Linas.P

Indeed, and I hoped it was clearer that is what I am advocating for, but well summarised. Especially kids should have equal opportunities, regardless of their parents success or standing in the society, private schooling is just deeply rooted division, which further devices society. When I went to school we had all sorts of kids, some were poor, some where kids of known rich families, you could always tell who is from which family, but one great thing that happens - kids are kids, they find friends without snobbism of adults, yes sure there is always group of "cool" kids and group of "losers", but this is not necessarily divided by wealth. What that means is that kids from poor background can socialise with kids from rich back ground, that eventually their parents can socialise and that in my opinion brings society together... at least a little bit. But when society is separate from basically the birth, then no wonder there is no understanding or common ground. And the second sentence I believe summarises my stance on private education quite well - the reality is that rich already have it better from the get go, even before they become adults and before they start deciding for themselves. And poor already are artificially held back by either worse education, or education that is at very least considered as inferior when university admissions are considered. It is not big secret that best universities prioritise kids from private schools. As well I do recognise that not all private school kids are coming from rich people, some parents really prioritise their kids education and barely scrape by to get them into private school. What I am saying - this should never be necessary, the private schools perhaps could exist for parent benefit e.g. giving them more flexibility on when to take kids out on holidays and not being stupid with fines for missed classes, or maybe allowing dedicated parking, pick-up and drop off facilities, or other extracurricular benefits. But when it comes to core topic of kids education public schools should not provide inherently worse education, getting decent education should not be question of money.

Indeed - l knew that air pollution sensitivity can be adjusted, but I always thought you need techstrem for it. I certainly seen these option in techstream, but never knew you can do ti by holding the selection button.

Yes - it is like a shortcut to enable several things at once - it turns air to recirculate and go trough the filter, it selects certain vents (I believe blows into the face), turns on AC and it raises the fan speed. So idea is - you got a lot of dust into the car for some reason, you press this one button and it kind of filters it out in accelerated fashion and tries to push filtered air into your face to reduce the dust, smell or whatever you have to breath in as quickly as possible. Then it goes back to last setting after like 5 minutes.

I do get the point that basically we have one big black hole of the budget and there isn't "ring fencing" in true way, even if I am somewhat unhappy about it, I believe it should be ring fence, particularly "roads fund" should only be raised from motorists and then only spend on the roads and nothing else, maybe in exceptional case to some big transport infrastructure project, but certainly not lost just in the common bucket. That said accountable government should price their policies, and if they say that say 15% tax on private schools will raise whatever £5 billion a year, and at the same time they will spend £5bn more on public schools, then I think the "ins and outs" adds-up, and at least on the surface level this policy makes sense. Now whenever it will all go wrong... yes it could, I don't think there is ever guarantee that policy will be successful and will achieve the desired results, some policies needs to be assessed and reversed, that would be example of working democracy if that were to happen... unlike certain "once in lifetime vote" which apparently can't be voted on again even if there is clearly different thing being delivered and majority opinion clearly has changed. Finally, I consider education as a bedrock of the society, I think most of our problems comes from poor education, I would even speculate (conspiracy theory warning) that our ruling class quite likes uneducated people as they are easier to rule over, so perhaps there is underlying desire not to make massive success out of it and then become accountable to now educated society? Anyhow I still find it wrong that we have inherent two class society when it comes to education and I find it completely unacceptable, regardless how much it costs or who is paying for it. And again - perhaps we can agree that it is not necessary to have solution to be able to identify the problem. And this is one of them in my opinion.

