Rockets

To be fair I think some are critical in the cases where the removal of "street clutter" a.k.a "pedestrian refuges" has been stated as part of the council's plan to facilitate cycle infrastructure. BTW did the mooted street market on Melbourne Grove ever materialise?

Yeah but I suppose the issue is that Brexit/Truss moment destabilised our economy and Trump's Truss moment is destabilising every economy globally and rocking the very foundation of global trading. Our stupid moments were just our stupid moments - Trump's stupid moment is everyone's stupid moment. The fact that people have been getting out of gold as well as stocks speaks volumes - gold is normally the safe-haven investors head for but lots are just cashing out completely.

The real worry is that Trump will never admit he got anything wrong and, as he did today with more threats to China, will keep doubling-down. Those tactics might work in real estate in the US but this is not real estate. I do wonder whether other governments will be forced to absorb the short-term pain in the view that they need to let him crash things to such a point that Americans go...what are you doing. Although he seems to be trying to mitigate dissent within his own party by turning on them quickly - like all good dictators do. It just seems ludicrous to think this puts the US in a stronger short-term position - I saw analysis that a Boeing 787 bill of materials now costs $20m more with the tariffs due to them only being assembled in the US and the parts manufactured all over the world. Just who is this supposed to be benefiting. American 401ks are linked to the stock market so American pensions are going downhill fast.

Isn't a collection of Teslas now known as a (Nuremberg) Car Rallie? I saw a great sticker on a Tesla bumper recently that read: Anti-Elon Tesla Owners Club

Never let it be said that Southwark Council have ever taken a blind bit of notice of what local residents think. Never let public opinion stand in the way of their grand plan....#comrade! They are charlatans.

I love it when you get a “we tried to deliver, you weren’t in” message and not a single post person has been anywhere near the house…it seems they sometimes don’t even bother to try to deliver and then claim you weren’t in…

Greyhound Cars is good.

Yes and I do wonder how many of those "asking" for a CPZ may be Labour supporters/activists and been tapped up to do so. I still can't work out how the council justified doing the Townley and Calton CPZ seeing as the consultation results showed the majority didn't want it.

Emma Ermengarde Ogilvy Greville-Nugent seems like an interesting character!

In my defence I only did that because 300,000 of the "1 million SUVs" article you shared are Ford Pumas or similar and are categorised as "Small SUVs". They are not SUVs - nowhere near it and nowhere near the negative impact of a Ford F50 series SUV/truck. Of course we agree on that but can we also agree that there is no "Epidemic of SUVs"? But short of incentivising manufacturers to not make them how do you stop their sales? When the stories emerged back in 2021 with the research on a 3rd of car sales in Chelsea being large SUVs the call to action centred around banning advertising and trying to advertise to shame people into not owning them but, to be honest, the people I know who own them aren't the type to shame easily and tend not to be the type to care one jot about what anyone else thinks - did Tyre Extinguishers make anyone think twice - I doubt it, far more likely they made people think there are a lot of climate cranks around! 😉

Superb - thanks both. I have never seen the sign on the bench but will seek it out.

Superb research! What is the domed building in the picture? Is that looking up the hill towards Camberwell?

Ah so it's part of the Melbourne Grove Streets for People works then. Madness that the council goes ahead with this when there are so many other works disrupting traffic in the area but I suspect year end budget surplus spends are at play here. Who at the council is responsible for the co-ordination of this type of thing?

Funny isn't it - the council rinse and repeats this approach all across the area, they say there will be no displacement but the moment anyone says there is a problem they acknowledge that it is due to the CPZ and, gleefully, ask whether people would like a CPZ on the streets impacted.

