For some reason I am as yet unable to fathom, new car registration are up 7% year on year in the UK, the ONS revealed half an hour ago. While this will undoubtedly be seized upon by an increasingly desperate government as yet another sign of ‘recovery’, I should imagine Camerlot is as surprised by the data as I am.

So in a sense then, it is good news. Probably. But even this has to be set against other more long-term issues. These represent bad news.

The Highways agency’s provisional data also show that road journey time reliability has been declining since March. Double-edged sword, your car sales surge: more cars, more jams.

In the mornings now, we are all travelling at an average speed of 25.1 miles per hour. Last month on ‘ONS’, we were travelling at 25.3 miles her hour.

This may seem to you a piddling fall in speed, but not if you extrapolate it forward: in the context of the UK being too strapped to build new roads, it isn’t looking good. By the time that magical year 2020 pitches up, we’ll be averaging 15.5 mph.

As I write, there is probably a committee meeting in the DfT, discussing the following possible solutions:

1. Build more roads anyway, we might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb

2. Ban all car sales

3. 1 and 2 together

4. More bus lanes, especially on motorways

5. Increase the speed limit to 125 mph

Earlier at The Slog: Coalition’s secret NHS privatisation group