ULEZ London

[Specmaster]

Whoop, it looks like the ULEZ zone expansion for London is to be scrapped, that if true is great news for those living in and around London as it means you won't have to pay the £12.50 a day charge when driving to pick up that latest eBay or other sales platform win. I'd made a mental note not to even entertain anything that looked it was within the zone because the charge would wipe out any advantage in collecting that super bargain TE item you just won, would have had. At last it looks like Westminster have got some common sense and blocked it.

[bd139]

It's not going to be scrapped. It's literally a vocal minority and right-leaning idiot press who don't want this and are making a noise. This happened with the original ULEZ and it still happened.

Worth noting My car is 9 years old and is ULEZ exempt. Even my neighbour's V8 Porsche Cayenne Turbo is ULEZ exempt. The only real problem are old diesels and really really old petrol cars.

[Specmaster]

Hmm, yes, exempt for now, if it does go ahead, which I have serious doubts that it will because the air quality outside central London is pretty good really, plenty of wide open spaces especially around the Essex and Surry areas where he wants to expand it to. Essex County Council have stated that they will not allow him to erect cameras etc so that will kill it off in the Essex area, and many other councils are preparing legal cases against it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrjSkkxiiFw

[bd139]

I have to ask what people's objection to emission controls is?

[MED6753]

Smoke this.

[tggzzz]

Down here the local ULEZ was expected to catch 30% of vehicles. Since the poorest will have the oldest cars, they will be hit the hardest. They don't have spare money to buy less ancient cars, especially since the price is going up at the moment.

That will screw many people in surprising ways, even the rich - because the elderly won't be able to get home helps to come to them in the zone.

Oh, I dare you to suggest using public transport. If you are lucky you would merely be ridiculed. If unlucky you would leave a bit of your body behind on the ground. (Routes here are being cut, leaving only the most profitable)

I recently got £20 from a bank, because they closed my local branch and I have to go into the zone and pay for car parking. I didn't let on that my 20yo Toyota isn't caught.

The twist is that the bank later told us that both parties to the joint account need to go to a branch together - and the other party is 120miles away. Miles plus time => £200 expense!

[Specmaster]

Down here the local ULEZ was expected to catch 30% of vehicles. Since the poorest will have the oldest cars, they will be hit the hardest. They don't have spare money to buy less ancient cars, especially since the price is going up at the moment.

That will screw many people in surprising ways, even the rich - because the elderly won't be able to get home helps to come to them in the zone.

Oh, I dare you to suggest using public transport. If you are lucky you would merely be ridiculed. If unlucky you would leave a bit of your body behind on the ground. (Routes here are being cut, leaving only the most profitable)

I recently got £20 from a bank, because they closed my local branch and I have to go into the zone and pay for car parking. I didn't let on that my 20yo Toyota isn't caught.

The twist is that the bank later told us that both parties to the joint account need to go to a branch together - and the other party is 120miles away. Miles plus time => £200 expense!

All are very valid points, and I share the same issue with public transport, and can also see that it will have a detrimental effect on home help and care in the community, carers etc as they are at the very bottom of the pay ladder so simply cannot afford to either buy a newer car and eventually a EV one either. All the decisions are being made by people who are well able to meet these conditions and yet, they are also the very same people who ensure that the workers who we all depend on, are kept right at the bottom of the pay ladder. Their motto seems to be I'm alright Jack. Many people who have occupational pensions are seeing their pension pot now becoming paper thin because the economy is so trashed. I have not dared to invoke mine yet because in the last 14 months, it has had over 40% wiped off its value and I'm hanging on in there in the desperate hope that the market will pick up and it will regain some of its losses.

The ULEZ is not the end of it, there are moves to introduce further misery on people not just in London, but across the country as a whole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgs6bazh-T4

[bd139]

Down here the local ULEZ was expected to catch 30% of vehicles. Since the poorest will have the oldest cars, they will be hit the hardest. They don't have spare money to buy less ancient cars, especially since the price is going up at the moment.

That will screw many people in surprising ways, even the rich - because the elderly won't be able to get home helps to come to them in the zone.

