I'm struggling to understand why the government has been so slow to defend British sovereign territory in Cyprus. The Greeks and French have every right to be upset.
There's a pattern with this government.
We're desperately rooting round in the cupboard to see if there's a working boat we can rustle up.
HMS Dragon isn't ready yet, and won't be until next weekend. Pathetic.
In the Falklands War we got a whole task force off in 72 hours.
I have the vision of the sailors turning up and a bloke with fag hanging out his mouth, big drag, well you see Barry can't come until next week to sort the toilets out and Trev is in Alicante on a golf trip so the painting isn't finished. I did my back out in 07, so I can't do it.....
Its something I really started to notice now in the UK compared to Asia. Asia, I consistently see when stuff breaks, its gets fixed ASAP. In China they fixed shit in my hotel within 2hrs, I saw an escalator break in Shangai at 7pm, I went into an art gallery, came out 2hrs later, a blokes had fixed it and where just tidying away their equipment.
Then I fly back to the UK, get in at 6am, multiple toilets broken....at an international airport. Given first flight in, those bogs had been broken from at least the previous day.
Trouble is, fixing stuff costs money. Fixing stuff quickly, rather than in three weeks' time when I can fit you in, costs more money.
And for a long time now, avoiding spending money has been the British way. How much that is owners wanting to extract every penny before the business collapses, how much it is customers having a preference for low-cost-but-shoddy, I don't know. Shame, because it's a problem that is biting the country increasingly painfully on the bum.
It is the Health & Safety culture in the UK. The H&S rules have to be seen to be followed. The job could likely be done quickly if the rules were broken, but what British manager is going to admit to deliberately breaking the H&S rules when they would straight away be out of their job?
In countries like the UAE getting the job done is the main thing, and H&S is not absolutely paramount. Lots of British people have moved there and I think this trend will continue, the present situation notwithstanding.
I'm struggling to understand why the government has been so slow to defend British sovereign territory in Cyprus. The Greeks and French have every right to be upset.
There's a pattern with this government.
We're desperately rooting round in the cupboard to see if there's a working boat we can rustle up.
HMS Dragon isn't ready yet, and won't be until next weekend. Pathetic.
In the Falklands War we got a whole task force off in 72 hours.
I have the vision of the sailors turning up and a bloke with fag hanging out his mouth, big drag, well you see Barry can't come until next week to sort the toilets out and Trev is in Alicante on a golf trip so the painting isn't finished. I did my back out in 07, so I can't do it.....
Its something I really started to notice now in the UK compared to Asia. Asia, I consistently see when stuff breaks, its gets fixed ASAP. In China they fixed shit in my hotel within 2hrs, I saw an escalator break in Shangai at 7pm, I went into an art gallery, came out 2hrs later, a blokes had fixed it and where just tidying away their equipment.
Then I fly back to the UK, get in at 6am, multiple toilets broken....at an international airport. Given first flight in, those bogs had been broken from at least the previous day.
Trouble is, fixing stuff costs money. Fixing stuff quickly, rather than in three weeks' time when I can fit you in, costs more money.
And for a long time now, avoiding spending money has been the British way. How much that is owners wanting to extract every penny before the business collapses, how much it is customers having a preference for low-cost-but-shoddy, I don't know. Shame, because it's a problem that is biting the country increasingly painfully on the bum.
And you used to get Ron from maintenance to pop down with his toolkit to take a look and then he raided his cupboard of spares to get it fixed. Now you call the maintenance company, they put you in the queue, have a look, then order the part. It's probably more efficient in terms of maintenance costs, but often takes longer. And Ron probably had a way of doing a temporary fix that got it up and running if needed (partly due to things being more basic and easier to take apart - also likely bigger, costlier, uglier, less environmentally friendly in initial manufacturing footprint etc).
At a previous company a couple of years ago, I was very pleasantly surprised when the response to reporting a noisy aircon outlet was that one of the onsite maintenance staff turned up the same day, diagnosed it as the bearings having gone in a unit which they kept some spares of in stock, and replaced it immediately. The firm contracted maintenance out to a third party company, but it can still be done right even then.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
I'm struggling to understand why the government has been so slow to defend British sovereign territory in Cyprus. The Greeks and French have every right to be upset.
There's a pattern with this government.
We're desperately rooting round in the cupboard to see if there's a working boat we can rustle up.
HMS Dragon isn't ready yet, and won't be until next weekend. Pathetic.
In the Falklands War we got a whole task force off in 72 hours.
I have the vision of the sailors turning up and a bloke with fag hanging out his mouth, big drag, well you see Barry can't come until next week to sort the toilets out and Trev is in Alicante on a golf trip so the painting isn't finished. I did my back out in 07, so I can't do it.....
Its something I really started to notice now in the UK compared to Asia. Asia, I consistently see when stuff breaks, its gets fixed ASAP. In China they fixed shit in my hotel within 2hrs, I saw an escalator break in Shangai at 7pm, I went into an art gallery, came out 2hrs later, a blokes had fixed it and where just tidying away their equipment.
Then I fly back to the UK, get in at 6am, multiple toilets broken....at an international airport. Given first flight in, those bogs had been broken from at least the previous day.
One of the reasons all the best chips are made in Taiwanese FABs is the astonishing work ethic. The Taiwanese themselves call it "eating shit" - ie they are prepared to eat shit, and work all hours, if the pay is good (which it is, in the chip industry, to an extent the chip engineers have become an elite)
In practise this means engineers are expected to be available 24/7. If a machine at the FAB goes wrong at 4am the relevant staff are called at home and they have to be there within 30 minutes and get it fixed immediately
TSMC have complained that they find it very hard to duplicate this work ethic elsewhere, eg the new FABs in Arizona
This is a choice on TSMC's part, their internal culture is based on Asian norms, not Western ones. Semiconductor fabs are significantly automated these days, the number of staff required isn't high compared to the value of the work being done. They absolutely could employ more staff so that nobody has to be available 24/7, and there's no shit eating going on. But that's not how it is done in Taiwan.
AMD used to run a large fab in Dresden. There was a point in the late 90s / early 2000s where AMD was very successful and that fab was running at well over normal capacity, with boxes of wafers literally stacked on top of the ceiling ventilation ducts because there was no other space available. AMD hired more people to deal with the workload - TSMC would have just pushed the existing staff harder.
Applying Asian culture to fabs (or any other factories) in western countries doesn't work, because people just won't tolerate that kind of work/life imbalance, no matter what the pay.
The latest immigration figures from… was it last week?… showed the number of asylum seekers down, the number of deportations of foreign offenders up, and the number of deportations in total up. I don’t know if the opponents of immigration in their social media bubbles will notice, but Labour’s delivering on what they said they’d do.
Israeli Air Force jets striking targets in Iran are also using their return flights to drop remaining munitions on targets in Lebanon, with targets provided in real time by Israeli military intelligence, security sources tell Ynet.
Israeli Air Force jets striking targets in Iran are also using their return flights to drop remaining munitions on targets in Lebanon, with targets provided in real time by Israeli military intelligence, security sources tell Ynet.
Given it 5 years and there will be some Israel tech start-up who revolutionises logistics.
'A 21-year-old has ignited a viral debate online after declaring he refuses to work because he was born without his consent. His argument is simple: since he never chose to be born, his parents are responsible for financially supporting him for life. He argues that being forced to work for a life he didn’t ask for is inherently unjust, and the responsibility lies with those who brought him into the world.' https://www.instagram.com/p/DVCTRydjRhj/
I'm struggling to understand why the government has been so slow to defend British sovereign territory in Cyprus. The Greeks and French have every right to be upset.
There's a pattern with this government.
We're desperately rooting round in the cupboard to see if there's a working boat we can rustle up.
HMS Dragon isn't ready yet, and won't be until next weekend. Pathetic.
In the Falklands War we got a whole task force off in 72 hours.
