ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Saddleworth really doesn't like being part of GM.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour will contest it, just as they did Somerton and Frome.
The LDs were second in Somerton and Frome in 2019 not Labour
North Shropshire says hello
Labour are about 5 to 10% higher in the polls than they were at the time of the North Shropshire by election.
The only poll in Mid Bedfordshire so far also has Labour ahead and the LDs 4th behind the Tories and an Independent
That poll is utterly meaningless in terms of a by election. if you take a poll anywhere when Labour are doing well in the polls before a campaign starts you will find Labour ahead of the LDs even in LD targets and even held seats. To take a real life example which is far more extreme than this:
S W Surrey:
1997 the result was: Con 25.2k, LD 22.5k, Lab 5.3k
In 2001 the result was Con 22.4k , LD 21.6k, Lab 4.3k
Labour absolutely no where in either election and a very tight Con/LD marginal.
A poll carried out prior to the campaign in 2001 in S W Surrey put Lab in 2nd place with the LDs 3rd.
To take any notice of a local poll prior to a by election campaign with an Indy on 19%, the LD by election m/c not yet in full swing and Lab high in the polls is as pointless as anything you could possibly do. I wouldn't be surprised if that poll wasn't a deliberate spoiler.
Mr. Palmer, should the African nations from whence the black African slave traders operated make the same foreign aid spending commitment as their wealth is partly based on the slave era?
Which African nations from whence the black African slave traders operated exist today as they existed then? The closest would probably be Benin, more or less the successor to Dahomey. Their wealth ‘partly based on the slave trade’ has resulted in a gdp per capita of $1390.
Exactly. There's a difference between countries which profited from the slave trade and are now prosperous, partly as a result, and countries which are still desperately poor themselves. Opposing giving 1/140th of our income to help because someone much poorer isn't doing the same is whataboutery of the highest order.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
That's peak Three Yorkshiremen. "It's better than the smog of the 1950s, so I only get asthma when I'm 30."
I was actually quite shaken to discover the seriousness of the pollution in London.
Ulez1 has been a superb, excellently implemented, policy to tackle the scourge of air pollution in this great city. I live a mile outside the existing zone. Delighted that it's being extended next week.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Hooray! Air quality in London is better than when it used to sometimes kill over 10,000 a month. Now it's only 4,000 a year. Mere bagatelle.
BR cannot comprehend progress that doesn't turn up in a profit and loss statement.
Reduction in child mortality = defund the NHS?
No, I am capable of comprehending that claims made by those with an agenda to push are typically bullshit.
Just because someone says something doesn't make it true. I'm an atheist for a reason, I'm sceptical unless there is evidence.
The evidence says that life expectancy in London is higher than the national average. So when someone claims that the air is like 'killing the first born of every family', yet the data says that people live longer, then alarm bells should ring for any sceptic that the claim does not match the data.
Improving air quality is a good idea, I am all in favour of that. That doesn't mean every proposal to do so is automatically a good idea though.
Nor any understanding of counterfactuals.
But let's consider your idea:
The highest life expectancy *at birth* in Scotland is the Orkney Islands, with their exceptionally clean air. The lowest is Glasgow, with a motorway running through the middle. Perhaps...
By that logic the primary mode of transportation in Orkney is driving, and they've put an effort into ensuring there's public EV charging points for people's cars.
While Glasgow relies more public transport options. Perhaps ...
You're getting the idea
EV good, public transport bad. Got it.
Oh come on. You've made a silly argument about life expectancy and been called out on it.
Its not silly.
If pollution were seriously affecting health, it would show in life expectancy figures.
Smoking rates show in life expectancy figures. Glasgow has higher than Scotland's national average, while Orkney has below average smoking rates.
If thousands of premature deaths a year were really happening then that should be able to be shown via data analysis and not just via claims made by organisations with a vested interest.
Which isn't to say that cleaning the air isn't a good idea, it is, but lets be honest and there's a right and wrong way to do it.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
I think this is like the GRR from Sturgeon.
Perhaps Khan genuinely wants to improve the health and wellbeing of Londoners? Takes the long view for the future of the city?
We need more politicians like that, even if they don't always get it completely right. Evidence-based punts.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour will contest it, just as they did Somerton and Frome.
The LDs were second in Somerton and Frome in 2019 not Labour
So? Voters are well organised and motivated to remove your corrupt party from power. Lab/LD will take a stonking victory whilst the other loses its deposit in one seat, and the other way round in another seat. A lot more Labour wins than LD, but you can't deny that the ABC vote is well organised and coming to get you.
Yes- a reason why I don't actually hope for a mid-Beds by-election is that it will turn into a high-profile Lab/LD mutual trashing war which will undermine tactical voting elsewhere. It looks inevitable, though, so Labour is right to build on the poll result and their second place last time.
Is the Independent mayor actually going to stand? If not, the question of who he endorses may be important.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Hooray! Air quality in London is better than when it used to sometimes kill over 10,000 a month. Now it's only 4,000 a year. Mere bagatelle.
BR cannot comprehend progress that doesn't turn up in a profit and loss statement.
Reduction in child mortality = defund the NHS?
No, I am capable of comprehending that claims made by those with an agenda to push are typically bullshit.
Just because someone says something doesn't make it true. I'm an atheist for a reason, I'm sceptical unless there is evidence.
The evidence says that life expectancy in London is higher than the national average. So when someone claims that the air is like 'killing the first born of every family', yet the data says that people live longer, then alarm bells should ring for any sceptic that the claim does not match the data.
Improving air quality is a good idea, I am all in favour of that. That doesn't mean every proposal to do so is automatically a good idea though.
Nor any understanding of counterfactuals.
But let's consider your idea:
The highest life expectancy *at birth* in Scotland is the Orkney Islands, with their exceptionally clean air. The lowest is Glasgow, with a motorway running through the middle. Perhaps...
By that logic the primary mode of transportation in Orkney is driving, and they've put an effort into ensuring there's public EV charging points for people's cars.
While Glasgow relies more public transport options. Perhaps ...
You're getting the idea
EV good, public transport bad. Got it.
Oh come on. You've made a silly argument about life expectancy and been called out on it.
Its not silly.
If pollution were seriously affecting health, it would show in life expectancy figures.
Smoking rates show in life expectancy figures. Glasgow has higher than Scotland's national average, while Orkney has below average smoking rates.
If thousands of premature deaths a year were really happening then that should be able to be shown via data analysis and not just via claims made by organisations with a vested interest.
Which isn't to say that cleaning the air isn't a good idea, it is, but lets be honest and there's a right and wrong way to do it.
Sigh. It's crazy that you actually understand the complexities of calculating this stuff yet refuse to apply that understanding to air pollution.
Let us also be honest, Johnson wanted to expand ULEZ.
So if he had done exactly what Khan had done, there would be no opposition, the Tories would be jumping up and down saying they'd solved pollution.
This is nothing but political point scoring.
I think you'll find many of us who are criticising the way Sadiq Khan is handling things are praising the way Andy Burnham is handling things.
Which party does Andy Burnham represent? 🤔
Some of us aren't party partisans and can think through issues and take stances out of principle or logic and can recognise when people do the right thing regardless of party. Burnham is doing a better job than Khan - Boris isn't even the picture or relevant.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Yes. I was born in an old London borough which no longer exists, and brought up in Middlesex which no longer exists. And I knew people when I was young who remembered Middlesex as a mostly rural county, as chronicled in Betjeman's great poem of that name.
Gaily into Ruislip Gardens Runs the red electric train, With a thousand Ta's and Pardon's Daintily alights Elaine; Hurries down the concrete station With a frown of concentration, Out into the outskirt's edges Where a few surviving hedges Keep alive our lost Elysium - rural Middlesex again.
Let us also be honest, Johnson wanted to expand ULEZ.
So if he had done exactly what Khan had done, there would be no opposition, the Tories would be jumping up and down saying they'd solved pollution.
This is nothing but political point scoring.
I think you'll find many of us who are criticising the way Sadiq Khan is handling things are praising the way Andy Burnham is handling things.
Which party does Andy Burnham represent? 🤔
Some of us aren't party partisans and can think through issues and take stances out of principle or logic and can recognise when people do the right thing regardless of party. Burnham is doing a better job than Khan - Boris isn't even the picture or relevant.
Has there been evidence to suggest that Burnham's approach will actually do anything?
