The Mirror Crack'd

Rishi Sunak is ordering a government review into LTNs, the contoversial low traffic neighbourhoods schemes that have been introduced by local councils in many towns and cities throughout the UK in an attempt to curb motor traffic in residential areas. Sunak has obviously been emboldened by how well the Labour Mayor of London's extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to include all of Greater London played out for the Conservatives in the recent by-election in Boris Johnson's old parliamentary seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Labour was tipped to win but lost to the Tories by 495 votes due, in large part, to the unpopularity of the scheme in this outer-London borough, where car and van ownership is high and public transport infrastructure woefully inadequate. The Labour leadership, understandably shocked and upset by this near-miss in so uniquely high-profile and winnable a seat, has turned its ire on its own Mayor, Sadiq Khan, blaming his policy for the loss. Quick t...

Writing in Time Out today India Lawrence fulminates against intrusive TikTok use on London's public transport network. Good for her. Just last week I found myself in a nightmarish scenario on a virtually empty Overground train. The initial calm was rudely shattered by a man playing videos loudly on his smartphone without earphones. This was promptly added to by a middle-aged woman (certainly old enough to know better) proceeding to do the same, but even louder. The man was Asian and the woman white so there was clearly another agenda at play.  Her action was a classic demonstration of passive-aggressive behaviour with racist or xenophobic undertones. When another passenger (braver than me) remonstrated with the woman her excuse was that she was trying to drown out the other man. The complainer pointed out that she, or her male companion, might do better to speak to the perpetrator rather than adding to his racket and disturbing the entire train (with the new Overground walk-throu...

Yesterday's by-election result in Boris Johnson's former parliamentary seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip should give Labour pause for thought.  Their candidate, Danny Beale, just missed victory by 495 votes. Although this is quite impressive considering Boris Johnson held the seat for the Conservatives with a 7,210  majority, given the unpopularity of the Tory government and the disappointment of the local electorate with Johnson as their absentee MP,  Beale had a realistic hope of defeating Tory candidate, Steve Tuckwell, and taking the seat for Labour, if only narrowly. So what went wrong? The issue that swung it was undoubtedly the unpopularity of Labour London Mayor, Sadiq Khan's controversial plan to extend the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) scheme from central areas of the capital throughout all of Greater London. The irony of this is that ULEZ was originally introduced by none other than former Conservative London Mayor, one Boris Johnson. The irony was, however, ...

Over the past few weeks we've had three letters from Thames Water seeking to gain access to our council flat to fit a smart meter. The first of these was inviting, the second enticing (ie offering a £20 voucher) and the third threatening. None of these tactics has yet elicited a response from us. I daresay we'll take the path of least resistance in the end but, frankly, why would we go out of our way to co-operate with a monopoly private company which has behaved so egregiously? Originally, our water bill was included as a precept in the rent. More recently we became liable for paying Thames Water direct -  currently just shy of 40 quid a month - which triggered a sizeable refund from the council who had apparently been overcharging for consumption for years. Goodness knows how much that bureaucratic exercise cost and now we are faced with yet more upheaval.  Do we believe Thames Water's PR that this is all about monitoring leaks and encouraging less wasteful usage? Not on ...

As an exercise in reckless hubris the ill-fated descent of the Titan submersible, carrying tourists to see the wreck of the SS Titanic, must rank alongside the building of the Tower of Babel or the flight of Daedalus and Icarus. Sadly, in the case of the Titan, this disastrous enterprise was not mythical but only too real. The warning from history, though, should have been clear: tempting fate can have fatal consequences. In ignoring the risks (flagrantly, even boastfully) the expedition leader and OceanGate company CEO, Stockton Rush, was not only jeopardising his own life but also the lives of his paying passengers. His own life was his to gamble with but what of his duty of care to his clients who entrusted their welfare to him? He and his four companions (one of whom was aged only 19) paid the ultimate price for his insouciance as the vessel imploded and sank to the Atlantic floor, four kilometres down at a pressure of four hundred atmospheres. Now, the wreck of the Titan lies on t...

The system of awarding honours in this country has always been a shabby transactional affair. Mediaeval monarchs would dub knights for acts of valour on the battlefield, in that sense rewarding very real service to the crown. As time went on, however, the process morphed into a cynical exercise of royal power through patronage and, as it did so, it became more and more enveloped in the mystique of chivalry, so much so that Edward I commissioned a replica of King Arthur's round table, which now hangs on the wall of the Great Hall in Winchester Castle. This is a prime example of the English genius for dressing up their grubbiest activities in a cloak of respectability - preferably an ermine-trimmed one. About fifty years after Edward I faked-up his round table his grandson, Edward III, founded the Most Noble Order of the Garter, now Britain's oldest order of chivalry. Whatever the truth behind the king's picking up of the Countess of Salisbury's slipped garter, the king w...

"There is a world elsewhere." Thus says the eponymous hero of Shakespeare's tragedy, Coriolanus, as he turns his back on the murky world of Roman politics and goes into self-imposed exile. Boris Johnson, with his much-vaunted classical erudition, no doubt casts himself in such a role; his fall the result of the ignoble scheming of lesser mortals. But Johnson's demise is no tragedy, or even farce, it's pure soap opera. A telling coincidence, then, that his resignation from the House of Commons should coincide with the prosecution of one infamous exponent of 'clown government', Donald J Trump, and the death of another, Silvio Berlusconi. However he may flatter himself, Johnson is no tragic hero, certainly no Coriolanus or Julius Caesar. In order to qualify the prerequisite must be the possession of nobility of character, which is then fatally compromised by a temperamental defect, leading to disaster. In the cases of the two Roman generals, the tragedy consi...