Absolute nonsense, how you can claim nitpicking and pedantry is laughable. We are not the ones making sensationalist and hyperbolic statements that there are now over one million new SUVs on the road when the "definition" of SUVs to get to that 1 million figure includes vehicles that nobody would ever claim to be SUVs. Do you think a Puma, Qashqai or Mokka is really an SUV? No, I didn't think so. If you want to have a discussion about the 3,000+ large SUVs purchased in the UK last year go ahead but don't wrap an ideological crusade around it and try to create the narrative that somehow there is an "epidemic of SUVs" in the UK based on injury data from a country (the US) that in 2024 sold over 2 million monster trucks and a country where the best selling vehicles are monster trucks. If challenged on that narrative don't then share data to back that claims 1 million SUVs sold in the UK that includes the vast majority of cars which no-one would ever consider to be an SUV because the rational people you want to engage with in the discussion will turn around and go...don't be daft and sideline you as some sort of "eat the rich and their Chelsea tractor crank". No-one here is doubting car bloat - I actually gave a reason for that and interestingly but somewhat predictably shot down as wrong by other posters. I am sorry but this thread really highlights how some refuse to let the truth get in the way of a good story and how knee-jerk ideology is not borne out in fact. And remember, it wasn't so long ago that eco-terrorists Tyre Extinguishers were going around letting tyres down on vehicles they deemed to be too big for cities based on this type of nonsense. There is no epidemic of SUVs in the UK. There is in the US. Don't conflate the two.

But interesting when the report originator never gives any indication as to what 30% of car sales in those areas actually equates to in actual numbers. It makes a good headline until you look and consider well, how many new car sales are there in those boroughs and what is 30% of that..... Given that in the year that report was published there were 2287 large SUVs bought in the whole country I very much suspect the numbers for those boroughs are no more than a handful and if you went with the actual number rather than a % then the hyperbole impact would have been massively diluted. To be fair @Earl Aelfheah when the original report got publicised by Ash Sarker hate, envy and a healthy dose of Marxist-ideology is normally not far behind.....;-) The original report did wreak of activist research.... It is funny because in the original publicity one of the authors/advocates for the report suggested that people should stop buying large SUVs and buy a Tesla instead....that hasn't aged well!!! 😉

But you are because you are sharing hyperbole reports and headlines to justify your narrative on SUVs yet the data within those reports includes small cars that they deem to be "SUVs". But it's not at all - you seem to think those cars are part of the SUV problem. Do you? Because if not I do not know why you are using research and articles that do to back up your point. You have to agree the headline you shared is undermined massively when you look at the detail included within.

To be fair @Earl Aelfheah - you're throwing around headlines and articles to try and justify the "epidemic of SUVs" like the below but when you look at the detail it includes cars that no-one thinks of as SUVs and then you look even further you realise the attention grabbing headline is because the major growth is not in actual SUVs but things like a Nissan Qashqai or Ford Puma. And I am sorry but this is not an SUV....and this is the SUV Mini category in that survey.

I don't think anyone is saying the trend for larger cars is a good one but other than the fact people are ideologically opposed to them (or maybe their drivers) I really don't understand the fevered reaction to them and there is nothing to suggest there is an epidemic as the title suggests. It does seem that people are conflating (perhaps deliberately) the massive challenges the US has with truck sized SUVs that are 1) bought in huge numbers - the F150 is America's best selling vehicle and over 700,000 were sold last year alone and 2) kill and injure people in huge numbers as a result. The fact there is only 1 SUV (and even that is small compared to the "trucks" in the US) in the UK Top 10 sales figures for last year really demonstrates that this is in no-way an epidemic. The question remains, on what grounds are people going to ban them in London when a much smaller car - Toyota Prius - is actually a bigger menace to people because 1) there are so many of them and 2) given many are PHVs spend a very large time on the road so proportionally are the vehicle most involved in injury causing accidents. Hang on @Earl Aelfheah that survey counts a Mini, Ford Puma and Nissan Juke as an SUV.....and the chart below seems to show that's where the big growth is coming from. I don't think anyone looks at one of those and thinks that's an SUV. Is the Ford Puma a vehicle you categorise as an SUV? Are you suggesting we ban all of these from London as well?

Germany also cannot afford to lose 780,000 jobs in car production; that has nothing to do with national pride - it's about survival. Governments are delaying the phasing out of sales of ICE vehicles because the Chinese are too good at EVs, can produce them cheaply and are a huge threat to the established players. VW will sell you an ID4 for at least £45,000 here. In China they have to sell them for £15,000 such is the pressue on prices and they're losing money each time they sell one in China as they desperately trying to maintain marketshare.

