On the twelfth day of Christmas  my true love said to me
Twelve ferries cancelled
Eleven lanes a closed
Ten restriction signs
Nine diggers digging
Eight potholes threatening
Seven bollards blocking
Six cameras flashing
Five closed roads
Four different routes
Three speeding limits
Two red lights
and traffic jams on the motorway
December 26, 2023
Good morning, and very well done Sir John.
Eight Mayors are milking (the car driver) !
I’ll get me coat đ
Have a nice day all.
December 26, 2023
Christmas Day was actually a great day for driving in the Kingston and Wimbledon area. No traffic on the roads, rapid journey times even with the daft 20 mph speed restrictions.
This for someone who normally hates driving.
December 26, 2023
Christmas day is almost always excellent for driving – so long as you stay sober. Little traffic, and no one doing road works, few police. But now the cash cow mugging cameras are still working and the 20mph and variable etc. speed limits designed to mug. The anti-car red lights, many bus/bike lane cameras too. Despite almost zero buses or bikes. No trains anyway so no choice but to drive if you need to travel this day.
I remember doing Lake District to near Wokingham 30 years back in just over three and a half hours in a nice Maroon 1959 Riley 1.5.
December 26, 2023
Yep, this government has taken the ‘fun’ out of just driving …the day-trip with the family is now a chore
December 26, 2023
Get the angle grinder out and fell a few!
December 26, 2023
At least our King of climate hypocrisy confined himself to a few trite rather meaningless platitudes yesterday. Rather than full on climate lunacy.
He talked about âAbrahamic faithsâ. It might be nice if these âfaithsâ spent rather less time, money and effort in trying to kill and destroy each other. Then we have the Pope blaming people who build or invest in the weapons – if you want peace prepare for war Your Holiness surely you should have worked that out by your age!
December 26, 2023
Beware the green king ….posing as the green man
December 26, 2023
Load of empty bus and bike lanes, endless anti-car red lights, low traffic neighbourhoods forcing drivers to drive further (past unlucky other poorer peopleâs houses), no where to park cheaply or for long, loads of mugging cameras and mugging traffic wardens, load of EV cars endlessly recharging (emitting more not less CO2 when all accounted for propery than keeping your old carâŠ
December 26, 2023
don’t forget the empty cycle-lanes (ÂŁ4bn and counting)
December 27, 2023
Life logic
Have you noticed that the excellent cats eyes have now been removed from many roads, the white lines that replaced them do not seem to reflect light any more, and are thus almost invisible at night when it is raining, Likewise the directional arrows, speed signage on the tarmac, and box junction markings suffer the same problem.
The street lights are like stars in the sky and do not light up the road, paths, or curbs any more, the coloured tarmac looks the same as ordinary tarmac when wet and at night.
Interesting that my Lane assist (I hate this feature) on board camera had problems reading the white lines tonight, This does not bode well for driverless technology which will rely on such camera’s and computer technology..
They call all of the above progress !!!!!!
December 26, 2023
Twelve is not enough. Thirteen is needed. The Conservatives have been in power for thirteen years, so if transport policy is a mess, and it is (and not only transport policy), then why have the Conservatives done nothing about it?
December 26, 2023
This Governmentâs transport policy is to drive people off the roads as far as they can by road constriction, blocking, red lights, bus lanes, absurd speed limits and cash cow mugging. They blame ULEZ Kahn but Sunak clearly supports it. He could easily stop it but chooses not to. He too seems to suffer from the ânet zeroâ religion/delusion/lunacy.
December 26, 2023
Grant Shapps Transport Secretary ….enough said
December 26, 2023
The DoT gives figures for C02 per mile by transport method – walking, cycling, bus, coach, train, plane⊠the figures are way out. They even claim walking and cycling produce zero CO2 – so all we need is a steak and chips & human food fuelled car and that would be zero CO2 too would it? EV cars are worse than keeping you old car unless it is a WW2 tank or similar.
So are they morons or just liars? To be fair Grant Shapps has got 5 O levels (more than John Major) and an HND in finance from Manchester Poly so perhaps he really is that deluded and not lying.
December 26, 2023
Boxing Day Sir John, and the state sector employees, BOE and Hunt, should certainly be coming to John Bull with boxes!