Burnham is just as slippery as Johnson, so it is not a surprise to see you taken in by him. He was a Brownite under Brown, anti-Corbyn, then stole Corbyn's policies, then was anti-Corbyn again, then he was a Starmer supporter, then he was a Starmer hater, then he wanted the leadership, now he doesn't want the leadership, now he's a Starmer advocate again.
He's a slippery chap with no principles whatsoever. It is shocking that people cannot see past it.
As somebody that lives in London, I commend Khan for standing up for London's place in the UK and in the world. Johnson said the right things but at every turn sold London down the river.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour will contest it, just as they did Somerton and Frome.
The LDs were second in Somerton and Frome in 2019 not Labour
North Shropshire says hello
Labour are about 5 to 10% higher in the polls than they were at the time of the North Shropshire by election.
The only poll in Mid Bedfordshire so far also has Labour ahead and the LDs 4th behind the Tories and an Independent
That poll is utterly meaningless in terms of a by election. if you take a poll anywhere when Labour are doing well in the polls before a campaign starts you will find Labour ahead of the LDs even in LD targets and even held seats. To take a real life example which is far more extreme than this:
S W Surrey:
1997 the result was: Con 25.2k, LD 22.5k, Lab 5.3k
In 2001 the result was Con 22.4k , LD 21.6k, Lab 4.3k
Labour absolutely no where in either election and a very tight Con/LD marginal.
A poll carried out prior to the campaign in 2001 in S W Surrey put Lab in 2nd place with the LDs 3rd.
To take any notice of a local poll prior to a by election campaign with an Indy on 19%, the LD by election m/c not yet in full swing and Lab high in the polls is as pointless as anything you could possibly do. I wouldn't be surprised if that poll wasn't a deliberate spoiler.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
That's peak Three Yorkshiremen. "It's better than the smog of the 1950s, so I only get asthma when I'm 30."
I was actually quite shaken to discover the seriousness of the pollution in London.
Ulez1 has been a superb, excellently implemented policy.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Saddleworth really doesn't like being part of GM.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
A few ageing nostalgics therein make such a claim.
Matthew Engel wrote about it in his book Engel's England and found no-one under 50 that claimed to live in Yorkshire "only the old people say that", a local girl told him.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Saddleworth really doesn't like being part of GM.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
This is a very good point.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
On topic, having read the header, if the Lib Dems were hoping that Labour would scale back their efforts in Mid Beds then publishing a leaflet explicitly slagging off the prospective Labour candidate is hardly the way to go about it. Pretty poor. As a result, I expect Lab and Lib Dems to go for it full on, and the Tories to win.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour will contest it, just as they did Somerton and Frome.
The LDs were second in Somerton and Frome in 2019 not Labour
North Shropshire says hello
Labour are about 5 to 10% higher in the polls than they were at the time of the North Shropshire by election.
The only poll in Mid Bedfordshire so far also has Labour ahead and the LDs 4th behind the Tories and an Independent
Labour seem to have blown it my choosing a dud candidate.
When the issue of the election is an absentee MP cashing in while abandoning her constituents, picking a Walthamstow councillor who's trousering £40k in allowances whilst trying to get elected as Dorries' successor was unwise.
He's probably a nice enough bloke personally and a fairly credible candidate in a General Election but, like the Tory candidate in North Shropshire, you just can't hand your opponent a stick like that to beat you with in a by-election as it will be used absolutely relentlessly.
As somebody that lives in London, I commend Khan for standing up for London's place in the UK and in the world. Johnson said the right things but at every turn sold London down the river.
I think that avoiding a cliff edge penalising the many (hundreds of?) thousands of 10yr old diesels could have been avoided. A taper or something. Because small a percentage as it may be it will nevertheless affect many people who can least afford it in order to achieve a medium term aim.
No one wants polluting cars on the road where an affordable, sensible solution is available. Expansion of the ULEZ is not it.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Saddleworth really doesn't like being part of GM.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
That's peak Three Yorkshiremen. "It's better than the smog of the 1950s, so I only get asthma when I'm 30."
I was actually quite shaken to discover the seriousness of the pollution in London.
Ulez1 has been a superb, excellently implemented policy.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Saddleworth really doesn't like being part of GM.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
A few ageing nostalgics therein make such a claim.
Matthew Engel wrote about it in his book Engel's England and found no-one under 50 that claimed to live in Yorkshire "only the old people say that", a local girl told him.
Unfortunately, they are electorally significant ageing nostalgics, and will remain so for a bit longer.
Getting overseas aid back up to 0.7% and stop fiddling it by using it for migrant hotels or disguised export subsidies would be a good start. Nobody expects us to send a sudden £X billion cheque to Zimbabwe, but a steady, reliable commitment would be a reasonable course of action for a country whose wealth is partly based on the slave era.
I'm in favour of the 0.7% foreign aid budget, but am unsure that migrant hotels or disguised export subsidies are 'fiddling' - or at least if they are seen as such, what is acceptable needs defining.
For instance, I think giving countries adjacent to hotspots money to house refugees is a brilliant way to spend money, for the migrants, for the host country, and for us. Yet I've heard some people say it's the wrong way to spend the foreign aid budget.
So it comes down to what the foreign aid budget is for - and that seems rather muddled, particularly in the messaging.
Yes, that's true. My mindset is still focused on the well-building/road-building/hospital-building model of foreign aid, and giving the dosh to the Home Office so they can rent some hotels for migrants in Bognor seems to me a cynical use of the term "aid". I do see a good case for using it for poor countries housing refugees, though I still think the focus needs to be on investment in capacity-building for the medium term.
Another question is whether aid is best given to countries who use it efficiently or countries that we like. When I was in the Commons I remember discussing with Hilary Benn whether we should still be giving substantial aid to Ethiopia after a Government crackdown on dissidents. He said DfID opinion was divided - some felt we had to show that we disapproved, others said that Ethiopia was an example of a country with relatively low corruption which was using aid effectively. He decided to switch aid from Ethiopian Government agencies to NGOs helping on the ground in Ethiopia, but as I recall he wasn't really sure if that was the right decision, because the agencies were actually pretty good and starving them of funds didn't feel quite right.
Regardless of the "correct" answer, I was quite proud of him and DfID for wrestling with it. I don't feel the "hotels in Bognor" approach passes the same smell test.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
I think this is like the GRR from Sturgeon.
Perhaps Khan genuinely wants to improve the health and wellbeing of Londoners? Takes the long view for the future of the city?
We need more politicians like that, even if they don't always get it completely right. Evidence-based punts.
Absolutely, lets go for evidence-based politics.
And take the evidence wherever it leads us. Not pay millions to try to get the evidence changed to suit our agenda when it turns out the evidence is against what is proposed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66570024
In the top right hand corner of liveuamap.com there is a thing that looks like a clock. Press it. It will give you a drop down list of dates. Pick a date in the past. Compare the map around Orikhiv now to the date then. They really haven't made a lot of progress in terms of freed territory.
As somebody that lives in London, I commend Khan for standing up for London's place in the UK and in the world. Johnson said the right things but at every turn sold London down the river.
I think that avoiding a cliff edge penalising the many (hundreds of?) thousands of 10yr old diesels could have been avoided. A taper or something. Because small a percentage as it may be it will nevertheless affect many people who can least afford it in order to achieve a medium term aim.
No one wants polluting cars on the road where an affordable, sensible solution is available. Expansion of the ULEZ is not it.
I think there's some merit to your argument and I would support that. But that is very different from scrapping it altogether.
Let us be honest, these people are the same people that opposed the congestion charge, opposed the minimum wage.
Let us also be honest, Johnson wanted to expand ULEZ.
So if he had done exactly what Khan had done, there would be no opposition, the Tories would be jumping up and down saying they'd solved pollution.
This is nothing but political point scoring.
I think you'll find many of us who are criticising the way Sadiq Khan is handling things are praising the way Andy Burnham is handling things.
Which party does Andy Burnham represent? 🤔
Some of us aren't party partisans and can think through issues and take stances out of principle or logic and can recognise when people do the right thing regardless of party. Burnham is doing a better job than Khan - Boris isn't even the picture or relevant.
Has there been evidence to suggest that Burnham's approach will actually do anything?
Burnham is just as slippery as Johnson, so it is not a surprise to see you taken in by him. He was a Brownite under Brown, anti-Corbyn, then stole Corbyn's policies, then was anti-Corbyn again, then he was a Starmer supporter, then he was a Starmer hater, then he wanted the leadership, now he doesn't want the leadership, now he's a Starmer advocate again.
