numbers) around 40% of cars in London are owned by about 15% of households.
The numbers who will actually drive non-compliant cars in London will be tiny.
I wonder how the skilled working classes will react when they realise they are being sold a pup?
One problem with LTNs as often implemented is they effectively bar cabs, so there is an effect on the car-less and disabled. They can make life harder for the emergency services too.
You can still access an LTN with a vehicle - they don't bar cabs or any sort of vehicle at all.
There is no evidence whatsoever that they delay the emergency services. Indeed, congestion is the main reason why there are delayed in cities, and the whole point of LTNs is reduce traffic, both within the LTN and more generally. See https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/incident-response-times-fire-facts
Anyone who has ever played a city simulator knows that reducing the number and proximity of junctions is key for reducing congestion. This is actually a problem with the design of the Queensferry Crossing - the junction for S.Queensferry is too close to the junctions for the M8 etc.
You may be right but I have heard both cab drivers and delivery drivers complaining about LTNs, and have read about thieves on mopeds using them to escape police. Maybe there are just one or two poorly designed LTNs though.
Today’s Sunday Rawnsley, arriving via a bright but drizzly morning on my island near the Arctic Circle:
Most people assume [Starmer] will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge.
..both these byelections demonstrated, as did the local elections in May, that explicit collaboration between the opposition parties isn’t required to get anti-Tory voters to mobilise behind the anti-Tory candidate who is best-placed to win.
Sir Keir had to scrap his plans to do a victory lap in west London while the prime minister hurried to the seat to proclaim that this proved that a Tory defeat at the general election was “not a done deal”. It has given the Conservatives a scrap of hope and left Labour with some crucial lessons to learn.
Tory campaign literature suggested that everyone in Uxbridge, not the minority with the dirtiest vehicles, would be paying £12.50 a day to drive. “We had people with a Tesla in the driveway saying it was outrageous that they would have to pay,” reports one Labour campaigner. Labour flailed around when it should have crafted a robust response. Rather than take on the Tory attack, the Labour candidate suggested that the Ulez expansion should be halted, a timorous response which essentially endorsed his opponent’s position.
“Their byelection machine was not so smart,” says a Lib Dem campaigner. “When the Tories come at you, you have to punch back and punch hard. They could have fought the Ulez thing.”
There’s another cause for some Labour disquiet. We know that public alienation from the Conservatives runs deep, but there is still not that much enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s party. Between here and election day, Labour has to convince people that it will be both a responsible government and one that delivers change. It is a tricky balancing act, but if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Keir doesn't know how to fight. Politics is winning the argument. You have to engage with people you don't like and who don't like you, and get them (or the people watching) to change their mind and vote for you. It is hard and not many people can do it, but it's part of the job. If he can't do it he can subcontract the job to a minister or party spokesman or something, but it has to be done.
Labour should have delivered a leaflet like this:
1) Yes, it was introduced by the Tories, and apparently you think it's a good thing. That does not mean the extension is automatically a good idea.
2) Why does TfL need a subsidy? Might it be in part due to electoral bribes such as Labour's fare freezes?
3) So you're saying sod-you to more than 10% of the electorate. Well done!
In a political leaflet, you just repeat the key message without hesitation or deviation.
It might just about help with get out of the vote of current supporters. It won't change the mind of anyone switching to Tories because of ULEZ.
It might cause potential switchers to doubt the Tory line on ULEZ rather than swallowing it in the absence of a Labour rebuttal.
Thank God common sense seems to be breaking slowly through on Net Zero, ULEZ and other green crap anyway. I can see this being the big popular revolt of the 2020s, like leaving the EU was for the 2010s.
Half of Europe is on fire and the other half is flooded according to the news, so maybe green crap is not quite dea.d.
Tells you everything about how crap the news is and sfs about weather and climate
Are you saying that the whole of Rhodes catches fire every year and reporting it is just a passing fad? Are you not amazed by the photograph here, in peacetime Europe?
'Holidaymaker Emma Marsh said: 'We are currently in Rhodes - we landed today only to be told that our hotel has burnt down. No one from the airline informed us before we flew.";
LOL, but I imagine the tour operators won't refund until the actual hotel booked has caught fire, so you just board the plane and hope a different part of Rhodes is where the problem is. I have made a rule, no advance bookings in the med June July August, but I don't have term dates to stick to
I simply don't travel in the school holidays and don't go to the Med in midsummer as it is already too bloody hot. I had a pleasant time in the Baltics and Finland in June and I am next going away in September
I fear the north Norwegian riviera still has some heavy lifting to do, however…
This season has really pinpointed the dilemma we have for holidays in a warming Europe. There are very few short haul places now where you aren’t at a 50% risk of being in unpleasantly hot conditions, but can still be confident of good sunny warm weather.
Northern Europe is still too unreliable. Southern Europe is a furnace more often than not. Central Europe now alternates between furnace and wet.
