Nigel Farage complains about "insane" cycle lanes...but is all as it seems?; Cyclist praised for helping pensioner; Danny MacA-skills; No Brits for Ineos at Giro; Plastic bike lane; Bike theft plea; Simon Yates eyes Giro redemption + more on the live blog

Unless the pedestrian steps onto the crossing, the driver should but doesn't have to stop.  Basically, zebra crossings are a legal form of chicken.

Yep, even the "overtake rule" is not illegal when overtaking cyclists in the markings. Which is weird being as they have to give us the same room as a small car so the affect of pedestirans being unseen or not expecting to have to look on the wrong side for the road check is probably still a problem.

Arguably the Lib Dems show the opposite - from "I agree with Nick" and lots of MPs to the Parliamentary party all fitting into a cab - surely driven by their failure to stick with the student funding pledge they signed when in no danger of having to be in government.

I understand that it's not always right to promise something in current conditions that future events might kibosh, but hopefully this set of pledges will be useful in post-truth politics (which is as polite as I can be).

Yep - it's totally undemocratic to do something if you've won a majority on the basis of saying that that's what you'll do if you win a majority. That's not the foundation of electoral democracy at all...

Nope, they went from 57 in 2010 to eight in 2015. They actually have more now then they did then. So it was the "betrayal" the Ex Labour voters and Students felt with teaming up with the Tories in 2010 that meant that could fit in the back of two cabs. 

So 56 to 8 is actually better results then 20 to 11? Also they went up to the mighty level of 11 in the TM 2017 election where traditionally they always used to be between 50-60 in the past 20 years or so. And they only had 20 in 2019 because the change uk lot teamed up with them going into it as they were repping the same thing. 

Nigel Garrage wrote:

You've (conveniently) forgotten the Theresa May election in 2017 - the Lib Dems actually went into the 2019 election with 20 MPs and with Jo Swinson declaring she was going to be "Britain's next prime minister"!

And you've (conveniently) forgotten that a good chunk of those MPs going in to the election were defections from other parties, who then had to stand against a candidate from their original party. They were down 1 seat on a much increased vote share between the 2017 and 2019 results - hardly a massive collapse due to their position on the EU.

It's a "fact" in the sense that you've made it up and would like it to be true.

Better make that 2 cabs as there are 11 LD MP's.  

As mdavidford points out - by definition if the lib dems had won the election it wouldnt have been undemocratic to halt Brexit proceedings, in fact quite the opposite as you have conveniently forgotten that the Referendum was not legally binding.  No UK parliament can enact legistation that cannot be undone by a following one - that applies to matter of states and treaties too.

52% of me wants to see a whopping supermajority for the SNP on Thursday, the other 48% wants a very narrow win so we can watch Brexiteer hypocrisy flow like rivers of sh*t again.  Just like it did over the ministerial code recently - contrast Tory attacks on Sturgeon vs their defence of Boris, Priti and others.

BTW hows the slow motion demise of the Union working out for you?  Ready to raise the flag of "Little England" yet?

Your time will come....

Nigel Garrage wrote:

Funny enough I saw your post on losing energy and I've had a similar cough/cold over the last couple of weeks and have been taking it pretty easy - hope you're feeling better. Hoping for warmer weather coming through soon - I seem to feel the cold much more these days!

Thanks for the kind thoughts.  Hopefully yours will have less impact than mine.  My boss had similar and was below par for weeks.  Sample of 2 but the paranoid in me suggests something low level viral is doing the rounds. Possibly because COVID has out-competed the nastier stuff.

Revisionist history there. After the coallition government, it transpired that Lib Dem voters were not happy with the coallition and many deserted the lib dems.

either

they expected the junior party in the coalltion to deliver their entire manifesto at the epxense of the larger party.

Or 

they were labout voters who didnt want to admit it

OR

they voted lib dem as a protest vote, and didn't want them to actually gain power in any way.

The consequence of this was the next government was an unconstrained tory government able to deliver all the things they couldn't in the coallation. Lib dem voters punishing th party for forming a coallation with the tories only made things worse, getting more fo what they were unhappy with.

2010  22% of vote 62 seats

2015 8% votes  8 seats

2017 8% votes 8 seats

2019 7.4% votes 12 seats

No significant decline in the brexit shakeout, but no significant improvement either

Or

they expected them to at least restrain the tories from the sort of savage cuts even Thatcher would have baulked at.  