I am mostly taking everything literal unless specified otherwise - so be warned 😄 As well I think the point which is being missed - is misdirection of benefit, you focusing on parents benefit vs. kids benefit. What I am saying - I do not care if parent can afford fuel, cigarettes, drugs, clothing their kids, or sending them to elite schools to get best education... as far as I am concerned they can be broke and die from hunger - that is their problem, they are adults they are responsible for themselves. I am talking about kids benefit - they are kids, they are not responsible for themselves, we as society are responsible for them and ideally we treat them all equally well, they should neither suffer, nor benefit from their parents decisions. Secondly, I think you trying to conflate issues, whereas I am looking for problem solving... sure some of the solutions in my mind and the ones I proposed are idealistic and I am more than happy if somebody comes and pokes holes in them, if they are objectively flawed, unrealistic or unachievable. However, if problem can be ringfenced and solved, then I think that is exactly where we should start. Basically, this sounds to me like "perfect solution fallacy" i.e. because we can't fix everything, we should not even start fixing what we can. This is very inefficient way of dealing with problems, actually problem solving works in exactly opposite way - it is better to isolate smaller problem and deal with one problem at the time, as there are always going to be more and bigger problems which may be impossible to fix at fist. I didn't get your last point - sorry... thinking too literal...

But why we start levelling education by charging people on cars - sorry link is missing. I might not even have kids now, or not even plan to have them in my life, why would I be funding education of other people kids from my car pot? Are we just assuming here that everyone will have kids? As well I think the "beneficiaries" of such proposal are confused... it is not parents that are beneficiaries, it is the kids... parent should be completely indifferent on what kind of education their kids are getting, as long as it is acceptable and not obviously detrimental. Isn't it better to "equalise the room temperature" by charging those with shared interest i.e. exactly the people who pay extra for private schooling despite having an option to send their kids to state school? Quite clearly they have excessive money for education if they can pay literally tens of thousands for thing that could be received for free. That is why I think idea of triple and quadruple charging those in private education quite appealing. I mean look - I am clearly biased, I just can't see the reason why private education exists at all, seems inherently flawed idea to allow for it to exist in the country altogether, so perhaps I am not the best "mediator" here. But... wouldn't you agree that if quality of education would be universally acceptable, not necessarily exceptional, but decent, the quality that would not hurt you in your life going forward and would not restrict your addition to neither universities, nor late the job market... then there would be no need to have private schools? The the mere existence of private schools in itself is proof that public schools are failure...

Fair point, equality is harder to achieve in some areas of life compared to others... education is one where it is simple, in fact I came from country where we do not even have concept of "private school", there are only state schools and even with all their faults the level of education is many times better than in UK. Sorry to say, and I may be wrong, but we consider Brits "poorly educated", especially in sort of primary and secondary education. I certainly would not allow my kids even near British schools, even private ones. When it comes to higher education I believe British one is definitely better and is objectively recognised as one of the best in the world, BUT before the university and outside of private schools the education is very poor in UK. Would I believe kids should start as level as reasonably possible - yes, for education definitely, for nutritional diet as well... I don't think it is acceptable for society to have hungry kids (meal at school should kind of deal with it, but I agree we need more robust system), or for that matter overweight kids (I would punish any parents failing that harshly). In short - I believe kids regardless of their backgrounds should have "clean slate" start in the life, not malnutritional, educations is decent and judged on their own IQ and their own merits. Now sure - some people are just dumb and they inevitably will fail in their life, but no person should be punished because their parents were dumb. Is it cherry-picking... YES... but I rather call it "prioritisation", actually I think it is not hard to justify as education is one of main pillars holding our society and separating humans from other animals. We can't make everyone equal, we shouldn't for many good reason, but to give equal standing for kids to get equal and good level of education is really not high bar, nor controversial demand. How far we should go to achieve it... I don't know that is good question, but good start would be removing inherent two tier system.

