The hypocrisy of Council reserved car parks never fails to annoy me. The architects of our current road misery so often have reserved areas in a car park next to the Council offices for their cars when they do make it into the officeĀ to tell the rest of us to leave our cbars at home.
My journeys these days like yours are beset by closed roads, narrowed traffic lanes, more traffic lights, more 20 mph, 30 mph and 40 mph zones, endless changes of speed limit and access rules, ever dearer and more restricted municipal parking. Huge sums are spent on remodelling the roads and junctions, putting up forests of new signs and controls,Ā and on installing more cameras than in a communist state . These CouncilsĀ seek to collect easy revenue from drivers who make a mistake and dare to go 23 mph in what was a 30 mile an hour zone or who get stranded behind a vehicle just across the lines of a box junction.
The Councils love inventing new tortures and increasing their revenues from their anti driver scams. It never occurs to them that they might one day need the ambulance or doctor to get to them quickly by vehicle. They forget that the plumber or decorator or window cleaner they need at home might find it all too much, or put their prices upĀ because traffic delays means fewer visits in a working day. They delight in letting contracts for temporary traffic lights and barriers so the taxpayer has to pay for weeks of their hire, often for long periods when no works are proceeding on the road.
Why do they hate us so much?
January 14, 2024
Councils don’t hate drivers. They are, however, affected by the year-on-year budget cuts inflicted by the Conservative governments of the last 13 years, which have made life worse for all of us
Reply Nonsense. Grants up. They spend too much on wrecking the roads.
January 14, 2024
Well they love them as cash cows to be mugged for parking fines, residents parking fees, speeding fines, bus lane finesā¦ Low traffic areas force them to drive further and push the traffic on to certain other roads where less fortunate people live.
January 14, 2024
Missed off ULEZ, congestion taxes. fuel taxes, road taxes. Yet still they claim they cannot afford, or be bothered, to fix potholes. London it seems now has the slowest traffic movement in the World. Must do wonders to decrease UK productivity.
January 14, 2024
All under government instruction
January 14, 2024
Says the man who certainly must not have ever visited Nairobi, Mumbai or downtown Manila.
And the previous comment was directed to smug ChrisS.
January 14, 2024
Taxes and government spending is the highest for 70+ years nearly 50% of GDP! But still they do not have enough money they claim. What would they like 75% or 100%?
January 14, 2024
Iām wondering what happens when councils go bust. Ours is on the brink I believe. No surprise there!
But what of the council tax paying electorate?
What further suffering lies in store?
January 14, 2024
The commissioner put in charge of Labour-run Birmingham City Council after it declared effective bankruptcy earlier this year told the BBC it would have to put up the tax by at least 10 per cent.
So they do not go bust their residents and businesses get mugged yet again. Though I have a some sympathy with Birmingham as their main problem was courts (Blair again I think) deciding that certain mainly male jobs like refuse collection were of the same value as other mainly female but quite different jobs. It is the market that should decide not courts and judges who have never done either job. If women want to work in refuse collection often in the early hours they can choose to do so – not claim that a different job is of equal value years later.
January 14, 2024
In Bracknell /Wokingham waste contractors DO have women ‘bin-men’.
January 14, 2024
@ Mickey – good what %?
January 14, 2024
+++
Thanks for reply.
10%!!
Good grief.
And all they do is occasionally collect the rubbish!
Re MTās bin menā
Feminism destroys women.
January 14, 2024
@Lifelogic – could have cut staffing to fit need and income. It comes over as a DIE cabal first (Diversity, Inclusion, Equality). In plain English signal a virtue then you don’t have to work or manage
January 14, 2024
The anewer? Over-zealous, slavish ābuy-inā to the green agenda and blow the consequences.
Motorists are a cash cow, they donāt give a monkeys about our feelings, views, motoring needs or the livelihoods built on them. Could it possibly be that the LibDem influence in Wokingham is pushing this agenda? I presume youāve asked the Council your question directly, weād all love to hear their reply. [As an aside, my own experience of the Council (a planning matter) was of shocking ineptitude and a feeling of them wanting an easy life to clear their in-trays.
January 14, 2024
Public utilities also provide excellent examples of inconveniencing motorists.
The A243 at the Ace of Spades roundabout is reduced to a single lane while one lot look for leaks. It is a busy route at the best of times.
Working in tandem, the next route along Ewell Road also has road works and single lane operation. This lot go one better. No workmen are visible at the site.
Further along there have been works at Tolworth roundabout for months. A pedestrian subway is being removed.
January 14, 2024
So you may as well stay where you are. Don’t take to the roads. Better to get the train to Wimbledon, Clapham or Waterloo and travel in comfort.
Rail strikes permitting of course.
January 14, 2024
One business journey I used to have to do regularly was to four offices – two in Kent, one in Suffolk and back to London. By car I could manage it in one slightly long day. By train I would have needed at least two days, several longish taxi journeys and one hotel for the night. Plus I would have been lugging large suitcases of gear around with me at the time. It would have cost about Ā£350 too in various trains, hotels and taxis plus my extra day in wages – rather than just circa Ā£50 in petrol.
January 14, 2024
How many councils have received a grant increase in line with inflation, and how many have not?
I understand that Wokingham is one of many councils that have received a below-inflation 3.0% increase.
Reply Wrong figures
January 14, 2024
āwrong figuresā: so what are the figures?
wokingham.gov.uk, 02/10/2023 āMore details on our financesā.
According to this, Wokingham is the lowest funded council in the UK.
Come on, John, donāt be shy, accept that youāre wrong instead of always pretending you know better than most. And show a bit of courage, publish my comments.
Reply You read this blog. I gave set the position in detail here. 2 nd best funded of the local Councils.
January 15, 2024
Second best on what basis? Central government grant alone, or aggregate income from all sources including local revenue streams (Council Tax, Business rates etc.). The IFS reports I have seen are based on aggregated income in total, not central government grants.
When presenting any data, politicians should share the full details of what that data is and where it comes from, especially if it is an aggregate of multiple sources (when a detailed breakdown should also be provided).
Not doing that suggests that, within that data, there are things that a politician wishes to obscure.
January 14, 2024
My experience in a District Council (as a Councillor) was that many elected members did not use their brains and/or for an easy life let officers run the show. After a couple of terms in office I threw in the towel.
The officers looked after their own interests of course.
January 14, 2024
It’s a convenient and easy way to raise money and your ruinous net zero provides useful cover. They haven’t started yet
Total bans on vehicles entering towns to come next. Excluding council workers of course.
January 14, 2024
+1
Yes. They’re only just getting started.
January 14, 2024
High street shops will go bust and business rates revenue will cease ā¦..Tories the so called party of business & capitalism
January 14, 2024
A vigorous local newspaper, website or social media group should expose such wrongdoing. Errant people are less inclined to do bad things when others are watching, poised to expose their shame.
January 14, 2024
Wokingham is a good example of this with its substantial increases in car parking fees, obsession with cycle lanes (most of us will never use them), installation of cameras to catch motorists out and so on.
January 14, 2024
+++
Agree.
Most cyclists will never use them either.