North West Spain and Northern Portugal, Coastal Charente, and the high alpine regions of the Med and Spain are just about all that’s left.
I can recommend Ukraine? Specifically, Lviv, where it is warm bright and sunny, with a 3% chance of missiles, and a light, pleasant, probably-not-radioactive breeze
We sit outside and drink our кава, contentedly
I'm looking forward to the photos of empty bottles of wine (one glass) from the front line in Bakhmut.
Cut me some slack. I just got here
I’ve already had some hairy moments - eg when the passport people found the Russian visa in my heavily stamped passport (I clean forgot my visit to St Petersburg and the Russian Arctic in 2019, or I would have used my other passport)
Then we arrived at 2am during curfew. I have press accreditation from the Ukrainian MOD (they love flints here) which means I can break curfew - and go into combat zones! - but still a bit hairy
It’s also true that love the Brits. The weary guy taking me to my 3am hotel room asked me dutifully “where are you from” and I told him and he turned and his eyes lit up and he said “Great Britain! Your country has really helped us!”
I got a bit of a patriotic tingle. He was genuine. Apparently they love us and the Poles first, and the Americans are third and everyone else is Meh or Putin
Ha, I knew it!
Have fun, stay safe, and yes the Ukranians are lovely people who really don’t deserve what’s happening to them - and who really love the Brits!
Today’s Sunday Rawnsley, arriving via a bright but drizzly morning on my island near the Arctic Circle:
Most people assume [Starmer] will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge.
..both these byelections demonstrated, as did the local elections in May, that explicit collaboration between the opposition parties isn’t required to get anti-Tory voters to mobilise behind the anti-Tory candidate who is best-placed to win.
Sir Keir had to scrap his plans to do a victory lap in west London while the prime minister hurried to the seat to proclaim that this proved that a Tory defeat at the general election was “not a done deal”. It has given the Conservatives a scrap of hope and left Labour with some crucial lessons to learn.
Tory campaign literature suggested that everyone in Uxbridge, not the minority with the dirtiest vehicles, would be paying £12.50 a day to drive. “We had people with a Tesla in the driveway saying it was outrageous that they would have to pay,” reports one Labour campaigner. Labour flailed around when it should have crafted a robust response. Rather than take on the Tory attack, the Labour candidate suggested that the Ulez expansion should be halted, a timorous response which essentially endorsed his opponent’s position.
“Their byelection machine was not so smart,” says a Lib Dem campaigner. “When the Tories come at you, you have to punch back and punch hard. They could have fought the Ulez thing.”
There’s another cause for some Labour disquiet. We know that public alienation from the Conservatives runs deep, but there is still not that much enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s party. Between here and election day, Labour has to convince people that it will be both a responsible government and one that delivers change. It is a tricky balancing act, but if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Keir doesn't know how to fight. Politics is winning the argument. You have to engage with people you don't like and who don't like you, and get them (or the people watching) to change their mind and vote for you. It is hard and not many people can do it, but it's part of the job. If he can't do it he can subcontract the job to a minister or party spokesman or something, but it has to be done.
Labour should have delivered a leaflet like this:
1) Yes, it was introduced by the Tories, and apparently you think it's a good thing. That does not mean the extension is automatically a good idea.
2) Why does TfL need a subsidy? Might it be in part due to electoral bribes such as Labour's fare freezes?
3) So you're saying sod-you to more than 10% of the electorate. Well done!
The pandemic and subsequent WFH drop in commuting meant a dramatic loss in income from fares and (less obviously) advertising.
That would be a good retort, aside from the fact that TfL's finances have been poor well before Covid. Something that, AIUI, the fair freeze wheeze did not help. They may make an operational profit next year, but costs are much greater than pure 'operational' costs.
Fair freezes are interesting ideas - I'm unsure if anything can be made from Khan's expensive gambit due to Covid intervening. Much more interesting to me is the bus £3 single freeze, which keeps on getting extended. Will it increase bus usage considerably, and will it reduce car journeys?
Had some cat van fun this week. This cat got in my van, tried to hide behind the big box, then followed me to the house I was delivering the box to. I was told he boldly visits all the time and their cat hates him
I tried to get a picture of the one with odd coloured eyes, but it disappeared before I got my phone out. The other one had matching eyes so I didn’t bother with a picture. I then met the owner who told me that the second one had the perfect colouring: with a ginger tail, ears, and a patch on one shoulder. They become valuable if they have that colouring and the odd eyes. With only one of the features they’re just expensive
Jeremy Corbyn may even win the Mayoralty as an Independent. Remember in 2000 Livingstone won as an Independent with Steve Norris the Tory 2nd + Dobson as Labour candidate 3rd.
Corbyn won London in 2019 too even as he lost the UK
I wasn't in London at the time... What was the reason/excuse for keeping Ken off the candidate's list? Was it any better than Blair not liking the cut of his jib?
I can see why lefties might have backed Livingstone then, but how many would commit career suicide for Corbyn now?
