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news
ULEZ signs - Licensed CC BY 2.0 by Matt Brown on FlickrLabour reportedly drops plans for nationwide ULEZ rollout
Labour has reportedly dropped plans for a nationwide rollout clean air zones, similar to London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) should it regain power in the next general election.
The news, reported in The Telegraph, follows last month’s by-election in former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge & South Ruislip, which resulted in a narrow Conservative victory with the forthcoming expansion of ULEZ to cover the whole of Greater London the focal point of the campaign.
Initially given the go-ahead by former Mayor of London Boris Johnson, the area covered by ULEZ when it came into force in 2019, by which point Labour’s Sadiq Khan had succeeded him at City Hall, was the same as that of the congestion charge zone.
> Whose ULEZ is it anyway? Political chicanery as clean air zone set to expand to outer London
The scheme, under which drivers of the most polluting cars have to pay a £12.50 charge each day they enter the zone, was subsequently extended in 2021 to encompass the area within the North and South Circular Roads, and from 29 August will apply to the whole of Greater London.
Following the recent by-election, which the Conservative Party attributed to local opposition to ULEZ, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that he had ordered a review of low-traffic neighbourhoods, with what the Tories term the “war on the motorist” likely to be a key campaigning issue in the next general election.
> Rishi Sunak accused of seeking to exploit division over LTNs as he orders review of schemes
According to The Telegraph, Labour’s National Policy Forum is set to debate clean air zones shortly, with a draft policy document originally backing them, saying that the party “supports the principle of clean air zones and recognises the huge damage to human health caused by air pollution and the damage to our climate caused by carbon emissions from polluting vehicles.
“However, they must be phased in carefully, mindful of the impacts on small businesses and low-paid workers, and should be accompanied with a just transition plan to enable people to switch affordably to low-emission vehicles.”
But the newspaper adds that those paragraphs were deleted following the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election.
It quotes a Labour source as saying: “Clean air zones are Conservative government policy. The Tories are the ones who have pushed councils to introduce them. Labour is not in favour of extra burdens on drivers during a Tory-made cost of living crisis.
“Labour’s priority is growing the economy to improve living standards and tackle the cost of living crisis, not pushing up costs for hard working families.
“We are committed to tackling air pollution and we will introduce a Clean Air Act, but we will always look at options for reducing air pollution which do not put the burden on hard working families,” the source added.
One Labour MP was quoted in the newspaper as criticising the apparent change of policy.
Rachael Maskell, MP for York Central, said: “I think Sadiq Khan called it right when he said we wouldn’t accept dirty water, so why accept dirty air?
“I would say it’s absolutely essential that we make those interventions that make a difference.
“An Ulez cannot be introduced without proper mitigation – we know that the cost of electric cars is prohibitive,” she continued.
“But we’ve got to address the practical reality and that’s by putting green alternatives forward.
“We’ve got to remember it is people living in the most deprived areas that are most affected by poor air quality. This goes to an essential value of Labour and we’ve got to seriously look at this before coming to office, because the consequences of not doing so will mean people could die unnecessarily.
“I think Labour should follow the science with this, and with that ensure that no community experiences detriment,” she added.
Susan Hall, who was recently selected to be the Conservative candidate in the next London mayoral election, due to be held in May next year, cast doubt on the Labour leaders comments.
“Everyone knows Labour won’t stop with Sadiq Khan’s Ulez expansion, no matter what they say,” she claimed.
“[Shadow Chancellor] Angela Rayner has admitted that she wants to see ULEZ schemes all over the country. Sadiq Khan’s tax will punish poorer families who rely on their cars, and Keir Starmer was too weak to tell him to stop.
“That is why we must stop them both at the ballot box in 2024.”
Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports that cars bearing anti-ULEZ stickers had their tyres slashed while their owners were attending a protest against the scheme in Bromley, one of the outer London boroughs that the zone is being expanded to.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Unfortunately, public opinion and facts are often diametrically opposites
It's worserer than that - facts do get redefined, so the old conclusions from the old facts become redundant, flawed or plain wrong. It happens even in science .... much more so in politics.
Its a bluddy nuisance but we humans are incapable of apprehending some sort of absolute or objective truth. Instead, we apprehend sense data that's then mediated by our pre-installed cultural schemas and taxonomies. These change but its hard to keep up with the changes! Pity the poor believer in some defunct religion or crumbling political idealogy, as all their facts turn to dust blowing in the winds of a new reality.