Here they have ruined vast swathes of road ( made the roads much narrower obviously) with them and now the reduced road space is shared with two or three abreast cyclists, emboldened by that ludicrous law which puts them above powerful vehicles.
I think the money for such schemes came from the EU? ( Or rather recycled taxes via EU).
January 14, 2024
Cycle lanes are typically implemented by people who have no idea of cycling. They don’t understand that tracks scattered with stones and mud pools, that aren’t treated with grit in cold weather, that pass by residential drives obscured by hedges, that have give way markings every ten yards, that have anti-cycling barriers every now and then and “cyclists dismount” signs periodically just aren’t suitable as cycling lanes. To make things worse, drivers get annoyed when you don’t use them.
January 14, 2024
+++
Very true.
The sort they built here are incredibly near the road, ( there wasnāt really enough overall room probably) separated by quite a high kerb.
It always looks to me as if a cyclist could skid or topple over into the road.
Iād happily go back to a world where most travelled by bike.
The incredibly clever powers-that-be however have made that impossible now.
January 14, 2024
LL,
Snake and Cameron just gave Ukraine two minesweeper ships and Ā£2.5 billion. JRs party and govt have loads of money or why would they waste so much!
Their economic record far worse than any Labour govt since WWII!
JR needs to remind us who forced mayors upon us against our wishes.
January 14, 2024
We must be rich
January 14, 2024
Chris
Indeed when I attended a Town Centre Precinct meeting last year (representing a local Charity Organisation) the new car park fees were being discussed, the Councillor responsible for the Wokingham district increase later in the meeting asked, what can we do to improve the footfall in the Town !
He was advised, reduce or stop the car park increases, because that will drive people out of the Town Centre.
He replied but we need the money !
Clueless absolutely clueless, no joined up thinking.
January 14, 2024
I think that the long term plan has been to actually empty the town centres.
Shops, offices etc to be used for housing.
That has happened here.
Not sure about the retail parks that helped to destroy towns ā¦will they keep those? I suppose they will be within peopleās 15 min cities?
I canāt think of any words bad enough to describe those doing all this to us.
Maybe for the best since I no longer have freedom of speechā¦or movement or association.
January 14, 2024
@Berkshire Alan – back in the days of the Conservatives running Wokingham, the question arose about the Town having Parking Wardens. It was reasoned that the cost of hiring in these outside contractors, as that is what they are, and the income the would achieve alone with the extra Council administration meant it wouldn’t amount to enough to waste their energies on. Nowadays, new regime Lib Dems, it’s just about signalling virtue in that can increase staff levels and local taxes. They the Lib Dems don’t work for the community they work for themselves
January 14, 2024
We go to Sainsburys fairly often, driving between Shute End and Winnesh to get there. This 1.25mile stretch of road is the one they’ve just spent Ā£606K (of Government grant) ‘planning’ to improve with better cycle lanes and a speed reduction (nothing has actually been built yet).
Last Friday, mid-afternoon there were steady streams of vehicle traffic on both side of the road – it was busy but moving. Our new game these days is ‘Count the Cyclists’ and we did quite well – there was one cyclist going down (in the existing cycle lane) but we scored two going back (if I include the elderly lady cycling on the pavement near the Wade Centre). Our best score ever has been five (three going down & two coming back). What a complete waste of time & our money. We have a Lib Dem led council here these days by the way…the leader of which has just stood down to challeng Sir John at the up-coming General Election.
January 14, 2024
We do the same on the Showcase roundabout towards Shinfield (and ASDA). Never seen more than 2 cyclists, often 3 joggers, now again a parent pushing a buggy/pram. Staggering cost on the tramac and the associated fencing, pole moving, line painting etc.
January 14, 2024
Just tell me, how is it so different from the leader of the Conservative councillors on the Wokingham District Council advertising herself as āP.J. with Rishi Sunakā as Conservative candidate for the new Earley & Woodley constituency (an area taken out of the previous Wokingham constituency to help Sir. John be reelected as E&W electors are less likely to vote Conservative if one believes the trend seen in previous GEs)?
Are opposition parties forbidden to present candidates in your book? You seem to have a strange understanding of what democracy is.
January 15, 2024
Of course Clive Jones can stand against Sir John but given recent council policies such as this cycle way “improvement” (undertaken when he was still in charge) I don’t want him as my MP thank you very much.
Others can (and no doubt will) vote for this “It’s a Climate Emergency” clap trap but in the real world (e.g. my world) I’d rather see actions that actually have some useful outcomes, rather than just being a huge virtue signalling waste of public resources. I will of course accept any outcome from the election (that is democracy) but I don’t have to like it, if delivers stupid policies (that’s called freedom of speeech).
January 14, 2024
IanT
This part of the A329 actually passes our House, I can assure you that the cyclist score you have just posted is high for about half an hours duration !.
This proposed modified cycle scheme is going to cost Ā£ Millions and will inconvenience and delay thousands of motorists, and the buses, for just a handful of cyclists so the council can tick a box.
Likewise the rat runs it will create on Old Woosehill lane and Simons Lane as Woosehill estate people try to dodge the proposed new lights at the Woosehill roundabout, will increase the danger for all in those areas,
Thus negative value for money.
January 14, 2024
@IanT – only to be expected with a Liberal Democrat (we do the call themselves Democrat) council. The way the road you talk about is signed cyclists have the lane on the roadway and also priority over pedestrians on what used to be a pedestrian footpath. Even more stupid they have signed elsewhere that cyclist should ride on the right – while excluding pedestrian safety
January 14, 2024
They’re killing the high street shops
January 14, 2024
Dead and buried here!
So sad and so wicked.
Was it all to hand 100% trade to the loathsome supermarkets to make the imposition of a social credit system easier?
January 14, 2024
If I were cynical I’d say it was all by designed & planned ….otherwise complete incompetence
January 14, 2024
Oh they donāt just hat drivers, they hate us in every respect. The planning Department torture us yet itās Councils that, for instance that own more demolish and distort listed buildings than any other entity. They hate farmers and entrepreneurs so own more farmland and commercial property which they hope will lie derelict, or should I say ārewindā.
You would have a real education Sir John, if your home and income depended on the local authority. They need them you see, for precious immigrants.
āTheyā learned how to take control beyond their remit in āCommon Purposeā lessons, and no elected councillor and few MPs can withstand the pressure.
Most if not all State employees should be sacked. Iām thinking there should be a maximum term that anyone can work for the state in any form, letās say ātwo termsā like an American President. All employees must know that they are jailers temporally, but that they will rejoin the masses and have to make their own way.
January 14, 2024
+1
January 14, 2024
Hateful intent seems unlikely. Inept, naĆÆve and careless idiots having power on Councils is more probably the fundamental scourge that needs remedying. Electing sensible leaders who enact good decisions would reach increasingly nearer to harmony.
January 14, 2024
This is a typical Englishmanās response. No matter what the evidence, you reject evil and evil intent. You will cling to any alternative explanation, like a drowning man to a brick.
There is evil in the world and by ignoring it and excusing it we give it a free pass. Thatās why Britain is the unrecognisable mess that it is.