He's a slippery chap with no principles whatsoever. It is shocking that people cannot see past it.
So if I say I disagree with Labour's Khan then its because I'm a petty partisan who disagrees with him as he's Labour?
But if I say I agree with Labour's Burnham then its because Burnham is a slippery unprincipled chap?
Maybe there's more to life than political point scoring.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
That's peak Three Yorkshiremen. "It's better than the smog of the 1950s, so I only get asthma when I'm 30."
I was actually quite shaken to discover the seriousness of the pollution in London.
Ulez1 has been a superb, excellently implemented policy.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Saddleworth really doesn't like being part of GM.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
A few ageing nostalgics therein make such a claim.
Matthew Engel wrote about it in his book Engel's England and found no-one under 50 that claimed to live in Yorkshire "only the old people say that", a local girl told him.
Yeah, us youngsters just say we live in God's Own County
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
That's peak Three Yorkshiremen. "It's better than the smog of the 1950s, so I only get asthma when I'm 30."
I was actually quite shaken to discover the seriousness of the pollution in London.
Ulez1 has been a superb, excellently implemented policy.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Saddleworth really doesn't like being part of GM.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
A few ageing nostalgics therein make such a claim.
Matthew Engel wrote about it in his book Engel's England and found no-one under 50 that claimed to live in Yorkshire "only the old people say that", a local girl told him.
Well, that might be true, but all the borough road signs have a White Rose on them ("In the historic county of York"), which is what I take as "it".
I don't suppose it would be practical to separate from Oldham, but still.
Let us also be honest, Johnson wanted to expand ULEZ.
So if he had done exactly what Khan had done, there would be no opposition, the Tories would be jumping up and down saying they'd solved pollution.
This is nothing but political point scoring.
I think you'll find many of us who are criticising the way Sadiq Khan is handling things are praising the way Andy Burnham is handling things.
Which party does Andy Burnham represent? 🤔
Some of us aren't party partisans and can think through issues and take stances out of principle or logic and can recognise when people do the right thing regardless of party. Burnham is doing a better job than Khan - Boris isn't even the picture or relevant.
Has there been evidence to suggest that Burnham's approach will actually do anything?
Burnham is just as slippery as Johnson, so it is not a surprise to see you taken in by him. He was a Brownite under Brown, anti-Corbyn, then stole Corbyn's policies, then was anti-Corbyn again, then he was a Starmer supporter, then he was a Starmer hater, then he wanted the leadership, now he doesn't want the leadership, now he's a Starmer advocate again.
He's a slippery chap with no principles whatsoever. It is shocking that people cannot see past it.
So if I say I disagree with Labour's Khan then its because I'm a petty partisan who disagrees with him as he's Labour?
But if I say I agree with Labour's Burnham then its because Burnham is a slippery unprincipled chap?
Maybe there's more to life than political point scoring.
No you disagree with Khan because he's pro SKS and you agree with Andy Burnham because he's anti-SKS. Quite obvious.
If evidence is what you are basing your suggestions on, then you would conclude that Burnham's proposals don't go nearly far enough.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
This is a very good point.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
Let us also be honest, Johnson wanted to expand ULEZ.
So if he had done exactly what Khan had done, there would be no opposition, the Tories would be jumping up and down saying they'd solved pollution.
This is nothing but political point scoring.
I think you'll find many of us who are criticising the way Sadiq Khan is handling things are praising the way Andy Burnham is handling things.
Which party does Andy Burnham represent? 🤔
Some of us aren't party partisans and can think through issues and take stances out of principle or logic and can recognise when people do the right thing regardless of party. Burnham is doing a better job than Khan - Boris isn't even the picture or relevant.
Has there been evidence to suggest that Burnham's approach will actually do anything?
Burnham is just as slippery as Johnson, so it is not a surprise to see you taken in by him. He was a Brownite under Brown, anti-Corbyn, then stole Corbyn's policies, then was anti-Corbyn again, then he was a Starmer supporter, then he was a Starmer hater, then he wanted the leadership, now he doesn't want the leadership, now he's a Starmer advocate again.
He's a slippery chap with no principles whatsoever. It is shocking that people cannot see past it.
So if I say I disagree with Labour's Khan then its because I'm a petty partisan who disagrees with him as he's Labour?
But if I say I agree with Labour's Burnham then its because Burnham is a slippery unprincipled chap?
Maybe there's more to life than political point scoring.
No you disagree with Khan because he's pro SKS and you agree with Andy Burnham because he's anti-SKS. Quite obvious.
Slight problem with that.
I kind of like SKS lately. I like what he has to say about building more houses and I'd rather he is PM than Sunak because of that, despite not liking leftwing politics in general.
My principles come before party politics. My principle is I want a UK where people can afford a home and private transportation of their own. Lately Sunak is against that, Khan is against that, SKS and Burnham are more in favour of that.
I kind of like SKS lately. I like what he has to say about building more houses and I'd rather he is PM than Sunak because of that, despite not liking leftwing politics in general.
My principles come before party politics. My principle is I want a UK where people can afford a home and private transportation of their own. Lately Sunak is against that, Khan is against that, SKS and Burnham are more in favour of that.
I didn't get the sense you liked SKS at all from your posts but that is fine, I accept that.
I care about pollution and preventing unneeded deaths, you support proposals that will do little to reduce that, which is fine as it goes. But we have different priorities.
As somebody that lives in London, I commend Khan for standing up for London's place in the UK and in the world. Johnson said the right things but at every turn sold London down the river.
I think that avoiding a cliff edge penalising the many (hundreds of?) thousands of 10yr old diesels could have been avoided. A taper or something. Because small a percentage as it may be it will nevertheless affect many people who can least afford it in order to achieve a medium term aim.
No one wants polluting cars on the road where an affordable, sensible solution is available. Expansion of the ULEZ is not it.
I think there's some merit to your argument and I would support that. But that is very different from scrapping it altogether.
Let us be honest, these people are the same people that opposed the congestion charge, opposed the minimum wage.
...opposed the move to digital TV; can't use a debit card; own cars that self-destruct when cruising at 20mph; are triggered by the Tube scene in Darkest Hour...
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
Interesting one this, and there's no definitive answer.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!). The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
Interesting one this, and there's no definitive answer.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!). The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
[cont] Anyway, apologies for long rambling reply. It's an interesting question and the answer is definitely feelings-based, and I'm sure others in GM would have different perspectives.
As a final point, I think there was a remarkably similar story in Tyne and Wear.
As somebody that lives in London, I commend Khan for standing up for London's place in the UK and in the world. Johnson said the right things but at every turn sold London down the river.
I think that avoiding a cliff edge penalising the many (hundreds of?) thousands of 10yr old diesels could have been avoided. A taper or something. Because small a percentage as it may be it will nevertheless affect many people who can least afford it in order to achieve a medium term aim.
No one wants polluting cars on the road where an affordable, sensible solution is available. Expansion of the ULEZ is not it.
I think there's some merit to your argument and I would support that. But that is very different from scrapping it altogether.
Let us be honest, these people are the same people that opposed the congestion charge, opposed the minimum wage.
...opposed the move to digital TV; can't use a debit card; own cars that self-destruct when cruising at 20mph; are triggered by the Tube scene in Darkest Hour...
I mean, the list goes on...
I think the best comparison is the smoking ban. I remember the fuss over that.
The Tories have seemingly given up on the Red Wall. I suspect these voters will never make that mistake again so the Tories will have to find a new voting coalition.
Such a shame they've pissed off the people that would vote for them in future.
How is it that the Conservatives have managed to miss the wide open London mayoral goal? In fact, they haven't just missed it, they have shot the ball into the stands on the far right.
They had one opportunity to pick someone sensible, attractive to the electorate, dynamic, interesting. I'm not suggesting Rory Stewart, but obviously someone of that kind of ilk who had a presence and who might galvanise moderate left voters in the way that Boris once did. They could have won this election in May, possibly with ease.
It's a measure of how disconnected the Conservative Party is becoming from power that at its moment of golden opportunity it managed to select someone so repulsively unelectable as Susan Hall.
Whom do you have in mind? Surely the problem is that the party *doesn't* have anyone with those attributes. In London or elsewhere...
George Osborne.
ROFL!