I have the vision of the sailors turning up and a bloke with fag hanging out his mouth, big drag, well you see Barry can't come until next week to sort the toilets out and Trev is in Alicante on a golf trip so the painting isn't finished. I did my back out in 07, so I can't do it.....
Its something I really started to notice now in the UK compared to Asia. Asia, I consistently see when stuff breaks, its gets fixed ASAP. In China they fixed shit in my hotel within 2hrs, I saw an escalator break in Shangai at 7pm, I went into an art gallery, came out 2hrs later, a blokes had fixed it and where just tidying away their equipment.
Then I fly back to the UK, get in at 6am, multiple toilets broken....at an international airport. Given first flight in, those bogs had been broken from at least the previous day.
Trouble is, fixing stuff costs money. Fixing stuff quickly, rather than in three weeks' time when I can fit you in, costs more money.
And for a long time now, avoiding spending money has been the British way. How much that is owners wanting to extract every penny before the business collapses, how much it is customers having a preference for low-cost-but-shoddy, I don't know. Shame, because it's a problem that is biting the country increasingly painfully on the bum.
It is the Health & Safety culture in the UK. The H&S rules have to be seen to be followed. The job could likely be done quickly if the rules were broken, but what British manager is going to admit to deliberately breaking the H&S rules when they would straight away be out of their job?
In countries like the UAE getting the job done is the main thing, and H&S is not absolutely paramount. Lots of British people have moved there and I think this trend will continue, the present situation notwithstanding.
In UAE, getting the job done is the main thing, and if the job is illegal and you have to slip the police some money, that’s fine. I kinda prefer the British approach.
I can say I cannot ever recall watching CH4 for anything
But if you and @Roger sing its praises then it must be of the left
Put it this way. It is no GBNews.
PB Tories would class it as left wing. I find it appropriately critical of Labour, Conservatives, Dem and GOP.
Their journalists and presenters are old school, probably left leaning but not unduly uncritical of Labour or Dem.
I find they report the news rather than opine like Mason and Kuennsberg tend to do.
It's a little left (in my view) but I always liked it as news for grown ups - people who had a basic understanding of the world and so didn't need to be spoonfed every detail, leaving more time for in depth reporting on the current situation.
It's a while since I watch it regularly though - it clashes with kids' bed and bath routine if watched live!
The other good thing about Channel 4 News is that they credit viewers with intelligence and attention span by featuring relatively long reports in depth on fewer subjects.
The old Newsnight was as good, but now it is just another bunch of talking heads in a studio.
Panorama is another victim of this. You can't explain a complicated investigation with comment from relevant people in 20 odd minutes, so they rarely do any. The odd exception, its all surface level crap.
When you watch old documentaries or current affairs programmes like Horizon, In Our Time etc it is impressive how they gave subjects and interviews time, compared to jump cut modern editing.
Indeed the original Thunderbirds is ponderously slow in comparison to modern programming.
Now you might say well people today eye roll, no attention span. But the likes of Vertasium on Youtube have shown 50+ minute videos about really quite niche science and maths subjects draws huge audiences. 11m people watched a 30 minute video about Markov Chains and 16m about the Path of Least Action.
Not to mention two hour podcasts. In fact, some people will consume ten second tiktoks and two hour podcasts and not much in between. An interesting bifurcation.
I'm struggling to understand why the government has been so slow to defend British sovereign territory in Cyprus. The Greeks and French have every right to be upset.
There's a pattern with this government.
We're desperately rooting round in the cupboard to see if there's a working boat we can rustle up.
HMS Dragon isn't ready yet, and won't be until next weekend. Pathetic.
In the Falklands War we got a whole task force off in 72 hours.
I have the vision of the sailors turning up and a bloke with fag hanging out his mouth, big drag, well you see Barry can't come until next week to sort the toilets out and Trev is in Alicante on a golf trip so the painting isn't finished. I did my back out in 07, so I can't do it.....
Its something I really started to notice now in the UK compared to Asia. Asia, I consistently see when stuff breaks, its gets fixed ASAP. In China they fixed shit in my hotel within 2hrs, I saw an escalator break in Shangai at 7pm, I went into an art gallery, came out 2hrs later, a blokes had fixed it and where just tidying away their equipment.
Then I fly back to the UK, get in at 6am, multiple toilets broken....at an international airport. Given first flight in, those bogs had been broken from at least the previous day.
Trouble is, fixing stuff costs money. Fixing stuff quickly, rather than in three weeks' time when I can fit you in, costs more money.
And for a long time now, avoiding spending money has been the British way. How much that is owners wanting to extract every penny before the business collapses, how much it is customers having a preference for low-cost-but-shoddy, I don't know. Shame, because it's a problem that is biting the country increasingly painfully on the bum.
And you used to get Ron from maintenance to pop down with his toolkit to take a look and then he raided his cupboard of spares to get it fixed. Now you call the maintenance company, they put you in the queue, have a look, then order the part. It's probably more efficient in terms of maintenance costs, but often takes longer. And Ron probably had a way of doing a temporary fix that got it up and running if needed (partly due to things being more basic and easier to take apart - also likely bigger, costlier, uglier, less environmentally friendly in initial manufacturing footprint etc).
At a previous company a couple of years ago, I was very pleasantly surprised when the response to reporting a noisy aircon outlet was that one of the onsite maintenance staff turned up the same day, diagnosed it as the bearings having gone in a unit which they kept some spares of in stock, and replaced it immediately. The firm contracted maintenance out to a third party company, but it can still be done right even then.
Yeah, doesn't necessarily matter who does it - if you get a competent company in with a decent service level agreement (both of which cost, of course).
Cyprus High Commissioner Kyriacos Kouros sounding furious about the lack of British action to defend RAF Akrotiri, telling @skynews: 'Greek forces are present on the island, the French are coming - the least we expect is the British are present'
They didn’t ask us for help. They are playing anti UK politics. Stop helping them get rid of our basis Willy, you traitor.
So you don’t think the Cypriots have a right to be pissed off ?
They’re stuck with bases which end up targets anytime GB is involved in ME action . This screws their tourism industry and puts the local population at risk . Starmer took too long to clarify that the US wouldn’t be using the bases there and the UK should have had its assets there already .
Thank heavens the Greeks and French have come to help .
That’s a clueless post. It’s the other way around.
We are not sending Dragon to help Cyprus, they didn’t ask us for it, they went straight to their friends. Even before Dragon gets there, it’s the most defended bases in the entire war.
Greece and Cyprus exercise with Israel, that invited the drone both Hezbollah and Hamas have been promising them for years.
This is the same game what lost us the Chagos. Cyprus and their friends are making mugs of the lot of you.
'A 21-year-old has ignited a viral debate online after declaring he refuses to work because he was born without his consent. His argument is simple: since he never chose to be born, his parents are responsible for financially supporting him for life. He argues that being forced to work for a life he didn’t ask for is inherently unjust, and the responsibility lies with those who brought him into the world.' https://www.instagram.com/p/DVCTRydjRhj/
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Have you ever come across a junction without lights before? There's your answer.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
If a pedestrian jaywalks...
The same questions apply. My main concern would be any impact on pedestrians taking advantage of the red light (cyclists should of course give way)
(I'm not sure whether I'm in favour of this move - depending how applied. Being able to turn left on a red would make sense - applies in other countries and works well)
Israeli Air Force jets striking targets in Iran are also using their return flights to drop remaining munitions on targets in Lebanon, with targets provided in real time by Israeli military intelligence, security sources tell Ynet.
Given it 5 years and there will be some Israel tech start-up who revolutionises logistics.
It would be an original way to deliver Amazon packages.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
Oh, I'm not saying it shouldn't happen, it was mostly a tongue-in-cheek comment.
Having said that though, I have more sympathy with actual cyclists doing that, and not these Deliveroo riders on the stupid fat-tyred electric bikes that can't decide whether they want to be a car or a pedestrian or both at the same time and are just generally a menace.