I guess that highlight the bigger issue with our government, or to be fair democracy as a whole... It is political system, not based on merits... people get position as Defence Minister without having any military knowledge, Transport Minister without having any knowledge of how transportation works, Education Minister without having any clue about education and in some cases not even having any formal education of their own, Health Minister without having the clue what doctor does wand without medical degree... that is madness that we give incompetent people to power to rule over the competent ones... I know Meritocracy exists in theory as form of governance and I am not necessarily advocating for it, but I think there should be basic level of of entry criteria... ideally somebody who has clean record and does not have criminal history (more of an issue in US, but it is ridiculous that somebody like Trump are even allow to stand their candidacy), level of education (perhaps a degree) and then relevant experience, basically person should be qualified for the field they going to have oversight over. Sounds basic... but we are far far away from that. And I know they have advisors, civil servants etc.. but they still make decisions on things and it is hard to know if advisor is not talking shaite when you have no clue in the field at all... not even remote one!

I get your point, but there is still an issue. If it would be up to me, then I don't believe I would allow private schools at all. This goes back to the point that EVERYONE should have a right to get same level of education and parents wealth should not have impact on quality of it. If the child is struggling is say math I have no issue for the parents to pay extra tuition to hire tutor just for that, but to send child into completely separate school smells of elitism for me. As well I don't agree with the point of "helping with scarce resource", no - the reason you send your kids to private school is for them to get BETTER education... and that is fine, you have right to do it, it makes sense, it was good decision etc. But I still don't like it, I consider a child to be at no fault for their parents decision in life, so if their parents are on drugs, or poor or made poor decision in their life, that does not mean the child has to be relegated to public school of inferior quality, so that when it comes to getting University places they are automatically left out from the best universities, because kids from private schools are just better educated. Again - am not hating people for being successful... I just don't like the "class or caste" system where poor gets public education and then get's into trash universities (yet pays same ridiculous £12,000 a year just for much worse degree). No - think kids should all have same opportunities regardless of the parents ability to send them to private schools. And hey - that is semantics really, we all know that kids from good families are more likely to be successful in life, if not for private education, then from general better advice, from being thought good values in life, from being given sound financial, personal, educational, s*e*x*ual, family planning advice etc. I just think it is wrong to have government instituted two tier system determined by the achievements of the parents and not the kids. At least that is my opinion.

I am sure instructor car can be arranged for the test, as for learning to drive and just getting the experience IS250 is decent car. My girlfriend learned on my IS250 back in the day, funny enough she could not get learner insurance on GS300 for some reason (not that it would be most suitable car for learning anyway). I think the answer lies in word "SON"... meaning your male adult being shafted by insurance companies, would it be daughter I am sure insurance would be cheap as chips. Well obviously loads of speculations here... I just think IS250 isn't bad first car or the one to learn to drive in... perhaps person would get a little bit spoiled as one can quickly get used to such a great car!

It is all politics, but I can see the logic of taxing private schools... let's me start from saying - I don't even understand why private schools are needed at all and why can't everyone just use state schools? But apart of me being little bit ignorant in the topic... if the taxation from private schools goes into funding public schools then that is good (we obviously desire to bridge the gap between quality of education, everyone should get good quality education, not only rich, and if there would be no quality differences, then private schools would not exist)... obviously as we all know the tax money will inevitably going to be just throw into bottomless pit of government corruption and inefficiency and I doubt public schools would improve at all. As for housing, I think overall goal is to make it affordable for anyone that has jobs and works, it does not need to be cheap, but it should be achievable goal without requiring 2 people to take mortgage for 40 years and £100,000 deposit. What I would like to be done here is progressive taxation on property i.e. normal council tax for first property, 50% higher for second property, double for third property, then quadruple for forth property and so on, as well making the owner to pay it, not tenant. Meaning that by the time one person has maybe 6 properties the burden of council tax should be too high and they can't get any more (lets say if average council tax is £1,300, then 2nd property would be - £1,950, 3rd - £2,600, 4th -£5,200, 5 - £10,400, 6th - £20,800 etc. So basically getting more properties for sub-letting after 3rd or 4th is already not economically viable). I may be wrong, but I would like to see convincing argument as to why ANYONE would need more than 6 different residential properties in UK under their name?! Please surprise me! As for immigrants - this may be unpopular opinion, but UK desperately needs more immigrants as it is aging country where working age people can no longer carry the burden for those who have retired. So immigration is always net positive, and emigration is always a negative thing (brain drain). Obviously... there is the caveat - immigrants should only be welcome if they are willing to work and contribute. This is not EU fault, this is not immigrants fault, it is our government fault that they have not figured basics out. Very simple solution here - require minimum of 5 years contributions from employment before allowing people on the dole. Both immigrants and locally born British. This would actually fix several problems... the generational "benefit families", the premature family planning, the so called NEETs etc. Basically there would be high motivation for people to get into employment as early as they can in their life, get at least 5 years in and I can assure you this would fix majority of the problems. Once one is already in employment they change their world view and they are less likely to want to become passive takers, but there are loads of people who never even start working as option of simply being paid by state not to work is easier. Make no mistake - their life is miserable, but they don't know the alternative and by the time they are 30 years old without education, nor experience... they are no longer employable anyway. This would nicely act into reducing petty crime, stealing, burglaries, drug offences etc. Where I agree - yes it is very depressing, we have basically choice of two parties which are equally useless and we just have to choose one which is less useless than the other.

