London pollution & ULEZ

You are using the stat as a stick when it is just obvious, re: my abbatoir comment. Itd be more surprising if you said more pedestrians died on the motorway, for obvious reasons.

You've then suggested it's because the speed limit is 30 that the deaths make up 2/3rds which is utter rubbish.
I'm sorry but you're full of it. And now you resort to lying and misrepresentation.

For something you now say is "obvious" you were quick to demand a source a couple pages back.

I've been saying all the way through this thread that residential areas are dangerous because of their nature. Like I said: "Parked cars, narrow streets, kids, animals, OAPs" and other things. Peds crossing the road (doesn't happen on motorways much...). People opening car doors. Kids on skateboards.

I never said anything so utterly ridiculous as you just claimed, that residential areas are dangerous because they are 30mph zones. Honestly, have a word with yourself.

I did say that going slower than 30 (ie 20) can only be a good thing. I'm far from the only person who believes this. The whole of Cornwall is soon to switch from 30 to 20 for residential areas. It's happening, whether you like it or not.
 
So what is the solution? I’ve been hit in cars twice by cyclists and have to compensate for peoples lack of self awareness pretty much every journey, even with me affording them as much curtsey and room as possible.

It’s not an us vs them issue, although I’d say cyclists are generally of that mindset.

Is it o.k for middle-aged men to obsess about cyclists doing things that should be frowned on, but are largely harmless, when Range Rovers are ploughing through schools in Wimbledon killing children, drivers kill 600 pedestrians and cyclists a year with their cars and thousands more with their smog?

Hmmm makes you think.
 
I'm sorry but you're full of it. And now you resort to lying and misrepresentation.

For something you now say is "obvious" you were quick to demand a source a couple pages back.

I've been saying all the way through this thread that residential areas are dangerous because of their nature. Like I said: "Parked cars, narrow streets, kids, animals, OAPs" and other things. Peds crossing the road (doesn't happen on motorways much...). People opening car doors. Kids on skateboards.

I never said anything so utterly ridiculous as you just claimed, that residential areas are dangerous because they are 30mph zones. Honestly, have a word with yourself.

I did say that going slower than 30 (ie 20) can only be a good thing. I'm far from the only person who believes this. The whole of Cornwall is soon to switch from 30 to 20 for residential areas. It's happening, whether you like it or not.
And guess what? If it reduced to 20, your stat probably won't change at all. That's why it was a dumb stat to pull out to (not) prove your point.
 
good luck getting that to happen!.......

Im insured as a cyclist and I think you would be pretty surprised how many cyclists are insured. All those "lycra clad" cyclists people love to hate will be mostly insured if they are club cyclists as its usually a stipulation as part of being in the club. British cycling membership costs £44 a year and gives you £20m third party cover for instance
 
Is it o.k for middle-aged men to obsess about cyclists doing things that should be frowned on, but are largely harmless, when Range Rovers are ploughing through schools in Wimbledon killing children, drivers kill 600 pedestrians and cyclists a year with their cars and thousands more with their smog?

Hmmm makes you think.

I think you just made that up about not caring. that accident outside the school was appalling.

smog wise ICE vehicles are less efficient at 20 than they are at 30 and that horrible accident outside the school would have happened regardless of the speed limit.

NOTE I am not saying I am against 20mph in some areas and am certainly not against the ULEZ or reducing the number of vehicles in cities either ........ but that swipe at car drivers not caring about pedestrians or cyclists being killed is not only OT but it is nonsense as well.
 
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Im insured as a cyclist and I think you would be pretty surprised how many cyclists are insured. All those "lycra clad" cyclists people love to hate will be mostly insured if they are club cyclists as its usually a stipulation as part of being in the club. British cycling membership costs £44 a year and gives you £20m third party cover for instance
that is good to know and you are right I wasn't aware. PS tacking the Mick out of someone because of what they wear is the last thing I would do and have no issues with cyclists who respect all road users.... and I agree there are a lot of idiot car drivers as well ....... however for instance I do not know a single car driver who drink drives any more but I know double figures numbers of cyclists who have no problem at all cycling drunk. perhaps it depends on where you live as to how people behave but Cambridge is awful for terrible cyclists and the frustrating thing for me as a car driver when I lived there or when I visit people is no one even bothers to stop them.
 