Jeremy Clarkson?
Far too divisive, reactionary, and anti-woke. He's exactly what the party needs to move away from, not towards.
You aren’t aware that the real life Clarkson is very different to the character he plays on TV? A Remainer for a start.
He cultivates an air of grumpy old-fashioned obnoxiousness, which regardless of his actual views is not likely to attract centrist London voters. But in current circs I think Jesus Christ would struggle as Tory candidate for London. Maybe their candidate is as good as any.
Anyone who spends a minute pondering Clarkson will come to the conclusion that he is in their side. Plenty won't bother spending that minute, that said.
Many moons ago, Clarkson wrote a column - perhaps better called a meta-column - about column writing. Basically, he had to write a certain number of columns a year - say, 40 - of a certain number of words. And do so for years. They also need to be entertaining and engage the paper's audience. The problem he outlined was that after a few years of this, he has covered everything. So his first part of writing is to read the week's papers, see what has engaged people and/or was controversial, and write about that in an engaging way. Hence he sometimes write columns which were directly contradicted by earlier columns he had written, and not particularly his own views at times.
It sounded quite honest, tbf, and could explain why columnists sometimes get into trouble.
Clarkson the column-writer might be a very different entity to Clarkson the celebrity, and that might be very different to Clarkson the real person.
Didn't Clarkson punch someone in the face for bringing him a cold steak? Did he do that as celebrity, a columnist or a real person, I wonder?
Did he? I knew he hit Piers Morgan, over something that I have a little sympathy with Clarkson for.
( I am saddened that Piers Morgan still has any prominence within our society. If Clarkson's bad, then Morgan's many times worse. We'd be better off without either. I wonder if Morgan's left-wing persuasion offers him some protection?)
Piers Morgan is left wing? News to me. Clarkson punched someone working on Top Gear for bringing him cold food, IIRC, it's why he was sacked from the programme.
If he's left wing how come so much of what he says pisses me off?
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
This is a very good point.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
it seems to be demanding money from central government to fund a scrappage scheme.
Which if you want a progressive rather than regressive solution, or a solution which actually works, is surely a better alternative?
Why is taxing poor people who can't afford to replace their vehicles better than having a scrappage scheme to assist them to actually replace vehicles?
And if a scrappage scheme gets more polluting cars off the road, faster, then isn't it a good idea?
I thought Labour was supposed to be the party of progressive politics. Telling rich people who can afford clean vehicles they can drive tax free while poor people need to pay the taxes, how is that progressive?
Okay I just saw the Leon comment on the IanB2 comment. IanB2 has always been pretty anti Leon for one reason or another.
But let's not start talking about ourselves.
Are we sure Leon is Leon? Leon's profile has been marked private, so unsearchable, which did not used to be the case.
I just clicked on the "activity" button.
I'm not sure I've seen an activity button. Nonetheless, I am wary of sudden, unexplained changes, especially when other PBers are wondering if their accounts have been compromised.
I kind of like SKS lately. I like what he has to say about building more houses and I'd rather he is PM than Sunak because of that, despite not liking leftwing politics in general.
My principles come before party politics. My principle is I want a UK where people can afford a home and private transportation of their own. Lately Sunak is against that, Khan is against that, SKS and Burnham are more in favour of that.
I didn't get the sense you liked SKS at all from your posts but that is fine, I accept that.
I care about pollution and preventing unneeded deaths, you support proposals that will do little to reduce that, which is fine as it goes. But we have different priorities.
I support proposals that will do more to reduce pollution, not less.
I also want pollution tackled, I just have different ideas on how to do so.
I believe getting clean technologies to replace dirty technologies is the way to do so.
I think it's pretty easy to explain without having to be a fan of SKS - we live in a de facto two party politick. When the support for the governing party collapses (because it tanks the economy, or has no policies, or is just being cruel in lieu of any policies) the main beneficiary is the second of those two parties. This didn't happen when Corbyn was LOTO because a) Brexit, b) the media outcry at the existence of Corbyn and c) the Tories were still managing the economy for those with mortgages or pensions. Now SKS (who has rolled back every single interesting or new policy proposal he has put forward) is reaping the benefit by standing still and hoping the collapse continues.
It was interesting the other day when a poll of the hypothetical "what if Corbyn was still leader" had Labour ahead by a few points. Even the idea of Corbyn without the shine on his policies (essentially the ephemeral memory of press created Corbyn) was winning enough seats to be the largest party if not a governing amount (I would suggest that in this economy Corbyn's policies would actually be a lot more popular, no matter what the press said, because since the onset of covid many of his policy solutions have been shown to be correct / have become actual government policy).
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
This is a very good point.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
it seems to be demanding money from central government to fund a scrappage scheme.
Which if you want a progressive rather than regressive solution, or a solution which actually works, is surely a better alternative?
Why is taxing poor people who can't afford to replace their vehicles better than having a scrappage scheme to assist them to actually replace vehicles?
And if a scrappage scheme gets more polluting cars off the road, faster, then isn't it a good idea?
I thought Labour was supposed to be the party of progressive politics. Telling rich people who can afford clean vehicles they can drive tax free while poor people need to pay the taxes, how is that progressive?
And if the government says no, you can't have any money from us? Which is what happened in London, after all.
I kind of like SKS lately. I like what he has to say about building more houses and I'd rather he is PM than Sunak because of that, despite not liking leftwing politics in general.
My principles come before party politics. My principle is I want a UK where people can afford a home and private transportation of their own. Lately Sunak is against that, Khan is against that, SKS and Burnham are more in favour of that.
I didn't get the sense you liked SKS at all from your posts but that is fine, I accept that.
I care about pollution and preventing unneeded deaths, you support proposals that will do little to reduce that, which is fine as it goes. But we have different priorities.
I support proposals that will do more to reduce pollution, not less.
I also want pollution tackled, I just have different ideas on how to do so.
I believe getting clean technologies to replace dirty technologies is the way to do so.
But then why do you not support Khan's proposals which even the Tories supported on the grounds they would reduce pollution? Why do you support Burnham's non-solution?
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
I would also give an allowance for blue badges and diplomatic vehicles, but other than that I basically agree. The public transport is good enough, and disallowing cars would obviously give it more passengers and therefore more money to reinvest in even better services.
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
I would also give an allowance for blue badges and diplomatic vehicles, but other than that I basically agree. The public transport is good enough, and disallowing cars would obviously give it more passengers and therefore more money to reinvest in even better services.
I concede to your modifications.
There is absolutely zero reason to drive in Central London. It is slow, inefficient, terrible for the environment and terrible for air quality. Get the bus, cycle, walk or get the Tube.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
I think this is like the GRR from Sturgeon.
Perhaps Khan genuinely wants to improve the health and wellbeing of Londoners? Takes the long view for the future of the city?
We need more politicians like that, even if they don't always get it completely right. Evidence-based punts.
I'm not sure it was an evidence-based punt, though. The evidence that it would improve health was sketchy at best. That's not to say there isn't room for vision.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour will contest it, just as they did Somerton and Frome.
The LDs were second in Somerton and Frome in 2019 not Labour
So? Voters are well organised and motivated to remove your corrupt party from power. Lab/LD will take a stonking victory whilst the other loses its deposit in one seat, and the other way round in another seat. A lot more Labour wins than LD, but you can't deny that the ABC vote is well organised and coming to get you.
Given the LDs have just produced a leaflet trashing the Labour candidate in Mid Bedfordshire the local Labour party will certainly not concede it and nor will Starmer. If he is heading for No 10 with a majority he should be winning seats like Mid Bedfordshire where Labour were second at the last general election as Blair did pre 1997
Oh come off it. Mid Beds has never been on anyone's target list before there was a sniff of a by election.
Even in 1997 the majority was 7000. It is normally over 20,000. In the two elections before that (2010, 2005) when it did drop below 20,000 the LDs were 2nd and the majority was still huge. The Tory vote share is often around 60% and hasn't dropped below 45% unless you go back to 1950. The last time anyone else held it was 1920.
In no way, outside of a by election is this on anyone's target list.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
This is a very good point.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
it seems to be demanding money from central government to fund a scrappage scheme.
Which if you want a progressive rather than regressive solution, or a solution which actually works, is surely a better alternative?
Why is taxing poor people who can't afford to replace their vehicles better than having a scrappage scheme to assist them to actually replace vehicles?
And if a scrappage scheme gets more polluting cars off the road, faster, then isn't it a good idea?
