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Truly eye-rolling and a complete lack of self awareness! 🤷🏼
They have literally no interest in putting anything except lies and culture war against Khan. It's not like there are no legitimate complaints, and it's not like they couldn't have found a better candidate... they just don't care about any of that, given the choice they choose bullshit every time.
I thought many people on here were anti cycle lane ?
Now we need a candidate saying to all London’s cyclists not to vote for the conservative candidate. How many cyclists must there be in London.
Remind Susan Hall exactly the number of potential voters she just isolated herself from.
That is the last thing they should do, that is how the culture war works and just adds to it.
What they should do is show that cycling reduces the number of cars on the road and reduces congestion, that even though the "cycling infrastructure" can seem like an inconvenience it is actually a benefit to drivers and other road transport. Actually fight against the culture war rather than pitting one side against the other.
I thought many people on here were anti cycle lane ?
depends how it's done. A bit of paint in a gutter full with rubbish and glass, and parked cars, that we're supposed to use while men in vans yell at us. Not so much. But if you ever ride in London, it's actually in most areas bloody well done with segregated or separate lanes and routes, clear signage and so on. If other towns and cities had the same infrastructure you'd see a load more cycling there too.
The Tory campaign in London just seems absolutely bizarre. Their candidate comes across as completely unhinged and where do you even start with their surreal ‘London is the crime capital of the world’ video from earlier this week
If you’ve not already seen this, marvel at just how completely hatstand it is
https://twitter.com/conservatives/status/1772321715713982730?s=46&t=1lK7Dw1b6RqGJyvufO-trQ
Now we need a candidate saying to all London’s cyclists not to vote for the conservative candidate. How many cyclists must there be in London.
if you draw the Venn diagram of people who support conservative policies in general, people who live in London, people who will vote Tory at the next opportunity and people who cycle the overlap is already small. I suspect a straw poll would find most Londoners couldn’t even name the Tory candidate so a PR stunt that fits well with the Venn diagram of people who hate cyclists, have ever voted Tory, don’t like the incumbent is probably well thought out!
Remind Susan Hall exactly the number of potential voters she just isolated herself from.
she says in the article she thinks it’s 3%. I suspect that number is nonsense, especially in London, but if she was intelligent enough to realise that she wouldn’t be standing as a Tory candidate in the current climate.
The Tory campaign in London just seems absolutely bizarre. Their candidate comes across as completely unhinged
in fairness the last time they sported an unhinged candidate he won, and the rest of the country elevated him to PM!
The shit they post through the door for that woman’s campaign boils my piss! Sincerely hope she don’t get in.
slighty off topic but I saw a young group of men with NO ULEZ TILL I DIE on their hoodies!!! Mental
The shit they post through the door for that woman’s campaign boils my piss! Sincerely hope she don’t get in.
slighty off topic but I saw a young group of men with NO ULEZ TILL I DIE on their hoodies!!! Mental
@MSP If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last 9 years it’s that facts don’t really matter to most people. What e.g. active travel campaigners need to be better at is making the emotional argument.
"I saw a young group of men with NO ULEZ TILL I DIE on their hoodies!!! "
Given that there is a ULEZ I think what you saw there was some ghost
"in fairness the last time they sported an unhinged candidate he won, and the rest of the country elevated him to PM!"
The C4 documentary on Boris' risevand fall made it clear that Cameron set up Boris to fail at the mayor candidacy and totally underestimated his appeal to ordinary folk.
I'm quietly confident that the current candidate is not the next Boris.
The anti-ULEZ hoodies sound exactly the kind of folk her campaign video is warning us against, strangely
Maybe Park Lane isn't the right place for a dedicated cycle lane?
Scrapping the ulez expansion has got to be a major vote winner?
Doesn't seem to be a canny political operator, there are many valid points to get Khan on but she doesn't seem able to articulate them.
Maybe Park Lane isn’t the right place for a dedicated cycle lane?
Not ridden that one but the park alongside is a major tourist draw and cycling in it is fairly precarious with random walkers so separation of commuting cyclists and tourists seems like a good idea tbh.
Also Park Lane has always been a shitshow to drive along, long before the bike lanes. Even if you could speed Park Lane up everything off it is slow anyway as you hit busy single carriageways.
Scrapping the ulez expansion has got to be a major vote winner?
I’m not sure that’s as much of a given as you might think; general experience on these things is that once they’re in, everyone is used to it, and lots of people will have found out it doesn’t affect them after all.
Khan has also said he won’t expand the ULEZ further, too.
Scrapping the ulez expansion has got to be a major vote winner?
