The new scam?

[Sharpend]

Anyone affected by this scam? Can’t see what a charge is going to achieve for pollution, pollution isn’t created by money? 

It will probably spread to all large towns and cities if it proves successful. 

ULEZ zones will cost some drivers up to £4,500 a year

by Lisa Board | Dec 12, 2018 | Motoring | 9 comments

Image: Pixabay 

A new pollution charge, expected to affect one million people across large areas of London from next year, is causing anger and worry for motorists; directed at the man behind the new tax—London Mayor, Sadiq Khan.

From the 8th of April 2019, an Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) will run in Central London and — from the 25th of October 2021 — will expand to include the inner London area surrounded by the North and South Circular roads, meaning vehicles driving inside the area must satisfy new, stricter emissions standards; or pay a daily charge of £12.50.

£1.5 billion a year

The government will enforce the ULEZ based on the declared emissions of the vehicle rather than the age but, cars liable to pay the ULEZ charge are petrol cars registered before 2005 and diesel cars registered before September 2015.

Transport for London encourages motorists to drive a vehicle that satisfies the new emissions standards instead of paying the charge, yet they will receive up to £1.5billion a year from the £12.50 daily charge—six times more than the £230million collected from the Congestion Charge alone.

The charge—which will replace the T-Charge and will run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year—will also affect owners of vans, motorcycles, and larger vehicles, including ambulances and fire engines. The ULEZ charge will be on top of the Congestion Charge and Low Emission Zone (LEZ) charge, and there won’t be any discount for residents.

Transport for London’s ‘integrated impact assessment’ predicts that around 565,000 cars and 276,000 vans registered in the capital will be liable for the ULEZ charge. Add HGVs and minicabs to the total number of vehicles and that number could increase to one million; unless an online petition, calling for a halt to the ULEZ expansion, succeeds.

 

[ProDave]

The basic problem is the SE, and London in particular, is over crowded leading to too much pollution.

This should be a wake up call for people to move somewhere better, cheaper, less polluted and without all these charges.

Of course they can bury their head in the sand, stay and pay the charge.  Or buy an EV.

 

[Sidney]

Sadiq is grovelling to those that believe London should only be for cyclists and pedestrians.

A lot of small business owners who cannot afford newer vehicles will end up paying this charge which will then be passed onto their customers. The customers will not like the cost increase so will in turn opt for the cheaper option, normally Bob who will bodge the job and provide no certification when he disappears into the smog...

It's a poorly thought out vicious circle that will only effect the lower classes.

I agree pollution needs to be reduced but taxing people is not the way to do it.

 

[Sharpend]

You’d have thought it would have been cheaper for the government to purchase every house/business in the effected area one vehicle. Instead of the administration and new equipment to set this up....

oh no that wouldn’t work this way the equipment and costs will get repaid 10fold. 

 

[Evans Electric]

Same scam is to  hit Birmingham soon  .    They have just had to half the cost to the people who live within the  penalty zone .    There are two classes who live inside the zone ,  well off , yuppie , buppy young  type  people  many possibly do not own a car ,  and the much less well off , poorly paid , working classes , many in the tower blocks , probably drive ancient Ford Escorts  which they need to get to their place of work  ,  costs would be crippling .   

The inner ring road is the boundary ,  I presume millions of ££££s worth of CCTV will have to be installed to police the scheme . 

Taxi,s will be fitted with new engines by the council  :C     so thats the ethnic majorities sorted by their brothers  on the council ...buses exempt . 

I see that both my van and the wife's Focus are both condemned as polluters . 

An ethnic majority councillor stated that lives MUST be saved ,  yet the majority of the population live outside the inner city  in the suburbs  ....surrounded by a network of    exhaust bellowing motorways .  

 

[Sharpend]

Perhaps if we all retired and left the rest of the world to work we would contribute to reducing the CO2 emissions, make the air pleasant, noise pollution would be reduced, people would be able to get around with ease, the government would be happy at their achievements, the world would look at us with great envy and it would only take two years for us to become a third world country and bankrupt. 

All part of the government strategy, after all the third world countries have the fastest growing economies. 

:C  

 

[binky]

I see that both my van and the wife's Focus are both condemned as polluters . 

as a keen planet saver, this actually bugs me! There's nothing planet saving about making people ditch their old cars in favour of new ones - something to do with factory emmissions...