January 14, 2024
I am English Lynn, with ancestors spanning over 300 years here; less typical now.
Most of our citizens oppose evil and try to prevent it.
January 15, 2024
Evil is indeed generally opposed, however, I sense a broad shift to many minor crimes and activities becoming tolerated and accepted.
January 14, 2024
Because we’re seen as a problem though that attitude is temporarily suspended when the parasite class at both local and national level come knocking for more taxpayer funding for their deliberately bankrupted budgets….
We are quite literally financing the destruction of our own world.
I note Ellison’s donated $200m to the snake Blair’s so called institute so he can go about constructing his globalist plan and just before Davos.
What have we done to deserve to be treated like subhuman scum?
January 14, 2024
+1
January 14, 2024
+++
Yes, yes a thousand time YES!
Councillors treat one like a stick of gelagniteā¦at arms length.
They tend to pander to rough elements and those deemed āneedyā.
They sum you up and treat you accordingly.
Or as one said to me onceā¦
ā Yesā¦but you are law-abiding arenāt you!ā
January 14, 2024
Shapps this week reiterated why Uni party should be ousted from office forever. Military is about delivering lethal force to the maxim amount of devastating consequences or threat to do so to keep peace. Shapps totally undermined that notion where Iran, Russia and China will be laughing and helping Shapps and co carry on implementing his left wing diversity social engineering nonsense to weaken and render our defences useless. At present no borders, no sovereignty= no nation. A complete idiot unfit for any public office.
January 14, 2024
Well I see our Civil Service and State employees have been very busy doing important things! The PM can relax!
ā Ukraine will support Great Britain if it is attacked by Russia – Prime Minister Shmygal
According to the concluded agreement on security guarantees, not only the British are obliged to help Ukraine, but also the Ukrainians must be able to come to the rescue in the event of aggression against Great Britain.ā
All those cycle lanes will come in useful after all and obviously we donāt want the invading Russians proceeding at over 20 mph!
January 14, 2024
Yes.
They do their absolute best to wreck driving ( and everything else actually). They make a huge fuss about climate change ( and similar rot) but right now, early on a Sunday morning, in the road over my fence, a bloke in a van is just sitting there running his engine. Very loudly indeed.
What do councils ever do about that sort of thing?
Where is the concern for residents? And never mind any pollution ( if that exists). What about the stench of a running engine? That is real!
January 14, 2024
Oh and Heaven help the folk who appear to be living in a campervan over the fence.
No warm hotel for them!
January 14, 2024
UK 100 Councils is the answer to your question Sir John.
They take their orders from the WEF, UN, the green blob, anywhere rather than the people who elect them and whose welfare they should look after.
It is not only MP’s and civil serpents being indoctrinated through the young leaders program. It is high time for anyone with any connection at all to WEF to be declared ineligible for public office.
January 14, 2024
Common Purpose is another culprit, hand in glove with WEF.
January 14, 2024
For years councillors totally denied any knowledge of Common Purpose and WEF etc.
( mind you reference to those was deleted on here. Was there a trigger point at which the info was allowed out?)
Then when it could not be denied any more what with the fuss about 15 min cities and I queried why councillors hadnāt kept abreast of global mattersā¦.I was told.
āYou canāt read everything!ā
January 14, 2024
Agreed.
January 14, 2024
Councils hate drivers because they are not commercially savy, dumb in fact. So dumb in Birmingham that they have managed to go bankrupt. The same idiots in Birmingham are apparently planning the abolition of all cars from Birmingham city centre, so ensuring the death of all business because customers will find alternatives.
Local government war on the car and business is not confined to Birmingham, it is rife and growing throughout the country. It is symptomatic of socialism on a suicide mission. Socialism has become the suicide bomber of civic Brittain.
I would wish for one currently less infected council to demonstrate that the way forward is the very opposite. Free car parks for the first three hours of stay, giving time for exhaustive shopping and lunch at the end of it. Totally free parking after 18.00 hrs, encouraging an active night life. Then it might make city centre shopping and entertainment viable. Business taxes based on profit rather than double the sum of last year thinking. Provision of facilities for a five day fresh food market, so popular throughout Spain. Anyone who has bought food in the markets of Valencia and Barcelona would not accept the grubby offerings in most UK cities. For UK cities to survive they must be customer oriented, a vain prayer these days. They just join the litany of failed everything. A country residing in a failing ICU.
January 14, 2024
agricola
Agreed same situation in France with free parking for residents and customers in most villages and Towns, only major cities have restrictions. But then France has far fewer people per square mile than us, which is where our problem really is, we are too densely populated, but the Politicians have not worked that out yet, allowing another 500,000 per year to enter.
January 14, 2024
An overcrowded country is like a filing cabinet carelessly stuffed full.
Keep the content level properly maintained and freedom of movement is easy.
Push in even one excessive piece and all are stuck fast.
January 14, 2024
and chuck some out and the cabinet is much better…
January 14, 2024
Yes. That Cabinet has too many needless people clogging up access to essentials with their worthlessness and waste. Dump them efficiently out of the way.
January 14, 2024
Unlike yourself, I blame the Conservative governmentās embrace of environmentalism and of Net Zero for all this. Itās allowed Councils to cite āthe climate emergencyā as an excuse to apply ever more restrictions on āpollutingā car usage. Enabling genuine local economic growth used to be a stated aim of some Councils, but no more thanks to Tory growth stifling actions, bans and inactions at the national level. Council bans on freedom of car use is entirely consistent with this governmentās real agenda.
January 14, 2024
MPC :
Correct.
January 14, 2024
If “yourself” is in fact me Agricola then please understand that I define Socialism as a philosophy and maintain that there is more of it in the so called conservative party in government than there is Conservatism. I judge them by what they do not the rosette they choose to display.
January 14, 2024
Every council department now employs a net-zero person, who’s job it is to identify and make net-zero solutions ….even if they don’t exist ….they have to justify their employment, the same is true for diversity officers and a great many health & safety officers
January 14, 2024
However annoying, frustrating and downright bolshevik this is, it could be worse. They could all be buying themselves expensive electric cars at ratepayers’ expense.
I wonder if Wokingham, Wokefield and Woking are two of the most aptly named councils in the UK.
According to Wikipedia, Wokingham means ‘Wocca’s people’s home’. Wocca was apparently a Saxon chieftain who may also have owned lands at Wokefield in Berkshire and Woking in Surrey.
From now on Wokists shall be called Woccas.
January 14, 2024
Mine and Sir John’s constituency could be renamed Wokeland. It’s starting to feel like the name implies.
January 14, 2024
Don’t know if they buy themselves electric cars at tax payers’ expense, but I do know a large proportion of our Council Tax goes to provide their pensions, whilst the tax payers who are struggling and cannot put much if anything into their own pensions fund their lush ones.
January 14, 2024
The simple answer is that a lot of the councillors are ‘cyclists’, the way they do road markings in my area prove it.
January 14, 2024
I can assure you that councillors are not cyclists. When it comes to cycling provision, they have no idea.