The latest immigration figures from… was it last week?… showed the number of asylum seekers down, the number of deportations of foreign offenders up, and the number of deportations in total up. I don’t know if the opponents of immigration in their social media bubbles will notice, but Labour’s delivering on what they said they’d do.
This just feels awfully wrong.
The Conservative Boris invited our friends from the Indian Sub-Continent to help us out post Brexit only for Labour to unceremoniously kick them all out on their arses. Thrown out by a Labour Government? It's vile!
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Have you ever come across a junction without lights before? There's your answer.
What's the answer?
Yes I have come across junctions without lights before and they are differently designed. Some have one direction having right of way and the other having to give way for example.
Whoever has a green light has right of way. I have no qualms with it being legal to cycle or drive through a red light, so long as it is clear that anyone who does is at fault if there is a collision.
'A 21-year-old has ignited a viral debate online after declaring he refuses to work because he was born without his consent. His argument is simple: since he never chose to be born, his parents are responsible for financially supporting him for life. He argues that being forced to work for a life he didn’t ask for is inherently unjust, and the responsibility lies with those who brought him into the world.' https://www.instagram.com/p/DVCTRydjRhj/
In the immortal words of Steve Ignorant "Do they owe us a living?"
I'm struggling to understand why the government has been so slow to defend British sovereign territory in Cyprus. The Greeks and French have every right to be upset.
There's a pattern with this government.
We're desperately rooting round in the cupboard to see if there's a working boat we can rustle up.
HMS Dragon isn't ready yet, and won't be until next weekend. Pathetic.
In the Falklands War we got a whole task force off in 72 hours.
I have the vision of the sailors turning up and a bloke with fag hanging out his mouth, big drag, well you see Barry can't come until next week to sort the toilets out and Trev is in Alicante on a golf trip so the painting isn't finished. I did my back out in 07, so I can't do it.....
Its something I really started to notice now in the UK compared to Asia. Asia, I consistently see when stuff breaks, its gets fixed ASAP. In China they fixed shit in my hotel within 2hrs, I saw an escalator break in Shangai at 7pm, I went into an art gallery, came out 2hrs later, a blokes had fixed it and where just tidying away their equipment.
Then I fly back to the UK, get in at 6am, multiple toilets broken....at an international airport. Given first flight in, those bogs had been broken from at least the previous day.
One of the reasons all the best chips are made in Taiwanese FABs is the astonishing work ethic. The Taiwanese themselves call it "eating shit" - ie they are prepared to eat shit, and work all hours, if the pay is good (which it is, in the chip industry, to an extent the chip engineers have become an elite)
In practise this means engineers are expected to be available 24/7. If a machine at the FAB goes wrong at 4am the relevant staff are called at home and they have to be there within 30 minutes and get it fixed immediately
TSMC have complained that they find it very hard to duplicate this work ethic elsewhere, eg the new FABs in Arizona
My understanding is that if there is any earth tremors, even very very small ones, that screws the machinery in the FAB. The Tawianese don't have to be told or ordered, they just head to the FAB ASAP to fix production. It is national pride and saving face rather than perhaps much concerns over impact to GDP.
FAB 18 - the best and biggest in the world right now, which I visited last week, has special "floating floors". The floors are all on hi tech dampers which mean that even the faint tremble from a distant passing truck won't impact machines and damage production
Amazing things, FABs. I became quite obsessed with them for half a week
'A 21-year-old has ignited a viral debate online after declaring he refuses to work because he was born without his consent. His argument is simple: since he never chose to be born, his parents are responsible for financially supporting him for life. He argues that being forced to work for a life he didn’t ask for is inherently unjust, and the responsibility lies with those who brought him into the world.' https://www.instagram.com/p/DVCTRydjRhj/
An argument probably employed by about 75% of children across all of time.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues that. I argue for rather more than we get, and particularly for tweaks such as far longer potential suspension on sentences so there is a hard incentive for no more driving offences. There is a modest propsal for 3 year suspension of sentences somewhere in current proposals, but it should be up to 10 years more like Ireland.
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
'A 21-year-old has ignited a viral debate online after declaring he refuses to work because he was born without his consent. His argument is simple: since he never chose to be born, his parents are responsible for financially supporting him for life. He argues that being forced to work for a life he didn’t ask for is inherently unjust, and the responsibility lies with those who brought him into the world.' https://www.instagram.com/p/DVCTRydjRhj/
An argument probably employed by about 75% of children across all of time.
When they are 8 year old and asked to tidy their room, not 21....
'A 21-year-old has ignited a viral debate online after declaring he refuses to work because he was born without his consent. His argument is simple: since he never chose to be born, his parents are responsible for financially supporting him for life. He argues that being forced to work for a life he didn’t ask for is inherently unjust, and the responsibility lies with those who brought him into the world.' https://www.instagram.com/p/DVCTRydjRhj/
An argument probably employed by about 75% of children across all of time.
When they are 8 year old and asked to tidy their room, not 21....
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
Two minutes of Tony Benn speaking in the Commons before the Iraq war.
I would struggle to agree with Tony Benn on any political matter but that was a great speech and highly apposite for these times. His articulacy puts the current House of Commons to shame, it really does.
This would be the Tony Benn who met and interviewed Saddam Hussein in 2003 as part of his attempt to stop the war and utterly failed to ask him the 5 questions he famously said all leaders should be asked -
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can Iraqis get rid of you?
I’ve thought Trump’s sense of political self-preservation would lead him to find a way to declare victory and get out. But a headstrong megalomaniac thinking it’s fine to toss matches around in the Middle East? This will not end well for the U.S.
Israeli Air Force jets striking targets in Iran are also using their return flights to drop remaining munitions on targets in Lebanon, with targets provided in real time by Israeli military intelligence, security sources tell Ynet.
Given it 5 years and there will be some Israel tech start-up who revolutionises logistics.
It would be an original way to deliver Amazon packages.
I think our local Evri driver must have trained in the IDF airforce as all they do is apparently launch packages from a distance.
The latest immigration figures from… was it last week?… showed the number of asylum seekers down, the number of deportations of foreign offenders up, and the number of deportations in total up. I don’t know if the opponents of immigration in their social media bubbles will notice, but Labour’s delivering on what they said they’d do.
Why do you think the right is now talking about the deportation of non white citizens ?
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues that. I argue for rather more than we get, and particularly for tweaks such as far longer potential suspension on sentences so there is a hard incentive for no more driving offences. There is a modest propsal for 3 year suspension of sentences somewhere in current proposals, but it should be up to 10 years more like Ireland.
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
The NHS does claim back the cost of treatment from motor vehicle accident insurers. Other Social Services can claim it back too.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
The latest immigration figures from… was it last week?… showed the number of asylum seekers down, the number of deportations of foreign offenders up, and the number of deportations in total up. I don’t know if the opponents of immigration in their social media bubbles will notice, but Labour’s delivering on what they said they’d do.
Why do you think the right is now talking about the deportation of non white citizens ?
Its just like inflation, isn't it?
When prices shot up, then opponents of that did not want prices to go up more slowly, they wanted the prices to come back down again. Saying "inflation has been cut" (ie prices are now going up at a slower rate) is not getting thanks from those who want the price rise reversed.
For those who did not want the migration, then having net migration reduced but still positive is not what they want any more than those opposed to high prices wanted prices increasing but at a slower rate.
The latest immigration figures from… was it last week?… showed the number of asylum seekers down, the number of deportations of foreign offenders up, and the number of deportations in total up. I don’t know if the opponents of immigration in their social media bubbles will notice, but Labour’s delivering on what they said they’d do.
Why do you think the right is now talking about the deportation of non white citizens ?
Because we now see that Cameron's famous description of "Fruitcakes, swivel eyed loons and closet racists" is no longer accurate. The racists are completely uncloseted now.