Oh, I dare you to suggest using public transport. If you are lucky you would merely be ridiculed. If unlucky you would leave a bit of your body behind on the ground. (Routes here are being cut, leaving only the most profitable)

I recently got £20 from a bank, because they closed my local branch and I have to go into the zone and pay for car parking. I didn't let on that my 20yo Toyota isn't caught.

The twist is that the bank later told us that both parties to the joint account need to go to a branch together - and the other party is 120miles away. Miles plus time => £200 expense!

Well there are a lot of problems in that:

1. London and your local area have very different demographics.
2. They offer a scrappage scheme in London which is means tested which helps the lowest earners with a cash lump sum or public transport passes.
3. Elderly home help is excluded from ULEZ and Congestion Charging schemes (as are NHS staff)
4. I haven't actually gone in a bank and spoken to a human for at least 5 years. At best I've funnelled a big wadge of cash into the deposit machines. This included futzing money around, divorce, company accounting. This is why the branches are gone.

All are very valid points, and I share the same issue with public transport, and can also see that it will have a detrimental effect on home help and care in the community, carers etc as they are at the very bottom of the pay ladder so simply cannot afford to either buy a newer car and eventually a EV one either. All the decisions are being made by people who are well able to meet these conditions and yet, they are also the very same people who ensure that the workers who we all depend on, are kept right at the bottom of the pay ladder. Their motto seems to be I'm alright Jack. Many people who have occupational pensions are seeing their pension pot now becoming paper thin because the economy is so trashed. I have not dared to invoke mine yet because in the last 14 months, it has had over 40% wiped off its value and I'm hanging on in there in the desperate hope that the market will pick up and it will regain some of its losses.

The ULEZ is not the end of it, there are moves to introduce further misery on people not just in London, but across the country as a whole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgs6bazh-T4

Well as mentioned, no it won't affect carers. And the very bottom of the ladder, and I've been there so I know, can't afford to own the car they have. One minor accident and it's all over and any dependency that car propped up is gone. Everything's a planet killer if your risk surface is huge.

While I appreciate the finger pointing up to the top with "it's not us it's them", I would argue the responsibility is set 50/50 between them and the rest of us. The human race exists in a mire of poorly thought out life choices, carnage, mayhem and despair at the best of times. When you bought your last car, what went into the decision? Mine, which I bought in 2017 was the necessity to drive at the time, the impending ULEZ, rising fuel cost and diesel pollution. I chose accordingly and traded that off against size and luxury, neither of which really buy you anything other than status.

And there's the problem. Status. And that's in everyone's hands.

Anyway driving anywhere is a luxury that is wearing out rapidly. Start planning around that. I barely use my car. I could sell it tomorrow. That plan started in 2005.

As for the pension, yes I lost about 40% of my value, stopped paying into it immediately and threw that extra cash into an ETF which is doing very nicely. Pensions are a gamble as is any investment. It won't pick up. Cash it now and throw it into something else. Hint: There's a war in progress.

[tggzzz]

Down here the local ULEZ was expected to catch 30% of vehicles. Since the poorest will have the oldest cars, they will be hit the hardest. They don't have spare money to buy less ancient cars, especially since the price is going up at the moment.

That will screw many people in surprising ways, even the rich - because the elderly won't be able to get home helps to come to them in the zone.

Oh, I dare you to suggest using public transport. If you are lucky you would merely be ridiculed. If unlucky you would leave a bit of your body behind on the ground. (Routes here are being cut, leaving only the most profitable)

I recently got £20 from a bank, because they closed my local branch and I have to go into the zone and pay for car parking. I didn't let on that my 20yo Toyota isn't caught.

The twist is that the bank later told us that both parties to the joint account need to go to a branch together - and the other party is 120miles away. Miles plus time => £200 expense!

Well there are a lot of problems in that:

1. London and your local area have very different demographics.

Really? Given the size of the London ULEZ, I doubt it. Unless, I suppose, there has been more effective "class cleanising" (cf ethnic cleansing) than I believed possible.

2. They offer a scrappage scheme in London which is means tested which helps the lowest earners with a cash lump sum or public transport passes.