In our area, some pavements have been designated as cycle lanes. Normally cycling on the pavement is illegal. Why? Because it’s dangerous. Yet the council thinks sprinkling it with cycle lane fairy dust makes it safe for cycling, as if by magic.
January 14, 2024
Being stubborn , I will continue to drive my petrol car until no more fuel is available and then it will end its day as a weapon !
They will be punished!
January 14, 2024
a weapon? will you dump it on a cycle lane?
January 14, 2024
Possibly, but then I cannot talk about plans!!
January 14, 2024
ha ha !
January 14, 2024
Same Here
January 14, 2024
Looking around this appalling place where we were abandoned by the govt. some 40 years ago I always wonder how the successive councils managed to destroy an already rather grim place.
I find myself longing for how it used to be.
No one could ever have imagined the brutalist, untidy and totally unappealing architecture and overdevelopment that has taken place.
And now there are areas where one would really rather not go.
Wellā¦actually..increasingly, going anywhere is impossible.
January 14, 2024
So who runs this country – humans, or cars? There were around 34.6 million passenger cars in operation in the United Kingdom in 2022, but in 2000 it was only 27.2 million (source Car Magazine) Have we built more road to accomodate the extra 7million+ cars? I would suggest not.
Everyone who lives here – indigenous Brits, economic migrants, boat people, illegal immigrants etc – want a car. Larger families want several. With the extra cars on the roads no wonder residents in “rat-run” streets want 20mph zones, resident only parking, or indeed car free zones. Who wants the extra stinky pollution, noise, dust and the endless road rage incidents as fossil fuel drivers try and work out who has right of way in your hitherto quiet residential street?
Clearly, the vast extra numbers of cars on our roads are providing a windfall tax benefit for the Treasury in road tax, VAT on fuel etc. Consequently we should be dramatically increasing the taxes on drivers to limit the numbers of those who can afford motoring. The rest can use public transport, or walk or cycle to the shops.
Reply Sums up your views. Only the rich should drive. Let the rest walk.
January 14, 2024
Sakara
Unfortunately there are not that many bus routes that run outside of densely populated areas, or perhaps you had not noticed.
Agree we are overpopulated now, and have been for a couple of decades, it is continuing so it will get worse.
Interesting viewing a broken down Tesla outside our house yesterday having to rescued by the AA and lifted onto a flat bed lorry because it could not be towed, they call it progress, the rescue lorry was diesel of course.
January 14, 2024
There will come a time when EV powered tow-trucks will be required. That will be interesting, especially when THEY breakdown.
January 14, 2024
My Tesla has never broken down. It’s only needed servicing once and that was to install a software upgrade. I’m really impressed with it – its unbelievably cheap to run, has no road tax or ULEZ and it’s quiet. Tesla battery warranties vary somewhat depending on the battery pack, but all guarantee at least 70 percent retention of battery capacity over 8 years and 100,000 miles or more. And also a 50,000 mile general warranty. I can charge it up in the summer on my solar panels, it’s a lovely car with really impressive technology
What we desperately need is the 40,000 extra charging points that Kwarteng cancelled as part of the disastrous “fiscal event”. That will deal with the alleged “range anxiety” issue put out by the anti-EV brigade to try and stop folk from buying one
January 14, 2024
what is the warranty? Did you read the small print? So after 8 years use and the battery registers 69% or less will they give and fit you a new battery, or even a new equivalent car? We’d all love to know.
January 14, 2024
Batteries, in present-day new EVs, are said to keep a charging capacity of 70% after 200,000 miles or eight years (autocar.co.uk, 14/12/2023 āHow long do batteries last in electric carsā).
As a real world illustration Tesla S taxis operating from LGW (Gatwick) were retaining a 82 percent charging capacity after 300,000 miles over three years.
January 15, 2024
Hefner – shame I have to wait another 5 years to find out what the typical charging capacity is left at 8 years.
Actually only 82% left after just 3 years is not very impressive.
January 14, 2024
But itās using roads, breaking them up because itās so heavy, it scoping up energy that people need to cook and stay warm. It cost a fortune and that money would be better deployed investing in people.
Why donāt you get on a bus, buy a secondhand bicycle and try shankās pony? Donāt you want to save the planet?
January 14, 2024
As if lorries were not heavier!
BTW, I have a 21-year old ICE car.
But I simply consider Sir John and the anti-EV contributors on this blog rather funny. Arenāt you all keen defenders of the individuals and of their choices. If some individuals choose wrongly, let them bear the consequences of their choices, stop being so prescriptive of what people can/cannot, should/shouldnāt do. Arenāt market forces the drivers of an open economy?
Live and let live. Stop twitching the curtains when an EV-driving neighbour passes your house.
You just look to me like an old bunch of unhappy jealous constipated fellows.
āend of rantā.
Reply You sound desperate on so many topics today. I am an advocate of selling people cars they want to buy which includes EV s if they want them!
January 14, 2024
People I know who have been suckered into buying an EV do not suffer from ALLEGED range anxiety. They suffer from actual range anxiety every time the go on a long journey.
January 14, 2024
Reply to reply: Donāt be daft. In my area, there are more and more driveways with three cars there at night, where 10-15 years ago there would have been one or two. Two of my neighbours justify this as being the van used for professional reasons, the family car, and the womanās car, saying that it makes more sense both for tax and environmental reasons.
O/T: why are you reacting to SG comments and never have done about the nonsense often spouted by Lifelogic about the CO2 emitted by walkers and cyclists? Are you as stupid as he sometimes is?
January 14, 2024
I thought Sir John took exception to offensive remarks ? Hefner gets a yellow card, second offence a ban?
Perhaps the rule only applies to public named figures!
January 14, 2024
Totally agree MT
hefner’ post is rude.
Calling people daft and stupid.
Learn some manners.
January 14, 2024
I’ve given up on the crap that Lifelogic posts. I have replied to him in the past, but it’s pointless. I used to debate the merits of renewable energy here too, but nobody researches the subject – they just post crap they read in the right-wing press that comes from the powerful fossil fuel lobby. However, somebody has to speak up for our lovely planet, so I keep on trying
January 14, 2024
Yes but you have never made any sensible points on the topic that I have seen. I read maths, physics and electronic at Cambridge then Manchester and have worked in engineering most of my life I do know a fair bit on the topic. I see they were using Tornado Jets is the Red Sea the other day. I worked on parts of this swing wing MRCA/Tornado some 40 years back. Still in use it seems. I also worked for Ford of Britain albeit briefly. But the laws of physics do not change – even if our deluded net zero PPE graduate MPs think they can be changed.
The good news about the failure of the recent Moon mission was that it was not going to do anything useful even had it made it. So no loss. The money and fuel had already been wasted. But which moron (a PR dope I assume) specified they should rely on solar cells and making the rocket fly with them pointing at the sun.
January 14, 2024
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
Richard P. Feynman.
January 14, 2024
Youāre funny Lifelogic, most spacecrafts, space stations, satellites rely on solar cells and panels for their energy. The only notable exceptions were some early Soviet satellites that carried ānuclear-poweredā batteries, and the Voyager satellites, which from the start, had been designed to go to and beyond the limits of the solar system and also have radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
aerospacelectures.com āPower system design for Earth orbiting satellitesā an old (2009) presentation to a NASA workshop.