No Con or LD defences in tomorrow's local by elections. We have Ind defences in Braintree and Sevenoaks, a Ref defence in Durham, a Green defence in Stroud, and a Lab defence in Tamworth.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
I’ve thought Trump’s sense of political self-preservation would lead him to find a way to declare victory and get out. But a headstrong megalomaniac thinking it’s fine to toss matches around in the Middle East? This will not end well for the U.S.
Two minutes of Tony Benn speaking in the Commons before the Iraq war.
I would struggle to agree with Tony Benn on any political matter but that was a great speech and highly apposite for these times. His articulacy puts the current House of Commons to shame, it really does.
This would be the Tony Benn who met and interviewed Saddam Hussein in 2003 as part of his attempt to stop the war and utterly failed to ask him the 5 questions he famously said all leaders should be asked -
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can Iraqis get rid of you?
Two officers were suspended on full pay for *four years* over racist, misogynistic, homophobic messages
They resigned just before this week's gross misconduct hearing
This was a really simple case. When I asked the chief constable why...
... it took so long, he could only point to difficulties in finding people to fill the misconduct panel.
He said: "We share the same struggles as other police forces across the UK in getting a limited number of people who've got the ability to undertake these functions"..
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
The latest immigration figures from… was it last week?… showed the number of asylum seekers down, the number of deportations of foreign offenders up, and the number of deportations in total up. I don’t know if the opponents of immigration in their social media bubbles will notice, but Labour’s delivering on what they said they’d do.
Why do you think the right is now talking about the deportation of non white citizens ?
Surely it makes sense to keep like minded people irrespective of colour and religious preference and get rid of socialists and social democrats whatever their colour. I hope I am deported to somewhere nice and warm.
Kudos to Crockett for accepting the result with grace.
This morning I called James and congratulated him on becoming the Senate nominee. Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person. This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track. With the primary behind us, Democrats must rally around our nominees and win. I’m committed to doing my part and will continue working to elect democrats up and down the ballot. https://x.com/JasmineForUS/status/2029190814518177900
Meanwhile Trump U.S. saying he should get to choose the MAGA candidate instead of having a runoff.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
Two minutes of Tony Benn speaking in the Commons before the Iraq war.
I would struggle to agree with Tony Benn on any political matter but that was a great speech and highly apposite for these times. His articulacy puts the current House of Commons to shame, it really does.
This would be the Tony Benn who met and interviewed Saddam Hussein in 2003 as part of his attempt to stop the war and utterly failed to ask him the 5 questions he famously said all leaders should be asked -
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can Iraqis get rid of you?
Two officers were suspended on full pay for *four years* over racist, misogynistic, homophobic messages
They resigned just before this week's gross misconduct hearing
This was a really simple case. When I asked the chief constable why...
... it took so long, he could only point to difficulties in finding people to fill the misconduct panel.
He said: "We share the same struggles as other police forces across the UK in getting a limited number of people who've got the ability to undertake these functions"..
He clearly didn't try very hard or look very far.
That's one explanation.
The other is that delaying until the person resigns saves face for everyone and avoids making any decisions, which is pretty much the standard modus operandi for the British state these days.
Two minutes of Tony Benn speaking in the Commons before the Iraq war.
I would struggle to agree with Tony Benn on any political matter but that was a great speech and highly apposite for these times. His articulacy puts the current House of Commons to shame, it really does.
This would be the Tony Benn who met and interviewed Saddam Hussein in 2003 as part of his attempt to stop the war and utterly failed to ask him the 5 questions he famously said all leaders should be asked -
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can Iraqis get rid of you?
Two officers were suspended on full pay for *four years* over racist, misogynistic, homophobic messages
They resigned just before this week's gross misconduct hearing
This was a really simple case. When I asked the chief constable why...
... it took so long, he could only point to difficulties in finding people to fill the misconduct panel.
He said: "We share the same struggles as other police forces across the UK in getting a limited number of people who've got the ability to undertake these functions"..
He clearly didn't try very hard or look very far.
That's one explanation.
The other is that delaying until the person resigns saves face for everyone and avoids making any decisions, which is pretty much the standard modus operandi for the British state these days.
See the likes of Red Ken investigation for constant banging on about Adolf under Jezza.....
'A 21-year-old has ignited a viral debate online after declaring he refuses to work because he was born without his consent. His argument is simple: since he never chose to be born, his parents are responsible for financially supporting him for life. He argues that being forced to work for a life he didn’t ask for is inherently unjust, and the responsibility lies with those who brought him into the world.' https://www.instagram.com/p/DVCTRydjRhj/
An argument probably employed by about 75% of children across all of time.
When they are 8 year old and asked to tidy their room, not 21....
I've never been able to listen to "Rage Against The Machine" since someone described their first hit as "F**k you, I won't tidy my bedroom".
Though I do give them some props for a concert in Germany attended by a bunch of neo-nazi's. The band walked out on stage nekkid and proceeded to literally just p*ss all over them. I'm sure some of them enjoyed it. But - broadly - I think it sent a message.
PJAK seems to be led by a woman, and seeking a multii-ethnic confederation. Similar to the Kurds in Syria, before they had no choice but to sign a deal with the Syrian government, where they did make some gains for their language and culture.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
Two minutes of Tony Benn speaking in the Commons before the Iraq war.
I would struggle to agree with Tony Benn on any political matter but that was a great speech and highly apposite for these times. His articulacy puts the current House of Commons to shame, it really does.
This would be the Tony Benn who met and interviewed Saddam Hussein in 2003 as part of his attempt to stop the war and utterly failed to ask him the 5 questions he famously said all leaders should be asked -
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can Iraqis get rid of you?
Two officers were suspended on full pay for *four years* over racist, misogynistic, homophobic messages
They resigned just before this week's gross misconduct hearing
This was a really simple case. When I asked the chief constable why...
... it took so long, he could only point to difficulties in finding people to fill the misconduct panel.
He said: "We share the same struggles as other police forces across the UK in getting a limited number of people who've got the ability to undertake these functions"..
He clearly didn't try very hard or look very far.
That's one explanation.
The other is that delaying until the person resigns saves face for everyone and avoids making any decisions, which is pretty much the standard modus operandi for the British state these days.
Or they just couldn't find any non bent coppers ?
It's utterly ridiculous as an excuse for what seems to have been standard practice since forever.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
Oh, I'm not saying it shouldn't happen, it was mostly a tongue-in-cheek comment.
Having said that though, I have more sympathy with actual cyclists doing that, and not these Deliveroo riders on the stupid fat-tyred electric bikes that can't decide whether they want to be a car or a pedestrian or both at the same time and are just generally a menace.
They're generally untaxed, uninsured, not road legal electric motorbikes
Span past someone the other morning, stopped at a pedestrian crossing, only for him to sail through between the people crossing... 50ish in his work clothes and big over the ears head phones, so I'm not sure he heard when I overtook and thanked him for making cyclists look like dicks
I'm struggling to understand why the government has been so slow to defend British sovereign territory in Cyprus. The Greeks and French have every right to be upset.
There's a pattern with this government.
We're desperately rooting round in the cupboard to see if there's a working boat we can rustle up.
HMS Dragon isn't ready yet, and won't be until next weekend. Pathetic.
In the Falklands War we got a whole task force off in 72 hours.
I have the vision of the sailors turning up and a bloke with fag hanging out his mouth, big drag, well you see Barry can't come until next week to sort the toilets out and Trev is in Alicante on a golf trip so the painting isn't finished. I did my back out in 07, so I can't do it.....
Its something I really started to notice now in the UK compared to Asia. Asia, I consistently see when stuff breaks, its gets fixed ASAP. In China they fixed shit in my hotel within 2hrs, I saw an escalator break in Shangai at 7pm, I went into an art gallery, came out 2hrs later, a blokes had fixed it and where just tidying away their equipment.