Yes... and I think Labour is as well putting much emphasis on building homes, so it seems they want to draw battle lines between choosing the cars vs. homes. I can't personally see why can't we have both and I am sure that will be Tories response "yeah yeah - we will build homes as well"... except that they have tragic record of promising this over and over again and failing to deliver. That said Labour has quite poor record as well - they may deliver 1.5 million homes in 5 years, but those going by their previous achievement will be poor quality housing, perhaps good for slaves or animals, but not human occupation (sort of in line with communist ideals of blocks, communal everything, just a place for proletariat to live). As well 300,000 homes per year is not really a solution, as estimate is that we need at least 300,000 just to say on top of it, but we already have shortage of ~1.7 million homes, so proposed Labour plan really does not address the issue, just promises "not to make it worse". Really they would need to double their goal to achieve anything resembling the reasonable resolution. Now the reason why Tories keeps promising homes and fails to build them is because... let's face it - average conservative voter is against building more homes, they are statistically likely to be older and have their homes, so building more homes and resolving the shortage would just depreciate their assets, so by keeping their promise Tories would undermine their base. Thinking about it - it is just so predictable that Labour is focusing on housing as that is what appeals to most of their voters and Tories focus on cars and climate goal softening.

At current pricing (RC200t/300h ~ with less than 100,000 miles and without salvage category ~£18,000), I would definitely rather buys RC350 from Japan, not AWD for sure as 6-speed box is extremely lazy for modern standards and all the other undesirable and unnecessary in UK cons that comes with AWD, but certainly nice RWD. Even if hit by tax and duty, the car from japan would come ~£20,000-£21,000... and usually they have under 100,000 kilometres. Although the cheapest one for £12,000 had 194,000 (still that is ~120,000 miles, and that is what cheaper UK RCs are approaching anyway). So realistically RC350 from Japan costs approximately £3000 more than British RC200t/300h which in my opinion is well worth the extra cost for the car that is actually fast and enjoyable to drive as GT/Sport coupe. Sadly when I bought my RC200t back in 2019 that wasn't an option, as I paid £15,500 for it and RC300h would have been closer to £16-17,000 back then, whereas RC350 in Japan was about the same price as British RC-F in 2019 (~£35,000).