I thought Labour was supposed to be the party of progressive politics. Telling rich people who can afford clean vehicles they can drive tax free while poor people need to pay the taxes, how is that progressive?
And if the government says no, you can't have any money from us? Which is what happened in London, after all.
Then turn it around and put it on the government to implement an alternative solution, since yours has been rejected. Its upto the Chancellor to sort out taxes and spending, make him own it instead.
The technology is here for clean vehicles, the only discussion is not whether we transition to them but how to do so. Rich people can afford clean vehicles, poor people can't. The question is how to fix the latter. I'm not convinced taxing poor people who can't afford to change for their inability to do so is the wisest of solutions.
If providing a scrappage scheme makes it affordable for poor people to change their vehicle, which removes more pollution than a tax does, then is it not a better solution?
How is it that the Conservatives have managed to miss the wide open London mayoral goal? In fact, they haven't just missed it, they have shot the ball into the stands on the far right.
They had one opportunity to pick someone sensible, attractive to the electorate, dynamic, interesting. I'm not suggesting Rory Stewart, but obviously someone of that kind of ilk who had a presence and who might galvanise moderate left voters in the way that Boris once did. They could have won this election in May, possibly with ease.
It's a measure of how disconnected the Conservative Party is becoming from power that at its moment of golden opportunity it managed to select someone so repulsively unelectable as Susan Hall.
Whom do you have in mind? Surely the problem is that the party *doesn't* have anyone with those attributes. In London or elsewhere...
George Osborne.
ROFL!
Jeremy Clarkson?
Far too divisive, reactionary, and anti-woke. He's exactly what the party needs to move away from, not towards.
You aren’t aware that the real life Clarkson is very different to the character he plays on TV? A Remainer for a start.
He cultivates an air of grumpy old-fashioned obnoxiousness, which regardless of his actual views is not likely to attract centrist London voters. But in current circs I think Jesus Christ would struggle as Tory candidate for London. Maybe their candidate is as good as any.
Anyone who spends a minute pondering Clarkson will come to the conclusion that he is in their side. Plenty won't bother spending that minute, that said.
Many moons ago, Clarkson wrote a column - perhaps better called a meta-column - about column writing. Basically, he had to write a certain number of columns a year - say, 40 - of a certain number of words. And do so for years. They also need to be entertaining and engage the paper's audience. The problem he outlined was that after a few years of this, he has covered everything. So his first part of writing is to read the week's papers, see what has engaged people and/or was controversial, and write about that in an engaging way. Hence he sometimes write columns which were directly contradicted by earlier columns he had written, and not particularly his own views at times.
It sounded quite honest, tbf, and could explain why columnists sometimes get into trouble.
Clarkson the column-writer might be a very different entity to Clarkson the celebrity, and that might be very different to Clarkson the real person.
Didn't Clarkson punch someone in the face for bringing him a cold steak? Did he do that as celebrity, a columnist or a real person, I wonder?
Did he? I knew he hit Piers Morgan, over something that I have a little sympathy with Clarkson for.
( I am saddened that Piers Morgan still has any prominence within our society. If Clarkson's bad, then Morgan's many times worse. We'd be better off without either. I wonder if Morgan's left-wing persuasion offers him some protection?)
Piers Morgan is left wing? News to me. Clarkson punched someone working on Top Gear for bringing him cold food, IIRC, it's why he was sacked from the programme.
If he's left wing how come so much of what he says pisses me off?
I kind of like SKS lately. I like what he has to say about building more houses and I'd rather he is PM than Sunak because of that, despite not liking leftwing politics in general.
My principles come before party politics. My principle is I want a UK where people can afford a home and private transportation of their own. Lately Sunak is against that, Khan is against that, SKS and Burnham are more in favour of that.
I didn't get the sense you liked SKS at all from your posts but that is fine, I accept that.
I care about pollution and preventing unneeded deaths, you support proposals that will do little to reduce that, which is fine as it goes. But we have different priorities.
I support proposals that will do more to reduce pollution, not less.
I also want pollution tackled, I just have different ideas on how to do so.
I believe getting clean technologies to replace dirty technologies is the way to do so.
But then why do you not support Khan's proposals which even the Tories supported on the grounds they would reduce pollution? Why do you support Burnham's non-solution?
I am totally bemused at your logic.
Because taxing polluting vehicles for driving, which the owner can't afford to change, does not reduce pollution as more as getting those vehicles scrapped and off the road altogether does.
Burnham's solution will remove more emissions from the air, not less.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
This is a very good point.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
it seems to be demanding money from central government to fund a scrappage scheme.
Which if you want a progressive rather than regressive solution, or a solution which actually works, is surely a better alternative?
Why is taxing poor people who can't afford to replace their vehicles better than having a scrappage scheme to assist them to actually replace vehicles?
And if a scrappage scheme gets more polluting cars off the road, faster, then isn't it a good idea?
I thought Labour was supposed to be the party of progressive politics. Telling rich people who can afford clean vehicles they can drive tax free while poor people need to pay the taxes, how is that progressive?
And if the government says no, you can't have any money from us? Which is what happened in London, after all.
I'm not sure it was an evidence-based punt, though. The evidence that it would improve health was sketchy at best. That's not to say there isn't room for vision.
At least Khan has some ideas. We can criticise the ideas but at least he has some.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
This is a very good point.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
Wigan in GM is probably the fundamental issue. Original proposals didn't have it there. It's no more Manchester than Warrington is.
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
A good starting point would be to pedestrian Oxford Street and environs, save for delivery vehicles. Would transform the area.
I kind of like SKS lately. I like what he has to say about building more houses and I'd rather he is PM than Sunak because of that, despite not liking leftwing politics in general.
My principles come before party politics. My principle is I want a UK where people can afford a home and private transportation of their own. Lately Sunak is against that, Khan is against that, SKS and Burnham are more in favour of that.
I didn't get the sense you liked SKS at all from your posts but that is fine, I accept that.
I care about pollution and preventing unneeded deaths, you support proposals that will do little to reduce that, which is fine as it goes. But we have different priorities.
I support proposals that will do more to reduce pollution, not less.
I also want pollution tackled, I just have different ideas on how to do so.
I believe getting clean technologies to replace dirty technologies is the way to do so.
But then why do you not support Khan's proposals which even the Tories supported on the grounds they would reduce pollution? Why do you support Burnham's non-solution?
I am totally bemused at your logic.
Because taxing polluting vehicles for driving, which the owner can't afford to change, does not reduce pollution as more as getting those vehicles scrapped and off the road altogether does.
Burnham's solution will remove more emissions from the air, not less.
That's exactly what they said about the congestion charge
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
This is a very good point.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
it seems to be demanding money from central government to fund a scrappage scheme.
Which if you want a progressive rather than regressive solution, or a solution which actually works, is surely a better alternative?
Why is taxing poor people who can't afford to replace their vehicles better than having a scrappage scheme to assist them to actually replace vehicles?
And if a scrappage scheme gets more polluting cars off the road, faster, then isn't it a good idea?
I thought Labour was supposed to be the party of progressive politics. Telling rich people who can afford clean vehicles they can drive tax free while poor people need to pay the taxes, how is that progressive?
And if the government says no, you can't have any money from us? Which is what happened in London, after all.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Saddleworth really doesn't like being part of GM.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
Barnoldswick is an area of "Lancashire controlled Yorkshire" and wants to go back home.
Citation required – (i.e. proper polling rather than a few flag-waving nerds)
The Yorkshire flag waves proudly in the middle of the village from a bloody big flagpole. The local shops sell Yorkshire memorabilia. Not a hint of the red rose to be found.
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
A good starting point would be to pedestrian Oxford Street and environs, save for delivery vehicles. Would transform the area.
Sadiq Khan has so little power he couldn't even do that, despite all the locals and Londoners supporting it.
In a hypothetical world in which Labour did actually win 500 seats as some of the polls say, what would happen to the Tories?
They would either be replaced by or adapt into more of an outwardly socially right wing party - like a Christian Conservative party. I think they will lose the ability to talk to "moderates" (who will flock to LDs or Labour) and become very insular.
