Welcome your new Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond

rjsterry

Thanks for steering us back on topic mybreakfastconsisted. That's a much more pessimistic take on him than the comments taken out of context (as they were in the OP) might suggest. Come on Boris, your fellow cyclists need you (never thought I'd type that).

prj45

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2010/jun/01/transport-secretary-motorists

From the article:

Instead he revealed himself as a man who loves driving his Jaguar XJ out on the open road, wants to ease speed limits for motorists and thinks cyclists should get out of their way.

'bout right.

He's got a speeding conviction too.

prj45

rjsterry wrote:

Come on Boris, your fellow cyclists need you (never thought I'd type that).

Hah!

Boris Johnson:

Cancelled the LCN+

Stopped funding the police unit specially set up to catch law breaking lorrys (later u-turned on this)

Allowed motorcycles into bus lanes without proper research

Is trying to bring back an open backed bus

Plans to scrap the western extension of the congestion zone (more cars, more pollution)

Cancelled the policy of an extra charge for more polluting vehicles

Scrapped the cross river tram (scrapping an option of reducing car journeys)

Scrapped the East london crossing (scrapping an option to reduce congestion in east London)

Retracted spending on more hybrid and gas powered vehicles

Told everybody that bendy buses killed many cyclists each year (a falsehood which must've discouraged many)

Enforced stereotypes by riding through red lights and on the pavement

Introduced blue cycle lanes so "car drivers can know where cyclists are"

He's no cycling friendly mayor in my book.

rjsterry

No, but he does at least ride a bike, which is more than can be said for Mr Hammond.

prj45

Interesting tweet from industry insider Christian Wolmar about something Mr Hammond has said:

Phil hammond has again asked why cyclists do not pay road tax. Does he not yet realise there is no such thing?

mybreakfastconsisted

If Philip Hammond really asked that then I despair.

Apart from being pig ignorant, it's divisive and recklessly stupid because it bolsters motorists' sense of ownership and reinforces the view among knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers that cyclists are intruders on the roads and don't really belong there.

I hope Philip Hammond goes in the kitchen and turns the tap on and the water hits a spoon in the sink and soaks the front of his light-coloured trousers.

prj45

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

I hope Philip Hammond goes in the kitchen and turns the tap on and the water hits a spoon in the sink and soaks the front of his light-coloured trousers.

A more cruel fate I could not imagine, unless it's the kitchen sink at work, and then if he was a teacher of drop out adolescents.

Mike Healey

Stevo 666 wrote:

prj45 wrote:

The Standard also states that the "war on the motorist" is over. What war?

Excessive taxes on motoring, proliferation of speed cameras etc. Do you own a car? If so, you would know what they meant.

I must have missed the declaration of war. Not sure what "excessive" taxes are - please clarify.
Proliferation of speed cameras - so what? Don't see what's difficult about not being done for speeding by one. There are big circular signs with a black number on a white background with a red surround which indicate the speed limit. I have a dial thingie on my car which indicates the speed I'm driving at. I use it to ensure that I keep below the speed lmit. This means that speed cameras are no problem. If I ever get done by one of them, it means that I will have been doing above the limit.
IIRC, a few years ago, the motoring lobby complained about how unsporting it was and how unBritish, that police could lurk behind bushes and trees and do the innocent, law-abiding, non-criminal driver for speeding. So a pusillanimous govt decided to put up warning signs and paint the cameras bright yellow, as requested.
Naturally, speeding fines fell, didn’t they? So what's the problem?

mybreakfastconsisted

can we get a source for hammond's pig-ignorant remark? i can't find one.

ketsbaia

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

can we get a source for hammond's pig-ignorant remark? i can't find one.

I'm told the initial source was his brain, so it's no surprise you're having trouble locating it.

mybreakfastconsisted

As part of his pledge to “end the war on motorists”, Hammond is cutting funding for speed cameras.

This is despite his department’s own research concluding that speed cameras lead to 100 fewer deaths each year. And subsequent analysis by the TUC indicating that the poor are more likely to die in road accidents than the better off.

In sum: Hammond thinks 100 more dead people (most of them poor) a year is an acceptable number for the wider social benefits of…what, exactly?


Hammond cuts an altogether shallower figure (no surprise, I admit). For him, 100 more dead people a year is the price we must pay so that pillocks like Jeremy Clarkson and his army of cretinous fans can drive around as fast as they like, sticking two fingers up at those whose lives they put at risk.

Or looked at another way: 100 more dead people so that the Conservative Party can further secure the votes of (predominantly) selfish middle-aged white men who bizarrely believe themselves to be persecuted because other people would rather they drove their polluting, potentially lethal weapons in moderately more responsible ways.

Which just goes to show, it’s the important freedoms that really matter to this government.



http://badconscience.com/2010/08/27/ber ... -tolerate/

mybreakfastconsisted

http://ipayroadtax.com/?p=481

Does the Transport Secretary know how Britain’s roads are funded?

You and I know roads are not funded by motorists but by all tax-payers. This basic fact seems to elude Philip Hammond yet he’s the UK Transport Secretary.

I have it on very good authority that a senior civil servant in the Department of Transport patiently explained the intricacies of roads funding to Mr Hammond when he was appointed to his role earlier this year. He was told that the term ‘cyclists don’t pay road tax’ is wrong on many levels.

Hammond, a petrolhead who eschews train travel, might not have been giving his full attention to this civil servant. According to respected transport journalist Christian Wolmar, Hammond has been having a poke at ‘freeloading’ cyclists.