I wonder what Jezza the Mayor would do about the ULEZ and LTNs?
Intriguing prospect .
Does the Mayor have the power to turn Council Tax into a Wealth Tax?
Thank God common sense seems to be breaking slowly through on Net Zero, ULEZ and other green crap anyway. I can see this being the big popular revolt of the 2020s, like leaving the EU was for the 2010s.
Half of Europe is on fire and the other half is flooded according to the news, so maybe green crap is not quite dea.d.
Tells you everything about how crap the news is and sfs about weather and climate
Are you saying that the whole of Rhodes catches fire every year and reporting it is just a passing fad? Are you not amazed by the photograph here, in peacetime Europe?
'Holidaymaker Emma Marsh said: 'We are currently in Rhodes - we landed today only to be told that our hotel has burnt down. No one from the airline informed us before we flew.";
LOL, but I imagine the tour operators won't refund until the actual hotel booked has caught fire, so you just board the plane and hope a different part of Rhodes is where the problem is. I have made a rule, no advance bookings in the med June July August, but I don't have term dates to stick to
I simply don't travel in the school holidays and don't go to the Med in midsummer as it is already too bloody hot. I had a pleasant time in the Baltics and Finland in June and I am next going away in September
I fear the north Norwegian riviera still has some heavy lifting to do, however…
This season has really pinpointed the dilemma we have for holidays in a warming Europe. There are very few short haul places now where you aren’t at a 50% risk of being in unpleasantly hot conditions, but can still be confident of good sunny warm weather.
Northern Europe is still too unreliable. Southern Europe is a furnace more often than not. Central Europe now alternates between furnace and wet.
North West Spain and Northern Portugal, Coastal Charente, and the high alpine regions of the Med and Spain are just about all that’s left.
I can recommend Ukraine? Specifically, Lviv, where it is warm bright and sunny, with a 3% chance of missiles, and a light, pleasant, probably-not-radioactive breeze
We sit outside and drink our кава, contentedly
I'm looking forward to the photos of empty bottles of wine (one glass) from the front line in Bakhmut.
Cut me some slack. I just got here
I’ve already had some hairy moments - eg when the passport people found the Russian visa in my heavily stamped passport (I clean forgot my visit to St Petersburg and the Russian Arctic in 2019, or I would have used my other passport)
Then we arrived at 2am during curfew. I have press accreditation from the Ukrainian MOD (they love flints here) which means I can break curfew - and go into combat zones! - but still a bit hairy
It’s also true that love the Brits. The weary guy taking me to my 3am hotel room asked me dutifully “where are you from” and I told him and he turned and his eyes lit up and he said “Great Britain! Your country has really helped us!”
I got a bit of a patriotic tingle. He was genuine. Apparently they love us and the Poles first, and the Americans are third and everyone else is Meh or Putin
Ha, I knew it!
Have fun, stay safe, and yes the Ukranians are lovely people who really don’t deserve what’s happening to them - and who really love the Brits!
They also specifically admire Boris. It’s not imaginary. They can’t work out why we dumped him for a few parties
Anyway. I am out for coffee and strudel. Woke up late. No bombs. Expect photos of wheatbeer
Thousands of young European waiters, baristas and au pairs could be allowed to come to the UK for two years under plans to plug gaps in the British workforce.
The Home Office has begun discussions with some EU countries after being asked by Downing Street to agree more youth mobility schemes to help improve the economy without raising record levels of net migration.
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, and Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, have proposed deals to a number of their European counterparts in recent months.
So they can come over here and live and work in a pre-Brexit freedom of movement sort of a way, and I can't live and work out there in a pre-Brexit freedom of movement sort of a way.
It's not just baristas, au pairs and waiters that have been added to the shortage occupation list. Last week, a whole raft of construction workers were added to that list, making it easier for them to come here. Welcome back, Romanian roofers!
It's almost as if Brexit never happened.
So the pay of builders will go down, or at least not go up so much? Contrary to what was promised?
Our monkeys in Westminster and their organ grinders in the media are obviously getting pissed at their home imrpovements not being done the day before yesterday.
Jeremy Corbyn may even win the Mayoralty as an Independent. Remember in 2000 Livingstone won as an Independent with Steve Norris the Tory 2nd + Dobson as Labour candidate 3rd.
Corbyn won London in 2019 too even as he lost the UK
I wasn't in London at the time... What was the reason/excuse for keeping Ken off the candidate's list? Was it any better than Blair not liking the cut of his jib?
I can see why lefties might have backed Livingstone then, but how many would commit career suicide for Corbyn now?
Ken was not kept off the list. It was as simple as Blair did not like Livingstone so leant on MPs to select Dobson as the candidate. They did, narrowly, and Ken stood against Dobson as an independent candidate and won. It was obvious at the time that Ken was far more popular with the party and the electorate.