Then I fly back to the UK, get in at 6am, multiple toilets broken....at an international airport. Given first flight in, those bogs had been broken from at least the previous day.
One of the reasons all the best chips are made in Taiwanese FABs is the astonishing work ethic. The Taiwanese themselves call it "eating shit" - ie they are prepared to eat shit, and work all hours, if the pay is good (which it is, in the chip industry, to an extent the chip engineers have become an elite)
In practise this means engineers are expected to be available 24/7. If a machine at the FAB goes wrong at 4am the relevant staff are called at home and they have to be there within 30 minutes and get it fixed immediately
TSMC have complained that they find it very hard to duplicate this work ethic elsewhere, eg the new FABs in Arizona
My understanding is that if there is any earth tremors, even very very small ones, that screws the machinery in the FAB. The Tawianese don't have to be told or ordered, they just head to the FAB ASAP to fix production. It is national pride and saving face rather than perhaps much concerns over impact to GDP.
FAB 18 - the best and biggest in the world right now, which I visited last week, has special "floating floors". The floors are all on hi tech dampers which mean that even the faint tremble from a distant passing truck won't impact machines and damage production
Amazing things, FABs. I became quite obsessed with them for half a week
I work with a lot of nanotech. There was quite a lot of planning involved when you're trying to avoid a vibration of a nanometre or so. The local underground was especially tricky.
Though as part of my contribution I managed to add a python function to the main nanotech code called `shuggle()` which moved the head of an electron-beam lithography tool a few nanometres to an fro before starting to write as - for reasons unknown - it became more accurate than just pointing it at the original 'precise' location.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
I’ve thought Trump’s sense of political self-preservation would lead him to find a way to declare victory and get out. But a headstrong megalomaniac thinking it’s fine to toss matches around in the Middle East? This will not end well for the U.S.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
3. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
1. Yes I would oppose it, since it is more complex than that. It is probably fair to say that you have a more expansive definition of "accident" vs "collision" than I do.
A good illustration of the ambiguity from the cycling side is Iain Duncan_Smith's list of 6 (iirc) people he branded "killer cyclists" in the House of Commons after they were involved in a collision where a pedestrian was killed. Of those, in my assessment 2 were clearly at fault, 2 were ambiguous, and 2 were clearly not at fault.
As I see it, deterrence is important, but there can be problem with Court decisions. My current bugbear is when 'the sun was in my eyes and I kept driving at the same speed' is treated as an excuse / mitigation, rather than an admission of guilt to dangerous / reckless driving where a careful and competent driver (the HWC standard) would slow down to the point where they COULD see.
2, the main answer to "deceased cyclist" is that it is a matter for the insurance company. Anybody with a household contents policy is overwhelmingly likely in the UK to be covered for 3rd Party Liability for injuries caused, including injuries caused by cycling by anyone in their household (usually expluding professional, sports etc). I've never seen rigorous survey research, but I have seen research into the terms offered by the main insurance cover and almost all of them cover it. My assessment is that perhaps 75-80% of people cycling are in that category.
That does not cover all of it, but it is the answer to most of the issue. The deceased cyclist is unlikely to have escaped.
That would cover anything meeting the definition of pedal cycle in the Type Approval regulations, which is cycles and all electrically assisted cycles meeting the "250W continuous power max, requires pedalling, cuts out at 25 kph" criteria. Anything outside that definition is under moped or motorcycle law.
All the over powered delivery cycles hooning around are actually uninsured motor vehicles, not cycles ! Which does not exactly help, but is an eye opener.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
However, the number of deaths in 2025 stood at 50, one more than the previous year, although less than the 57 recorded in 2023 and 62 in 2022.
So the number of deaths fell from 62 to 50 and that is being reported as the death rate doubled.
This is also the classic law of tiny numbers. 24 pedestrians and it says KSI on the roads, not necessarily a car.
Overall that BBC report is terribly written in so many ways. Pretty sure they just copy / pasted some press release / bits of a report without thinking about what the numbers meant and how best to report it.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
Two minutes of Tony Benn speaking in the Commons before the Iraq war.
I would struggle to agree with Tony Benn on any political matter but that was a great speech and highly apposite for these times. His articulacy puts the current House of Commons to shame, it really does.
This would be the Tony Benn who met and interviewed Saddam Hussein in 2003 as part of his attempt to stop the war and utterly failed to ask him the 5 questions he famously said all leaders should be asked -
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can Iraqis get rid of you?
Two officers were suspended on full pay for *four years* over racist, misogynistic, homophobic messages
They resigned just before this week's gross misconduct hearing
This was a really simple case. When I asked the chief constable why...
... it took so long, he could only point to difficulties in finding people to fill the misconduct panel.
He said: "We share the same struggles as other police forces across the UK in getting a limited number of people who've got the ability to undertake these functions"..
He clearly didn't try very hard or look very far.
That's one explanation.
The other is that delaying until the person resigns saves face for everyone and avoids making any decisions, which is pretty much the standard modus operandi for the British state these days.
Or they just couldn't find any non bent coppers ?
It's utterly ridiculous as an excuse for what seems to have been standard practice since forever.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
I’ve thought Trump’s sense of political self-preservation would lead him to find a way to declare victory and get out. But a headstrong megalomaniac thinking it’s fine to toss matches around in the Middle East? This will not end well for the U.S.
To be fair, after killing the Ayatollah, there is no way out of this for the US except complete victory and regime change?
"I declare complete victory!" says the President, as he sends the troops to Greenland for a change of climate. Media will lap it up, obsess over it and forget the Iran thing, never mind the Venezuela thing, never mind the ICE thing, never mind the ...... , ever happened.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
Hand that driving licence back. Don't forget modern cars are three times the weight of cars in the 1980s and 80s. They take longer to stop.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
However, the number of deaths in 2025 stood at 50, one more than the previous year, although less than the 57 recorded in 2023 and 62 in 2022.
So the number of deaths fell from 62 to 50 and that is being reported as the death rate doubled.
This is also the classic law of tiny numbers. 24 pedestrians and it says KSI on the roads, not necessarily a car.
Its worse than the law of tiny numbers, it is referring to the rate.
The proportion of pedestrian fatalities doubled, but that is a higher rate of a smaller overall number.
Still tiny numbers either way, but it is distorted to being a significantly higher proportion because it has come amongst an overall fall in fatalities.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
And yet here you are, worrying about the difficulty of extracting money out of a dead cyclist's estate.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
Mass x velocity= Force
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
And yet here you are, worrying about the difficulty of extracting money out of a dead cyclist's estate.
I'm not worried about that. It was just meant to be provocative, since you were saying cyclists should be able to go through red lights.
I agree, so long as drivers can too.
And so long as its agreed anyone who goes through a red light is at fault if there is a crash.
Two minutes of Tony Benn speaking in the Commons before the Iraq war.
I would struggle to agree with Tony Benn on any political matter but that was a great speech and highly apposite for these times. His articulacy puts the current House of Commons to shame, it really does.
This would be the Tony Benn who met and interviewed Saddam Hussein in 2003 as part of his attempt to stop the war and utterly failed to ask him the 5 questions he famously said all leaders should be asked -
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can Iraqis get rid of you?
Two officers were suspended on full pay for *four years* over racist, misogynistic, homophobic messages
They resigned just before this week's gross misconduct hearing
This was a really simple case. When I asked the chief constable why...
... it took so long, he could only point to difficulties in finding people to fill the misconduct panel.
He said: "We share the same struggles as other police forces across the UK in getting a limited number of people who've got the ability to undertake these functions"..
He clearly didn't try very hard or look very far.
That's one explanation.
The other is that delaying until the person resigns saves face for everyone and avoids making any decisions, which is pretty much the standard modus operandi for the British state these days.
Or they just couldn't find any non bent coppers ?