Here too. The takeup has been poor, presumably for the reasons I mentioned.

3. Elderly home help is excluded from ULEZ and Congestion Charging schemes (as are NHS staff)

Not here. Hospital patients are exempt, but I wonder what evidence and sickbed work is required, and what the takeup isn't.

4. I haven't actually gone in a bank and spoken to a human for at least 5 years. At best I've funnelled a big wadge of cash into the deposit machines. This included futzing money around, divorce, company accounting. This is why the branches are gone.

We managed to remotely deal with an estate. Bit of a faff, but it was done. We opened the joint executor account separately and remotely. HSBC claim we can't close it remotely. WTF, FML, etc.

W.r.t. the ULEZ.....

There is a <1mile stretch of road that many people use to avoid the town centre. It is in the ULEZ. One alternative is to use a toll bridge. Foreigners are (unnecessarily) directed along it on the way to the airport. When the motorway is closed, people will be forced to use it; council claims they won't have to pay, but nobody believes them.

There is a 200m stretch of road that, due to long-term roadworks, people have to use. In December the council stated that section would be exempt. In February, they reversed that decision retroactively, leaving people with large penalties. If it was me, I'd claim maladministration and sue if necessary.

[Specmaster]

As far as I'm concerned, the whole idea of ULEZ is purely a money and power grabbing exercise, wherever these schemes are introduced, the motive is the same. If the aim is to improve the air quality, then that is admirable but it has to be done in such a fashion that it does not penalise the less well off in society which all current schemes do certainly the London scheme is going to be doing that in bucket loads. Even the scrappage scheme is going to well out of many people's reach, even if the scheme was to write off 90% of the price of a new compliant car, they could not afford the 10% to fund a new car.

Look at almost every town or city, what used to be the main shopping centres, i.e., town centres, there are more and more residential properties springing up, office blocks being converted to flats etc and the main high street brands of food, clothing, furniture, hardware etc shops are now located in retail parks dotted around the edge of towns. That means that you have to go there to do any sensible shopping, regardless of it being food or DIY materials. How many of them have decent public transport connections? Around here, that is zero, and even if they did, it is a fact that a single person would need to make several trips in order to do the weekly shop for an average sized family due to the limitation of what a person can carry. With a car, you can carry far more, using the boot and if required at times, the rear seat as well, meaning that the weekly shopping could be done in a single journey.

If they really want to improve air quality, then improve public transport dramatically, make that more emission friendly, make the fares really affordable so people want to use it whenever they can because of the following reasons:-
1) The routes are more convenient, i.e, actually go where you want to go and the timings are more suitable and reliable.
2) Fares are really affordable, even for a family travelling together.
3) There is plenty of storage space for shopping etc.
4) Make sure that the transport is clean and safe to use.
5) that it runs early in the morning and also late at night
6) that out laying areas, like villages etc are well served, not just a service once or twice a week as is often the case today, making private car use a necessity.

A single double-deck bus with a capacity of 80 people, if being run full and often, can take upto 80 cars of the road (based on the cars having just the driver in them, which is often the case) think of the reduction in wear and tear on the roads and massive reduction in emissions.

Like it or not, successive governments, big business, town planners, local authorities have largely created the problems themselves and once again the price of resolving them is passed down to those who can least afford it.

[tggzzz]

As far as I'm concerned, the whole idea of ULEZ is purely a money and power grabbing exercise, wherever these schemes are introduced, the motive is the same. If the aim is to improve the air quality, then that is admirable but it has to be done in such a fashion that it does not penalise the less well off in society which all current schemes do certainly the London scheme is going to be doing that in bucket loads. Even the scrappage scheme is going to well out of many people's reach, even if the scheme was to write off 90% of the price of a new compliant car, they could not afford the 10% to fund a new car.

The councils have to do it, because it is a government mandate.

If they really want to improve air quality, then improve public transport dramatically, make that more emission friendly, make the fares really affordable so people want to use it whenever they can because of the following reasons:-
1) The routes are more convenient, i.e, actually go where you want to go and the timings are more suitable and reliable.
2) Fares are really affordable, even for a family travelling together.
3) There is plenty of storage space for shopping etc.
4) Make sure that the transport is clean and safe to use.
5) that it runs early in the morning and also late at night
6) that out laying areas, like villages etc are well served, not just a service once or twice a week as is often the case today, making private car use a necessity.

