Danny Yee

BREAKING: Our fake Chinese AI investor bought access into heart of Labour government Ex-Tory MP facilitated meetings with 10+ Labour MPs and met ministers in “cash-for-access operation”

🔴 BREAKING: Our fake Chinese AI investor bought access to 10+ Labour MPs and minister

Brand new investigation by Democracy for Sale and Led By Donkeys.

democracyforsale.substack.com/p/breaking-o...

The unseasonably warm late autumn will have helped.

Unlawful Orders and Killing Shipwrecked Boat Strike Survivors: An Expert Backgrounder An expert backgrounder on the reported Hegseth "no quarter" order to kill everyone aboard a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2.

An exhaustive and utterly damning assesment. "In sum, there is simply no plausible argument that the reported killing of two survivors clinging to the burning wreckage of their stricken vessel could be anything other than an extrajudicial killing." www.justsecurity.org/125948/illeg...

Factory workers dash for home IT WAS a brave person who ventured out when Cowley car workers were leaving the factory.

Workers cycling home from the car factory in Cowley, Oxford in the 1960s www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/1041279...

"But Charlie!" you may say, "why should *I* care about the Tanzania People's Defence Force!?" Well let me tell you a few cool things about them!

1. Following independence most African states just inherited whatever colonial troops existed as their militaries. This often led to coups and mutinies.

Also, pre-LTNs and pre-Covid (2017-2019) there were 66 reported injuries per year on and inside the Iffley-Plain-Cowley-BTR-CCR triangle. Post LTNs this has reduced to 46 reported injuries per year (a 30% reduction).

The 2016 changes may have marginally made things worse, but it's not very clear.

Also, pre-LTNs and pre-Covid (2017-2019) there were 66 reported injuries per year on and inside the Iffley-Plain-Cowley-BTR-CCR triangle. Post LTNs this has reduced to 46 reported injuries per year (a 30% reduction).

Also, the fatality happened four months before the East Oxford LTNs were put in!

I was thirty before I started calling for a UN embargo on the publication of new books until I'd caught up with the backlog.

I sometimes joke that I read everything "except horror fiction and theology" dannyreviews.com/subjects.html though I have read a biography of Aquinas.

Will he still need to win preselection from the local Green party members?

Hammersmith Bridge Where did 25,000 vehicles go?

insights from Hammersmith Bridge nickmaini.substack.com/p/hammersmit... (Nick Maini) "closing a major bridge carrying 25,000 daily vehicles should lead to more traffic on other nearby crossings and less economic activity on either side. The evidence shows the exact opposite."

Magdalen Bridge, six injuries in 2017-2019 (before Edge Lane Road layout) and two in 2022-2024 (after).

And the layout on Magdalen Bridge is safer than the previous layout - that’s one of the most successful schemes, making probably the most efficient use of limited space.

There have been fewer injuries per year at the Plain since the LTNs. Congestion is not a direct problem for cycling safety, and there was already too much traffic in 2016 to allow a safer design.

the Longwall-High junction The junction of Longwall St and High St, in Oxford, poses some unusual design challenges. Along with Magdalen Bridge and the Plain roundabout, it is a key bottleneck in Oxford's transport network — th...

But that is going to be necessary both to reduce traffic at the Plain and to allow a redesign of the Longwall-High junction wanderingdanny.com/oxford/2022/... Magdalen Bridge itself is the busiest bus route in the UK, and the second busiest cycle route (despite the junctions at either end).

In 1975 the council considered blocking private cars from Magdalen Bridge, and that (soon after the opening of Marston Ferry Rd) would have been the best time to do that. Now it's going to be much harder to get a bus gate on Longwall St.

And even the much less ambitious redesign proposed in 2016 was blocked by the bus operators because of its likely impact on congestion. biblio.ugent.be/publication/...

TRL modelling suggested that "The impact of the trialled [Dutch] layout compared with an equivalent ‘conventional’ roundabout, with the same travel patterns, was to reduce capacity by a little over 40%. www.trl.co.uk/Uploads/TRL/...

It's a tricky design challenge, but all the options for making the Plain safer would significantly reduce its motor traffic throughput, and so can only be considered once we have the traffic filters and other measures to reduce car use.

London's most dangerous junction for cycling has had thirty injuries in the last five years. Oxford's Plain roundabout has had forty injuries in that time.

Remove, restrict, and charge for car parking.

Oxford is the anti-Stevenage. Generally terrible infrastructure, but road-building stopped in 1971 and the councils have taken measures since 1972 to restrict car use, at least in the centre. So cycling has maintained an ~20% modal share.

This is the Conservatives _now_, after anyone not a social hardliner got pushed out (or jumped to the LibDems).

Red book cover. Top half, all in capitals, white "BIKE CITY", black "AMSTERDAM", small white "HOW AMSTERDAM BECAME THE CYCLING CAPITAL OF THE WORLD". Bottom half, black and white photo of a woman cycling, sticking her tongue out towards the photographer, above black "FRED FEDDES" and white "in collaboration with Marjolein de Lange - UITGEVERIJ BAS LUBBERHUIZEN".

Bike City Amsterdam: How Amsterdam Became the Cycling Capital of the World dannyreviews.com/h/Bike_City_... (my review) - "the interaction of the city's geography, planning and politics with its cycling culture, people, and infrastructure"

Hair? Spare kidneys?

Cowley Rd is a disaster zone for cycling This map shows the injuries from road collisions on the north-western end of Cowley Rd (the B480) between 2005 and 2019. The purple stars are serious injuries (resulting in overnight hospital stays) ...

Also - no coincidence- one of the most dangerous places in Oxford to cycle wanderingdanny.com/oxford/2021/...

I read those in the same order too! Both great books, gave me a whole new perspective after a lot of mostly straight military history read as a teenager.

But my surprise takeaway for me from that was that the Nazi leadership were aware they were doomed if they had to face the US, and that Barbarossa made a certain kind of sense in that context, as a giant gamble.