Live blog: Cycling UK criticise government's "reannouncement" of huge road spending with nothing for cycling infra; Ellen van Dijk's stolen bike turns up... four months later; World Champs Strava stats; Rohan Dennis officially leaves Bahrain-Merida +more

Just seen Sajid Javid making all kinds of astonishing spending commitments that would have embarrassed Croesus, but not a flicker of a smile crossed his face as he told lie after lie.  Is there no kind of acting award for such a towering performance?  Apparently the magic money tree is fertilised with tory bs.

Smart motorways are bloody lethal. The problem no-one has considered is that there's lag between a car breaking down and the gantry lighting up to close the lane, so its very easy to arrive at 60mph+ to find a stationary vehicle in front of you. Particularly if you're tucked in behind a lorry that pulls into the 2nd lane at the last minute - you're expecting a slower moving vehicle ahead, not a stationary one, perhaps with no stop lights showing.

Not aware of any fatalities yet but it has to be only a matter of time.

Rather like the change made to rural speed limits for 7.5t+ vehicles this is another example of govt prioritising capacity over safety.

Just to point out that to just make a 32 mile section of the M4 into a "smart" motorway is going to cost an estimated 864.2 million pounds.

Think how many miles of cycle routes could be built for that, maybe even some that could be described as "quality" for that sort of money.

People are stupid!

A local MP got lots of praise from a middle class sporting club near me for her unwavering support of the building of 2 pitches and a 'sports hub' i.e. changing room. This project was after selling and demolisihing a University site (including 10 times the sports infrastructure) and building 3,000 houses. My friends bigging her up didn't seem impressed when I showed the type of human she is, constantly voting against improved rights for LGBT people and people of a less financial position.

Heard a spokestwat on the radio this morning say "everybody wants more roads".

Erm no, I want less cars, less dependency on cars, more affordable public transport, better infrastructure, better policing and so on...

No, lets build more bypasses to feed into the congested smog infested sho=tihole town centres and meccano out of town retail shitholes!!!

Tbf whilst not leaping instantly on the 'thing is bad' bandwagon, whilst the money itself isnt a new thing, the former chancellor never really clarified what he was going to exactly spend it on, so saying you'll spend £220 million of that 25billion on buses is a new thing even if it's old money,as is spending £5 billion on broadband/5g, that's right it's not wholly going on roads fwiw either, try explaining that to the road money only funds roads lot,maybe they'll advertise it as funding the information super highway instead...

Pre-election guff from a desperate-for-votes UK government.    

It's a gammon budget pure and simple. No surprises whatsoever.

And they're still polling higher than the opposition. How many years do we have to wait for these fuckers to die before we get a reasonable government and policies back? Or is the damage too much for that now??

From what I heard on the radio this is just a re-announcement of the £25billion that Phillip Hammond had already announced. Plus a simple Google search can prove it:-

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/budget-announcement-philip-hamm...

And politicians wonder why they have such a bad name.

Really enjoyed the World Champs. Every race was interesting - even the TTs! van Vleuten's solo will live long in the memory, as will the brutality of yesterday's race. A huge success despite the weather, and that finishing course shows that you don't need Alpine climbs or to be in Flanders to have a race that cracks the very best.

I know it's not as sexy but could we spend a bit of cash repairing and even rebuilding the roads we already have.  It is generally the councils responsibility for the smaller roads and they have been massively squeezed under austerity.  Fix what you already have.

"We've asked Cycling UK for their view on the spending announcements - do you think the government has got it all wrong?"

Well, I don't know what CUK's official position is, but mine is that this is the worst government in my life for a thousand reasons, but including its appalling failure on transport, and this announcement hasn't changed my mind.  This is quite clearly an election bribe, and like the 40 new hospitals which turns out to be six mostly refurbished, disintegrates on examination.  It's funny, but when labour proposes anything like this it is a completely reckless waste of hard-working taxpayers' money.  I'll be writing to my MP making it very clear that these fake spending announcements aren't going to fool most people, and definitely not me.

Never mind that study after study shows that building more roads creates more driving, more pollution, more congestion, more danger death and injury, reduces health increases obesity and is only a sensible investment if you make some pretty wild assumptions; this government is going to build more roads.   Never mind that study after study shows that spending on cycling and walking is twenty times more beneficial than spending on roads, they're going to spend all the money on roads.

We should all be outraged.

Why yes, I do think the government has got it all wrong.

Oh, did you mean just the road building bit - well yes, that's completely ignoring the return on investment of building cycling infrastructure. I daresay that the roads do require investment as well, but the priority should be to get as many people as possible cycling. Long-term, the costs of cycle infrastructure would be offset by reduced NHS expenditure.

However, the Tory/Labour agendas don't even recognise that there may be another mode of transport than driving.