Not very clear from pictures, but assuming your car has headlight washers then you you should have following connectors: (front) headlight washer pump (front) washer level sensor -2 wires seems to suggest to me you asking about this one. (rear) screen washer pump

That is what I often like to point out when talking about "reliable cars". The way I see it there are basically 3 categories: Many modern cars are "reliable", but they are reliable conditionally on timely maintenance - for example I would put IS250, GS300, GS450 and most of current Lexus line-up in this category, they are reliable, but they are not indestructible and if you get poor example it could cost thousands to fix... it may still run for a long time on shoe strings, but it won't run well. There are unreliable cars with design flaws that even when cared for still fails - like IS220d. But then there are those cars which are "inherently reliable", one example of such car is LS400, I think Toyota 2JZ is another such example, so Supra for example. Those are cars that even with minimal maintenance still can stay on the road for very long time. I think cars equipped with 3UZ engines (all the 430s) still fit in this category of inherently reliable cars, even though I really hate anything with belts, they still can last 200k without issues. I mean just look at it - 250k miles with minimal maintenance... sure not recommended, but after replacing few belts and few dried out gaskets it will do another 250k miles... again on minimal maintenance. And you know in our modern "environmentally cautious society" it seems ridiculous suggestion, but why wouldn't they make the new car like this? Give it new body, new electrics (which even in latest Lexus does not have any reliability issues) and just pop out new LS, GS, IS400. Maybe slight update to ECU for better fuel economy (not that 32MPG is bad for 90s 4L v8), maybe a more modern 8 speed gearbox (again Lexus/Toyota/Aisin seems to be able to make them completely reliable) and continue making these cars, because they last forever. I probably would as well move from belt to chain as that is my pet peeve, but apart of that it is bulletproof. But no - we have ridiculous taxation and air quality requirements which would make this car impossible to buy and register... much better force everyone to upgrade to BEVs and replace them every 2-3 years. I still think consumerism is the key issue, not the cars... I haven't done exact math, but I do suspect that this 26 years old LS with 250k miles works out cleaner to environment, than replacing 9 cars in the same period of time (no matter who individually economical and clean they are). Well at least they still make 3GR (or derivatives of it).

Didn't realise it is not on later models, but I guess Lexus decided it is not being used much... I always thought it is kind of strange to have such button. I would want opposite of that - button that switches of headlight washer OFF. Yes Ford has entire windscreen heating on some models, on Lexus we get just the bottom of windscreen where the wipers rest. I this not really big deal to be honest - it probably saves minute or two in the morning, but turn-on on windscreen defrost fan mostly does the job. As long as windscreen stays above 0C it will defrost and won't freeze over, so it does not need to be actually hot. I never had windscreen jet's freezing over on me, but headlight washers did. Basically in very cold condition to wash the headlights, one would need to stop first, because doing it at speed really results in "interesting" situation.

Well it is quite noticeable performance boost 8.4s vs. 5.1s 0-60... you will definitely notice that... and yes I agree RC350 is much more comfortable car for daily driving that RC-F, lower maintenance costs, more fuel efficient, folding back seats etc. Honestly that would have been perfect car for me like 3 years ago. As well RC350 price in Japan are now very good, just couple of years ago it was cheaper to buy RC-F in UK than import RC350 from Japan, now you can find RC350s in japan for under £16,000 including shipping to UK. One thing I am not sure about is UK import duties. I think it seems that would be 20% on top. Meaning it is still close to £20,000 to have RC350 imported into UK... not as bad as few years back, but still pricey for what will be higher mileage and likely 2014 car. And I am not even sure if VAT should be payable on top of that, so potentially another 20%. And then the next step from RC350 to RC-F does not seem as big.. 0.6s will not be that noticeable... obviously you get glorious V8, but you will lose ton of practicality. Obviously, that is before we talk about AWD... they do have RC350 AWD in Japan, it is rare, but theoretically can be imported, however I just don't think RC really works well with AWD, it is sports car and RWD is probably the way I would want my RC to be. That said I have seen GS350 AWD F-Sport with 4 Wheel steering, just £12,000 and in great condition in Japan... I think that would be the best combination of AWD and 350 engine in the car. I think that one is gone now, but I found this Premier for ~£10,000 as an example: https://carfromjapan.com/cheap-used-lexus-gs-2012-for-sale-64f1949281f2a7f7e5ac73fb Sadly, I think import duties are what kills appeal for most "ordinary car". They work fine for £30,000 Supra, GTR or NSX, maybe even RC-F or IS-F, but for something relatively normal it is deal breaker.

