£23m is owed in unpaid Congestion Charge fees and fines by foreign diplomats in the capital according Labour members of the London Assembly. But Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, local taxes do not apply to foreign diplomats, who therefore have ‘diplomatic immunity’ from such charges of fines for non-payment. Go here for latest from the BBC, or here for Times report. Meanwhile, London’s Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson is begging for £15m from Geoff Hoon, the new UK Transport Secretary, to rescue plans for A ‘CRUCIAL’ extension of a major rail link through South London. Mayor Johnson has cut the cost of the East London line extension between Canary Warf and Clapham down to £30m, and is willing to fund half of that but wants central government to cough up...

All major UK political parties currently support tough action in accord with the Green agenda in which reducing C02 emissions is of paramount importance. No surprise then that Britain’s government has just set itself up to lead the way in trying to achieve those goals by toughening targets for emission reductions in its Climate Change Bill. Now though a UK academic and former founder of the German Green party is questioning the wisdom of this stance. Fears about the potentially devastating consequences of economic meltdown are rapidly exceeding concerns about global warming or changing the way that polar ice caps melt – in just about every other developed nation. Cutting C02 to the extent that UK politicians aspire to may be inline with laudable theory, but the question of whether the...

Drivers face the prospect of new tolls for using fast-track lanes or the hard shoulder on congested motorways if plans for this form of road pricing go-ahead. The new tolling plan is being developed by the DfT but seems to be led in practice by Derek Turner who is currently with the Highways Agency – but Turner was also the mastermind behind introduction of London’s Congestion Charge. The new hard shoulder toll charges are the latest step in government theories about how to tackle problems on heavily congested sections of motorways. Go here for a news report and here to see all that the DfT has published so far about plans for single lane tolling schemes. With Derek’s help, the government is now in favour of allowing drivers to use hard shoulders in conjunction with ATM (active...

A new ‘Stop the Charge’ battalion of cross-party MPs, Councillors and businesses has joined the escalating fight in Manchester over plans to introduce an 80 sq ml Congestion Charge zone which, if it goes ahead, would be the biggest urban Road Pricing scheme in the world. The new coalition was announced today after last-minute changes were made to charging plans in an attempt to diffuse opposition to the proposed new road tolls. The price cap cuts coincided with MORI poll data revealing that more of the 81,000 respondents in consultations expressed ‘negative’ views than ‘positive’ones. Go here for a Manchester Evening News report on the ensuing ‘row’ over the poll and go here for FT report on pricing changes, and see ‘more…’ below for the coalition news release. It...

One hundred and seventy motorcycle and scooter riders brought traffic to a halt for an hour on Friday 24th in many West End streets – in a ‘peaceful legal protest’ ride round Marble Arch. The demonstration was planned to show Westminster City Council what riders think of a new ‘experimental’ scheme to charge £1.50 for each time a motorcycle is parked on a street throughout the central London borough which includes London’s West End. TC notes that all participants were given strict instructions to “abide by all traffic regulations and traffic signals” by Chairman Warren of the ‘no-to-bike-parking-fees’ campaign group which was recently formed to fight the attempt by Westminster to impose the new charging scheme. Go to notobikeparkingfees.com for more from them or here...

Swindon is the first UK council to stop paying for speed aka ‘safety’ cameras as they are not cutting deaths and serious injuries enough to justify a £320,000 per year investment of rate payers’ money. This bold move is the first time a UK transport authority has had the courage to properly look at the grim facts about ongoing failures to reduce road deaths instead of the vogue theories that have been used to justify the spread of speed cameras throughout Britain. TC can exclusively reveal that there were two crucial drivers for the momentous decision. First was a council pledge to not only cut road deaths but check the facts to see if their policies were working. Second is having the courage to acknowledge that despite vogue theories about the great benefits of speed...

Do you agree with the Transport Innovation Fund proposals? This is set to be The question for voters in Manchester’s referendum on plans for the largest Congestion Charging scheme on the planet. See the latest on this from the......

Residents and businesses in Manchester have been asked whether they want to pay a new ‘Congestion Charge’ tax to drive on the public highways they have already paid for – in exchange for massive government ‘investment’ in public transport development. But that is merely in theory. In practice, as the Manchester Evening News points out today, referendum voters were not asked anything of the sort. In practice they were invited to answer a much better spun but perhaps beguilingly soothing question: “Do you agree with the proposals?” And ‘the proposals’ that were mostly mentioned involve billions of pounds for lovely trams, buses and bicycle tracks. But TC notes that the hugely attractive sounding £2.75bn ‘investment’ carrot for Manchester to accept a new road user tax...

Reducing the number of UK trains that are officially ‘overcrowded’ will be done in one deft stroke by the DfT as a new standard for “acceptable loading of passengers on trains” is set for operators. The new benchmark triples the number of passengers who can be ‘acceptably’ forced to stand by raising the standard from 10 per 100 seats to 30 standing per 100 seats. Centro, the public transport authority in the West Midlands, is reported to have complained to the National Audit Office (NAO) that this move “would result in even worse conditions on trains in the region and encourage people to travel by car”. Go here for more on this in The Times. And, although TC notes that UK rail passengers may feel that this enough bad news for one week, more looks likely soon as a £3.2...

