Oh, yeah. We’re all here on this famously rainy island but, sure, blame rain for the lack of growth. Not the government, of course not.

If you want to help, blood.co.uk is the place to sign up!

And when there’s any chance of us having to fight a defensive land war against Russia, I will admit I was wrong.

It is a bad idea, which is why nearly everywhere has stopped doing it and hardly anywhere has started again.

Which is exactly why the army has been asking for more funding, which it actually needs. It doesn’t want conscription, which it recognises would be a waste of resources.

Other countries considering a bad idea doesn’t make it a good idea.

Another unfunded pledge from the Conservatives. What do we want? Housing! What will we get? Conscription!

David Cameron already did this anyway with the voluntary National Citizen Service. He also promised to eventually make it involuntary but never did, presumably because it was unworkable, expensive or both. So, what has changed to make it workable or inexpensive?

Bizarre day where both Kate Osamor and Natalie Elphicke (re)join the PLP.

Yeah, I signed up to one of the group-buying schemes that Sadiq Khan brought in, in theory to make it cheaper to put solar panels on your house. The company that got the contract ended up going bust, so no solar panels for me! At least I got the deposit back.

A salutary reminder that humans can hallucinate things better than any bot.

Yeah, I was worried their misinformation, combined with understandable frustration with some of Labour’s actual policies, would swing it to the Tories.

Yep, smashed it. I voted for him and I’m pleased for the guy. Not many people have had to put up with the level of shit he’s had. I hope the Tories will recognise there’s no electoral mileage in banging on about cars and dogwhistling about Muslims, but if they were capable of that, they most likely wouldn’t be Tories.

The polls were still way off, though. A 10% lead is great, but it’s not a 20% lead!

True, but if they win that will validate the strategy and they’ll get worse!

PSA to everyone:

Remember to bring photo ID.

You cannot vote without it. Along with abolishing STV, the requirement for photo ID was brought in by the Tories as a deliberate strategy to suppress their opponents’ vote. Don’t let them get away with it!

Would be funny if he did a Theresa May, just came out and said fuck all then carried on like nothing had happened.

He’s standing down at the next general election anyway, so this isn’t about saving his seat.

The number who think it’s okay to park on the zigzags because they left their hazards on is similarly incredible.

As discussed in this article, the government is busily ignoring its own reports and its own advisers. Instead, they’re trying to make it harder to implement life-saving policies like ULEZ, LTNs and 20mph zones, and even trying to make it harder for councils to fine motorists who break the law (more great stuff from ‘the party of law and order’!).

There’s no such thing as road tax, but full duty, which motorists do pay, has not risen. It’s been frozen for, I think, 14 years. Hunt froze it again the Budget just the other day! There may be other car-specific taxes I’m not aware of and you’re sort of right that the overall tax burden has increased, but I don’t know how much that applies to motorists specifically.

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to add: there’s one important sense in which clean air policies benefit motorists more than anybody, because the people most exposed to air pollution are people in cars. So, proven effective clean air policies like ULEZ certainly benefit motorists’ health, which is why I described the government’s new strategy as ‘supposedly’ pro-motorist. Not sure you can describe a policy to make people breathe poisonous air as ‘pro’ that group!

This is the third study in the last week that shows just how wrongheaded the government is to pursue supposedly ‘pro-motorist’ policies.

I’m not entirely clear why you feel (re)designing cities around walking/cycling is a patronising policy, but designing cities around cars isn’t. If the answer is, ‘because cars aren’t good for you’, it seems like your stance would have to be ‘cities should be designed around what’s bad for you, otherwise it’s patronising’, and I don’t think that can be what you believe!

LTNs make life easier for everyone who doesn’t use a car which, in inner city London, where many of these studies were conducted, means the majority. So, it’s not about maliciously targeting people with cars but benevolently targeting the majority who don’t have them.

I didn’t personally find the tone of this article smug, but again: it’s not about making life harder for people who want to drive or preventing them from doing what they want (because after all everyone can still drive if they choose to), but enabling people to safely do what they want when they want to walk and cycle. LTNs make walking more pleasant and safer; there’s even some evidence they reduce crime! So, as you’re someone who walks a lot but doesn’t particularly enjoy it (sorry about that), LTNs ought to make things a bit better for you.

Finally, LTNs are about as likely to reduce journey times for motorists as they are to increase them, so the net effect on motorists way well be neutral. Again, this doesn’t strike me as the kind of outcome I’d want if I were maliciously targeting motorists.