I also think 500 seats could see a split in the Labour party - SKS will feel bulletproof and be able to kick out any holdovers from the Corbyn era without imperilling his majority (thinking McDonnell or Abbott). I think they will either sit as independents with Corbyn (who I think would retain his seat as an Independent) or set up a "New Left" party. This group would likely be no bigger than 20 MPs, but still, I think it is possible. I also wonder where the LDs will go - I'm still constantly surprised Ed Davey hasn't stepped aside for Daisy Cooper who is just a much more telegenic and charismatic politician who in a GE would contrast well with SKS and Sunak in a way Davey just... won't.
No-one knows for sure how close Russia are to exhausting their reserves. Having three defensive lines might not help Russia much if they've thrown everything into defending the first line.
Chris has perhaps overlooked this line in his reading of the dense texts of the ISW.
"The Russian formations and units currently occupying secondary lines of defense are largely unknown at this time, however, and ISW offers this assessment with low confidence."
Always important to read the small print. The uncertainty, of course, cuts both ways.
Absolutely.
This is a very good* article looking at the overall position of the conflict, and the various prospects for what might happen next.
Just when you've published a header entitled "The Lab Lead is Getting Narrower", and opined "One thing is looking pretty clear and that the days of Labour leads of 20% plus are no longer there…" - this happens!
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
Saddleworth really doesn't like being part of GM.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
Barnoldswick is an area of "Lancashire controlled Yorkshire" and wants to go back home.
Citation required – (i.e. proper polling rather than a few flag-waving nerds)
The Yorkshire flag waves proudly in the middle of the village from a bloody big flagpole. The local shops sell Yorkshire memorabilia. Not a hint of the red rose to be found.
Nerdish flag-waving.
Polling required.
Matthew Engel wants to revert to the old boundaries. Yet even he couldn't find anyone under 50 who said they lived in Yorkshire.
Saddleworth has been Greater Manchester since 1974.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour will contest it, just as they did Somerton and Frome.
The LDs were second in Somerton and Frome in 2019 not Labour
So? Voters are well organised and motivated to remove your corrupt party from power. Lab/LD will take a stonking victory whilst the other loses its deposit in one seat, and the other way round in another seat. A lot more Labour wins than LD, but you can't deny that the ABC vote is well organised and coming to get you.
Given the LDs have just produced a leaflet trashing the Labour candidate in Mid Bedfordshire the local Labour party will certainly not concede it and nor will Starmer. If he is heading for No 10 with a majority he should be winning seats like Mid Bedfordshire where Labour were second at the last general election as Blair did pre 1997
Oh come off it. Mid Beds has never been on anyone's target list before there was a sniff of a by election.
Even in 1997 the majority was 7000. It is normally over 20,000. In the two elections before that (2010, 2005) when it did drop below 20,000 the LDs were 2nd and the majority was still huge. The Tory vote share is often around 60% and hasn't dropped below 45% unless you go back to 1950 and they have never lost the seat.
In no way, outside of a by election is this on anyone's target list.
In fairness, I think HYUFD's point is not that this would be a General Election target but that this IS a by-election and, pre-1997, Blair would've won and not given the Lib Dems a sniff starting from second (Lib Dems did win a couple of by-elections during Blair's period as LOTO, but starting from second place and with Labour giving them a run for their money).
There is some truth in that, albeit as it happened none of Labour's by-election gains 1994-7 came in such deep blue territory as the three that arose were in seats that were likely to be on Labour's target list for a General Election.
I kind of like SKS lately. I like what he has to say about building more houses and I'd rather he is PM than Sunak because of that, despite not liking leftwing politics in general.
My principles come before party politics. My principle is I want a UK where people can afford a home and private transportation of their own. Lately Sunak is against that, Khan is against that, SKS and Burnham are more in favour of that.
I didn't get the sense you liked SKS at all from your posts but that is fine, I accept that.
I care about pollution and preventing unneeded deaths, you support proposals that will do little to reduce that, which is fine as it goes. But we have different priorities.
I support proposals that will do more to reduce pollution, not less.
I also want pollution tackled, I just have different ideas on how to do so.
I believe getting clean technologies to replace dirty technologies is the way to do so.
But then why do you not support Khan's proposals which even the Tories supported on the grounds they would reduce pollution? Why do you support Burnham's non-solution?
I am totally bemused at your logic.
Because taxing polluting vehicles for driving, which the owner can't afford to change, does not reduce pollution as more as getting those vehicles scrapped and off the road altogether does.
Burnham's solution will remove more emissions from the air, not less.
That's exactly what they said about the congestion charge
No its not.
With the congestion charge where was an alternative plan to get vehicles off the road altogether?
I never said that taxing polluting vehicles will not reduce pollution, you cut the rest of the sentence out. I said it will not cut pollution "as [much] as getting those vehicles scrapped and off the road altogether" does. The full sentence needs to read, not a fragment of it.
Taxing polluting vehicles has been great for providing a market-led incentive to get rich people to change their vehicles, its worked. But the problem is that poor people can't afford to do so. Taxing poor people more won't make it any easier for them to afford to do so, but providing scrappage incentives will. Its a progressive and science-led scheme, rather than a punitive and regressive one.
The outstanding concern is the non-Londoners with a frequent need to drive into the ULEZ for work etc. That's outside Khan's remit, but there should be support for them, too (subject to some kind of testing of need to drive into London etc)
Greetings from the Pravda Brewery Beer Theatre, Market Sq, Lviv - where there’s 56 beers on tap!
What a lovely old city, cobbled streets, trams, dozens of street bars. We went to the national museum, but sadly most of the old stuff there had been removed for safety, there was an old Jesuit church basement which was quite funky, and there’s an Apple Museum we’re going to see this afternoon. That’s a museum of old computers, not old apples!
I note we are back to the PB Bumpkins telling Londoners what's good for our city.
An almost daily phenomenon on PB.
Absolutely - my right to drive with no congestion charge, road tax or parking costs is to be defended at all costs.
Morning all.
There is no Right to Drive; that's why you have to have a license to do it !
Most places in the USA require a licence to buy and own a gun, but that's viewed even by a very conservative Supreme Court as consistent with the right to bear arms under the Constitution.
I think your mistake is to view all rights as absolute by definition. Most are qualified and enable something like a licensing regime.
Having said that, I'm not sure the "right to drive" is very meaningful. There are very substantial restrictions on where, what and how you can drive that nobody seriously suggests removing.
Morgan's left-wing 'persuasion'? He spends every day telling us how woke and trans people are destroying the world. He was anti gay rights, he was pro the Iraq war.
There is nothing left wing about him, centrist maybe at a stretch.
And I'm far from convinced that woke and anti-woke views split left or right. It's perfectly possible to be a trade unionist who is anti-woke, as an example, because woke/anti-woke is more about social views over economic and political views.
Or in my case, someone who is probably centre-right, yet is (hopefully) fairly woke.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
In Greater London, there are still areas where there's resentment at being in Greater London at all, even getting on for 60 years on. Havering natch; here's something you won't hear Andrew Rosindell raising in Parliament;
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
This is a very good point.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
it seems to be demanding money from central government to fund a scrappage scheme.
Which if you want a progressive rather than regressive solution, or a solution which actually works, is surely a better alternative?
Why is taxing poor people who can't afford to replace their vehicles better than having a scrappage scheme to assist them to actually replace vehicles?
And if a scrappage scheme gets more polluting cars off the road, faster, then isn't it a good idea?
I thought Labour was supposed to be the party of progressive politics. Telling rich people who can afford clean vehicles they can drive tax free while poor people need to pay the taxes, how is that progressive?
And if the government says no, you can't have any money from us? Which is what happened in London, after all.
*cough* Crossrail *cough*
*coughchokeNPRsplutterHS2chokecough*
Lots of coughing going on. Is there an air quality problem this morning?
Besides, most of the money for Crossrail (70% or so) came from London, a lot by nabbing vale from businesses who would benefit from the line.
The outstanding concern is the non-Londoners with a frequent need to drive into the ULEZ for work etc. That's outside Khan's remit, but there should be support for them, too (subject to some kind of testing of need to drive into London etc)
Perhaps the Tories should help with that instead of just calling to scrap the whole thing?
In a hypothetical world in which Labour did actually win 500 seats as some of the polls say, what would happen to the Tories?
I worry about this. It's been playing on my mind.
Let's enter the world of evolution by natural selection. More precisely, the evolution of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and viruses, or drug resistant tumours.