It's utterly ridiculous as an excuse for what seems to have been standard practice since forever.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
Mass x velocity= Force
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
And yet overall fatalities have fallen, considerably. Many reasons for that.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
Mass x velocity= Force
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
I think the important factor is kinetic energy. k =1/2 mv^2
So increased velocity is more dangerous, as of course is stopping distance, and higher bumpers resulting in more severe injuries.
In 2024, 409 pedestrians were killed in Great Britain, whilst 5,823 were reported to be seriously injured (adjusted) and 12,944 slightly injured (adjusted). Table 1 and chart 1 show that pedestrian traffic (measured by distance walked) has risen between 2004 and 2024 whilst fatalities, serious and slight injuries have fallen. Between 2023 and 2024, pedestrian fatalities increased by 1% while pedestrian traffic (distance walked) increased by 2%.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
Mass x velocity= Force
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
I think the important factor is kinetic energy. k =1/2 mv^2
So increased velocity is more dangerous, as of course is stopping distance, and higher bumpers resulting in more severe injuries.
With fewer fatalities overall as a matter of fact.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
Mass x velocity= Force
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
And yet overall fatalities have fallen, considerably. Many reasons for that.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
Mass x velocity= Force
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
I think it's more that you go under/sideways rather than over the top, plus a stunning lack of visibility (less than a main battle tank for some SUVs/pickups). Compare with something like a Transit van, which I find easier to drive around Edinburgh than my hatchback because my situational awareness is better.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
Mass x velocity= Force
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
I think the important factor is kinetic energy. k =1/2 mv^2
So increased velocity is more dangerous, as of course is stopping distance, and higher bumpers resulting in more severe injuries.
(and stopping times, which people always forget. Most of the gains from 20mph are from the collision not happening in the first place, not the severity of injury)
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
However, the number of deaths in 2025 stood at 50, one more than the previous year, although less than the 57 recorded in 2023 and 62 in 2022.
So the number of deaths fell from 62 to 50 and that is being reported as the death rate doubled.
Being pedantic, it's slightly different to that. The "headline" is "pedestrian death rate doubled". I have not examined the article with a fine toothcomb.
The numbers are pedestrian deaths in 2022 is 17 or 18 (28.5% of 62), and in 2025 is 24 (48% of 50).
It's incomplete, incompetent data journalism, and a sensational headline, which should have been about "pedestrian proportion of road deaths almost doubles" - but even that needs a qualifier for such a small sample.
Update: Checking your comments, I agree with the contempt for the reporting.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
That is not true. SUV style cars with their higher bumpers are more likely to be fatal to pedestrians.
However, the number of deaths in 2025 stood at 50, one more than the previous year, although less than the 57 recorded in 2023 and 62 in 2022.
So the number of deaths fell from 62 to 50 and that is being reported as the death rate doubled.
Those are all deaths, not pedestrian deaths. The article continues...
Of those 50 deaths in 2025, 24 were pedestrians, three more than in 2024. This represents a 48% proportion of annual road deaths being pedestrians, compared with 43% in 2024 and 28.5% in 2022.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
Mass x velocity= Force
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
I think the important factor is kinetic energy. k =1/2 mv^2
So increased velocity is more dangerous, as of course is stopping distance, and higher bumpers resulting in more severe injuries.
(and stopping times, which people always forget. Most of the gains from 20mph are from the collision not happening in the first place, not the severity of injury)
BREAKING: Thousands of Iraqi Kurds have launched a ground offensive in Iran, U.S. official says. - FOX
Could end very well.
You were complaining there were no boots on the ground. Now there are.
Onwards to victory! 💪
To quote Wikipedia: "Iran's military forces are made up of approximately 610,000 active-duty personnel plus 350,000 reserve and trained personnel that can be mobilized when needed, bringing the country's military manpower to about 960,000 total personnel.[6] These numbers do not include the Police Command or Basij." Thousands of Iraqi Kurds may not be enough.
I’ve thought Trump’s sense of political self-preservation would lead him to find a way to declare victory and get out. But a headstrong megalomaniac thinking it’s fine to toss matches around in the Middle East? This will not end well for the U.S.
To be fair, after killing the Ayatollah, there is no way out of this for the US except complete victory and regime change?
"I declare complete victory!" says the President, as he sends the troops to Greenland for a change of climate. Media will lap it up, obsess over it and forget the Iran thing, never mind the Venezuela thing, never mind the ICE thing, never mind the ...... , ever happened.
One of Trump's strange lies to himself was his "they already had 2 goes at me" in iirc his Sean Hannity interview, which clearly they have not.
He's a human delusion-bubble, with power to act on his delusions.
In 2024, 409 pedestrians were killed in Great Britain, whilst 5,823 were reported to be seriously injured (adjusted) and 12,944 slightly injured (adjusted). Table 1 and chart 1 show that pedestrian traffic (measured by distance walked) has risen between 2004 and 2024 whilst fatalities, serious and slight injuries have fallen. Between 2023 and 2024, pedestrian fatalities increased by 1% while pedestrian traffic (distance walked) increased by 2%.
I'm struggling to understand why the government has been so slow to defend British sovereign territory in Cyprus. The Greeks and French have every right to be upset.
There's a pattern with this government.
We're desperately rooting round in the cupboard to see if there's a working boat we can rustle up.
HMS Dragon isn't ready yet, and won't be until next weekend. Pathetic.
In the Falklands War we got a whole task force off in 72 hours.
After the defeat at Coronel, 1914, Fisher sent the battle cruisers Inflexible and Invincible to the Falklands. The dockyards pleaded for weeks of provisioning and maintenance. He ordered Admiral Sturdee to sea immediately.
They arrived at the Falklands, just in time to intercept and destroy the German flotilla, commanded by Admiral Spee.
At the opening of WWII, a group of three British cruisers were sent, despite the pleas of the dockyards to intercept, near the Falklands, the German surface raider Graf Spee (named after the WWI German Admiral above).
The single biggest failures of Starmer/Reeves has been lack of vision and lack of comms. Literally anyone who is able to articulate what they actually want to achieve in politics and how to tackle some of the problems in our system would be better than the current lot.
I heard Starmer at PMQs and he is rubbish at speaking at the despatch box and answering the questions. Starmer shows no wit, no deftness, drones on, and his blaming the previous government is wearing very thin.
The thing is I can't honestly think of anyone else in the party who would be better than Starmer, his failings are on the politics side of things, there might be better speakers, who would drum up enthusiasm, but their instincts and abilities to govern may well be worse.
Maybe he should have a drink or two before appearing in public?
Starmer had what I think is a new tactic today. He hijacked one of Kemi's questions to make the government announcement on evacuations that would normally have been a separate statement.
6 0 starmer today
She didn't deserve 0
Worst Pmq performance I've ever seen.
Made
Truss Corbyn IDS
Look decent
A score draw then, after accounting for bias
Tempting to split the difference but Badenoch was genuinely dire at PMQs:
1. She got the tone wrong. Badenoch only has one mode - condescending smirk. When discussing the country going to war isn't the time to use it. 2. Her interventions didn't make sense. Badenoch could take her cues from Baroness Neville-Jones in her own party if she wanted to challenge Stamer on his handling of the Iran War crisis. Incidentally worth a watch: https://youtu.be/ODF0J9_3DYM?si=cY3yBtuwvL3yDOf5 3. PMQs is a gift to the Leader of the Opposition as they can showcase themselves as the alternative to the current PM. No-one would visualise Badenoch as the best alternative to Starmer, in the same circumstances, based on her performance at PMQs today. James Cleverly on the other hand ... water under the bridge I suppose
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future ... [or] the stability of Iran."
Stability is stagnation, it is not a good thing, especially when the stability is a dictatorship.
Instability enables progress.
Chaos over order? Well, it's a view and certainly valid to argue chaos means change of whatever nature.
Two World Wars last century and millions dead certainly piled on the change but people tire of unending chaos and want order of whatever form.
