A vote-winning statement from London’s prospective mayor…

Truly eye-rolling and a complete lack of self awareness! 🤷🏼

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/conservative-london-mayor-candidate-vows-to-tear-out-havoc-causing-cycle-lanes-if-elected-into-office

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.

Crafty choice of accompanying photo there.

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.

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://x.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.

Khan has also said he won’t expand the ULEZ further, too.

Ulez currently covers the whole of London, if Sadiq Khan wanted to expand it any further he would have to seek the advice of Netanyahu.

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/25/why-is-the-right-at-war-with-cyclists-were-not-wokerati-were-just-trying-to-get-around

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.

IIRC Susan Hall became the Tory candidate by default.

There were 2 preferred candidates

One was in the Partygate video from Tory HQ

One has been accused of sexual assault

They must know she’s got no hope.

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…

“42 percent of  London households don’t have access to a car”

Maybe – but it’s older, wealthier, more suburban types that are likely to register to vote and show up.

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.