Now in UK... The "real" winters I mentioned Northern/Eastern Europe...

I am pretty sure there is separate button called "just waste more screenwash" just exactly for that reason. I could never understand why anyone would want to use it, but it seems that is for your use case. It is good find that screenwash function stops wasting the screenwash on headlights after few initial presses (I didn't know that), but I am quite surprised that you found the headlight wash feature "useful". In my opinion, apart of wasting half of the screen wash in single wash it makes absolutelly not difference to how clean the headlights are... especially in summer it is annoying when you try just to clean the bugs from windscreen at night and it covers entire car in screenwash and then all the dirt sticks to wet surface just making massive mess and headlights even dirtier. In winter I guess it is less of an issue, but still I have never found that headlight washers made any difference to how clean/dirty were the headlights... and I don't just mean Lexus... I mean all cars with headlights washers. The most ridiculous example was once when I was driving in ~ -21C and I had -50C screen was in the car (or maybe -45C), but the point is that I tried to wash the headlights driving on "highway" because it was snowstorm and I thought for myself "this is going to be the first time in my life when headlights washers actually going to be useful"... just for my lights to go out completely few second later. I had to stop on the side of the what in UK would be classed as B-Road, luckily for me in Europe such "highways" have clearance on the sides to stop safely. Anyway... what I have found when I stopped was that spray from the jets just frozen into solid piece of ice and completely blocked the lights. Later I was discussing this occurrence with little bit more experienced people (who regularly drives in such conditions) and it turns out that this was to be expected with screenwash rated for very low temp - it is like 70-80% alcohol, so it does not freeze over, but it evaporates very quickly, so it is good for cold morning when you clean the windows/lights in stationary car and for melting ice/snow, but if you try to use it when going fast on the road the alcohol content evaporates almost instantly and you are left with just frozen water/chemicals (basically all non-alcohol parts). Anyway... why am I saying this... the headlight washers seems like good idea in theory, but they just don't work in my experience. Perhaps if you have off roader and go deep in mud where headlights gets covered with mud... they probably would work in that instance, but for the rest of normal circumstances they just kind of useless.

Yes Lexus have offered AWD for very long time, my second IS250 was US import AWD, there are obvious pros and cons for the system. As well just quick translation US RC300 = UK RC200t. I think the main pros are that Lexus AWD systems tends to be rear biased, so they still feel nice to drive on good surface, but has that added 4 wheel traction when roads are not so good. In theory it as well should give you opportunities to drive in conditions where RWD would struggle, but only in theory. Now the cons... it just feels "dull" to drive, just kind of lazy and unresponsive, even more underpowered than IS250 and particularly motorway fuel consumption is quite horrible. With quick conversion to MPG, my first IS250 (that was 2012 F-Sport) was doing 29MPG in the city and about 43MPG on motorway, the IS250 AWD (2010 Luxury) did like 24MPG in the city and 29MPG on motorway. Would that translate into RC200t, or RC350... yes very likely, and probably even more so than it was in IS250. Back in IS mk2 times there wasn't much sacrifice in terms of gearbox when choosing AWD, both cars would get 6 speed auto box, but for mk3 IS and RC one would sacrifice 8 speed box to last gen 6 speed... In conclusion I honestly don't think Basically, I traded cars specifically because of concerns for winter weather (in the country which actually has winters - not like UK). So I went IS250 RWD > BMW 328 Xi (AWD) hated the hard suspension > IS250 AWD > MB C350 4-matic (AWD) because I wanted more power... In the end of the day, all 4 cars would easily get stuck in snow or mud anyway and the problem was not RWD or AWD, but tyres and ground clearance, in the end I concluded that it is little bit pointless to have AWD on sporty saloon. Yes it gives maybe a little bit more traction in mild conditions, but in serious winter is stands no chance. Putting good winter tyres on RWD IS250 is pretty much as useful as having the same tyres on AWD. Expanding the context a little bit more - nowadays switchable AWD often find it's ways on "super-saloons" like BMW M5, Audi RS6 or Porsche, but the purpose is entirely different, that allows those cars do sub-4s 0-60 times and it is more about transferring 600hp onto good surface and less about traction in winter.