None of those problems are apparent to people living in London (or Manchester), so it isn't surprising Chris has a different weltanschaaung. Coincidentally (I'm sure!) neither are run by that rapacious company Stagecoach that is interested in profitability. It seems accountable local authorities are required to ensure transport is available when/where necessary. (And no, I'm not a pinko commie!)

When/where I have been able to turn up at a bus stop and get a bus within 15 mins (or train within 30 mins), I have used public transport by choice.
When they are hourly and might not arrive, I use a car unless there's no alternative.
Where they are weekly, and many around here are, I ignore the possibility of public transport.
When I lived in Epsom and Woking, I didn't have car and used public transport and a bike. Little problem.

Like it or not, successive governments, big business, town planners, local authorities have largely created the problems themselves and once again the price of resolving them is passed down to those who can least afford it.

Deregulation was when the rot started. I remember getting on a train from X to Y only to be told that the ticket from X to Y was only valid on a different company's trains - and I had to pay a very large "surcharge". Stopped bothering with trains.

I suppose deregulation did offer the chance to reduce costs from X to Y by journey splitting into several sub-journeys; I believe 34 tickets is the record from somewhere like Exeter to Newcastle!

[Specmaster]

Yeah, I suppose folk who live in London don't really understand the real life everyday problems that you and I have to put up with when it comes to public transport. That being said, I don't think that those living south of the Thames enjoy the same level of service as those north of the Thames do. I also think that the boroughs towards the outer edge of London also are not treated as well, and car ownership in those areas is far greater.

Deregulation was indeed the start of things sliding into decline, and it rapidly became just the routes that were generating some form of revenue / profit that were the main focus, these living outside the main towns had to survive the best they could on massively reduced service which relied on local authority grants to keep running. As central government began to reduce local authority funding, many of those grants were dramatically curtailed with many services either further reduced in frequency or even cut completely, forcing even greater car ownership.

I did my apprenticeship with Eastern National who were part of the National Bus Group and there was some sort of joined up rationale in play then where there was a campaign to reduce the number of cars on the roads adding unnecessary pollution, congestion, and wear and tear on the public roads. That was the time when any potholes were rapidly dealt with and roads received proper maintenance. I saw first hand just how many services were run into small villages, and they were plentiful. Routes between mayor towns would be diverted off the main roads and pick up villages along the way, i.e, Chelmsford to Southend-on-Sea would pick up the villages on route like Battles bridge, Rayleigh etc, while other like Ongar would have their own dedicated services which would pick up other villages along the way.

Deregulation rapidly saw these lesser routes axed as the funding cuts became a reality and private companies are set up to make profits and thus public service flew out of the window, the rest is history, and we find ourselves in the current state, which as previously mentioned is self inflected by the authorities over the years with the fascination of competitive tendering etc to steer public money into the hands of a few wealthy individuals.

The following links provide some interesting reading and information and the same things has been repeated many times over, rail, water, power, gas, etc, and we see the results of that exercise has been just bad for the country. The last link is very interesting with Fig 5 highlighting just how dire things are outside London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_N ... nalisation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FirstGroup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagecoach_Group

https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/ ... or-mayors/

[Zenith]

The rot started with Dr Beeching in 1963. He saw the railways as only useful in providing inter-city services. They were finding it increasingly hard to compete with road transport.

Actually it had started well before then. The railway network was losing large amounts of money, and British Rail had closed many lines because they were little used.

[tggzzz]

The following links provide some interesting reading and information and the same things has been repeated many times over, rail, water, power, gas, etc, and we see the results of that exercise has been just bad for the country. The last link is very interesting with Fig 5 highlighting just how dire things are outside London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_N ... nalisation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FirstGroup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagecoach_Group

https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/ ... or-mayors/

Useful links; thanks. Having said that, I would like Fig 5 to show per-capita (not per-Crapita !) public support.