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Guardian article on Tory Uxbridge win
as much Kier's screw up parachuting candidate in to Uxbridge (like he is planning to do for nadines seat) who alienated voters, as did the prospect of reach of meglomaniac Khan, versus a local boy with genuine concern for constituency

yes, that confirms why Kier wants to dress that up as a ULEZ, one topic, loss
 
Guardian article on Tory Uxbridge win
as much Kier's screw up parachuting candidate in to Uxbridge (like he is planning to do for nadines seat) who alienated voters, as did the prospect of reach of meglomaniac Khan, versus a local boy with genuine concern for constituency

yes, that confirms why Kier wants to dress that up as a ULEZ, one topic, loss

While I get the need to blame Ulez for the Uxbridge loss it looks to me as an anti Starmer issue as the below points out.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...rexit-tories-anti-green-labour-local#comments
You can still see the precise moment this summer when politics slid off-script and in a new direction. It occurs in a video that opens in an old gym, where a returning officer is enjoying his big moment. Uxbridge in July, and the drama over who succeeds Boris Johnson as local MP is reaching its climax. The mood is less election night, more exhausted carnival: centre stage stands Count Binface; up front is the Monster Raving lunatic, almost hidden under his stetson – and here comes Laurence Fox, braced to lose yet another deposit.
Off to one side stand the two main men. They make an odd pairing: Labour’s Danny Beales, young, slim and stiff-backed, side by side with his Tory rival, Steve Tuckwell, who is some 20 years older. Both look queasy as the officer reads the numbers. By a tiny margin, the reds have lost. A government on death row, Johnson in disgrace, the buoyancy of Keir Starmer: none of it has been enough.


Triumphant, the new Conservative MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip takes the mic. “The pundits expected Labour to win big here but our community came together,” begins Tuckwell, wearing the mahogany tan of someone who has pounded streets all summer. “This wasn’t the campaign Labour expected.”
I’ll say. According to the bookies, Starmer’s team went in to this election with odds that would be the envy of Pyongyang. Now the party is still in bitter recrimination and the newspapers have given full ventilation to the leadership’s explanation of what went awry.
Suitably briefed, the same press that called Uxbridge wrong are now convinced they know what happened: this was the revolt of the drivers, protesting a daily charge of £12.50 on those with older, more polluting motors. By extending the ultra low emission zone (Ulez) from inner London to its suburbs, the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, lost his own party that crucial poll.
Before, the issue was barely on the radar; now it is all-important. For this piece, the Guardian tallied up mentions of Ulez in the national press: over the first six months of this year it made a total of 405 appearances. In just 11 days after the result, it came up 332 times, including in many columns sneering at environmental policies and talking reverently of “motorists” as if they were some endangered native tribe.

No wonder Rishi Sunak began this week dressing up as the motorists’ friend, before retreating to his chopper. But why have the papers focused on Labour’s alibi for why they lost, rather than ask the Tories how, despite everything, they won? Why is the gospel delivered from Westminster, while the view from the ground goes ignored? For this piece, I spoke to local activists on the Tory and Labour sides, and the story they tell is very different from that spun by the party bosses. Ulez features heavily, to be sure – but so does a disaffection with mainstream politics that smells very similar to the odour that permeated the Brexit referendum.

The key divide in this story is between Westminster and local politics. Time and again, Tory activists began the account of their victory with the freedom to choose their candidate. How they got so much say in a closely watched byelection still mystifies them (“Maybe CCHQ [Conservative campaign headquarters] thought the seat was already lost,” says one). However, in Tuckwell, they picked neither a star performer nor a political veteran – but someone born and bred in the area, who has raised a family there and even led a local scout troop.