January 14, 2024
It’s not so lovely in the Congo where they’re destroying the environment, with what is effectively child slave labour, to mine the minerals you need for your virtue-signalling noddy car.
January 14, 2024
What is funny with you Donna is that you are very unhappy with cobalt mining in DRCongo but I guess you must not have moved a muscle in the period 1960s-2010s when copper, tin, diamond, gold, uranium and petroleum have been extracted, creating the Katanga Secession War in 1962-63 then the Second Congo War in 1997-2003.
Could it be that your favourite tabloid was not interested in those days?
January 14, 2024
SG
You have an exaggerated sense of your own importance
LL possesses skills which are much in demandā¦. what skills do you possess that have employers pursuing you?
January 14, 2024
Well Hefner is it not nonsense. Walking and cycling are powered by human food which not remotely an efficient fuel. It takes loads of fossil fuels and water to plant, fertilise, grow, harvest, process, butcher, dry, chill, freeze, pack, cook… if you crunch the sums a small car with four people in is far, far more efficient in CO2 (terms per person mile) than four people walking especially if they are heavy meat eaters. One walker can actually be worse than one small car in CO2 per mile.
As to needing three cars perhaps there are three people going to different destinations to work so how would one car work. Public transport often less efficient than a private car too is you do the maths as they tax much longer and over you need to take hugely indirect routes with long walks at each end.
January 14, 2024
Let me crunch some sums. My 5 mile cycle to work I do on a breakfast of about 400 calories, with energy left to tide me over till lunch. Tomorrow I shall take the car because it’s due for its MOT and it will consume about 1/2 litre of fuel or about 9,000 calories for the same journey. My maths tells me the bicycle is more than 20 times more efficient.
January 14, 2024
If one car took all three to work and picked them all up the mileage done would almost always be far more than three cars driven by each person to work if you just think about it. Unless they all worked very near to each other. Plus they may not have the same hours or might need the car for appointments too or have other activities they need the car for after work! If you think I have missed something on the CO2 for walking, cycling, car comparison by all mean tell me. But I do not think i have.
January 22, 2024
I just hope youād realise that you are comparing apples and oranges. You are now comparing three cars with one person onboard with one with all three inside. That was not your original comparison (walking, biking people vs people in cars) and either you do that on purpose (which I do not think you do) or you are not even realising that you have changed the problem being discussed.
January 14, 2024
Hefner I thought you were living in France?
January 14, 2024
I have a house in France but I am officially residing in the UK.
January 14, 2024
I disagree with your summing up. The truth is yes everyone wants a cheap to buy and run, petrol powered car. Environmentalists, make you buy expensive EVs, but you can’t charge them or afford them. They block roads and reduce parking, which cripples small businesses and makes peoples lives more difficult. They say ride a bike or use public transport but that only works for a small number of people. The correct way to reduce travel time and reduce pollution is to build expressways in and out of towns and not put obstacles in the way or take up capacity with cycle and bus lanes. Rip them all out please.
January 14, 2024
+1
January 14, 2024
Sakara Gold:
Astronomer Carl Sagan opined that if Martians looked out from space, they would think that cars dominated life on Earth, and eventually on higher magnification they would see tiny parasites lived on them: Humans!
January 14, 2024
Sakara Gold, you’ve just described the governments transition towards ’15-min’ citites …..Its happening before our very eyes
January 14, 2024
About 10 years ago Farage correctly stated that the increase in traffic levels on the M4 (and elsewhere) was being caused by mass immigration. The bien pensant Establishment howled him down and called him racist.
At that time, traffic levels were increasing at about 2% across the country, with the SE experiencing higher levels.
I expect it’s 5% a year now. And all caused by mass immigration.
January 14, 2024
Birmingham city council say it’s good to have rat run through residential roads polluting quite areas causing chaos in the mornings an afternoon’s Saturday and Sundays
January 14, 2024
I know a girl who joined kingston upon thames council as an environmental manager.
She introduced draconian measures.
Her background was an environmentalist.
Brother in law and mother in law were environmentalists.
The whole family lived in a bubble paid for by tax payers.
January 14, 2024
I believe you. I grew up loving science, engineering and the natural world. However, the majority of people don’t recognise that their advanced way of life, comfort and indeed reduced impact on the environment is down to machines that are fossil fuel powered. Councils, government, quangos and most other administrative bodies are full of people trying to reduce, as they see it, the impact of humans on the planet or local environment. However, they fail to see the trade offs they are making. By introducing cycle lanes and bus lanes that are not needed and mostly unused, they create huge congestion, increase travel time and costs, increase noise and emissions or where they make the route impossible then people stop coning to shop in town centres. Fast access in personal transport, with quick, easy and cheap parking. The councils and government with their environmental measures are making everything worse for everyone.
January 14, 2024
And of course, even if they were successful it would make no difference at all to climate change and ignore rubbish thrown out of cars etc. Some of our major roads are a disgrace with litter from imbeciles who think the fairies will take it all away, but of course the councils just leave it there with the same idea. Even in my country lane they do it with fast food wrappings and drink cans of all kinds which we have to clear up or it would just get worse. The dust carts come and go and the refuse operatives (surely not dustmen anymore) walk past it all – maybe they could be trained to pick some of it up.
January 14, 2024
They confuse that idiot war on CO2 (harmless plant, crop, tree food) with having a pleasant environment. They are two very different things deliberately confused by the Net Zero zealots.
January 14, 2024
They even call CO2 (vital for nearly all life on earth/ plant/crop/free food) “pollution”. So moronic are they.
January 14, 2024
Well said LL , I agree whole heartedly.
January 14, 2024
Her name wasn’t Greta Thunberg ….was it !
January 14, 2024
Net zero us bonkers religion that no bright, sensible, honest & independent scientist would fall for.
January 14, 2024
I do not think they hate us. But they certainly disrespect & abuse us, their precious cash cows. Because this vein of revenue they constantly feed off. Enables these vastly overpaid & incompetent public servants to fill their coffers & egos.
Justifying many staff & poorly managed business contracts.
Wth little accountability for waste or mismanagement!
Devolution, which I do not remember was ever voted for. Has allowed this menace to govern our public purse & our lives on a daily basis.
It is a scourge that needs addressing by cutting back the scale, size & cost of all public officers & senior staff wages & pensions.
It’s time the people took back control of the asylum!
January 14, 2024
Agree – We need reform
January 14, 2024
John they do it because they can, and many schemes or proposals are funded by Central Government.
Wokingham has just received a grant of over Ā£500,000 from government for yet another study on improving cycle lanes and going green.
Thus we now have the LibDem empowered Council suggestion of narrowing the A329 Reading Road, to install a 2 metre wide cycle lane on both sides of the road, putting traffic lights on the Woosehill roundabout, and restricting with a pinch point the access to the huge Woosehill estate from the present two lanes each way to one.