I'll add a link about the what has and is and will happen with Big Internet Companies https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/

That has the pleasant title "Tiktok's enshittification", but Cory Doctorow discusses other examples.

[bd139]

I would like to point out I spent a big chunk of my life living in the middle of bloody nowhere. I'm well aware of the public transport concerns along with the other concerns of living out there. I regularly had to walk several miles home in the dark in the freezing bloody cold after a pub night or the one afternoon bus doing a no show. Most trips I had to do as a teenager involved walking several miles then jumping on a train without a ticket to somewhere. I also have got stranded recently on at least two occasions in the middle of bloody nowhere where the taxi office was closed and the only option was to walk 3 miles, wait 2 hours after one bus didn't show up then get mugged by Stagecoach to get to a station to wait an hour for a change. So don't think my sympathies don't lie with you there.

But you have to be realistic about everything. The reason this isn't working out is down to a bunch of really fucking stupid assumptions in town planning from the 1950s onwards which assumed cars were an eternal solution. Which has been mostly true until it isn't. This caused people to choose that over public transport. Public transport investment declined and was applied only to areas where there are high population densities because it only makes economic sense there. The aforementioned Beeching Report was the canonicalisation of this. Eventually the whole car ownership thing starts dying due to unstoppable economic and environmental shift and suddenly everyone realises the public transport infrastructure is done for and they're shit out of luck.

After living out in the middle of bloody nowhere, as mentioned, and watching grandparents and parents die isolated because they didn't consider the potential inability to drive one day, I decided to make sure I wasn't going to make the same stupid mistake. While I appreciate everyone likes to point a finger, if you don't take this into your own hands, don't expect society to stand in. It doesn't care about you individually. You are just a single data point in a statistic and changes required to fix it will have a huge time lag after you've been heavily impacted by them.

Ergo the lesson is: Continue whining but cover your own arse because no one else is going to.

[tggzzz]

I would like to point out I spent a big chunk of my life living in the middle of bloody nowhere. I'm well aware of the public transport concerns along with the other concerns of living out there. I regularly had to walk several miles home in the dark in the freezing bloody cold after a pub night or the one afternoon bus doing a no show. Most trips I had to do as a teenager involved walking several miles then jumping on a train without a ticket to somewhere. I also have got stranded recently on at least two occasions in the middle of bloody nowhere where the taxi office was closed and the only option was to walk 3 miles, wait 2 hours after one bus didn't show up then get mugged by Stagecoach to get to a station to wait an hour for a change. So don't think my sympathies don't lie with you there.

Public transport has become a lot worse in the last 20 years.

After living out in the middle of bloody nowhere, as mentioned, and watching grandparents and parents die isolated because they didn't consider the potential inability to drive one day, I decided to make sure I wasn't going to make the same stupid mistake.

True. I first saw that in the mid-70s, exacerbated by grandparents moving to a hill in a Costa Geriatica (Paignton). Made one of my life decisions as a result Parents died 150 yards from a main shopping street, I live 100 yards from the doctors and post office, and 200 yards from a Coop mini supermarket. At a pinch I could walk from the nearby city centre, but never have.

But your point is also completely irrelevant in the context of your comment that kicked off this thread, viz:

I have to ask what people's objection to emission controls is?

While I appreciate everyone likes to point a finger, if you don't take this into your own hands, don't expect society to stand in. It doesn't care about you individually. You are just a single data point in a statistic and changes required to fix it will have a huge time lag after you've been heavily impacted by them.

Ergo the lesson is: Continue whining but cover your own arse because no one else is going to.

Not a bad philosophy. But irrelevant to the problems ULEZs cause.

[Specmaster]

A point, I pointed out earlier, is that the whole disgusting mess is a result of the failures of successive governments and local authorities (i.e., town planners). They lacked the joined thinking processes that a properly run and coordinated public transport would in actual fact reduce congestion, pollution, money having to be spent repairing road infrastructure, so a win-win really, businesses would benefit by having less time wasted through road congestion, therefore operating more efficiently. I suppose, you could again lay a lot of the blame at government's feet, as they more than likely had their eyes upon having to put less money into public transport, looking at increasing car ownership and the huge surge in revenue from the sales of new cars and the income from fuel taxation.