 

[Blue Duck]

I live close to the North circ, I understand the environmental impact as my son's who both have been affected by what they call seasonal asthma and a lot of other kids in their school are also affected.

The thing is the areas around the North circ used to be industrialised but all this was sold off to provide housing with help from then mayor Livingstone. So the section near where I live has gone from a 50mph zone with few lights to a 20mph zone with loads of pedestrian crossings so traffic is crawling at best most mornings and evenings. This forces drivers to cut out this section and pass though my area & my son's school.

Add that parking my car outside my house has just gone up 60% and parking it elsewhere is a lottery but in central London can be up to £14/hr I can only conclude that this is either a form of social cleansing or just really bad planning.

 

[Sharpend]

Some may interpret it as a method of controlling the masses? 

You have as much freedom as you like providing they control your money? 

If they were so hell bent on cleaning up the air then shouldn’t they have been forcing the manufacturers to make the changes sooner let’s fave it I can remember pollution being a major issue when I was at school so it’s not like it’s new to them is it. 

 

[phil d]

I despise ANYTHING  to do with this save the planet garbage, as far as I know it only benefits the wealthy, Take the car thing a few years ago giving several thousand pounds to people to replace their car, the people with the really old cars couldn't afford a new one, the people who did benefit were those with cars only a few years old, who would have replaced their cars anyway, but getting the few grand just made it cheaper for them.

Global warming is a cyclical event, it's going to happen whatever we do, there are just a lot of people making a lot of money out of scaremongering!, Be honest, by the time it all comes to an end, none of us are going to be around, so the one's who've made good coin out of the scaremongering in our time will have had a good life anyway, at the expense of others. The sun is a finite thing, it is also something which is vital to the continuation of life on this planet, no sun=no life, yet it is merely a large ball of gas that will eventually run out!

If something is going to happen then it will, and there's nothing me, you, or anyone else can do to prevent it, yes, we may delay the inevitable, but it will only be a delay, it's still going to happen.

One thing nobody wants to do is to die, but we all will, now, suppose I made you an offer, if you gave me £10 a week, then I will give you a tablet and it will guarantee you immortality. Suppose you pay me this tenner for the next 20 or 30 years, then one day you die. Exactly what are you going to do about it?, nothing, because you are dead! You have faithfully paid me every week for the last 20 or 30 years, but you are still dead and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it!

A few years ago the EU managed to rewrite the laws of physics, trust me, they did, they must have, because otherwise how was the idea of reduced wattages on appliances expected to work? They reduced the power of things such as hoovers, kettles and toasters, all this did was waste time and money, an old toaster say using 3Kw of electric was hot, it quickly browned the outside of the bread, leaving a soft centre, delicious.The new lower wattage toaster browns slower, hardening the bread and you end up with horrible toast.

Water has a specific heat capacity of 4.2 joules per gram, this means that to raise the temperature of pure water by 1 degree requires 4.2 joules of energy, end of. So if it takes a 3Kw kettle 3 minutes to boil then the same kettle, with a 1500 watt element will take 6 minutes to boil, it''s basic physics, so where's the energy saving, there isn't one. Yet when an eminent physicist pointed this out to the idiots at the EU, they simply said he was wrong!

A lower wattage hoover generally has weaker suction, so it takes longer to clean up than with a bigger one, so you still use the same or perhaps even more energy using a lower wattage.

There are ways of saving energy, double glazing, wall insulation, thicker loft insulation for example, but as far as I'm concerned, there's a lot of money being made by a relatively small group of people creating fear among a relatively large group. 

 

[Blue Duck]

https://www.change.org/p/sadiq-khan-stop-mayor-khan-s-ulez-zone-extension-to-the-north-south-circular-roads-in-london

 

[binky]

Global warming is a cyclical event, it's going to happen whatever we do,

Education time  :^O  

Have a look at the carbon chart cleaned from over 600,000 years of ice core samples posted below. Now I've picked a link from NASA who are scientists rather than tree hugging vegans.  As you can see from the chart, there is a natural cyclical pattern to CO2 in the atmosphere. The world has warmed and cooled many times, until the start of the industrial revolution. From that point onwards, the CO2 levels have done nothing but sky-rocket way above any natural cycle. So we have serious increase of burning fossil fuels and a serious increase in CO2 levels - I wonder what could have caused that then???  Now, it's already a bit late to stop it completely, but the BIG issue is trying to limit the rise. Why?  Something to do with preventing a run away disaster, the more the world warms up, the more things melt, like the permafrost in the Artic as well as the well TV documented melting of the ice-sheets, glaciers,  etc etc.  The artic tundra contains a lot of stored methane gas, a gas which is 4 times worse for global warming than CO2, if this gets released, global warming will really get out of control.  Sea level rises will be extreme, all our coastal towns and cities will be drowned with the consequent absolute disaster for humankind. So if you think  the current cost of reducing CO2 is high, imagine how much re-building /moving entire cities will cost.  The consequent change in weather patterns will also be a disaster for food production., so only the wealthy will eat! 