But the proposal goes even further, the new cycle lane will be raised from the road, meaning all of the present road drains will need to be moved, as will bus stops (even less room to then overtake a stationary bus) and perhaps some street lighting, and it is planned to give cyclists the right of way across junctions. This scheme will cost the Council millions, when there is already a cycle lane in both directions which is little used, and the Council is pleading it is short of money !
This lunacy of net Zero is destroying us !
Reply I strongly oppose this dreadful waste of money
January 14, 2024
not just wasting our council tax – the proposals are not needed, will not solve ANY problems and will create accidents that don’t happen now. I can foresee stubborn cyclists (I see at least one every time I go out) choosing to dash across at junctions and moving out from behind buses without thinking that an unaware driver will be a head-on crash. Could be deaths.
January 14, 2024
My council is going ahead with building more cycle lanes, with central funding money (and part council tax), before the results and evaluation of the cycle lanes built last year are in ā¦its all pushed by this Tory government
….and a cycle-lane is just another water run-off, no wonder we have flooding
January 14, 2024
Mrs Gold, who has a subscription to the Telegraph, has drawn my attention today to an article – wait for it – in favour of heat pumps. I was surprised at this and so I read it carefully over the excellent coffee and breakfast that the lady has prepared.
As our domestic boiler (manufactured by Ideal Ltd at their Hull facility) is only five years old it would probably be uneconomic to replace it with a heat pump, but Octopus energy have just installed their first domestic heat pump at no cost to the householder. The full costs were covered by the available government grants etc.
Doubtless the legions of pro-fossil fuel, climate crisis denying, anti-renewables folk who post here will have something to say about how dreadful is this development. Personally, I shall ask Octopus to prepare a quotation to see if an Ideal Ltd (they also make heat pumps to a British design) heat pump installation could be economic in my property.
Reply Making available large grants just shifts all the extra cost of a heat pump onto your tax bill.
January 14, 2024
In general heat pumps (air source especially) make little sense. You might get 2X heat out for X heat in (CoP factor) but they use electricity that costs 3+ times more than gas. They are more capital intensive, cost more to maintain, heat up more slowly, are more tepid so need larger radiators. Likely they may need an expensive beefed up electrical supply. Also as they are largely driven from electricity made from gas, coal or imported wood they make no sense environmentally even if you are infected with the CO2 devil gas religion.
As John says a subsidy is just a transfer to everyoneās tax bill. A bribe to encourage you to make usually a duff decision like heat pumps or EV cars. I not Hertz car rental will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money it brings to purchase more gasoline-powered vehicles. Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials and are not popular. They more people get to know them they more they realise their range and charging limitations. Far more to purchase, insure and far higher tyre wear too.
January 14, 2024
When we fly into LA or San Francisco, we hire a decent sized 4WD SUV, especially when we are going to Lake Tahoe in winter to ski. Last time it was a Chevy Tahoe from Hertz.
We would never accept an EV because we couldn’t even get to our hotel in Tahoe City without stopping to recharge.
When you have just flown the Atlantic, you just want to get there in your car. That would be the case for most people hiring a car in the US because distances are so much greater.
Even the current Biden government isn’t forecasting 50% take-up of EVs before 2050!
January 14, 2024
you mean OUR tax bill, don’t you?
And I hope you go ahead, replace the boiler and freeze with a hopeless heat pump.
Karma.
January 14, 2024
Wait ’til you try one. You’ll want your old boiler back again and the bills for the electricity will make your eyes water even with our so called 9 times cheaper wind energy (when it is actually being produced), a lower charge which never seems to make it onto my bills (they’ve just gone up again). Prepare to buy more woolies.
January 14, 2024
SG,
So finally I know whether you are a he or a she.
The overseas lager was a good cover name.
One more poster is yet to be revealed.
January 14, 2024
I’m sure poor, overtaxed British taxpayers will be just delighted to fund your virtue-signalling domestic heating.
The Government has no money; it only has ours but as a Green-Socialist, I doubt if you understand that.
January 14, 2024
To Reply Making available large grants just shifts all the extra cost of a heat pump onto your tax bill.
Worse still it put is on my tax bill even though I have the sense not to buy a heat pump or an EV. It further meant that millions are bribed to buy the wrong duff technology windfarms, heat pumps, solar farms, EVs.
Littering the place with expensive but duff technology that will have to be replaced on the subsidies finish!
January 14, 2024
SG – wait until the next generation of heat pumps become available that can heat to 85 degrees rather than the current tepid versions…
January 14, 2024
Oh get a heat pump! Do! And you can sell your second hand gas boiler Iām sure. Why donāt you actually pay for your heat pump just to show that you are not sponging on poor people.
January 14, 2024
Yes, agreed, but what happens when you add another layer of absurdity, Devolution?
It gives People nightmares!
You English based voters want to remember, we have 20mph, Child Laws, Welsh Language Laws, bloated local Councils with employment for the Boy’s, no support for the hated self employed, extra Public Service, Climate Change, it goes on!
All extra costs on doing business, compared to an English councils!
With different Competitiveness strategy’s needed for North, and South, Wales, we have none!
Collusion with Tata Steel to close Virgin Steel making in Port Talbot!
All they care about is waiting for Westminster Labour to get in, and bail them out!
Devolution does not work, only for the Welsh Labour Party, and the Welsh Nationalists!
And, the only alternative we have is a Left Wing Conservative Party, that’s just as bad!
Sunak is not electable! The longer you leave it, the more People will accept Starmer!
Best of luck, SJR!
January 14, 2024
Sunak and most Tory MPs have the wrong polices, even if they occasionally pretend to want smaller government, lower taxes, growth, far lower immigration. Their policies clearly show they are lying. On the net zero insanity the to not even bother to pretend. Sunak is not even trying to hit is pledges. The one he has hit inflation was all caused by him and the BoE anyway. Likely to go up again due to the Red Sea issues and week pound due to Sunak’s incompetent anti-growth economic policies.
January 14, 2024
They’re following the lead of the Department for Transport, which funds much of the driver-punishing initiatives.
And the Department for Transport is implementing “Government” policy, which is controlled by EU Regulations, and the objectives of the WEF.
Councils and Local Highways Authorities are simply doing what they are empowered to do. And if it makes them money on the back of motorists, as far as they’re concerned it’s a win/win.
The Not-a-Conservative-Government could, of course, ditch the EU Regulations now we’re supposedly “out” of the EU and they could ignore the WEF. But they won’t.
January 14, 2024
A timely reminder of one small but notable tipping point in recent years when it started to dawn upon us that this notionally Conservative government really was not on our side. In the middle of lockdown, with economic wreckage plainly on the horizon, the ludicrous Grant Shapps puffed himself up to his full height and announced that as from 2030 it would become illegal for a driver to enter into a contract with a dealership for the purchase of a brand new ICE vehicle (I express the point in this manner deliberately to illustrate a type of contract that had been legal for time immemorial). The preceding manifesto commitment had only been expressed as a pledge to consult on the earliest possible date for such a measure: are we to infer that Shapps only consulted Lord Deben, Caroline Lucas and Swampy?