To Tony Blair's credit, he did later realise Ken was not the Stalinist monster of press (and New Labour) mythology and readmitted him to the party. Basically, although Ken seemed radical, he was an efficient manager and administrator who made London safe for property developers.
It's not just baristas, au pairs and waiters that have been added to the shortage occupation list. Last week, a whole raft of construction workers were added to that list, making it easier for them to come here. Welcome back, Romanian roofers!
It's almost as if Brexit never happened.
So the pay of builders will go down, or at least not go up so much? Contrary to what was promised?
Our monkeys in Westminster and their organ grinders in the media are obviously getting pissed at their home imrpovements not being done the day before yesterday.
Pissing off the few groups of workers who are substantially better-off than they were four years ago, to quote Reagan’s maxim - tradespeople, and people who were on minimum wage in 2019, many of whom have switched jobs for large raises.
In defiance of all Met Office data, it appears to have stopped raining. Definitely brightening up. The forecast remains dreadful, but the current reality is very playable.
£150m for ULEZ infrastructure. Greater London population around 9.5m. £15 per Londoner for better air quality?
Am I missing something here? That sounds like fantastic value for money.
God Tories are such gigantic whoppers.
Sure for the vast majority ULEZ is a positive change. But its a small non vote changing positive.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
Generally speaking, I suppose that the test of an effective politician is the ability to get things that are beneficial for the people as a whole done in the face of opposition from those who lose out.
Something that’s much easier to do when the losers are in the top 10% by income, rather than the skilled working class and lower-middle-class JAMs who can’t afford to replace their old car at the moment.
I don't believe this claim.
Car ownership in London is low and skews heavily towards the wealthy. The 'poorer vehicle owner' claim imo is mainly them being used as a human shield, as anti-LTN campaigns use a minority of people with disabilities, ignoring the majority.
Bart did this yesterday when he assumed that 10% of vehicles being non-compliant means that 10% of the population were under attack, and that was in some way outrageous.
In reality, nearly half of London households do not even own a motor vehicle, and that is a third even in the Outer Boroughs. From the latest not very recent figures I have seen (old TFL technical briefing note - welcome more recent numbers) around 40% of cars in London are owned by about 15% of households.
The numbers who will actually drive non-compliant cars in London will be tiny.
I wonder how the skilled working classes will react when they realise they are being sold a pup?
One problem with LTNs as often implemented is they effectively bar cabs, so there is an effect on the car-less and disabled. They can make life harder for the emergency services too.
You can still access an LTN with a vehicle - they don't bar cabs or any sort of vehicle at all.
There is no evidence whatsoever that they delay the emergency services. Indeed, congestion is the main reason why there are delayed in cities, and the whole point of LTNs is reduce traffic, both within the LTN and more generally. See https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/incident-response-times-fire-facts
Anyone who has ever played a city simulator knows that reducing the number and proximity of junctions is key for reducing congestion. This is actually a problem with the design of the Queensferry Crossing - the junction for S.Queensferry is too close to the junctions for the M8 etc.
You may be right but I have heard both cab drivers and delivery drivers complaining about LTNs, and have read about thieves on mopeds using them to escape police. Maybe there are just one or two poorly designed LTNs though.
I posted the numbers late last night - LTNs in London have reduced traffic inside the sample of 70 LTNs by just under half, and traffic on boundary roads *on average* stays effectively the same (1-3% increase) but there is a spectrum of change on boundary roads from significant falls to significant increases.
So the conclusion is that careful detailed design is needed around boundary roads, and that overall for traffic inside and on boundaries, the "traffic evaporation" effect dominates over "zero sum game traffic transfer" *on average*.
I posted polling showing majority or plurality support for LTNs yesterday.
So I conclude they are here to stay, and will increase. And that Mark Harper, Susan Hall and the RBKC are all on the wrong side of both history and current trends.
It's not just baristas, au pairs and waiters that have been added to the shortage occupation list. Last week, a whole raft of construction workers were added to that list, making it easier for them to come here. Welcome back, Romanian roofers!
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
So driving becomes a luxury item only for the very rich?
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
So driving becomes a luxury item only for the very rich?
Hopefully driving becomes an activity that pays for the expenses it imposes.
Not necessarily my preferred route, though.
>Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue.
Yes, however congestion will remain an issue and private motor vehicles will remain the most space-inefficient form of urban transport.
It's not just baristas, au pairs and waiters that have been added to the shortage occupation list. Last week, a whole raft of construction workers were added to that list, making it easier for them to come here. Welcome back, Romanian roofers!
It's almost as if Brexit never happened.
Can you imagine the furore if Labour had proposed this . The Tories can get away with it because their arse licking media enablers are too embarrassed to point out that millions lost their freedom of movement rights for fxck all .
£150m for ULEZ infrastructure. Greater London population around 9.5m. £15 per Londoner for better air quality?
Am I missing something here? That sounds like fantastic value for money.
God Tories are such gigantic whoppers.