“Phil Hammond has again asked why cyclists do not pay road tax. Does he not yet realise there is no such thing?” twittered Wolmar.

Wolmar told me the anecdote came to him secondhand but that Hammond’s ‘road tax gibe’ against cyclists was batted down by a familiar bike nut: “Boris apparently corrected him when they went on a bike ride together,” said the well-connected Wolmar.

simonaspinall

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

As part of his pledge to “end the war on motorists”, Hammond is cutting funding for speed cameras.

This is despite his department’s own research concluding that speed cameras lead to 100 fewer deaths each year. And subsequent analysis by the TUC indicating that the poor are more likely to die in road accidents than the better off.

In sum: Hammond thinks 100 more dead people (most of them poor) a year is an acceptable number for the wider social benefits of…what, exactly?


Hammond cuts an altogether shallower figure (no surprise, I admit). For him, 100 more dead people a year is the price we must pay so that pillocks like Jeremy Clarkson and his army of cretinous fans can drive around as fast as they like, sticking two fingers up at those whose lives they put at risk.

Or looked at another way: 100 more dead people so that the Conservative Party can further secure the votes of (predominantly) selfish middle-aged white men who bizarrely believe themselves to be persecuted because other people would rather they drove their polluting, potentially lethal weapons in moderately more responsible ways.

Which just goes to show, it’s the important freedoms that really matter to this government.



http://badconscience.com/2010/08/27/ber ... -tolerate/

Couldn't have put it better

mybreakfastconsisted

One of the Government's top legal advisers defended his recommendations to cut the drink-drive limit after ministers signalled they would be rejected.

Sir Peter North said reducing the limit of 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood to 50mg would save hundreds of lives a year.

But Transport Secretary Philip Hammond is thought to oppose his plans, with allies saying he is minded to block the move as the “one pint and you're banned” rule would devastate the rural economy.

Sir Peter said: “I'm sure Mr Hammond should listen, I have told him quite clearly what he should do.”

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/ ... e-lives.do

W1

simonaspinall wrote:

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

As part of his pledge to “end the war on motorists”, Hammond is cutting funding for speed cameras.

This is despite his department’s own research concluding that speed cameras lead to 100 fewer deaths each year. And subsequent analysis by the TUC indicating that the poor are more likely to die in road accidents than the better off.

In sum: Hammond thinks 100 more dead people (most of them poor) a year is an acceptable number for the wider social benefits of…what, exactly?


Hammond cuts an altogether shallower figure (no surprise, I admit). For him, 100 more dead people a year is the price we must pay so that pillocks like Jeremy Clarkson and his army of cretinous fans can drive around as fast as they like, sticking two fingers up at those whose lives they put at risk.

Or looked at another way: 100 more dead people so that the Conservative Party can further secure the votes of (predominantly) selfish middle-aged white men who bizarrely believe themselves to be persecuted because other people would rather they drove their polluting, potentially lethal weapons in moderately more responsible ways.

Which just goes to show, it’s the important freedoms that really matter to this government.



http://badconscience.com/2010/08/27/ber ... -tolerate/

Couldn't have put it better

Neither could mybreakfastconsisted - unless he's also the author of the comment on this link which he's copied and pasted, which itself appears to be c+p'd from his own link? How odd:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/ ... e-lives.do

W1

Can anyone link to the evidence that there are hundreds of people being killed by drivers who have between 50 and 80 milligrams of alcohol per hundred mililitres of blood in their system?

mybreakfastconsisted

W1 wrote:

Can anyone link to the evidence that there are hundreds of people being killed by drivers who have between 50 and 80 milligrams of alcohol per hundred mililitres of blood in their system?

Can anyone link to anyone making that claim?

W1

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

W1 wrote:

Can anyone link to the evidence that there are hundreds of people being killed by drivers who have between 50 and 80 milligrams of alcohol per hundred mililitres of blood in their system?

Can anyone link to anyone making that claim?

Yeah, you did about three posts up:

"Sir Peter North said reducing the limit of 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood to 50mg would save hundreds of lives a year."

mybreakfastconsisted

Here's the pdf:

http://northreview.independent.gov.uk/d ... idence.pdf

Sir Peter estimates that tens, perhaps even hundreds, of lives could be saved annually by reducing the blood alcohol limit to 50 mg/100ml, to say nothing of the possibly thousands of injuries that would be avoided. NICE’s high-end estimates suggest that as many as 168 lives - approximately 7% of current road deaths in Great Britain – could be saved in the first year of a reduced limit, rising to as many as 303 lives saved by the 6th year following any change in the law.

http://northreview.independent.gov.uk/d ... elease.pdf

W1

I think that's the one for drugs.

They are both here I think:
http://northreview.independent.gov.uk/d ... Report.pdf

Brief scan makes interesting reading - if the limit were reduced would you support the penalty also being reduced as the report mentions?

tailwindhome

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

In sum: Hammond thinks 100 more dead people (most of them poor) a year is an acceptable number for the wider social benefits of…what, exactly?

Emotive equations don't really help.

Especially ones missing important variables

mybreakfastconsisted

TailWindHome wrote:

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

In sum: Hammond thinks 100 more dead people (most of them poor) a year is an acceptable number for the wider social benefits of…what, exactly?

Emotive equations don't really help.

Especially ones missing important variables

Not sure how to respond to cryptic remarks that leave me baffled as to what's actually being said.