abelian.bsky.social
Trying to commute less these days.
296 posts
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250 following
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Not "rebuild". There's a niche for an ornamental city festooned with Gothic pinnacles. It's just that maybe we should stop pretending that it is the only conceivable place for everything from shopping centres to vaccine research to AI startups. The housing is already elsewhere, why not the rest?
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I don't think there's a solution as long as central Oxford is hothoused beyond the capacity of its site. Personally, I'd build a more practical replacement city somewhere in that massive underdeveloped area that surrounds Oxford, but I don't suppose anyone will ask me.
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Is there good reason to think that a congestion charge would be more politically feasible in Oxford than in Cambridge?
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I see the Labour strategy of "we're shit, but it's us or Farage" is going as well as everyone expected.
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Known as "Sweaty" Pollux by the end of Year 9, I would bet.
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It's good, but I fear the target audience (people whose concerns about AI are good-faith environmental worries, and who can think quantitatively) is very small indeed.
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One where you can do a PhD at Oxford, apparently.
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My great grandmother was nineteenth century Irish, so the rule can sod right off.
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How is he on fixing the church roof?
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What a mug.
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The Briggs campaign has been absolutely clear from the start that theirs is not a road safety campaign, it's about legislative neatness. Tidy laws aren't necessarily a bad thing, but the number of STATS19 incidents isn't really the relevant issue here.
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Will this measure reduce that problem? No. At least, not until enforcement efforts are redirected from cars to bicycles.
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They do a wassail/Mari Lwyd mashup near here. Proper multicultural, that is.
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The National Trust was making them with vegan spread. Bill Cash got very agitated over it for some reason.
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Just in the last parliament they had it in for the RNLI, the National Trust, bicycles, loft insulation, railways and scones. I do wonder why they're still here.
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Since AD 43...
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Meanwhile, when was the last time you were driving your car and anyone checked that you had a licence?
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The costs would be substantial - setting up and staffing a new DCLA, off-road training facilities for learners everywhere, testing, enforcement - but I am sure we could raise it. Maybe a levy on car insurance premiums, since the car owners are so keen?
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Meanwhile, Labour are obsessed with anti-trans campaigns, the Liberal Democrats have the NIMBY vote sewn up, and the Greens are busy fighting against railways and solar power farms. I miss the days when UK politics made sense.
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At some point the dust will settle and we will see what the Tories stand for now, but as yet there is no sign that anyone is left in the party who can find that space.
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They have lost their niche. They were the pro-business, free market, law-and-order party of trad British values that your gran voted for. Now they are the F*ck Business party of VIP lanes and insider betting. The racist nutters are voting Reform, and the wets are now in Labour or the Lib Dems.
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It's complicated; they are a national party and there are pockets of sanity, but there is definitely a trend. It's a way to distinguish themselves from Labour, who aren't exactly left-wing firebrands right now.
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I'm not sure we can draw a precise chronological line TBH. If you doubt their position though, take a look at their chosen candidate for London Mayor, only last year. Rip out the cycle lanes, every road a through road.
www.standard.co.uk/news/politic...
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It's what the Greens do. Build a new A-road and they will tut a bit. Propose a new home, a railway line or a cycle path, and they explode into thermonuclear opposition.
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Anyway, sentencing incentives being what they are, I fully expect Just Stop Oil to come back as Just Play HGV Dodgems On The M25 While Off Your Tits On Cocaine.
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If you were looking for something that actually did cross a line, the actions of Hertfordshire Police in rounding up the journalists reporting on the protests might well qualify.
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I've no time for the pointless vandalism, but blocked roads don't "cross a line". It happens quite regularly for many reasons without the judiciary losing their minds.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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Leaving aside the obvious question of whether anyone trusts America enough to pay this, why on earth would taxpayers in other countries agree to pay the US government to reduce a levy that will be paid by Americans?
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Also, if 40% of cyclists are looking at a route and saying "hell no, that's not safe", the question to ask is not "how can we get more cyclists to use that route?"
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I don't know the area at all, but I suspect I wouldn't bother with that diversion either. Adds complexity to the route and takes you back to the towpath only a few hundred yards from where you started. Imagine a 5-10 mile commute made up of back street loops like that. You'd need a satnav.
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Take the battery off the bike and put it in a carrier bag. The e-bike that remains is not a fire risk, but is banned. The battery may be a fire risk, but it's allowed. The carrier bag is smarter than whoever signed this off.
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Likelihood matters though. Otherwise you'd ban electric wheelchairs - they don't catch fire very often, but when they go, they go.