Sure for the vast majority ULEZ is a positive change. But its a small non vote changing positive.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
Generally speaking, I suppose that the test of an effective politician is the ability to get things that are beneficial for the people as a whole done in the face of opposition from those who lose out.
Something that’s much easier to do when the losers are in the top 10% by income, rather than the skilled working class and lower-middle-class JAMs who can’t afford to replace their old car at the moment.
I don't believe this claim.
Car ownership in London is low and skews heavily towards the wealthy. The 'poorer vehicle owner' claim imo is mainly them being used as a human shield, as anti-LTN campaigns use a minority of people with disabilities, ignoring the majority.
Bart did this yesterday when he assumed that 10% of vehicles being non-compliant means that 10% of the population were under attack, and that was in some way outrageous.
In reality, nearly half of London households do not even own a motor vehicle, and that is a third even in the Outer Boroughs. From the latest not very recent figures I have seen (old TFL technical briefing note - welcome more recent numbers) around 40% of cars in London are owned by about 15% of households.
The numbers who will actually drive non-compliant cars in London will be tiny.
I wonder how the skilled working classes will react when they realise they are being sold a pup?
One problem with LTNs as often implemented is they effectively bar cabs, so there is an effect on the car-less and disabled. They can make life harder for the emergency services too.
You can still access an LTN with a vehicle - they don't bar cabs or any sort of vehicle at all.
There is no evidence whatsoever that they delay the emergency services. Indeed, congestion is the main reason why there are delayed in cities, and the whole point of LTNs is reduce traffic, both within the LTN and more generally. See https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/incident-response-times-fire-facts
Anyone who has ever played a city simulator knows that reducing the number and proximity of junctions is key for reducing congestion. This is actually a problem with the design of the Queensferry Crossing - the junction for S.Queensferry is too close to the junctions for the M8 etc.
You may be right but I have heard both cab drivers and delivery drivers complaining about LTNs, and have read about thieves on mopeds using them to escape police. Maybe there are just one or two poorly designed LTNs though.
Back in 2020, they abolished the LTN trial areas in Redbridge (ie. Ilford North and Ilford South) after only c. 6 weeks.
Even if Comrade Jez splits the left vote, it's going to be hard for the Conservatives to take advantage.
In 2021, Shaun Bailey got 35% in the first round. That was at peak Vaccine Hero Boris, and Bailey was a better candidate than Hall. (Who has already managed to pose for a stupid photo on the front page of the Standard and caused the Conservatives to complain to London's newspaper, which is never a wise thing to do.)
We're not far off a scenario where the vote to the left of the Conservatives could be split into three equal portions and still come out ahead of Hall.
Not sure that is right. Bailey was 4.7% behind. Corbyn will win a lot more than 5% if he stands, I would guess 15-20% most likely. That feels like enough to allow the Tories to win if they get around 30% to me. Sounds plausible.
I don’t think the Tories will get 30% in the mayoral when they’re on less than that nationally.
Uxbridge (a 6.7% swing to Labour by the way) has gone to everyone’s heads.
The economy is bad and people feel like there is no solution and one party has been in power a long time. Nationally that is a disaster for the Tories. In London, some blame the Tories (fairly) others blame the Mayor (unfairly), so less so.
Khan is a bit shit. He is taking all of the blame for ULEZ, yet the decision to impose it was made by Shapps Green. So he should have been banging that particular drum hard. Instead he's taking the blame.
Not sure that works. He can't champion ULEZ at the same time as say, not my fault, blame the Tories for it.
His mistakes are around implementation, leaving it fiscally regressive, and a lack of listening, persuasion and compromise, three characteristics that are sorely missing from contemporary UK politics across the board.
No to both. The mistakes lay with the muppet running Labour's Uxbridge campaign who decided not to counter Tories telling voters they'd all have to pay, when in fact most vehicles are exempt. Years ago John Prescott complained about this idea, then presumably due to Mandelson and/or Campbell, that you must never refute your opponent's charges because that is letting the Tories "set the agenda". Well, great unless it means losing an election.
I think there is a lot of electoral denial on here from normally astute posters.
That 90% are not impacted is pretty irrelevant to the electoral damage. These are low turnout elections decided by not that much. The first round gap between Khan and Bailey was 120,000 votes. If 700,000 vehicles are starting to get hit by charges, that will be a big problem. Now of course the Tories are so bad nationally it may not matter but it is dismissed far too casually.
700,000 vehicles! Where on earth are you getting that from.
Read the Rawnsley piece above. The Tories told people with Tesla's they would have to pay the ULEZ charge. And Tories in Uxbridge always tell the truth, so it must be fact.
The ULEZ extension will have been in place for at least a year before the next election, so reality will disabuse them of that notion looking before they cast a General Election vote.
I don't think it will. People aren't stupid.
The ULEZ has been introduced as a revenue-raising measure. When all the cars are compliant, and it isn't raising any revenue, they will tighten the rules.
Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue. They'll want to use the existing infrastructure to introduce a road-pricing scheme for all cars.