Not really.
1) If you live outside London and drive in you can't vote.
2) If you live in London you probably already either swapped to public transport, or bought a 20 year old petrol car for £500.
The anti-ULEZ campaign is a small minority stirred up by the right-wing press. It's a handful of van drivers, and people who would probably have an ASBO for something else anyway if they weren't getting themselves on the terrorism watch list for trying to take out cameras with explosives.
Even the Tories think she's a nutter.
File this under irrelevant.
Scrapping the ulez expansion has got to be a major vote winner?
Not really, for the same reason that the various anti-LTN groups never get much traction outside a small (and highly vocal) minority. All the local council candidates standing on anti-LTN "we'll rip out all the undemocratic LTNs imposed on us by the fascist Labour dictatorship" platforms got soundly thrashed at local elections.
Unfortunately I still expect ULEZ to do some damage. As someone who lives in the zone but right on the edge there is still quite a bit of anger about it. I'm hoping that those minorities and truly just that
"Cameron set up Boris to fail at the mayor candidacy and totally underestimated his appeal to ordinary folk"
It didn't help that the Labour candidate was a "lifelong anti-racist" with a long history of associating with anti-Semites and "careless comments". With such a small margin, it didn't help. OTOH, the disaster of the Iraq invasion and the tiredness of Blairism were becoming obvious at that point. And to be fair, Livingstone was sharp as a whip and was approximately 1000 times more effective in achieving stuff for the people that he represented than his North London contemporaries.
I thought many people on here were anti cycle lane ?
That's just Daily Mail readers.
Oh no...wait..
Unfortunately I still expect ULEZ to do some damage.
im sure they will, outside if this echo chamber there are lots of ordinary people who don’t care an out cycle lanes and don’t like the ulez. It wouldn’t be hard to build a campaign on getting rid of ulez and it being a vote winner
It will win some votes. There are a lot of people who moan about ULEZ even if it hasn't affected them personally.
It wouldn’t be hard to build a campaign on getting rid of ulez and it being a vote winner
It's all a pack of lies though - all her claims about "scrapping ULEZ on Day 1" is total nonsense, there's a load of legal stuff to go through, consultations etc - she simply cannot live up to any of those promises although having said that, she's a Tory and that minor issue of promising the impossible hasn't stopped them in the last few years. If anything it's helped them.
While the polling has a fair lead for Kahn, on the ground canvassers have apparently been getting much less favourable feedback
Hall is an appalling candidate but the Tories are throwing money at their culture war ads
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-ramp-up-spending-facebook-32336964
This is was the Tories think a Winner looks like in 2024. I think she is just channeling her inner Aunt Sally, which is fine by me. Live and let live.
Susan Hall is a bad candidate but she isn't in my opinion any worse than the previous Tory mayoral candidate Sean Bailey who came within 5% of Sadiq Khan at the last mayoral election.
The problem imo is that whilst the Tories are extremely unpopular in London Sadiq Khan isn't very popular either. He seems to be less popular in London than the Labour Party is. Which might explain this:
While the polling has a fair lead for Kahn, on the ground canvassers have apparently been getting much less favourable feedback
So whilst the feedback on the doorstep might not be that great i suspect that Londoners will vote for the Labour candidate on May 2, which is presumably what they are telling pollsters.
Labour losing London, however unlikely, would be a massive boost to Rishi Sunak and could well have a profound effect on the next general election result.
The tories basing their campaign around ulez, and anti cycling bingo is a bit dim, given that 42 percent of London households don't have access to a car. The idea that 'everyone drives' is simply not true.
andrewyFull Member
The tories basing their campaign around ulez, and anti cycling bingo is a bit dim, given that 42 percent of London households don’t have access to a car. The idea that ‘everyone drives’ is simply not true.
I think someone already mentioned it but it's amazing how many people not even effected by ULEZ have been mobilised to hate it.
It's very odd.
I don't think that the Tories are basing their campaign around ulez and anti cycling, it's just that the OP's link comes from Cycling Weekly.
They seem to have targeted the issue of rising crime.
The tories basing their campaign around ulez, and anti cycling bingo is a bit dim, given that 42 percent of London households don’t have access to a car. The idea that ‘everyone drives’ is simply not true.
But similar to Inheritance tax which seems to worry millions of people who don't have enough to leave to trigger it....
Facts don't matter...
I don’t think that the Tories are basing their campaign around ulez and anti cycling, it’s just that the OP’s link comes from Cycling Weekly.
They seem to have targeted the issue of rising crime.