How often do we see revolutions which topple autarchies or dictatorships themselves lead to dictatorship and repression in the name of ending chaos and restoring order?
It may be simple for you but for many people the certainty of order (with all the restrictions) seems more attractive than the uncertainty of anarchy (what price "freedom" if there is no work, no money, no food and no law?).
'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Yes some may choose to turn to authoritarians to prefer order over instability. I never have and never will.
You might miss the Rule of Law though.
Law should always be pragmatic and flexible. That was always the English way, to have a flexible and amendable law, changeable by Parliament, not a hard and fast codified one.
The rigid dogmatic institutionalisation of "The Law" (TM) over and above flexibility and politics is a rather modern and not a positive invention.
Good news on that front - a little bird tells me the government is going to trial cyclists/horse riders being allowed to pass through red lights, as long as they give way to pedestrians (like a zebra crossing).
Exactly the kind of flexibility we need - red lights for pedal cycles was always a dreadful constriction on #freedom #magnacarta
Thought most cyclists already did that anyway...
I think that's the best argument for it. If you think cyclists are always going through red lights, the lack of fatalities as a result would suggest it's an unnecessary restriction.
I can't see how you could argue against 20mph limits (which do gave a significant impact on pedestrians) while opposing this.
If a cyclist goes through a red light and is hit and killed by a driver who did nothing wrong and went through a green light, then a couple of questions.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
Our system has more flexibility than that.
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues hat
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
1. Some here have argued it. If not you, then fair enough, would you oppose that?
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
We've finally found a reason for you to support 20mph limits. After you've mown down the 90 year old who didn't look properly before stepping out, you do tend to get some grief from the family when you sue the estate. 60kg at 30mph is going to take out the radiator at least.
Given roads are safer than they've ever been, we should be putting the speed limit up to 40 in most places, not cutting it.
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
Hand your driving licence in at your nearest police station. You clearly have no idea about thinking distance to add to your braking distance.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
Thinking distances were a thing in the past too.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
Did you watch the Hannah Fry programme about self driving cars on BBC2 yesterday. They are not yet infallible.
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
For real.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
Mass x velocity= Force
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
I think it's more that you go under/sideways rather than over the top, plus a stunning lack of visibility (less than a main battle tank for some SUVs/pickups). Compare with something like a Transit van, which I find easier to drive around Edinburgh than my hatchback because my situational awareness is better.
When I worked for Safety Kleen I spent my first few years ensuring I never drove the 7.5 tonne Iveco Cargo box trucks. However, needs must. I was called for a VOSA inspection at Llantrissant and I couldn't afford to keep one of the guys off the road for an afternoon so I had to take it. Being aware of the increased potential for killing other road users I kept my wits about me. On the irregular occasions I drove the Cargos I was a better road user than I was in a car. They were surprisingly easy to drive.
Comments
In countries like the UAE getting the job done is the main thing, and H&S is not absolutely paramount. Lots of British people have moved there and I think this trend will continue, the present situation notwithstanding.
1: Should that driver be incarcerated? I have seen some here (can't remember if you're one) demand mandatory incarceration of all drivers involved in fatalities regardless of cause.
2: Should that driver be offered counselling for the trauma and who should fund it?
AMD used to run a large fab in Dresden. There was a point in the late 90s / early 2000s where AMD was very successful and that fab was running at well over normal capacity, with boxes of wafers literally stacked on top of the ceiling ventilation ducts because there was no other space available. AMD hired more people to deal with the workload - TSMC would have just pushed the existing staff harder.
Applying Asian culture to fabs (or any other factories) in western countries doesn't work, because people just won't tolerate that kind of work/life imbalance, no matter what the pay.
If performative cruelty to "other" people floats one's boat my not vote for the real deal. Reform or Conservative.
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/2029232025798922440
Israeli Air Force jets striking targets in Iran are also using their return flights to drop remaining munitions on targets in Lebanon, with targets provided in real time by Israeli military intelligence, security sources tell Ynet.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DVCTRydjRhj/
We are not sending Dragon to help Cyprus, they didn’t ask us for it, they went straight to their friends. Even before Dragon gets there, it’s the most defended bases in the entire war.
Greece and Cyprus exercise with Israel, that invited the drone both Hezbollah and Hamas have been promising them for years.
This is the same game what lost us the Chagos. Cyprus and their friends are making mugs of the lot of you.
The same questions apply. My main concern would be any impact on pedestrians taking advantage of the red light (cyclists should of course give way)
(I'm not sure whether I'm in favour of this move - depending how applied. Being able to turn left on a red would make sense - applies in other countries and works well)
Having said that though, I have more sympathy with actual cyclists doing that, and not these Deliveroo riders on the stupid fat-tyred electric bikes that can't decide whether they want to be a car or a pedestrian or both at the same time and are just generally a menace.
The Conservative Boris invited our friends from the Indian Sub-Continent to help us out post Brexit only for Labour to unceremoniously kick them all out on their arses. Thrown out by a Labour Government? It's vile!
Yes I have come across junctions without lights before and they are differently designed. Some have one direction having right of way and the other having to give way for example.
Whoever has a green light has right of way. I have no qualms with it being legal to cycle or drive through a red light, so long as it is clear that anyone who does is at fault if there is a collision.
https://youtu.be/7f1Dmm-tF-k?si=zAIBeZpSGqY301vW
Amazing things, FABs. I became quite obsessed with them for half a week
1 - On driver incarceration, i don't think anyone argues that. I argue for rather more than we get, and particularly for tweaks such as far longer potential suspension on sentences so there is a hard incentive for no more driving offences. There is a modest propsal for 3 year suspension of sentences somewhere in current proposals, but it should be up to 10 years more like Ireland.
2 - I think a more appropriate route for trauma counselling would be from the insurance company of the "at fault" party as is currently obtainable via the settlement process or civil action. That is already in place.
Of course there is also the NHS. All parties in any situation usually get NHS services (are there exceptions - can costs be recovered from insurance companies?) so I see no particular difference.
Even in cases where there is presumed civil liability for the more vulnerable party further up the hierarchy in civil legal action around collisions - as is the case in approximately 35 of 40 European countries * - it is a rebuttable presumption, so just a starting point and a shifting of the burden of proof.
* UK, Ireland, Romania, Cyprus, and Malta are the exceptions.
2. If the at-fault party is a deceased cyclist, then what exactly is to be done about it? Hard to take a civil action against the deceased, and a bit morbid to try.
What power have you got?
Where did you get it from?
In whose interests do you exercise it?
To whom are you accountable?
And how can Iraqis get rid of you?
That Tony Benn?
@BillKristol
·
6m
The megalomania is scary.
I’ve thought Trump’s sense of political self-preservation would lead him to find a way to declare victory and get out. But a headstrong megalomaniac thinking it’s fine to toss matches around in the Middle East? This will not end well for the U.S.
https://x.com/BillKristol/status/2029296952630808936
https://www.markthompsonlaw.com/accident-compensation-claims-to-repay-nhs/#:~:text=If you bring a successful,NHS from our insurance premiums.
When prices shot up, then opponents of that did not want prices to go up more slowly, they wanted the prices to come back down again. Saying "inflation has been cut" (ie prices are now going up at a slower rate) is not getting thanks from those who want the price rise reversed.
For those who did not want the migration, then having net migration reduced but still positive is not what they want any more than those opposed to high prices wanted prices increasing but at a slower rate.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/03/half-reform-voters-believe-non-white-british-citizens-forced-encouraged-leave?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
40 today is as safe as 30 was in the past, given improvements in safety technologies.
So as per the btl speculation
Is he
3
4
5
more
drinks in?
Vote now!! Banzai!!!
https://x.com/ConorGogarty/status/2029115358355800272
Head-scratching stuff at Gwent Police
Two officers were suspended on full pay for *four years* over racist, misogynistic, homophobic messages
They resigned just before this week's gross misconduct hearing
This was a really simple case. When I asked the chief constable why...
