Why there is no money for safer road infrastructure....

there is plenty of money around to spend on safe roads
from www.constructionenquirer.com

"Schemes to start in 2013/14
M3 J2 to 4a, Surrey – cost £159m-£223m
M6 J10a to 13, West Midlands – cost £140m-£201m
M1 J28 to 31, Derbyshire – £177m-£250m
A160/A180 Immingham dualling – cost £89m-£132m (Start summer 2015)

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: “I am determined to cut the time it takes to upgrade our roads in half by dismantling procedures that have slowed us down.......

....The Department for Transport and the Highways Agency has looked hard at how to speed up the decision making process and the time it takes to have roads ready for use by motorists."

lots of very safe roads there - look at the stats - political will not money is the problem

Re: Nigeria - Nigeria has oil and gas, the UK has companies with expertise in the extraction of oil and gas. Join those dots.

Less cynically you could also argue that by improving the conditions of a developing country then the inhabitants of said country are less likely to want to come to your country as a drain on resources. Or if they do want to come to your country then having had access to better education and health care they might do as a skilled, healthy worker and bring a net economic benefit.

Spin goes both ways.

Let's face it, many years ago, countries' public finances were not as scrutinised as much as they are these days. No doubt in the past certain "expenditures" could possibly have been required in decades passed.
As an aside, if you Google "al yamamah" you will find all sorts of views on a major UK government contract that provided all sorts of jobs. The idea that there weren't conflicting ethics/ideologies is laughable. I'll leave it at that.

This is what I am talking about; the UK provides aid. The aid is invested. The country prospers and so they want 'necessities' like 126 fighter planes....

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/UK-keen-to-offer-Eurofighter-to...

Who do they come to?
The UK; at £65M each + on-going maintenance.... ker-ching! (hopefully)

There's proposals to build a tunnel to replace the (life expired) Hammersmith flyover. The top end estimate for this scheme comes in at about £1.7 billion.

For 2.5 miles of road, to relieve a local conjestion issue.

All this talk of foreign aid budgets, corporate taxes etc is a red herring. This country can well afford, even with all that, to allocate vastly more to safer cycling than it does at the moment. We could cheerfully go to £50/head/year- if the government wanted to. It doesn't. It doesn't want to spend money on this.

UK gross domestic product (GDP) is $2,417,600M the sixth highest in the world. Not bad for a country that is apparently becoming a third world s.hole. It is easy to be critical of giving aid to countries like India and Nigeria (10th, $1,875,213M and 37th, $262,545M GDP) but I would like to know what this money is spent on before I am too critical; I do not suppose it is food parcels and what do 'we' get in return, because I am sure it is not just green beans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
But the question stands; (in the voice of Al Murray 'The Pub Landlord' ) "WHERE'S THE F***ING MONEY?"

To be fair to Vodafone, they did get scalped on the spectrum auction (a form of windfall tax) which is why they have not been paying much tax since (as they can offset the expense).
Still, the bottom line is that if your tax system is too complex for the government of the day to collect it, it's way too complicated.

"there was actually an article in the Daily Mail today about foreign aid and its cost"

Hardly a source of impartial information! I nearly didn't read any further, such is the dreadful reputation of that pile of shite.

Foreign aid is a red herring while tax dodging by massive, super-rich companies would be a real source of income if the political will was there.

The report linked by mrmo was also covered on road.cc:
http://road.cc/content/news/98607-campaigners-criticise-self-fulfilling-...

While cycling accounts for ~1.5% of journeys then it is likely to get just 1.5% of road spending, or possibly even less. Taking road space away from cars and giving it to lefties, greens and impoverished plebs on bicycles is not a vote-winner among the parts of the electorate this government cares about.

The vast majority of this country's problems are very much first-world issues. Plus, the last time I checked we weren't being bombed or gassed by our own government so I don't think your third-world-like-Syria comparison really stands up.

They should ask Vodafone for the billion plus in tax that they owe the country, but they won't as our country's leaders have no back bone. They are even too scared to put their own people first incase Brussels tells us off. The poor people of Somerset get to suffer whilst we throw money at Syria and any other third world dump that has corrupt governments.

The country as a whole is a joke and we are becoming a third world sh*t hole, still as long as Brussels and the third world are ok.

Don't worry, since his party donor's ponies started floating off down the Thames, Dave had a another look under the cushions of his austerity sofa and found a shitload of money that he had completely forgotten about. I'm pretty sure that once all the flood defending and pony drying have been sorted there will be lots left over for all sorts of splendid modern infrastructure type things like bicycle tracks, rooftop helipads and monorails.

Oh it's much worse than that. They have failed to collect £22 billion in taxes owed (i.e. one fifth of the current deficit) and £6billion has been written off. Think what they could do with that.

https://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/uk-government-is-planning-for-a-fall-i...

i will come back and add a few more details later, but this is very telling