By Jo Nova
Suddenly a lot of people in London are realizing what “Net Zero” really means
Nigel Farage at the Ulez protests in London
This week many Londoners are waking up to the impact of living in an Ultra Low Emission Zone as the £12.50 daily charge for unfashionable cars begins in the outer poorer suburbs.
Normally “climate change” costs are secretly buried in bills, hidden in rising costs and blamed on “old unreliable coal plants”, inflation or foreign wars. Your electricity bill does not have a category for “subsidies for your neighbors solar panels”. But the immense pain of NetZero can’t be disguised.
For a pensioner on £186 a week it could be as much as an £87 a week penalty for driving their car — or £4,500 a year. The Daily Mail is full of stories of livid and dismayed people who served in the Navy or worked fifty years, who can’t afford to look after older frail Aunts or shop in their usual stores now, or who will have to give up their cars. People are talking about the “end of Democracy”. The cameras are expected to bring in £2.5 million a day in ULEZ charges to City Hall. But shops inside the zone may also lose customers, and everyone, with and without cars will have to pay more for tradespeople and deliveries to cover the cost of their new car or Ulez fee.
Protests have reached a new level of anger and hooded vigilantes in masks carry long gardening clippers, or spray cans and lazers to disable cameras that record number plates for Ulez. In one photo the whole metal camera pole has been sheared by an electric saw of some sort. There chaos.
Interactive maps have sprung up to report where the cameras are, and help people “plan their trips”. The vigilante group called Blade Runners have vowed to remove or disable every ULEZ camera in London. Nearly nine out of ten cameras have been vandalized in South-east London.
The Transport for London website was overwhelmed with searches from people wondering if their car was compliant and they would have to pay just to drive on the roads their taxes and fees built. Some people have bought old historic cars to get around the fee, but apparently a lot of people hadn’t thought much about what was coming. Sadiq Khan probably didn’t mention this in his election campaign. Presumably there are others in London who will get a nasty surprise bill in the mail.
As Nigel Farage says: “I’ve never seen people so angry about this new tax on working people. “And people are not just furious at Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, they’re angry at the Prime Minister and the conservatives for not stopping the scheme.
Politicians all over the West should be watching London
…
The shock win 6 weeks ago of an anti-Ulez candidate in Boris Johnson’s old seat rattled both sides of politics to the point where even Sir Keir Starmer the Labor Opposition leader has been pressuring Sadiq Khan to slow down. The Labor Party appeared to suddenly recognize that their green flank was exposed and vulnerable to any conservatives who spoke up for car owners, which, of course, might win them millions of votes.
The only way the unpopular green policies win elections is when the costs are hidden and the plans are described in vaporous motherware lines of clean air and fluffy koalas. But the Ulez fees are a full frontal attack on lifestyles, especially of the poor.
With a first-past-the -post voting system in the UK both sides of politics are very vulnerable to splinter factions that break away on key topics and fracture their vote. The only way unpopular green schemes win elections is when both sides of “the Uniparty” have the same policy.
People all over the West should be watching London, because if Sadiq Khan gets away with this, it will happen everywhere.
Katie Hopkins is appalled that people are vandalizing cameras with filling foam from ToolStation for £6.69:
One Tory MP — Sir Iain Duncan Smith has said he backs the “Blade Runners”. The former cabinet minister said today he was ‘happy’ for the residents of his Chingford and Woodford Green constituency to destroy cameras because they have been ‘lied to’.
Vandalism is of course a bad thing. The worst vandals are the ones who run for elections without telling the voters they plan to take their cars, their jobs, their lifestyle and toss them in the Thames. Those vandals ransack whole democracies with deceit.
It would be so much better wouldn’t it, if the PM held a referendum on Net Zero and let the people decide?
h/t David Maddison, and Topher. I’ll be talking about this on The Aussie Wire with Topher.
UPDATE: One scaffolder hit with £11,500 in similar penalties took City Hall to the court and won a legal verdict this week that the Lez signs (Low Emission Zone) are not lawful.
He said: “The Road Traffic Act states if there is a risk that motorists are going to be charged, you have to let them know. But the low emission zone signs just say ‘Lez’ or ‘Ulez Zone’. They don’t make it clear about charges.” He added of the signs: “Just saying you are in a zone is, by itself, meaningless.” “They need to tell you not just where you are but what happens, in other words a charge could be incurred.
— The Sun.
The legal win is not necessarily binding though, but is deemed “persuasive” in court.