January 14, 2024
The councillors are supposed to be our representatives and work for our benefit. Why is it, as with professional politicians, that once they get into power they turn 180 degrees to what they promise? Is there some manual they have to imbibe? Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
January 15, 2024
Why is it? Because they can!
January 14, 2024
+1
January 14, 2024
Just as the country is run by civil servants, quangos, regulators, āOffsā and the judiciary the councils are run by their officials under the direction of organisations such as C40 cities who are funded by communists and WEF feudalists who at the same time fund CAGW extremists such as XR. Both desire to control the population through impoverishment using the Net Zero Strategy and the ending of private transport, the car, is a powerful tool in this aim.
The billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, is the President of C40 cities and the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan serves as C40ās Chair.
Itās worthwhile checking out their mission statements and how they intend to achieve their goals. Then the answer as to why āso many councils hate driversā (and the local population) and the reasons for their policies and actions becomes completely obvious.
January 14, 2024
Very clear explanation. What do we do about this, JR?
January 14, 2024
Yes excellent points Sir John, all this is infuriating. And exactly the same goes for this ridiculous rewilding nonsense, where drains and gutters are blocked and full of weeds and important road signs obscured. But my question to you is, āare local authorities merely following, albeit aggressively, the āGreen agendaā set by government?ā
January 14, 2024
We could ask in turn “why do so many Councils hate retailers and premises based service providers?” One obvious consequence of their vendetta against drivers is that those drivers will think twice about heading into city centres and negotiating the municipal obstacle course that has made it considerably more difficult to get there intact and in good time. As the late Keith Waterhouse, an old school socialist but not a malevolent one, once put it: “city centres are for trading in, not living in.”
January 14, 2024
It is not just drivers that they hate, it is the greater part of the population, those that think they should at least try to keep the Ten Commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not bear false witness etc. One of their deadliest weapons to wreck our society and, yes, kill us is appointment and promotion not on merit but on who you are. This is being enforced everywhere in government and imposed by government in the private sector. This is How Pilots Are Being Chosen To Fly. You Should Be Concerned was an appalling video I saw yesterday (applies also to aircraft manufacture and maintenance). DEI, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is what it is called in the US. What do our haters call it here?
January 14, 2024
Before individuals are selected for Council or any public body they should be scrutinised for their ability to decide in all the areas involved ; too many are under qualified . We are dominated by the result of National and Local elections and the time lapse before change can occur is several years . We are over-populated with enormous consequences .
January 14, 2024
I know a council where they claimed they did not have reserved parking. No it gets better – they raised the prices in a local public car park so that the car park was mostly empty. Then when they go into the office they just claim the parking costs on expenses. You really couldn’t make this stuff up!
January 14, 2024
They don’t particularly hate motorists but they love money. It’s just that they can dress up cash raids on motorists as if it was driven by their virtuous green agenda. For example Khan’s ULEZ zone which he claims is to reduce air pollution from cars despite the fact there is worse air pollution in the underground which he’s doing nothing about. One generates money the other costs money.
January 14, 2024
@Roy Grainger – What air pollution there is said to be is the result of the London Mayor refusing to update the infrastructure under his control to meet the needs of his community. Not considered, as there is no punishment reward yet worked out, EV’s due to their excessive weight pollute more from brake dust and tyre wear, than the equivalent ICE vehicle. It has also been shown that 78% of the Oceans micro plastic pollution comes from vehicle tyre and brake wear – it is possible to conclude as Ev’s cause more of it they will become the main culprit.
January 14, 2024
returning to the big issue!
Paula Vennells was backed for the honour despite a High Court trial looming, more than 500 sub-postmasters took their fight to the High Court in 2018. At the time of her nomination, the Horizon IT system was known to be defective
Theresa May’s government forced through a CBE for disgraced former Post Office boss Paula Vennells despite serious concerns at the time that the Horizon IT system was defective and a group action being brought by more than 500 sub-postmasters against their employer for wrongful prosecution.
However, such concerns were either ‘brushed aside’ or were given reassurance by civil servants backing Vennells for the honour. One senior civil servant at the time said there was a view that Vennells had ‘inherited’ the Horizon problem and was ‘clearing up rather than being the cause’, reports The Times.
Vennells was recommended for a CBE, which ranks below a knighthood or damehood, by a sub-committee chaired by Sir Ian Cheshire, now chairman of Channel 4.
According to sources, she was nominated by May’s government prior to the sub-committee’s recommendation and her name was discussed by the main honours committee in 2018, chaired by Sir Jonathan Stephens, the then civil servant responsible for Northern Ireland.
January 14, 2024
Sir John
Why? – its cheaper than building the infrastructure to support the Community. It sends a Political Virtue Signal
January 14, 2024
Sir John
The London mayors ULEZ, allows an outside body (Capita Business Services) to make up rules fine and persecute the Driver in the Mayors Name.
TfL (Another unaccountable body) has agreed to pay Capita Ā£213,333,333 until 2026 to punish the motorist.
Capita has decreed vehicles pre-2007 pollute so must pay or get fined. However, it has been proven that cars as far back as 1997 comply and exceed the standards that ULEZ demands and the official documentation exists. But before 2007 it wasnāt a āthingā so there was no need to keep the āfactā and register it with the DVLA so Capita a private dictatorship that isnāt under political control ignored that. Capita hasnāt got to prove that a vehicle doesnāt comply they can just decree it ā the new interpretation of English/Common Law.
This has all the hallmarks of another Post Office Scandal, although clearly not to the same decree.
Sir John, Continuing on the train of thought from your recent Diary submissions, too much of our daily life has seemingly been removed from political accountability, removed from Democratic oversite and responsibility. I said seemingly as the Government is still the āmanagerā the management we have empowered and paid to ensure that should be the case ā they simply refuse their duty.
January 14, 2024
Because they are infected by Marxist thinking, which is anti-human beings, as you saw in Russia and now see in China. The people need to wake up and remove them from office, but I fear that most people are either infected themselves or are asleep.
January 14, 2024
In our pleasant, leafy little road, four well-healed families in houses next to each other, have each bought an expensive EV in the last six months. A Tesla model S, BMW SUV, Audi eTron GT, and a Mercedes. Total purchase price in excess of Ā£375,000.
None of these rapidly depreciating liabilities are used very much, sitting in the driveway on charge at least 90% of the time. Only one of the four homes has solar panels. Given that it takes 65-80,000 miles to equal the greenhouse gases created in building these EVs, the four families are now large contributors to global warming. Yet when they drive by my house with its four sustainable diesel and petrol cars, which have a combined age of more than 100 years, they don’t emit any CO2, just an intolerable air of smugness.
January 15, 2024
and why is my niece paying Ā£290 car tax for her old 20 year old 1.6 ford focus, I pay Ā£180 and my neighbour pays nothing on his EV …..we all use the same bloody road
January 14, 2024
Not sure the councillors hate drivers but many politicians, at all levels , to achieve their desired outcomes, can all too often easily default to āthou shalt/shalt notā mode, rather than engaging in genuine consultation with citizens-which is time consuming but which social media will hopefully make ever easier?
January 14, 2024
Opinion by Ben Chapman (GB News).