Road pricing is inherently a good idea. Capacity is scarce, and we should be looking at the best way to maximize throughput - which is almost certainly through charging.
So driving becomes a luxury item only for the very rich?
Not really. We already have a very heavy taxation system on driving through tax and VAT on fuel. Keep the whole thing revenue neutral and transfer it to mileage but, as others sensibly suggested yesterday, with a modifier for vehicle weight so that those who do the most damage to the roads pay the most.
Why lunch at 12.20, why not start it now and get it out the way? If it’s not raining and the ground is OK, they should be playing. Why wait until 1 if they could be out at 10 to."
Thank God common sense seems to be breaking slowly through on Net Zero, ULEZ and other green crap anyway. I can see this being the big popular revolt of the 2020s, like leaving the EU was for the 2010s.
Half of Europe is on fire and the other half is flooded according to the news, so maybe green crap is not quite dea.d.
Tells you everything about how crap the news is and sfs about weather and climate
Are you saying that the whole of Rhodes catches fire every year and reporting it is just a passing fad? Are you not amazed by the photograph here, in peacetime Europe?
'Holidaymaker Emma Marsh said: 'We are currently in Rhodes - we landed today only to be told that our hotel has burnt down. No one from the airline informed us before we flew.";
LOL, but I imagine the tour operators won't refund until the actual hotel booked has caught fire, so you just board the plane and hope a different part of Rhodes is where the problem is. I have made a rule, no advance bookings in the med June July August, but I don't have term dates to stick to
I simply don't travel in the school holidays and don't go to the Med in midsummer as it is already too bloody hot. I had a pleasant time in the Baltics and Finland in June and I am next going away in September
I fear the north Norwegian riviera still has some heavy lifting to do, however…
This season has really pinpointed the dilemma we have for holidays in a warming Europe. There are very few short haul places now where you aren’t at a 50% risk of being in unpleasantly hot conditions, but can still be confident of good sunny warm weather.
Northern Europe is still too unreliable. Southern Europe is a furnace more often than not. Central Europe now alternates between furnace and wet.
North West Spain and Northern Portugal, Coastal Charente, and the high alpine regions of the Med and Spain are just about all that’s left.
I can recommend Ukraine? Specifically, Lviv, where it is warm bright and sunny, with a 3% chance of missiles, and a light, pleasant, probably-not-radioactive breeze
We sit outside and drink our кава, contentedly
I'm looking forward to the photos of empty bottles of wine (one glass) from the front line in Bakhmut.
Cut me some slack. I just got here
I’ve already had some hairy moments - eg when the passport people found the Russian visa in my heavily stamped passport (I clean forgot my visit to St Petersburg and the Russian Arctic in 2019, or I would have used my other passport)
Then we arrived at 2am during curfew. I have press accreditation from the Ukrainian MOD (they love flints here) which means I can break curfew - and go into combat zones! - but still a bit hairy
It’s also true that they love the Brits. The weary guy taking me to my 3am hotel room asked me dutifully “where are you from” and I told him and he turned and his eyes lit up and he said “Great Britain! Your country has really helped us!”
I got a bit of a patriotic tingle. He was genuine. Apparently they love us and the Poles first, and the Americans are third and everyone else is Meh or Putin
You should have taken @Dura_Ace with you, just for the bantz
Comments
Northern Europe is still too unreliable. Southern Europe is a furnace more often than not. Central Europe now alternates between furnace and wet.
North West Spain and Northern Portugal, Coastal Charente, and the high alpine regions of the Med and Spain are just about all that’s left.
This is not a new problem but it is a growing one. Profits are so easily manipulated for large companies that they are perhaps not the correct answer as to how they contribute to the society in which they extract their gains. Its tricky though, especially when we want these large companies to invest a lot more into our economy rather than somewhere else.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/22/labour-17-point-lead-tories-keir-starmer-opinion-poll
Not on changes to KPI's at an insurance firm.
The Conservative Govt set target for 2028, which I think they keep characterising as "legally binding", is driving this and requires a 40-50% fall in NOx on even the outermost Boroughs over 2020 figures.
It also seems a neat way of raising a bit of revenue from those who visit London but avoid the residence taxes !
I don't see why showman's vehicles, or 40+ year old vehicles, should be exempt though.
Public transport was a non starter for that commute before anyone says it.
For a small but significant minority it is a financial headache during a cost of living crisis. For them it is a vote changer.
If you have inflation at 4% (where it will be at year end) and pay increasing at 7%, that is excellent news for the typical worker. If you have inflation at 3%, but pay increasing at 1%, that is very bad news for the typical worker.
But, guess which one the government would prefer?
The decision to scrap the voting system for elected mayors and crime commissioners is not only shameful, but also short-sighted. Many people felt uncomfortable about giving very considerable - almost dictatorial - powers to these people in the first place.
