Tories want number plates and speed limits for cycles

[Cudzoziemiec]

Shapps has also (this week) proposed that all bus fares outside London should be capped at £2, while simultaneously suggesting that up to 50% of routes could be scrapped. I think he's in desperately trying to please both potential bosses mode.

[Wowbagger]

Shapps has also (this week) proposed that all bus fares outside London should be capped at £2, while simultaneously suggesting that up to 50% of routes could be scrapped. I think he's in desperately trying to please both potential bosses mode.

He's doing a good job if he succeeds in diverting the headlines away from how utterly crap they both are.

[Kim]

As bicycles do not come with speedometers I have to wonder how a cyclist is to know what speed they are travelling at unless they fit a third party extra.

This is a non-argument.  If your motor vehicle doesn't have a speedometer (some classics and agricultural vehicles don't) you're still required to stay within the speed limit.  The easiest way to do that might involve fitting a speedometer, but that's your choice.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

Why stop at cyclists?
Bar code the lot.
At birth.
On the back of the neck.
Job done.
Anyone who doesn't have a neck (Sandy Toksvig etc) - sparq code on the forehead.

Sontarans might have a problem with this too.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Shapps has also (this week) proposed that all bus fares outside London should be capped at £2, while simultaneously suggesting that up to 50% of routes could be scrapped. I think he's in desperately trying to please both potential bosses mode.

He's doing a good job if he succeeds in diverting the headlines away from how utterly crap they both are.

That too! Remains to be seen whether he's impressing them with his smartz or showing even them that his ideas are utterly crap. I expect the latter but the job might remain his through lack of alternatives (or he might persuade them he's so bad he needs to be promoted. Perhaps Foreign Secy?)

[giropaul]

Can you imagine an extended Shapps family gathering?

An imagined matriarch speaks (I'm thinking something along the lines of Peggy Wooley, off of The Archers)

"Andre Shapps, what's the best thing you've done?"
"Well I'm quite proud of my time with Big Audio Dynamite"
"Cousin Mick, what about you?"
"I was in The Clash. And then formed Big Audio Dynamite"
"And young Grant, what about you?"
"I put forward an unworkable and barely thought out proposal to counter the scourge of killer cyclists"

"You da man!"

Perhaps you haven’t noticed Mr Shapp’s actual “ business “ ideas, usually posing as Michael Green

[giropaul]

In his interview with The Times Scapps said he had no plans for number plates, and that such a scheme would be very expensive and not cost effective.

[Mr Larrington]

What does that say please? It is paywalled.

If you poke “I'll try later” under the “Please to register” guff on the Indy's webby SCIENCE it shows you the whole thing.  Or at least it does for me.

[GdS]

face it the general public in the UK hate cyclists; *

ride up any hill in France and you get "allez allez" or "bonne courage"

in the UK it's IMX mostly "oi mate your wheels are going raand" or "get on the cyclepath you c**t"

* except when they win medals and briefly become national heroes

[Redlight]

As an aside to the original Daily Wail story that kicked this nonsense off, I went to an exhibition at the British Library called Breaking News yesterday. 

One part of the exhibition focused on 'fake news', among other things, its role in the lead-up to the Brexit vote. The degree to which anti-EU stories in the popular press were used to create an image of an uncontrolled dictatorial body meddling in every aspect of citizens' lives was illustrated with a story from the Wail's then Brussels correspondent, reporting that the EU had banned children from writing letters to Father Christmas as part of its data protection measures.

Each 'fact' in the story was annotated with an explanation of why it was untrue. 

The reporter who filed the story was one David Churchill, now Transport Editor and responsible for this latest piece of trash. Old habits die hard, I guess.

[DaveReading]

Each 'fact' in the story was annotated with an explanation of why it was untrue. 

The reporter who filed the story was one David Churchill, now Transport Editor and responsible for this latest piece of trash. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Except that "this latest piece of trash" appears to have been true, not journalistic invention.

[Redlight]

Each 'fact' in the story was annotated with an explanation of why it was untrue. 

The reporter who filed the story was one David Churchill, now Transport Editor and responsible for this latest piece of trash. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Except that "this latest piece of trash" appears to have been true, not journalistic invention.

I'm not sure. Shapps appears to have said the opposite (on number plates) in other interviews and many of the other claims appear to be somewhat exaggerated, in that ideas that are simply being thrown into the mix for consideration are reported as if they are done deals.

There's a lot of "may...: and "could..." rather than "will", which is the classic newspaper way of insinuating something that cannot be proven or confirmed. The Mail is very good at this - witness its notorious "Dark Secret" headline about the murdered Millie Dowler, for example.*

It's very easy for a  reporter to frame a question in order to elicit the response that is desired, which is what I suspect Churchilll has done in sourcing his quotes from Shapps (or Shapps' spokesperson).