đ€ nine diggers certainly, but if you can find one digging Iâll eat my brand new hat!
Take a breather, 2024 will be all go!
December 26, 2023
Quite. Nine diggers chatting would be more accurate in my experience.
December 26, 2023
Good morning, Sir Joihn
How about:
12 ULEZ cameras
11 EVs unsold
10 EVs burning
And thousands of spent batteries
December 26, 2023
9 EV battery manufacturers going bust
December 26, 2023
Thousands of fines a-landing
December 26, 2023
đŒWill they be paid?âŠ
Many flooded roads
No buses
Lots of yellow lines
And a wrecked ee cono o mee!
If you think about it they have already got their 15 min cities and people arenât noticing.
And rumours of the most draconian ( and ultra bizarre) anti car/driving laws based around alcohol in the pipeline.
December 26, 2023
âïž i agree!
December 26, 2023
DT reports pothole compensation claims have risen 70%. Surrey has had the highest payouts. One payout in Surrey costs ÂŁ31,000, effectively costing ten families council tax for the year.
December 26, 2023
DT reports an OECD study of 38 prosperous nations. The UK spending on potholes had halved from ÂŁ4bn to ÂŁ2bn over the past 20 years. Whereas in the US, NZ, Sweden, Japan Denmark is had gone up by 50%.
December 26, 2023
And at 50 quid or so per pothole to repair why are they not doing it? Usual ‘it’s only public money’ I suppose and no one competent enough to see what could be done. They just don’t want to. Maybe the road repair teams are ‘working from home’ like most of our council employees, judging by the empty car park at the council offices which used to be full up.
December 26, 2023
One pot-hole could right-off an EV …..they’re un-repairable
December 26, 2023
Headline from todayâs Telegraph.
âNet zero will hamper West and boost China, warns CEBRâ
Doh!
December 26, 2023
10 Lords a’sleeping
11 unions striking
12 railways empty
December 26, 2023
10 Lords a-grifting more like …..
December 26, 2023
I will not compete with your laureat aspirations but make an observation after 15 months living in ,following a 15 year absense from your promised land.
The colour of death is black and is facilitated by black. On winter nights, under at best Toc H street lighting, why is black the colour of choice for the majority of pedestrians and cyclists. Is it a hang over from Henry Ford’s philosophy, by garment makers, of any colour providing its black.
Simple change for 2024, government to insist on dayglow colours for all outer garments worn from sunset to sunrise. Put an end to people in black emerging from black backgrounds to committ suicide before a moving vehicle.
December 28, 2023
Agricola
Absolutely agree and have said the same for years, likewise such people often do not even bother to have lights on bikes any more.
Self and sensible self preservation seems to be a lost art of common-sense.
Perhaps it’s the victim claim culture, as it’s always somebody else’s fault.
December 26, 2023
MT – 770 + Lords asleeping, 640 MPs absent from the chamber.
December 26, 2023
Thousands inconvenienced.
December 26, 2023
Hi sir John
It’s worse than that
No homes available
Long NHS Ques
December 26, 2023
Safety Fast:
Road A is one-way at 30mph and can go in whatever direction is best. Road B is identical.
If A & B are headed in opposite directions, join them with a zero mph red Emergency Lane in between.
If overtaking is needed, add one 50mph lane outwards to the right on each side.
If higher capacity is needed, add another at 50mph and one more at 70mph.
Road A now has 4 lanes of driving space between 30 & 70mph, and can still go in whatever direction is best, splitting from or crossing other roads. Road B is identical.
The entire length that A & B share in opposite directions is a new âMotorwayâ.
It doesnât need a wasteful metal barrier lane because even its 30mph opposite traffic is two lanes apart. The risk of 70mph vehicles having direct opposite impact would involve crossing 8 lanes!
This âSafety Fast Motorwayâ also reduces congestion and risk of impact by providing 33% more driving space than existing motorways consume.
December 26, 2023
âThe Motoristâ the cash cow for Socialist group think. The bogus safety issue is, just that â bogus. It is a way for those in authority to blame someone else because they have failed to improve infrastructure to meet the needs of an ever-growing population. The ever-growing population is the result of authorities saying âlook-at-meâ
December 26, 2023
What a lovely sunny day.