Remove a hundred or so Tory MPs and what remains will still have some sort of ecological diversity. There will be the odd Lee Anderson or Suella type, a few dull but broadly thatcherite Sunaks, a handful of centrists and secret remainers and a few technocratic Tories nobody's heard of. What then grows back will be genetically similar to previous Tory parliamentary parties, and hopefully a little chastened with the populist right faction less powerful.
Get down to 50 though and the surviving MPs are likely to represent very Brexity, very right wing seats and be disproportionately of the Lee Anderson type (though not Lee himself, he would lose his seat). Either by natural disposition or through self-interest. What would then grow back might have quite dangerously mutant political DNA.
That might lock them out of power for a couple of terms, but it could mean that when things eventually swing back their way we would be faced with something much closer to the Trump GOP than we have even today.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
Interesting one this, and there's no definitive answer.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!). The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
[cont] Anyway, apologies for long rambling reply. It's an interesting question and the answer is definitely feelings-based, and I'm sure others in GM would have different perspectives.
As a final point, I think there was a remarkably similar story in Tyne and Wear.
Oh yes, the Mackems really enjoyed being under the thumb of Geordies.
The biggest pisser for them was the "Tyne and Wear Metro", which for decades went nowhere near Wearside.
This has carried on in a wider context, which was how they ended up with a "North of Tyne" mayor, when pre-1974 County Durham wanted nowt to do with it, fearing another power grab from The Toon.
And from my perspective, Gateshead is in County Durham. Just as it was when I was born there. That's my county. coz that's where I'm from. No Whitehall bureaucrat will tell me any different.
And of course, Middlesbrough will forever be a Small Town in Yorkshire.
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
When the congestion charge was introduced, I had a conversation with an A list celeb, who wanted it to be £100 a day. So he could drive his cars whenever he wanted. Get the poor off the roads.
Greetings from the Pravda Brewery Beer Theatre, Market Sq, Lviv - where there’s 56 beers on tap!
What a lovely old city, cobbled streets, trams, dozens of street bars. We went to the national museum, but sadly most of the old stuff there had been removed for safety, there was an old Jesuit church basement which was quite funky, and there’s an Apple Museum we’re going to see this afternoon. That’s a museum of old computers, not old apples!
Cheers!
Lviv looks lovely. I must go there once this is all over. My only Ukraine experience is Kyiv, which has its attractions but feels quite Soviet still, or at least did when I was there.
Comments
https://havering.blog/2023/04/22/andrew-rosindells-big-idea/
Bromley and Bexley still have patches of "Kent, actually". It was probably a factor in Uxbridge. It's an unspoken, emotional factor in the ULEZ expansion.
Is there something similar GM? When I was the other side of the Pennines, West Yorkshire was probably more acceptable than Greater Leeds.
So if he had done exactly what Khan had done, there would be no opposition, the Tories would be jumping up and down saying they'd solved pollution.
This is nothing but political point scoring.
It claims to be in Yorkshire, despite being the wrong side of the Pennines.
http://whiterose.saddleworth.net/whitered.htm
S W Surrey:
1997 the result was: Con 25.2k, LD 22.5k, Lab 5.3k
In 2001 the result was Con 22.4k , LD 21.6k, Lab 4.3k
Labour absolutely no where in either election and a very tight Con/LD marginal.
A poll carried out prior to the campaign in 2001 in S W Surrey put Lab in 2nd place with the LDs 3rd.
To take any notice of a local poll prior to a by election campaign with an Indy on 19%, the LD by election m/c not yet in full swing and Lab high in the polls is as pointless as anything you could possibly do. I wouldn't be surprised if that poll wasn't a deliberate spoiler.
If pollution were seriously affecting health, it would show in life expectancy figures.
Smoking rates show in life expectancy figures. Glasgow has higher than Scotland's national average, while Orkney has below average smoking rates.
If thousands of premature deaths a year were really happening then that should be able to be shown via data analysis and not just via claims made by organisations with a vested interest.
Which isn't to say that cleaning the air isn't a good idea, it is, but lets be honest and there's a right and wrong way to do it.
Perhaps Khan genuinely wants to improve the health and wellbeing of Londoners? Takes the long view for the future of the city?
We need more politicians like that, even if they don't always get it completely right. Evidence-based punts.
Is the Independent mayor actually going to stand? If not, the question of who he endorses may be important.
Which party does Andy Burnham represent? 🤔
Some of us aren't party partisans and can think through issues and take stances out of principle or logic and can recognise when people do the right thing regardless of party. Burnham is doing a better job than Khan - Boris isn't even the picture or relevant.
Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta's and Pardon's
Daintily alights Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt's edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium - rural Middlesex again.
Burnham is just as slippery as Johnson, so it is not a surprise to see you taken in by him. He was a Brownite under Brown, anti-Corbyn, then stole Corbyn's policies, then was anti-Corbyn again, then he was a Starmer supporter, then he was a Starmer hater, then he wanted the leadership, now he doesn't want the leadership, now he's a Starmer advocate again.
He's a slippery chap with no principles whatsoever. It is shocking that people cannot see past it.
a) If Lab doesn't campaign and gives the LDs a free run in Mid Beds who do you think will win?
b) If the LDs don't campaign and give Lab a free run in Mid Beds who do you think will win?
c) If both campaign hard in Mid Beds who do you think will win?
Here is my opinion:
a) LDs 99% certainty with a lot of confidence on my part
b) 50/50 Lab/Con, but with no real confidence on my part regarding those probabilities
c) I don't have any clue to be honest but if I had to assign odds I would go 60% Con, 25% LD, 15% Lab
A few ageing nostalgics therein make such a claim.
Matthew Engel wrote about it in his book Engel's England and found no-one under 50 that claimed to live in Yorkshire "only the old people say that", a local girl told him.
An almost daily phenomenon on PB.
I briefly worked in Leigh, and there people would absolutely hate being classed as a suburb of Wigan and were fiercely Leigh not Wigan. Now Leigh and Wigan are both classed as part of Greater Manchester. It always seemed though that Wigan was the problem in Leigh's eyes, not Manchester.
The original proposal by Burnham to have a charge zone, like ULEZ, across the whole of Greater Manchester was absolutely ridiculous. The idea that inner Manchester/Salford and outer Wigan need the same policy is clearly not true. Its good that they've rowed back and come up with a completely different, and better, solution. Hopefully other cities and regions can look at the work Burnham has done on this subject and learn from it - we should look at good ideas regardless of which party they come from.
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 50% (+4)
CON: 25% (-4)
LDEM: 9% (-3)
via
@DeltapollUK
, 17 - 21 Aug
As a result, I expect Lab and Lib Dems to go for it full on, and the Tories to win.
When the issue of the election is an absentee MP cashing in while abandoning her constituents, picking a Walthamstow councillor who's trousering £40k in allowances whilst trying to get elected as Dorries' successor was unwise.
He's probably a nice enough bloke personally and a fairly credible candidate in a General Election but, like the Tory candidate in North Shropshire, you just can't hand your opponent a stick like that to beat you with in a by-election as it will be used absolutely relentlessly.
No one wants polluting cars on the road where an affordable, sensible solution is available. Expansion of the ULEZ is not it.
Another question is whether aid is best given to countries who use it efficiently or countries that we like. When I was in the Commons I remember discussing with Hilary Benn whether we should still be giving substantial aid to Ethiopia after a Government crackdown on dissidents. He said DfID opinion was divided - some felt we had to show that we disapproved, others said that Ethiopia was an example of a country with relatively low corruption which was using aid effectively. He decided to switch aid from Ethiopian Government agencies to NGOs helping on the ground in Ethiopia, but as I recall he wasn't really sure if that was the right decision, because the agencies were actually pretty good and starving them of funds didn't feel quite right.
Regardless of the "correct" answer, I was quite proud of him and DfID for wrestling with it. I don't feel the "hotels in Bognor" approach passes the same smell test.
And take the evidence wherever it leads us. Not pay millions to try to get the evidence changed to suit our agenda when it turns out the evidence is against what is proposed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66570024
Survation for True North put SNP on 37% and Labour on 35%, its highest level of support w/ the company since 2014
https://twitter.com/KieranPAndrews/status/1694275112717951143
Let us be honest, these people are the same people that opposed the congestion charge, opposed the minimum wage.
But if I say I agree with Labour's Burnham then its because Burnham is a slippery unprincipled chap?
Maybe there's more to life than political point scoring.
I don't suppose it would be practical to separate from Oldham, but still.