TC notes with interest that stalwart bus fan Jenny Jones has been “shocked” by Mayor Johnson’s plan to replace Bendy-buses with more double-deckers – and so much so that she has admitted that a bus every 2-3 minutes may be “too much of a good thing”. Jones goes on to explain that the plan to have even more busses trundling along London’s streets will “guarantee that we have more bus jams, more pollution and more frustrated drivers and passengers.” The remarks were made in connection with routes 521 and 507. There is however another reason for jams caused by buses, as TC found yesterday… The ubiquitous practice of sharpening the corners of road junction to slow the speed of turning traffic does indeed succeed in doing just that. But when taken to extremes, which...

TC asks whether cutting the examination of such basic skills as reversing round corners and three point turns from the UK Driving test is really the best way to help improve driving standards – or is making cars easier to park the best way to go…? The need for learner drivers to show they can reverse round corners and do three point turns should be cut from the UK driving test says Tory Roads spokesman Robert Goodwill MP. Competence in these basic manoeuvres should be ‘signed-off’ by driving instructors before test day to allow more time for examining other skills. Rob Gifford, chief of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) lobby group thinks this idea is “fine” as it would enable examiners to focus the test on other key skills such as...

Consultations end soon on plans for a huge C–Charge/Road Pricing scheme in Manchester – and on whether London should keep the Western Extension of its Congestion Charging zone. But daggers are being drawn by doubters about the truth of claims by charging scheme supporters – and opponent’s concerns include a claim by Andrew Gilligan that ‘lies’ could skew voting. Go here to see more of Gilligan’s view in the London Evening Standard that “much of the key information given to those taking part [in consultations] is misleading or wrong”. And go here for Sean Corker’s view on how Manchunians are “being deceived” about the extent of rising traffic levels. However, earlier this month, Martin Cassini said in the Guardian that TfL had “come clean about the failure of the...

Ardent rail fan Christian Wolmar is perhaps an unlikely critic of the Tory plan to build a High-Speed rail link, HS2, between London and Leeds – instead of a third runway between London Heathrow Airport and the rest of the world. But Christian says “the environmental case for high speed lines is far from proven”, in his Guardian article here. Theresa Villiers, the shadow transport secretary, gave the Heathrow expansion melting pot a good stir at the party conference yesterday by saying a Conservative government would scrap the plan for a 3rd runway that Labour said was a “done deal” according to a Times article last week. The Tory move is seen by some as David Cameron’s “boldest move on the environment”, and Villiers is reported to have said: “This is a seriously...

Sales of luxury and ‘gas guzzling’ cars are plummeting – and not because rich would-be buyers have finally succumbed to a ubiquitous strain of the E coli bug, known as ecologitus – which until now was far more prevalent among the cautiously-off readers of the Guardian than What Car Playboy. It is because the credit crunch has made them; run out of ready cash for big car buying moments, too scared to splash out in case their city incomes dry up, or they can’t get a loan because their bankers can’t get a loan. But TC offers a cautionary note for those who might be overjoyed by market forces that cause car sales to crash. Even the most organic of carrots that enter retail outlets spend some time in a motor vehicle to get there… A collapse at the top end of the automotive world...

Good news about UK transport is rare – so a fall in road deaths to below 3,000 for the first time since records began is definitely worth noting. Go here for a BBC summary, of the latest figures or here for the full-Monty DfT version. But, TC and a few others note that the latest stats also reveal that speeding is a causal factor in only 3% of accidents. This is equally good news for most of us. Go here for a Massey of the Mail report. A third year of ‘cause’ stats to accompany traffic injury figures builds an increasingly clear and reliable source of facts to help balance road safety policy emphasis between speed limit enforcement and tackling the bad but non-speeding behaviour that causes most road fatalities in practice. The hard news on speed as a factor is however less...

Nearly half of the traffic wardens in a big London Borough left their jobs on hearing that immigration checks would be conducted the following day. The wardens, aka ‘civil enforcement officers’ or ‘parking attendants’, had worked for APCOA until August when the lucrative parking enforcement contract in Lambeth was awarded to NCP Services Ltd. But 48 of the 100 enforcement officers either resigned or didn’t turn up for work after the new management announced it would be re-checking immigration papers of the 150 staff who transferred to the new contractor. “We do not know whether all of them did not have the right to work because they resigned of their own accord”, said the NCP manager for Lambeth, Tim Cowan. Go here for a BBC TV broadcast on the story. In theory, UK...

Lorry and van operators pay over £600 million in fines per year to deliver vital services and move goods in London. Five firms – including BT’s telephone maintenance company and DHL are fined more than £1 million a year each for alleged parking violations in the capital. The huge total of UK parking fines are revealed by an in-depth study of delivery ‘hotspots’ that was part funded by Transport for London (TfL) and the Freight Transport Association (FTA). The total annual bill for companies such as John Lewis, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s Online is about £500 million a year – but firms spend another £100 million processing and appealing against fines. TC is however not alone in thinking that although in theory these fines are issued to punish errant parkers and change...