To be honest I am just driving with "cooled" seats all year long, if is very cold then I just turn it from cooled to heated, but it is never off 😄

But that is still a shift from - "drivers are evil and we should stamp them out like cockroaches" to "drivers are just people like any other and should be treated fairly". I believe the impact of this policy will depend on whenever it is successful winning the votes/election or not. It is certainly just political and frankly a populist move, but I still think you both underestimate the size of it. For example ECHR is something majority people have never dealt with, nor they would be impacted either way, but driving is daily thing for millions of people and almost every driver can relate to being penalised and charged in a way that didn't feel fair, nor justified. And I am not saying this goes anywhere near to make it just, nor that it necessary going to get implemented, but that is the perceived goal of the policy - they want to attract votes by saying "they will make driving conditions fairer".

That is good point - not only it is too little too late, but as well, as it is always the case, we can't even be sure it could be done. Altogether I believe local authorities should have no say over fines, it seems quite obvious that they would use it to make money. Should have never been allowed in the first place. Local authorities should be able to put restrictions in, but only national government should be able to take the money, as such any incentive to increase local budget should be removed. I guess the answer is then - government has control over DVLA and without driver details local authorities can't do anything... but then DVLA becomes political tool to punish labour authorities... As I said - the political aspect of all this is very unfortunate and politicising anything will make it worse. Although at the same time - anti-driving policies were politicised, so if we have politicised policies it is probably better to at least have it in "our benefit". Yeah - ideally the whole "road hierarchy" idea. Cycling is good and all, but I believe they should have their own infrastructure, for their own sake and safety as well.

Yes sadly this whole argument is not for better of anyone, but the politicians themselves, and again sadly it seems in this case it seems to coincide with what I would be seeking for example - backing-off stupid green agenda which wasn't necessary and would not work anyway and now as well going onto protecting the driver interest, or at least pretending to do it. As well I don't believe this is marginal issue, obviously I am biased because my position is well known on this, but I believe this is potentially quite topical. Just think about Wales - up-to 100,000 people protested against 20MPH limit, 250,000 signed petition... even if they get 10% of those to flip when it comes to time of voting this will be major change. As well consider London and generally bigger cities across UK that have ULEZ and that were labour strongholds - people so frustrated with restrictions that they go as far as committing crimes to damage cameras, so likely they will go as far as voting differently when it comes to it. I may be wrong, but I think you are under estimating the support for these policies. Again - I hate it is conservatives that are bringing them as I generally don't like them, same people who wants to quite ECHR, but I am just recognising that these may be very successful in elections. Now I am even unsure if I want them to succeed or not, if they fail, then this will be last ever attempt to make it right for the drivers, but if they succeed then I will feel guilty of trading human rights for sensible driving conditions.

Seems like too little too late, but I am hoping this will gain momentum i.e. hopefully it creates sentiment that drivers are prayed upon unfairly? Obviously, it doesn't go anywhere near far enough, but maybe that is first step. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-plan-to-put-drivers-back-in-the-driving-seat I have worry about this now becoming political problem, but I can't see any other way of this continuing... as hating on drivers was political for very long as well, so rebalancing was clearly needed. It is quite obvious that conservatives realised that majority is tired of hostile rules on the roads and such policy will be popular with voters, so this is done for one reason only - getting more votes. Now whenever it actually improves driving remains to be seen... but as much as I hate to admit it, this may become quite tempting reason to vote conservative. And if they get votes for it and realised it worked, then I am sure they will double down next time around.