Who else is going to highlight this deranged woman’s incoherent nonsense? She’s ranting about emergency services not being able to get to incidents because of the cycle lanes, so wants to close the cycle lanes to allow more cars in, which will, according to this imbecile, make it easier for emergency vehicles to get into central London more easily.
I’m no expert on traffic control or management, but everything she’s saying seems utterly counterintuitive! 😖
When 'Karen' makes it into the Encyclopedia Britannica, they need to use that picture.
Who else is going to highlight this deranged woman’s incoherent nonsense?
On cycling? Pretty much everyone, including Cycling Weekly. On crime? Probably not Cycling Weekly.
Cycling Weekly highlighting Susan Halls well-known anti-cycling views doesn't mean that the Tories aren't treating crime as their main campaign issue.
As the Tory campaign advert portraying Londoners as living in a black and white 1950s dystopian Hollywood world revealed yesterday. Despite the fact that the current Tory government had direct responsibility in appointing the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
I don't doubt that Susan Hall will not win the Mayoral election but I do find this quite interesting:
Yes, Khan enjoys a 24-point advantage. But voters are also largely dissatisfied with his performance on a range of issues. A majority of Londoners say the mayor has done badly or very badly on dealing with knife crime and gangs, tackling homelessness and improving the availability of housing.
It is noteworthy that, despite their falling out over Ulez, the mayor launched his campaign with Keir Starmer. Recall that the Labour leader somewhat threw the mayor under the bus following the Uxbridge defeat, when he said the party was "doing something very wrong" if the policies it put forward "end up on each and every Tory leaflet."
Why the rapprochement? Khan is wise to the fact that he isn't an especially popular incumbent, and so it makes sense for him to be associated with a buoyant national Labour Party. Conversely, Hall is staying about as far away from Rishi Sunak and the national Tories as possible to the extent that, as Londoner's Diary points out, the colour scheme on her leaflets is a deeply un-Tory orange.
42 percent of London households don’t have access to a car
Highlighting that seems a bit dim as it also points to most people being happy to rely on a functioning public transport infrastructure, which Khan is responsible for, isn’t he?
Thats something very few parts of the country have got
They’ve not really thought this through, have they?
??? If 42% don't have access to a car, that means most (58%) households have access to one or more cars.
??? If 42% don’t have access to a car, that means most (58%) households have access to one or more cars.
That's about right.
There are striking discrepancies too - inner London (already covered by ULEZ & congestion charging) has fairly low car ownership so most people aren't overly affected by the charges and it has a very good and very dense P/T network.
Outer London - especially affluent suburbs like Wimbledon, Beckenham etc - have very high levels of car ownership and less good P/T so they're (proportionally) more affected by the recent ULEZ expansion and they're also quite likely to make a noise about it. Even if that noise is highlighting how it now costs them £18,000 a year to take Jemima to ballet class half a mile away cos they're just outside the zone but the class is inside.
Normal people would think "what is wrong with walking half a mile?!" but that connection rarely seems to be made in active travel circles....
Normal people would think “what is wrong with walking half a mile?!” but that connection rarely seems to be made in active travel circles….
I don't quite get your meaning here, but a long way from London and without any form of ULEZ, people seem pretty happy to drive their kids ⅔ mile to school, which when you include finding a space takes about the same time as walking. Bigger problem in AT circles is that quite sensible arguments get shouted down or misinterpreted by militant drivists.
??? If 42% don’t have access to a car, that means most (58%) households have access to one or more cars.
But then not all of them will use them for commuting, anecdotally based on friends in London most only seem to use them for the weekly shop and weekends.
And of those that do, few will be affected by ULEZ.
If you you lived in London and they canceled UILEZ now very few people would go out and buy a worse car, I just can't see it being a vote winner outside a noisy minority.
And statistically you're more likely to be a victim of crime outside of London than in London based on the National Crime Survey, so even that is perception issue, not a reality for most people.
Crime in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
Outer London – especially affluent suburbs like Wimbledon, Beckenham etc – have very high levels of car ownership and less good P/T
Public transport in Wimbledon is excellent (tube, trams, overground and buses) you could quite easily manage without a car here but because people have cash and Jemimas they won’t. I didn’t notice any particular noise about Ulez around here tbh.
One bit of good (and very funny) news about the mayoral elections though:
I particularly liked that he “would appeal against the decision, which he claimed was the result of “political corruption”. It is understood that there is no avenue for appealing against the decision by London Elects.” . What a dickwad.
Wait a second... his application was rejected because he didn't get enough signatures? Or rather, that some were ruled invalid and rejected without appeal?
Isn't that exactly the same reason the anti-war candidates in the Russian election were rejected?