There are meta-facts that are more resilient than ordinary facts. These often become "truth tests" in that they can be used to test the clarity, coherence or utility of ordinary facts. Scientific facts are often regarded as meta-facts against which lesser facts can be measured. Sadly, even meta-facts are socio-cultural constructs and these too change albeit more slowly.
But some resilient processes can measure the the resilence of any kind of fact: for example, how good are the facts and associated logical conclusions using them at predicting future outcomes? Newtonian or (better) Einsteinian processes and facts are very good at this; religious and political prophesies are notoriously bad at this.
In the end, societies tend to form facts of the sort "that everyone knows". When this body of facts become disputed and increasingly incoherent, the society often crumbles. Ours is doing that now.
Worst of all, especially for we technocrats - even base realities can be altered to make new facts that fit some mad ideology or other. Consider North Korea or The Disunited States of America. Both these societies have rendered their physical and metaphysical realities to suit their crazy ideologies. It works for a while but eventually Momma Nature says, "Enough!" and the whole edifice falls to bits. North Koreans starve to death; Yankland begins to burn, flood and blow away in the wind.
Well "it's the art of the possible" - you only have to win the fights that you're actually involved in - "I don't have to run faster than the bear, just faster than you..."
Perhaps you should cut through all conventions and contradictions and adopt a middle way, the way of the wheel?
What is the sound of one crank snapping? If a bicycle stand falls over (because someone undid all the bolts) and you're not there, does it make a sound? How is the cyclist going far too fast and at the same time holding everyone up? Is (insert bike here) a gravel bike?
I'll just leave this here
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/sep/01/rightwing-comedians-not-funny-enough-for-bbc-shows-says-insider
AFAIK no one has ever planned a "Nationwide Rollout" - just in some heavily polluted cities.
The Labour Party needs to get serious on addressing pollution and climate change. The message needs to be that rolling out ULEZ nationally will help save the planet and at a more local level, reduce the burden on the NHS sigificantly, while improving the lives of millions of UK citizens suffering respiratory issues.
Make it clear that the Tories are liars who are happy to pollute the air and our waterways just so they can make bigger profits for themselves and their buddies at the expense of everyone else.
And bearing in mind climate adaptation, where only the rich will survive.
Rolling out ULEZ nationally will make very little difference - given that surface transport is only one of the contributors to the level of particulates in the air we breathe.
Even in the expanded ULEZ zone the Mayor's own scientific study forecasts a negligible improvement in air quality.
https://ibb.co/6nJs3WZ
Labour are pussies. Still chasing the brexitty gammon vote.
It looks like it's time to get another pair of these: https://shop.conservatives.com/keir-starmer-flipflops.html
"In three years of rudderless leadership, Keir Starmer has had more flip-flops than Bondi beach and more launches than NASA. Whether it’s small boats or the economy, Labour has a ‘liable to change’ leader who will flip his position if the politics flop to suit him.
So these one-of-a-kind sandals are the perfect present for all fans of flip flops"
Couldnt have said it better.
I do love Private Eye's Gnomemart! If I want perpetual motion I've already got a Truss iron weathervane though. Albeit that was always long beyond its best-before date - even before release.
Isn't the problem with the Starmer flip-flop that it tends to run after another pair of rental shoes currently possessed by the other party? Apparently the catalog (dubiously) listed these as "environmentally sustainable" but the current wearer has recently applied a "Top Gear" sticker to them.
The stupid thing is that there are already clean air zones or low emission zones in other big cities like Manchester. There isn't really much in ulez in other places anyway.
I'd sooner politicians that can assess the situation as it changes and adapt, or change policy than ones who rather than admit they were wrong, navigate the country into economic disaster.
Just so. The art of politics is the ability to arrange compromises and tolerances that end up benefiting all to a degree whilst also steering clear of those rocky "events, dear boy" that Macmillan feared. Changes of mind and policy to meet changes of circumstances, especially in a world chnging as rapidly as the current one, are an essential political skill.
