I do quite a bit of (and help organise) conservation volunteering. Think countryside and green space path maintenance and management. Woodland path clearing, step building. Just creating nice green space for people to be. Arranging litter picks, working with ecology teams to build habitats etc.

Sometimes even council publicised paths, walks and tourist areas are a scattered blanket of landownders and complications. Having open access to the land registry makes it much clearer who we can go to and ask about helping make our green spaces nicer.

The ridiculousness of the license fee is only highlighted in the modern world.

Tesco do not come hounding me because I’ve not been shopping in there. Yet routinely for the last 20 years I’ve been hounded by collectors from Capita about the license fee. Intimidating letters, bouncers at the door trying to barge in, demanding they can see my TV through the windows. The bullying tactics of this are the exact reason I refuse to pay for it.

Move to a better model, put all the old back catalogue on iPlayer and charge a monthly subscription like Netflix. Use the profits from that to subsidise the over the airwaves stuff. Bill me because I use it, don’t threaten me because I don’t.

Something trucking has, that non-trucking does not, is enforced rest stops and breaks.

If you don’t sit in a random layby, you rest at a charging point, the “waiting around” to charge isn’t a detriment. Because as a trucker you have to sit around and wait for <x> amount of time anyway.

*I can’t be arsed getting into arguments and different countries and their waiting times. I just know around europe mandatory rests are necessary.

Have places in town that people want to go to, for things they can’t get online.

I don’t want a TV shop in town, how the fuck do I get a TV home anyway? Carry my new TV through the high street? I might want to see a few TVs in a large store outside town, but TBH all TVs now are a thin black rectangle and some software. So I can research the software online.

I want a good cafe, different types of pub, arcade cabinets. Experiences that I can’t get in my living room. Sitting areas and third spaces as you’ve said. Libraries holding talks/conferences. Local bands, during the day.

Make me want to be in town, don’t tell me I have to “save the highstreet” while bemoaning the shops I don’t want to go into are failing.

I’d like to see more of a breakdown.

• How many of these injuries are the driver/rider/captain and how many are other people?
• How many are the fault of the driver, and how many are a 3rd party?

The stats on helmets etc. are interesting, but they only tell a part of the story.

The issue with these things being illegal, is the decent people who follow common sense rules and safety stay away. Because they’re illegal. This means the only people who are riding them, are assholes or asshole related. By definition. They’re already breaking the illegal rule, just by using the device. They are not likely to be people who will wear helmets, or be people who will honour (or teach their sprogs to honour) highway code or any other code of common sense. So of course, the accident to user ratio is quite high. Decent users, are not users at all.

I agree with other commenters, these can/could/should be positive devices. Allowing all electric “green” transportation in a tiny footprint. This would work, if we had the cycle/safe-space infrastructure to allow it and if we had a population that would enforce a level of common sense safety.