I don't think anyone would have expected them to deliver their entire manifesto, but they propped up a minority government without getting anything in exchange. And every backing of austerity came with the same we've 'come together in the national interest' nonsense that was as embarrasing as it was insulting. 

They got a referendum on changing the UK electoral system.

That was a pretty huge concession.

Unfortunately they couldn't win the vote (FWIW I voted in favour of it).

The Lib Dems policy for years and years had been to adopt proportional representation but the referendum was on changing to the alternative vote system.

It's a stretch to call this a pretty huge concession. Even a yes vote would have changed our electoral system to something the Lib Dems were not really in favour of. And in exchange they backed austerity - it was unforgiveable for many people.

FWIW I also voted in favour too. 

Given that the two largest parties would likely be the main losers from the change to 'Alternative Vote' I'd argue it was a pretty huge concession for one of them to back the referendum in the first place.

Had the referendum result been different British politics would have changed significantly. We'd likely have far more MPs from smaller parties and a more representative parliament.

You are probably right about what might have resulted from a change to alternative voting. But AV wasn't a Lib Dem policy, PR was. Maybe if they had managed to get PR on the ballot we'd have a different electorial system now but we'll never. Like we'll never know the results of them getting any of their headline policies though. However we all know the results of austerity and cuts to public services which they backed.

I suppose we can discuss whether getting the tories to allow a vote to change something they didn't want to change, to a system not called for by the electorate nor even supported by the Lib Dems, that ultimately failed was a pretty huge concession or not.  Really, my point was that among the reasons many people abandoned the Lib Dems after the coalition government was that they seemingly did not get any of their policies through yet propped up a minority government allowing them to carry out extreme austerity. It was omitted from the reasons listed above and for many people it's their reason not to vote for the Lib Dems. 

Bizarrely I actually voted for the Lib Dems in that election and was pretty pleased with what they managed to do.

The fact that someone on minimum wage now pays no income tax on the first £12,500 they earn, massively reducing their effective tax rate, is a direct result of the coalition. Likewise the large rises in the minimum wage itself were begun during the coalition.

Alistair Darling's proposed budget would have led to pretty much the same level of cuts as the coalition actually managed, Labour may not have actually have implemented all their proposed cuts of course but unfortunately that leads us into the realms of speculation.

Austerity and cuts would have occurred regardless with both Labour and the Conservatives. I actually credit the Lib Dems with tempering the worst impulses of the Conservatives in that regard.

I agree with this. The Lib Dems went into the coalition negotiations with some specific policy aims they wanted - including the increase in the personal allowance and the pupil premium for school funding (on which I had some minor involvement) And they got those. They also got things like free school meals for children in Key Stage 1 and, as you say, they tempered much of what the Tories might have done. But the Tories were happy both to take the credit for the Lib Dem policies and let the Lib Dems take the blame. (Resulting - for example - with my local Lib Dem MP losing his seat in 2015 to the Conservatives...)

But what applied to the Lib Dems then apparently does not apply to Johnson who promised 'no border in the Irish Sea' then promptly signed up to a border in the Irish Sea.

That's what happens if you set yourself up as the noble, virtuous types that hold to their word. You're held to those standards. If you come into it as a duplicitous git who's evidently comfortable with a bit of light homophobia/racism then a good chunk of people just nod along.

Thank you CCB - better than I could have put it.

The supporters of some politicians (not just that one) are not very interested in what they actually do and say.

I'm surprised CyclingUKs cycling election pledges havent had more publicity,theyve written to something like 2000 candidates in the elections across the UK, (yes who knew it wasnt just a London mayoral election happening) asking them to sign up to pledges about investment into active travel and developing active travel networks.

Annoyingly they dont share the data they got back so easily so you can just check, you have to give Cycling UK an email address and check by individual postcode. Which just makes the whole process annoying so I'll simply assume the responses they got back were negative.

Nigel Garrage wrote:

According to The Express he's "on a mission to save the planet"

If only it was the same planet we're all on.

No, I'd prefer a physically different planet.

It might be... You only have the Express to go on. Could be any planet, or none at all, frankly.

To give him his due, I think Mr F is keen on at least 2 types of plants - hops and tobacco. So that's a bit green.