IF YOU BUILD A BIKE LANE THAT DOESN'T CONNECT TO ANOTHER BIKE LANE THEN YOU DIDN'T BUILD A BIKE LANE

I don't deny that dogs can sometimes be quite lovely but what I will say is I don't trust their opinions. If a cat recommended me an album it had bought, I'd totally check it out. If a dog did the same, I'd promise to listen to the album, out of politeness, with no intention of actually doing so

Whistleblower says Trump officials thought USAID did 'just abortions,' asked for 'Barney-style' slides before gutting agency, per new book Read an exclusive excerpt from Nicholas Enrich's "Into the Wood Chipper"

When a USAID whistleblower told Trump people that it'd be hard to pull together accurate info on Malaria since DOGE had turned off access to the whole team who worked on that issue, one of the guys shouted “See, this is why, just because it might work at Twitter does not mean you can do it here!”

Whistleblower says Trump officials thought USAID did 'just abortions,' asked for 'Barney-style' slides before gutting agency, per new book Read an exclusive excerpt from Nicholas Enrich's "Into the Wood Chipper"

NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health.

'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:

No, that It would hamper picture-framing emergency services.

It won't come as a surprise to many, but good to see The Times pointing out that people actually like less traffic in local neighbourhoods.

It concludes that no big change is ever introduced without some initial opposition - so leaders should stick to their guns!

www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

When my Kindle broke (ok, I dropped it) I changed over to kobo. Functionally pretty much the same, but with the advantage of being able to get books from Edinburgh libraries.

Quiet Route infrastructure in the sunshine outside James Gillespie’s school. There is a cyclist cycling through the filter in the distance and the sun is shining against the blue sky and through the green leaves of the trees.

Today, the transport committee made a big decision about the future of the Quiet Route

I’m pleased that we are finally (!) seeing progress which will (hopefully) see the retention of the route with all active travel measures intact 🚲🌳🚶

Read more on my blog 📝:
open.substack.com/pub/cllrbenp...

✊ Transport committee votes for Greenbank to Meadows quiet route permanence (‘Option C’) 🥳

Still to be ratified at TRO Sub-committee in June (dare they try it on?) but a significant win for one of the few measures supporting active travel in South Edinburgh.

🚲💕

Can confirm. It's still not street width, topography, helmets, presumed liability or weather.

It still *is* careful network-level planning against a nationally, regionally and locally agreed framework and of course investment in transport in its widest sense and especially the public realm.

Headline: Dow rises 300 points after Trump says U.S. in ‘serious' talks to end operation in Iran

Golden retriever runs 15 feet after owner mimes throwing tennis ball

Banning drugs doesn’t reduce drug use at all and actually increases drug harms

No please, tell me again about the very real and principled local objections that it is so important our planning system accommodate at the expense of everything else

How did she slip through LibDem vetting?

Also a teensy bit of missing the point from Cllr Mowat: the TRO process means that projects can be delayed for years by a small number of objections. A tactic explicitly encouraged by one her former councillor colleagues to delay the CCWEL.

Sally Pattie, please report for your reeducation - can’t be saying things like this if you want to be a LibDem MSP.
(EEN report on the Spokes hustings: edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/councils-…)

The Glebe BIA had a report done about the area.

We think this image perfectly encapsulates the reason for hesitancy by the business owners to get rid of parking.

While 86% of the respondents who come to shop said they get there by means other than driving, 94% of the owners said they drove.

"We have already destroyed 100% of the Normans’ military capability, but it’s easy for them to shoot a close-range arrow somewhere along, or in, this Battlefield, no matter how badly defeated they are.”

It includes this incredible nugget "The A9 Dualling Programme demonstrates a BCR [Benefit-Cost Ratio] of 0.52 that rises to 0.81, when including Driver Frustration and Wider Economic Impacts, which equates to Low Value for Money."

Given the recent announcements about the A9 dualling, I had a quick dig to see if a revised Outline Business Case had been published. Nothing recent that I can see, but I did spot a November 2023 version, released under an FoI request that I haven't seen before.

Like we have been told to insure and forget the climate change- finally it has gotten expensive in Florida - people are moving out!

Over a week ago, in the FT, the *shipping* guys were saying "it's not just insurance. We just don't actually want our ships blown up."

Two Edinburgh councillors censured after breaching code of conduct Two Edinburgh councillors have been censured by the Standards Commission for failing to declare an interest when they took part in meetings on controversial traffic measures near where they lived.

In light of this decision my Transport & Environment Committee will now have to revisit the vote taken on the Braids Estate LTN.

www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/two-edi...

Bookmarking this until 2036.

Oh hey, it's a Very Fucked Paper.

See the pubpeer thread, it's a fun one:

pubpeer.com/publications...

It's important to note that both Councillors cooperated fully with the Standards Commission.

It's also important to note that there are a lot of Councillors who manage to _not_ get pulled up by the Standards Commission for their conduct.

⚠️ Today, Standards Commission hearing (Councillors Neil Ross & Marie-Clair Munro) found both had breached the Councillor code of conduct for failing to declare they lived by the Braid Estate when dealing w/ Greenbank to Meadows Quiet Route, including their votes to remove effective traffic filtering

This demonstrates that the vote to rip out the modal filters and other active travel measures in the Braid estate was not only unjustifiable, but also arrived at by a tainted process which must now surely be revisited.

Are the "congestion-causing" bike lanes in the room with us right now? 🔮 🫠