Vehicle tax rates are changing for cars and some motorhomes first registered with DVLA from today. These changes do not affect cars registered before 1 April 2017 – but their rate of tax has increased today in line with the Retail Price Index.

If you’re thinking about buying a new car or motorhome, read on because this will affect you.

For the last 12 months we’ve been working hard to make sure that you get the facts about the changes before you buy a new car.

We’ve been busy communicating this message on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube since last November and have updated GOV.UK information about the changes. Our press office has been issuing press releases to national, local and specialist publications.

In January, we launched a digital advertising campaign to new car buyers with simple messages driving people to GOV.UK to read the facts.  As a result of all our combined digital communications, almost 700,000 people have visited the information.

We’ve been blogging regularly, as well as putting messages on our printed literature. Over at our contact centre we have an automated telephone service to quickly answer your questions. This has been really effective so far with almost all of the calls relating to the changes using the service.

We’ve also been working closely with our stakeholders in the motor industry to help them get ready behind the scenes for the new rates. This includes updating the existing first registration service, creating a specially designed toolkit to use with their customers and running webinars in January and February.

So if you are thinking about buying a new car or motorhome from today, you’re probably aware of the changes by now. But make sure you have a look at new vehicle tax rates information to see how it affects you.

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In this week’s New Statesman, George Eaton’s cover piece is a call to arms for ‘liberal Britain’ to find some vehicle – any vehicle – for opposing Theresa May’s Conservatives whilst Jeremy Corbyn is busy irradiating Labour.

Remarkably, he revealed that “a close ally” (often, but not always, code for “the man himself”) of George Osborne has been going around pitching the idea:

“A week after the EU referendum, the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, was taken by surprise when a close ally of George Osborne approached him and suggested the creation of a new centrist party called “the Democrats” (the then chancellor had already pitched the idea to Labour MPs).”

Further down we find Anna Soubry (quelle surprise…) basically saying that she’s on board as soon as someone can get it off the ground: “If it could somehow be the voice of a moderate, sensible, forward-thinking, visionary middle way, with open minds – actually things which I’ve believed in all my life – better get on with it.”

Such talk will surely gladden the hearts of men such as Stephen Daisley, who has in the Spectator called for a caucus of 25 or so patriotic Europhiles to resign the Conservative whip and give the legislature control of the Brexit process (although they have yet to muster to many rebels on even a single vote).

Nonetheless the challenges to setting up a new party are formidable. Set aside the hurdles erected by our electoral system – they’ve been overcome before, as any Liberal will tell you. Ask instead: what would a new party actually be for? Who would it serve?

British party names usually denote a philosophy, like ‘Conservative’ and ‘Liberal’, or a sectional interest such as ‘Labour’ or ‘Scottish National’. ‘Democrats’ basically describes everybody, and so doesn’t really describe anybody.

Such a bland name speaks to the fact that its far from clear what the various bits of the ancien régime are supposed to unite around. They may have all found themselves on the same side during the Brexit referendum, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t real differences between them. Liberalism can only claim so much political territory – to supplant Labour a new party would have to reach out left or right, and that’s where the problems kick in.

An obvious answer to the sectional interest point might be ‘the 48 per cent’, but it can’t be stressed enough that this just isn’t a bloc of coherent interests on which to build anything so permanent as a party, let alone a wholesale realignment of the party system. Nor are the 52 per cent. If you doubt it, just see how the latest NatCen research is exploding the myth of a united and outraged ‘Remain Scotland’.

The referendum seems to have set something in train, certainly, but apart from a period of Tory hegemony it’s not yet clear what that is. As Tony Blair once put it: “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again.” But they may not settle soon enough for Osborne and co.

It seems probable that any new party, should one emerge, would be much better for coalescing once the fault-lines of post-Brexit British politics are clear, rather than being cobbled together on the fly to conduct a Europhile rearguard action during the negotiations. A successful new party must be forward-looking; one created to ‘hold the Government to account on Brexit’ would be fundamentally nostalgic.

There’s certainly space for a larger liberal party, now that the liberals who until recently ran all three of the major parties may need to settle for just the one. But actual liberalism is very rarely a mass-market product and it’s not clear why that tendency will result in anything other than a somewhat restored Liberal Democrats.

But you never know. British politics seems to divide itself up into eras defined by the lifespan of whichever party isn’t the Conservatives, punctuated by periods of Tory dominance as their opponents find their new shape. We see that pattern between the fall of the Liberals and the rise of Labour, and between the last ‘Old Labour’ administration and the rise of New Labour.

No party rules forever, and it’s more likely than not that when this Conservative administration does leave office it will bequeath it to a new-look opposition of one sort or another. But just as you couldn’t see the Attlee Government from the 20s, or the Blair one from the 80s, we probably can’t see that new movement from here.

Nearly 170,000 people had registered as organ donors in China by the end of last year, an event to remember organ donors in China was told on Friday in Shanghai.

The ceremony was also meant to promote public understanding of organ donation.

In March 2010, the Red Cross Society of China and the former Ministry of Health started the organ donation system, encouraging citizens to voluntarily donate organs after their death as a way to extend another’s life.

Remarkable achievements have been made over the past seven years, and now the system has become a major channel for organ donation, Wang Ping, vice-president and secretary-general of the society, said at the event.

Officials said public understanding of organ donations and support has significantly improved over the years, and the number of people registering for organ donation is also on the rise. So far, about three in every 1 million people have registered.

A total of 4,080 organ donations were made in 2016, with 11,296 organs being donated, an increase of 47.5 percent over 2015.

Also last year, 104,538 people registered to become an organ donor, three times more than in 2015.

The event also noted that the development of the organ donation system is still in its initial stages, and varies in different areas. In the future, more policies will be made to support the system’s long-term development.

At the event, Huang Jiefu, chairman of the China National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, was recognized for his special contribution to China’s organ donation work.

90-year-old woman survives 4 days with 6 duck eggs. [Photo/Video printscreen]

Before being found and rescued by local police, a 90-year-old woman in Chongqing survived in the forest for four days, equipped with only six duck eggs. The woman, surnamed Zhang, became disoriented after losing her way home.

Zhang lives in Nanbin, Chongqing municipality in southwestern China. She became lost while returning home from a fair held in a nearby county on March 20.

Her son, Ma Zewu, reported his mother missing on the evening of the second day of her absence, after finding no trace of the elderly Zhang. Upon receiving the alert, local police organized a rescue team, but failed to find Zhang immediately due to heavy rain.

On March 23, police used security camera footage to spot Zhang near a factory. Tracing her trail, they narrowed her possible location to a 2-kilometer stretch of road, between the factory and a bee farm. In the end, Zhang was found in a bush in the evening.

Though she was weak, her mind was still clear. She was later sent to the hospital.

According to Zhang, she lost her way after changing routes to avoid a vicious dog.

Despite spending three nights in the forest, she said the six duck eggs helped her to make it through. While Zhang is hardly the first person to survive in the wild when equipped with food and drink, it is something of a miracle for a 90-year-old to do so for four days, according to Zhang’s doctor.