Makes you think.
Now where did I put my tinfoil hat?
kilo
Full Member
I particularly liked that he “would appeal against the decision, which he claimed was the result of “political corruption”. It is understood that there is no avenue for appealing against the decision by London Elects.” . What a dickwad.
He's basically showing the damage Trump has done to politics in this country too. Actually most democracies in general.
I've no doubt if we were ever subjected to the hell that is a Reform Party government they would absolutely try to subvert the institutions that form the back bone of our democracy... All whilst using the mantra that they are actually defending democracy. The Tories and RW press have already laid the ground for this...
It's not an impossible scenario and that chills the blood.
TINAS - yeah, sure. I'm responding to Binners saying the fact that 42% of households not having access to a car shows that "most people [are] happy to rely on a functioning public transport infrastructure". That's not true, first because most households do have access to one or more cars, and second because there's no way of parsing how many in that minority that don't have access to a car don't want one or simply can't afford one etc etc.
Can I ask a genuine but possibly really naive question?
Was that Tory party add (The one describing Sadiq Khan as having ceased power) real?
Sorry my youngest son is really into politics. I try and monitor what he is looking at and help him to look at things critically and think for himself. At times it has put me in the interesting position of defending Boris but this time I genuinely can't tell whether it is a Mickey take or the real thing (It is completely hatstand).
Having looked at the various political websites its easy to understand why people believe that London is lawless. Like here people talk to people they perceive to have the same outlook. Unfortunately with anything vaguely American there is a perception that knife crime in London is out of control (it's less than national average for the USA before you add in gun crime). This gets fed back to British forums and becomes true (The BBC can't possibly be telling the truth).
Luckily my son believes that anyone in American politics left of Bennie Sanders is unredeemable so I don't have to engage too much on that side.
Was that Tory party add (The one describing Sadiq Khan as having ceased power) real?
I don't have the most reliable memory im afraid but I'm sure it was on the official Conservative X account and no doubt on other SM too. See if anyone can confirm my memory though.
1) Richie - check with your lad which video he is talking about. There may be fake or parody ones in addition to the original Tory video and then the edited Tory video. Take him to the official campaign site (spit) so he can learn about primary sources and then take him to sensible, reliable news reporting so he can learn about trustworthy sources (Times, Guardian, FT, BBC - reliable doesn't necessarily mean non-partisan).
2) who is this stuff aimed at? Not really London voters - but British voters at all?
We all think that there are evil geniuses and big money behind political campaigning but half of this stuff is cranked out by 22 year old interns relying on Chat GPT. I bet CCO isn't wasting much money or time on the unwinnable London Mayoral campaign so it doesn't surprise me that stuff gets shoved out the door that is shit.
3) the idea that "London has fallen" because everyone stays in because Khan has banned driving is conspiracy theory nuts. Look for yourself (NB it's been pissing with rain all morning)
The one on the campaign website was apparently taken down pretty quickly. The Guardian one is supposed to be the edited one. The one I saw was pretty much the same but slightly nastier so I'm guessing it was real.
I don't have many illusions about who produces adds like that but the idea that stuff like that is put out without a grown up watching it and thinking it was a good idea is worrying which ever way you look at it.
For an Idealist so far my son is reasonably good at sorting idealists from self serving ****s (ASD can have it's advantages). He is probably better than me at distinguishing the fakes from the real thing. When I saw it I couldn't believe it was real because of the 1950's Mccarthyite vibe. Even though I've seen the Guardian version I still wondered whether they had fallen for something because no one else, including the BBC, have mentioned it.
Meh, Tories gonna Tory innit.
It's the Uxbridge By-election's main legacy now the "war motorists" narrative is apparently their main propaganda tool within the M25.
They barely held onto a seat and the only point of differentiation was the Tory stance on ULEZ. So vote Tory then if you think the greater London area needs more unfettered access for motor vehicles...
It's just Culture War noise, filter them out and carry on with your day.
the only point of differentiation was the Tory stance on ULEZ.
IIRC the Lab candidate in Uxbridge wasn’t all that keen on ULEZ either.
Bleeding Starmer wasn't that enthusiastic about it, despite it being a policy of the single most popular Labour official in the country!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67020197
the polls could definitely be wrong but its not looking good for oyster card Suzie
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1775178461939634344?t=iIB4yREFukYl7I9Lfl6sXw&s=19
2 days to go
either the polls are spectacularly wrong (possible) or she really was the worst possible candidate
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1785315262977147033
One should also ensure that one owns the domain rights to ones name https://www.susanhall.uk/
S****s!