This concern was eased only by the fact that the voting system - effectively the Alternative Vote - ensured that would-be dictators did not take power when supported by only 20% of the electorate. Now the Conservatives have unilaterally swept that away.
Would people have gone along with the introduction of elected mayors, if they had known that within a few years they were going to be elected by the failed winner-grab-all FPTP voting system?
It is shameful indeed. Mr Eagles is quite right.
I used to park up somewhere in Edgware, or at Highgate Station car park (which still seems to be advertising £3.00 on a Saturday or £7.00 in the week without a time period), and get the tube in when visiting the Smoke.
More recently it has tended to be park near Luton station then a 30 minute rail journey in, though ParkAtMyHouse is an option.
It's also tempting to park on an MP's driveway, since the laws they passed in a fit of pique around 2011 mean there is nothing they can do to enforce.
If the journey you take isn't busy, then there shouldn't be charging. If it is busy, then there should be charging.
It's just surge pricing for roads.
And it should mean we all benefit.
We sit outside and drink our кава, contentedly
But more than half the crew were more than half drunk at sea? DA doesn't say whether this was the morning after and they'd just stood out from harbour at dawn for the fishing grounds - in which case it is just about comprehensible, but not great. And if it was a normal day at sea it's a Darwin award application on a par, in terms of numbers all at once, with the legendary postal voting returns from Labour-controlled local authority dementia homes.
*Full/pissed as crabs.
Reflected in the odds on a draw.
I also pay NI, VAT (both as a business and personally), council tax, and income tax.
My point is that big companies manipulate the system to avoid paying tax that fools like me and my business don't or can't. That system is not frankly fair and that sense of government and big business saying "fuck you" to ordinary voters who try to do the right thing is, if left unchecked, deeply corrosive of our society.
Though it does begin ...
'It is a drab Wednesday in April and I am sat naked in a transparent plastic shed. Tucked away in a forest near the sleepy town of Uckfield, a woman starts to hit me in the face with some birch twigs, while another incants tales of Sussex’s dragons. “Beware the dragons of St Leonard’s Forest,” she wails. “They’re not like the winged dragons of Wales. These ones are like serpents, slithering and squirting a deadly and smelly slime that torments the people of Horsham.”'
2) Why does TfL need a subsidy? Might it be in part due to electoral bribes such as Labour's fare freezes?
3) So you're saying sod-you to more than 10% of the electorate. Well done!
We're getting to the time (1973) when certain modern cars were being introduced and will be free of various taxes. Resurgence of interest in Austin Landcrabs !
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/maps-and-charts/rainfall-radar-forecast-map#?bbox=[[52.633062890594374,-5.053710937500001],[54.30690951430538,0.5603027343750001]]&model=ukmo-ukv&layer=rainfall-rate×tep=1690106400000
The washing is out in the back garden of Stodge Towers and perhaps the covers are off at Old Trafford? Who knows, who cares?
On ULEZ, as someone living in Inner London, the phrase "what's all the fuss about?" springs readily to mind. Yes, I was initially concerned but once I checked, my car (2009) was compliant as, so I'm led to believe, were 96% of Inner London vehicles.
Expanding the scheme to Outer London was always going to be a different kettle of worms. Notwithstanding higher rates of car ownership, the truth is the necessity for owning a car is much greater for Outer London than for Inner London - I'll be honest, my car is practically an ornament, it gets so little used and I suspect the insurance renewal due any day will prompt another intra-Stodge Towers debate of "do we really need the car?".
The problem seems less to be with car owners who, once they see their own vehicle is compliant, will be content (and if I were Labour, I'd be spreading the word about checking the compliance of your vehicle) than with small businesses and the eponymous "white van man" whose white van is sometimes an old particulate pumping diesel.
As I've argued elsewhere, there's a balance of carrot and stick needed - Mrs Stodge's issue with ULEZ isn't about cleaning the air but that ULEZ is a money-grabbing tax for Khan and City Hall. Add in the vehicles from Surrey (for example) who come in to London and suddenly ULEZ is a lot more. If I lived in Reigate or Woking and drove my old car to Croydon or Surbiton, I'm not sure I'd feel chuffed about paying £12.50 for the privilege.
You already have to pay congestion charge to drive into parts of central London now and for many in Outer London, the drive is to the nearest tube or train station to park up (if you can). ULEZ isn't an issue but it is if it becomes £12.50 to reach the train or tube station it becomes an issue.
Don't get me wrong - there's a good idea in all of this and we can support the ends but the means are the problem. The approach in Inner London has worked - no argument - but simply trying to take the same approach to Outer London won't. This is probably true for most towns and cities.
Car ownership in London is low and skews heavily towards the wealthy. The 'poorer vehicle owner' claim imo is mainly them being used as a human shield, as anti-LTN campaigns use a minority of people with disabilities, ignoring the majority.
Bart did this yesterday when he assumed that 10% of vehicles being non-compliant means that 10% of the population were under attack, and that was in some way outrageous.
