[Abernathy]

She has probably been advised (she will not have dreamed this up herself) that this is a good tactic to adopt : allowing her to “virtue signal” as being on the side of the oppressed-by-Ulez ordinary Joe Soap voter, while simultaneously condemning Sadiq for not agreeing (she of course knows that Sadiq never could or would) to this eminently sensible and equitable altruistic proposal, aimed wholly at safeguarding the democratic right to vote in a part of the city that might improbably entail driving into the Ulez zone in your vanishingly-unlikely-to-be non-exempt car. What a bastard, eh ?

So desperate as to be gut-bustingly laughable.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

It's been done.
Between 29 August and 18 October 2023 there were 120,797 penalties.

This is higher than I had expected, but it was the first sex weeks of the scheme. It is dwarfed by the number of penalties issued in the inner LEZ in the previous year (944,000). This is expected to fall until by 2027 the system is no longer self-financing as more vehicles are exempt.

Given that there are 1.4 million car journeys per day, on average, in London (making a total in the above period of 12.6 million) the percentage of journeys that were affected by the ULEZ charge was under 1%. Unless my maths is out, somewhere.

Thatb hardly seems like a big proportion.

[kreuzberger]

A revealing sub-set of that will be those vehicles having a registered keeper in the ULEZ area.

[Tubby Isaacs]

She has probably been advised (she will not have dreamed this up herself) that this is a good tactic to adopt : allowing her to “virtue signal” as being on the side of the oppressed-by-Ulez ordinary Joe Soap voter, while simultaneously condemning Sadiq for not agreeing (she of course knows that Sadiq never could or would) to this eminently sensible and equitable altruistic proposal, aimed wholly at safeguarding the democratic right to vote in a part of the city that might improbably entail driving into the Ulez zone in your vanishingly-unlikely-to-be non-exempt car. What a bastard, eh ?

So desperate as to be gut-bustingly laughable.

I think this was a relatively neat attack (neat bollocks), I was wondering about the emphasis on ULEZ generally, Is this aimed at London or wider online rightwingers? I suspect it resonates much more with the latter.

If I were her, I'd go for crime literally all the time. And do some work beyond "borough policing".

[Andy McDandy]

Wider online right wingers. The message is clear - London is closed to you. Khan is disenfranchising nice older middle class white people like you. His re-election has no validity. He doesn't speak for real Londoners. The city has been taken.

Same as her incident with the oyster card - the message there being not that she was pickpocketed, but that she was in a carriage with people she felt uncomfortable with and it was only a stroke of luck that she wasn't robbed, beaten up, or subjected to whatever indignities the savages had planned.

[Rosvanian]

Wider online right wingers. The message is clear - London is closed to you. Khan is disenfranchising nice older middle class white people like you. His re-election has no validity. He doesn't speak for real Londoners. The city has been taken.

Same as her incident with the oyster card - the message there being not that she was pickpocketed, but that she was in a carriage with people she felt uncomfortable with and it was only a stroke of luck that she wasn't robbed, beaten up, or subjected to whatever indignities the savages had planned.

Copied directly from MAGA Republican tactics re. New York, where Trump's court room appearances haven't featured large scale MAGA demos because his supporters think that if they travel to New York they'll be murdered.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Well we all know London is a foetid shithole...

[Bones McCoy]

Well we all know London is a foetid shithole...

Like the curate's egg "Parts of it are excellent".

The dirty old river is a particular topical shithole.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

It is in parts...

But other parts are fine.

[Tubby Isaacs]

We don't know much yet, but it's possible that the attacker turns out to be someone not unknown to mental health services, I'd have thought. If it's a machete gang, it's a pretty unusual one with one 36 year old bloke in it.

Absolutely classless- edit, that was LBC being classless, I think, not Hall. Apology to her.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Well done, Suzie. You bet the house on a knackered old nag.

[Bones McCoy]

Somebody's optimistic this morning

No prizes for guessing what the "C" stands for.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Some good turnout figures for areas where Hall should do well (and bad one in City East, which should be very good for Khan). But the turnout figures shouldn't make that much difference overall. It's all about whether other parties have voted tactically or not. My faith in the Wolfie Smith element of the Greens to do that is zero, but hope enough did.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm still shitting myself but it's more than 50-50 likely that this is a load of bollocks put around by the likes of Richard Holden's partner, Kate Ferguson of The Sun Then again perhaps some people have seen something as the votes are being validated.

Fuck.

[Crabcakes]

There is always the factor that turnout doesn’t guarantee where those votes will go. It might be more go to Hall than Khan, but as long as enough from those totals go to Khan then he should still be safe.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This could all be 2022 "Republican Red Wave" territory- it didn't happen, as polling said it wouldn't, but "vibes".

Let's all hope so.

[safe_timber_man]

I just saw all the hullabaloo on Twitter so came here for reassurance

Surely not? Susan Hall's camp have ran a massively Trump-esque campaign and have had a huge bot army on Twitter, but still...surely not?

[satnav]

Earlier this week bots were pushing hash tags about electoral fraud. I think they are just preparing the ground so tat they can push the agenda that Hall was robbed due to electoral fraud or dubious postal voting.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Certainly been some of that today.

One hopeful indicator that she won't win was that the Tory Party top brass didn't seem to get involved.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Bit more of the slightly worrying variety. Couple of London council by election results. The Tories are better than in 2021 mayor elections in both. But only 2 wards.

Anyway, night. I'm still hopeful enough Greens show up for Khan.