For months, Houthi rebels have defied the West, using missiles, drones and boarding parties to terrorise freighters entering the Red Sea sailing towards the Suez Canal. This week the anticipated response arrived as a coalition of ten countries, led by the United States and Britain, mounted retaliatory air strikes.
Meanwhile, I am sure that in my memory, Britain has never functioned worse.
The NHS is in collapse and even to get a doctorās appointment online is unachievable for many. The railways function only periodically.
Britain has never functioned worse – The only reforms move us closer to the sinister absurdities of wokery, says Michael Portillo.
The rottenness of the British state has been laid bare by the Post Office scandal.
Although ministers and MPs have known of the scandal for years, it has taken a television drama for the government to admit that it can do something to bring about restitution.
How can we have faith in British justice that convicted so many innocent people?
Beyond that, our police forces have lost public confidence. Immigration is not under control.
The government is unable to build new houses, schools or railways. Civil servants donāt go to the office and are unaccountable. MPs are involved in scandals.
Meanwhile the only reforms that are undertaken seem to move us closer to the sinister absurdities of wokery.
These are conditions that ought perhaps to produce a revolution.
Has the public just decided that nothing will ever get better?
January 14, 2024
Looks like we haven’t even a Royal Navy
January 14, 2024
To be fair. The Woke advertising, the BBC casting of a woman who can beat men up and is “the best combat helicopter pilot to have existed.” Even without the diversity quotas the RAF and Navy has brought in (they are determined to make the Royal Marines female friendly)
What young lad would want to join the military in order to join a brotherhood and prove his mettle ?
There is NOTHING in it for a white bloke anymore.
Paula Vennells and Assistant Chief Constables get CBEs for simply time serving. Why go to war to get a gong and see your wife and kids living in accommodation crapper than a barge in the west country ?
January 14, 2024
I donāt think Councils hate motorists I think they love them and rub their hands together in glee that so many people have no choice but to pay their parking fees and fines. They spend a small fortune installing 20mph circles on cul-de-sacs that in 30 years Iād never seen anyone speeding on theyāre too narrow and windy with parked cars.
These Councils seem to all be claiming that Central government have cut their funding by 40% from 2010 to 2020 (I wonder why stop at 2020 when weāre in 2024?). Some say they have less money to spend so they hit motorists to meet targets central government have imposed without funding for air quality. The people they should fine are the companies who they close roads for that take two months longer than they should and were contracted for. Perhaps we should look at the well performing Councils and investigate how they are doing it. Concentrate on the positive instead of all those failing and compare and contrast.
Everything seems to go much slower if the Council are involved, from house building using Homes England schemes to shopping centre changes, delays, quotes going up all the time, schemes having to halt because they used contractors who go on to double their charges, perhaps if they selected better contractors in the first place, honest pricing doesnāt seem to get them the workā¦
It makes me laugh that the multi story doesnāt have those lights that go off when no one is walking through, and the government buildings have lights on their car parks all night long then claim theyāre green.
Libraries need to move with the times and attract some of the youths that say there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. I know how kids in poorer areas feel I never had youth clubs or the money to pay for private clubs growing up but I loved the local library. My children also went every week to story times, take out computer games and books, reading relays, watch performances but the library we used was in a posher area and had lots of volunteers and was well organised. For years people demanded a cinema, no-one uses it, I used to buy my kids cinema gift cards that gave lots of free entry for Christmas or Birthday, when I was little that was one of the only affordable activities the cinema club in the holidays with a little show then a film with a break in the middle. Our school had one evening where people went to meet up, nothing but trouble with gangs so I didnāt go. Itās always interesting to see what they do find money to spend on though.
January 14, 2024
The largest warehouse Wild-Berries (Amazon) in Russia St.Petersburg has gone up in smoke yesterday covering an area of 42 acres ā¦.thatās created more co2 than every car in Europe for a year ā¦whatās the point of our ICE ban again ?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12959007/Panic-huge-fire-destroys-vast-online-shopping-warehouse-Russia-used-location-recruiting-migrant-workers-Putins-war-Ukraine-amid-suspicions-arson.html
January 14, 2024
Not to mention the volano in Iceland
January 14, 2024
Councils are just following and instigating the Globalalist UK Establishment NWO agenda. They also employ so many non -thinking indoctrinated lefty libtards who are willing to and delight in following the agenda. Infiltration from Within, beware the Trojan Horse.
January 14, 2024
Councillors and Mayors should be banned from visiting other countries or sending delegations to international events ….their business should be 100% local
January 14, 2024
Migrant crisis: At least five dead after drowning in English Channel overnight
French media report that more than 70 migrants were taken to the village hall in Wimereux.
Two other boats arrived in UK waters early this morning, with at least 100 people aboard, in another rescue yesterday, two migrants fell from an overloaded small boat were taken back to shore, but another 68 people on board the small boat refused the help of French authorities and continued their journey to the UK ā GB News
Weāre paying the French, so why werenāt the 70+ recued arrested and imprisoned by the police ???
January 14, 2024
Self charging,self driving AI cars will reduce the stress.
January 14, 2024
Some civil servant is already arguing why the need for passengers and the driver in the vehicle
January 14, 2024
”WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden said on Saturday the United States does not support the independence of Taiwan, after Taiwanese voters rebuffed China and gave the ruling party a third presidential term”
Have the wokes won, is freedom and democracy died
January 14, 2024
I see Portillo is saying that Britain has never performed worse than it is today, realistic verdict on so long with Conservative governments.
January 14, 2024
He’s correct – does anyone really recognise this government as ”conservative”
January 14, 2024
SJ, they don’t actually hate us at all, do they? They love the money we give them and that is the central focus of these dumb councils. And the resident elect this rubbish into office?
Why can they not treat their towns as a big business? Where they attract more customers by giving good reasons to shop and buy in their town? If they do run short of cash, cut their own overheads not deter those customers from buying in their town.
Surely the logic makes sense to most folk? Yep! Unfortunately, it appears that these councils are way behind that curve and it’s down to the citizens to rid themselves of these useless people. Good business principles must be at the foot of all the public sector else we end up where we are now, in jeopardy.
January 14, 2024
Yup.
14 years of Tory rule.
Country falling apart. Immigration out of control. People and their pets literally being eaten alive in the streets.
Just get out.
Go !
January 15, 2024
Great idea and we replace them with who?
January 14, 2024
YouGuv – if GE today Conservatives 169, labour 385. Wokingham to go LibDem. So Sunak/Hunt version on a Conservative Government will cause the Conservative Party to throw them selves under a bus. Strange because Labour doesn’t have the capability to win they are loosers, it is just Sunak/Hunt have a greater ability to loose.
Time to ditch the BoJo cabinet, grab any old inexperienced Conservative and it would be a walk in the park for the Tories.
It would appear CCHQ is riddled with the same mentality as this Conservative Government that to fail is the name of the game, dragging the party dow with them
January 15, 2024
The AA reporting today that we have more road pot-holes than at any other time in history
They estimate the cost to fix all pot-holes would be Ā£0.5 billion …..so why are we spending Ā£4.0 billion on cycle-lanes