In reality, nearly half of London households do not even own a motor vehicle, and that is a third even in the Outer Boroughs. From the latest not very recent figures I have seen (old TFL technical briefing note - I would welcome more recent numbers) 30-40% of cars in London are owned by about 15% of households.
The numbers who will actually drive non-compliant cars in London will be tiny.
I wonder how the skilled working classes will react when they realise they are being sold a pup?
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-are-there-in-london.pdf
1) the primary driver to expand ULEZ was to fund the hole in TfL as directed by Grant Shapps. With TfL's farebox recovering after COVID there is less of a hole to fill
2) ULEZ will bring more cars into its grip. And before anyone starts to wail and gnash, we are all used to this. Remember EURO 3/4/5/6 compliance law. Same thing. People replace cars as they age for cost and reliability reasons, this is no different
Fair freezes are interesting ideas - I'm unsure if anything can be made from Khan's expensive gambit due to Covid intervening. Much more interesting to me is the bus £3 single freeze, which keeps on getting extended. Will it increase bus usage considerably, and will it reduce car journeys?
What lowering speeds does do is reduce perceived and actual danger for walkers and cyclists. Probably at the cost of a reduction in engine efficiency, though smooth flow vs stop start is more important there.
Corbyn won London in 2019 too even as he lost the UK
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-of-the-2-bus-fare-cap/2-bus-fare-cap-evaluation-interim-report-january-2023
It's about which on balance is the most appropriate perceived mode of transport, as would be expected.
It's almost as if Brexit never happened.
There is no evidence whatsoever that they delay the emergency services. Indeed, congestion is the main reason why there are delayed in cities, and the whole point of LTNs is reduce traffic, both within the LTN and more generally. See https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/incident-response-times-fire-facts
Anyone who has ever played a city simulator knows that reducing the number and proximity of junctions is key for reducing congestion. This is actually a problem with the design of the Queensferry Crossing - the junction for S.Queensferry is too close to the junctions for the M8 etc.
I’ve already had some hairy moments - eg when the passport people found the Russian visa in my heavily stamped passport (I clean forgot my visit to St Petersburg and the Russian Arctic in 2019, or I would have used my other passport)
Then we arrived at 2am during curfew. I have press accreditation from the Ukrainian MOD (they love flints here) which means I can break curfew - and go into combat zones! - but still a bit hairy
It’s also true that they love the Brits. The weary guy taking me to my 3am hotel room asked me dutifully “where are you from” and I told him and he turned and his eyes lit up and he said “Great Britain! Your country has really helped us!”
I got a bit of a patriotic tingle. He was genuine. Apparently they love us and the Poles first, and the Americans are third and everyone else is Meh or Putin
I can see why lefties might have backed Livingstone then, but how many would commit career suicide for Corbyn now?
Have fun, stay safe, and yes the Ukranians are lovely people who really don’t deserve what’s happening to them - and who really love the Brits!
I also met a pair of, I think, Turkish Van cats
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Van
I tried to get a picture of the one with odd coloured eyes, but it disappeared before I got my phone out. The other one had matching eyes so I didn’t bother with a picture. I then met the owner who told me that the second one had the perfect colouring: with a ginger tail, ears, and a patch on one shoulder. They become valuable if they have that colouring and the odd eyes. With only one of the features they’re just expensive
Intriguing prospect
Does the Mayor have the power to turn Council Tax into a Wealth Tax?
Anyway. I am out for coffee and strudel. Woke up late. No bombs. Expect photos of wheatbeer
I'm loving all this taking back control.
Our monkeys in Westminster and their organ grinders in the media are obviously getting pissed at their home imrpovements not being done the day before yesterday.
To Tony Blair's credit, he did later realise Ken was not the Stalinist monster of press (and New Labour) mythology and readmitted him to the party. Basically, although Ken seemed radical, he was an efficient manager and administrator who made London safe for property developers.
The forecast remains dreadful, but the current reality is very playable.
So the conclusion is that careful detailed design is needed around boundary roads, and that overall for traffic inside and on boundaries, the "traffic evaporation" effect dominates over "zero sum game traffic transfer" *on average*.
I posted polling showing majority or plurality support for LTNs yesterday.
So I conclude they are here to stay, and will increase. And that Mark Harper, Susan Hall and the RBKC are all on the wrong side of both history and current trends.
It’s the hope that kills you, isn’t it?
Watchout @bunnco
Not necessarily my preferred route, though.
>Once all cars are electric and have zero tailpipe emissions they aren't likely to take down all the cameras and give up on the revenue.
Yes, however congestion will remain an issue and private motor vehicles will remain the most space-inefficient form of urban transport.
AV referendum 2011:
No 2 AV 68%
Yes 2 AV 32%
I think you mean the Exhaustive Ballot system - you can change who you support between each round.
Why lunch at 12.20, why not start it now and get it out the way? If it’s not raining and the ground is OK, they should be playing. Why wait until 1 if they could be out at 10 to."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/64959411