The problem, though, is that politicians no longer look to realities in arranging new compromises, tolerances and associated changes of policy. They look to the machinations or mass media organ owners, financial institutions, big business and others who live in a different world from 99% of the population. The 99% are regarded & treated, essentially, as serfs or subjects of a 1% aristocracy, not as citizens.
The Labour Party of today seems organised in its beliefs and intents as something serving the same fundamentals of our current faux society as are being served by Toryspivdom. The Labour policy kow-tow to anti-change forces of various kinds is a sure indication that they're, at bottom, more of the same red & blue clown-show.
More of the same will kill us all, despite the vast wishful thunk of the powerful that it'll somehow come out fine if they just "keep buggerin' on" in Churchill fashion. Churchill was rescued by many allies across the world; and by far more sensible folk surrounding him and preventing his madder intentions down in the war rooms. Modern British politicians all want to be Churchills but have no allies and sensible cabinet members to rescue them from their stupidities and excessive hubris.
What about politicians that actually make the right decisions to start with, than going all in then u-turning.
Or politicians that actually stand by their guns, and don't flip flop
If you ever find one, do let us know.
Caroline Lucas. From the Green Party, the only party left with any morals.
Hahahahahahahahaha morals?
Oh and Paul Merton. He's quite funny.
Well, Ms Lucas never had power (to make policy); and what if she and enough Greens had got that power? Sadly, one feels that the most likely scenario would be that the temptations of having power along with the incredible pressures exerted by the much more powerful (e.g. The City and Big Business) would have polluted her politics as they do every politics.
************
Naturally, the Toryspiv voter will larf at the notion of morality, since yer Toryspiv is essentially amoral, due to an absence of any empathy and an utter distaste for any sympathy. But a society with a large dollop of common moral sense and associated behaviours is an essential precursor to being able to establish a good polity, especially one run by rule of law.
Rule of law. Toryspiv are agin' that too now, eh - other than for the laws that provide them with another means to preserve their teeny aristocratic band of robber-barons whilst supressing the common herd?
Toryspiv law n' ordah: "Object to my toxic doings that make me money and power and yer forrit, by vicious policeman! Also, the laws concerning the protection of my properties and rights to do toxic stuff for money are Most Important. Meanwhile, I employ various ways and means to avoid the pretend-laws (which I'm just now dismantling via utter neglect) supposedly applying to everyone, even me. I need all that money to pay my libel & slander lawyers."
Yor phraseology is telling - "right, guns, flip-flop, u-turn". Is there anything worse than a pompous powerful prat filled with ideological certitudes, pursuing crazed policies that do damage all around, whilst bellowing that the damage is due to someone else's heretical conspiracy to subvert their loon-notions by complaining about the damage loon-notions always cause?
For examples, see the historical wreckings wrought by a long list of Toryspivs and their mass-media puppet masters. Oh, and the dafties that vote for them because the powerful prats stroke the dafty intolerances and hatreds of various handy scapegoats and pariahs, even as the dafties have their pockets picked by powerful prat henchpersons.
When the AIs take over, they will sit about chortling at human history, like Smash robots laughing at big potatoes. One feels that you are such a potatoe.
We can only hope for some much greater flip-flops and u-turns, along with the eradiction of The Right by means of psychiatric treatment of the poor things; or a rocketing to Mars with Muskrat.
Is it ever that simple? No. The right thing today isn't necessarily the right thing tomorrow. So the last thing anyone needs are politicians who blindly "stand by their guns"
That's literally all the Tories have left these days, isn't it, pathetic Boris Johnson-style spluttering gammon attempts at "humour". Sad.
Not up to speed with the Labour party then? Who of course, never do anything like that do they.
https://shop.labour.org.uk/product/missing-rishi-sunak-leaflet-pre-order
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2023/04/labour-lost-mo...
At least it shows one party has a sense of humour and some charisma I guess.
When I picture you etc etc
You're a Tory and you're criticising the Labour Party for flip flops? That's simply absurd.
Political debate in the UK.
Romans: bread and circuses to keep the poor from rioting while the elite looked disdainfully at the mob and more nervously over their shoulder at their bodyguards.
Now: the spectating plebs merely shout at each other from the stands of the internet while the elite are kept in check trolling each other in the House.
I remember the days when there was a point in voting Labour.
. . . . back when they actually deserved the name.
It will be interesting to see if property prices diverge between ulez and non-ulez areas.
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