* In the early days following Millie Dowler's disappearance the police visited her school and asked the pupils whether they were aware of any friends or acquaintances she might have outside the school who might not be known to her parents. The Mail twisted this into a strong suggestion that she might have a 'secret' boyfriend and ran the story on the front page under the headline "Millie's Dark Secret".

[citoyen]

It's very easy for a  reporter to frame a question…

The simple rule you have to remember is that if the Mail frames a headline as a question, the answer is no.

Eg: Does voting Labour give you cancer?

All that matters is that it’s enough to put an associative idea in people’s heads.

Same goes for anything else: if someone (Grant Shapps) mentioned it in passing, it’s enough to put the idea in people’s heads.

And take their eyes off the real elephant(s) in the room.

[Kim]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

[citoyen]

Exactly that

[handcyclist]

So why is Grant Shapps coming out with these ideas, and why now? Unless you've been living under a rock you may have noticed that the Conservative party is going through a leadership election, and the country will have a new prime minister next month. It will also have a new Cabinet.

Perhaps he's using the same tactict as Mike Pompeo in the final days of Trump's presidency. Publicly appealing to the next prime minister in order to keep his job, with the aim of keeping a check on the new No 10 administation to lessen the undoing of his department's good work on cycling.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I think he's publicly appealing to the incoming PM but I'm not so sure about preserving his department's work. I think he's just saying, "Look at me, I can come up with IDEAS! Give me a job!"

[iandusud]

On the issue of third party insurance for bikes I think this is a very good idea and I suspect most of us have it, either through club membership or household insurance. But why doesn't the government offer it for free (it would of course cost very little). This would be a great incentive to encourage cycling and give the moaning car drivers one less thing to moan about (although they would undoubtedly moan that they're having to pay for it, which is equally countered by cyclists pointing out that they are paying for road maintenance which is largely due to damage done by cars and lorries). 

[Jaded]

Does the MIB cover collisions with cyclists? It does cover damage from uninsured drivers.

I guess one of the problems would be that in many cases the damage done by a cyclist would be low value and at Excess level, so no great value in claiming on insurance

[Wowbagger]

It's all gone quiet. I think we've heard the last of this topic until there's some more bad news to bury.

[cygnet]

Truss responds to the nonsense suggestion from the Minister for Transport with an even more batshit "open to consideration" scenario - eliminating motor vehicle speed limits.

[DuncanM]

To be fair to her, a party member suggested it to her at a hustings, and she said it's something they would look at. That's basically "I'm campaigning, so I'm not saying no, but no".

[TPMB12]

How would the Department for Transport work out insurance rates? Would it be on the brand of bike, number of gears , area it's registered to?

As bikes change ownership all too often this idea/plan/proposal will never get off the ground

My bold.
This.

Agree.  It all came about by one grant schnapps, transport minister,  realising that the two potential leaders have no regard for him and he's likely out of a cabinet job in the first reshuffle. So he's appealing to the right of the party in order to gain further recognition in the hope he's going to get a my titbit in the reshuffle that'll come.

There's been DfT reviews fairly recently that concluded it's not cost effective and wouldn't happen. Senior officials have even gone on record to this effect after Schapps comments. Schapps himself a year or so publicly ruled numberplate and compulsory insurance as not effective or cost effective solution.

In summary this is and has not been a tory policy at least not in recent years to my knowledge.  It's the desperate bleatings of a tory bit player who's going to be sidelined very soon I reckon. Consider him to be a Diane Abbott or Mcdonnell of the tory party but with someone who's never risen as high as then in his party.

If you want to worry listen to some stories about Sunak wanting to reset the war on motorists. Although I think some Scottish parties have made similar comments about SNP policies I read somewhere so isn't a bad thing apparently if your party's the right one. Changing legislation relating to highways is a big thing. The hierarchy was a big change that took a long time. I doubt you can change such without cross party support. So basically it's all got air from a stoopid tory has been IMHO.

[biscuitwull]

face it the general public in the UK hate cyclists; *

ride up any hill in France and you get "allez allez" or "bonne courage"

in the UK it's IMX mostly "oi mate your wheels are going raand" or "get on the cyclepath you c**t"

* except when they win medals and briefly become national heroes

Yep, i'm just back from France and the attitude toward cyclists is a different world to the UK

[Wycombewheeler]

On the issue of third party insurance for bikes I think this is a very good idea and I suspect most of us have it, either through club membership or household insurance. But why doesn't the government offer it for free (it would of course cost very little). This would be a great incentive to encourage cycling and give the moaning car drivers one less thing to moan about (although they would undoubtedly moan that they're having to pay for it, which is equally countered by cyclists pointing out that they are paying for road maintenance which is largely due to damage done by cars and lorries).

Ironically every insured motorist is paying for the uninsured motorists via the motor insurers bureau, approximately 3% of premiums goes to this. There are more uninsured drivers on UK roads than there are cyclists in total.

So the uninsured cyclists* are costing drivers nothing, whule the unisured drivers are costing them something, but only the former group are complained about.
* a small subset of cyclists.