... it took so long, he could only point to difficulties in finding people to fill the misconduct panel.
He said: "We share the same struggles as other police forces across the UK in getting a limited number of people who've got the ability to undertake these functions"..
https://www.carwow.co.uk/news/8747/suvs-significantly-more-likely-cause-pedestrian-deaths-study#gref
This morning I called James and congratulated him on becoming the Senate nominee. Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person. This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track. With the primary behind us, Democrats must rally around our nominees and win. I’m committed to doing my part and will continue working to elect democrats up and down the ballot.
https://x.com/JasmineForUS/status/2029190814518177900
Meanwhile Trump U.S. saying he should get to choose the MAGA candidate instead of having a runoff.
Senility has not dimmed his megalomania.
Roads today are safer than they've ever been. Even with SUVs.
And I say that as a driver of a Suzuki Swift.
That's one explanation.
The other is that delaying until the person resigns saves face for everyone and avoids making any decisions, which is pretty much the standard modus operandi for the British state these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ
Though I do give them some props for a concert in Germany attended by a bunch of neo-nazi's. The band walked out on stage nekkid and proceeded to literally just p*ss all over them. I'm sure some of them enjoyed it. But - broadly - I think it sent a message.
Most of his answers were kind of correct.
But not.
Bloody reporters.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7gyvjp014o?app-referrer=deep-link
It's utterly ridiculous as an excuse for what seems to have been standard practice since forever.
Span past someone the other morning, stopped at a pedestrian crossing, only for him to sail through between the people crossing... 50ish in his work clothes and big over the ears head phones, so I'm not sure he heard when I overtook and thanked him for making cyclists look like dicks
Though as part of my contribution I managed to add a python function to the main nanotech code called `shuggle()` which moved the head of an electron-beam lithography tool a few nanometres to an fro before starting to write as - for reasons unknown - it became more accurate than just pointing it at the original 'precise' location.
I hate the default 20 here in Wales, but my driving is far more considerate than it used to be. I wouldn't dream of breaching 20 outside a school, and I drive at 30 in a 30 zone where I would have been closer to 40 back in the day.
There is a correlation between increased speed and dead children. I hope we never return to the sort of liberal speed policy that Reform are proposing.
So the number of deaths fell from 62 to 50 and that is being reported as the death rate doubled.
A good illustration of the ambiguity from the cycling side is Iain Duncan_Smith's list of 6 (iirc) people he branded "killer cyclists" in the House of Commons after they were involved in a collision where a pedestrian was killed. Of those, in my assessment 2 were clearly at fault, 2 were ambiguous, and 2 were clearly not at fault.
As I see it, deterrence is important, but there can be problem with Court decisions. My current bugbear is when 'the sun was in my eyes and I kept driving at the same speed' is treated as an excuse / mitigation, rather than an admission of guilt to dangerous / reckless driving where a careful and competent driver (the HWC standard) would slow down to the point where they COULD see.
2, the main answer to "deceased cyclist" is that it is a matter for the insurance company. Anybody with a household contents policy is overwhelmingly likely in the UK to be covered for 3rd Party Liability for injuries caused, including injuries caused by cycling by anyone in their household (usually expluding professional, sports etc). I've never seen rigorous survey research, but I have seen research into the terms offered by the main insurance cover and almost all of them cover it. My assessment is that perhaps 75-80% of people cycling are in that category.
That does not cover all of it, but it is the answer to most of the issue. The deceased cyclist is unlikely to have escaped.
That would cover anything meeting the definition of pedal cycle in the Type Approval regulations, which is cycles and all electrically assisted cycles meeting the "250W continuous power max, requires pedalling, cuts out at 25 kph" criteria. Anything outside that definition is under moped or motorcycle law.
All the over powered delivery cycles hooning around are actually uninsured motor vehicles, not cycles ! Which does not exactly help, but is an eye opener.
Overall that BBC report is terribly written in so many ways. Pretty sure they just copy / pasted some press release / bits of a report without thinking about what the numbers meant and how best to report it.
They're less needed now in the era of things like adaptive cruise control which can slow down vehicles automatically if the vehicle in front slows down or if there is an obstruction in the road ahead.
As a matter of fact, deaths are falling, not rising. We could easily absorb an increase in the speed limit and still have roads safer than they were in the past.
How could they say 'less' when they mean 'fewer?'
What with Gaza, Iran and speed limits you seem to have a cavalier attitude to other people's lives.
Are you for real or just taking the piss?
Hand that driving licence back. Don't forget modern cars are three times the weight of cars in the 1980s and 80s. They take longer to stop.
The proportion of pedestrian fatalities doubled, but that is a higher rate of a smaller overall number.
Still tiny numbers either way, but it is distorted to being a significantly higher proportion because it has come amongst an overall fall in fatalities.
Since when does anything in life need infallibility?
Life involves risks.
BREAKING: Thousands of Iraqi Kurds have launched a ground offensive in Iran, U.S. official says. - FOX
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/pedestrian-fatalities-annual-increase-should-be-a-red-flag-to-the-governmen/
And it is not just a UK phenomenon.
https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalities-2024-data
A slight drop in the last 2 years, but still significantly higher than a decade ago.
You were complaining there were no boots on the ground. Now there are.
Onwards to victory! 💪
It again quotes the proportion of pedestrian deaths. Being a proportion of a shrinking number.
Overall, fatalities are down, not up.
If you go faster in your big heavy car you hit the child harder. Slow down!
I agree, so long as drivers can too.
And so long as its agreed anyone who goes through a red light is at fault if there is a crash.
So increased velocity is more dangerous, as of course is stopping distance, and higher bumpers resulting in more severe injuries.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-pedestrian-factsheet-2024/reported-road-casualties-in-great-britain-pedestrian-factsheet-2024
When you zoom out even further, 1980s, 20k pedistrans were being KSI per year, 2000 of which were being killed.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f2f4ae5274a2e87db44f7/pedestrian-casualties-2013-data.pdf
Seems like the big strides in reduction were up to about 2010.
The numbers are pedestrian deaths in 2022 is 17 or 18 (28.5% of 62), and in 2025 is 24 (48% of 50).
It's incomplete, incompetent data journalism, and a sensational headline, which should have been about "pedestrian proportion of road deaths almost doubles" - but even that needs a qualifier for such a small sample.
Update: Checking your comments, I agree with the contempt for the reporting.
Of those 50 deaths in 2025, 24 were pedestrians, three more than in 2024. This represents a 48% proportion of annual road deaths being pedestrians, compared with 43% in 2024 and 28.5% in 2022.
Good night.
He's a human delusion-bubble, with power to act on his delusions.
It used to be close to 400 per annum. It has fallen by about 95%
And yet some people here believe we should be cutting speed limits and roads are more dangerous. Preposterous.
They arrived at the Falklands, just in time to intercept and destroy the German flotilla, commanded by Admiral Spee.
At the opening of WWII, a group of three British cruisers were sent, despite the pleas of the dockyards to intercept, near the Falklands, the German surface raider Graf Spee (named after the WWI German Admiral above).
1. She got the tone wrong. Badenoch only has one mode - condescending smirk. When discussing the country going to war isn't the time to use it.
2. Her interventions didn't make sense. Badenoch could take her cues from Baroness Neville-Jones in her own party if she wanted to challenge Stamer on his handling of the Iran War crisis. Incidentally worth a watch: https://youtu.be/ODF0J9_3DYM?si=cY3yBtuwvL3yDOf5
3. PMQs is a gift to the Leader of the Opposition as they can showcase themselves as the alternative to the current PM. No-one would visualise Badenoch as the best alternative to Starmer, in the same circumstances, based on her performance at PMQs today. James Cleverly on the other hand ... water under the bridge I suppose