Or, as TC wonders, is it to save her Bolton seat in the face of public anger about a Congestion Charging plan for Manchester – and support for rejection that is far more extensive across the region than mainstream news reports? The ludicrously timed announcement that T-Minister Ruth Kelly quits cabinet post – like at 3 a.m. before Prime Minister Brown tries rallying beleaguered Labour – has sparked speculation about why she dunnit. Top theories include a rekindling of old fire with Brown stalker Miliband, – and her ultra Catholic faith based ‘difficulty’ with supporting UK government’s Human fertilisation Bill. See Indie article here and the Guardian who report that “Brown will be toast by Christmas”! But TC wonders if secretly, in practice, the big driver for Kelly is...

I just got another call from Satellite Direct UK telling me that my Sky warranty needs renewing. Oddly enough, nothing has changed since their last call. We are still registered with the TPS so it’s unlawful for them to phone us and we still don’t have a Sky box, so it’s definitely not [...]...

This is the website of Julie Morgan, the Member of Parliament for Cardiff North. Cardiff North covers the wards of Gabalfa, Heath, Lisvane, Llandaff North, Llanishen, Pontprennau and Old St Mellons, Rhiwbina and Whitchurch and Tongwynlais. The constituency boundaries include Thornhill, Pantmawr, Mynachdy and Maindy. If you are unsure if you live in Julie's constituency, go to the Constituency Locata and enter your postcode to find out who your MP is. Julie is here to help you with all matters for which the UK Government is responsible. If you have a problem of an issue you would like to raise, go here first to find out about the role of an MP and what Julie can do for you. Some matters, such as education and health, are devolved to the National Assembly for Wales. The Assembly...

Julie Morgan was elected as Member of Parliament for Cardiff North on 1 May 1997 as part of the historic landslide that swept the Conservative Party from office. At the time of her election, Julie was the first woman Member of Parliament to represent a part of Cardiff. She was also one of our four Welsh Labour MPs who were women. Julie originally contested the seat in 1991. She was returned at the General Elections in 2001 and 2005. Julie was born in Cardiff on 2 November 1944. She was educated at Dinas Powys Primary School and Howell's School in Llandaff. She studied at King's College, London, where she took her BA in English in 1965. Julie also studied at Manchester University, and holds a postgraduate diploma in Social Administration (CQSW) from Cardiff University. Before she...

Cardiff is a modern city with over 320,000 inhabitants, established on the incredible wealth of a vast coal empire. The city, through imaginative redevelopment, is fast becoming one of Europe's finest maritime cities, and the rapid development is giving the city a new cosmopolitan feel. The city has the added attraction of being surrounded by some of the most beautiful countryside in Britain. Cardiff North is one of four parliamentary seats in the capital city of Wales, three of which are currently held by Labour. The constituency was created in its existing form in 1983 from the old Cardiff North-West constituency, which included part of Barry (now in the Vale of Glamorgan seat). The seat has some of Cardiff's most popular residential areas and is predominantly middle-class. It has a...

Blogging is still a relatively new phenomenon, and there are only a few blogging MPs. But the trend is catching on - particularly in local government, among our elected councillors - and the medium can only prove to be of use in communicating better with constituents. That's what I hope to achieve with this site. Here are the answers to some of the questions which may be uppermost in your mind if you're new to the world of blogs: What is a blog? "Blog" is short for "weblog". A weblog is a type of website where entries are made as in a journal or a diary. They often provide commentary or news and information on a particular subject, or they may function as personal online diaries. Blogs grew out of other online communities such as e-mail lists and internet forums where subjects would be...

First of all welcome, finding this blog in the midst of the other compelling content on the web is quite an achievement. If you like what you see, there is a link at the bottom of every page that makes it easy to subscribe via RSS.If you want to express an opinion about something you've read, you can submit a comment by clicking on the comments link. We are so adult we even have comments guidelines that spend three paragraphs saying don't take the piss in a roundabout manner.Thanks for dropping by, y'all come back now ya hear.rc started off as an experiment to find out about the capabilities of blogging by trying. Early on I roped in a couple of journalist friends who contributed a couple of items, but despite pretending otherwise its just the effort of one person.I am a PR person, so it...

First of all welcome, finding this blog in the midst of the other compelling content on the web is quite an achievement. If you like what you see, there is a link at the bottom of every page that makes it easy to subscribe via RSS. If you want to express an opinion about something you've read, you can submit a comment by clicking on the comments link. We are so adult we even have comments guidelines that spend three paragraphs saying don't take the piss.Thanks for dropping buy, y'all come back now ya hear me.rc started off as an experiment to find out about the capabilities of blogging by trying. Early on I roped in a couple of journalist friends who contributed a couple of items, but despite pretending otherwise its just the effort of one person.I am a PR person, so it made sense to find...

It took a long time, and it has been hard going, but I think we have all our domains moved and all our email addresses sorted out and all our databases (bar one) running as normal in their new homes. Mr L’s weather forum had to bite the dust and will be started from scratch. Phew! And only the one complaint, thus far Right, where’s the gin?...

FINAL POST FROM THE MOOSE-HOSTED VERSION OF...