Blue berry bushes planted
Tablecloths a drying
Ovens clean and smart
Families happy and smiling
Tulips pushing through
COVID attack resolving
Buds on lilac forming
Garden centres closed
Restaurants blooming
Wrapping paper recycling
Tomorrow back to working
December 26, 2023
Sir John – you forgot about the partridge !
December 26, 2023
ULEZ is just another motorist âcash-cowâ ploy by failing Councils. It starts out being fraudulent from the get go, it wrongly presumes that all vehicles arriving on our roads before a certain date had emissions higher than those of today. That is totally and fraudulently wrong, how can a vehicle comply with a standard when the standard didnât exist? The standard wasnât there to comply with. Yet a great majority of vehicles of that age did surpass the requirement without change once the standard was known. Good new style UK Laws presumed guilty because the authorities say so without proof.
The whole ULEZ concept presumes rather than proves a situation must have existed just because they (the authorities) say so. It has nothing to do with whether a vehicle pollutes or not. That is not a good way to implement law.
There is an however, all vehicles of the age referred to have each year to have an MOT carried out. That MOT includes a detailed emissions check, these are on the same records database that these fraudulent ULEZ cameras use to identify vehicle ownership â but they donât use them why?
December 26, 2023
I didnât get to the bit where the authorities are using the ULEZ Camera setup to track and monitor âeveryoneâs movementsâ the pollution aspect is but a side show â Chinese style control of the citizen.
December 26, 2023
The one-sided ULEZ has refused to address the issue of those vehicles of which the manufacturers put in place a method to fool the standards and then defraud the revenue. So those that illegally circumvent the rules and regulations to be in a preferential tax bracket, also get to be classed as out of sight of ULEZ Cameras.
The 2 standout issues, those for which there is no proof they are in the wrong, pollution wise are fined because those unable to prove the situation says so. Then those that are in the wrong because their cars have âstandards – defeat mechanisms installedâ get a free pass, so not only didnât/donât they pay the required on going correct vehicle tax they get a free pass from the ULEZ camera.
The treasury and successive governments know, as it has been proven in court that they have been defrauded the from receiving the correct vehicle tax, yet the prefer to make up their budget amount shortfall by tax everyone more.
You get to ask why are our political leaders, and authorities so deceitful when it comes to âtaxâ ?
December 26, 2023
ULEZ is proof that the sheriff of Nottingham is alive and well in London with the serfs being taxed to death âŠULEZ is undemocratic and a direct treat to the people, the poor people and our belief in the principals of the magna carta …and this tory government could stop it tomorrow but they choice NOT too
December 26, 2023
@glen cullen – if we had a Tory Government or a Government with the belief in Parliamentary Democracy
December 28, 2023
Ian B
It is nothing to do with pollution, because you can pollute if you want to and can afford it !
It is simply about raising more revenue, to then spend as they like, even value does not come into it any more.
December 26, 2023
Brilliant – thanks Sir John for your daily diary and wisdom throughout 2023.
December 26, 2023
Agree ….the only tory willing to put his head above the parapet
”My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure” Tenneyson
We need a few more pure of heart in parliament
December 26, 2023
Long Hospital queues, yet the management is empire building with their new âDiscrimination Departmentsâ and administrators, all consuming taxpayer money for the âhell of itâ. The health professionals they employ have not taken issue with their hospital management over pay, but with the Government. So, who manages the Hospitals, their capabilities and delivery of service?
Do striking medical staff get full pay while away from post.
December 26, 2023
O/T: 20/12/2023 economist.com âMeet the boffins and buccaneers drilling for hydrogenâ.
Could it be that in fact, and contrary to what some here have been repeating for months, it is possible to drill for hydrogen?
December 26, 2023
@hefner – announced in the Media 31/10/2023 – North Eastern France naturally occurring and renewable hydrogen found, by accident
https://www.ndtv.com/science/major-white-hydrogen-deposit-found-in-france-heres-how-it-could-revolutionise-the-world-4532198
December 27, 2023
…Thir- Teee-en YEEARS ! …
Fi-yeev Peey-ems, five lame ducks, fa-alse prom-miss-es…
And a boat LOAD of reffeey-yu-geeees !!!!
Best get canvassing among your new voter group. You’ve ruined Britain.