The prices are bad enough, but what is Infantino actually going to do with all the money? Nothing good surely. The confederations probably need to start developing a rival ‘World Nations Cup’ to get either some leverage against FIFA or build their eventual escape ship.

You need something to get through the barriers onto the platform and out again. I think they’re blue rather than orange. A nice little memento.

Is this Romford’s Hammersmith Bridge?!? Would be interested to see how being bus only for nearly a year affects ridership - during and after.

And the per mile lethality was even worse. The decline of cycling was a rational individual response to the risk of death and serious injury. Sadly only the Dutch seemed to take the rational system response in the 1970s to lots of children being killed on the road.

The cars are coming through now. Our cities, towns and narrow country lanes will appreciate tax policy that encourages new cars to go on a diet.

Football (and NFL?) in the stadium. Basketball team in the arena (+they’ve bought the local netball team). Women’s football team in their own 10k-15k stadium. That would also be the ideal size for a Prem rugby team (that league is pretty much a franchise now and they’d bite Birmingham’s hands off)

How much is Birmingham missing out to Manchester down to its football clubs having such little success in recent decades, and the team with any success being called Aston Villa. The new Birmingham City owners must be thinking of an NBA Europe franchise in building their sports quarter.

Just a fairly decent stab given the conditions at vaguely meaningful local communities if you're not going to do the sensible but apparently far too radical thing of creating a couple of Outer Outer London boroughs.

Remain convinced that the route to London’s fiscal autonomy - and a more pleasant city - is another two layers of congestion charge zones at the ULEZ and LEZ boundaries.

I don’t think people will drive less than now. It’ll keep a lid on the increase in vehicle miles vs do nothing. Making driving cheaper is generally a good thing, and other policies (local congestion management policies and motorway tolls) should deal with the neg externalities/raise revenue.

How huge the delay and how big are the emissions? I can’t see this having much impact at all personally. Current EV quotas and the end date for sales of petrol cars make that largely irrelevant.

No issue whatsoever. My guess is actual payment mechanism would be like un-smart metered utilities - pay by DD on an estimate - e.g 7000miles/yr - clear debit/credit on outturn (and adapt future DD accordingly). Selling a car requires an odometer reading, so you get the outturn from that w/o an MOT.

Makes perfect sense to me. Fuel duty is fine for ICEs but EVs paying nothing. Why make a massive tax change affecting 25 million and falling petrol drivers paying fuel duty currently when you can just start taxing a much smaller group (but growing) of EV drivers?

Disagree. Much better to keep national fuel duty replacement simple and cheap to enable its introduction. Leave congestion management up to the local areas it affects who can combine revenue with better bus/tram/rail etc. On motorways, enhancements should be funded by tolls in future a la autoroute.