[bd139]

Well they did actually build that out in a few new towns. And no one used it due to the car glut (all the busses were empty around me in the 80s and 90s when I wasn't in London) so they sold it off to private companies to cut their operational losses. Then everyone else cut and paste the idea. Obviously if it's not profitable no one is going to bother to do a good job of it so they cut services, routes, everything.

The cause here was the glut of cars. The glut of cars is going to be over very soon. The DfT are looking at this but of course it means directing funds away from other shit shows like Brexit, wars, political infighting and other privatisation disasters etc. EVs are very popular solution to this but as mentioned elsewhere they will only ever be luxury vehicles and of course not everyone can drive anyway. The current 8-10 year old+ ownership of vehicles and bangernomics is dead (as is any business associated with that market - time to get out now!).

Milton Keynes is a fine example of how to fuck this up on a grand scale. It's positively American in proportion and distances between everything.

[25 CPS]

Is ULEZ really about air pollution though, or is it being pushed for other reasons like a cash grab?

The reason I ask is because every so often here, the idea of Toronto tacking road tolls onto the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway along with some kind of congestion charge to close budget gaps. In that case, since the ideas are always floated as ways of addressing budget shortfalls, the motivation is clearly financial even though they dress up the green aspects of it to try and sell it. So far, it hasn't gained traction. The provincial government said they were going to approve it but then did a 180 degree reversal on that when the screaming started up in the commuter belt ridings.

Public transportation is laughably bad here. The commuter system is built around people working Monday-Friday 9-5 jobs in downtown Toronto. If you work off hour shifts, you're screwed. If your job isn't located in downtown Toronto, you're probably screwed. The Toronto Transit Commission is raising fares and cutting service. The last time they did a round of service cuts and price increases it took the better part of two decades for the passenger use to recover.

Then there's the completely stupid things like this: The last commuter bus leaving downtown Toronto is on paper scheduled to arrive at the end of the line in place I live in five minutes after the last set of local buses leaves the terminal. You depend on the Queen Elizabeth Way to be wide open with no accidents or construction and the commuter bus getting in early to be able to connect to the last local bus of the night otherwise you're going for a long walk or spending a lot of money on a taxi. I discovered this one after seeing the tail lights of the last local bus disappearing around the corner after getting off the commuter bus several nights in a row. I finally checked the arrival and departure times side by side on a computer with a large monitor and saw the mistimed connection. It's been like this the 10 years I've lived here so clearly nobody feels any urgency to touch up the respective schedules to make it work. Right there, this makes public transportation unusable for an afternoon shift.

Trudeau cancelled the public transportation tax credit in 2017 which worked out to a 15% price increase. The commuter train and bus agency also increased fares 3% in 2017 which was modest by their standards because every year previously, it was going up by about 7%, so the total year over year fare increase was 18% that year. Trudeau also dumped a carbon tax on us as well after taking away the public transportation tax increase; it's all stick and no carrot.

So, with runaway housing costs combined with wage stagnation, nobody working for my employer can afford to live in Toronto and be close to work, the public transportation is far more expensive than it used to be, is not usable for a lot of shift work, and commuters are a convenient target for the mayor of Toronto to pick on to unload the city's budget shortfalls on while preserving the lower-than-anywhere-else-in-Ontario property tax rates for his constituents, and Trudeau runs his mouth about climate change and the middle class while suckerpunching commuters by taking that tax credit away one one hand and jacking fuel taxes on the other.

Needless to say, I'm deeply skeptical of any politician pushing an immediate "pay more, get less" plan in the interest of an undefined "better" at some vague, unspecified future "later".

[tggzzz]

Is ULEZ really about air pollution though, or is it being pushed for other reasons like a cash grab?

I get the feeling that - over here - the motivation is about pollution. Nonetheless the consequence is that many find the opportunity to grab cash.

[Zenith]

A lot of these things start with, or are covered by, some noble, public spirited intention, but it's amazing how often they look like extending a political agenda without saying so, or just a money making racket.

