Road safety

On November 7th some 550 cars, all built before 1905, will travel from London to Brighton to celebrate the raising of the speed limit to 12mph. With all the speed restrictions in force today it is worth noting that in 1935 with only 2.3 million vehicles on the roads some 7000 people died in road accidents. June 1st this year was the 75th anniversary of the introduction of a driving test in order to get a licence. Today, with well over 30million vehicles on the roads the number of deaths is about 3500. Whilst every death is a personal tragedy we might actually get on better at avoiding them if we celebrated the achievement of drivers in keeping this figure so low instead of demonising them.

Liam Fox speech to Tory Conference

The Tory faithful gave one of its few spontaneous rounds of applause during Liam Fox's speech to the news that there will be a Trident replacement. Yet in his shopping list of all the threats & theaters of conflict in which we might find ourselves and with which he opened his speech [setting aside ritualistic Labour bashing] there was not a single one for which Trident would have been of any conceivable use whatsoever. This is an issue where Liberal Democrat MP's and activists must march with their feet into lobbies and polling booths and say NO. Any such action will not bring down the Coalition. It will send a powerful message that there are some compromises that are a step too far.