Earls it is. Electrification is leading to bigger and heavier cars. Why? Because the majority of the car is battery and to get the range you need to increase the size of the battery and that increases the dimensions of the car. A friend has an Audi Q8 electric car and whilst it looks big on the outside it feels almost claustrophobic on the inside and has a tiny boot - why, because of the size of the battery needed and the space it takes which raises the floor height. Just look at some of the electric monstrosities coming out in China (who are now the leader in EV) - many of them look like massive shoe boxes on wheels - why? Because of the battery. A bigger concern for me is exactly the Chinese EV issue if you look at the design trends (see the Ford Focus shared by Malumbu) is that, for some reason, electric cars seem to be squarer, blockier and with more prominent nose sections. Because how on earth do you legislate to stop them coming into London without also then having to address even bigger, heavier, high-fronted vehicles like vans and buses.....and given the fact Toyota Prius are the vehicles involved in most injury causing accidents on what grounds do single out SUVs - and "I don't like SUVs or SUV drivers" aren't grounds for barring them from a city. I think it is pretty clear that the citing of the Ford Puma was given as an example of how the hyperbole around the "Epidemic of SUVs" isn't actually born out by the facts - that in the Top 10 UK car sales only one is close to being considered an SUV. That's not a deflection. Maybe people's perception of the number of SUVs on the roads is being influenced because we live in a wealthy part of London and people see more of them on the roads. But like a lot of things Dulwich life is not a reflection of life everywhere.

The problem is much of the negativity and scaremongering around SUVs comes from the US and this is totally understandable. In fact, in the US they aren't known as SUVs but trucks and the really scary thing is that the F-Series and Silverado are the two biggest selling cars of any car and look at the units sold - the F Series sells more cars than all of the UK Top 10 put together and there is not one car in that list that comes close to the size of the 4 pick-up trucks highlighted in the US Top 10. Take a look at these two pics as well showing how big some of these monsters are, comparing a Ford F50 vs Fiesta and Silverado vs a Golf. Absolutely agree, there is no place for these on roads in the UK but we need to keep the perspective and stop the hyperbole - yes UK cars are getting bigger (much of this is being driven by electrification) but we will never get to the situation the US finds itself in. P.S. Whatever happened to RaptorTruckMan...... US 2024 Top-10 Car Sales 1. Ford F-Series - 765,649 2. Chevrolet Silverado: 549,945 3. Toyota RAV4: 475,193 4. Tesla Model Y - 405,900 5. Honda CRV - 402,791 6. Ram Pickup: 373,120 7. GMC Sierra - 324,734 8. Toyota Camry - 309,876 9. Nissan Rogue - 245, 724 10. Honda Civic -242,005 UK 2024 Top 10 Car Sales 1. Ford Puma - 48,384 2. Kia Sportage - 47,163 3. Nissan Qashqai - 42,418 4. Nissan Juke - 34,454 5. Tesla Model Y - 32,862 6. VW Golf - 32,370 7. Hyundai Tucson - 32,174 8. MG Motor HS - 30,207 9. Volvo XC40 - 30,202 10. VW Polo - 28,981

Is it Thames Water again?

Yup it's about as "fairly balanced" as you're going to get from the Guardian....but in typical Guardian style the headline is hyperbole not actually born out in the rest of the article 😉 It was clear from my posts that I was questioning the timing of it - why did Peter Walker suddenly decide to write about it now - one wonders what the trigger for it was given the same story was extensively covered some months ago in other media?

Of course its good news but why did Peter Walker decide to write about it now - it's really old news? And it's a classic Walker article in that the headline makes a definitive statement: Wales 20mph limit has cut road deaths. Why is there still even a debate? .....and yet his opening paragraph contradicts his headline by referring to the caveats that the Welsh government has applied to pause jumping to the conclusion of his headline. This is cub reporter stuff. Here is how the BBC dealt with those caveats: Government officials have urged caution in attributing the fall in casualties to the 20mph limit. The Welsh government's chief statistician said in a blog last year that at least three year's worth of collision data would be required for a meaningful comparison to be made. Casualty figures have also been on a downward trend for sometime - the Welsh government said they have "declined steadily over the last decade". So why did Peter decide to write that article now and gloss over the cabeats part? What do you think? I did. See post above yours.