Speed cameras are an example. Lot's of them in places where they could catch people in 30 mph limits doing 35mph, but notorious accident blackspots where they were never installed. They seem to have drawn their horns in over speed cameras, and have more signs that flash if you are over the limit, which I believe do a good job.

[Specmaster]

Yep, I'm afraid that this is a cancer that spreading like a wildfire and similar schemes are cropping up in loads of towns and cities and may well be coming to your area soon. In the case of London, the Mayor is not looking at the ULEZ, but also road charging which is going to be based on the type of vehicle, the distance travelled, the type of roads used, some will be higher charges than others, and the time of the journey. This by all accounts I have so far discovered, will also include people walking, cycling, using scooters, or even horses and its all being tied into the digital ID cards that the government is looking to introduce. Add into this mix, the government is looking to phase out money in the form of notes and coin, and move to the digital £.

The consultation times are very short on these, and the implementation dates they seem to be aiming for are later this year. If these all get the green light, it will mean that you will be tracked wherever you go, big brother will know your every movement.

There are already proposals for road charging schemes in Oxford and certain roads will only open at certain times of the day, this will force drivers to seek other routes and will just shift the congestion to other areas and will also dramatically increase the distance that some people will have to drive just to go shopping, go to work, do the school run, keep hospital appoints, visit the doctors or dentists etc. It would be bad enough for locals, just imagine the impact on non locals just visiting or trying to get round / through Oxford on their way to their final destinations, a complete nightmare situation in the making. With so many things happening on the roads anyway, it is all too easy to accidentally turn into a restricted road by accident and the first that the driver will know about is when the FPCN drops through their letterbox.

While on the subject of public transport, it appears that taxis are also at risk because of the move away from ICE vehicles to EV, they are not making EV vehicles suitable for use taxi use to satisfy the licencing authorities strict regulations, and if they did, they are also so expensive to buy and limited range that they would risk running out of charge etc and fares would have to be increased by a large amount in order to recoup the price of the car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfqu9z4EM4g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgs6bazh-T4&t=348s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COx6vl3i-L4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTk15vaPZPw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUdbleVuIFc&t=362s

[bd139]

This is about air pollution. There is fairly rigorous analysis of excess deaths caused by pollution in London.

The way to prevent this is to tax people for bad behaviour to both fund the schemes and make untenable behaviour unaffordable.

There is no conspiracy other than a lot of people not wanting to be told what to do because they don't give a fuck if it inconveniences them. I can see a lot of that in this thread.

[tggzzz]

A cynic might be reminded of the phrase "I'm alright, Jack" elsewhere in this thread.

Personally I acknowledge the necessity, but find the financial fig leaves reprehensible.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have any problem with people making a profit. I don't even have a problem with the poor being screwed. I do have a problem with the poor being screwed disproportionately - because if that become acceptable then it will also be acceptable to disproportionately screw the old/short/white/male/ etc.

Basically people will put up with a lot of they think it applies to everybody and is fair. If people think the opposite, revolutions occur.

[Specmaster]

This is about air pollution. There is fairly rigorous analysis of excess deaths caused by pollution in London.

The way to prevent this is to tax people for bad behaviour to both fund the schemes and make untenable behaviour unaffordable.

There is no conspiracy other than a lot of people not wanting to be told what to do because they don't give a fuck if it inconveniences them. I can see a lot of that in this thread.

I'm not so sure, it is, under the FOI scheme, it was declared that in 20 years, there has only been 1 recorded death attributed to air pollution in London. Add to this, that in a few years time, new cars have to EV, and also that many manufactures are now dropping some cars from their range and the replacements, are all EV's and this is happening now, then by default the pollution is being reduced all the time.

It would also make a lot of sense to remove obstacles to the flow of traffic, so vehicles spend less time idling in jams. It seems to be the case that these days there are more restrictions on roads, speed bumps, cycle lanes, traffic-calming measures, 20mph zones, it is a fact engines produce more pollutants at low speeds. Another way to help the position, is to make sure that the workers actually have way more disposable money in their pockets, and then many will make the switch to newer, cleaner, more reliable and therefore less expensive cars to run, automatically, and that would improve everyone's standard of living at the same time.