Labour’s story is the exact opposite, as Norrette Moore will tell you. A member of the party since Tony Blair was prime minister, she has written two detailed, careful pieces about how the entire campaign was rigged by bureaucrats in Westminster.

Before she and other local members had even been told about the selection last November, she says the party insiders had briefed journalists, while would-be candidates from outside the area already had their websites up. Rather than let the local party pick through the applicants, the bureaucrats presented members with a list. They then dissolved the entire selection committee – apparently because local members organising a Christmas food bank had sent an email thanking one of the hopeful applicants. Instead, Labour managers imposed Danny Beales, who had been born locally but lived and built a political career in central London. Among Uxbridge members, he’d been picked by only one ward out of seven.

“Command and control” is how a mayoral adviser in Greater Manchester this week referred to Starmer’s management style. It certainly applies to Uxbridge – and to many constituencies besides, where the party’s top bureaucrats gift safe seats to their favourites from London – even if that means blocking or barring the local person who would otherwise get through. In Sedgefield, the chair of the local party was blocked – leading to 13 local party officers quitting. A former Labour councillor from Haringey, partly responsible for the disastrous Haringey Development Vehicle, was chosen. In Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire, it will be a councillor from Lewisham. Norwich North will be represented by a red rosette from Southwark. Nadine Dorries’ seat of Mid Bedfordshire will be contested by a Bank of England worker from Walthamstow. South Thanet, Wycombe, Stevenage, Northampton North … the list stretches on and on. Parachutes for the boys and girls!

Working class London Labour voters dont like things like this. It was Labour voters that didnt turn out to support Starmer so the Tories won by default.

400 votes the same as the Green vote count.
 
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While I get the need to blame Ulez for the Uxbridge loss it looks to me as an anti Starmer issue as the below points out.



Working class London Labour voters dont like things like this. It was Labour voters that didnt turn out to support Starmer so the Tories won by default.

400 votes the same as the Green vote count.
This is just one of the many reasons Starmer leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I honestly don't think Labour under Starmer would be much if any improvement over the current lot.

This is a man who does everything in his power to impose his will and ignore the members, the voice from the grass roots. With Starmer it's 100% his way or the highway, and has been since he gained the leadership. Starmeleon is not the promised land, I'm afraid. He's a deeply unlikeable dictator in waiting.
 
This is just one of the many reasons Starmer leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I honestly don't think Labour under Starmer would be much if any improvement over the current lot.

This is a man who does everything in his power to impose his will and ignore the members, the voice from the grass roots. With Starmer it's 100% his way or the highway, and has been since he gained the leadership. Starmeleon is not the promised land, I'm afraid. He's a deeply unlikeable dictator in waiting.

I mean I think he will be better than this lot of Tories. Infact I have no doubt, but its not for me.
 
that swipe at car drivers not caring about pedestrians or cyclists being killed is not only OT but it is nonsense as well.

I'm not sure about that. If you driver in a dangerous manner around cyclists and pedestrians its very hard to argue they care about their lives. I find it hard to think drivers care much about my life when they overtake me on blind corners where a car crash would almost certainly end up involving me as they smash off each other.

They may not be actively looking to hurt cyclists but they sure as hell think that getting to their destination a few seconds earlier is worth putting our lives at risk. Well, the truth is they don't even think about us at all. We're just something inconveniencing them. Something to get past.
 
I'm not sure about that. If you driver in a dangerous manner around cyclists and pedestrians its very hard to argue they care about their lives. I find it hard to think drivers care much about my life when they overtake me on blind corners where a car crash would almost certainly end up involving me as they smash off each other.

They may not be actively looking to hurt cyclists but they sure as hell think that getting to their destination a few seconds earlier is worth putting our lives at risk. Well, the truth is they don't even think about us at all. We're just something inconveniencing them. Something to get past.
You're a mobile traffic cone with a face :p
 
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