Paul Corfield wrote:

Note the suggestion that the all-night tube would in part be funded by not
being included in the Travelcard package (including seasons it seems) but
instead would be paid for separately.

Good grief - and people complain about the complexity of PAYG
charging!

Yes and I wonder how this would work for people whose journeys straddle the
start and end of "night time running".

On top of everything else 24 hour running isn't going to be the greatest
help for those of use whose journey combines tube and National Rail - if
it's a choice between waiting in the cold in the West End/City for a night
bus that I can get onto or waiting in the cold at Stratford for a packed one
and the latter option costs more then I would not pay the night tube.

That's a vote loser before he even starts his campaign.

Finding ways to lose votes seems to be a speciality of Opik. He managed to
lose not just any safe Lib Dem seat, he lost Montgomeryshire. *The* seat
that always returned a Liberal of one description or another, except for
that one time they forgot to campaign *, since the days of Disraeli. That
takes some doing.

(* The story is commonly told of how the local Liberal Association in 1979
were so busy planning to celebrate a centenary of the seat being Liberal
1880-1980 held that they neglected to actually campaign, then lost the seat.
To add to the embarassment the sitting MP was the Deputy Leader.)

Opik has also been something of a Jonah for Lib Dem leadership elections
with the likes of Don Foster, Charles Kennedy and Mark Oaten all having
crashed and burned with Opik amongst their most prominent (sometimes only)
public supporters.