If evidence is what you are basing your suggestions on, then you would conclude that Burnham's proposals don't go nearly far enough.
Looking at this,
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/01/andy-burnham-clean-air-manchester-ulez-caz
it seems to be demanding money from central government to fund a scrappage scheme.
I kind of like SKS lately. I like what he has to say about building more houses and I'd rather he is PM than Sunak because of that, despite not liking leftwing politics in general.
My principles come before party politics. My principle is I want a UK where people can afford a home and private transportation of their own. Lately Sunak is against that, Khan is against that, SKS and Burnham are more in favour of that.
I care about pollution and preventing unneeded deaths, you support proposals that will do little to reduce that, which is fine as it goes. But we have different priorities.
I mean, the list goes on...
The man is a shameless opportunist and liar.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!).
The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
Driverless cars not happening (yet) has stuffed that.
Anyway, apologies for long rambling reply. It's an interesting question and the answer is definitely feelings-based, and I'm sure others in GM would have different perspectives.
As a final point, I think there was a remarkably similar story in Tyne and Wear.
Red Wall VI (6 August):
Labour 53% (+4)
Conservative 28% (–)
Reform UK 7% (-1)
Liberal Democrat 6% (-2)
Green 4% (–)
Plaid Cymru 1% (-1)
Other 1% (–)
Changes +/- 6 August
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1694016579598745708
The Tories have seemingly given up on the Red Wall. I suspect these voters will never make that mistake again so the Tories will have to find a new voting coalition.
Such a shame they've pissed off the people that would vote for them in future.
Why is taxing poor people who can't afford to replace their vehicles better than having a scrappage scheme to assist them to actually replace vehicles?
And if a scrappage scheme gets more polluting cars off the road, faster, then isn't it a good idea?
I thought Labour was supposed to be the party of progressive politics. Telling rich people who can afford clean vehicles they can drive tax free while poor people need to pay the taxes, how is that progressive?
I also want pollution tackled, I just have different ideas on how to do so.
I believe getting clean technologies to replace dirty technologies is the way to do so.
It was interesting the other day when a poll of the hypothetical "what if Corbyn was still leader" had Labour ahead by a few points. Even the idea of Corbyn without the shine on his policies (essentially the ephemeral memory of press created Corbyn) was winning enough seats to be the largest party if not a governing amount (I would suggest that in this economy Corbyn's policies would actually be a lot more popular, no matter what the press said, because since the onset of covid many of his policy solutions have been shown to be correct / have become actual government policy).
I am totally bemused at your logic.
Just as with everything TfL has had to cut, they think Londoners are thick and will blame Labour for it when they hold the money.
The Interesting Physics of Robert Oppenheimer (not the bomb) - Sixty Symbols
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py8k1tn8yw4
There is absolutely zero reason to drive in Central London. It is slow, inefficient, terrible for the environment and terrible for air quality. Get the bus, cycle, walk or get the Tube.
That's not to say there isn't room for vision.
Even in 1997 the majority was 7000. It is normally over 20,000. In the two elections before that (2010, 2005) when it did drop below 20,000 the LDs were 2nd and the majority was still huge. The Tory vote share is often around 60% and hasn't dropped below 45% unless you go back to 1950. The last time anyone else held it was 1920.
In no way, outside of a by election is this on anyone's target list.
The technology is here for clean vehicles, the only discussion is not whether we transition to them but how to do so. Rich people can afford clean vehicles, poor people can't. The question is how to fix the latter. I'm not convinced taxing poor people who can't afford to change for their inability to do so is the wisest of solutions.
If providing a scrappage scheme makes it affordable for poor people to change their vehicle, which removes more pollution than a tax does, then is it not a better solution?
Burnham's solution will remove more emissions from the air, not less.
Unlike say, Sunak.
"Two Labs for every Con"
I also think 500 seats could see a split in the Labour party - SKS will feel bulletproof and be able to kick out any holdovers from the Corbyn era without imperilling his majority (thinking McDonnell or Abbott). I think they will either sit as independents with Corbyn (who I think would retain his seat as an Independent) or set up a "New Left" party. This group would likely be no bigger than 20 MPs, but still, I think it is possible. I also wonder where the LDs will go - I'm still constantly surprised Ed Davey hasn't stepped aside for Daisy Cooper who is just a much more telegenic and charismatic politician who in a GE would contrast well with SKS and Sunak in a way Davey just... won't.
Ukraine's offensive: is it failing?
And are the Pentagon's criticism's of its strategy fair?
https://samf.substack.com/p/ukraines-offensive-is-it-failing?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
*Which means I agree with many of the points made.
Polling required.
Matthew Engel wants to revert to the old boundaries. Yet even he couldn't find anyone under 50 who said they lived in Yorkshire.
Saddleworth has been Greater Manchester since 1974.
There is some truth in that, albeit as it happened none of Labour's by-election gains 1994-7 came in such deep blue territory as the three that arose were in seats that were likely to be on Labour's target list for a General Election.
I’ve continued to listen to Londoners' concerns - and every single Londoner with a non ULEZ compliant vehicle is now eligible for financial support.
https://twitter.com/SadiqKhan/status/1694056011043102939
With the congestion charge where was an alternative plan to get vehicles off the road altogether?
I never said that taxing polluting vehicles will not reduce pollution, you cut the rest of the sentence out. I said it will not cut pollution "as [much] as getting those vehicles scrapped and off the road altogether" does. The full sentence needs to read, not a fragment of it.
Taxing polluting vehicles has been great for providing a market-led incentive to get rich people to change their vehicles, its worked. But the problem is that poor people can't afford to do so. Taxing poor people more won't make it any easier for them to afford to do so, but providing scrappage incentives will. Its a progressive and science-led scheme, rather than a punitive and regressive one.
There is no Right to Drive; that's why you have to have a license to do it !
What a lovely old city, cobbled streets, trams, dozens of street bars. We went to the national museum, but sadly most of the old stuff there had been removed for safety, there was an old Jesuit church basement which was quite funky, and there’s an Apple Museum we’re going to see this afternoon. That’s a museum of old computers, not old apples!
Cheers!
I think your mistake is to view all rights as absolute by definition. Most are qualified and enable something like a licensing regime.
Having said that, I'm not sure the "right to drive" is very meaningful. There are very substantial restrictions on where, what and how you can drive that nobody seriously suggests removing.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/22/labour-leftwing-credentials-byelection-snp-rutherglen-hamilton-west-keir-starmer
Very much in the tradition of Grauniad dropping into the Edinburgh Fringe for a few days every August so knows all about Scotland.
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/piers-morgan-i-should-be-the-darling-of-the-left-319247/
And I'm far from convinced that woke and anti-woke views split left or right. It's perfectly possible to be a trade unionist who is anti-woke, as an example, because woke/anti-woke is more about social views over economic and political views.
Or in my case, someone who is probably centre-right, yet is (hopefully) fairly woke.
Besides, most of the money for Crossrail (70% or so) came from London, a lot by nabbing vale from businesses who would benefit from the line.
Let's enter the world of evolution by natural selection. More precisely, the evolution of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and viruses, or drug resistant tumours.
Remove a hundred or so Tory MPs and what remains will still have some sort of ecological diversity. There will be the odd Lee Anderson or Suella type, a few dull but broadly thatcherite Sunaks, a handful of centrists and secret remainers and a few technocratic Tories nobody's heard of. What then grows back will be genetically similar to previous Tory parliamentary parties, and hopefully a little chastened with the populist right faction less powerful.
Get down to 50 though and the surviving MPs are likely to represent very Brexity, very right wing seats and be disproportionately of the Lee Anderson type (though not Lee himself, he would lose his seat). Either by natural disposition or through self-interest. What would then grow back might have quite dangerously mutant political DNA.
That might lock them out of power for a couple of terms, but it could mean that when things eventually swing back their way we would be faced with something much closer to the Trump GOP than we have even today.
The biggest pisser for them was the "Tyne and Wear Metro", which for decades went nowhere near Wearside.
This has carried on in a wider context, which was how they ended up with a "North of Tyne" mayor, when pre-1974 County Durham wanted nowt to do with it, fearing another power grab from The Toon.
And from my perspective, Gateshead is in County Durham. Just as it was when I was born there. That's my county. coz that's where I'm from. No Whitehall bureaucrat will tell me any different.
And of course, Middlesbrough will forever be a Small Town in Yorkshire.
How was the train journey?