People have a habit of talking about 'saving the planet', this is a red-herring, the planet will survive quite happily in one form or another. What people should be talking about is saving mankind from it's own stupidity!  We caused this problem, we have the technology and intelligence to solve it, like we did with acid rain a few decades ago, what we don't have is the political leadership to make the changes happen.

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/

 

[Evans Electric]

Just to add to Binky's  post ....the other major problem that needs addressing is over population . 

Without even considering China ...look at the UK  when compared to China , USA, France  , Russia , Canada etc   .

By allowing unprecedented ,  uncontrolled immigration into already teeming cities ,  the population will be beyond what the economy can sustain .      I know others can speak for London  but even here  if you travel in certain directions  , your average speed for the journey in your 100MPH car  is 5 MPH     

 

[phil d]

Just to add to Binky's  post ....the other major problem that needs addressing is over population . 

Without even considering China ...look at the UK  when compared to China , USA, France  , Russia , Canada etc   .

By allowing unprecedented ,  uncontrolled immigration into already teeming cities ,  the population will be beyond what the economy can sustain .      I know others can speak for London  but even here  if you travel in certain directions  , your average speed for the journey in your 100MPH car  is 5 MPH     

Ahh, so you've been in those roadworks on the M6 too then, last year a mate and myself went to Elex at coventry, there was a 12 mile stretch of roadworks and it took us exactly an hour to get through them, and there wasn't anybody doing any work, it's a joke!

The other thing that winds me up is when other countries decide they are not taking part, there was a thing a bit back, it said that despite a lot of countries making an effort to reduce their carbon emissions, some, such as China, had actually increased theirs. What's the point in reducing your output of harmful emmisions if other countries just take that as a green light to increase theirs.

 

[Sharpend]

I remember reading somewhere that man will destroy the planet and as a consequence himself too! 

Education is clearly wasted on many humans, basic maths teaches us multiplication yet many people believe that  by mankind increasing the number of pollutants and chemicals into the atmosphere which is a predetermined size it won’t have an effect on the planet??? Never mind increasing the number of inhabitants utilising a finite number of resources.?? Maybe I had a day off in maths when they taught the subject of non proportional ratios?? 

 

[phil d]

I remember reading somewhere that man will destroy the planet and as a consequence himself too! 

Education is clearly wasted on many humans, basic maths teaches us multiplication yet many people believe that  by mankind increasing the number of pollutants and chemicals into the atmosphere which is a predetermined size it won’t have an effect on the planet??? Never mind increasing the number of inhabitants utilising a finite number of resources.?? Maybe I had a day off in maths when they taught the subject of non proportional ratios?? 

The one that always gets me is the advert for aid to one of those third world countries, it goes on about how something like 20,000 kids will die today due to lack of food and water. Blimey they must breed fast, popping off at that rate they'd be all gone in a month. My old fella used to say it amazed him how, considering all these adults are starving due to a lack of food, how come they still have the energy to breed? I think he had a good point.

 

[Sharpend]

What mistifies me is not only the numbers of kids dying but how many years have we been encouraged to support this water system when apparently a few quid a month will provide enough water to a village for a month yet we pay how much am I paying for my water a month?? We must have a very poor infrastructure over here is they can do a whole new system at those prices. 

I wonder how much has been donated in the time that the adverts have been running, must be the seventies that they started? 

 

[binky]

Just to add to Binky's  post ....the other major problem that needs addressing is over population . 

Without even considering China ...look at the UK  when compared to China , USA, France  , Russia , Canada etc   .

By allowing unprecedented ,  uncontrolled immigration into already teeming cities ,  the population will be beyond what the economy can sustain .      I know others can speak for London  but even here  if you travel in certain directions  , your average speed for the journey in your 100MPH car  is 5 MPH     

some official figures - reckon they amount to about 15 new cities the size of Plymouth...

 

[binky]

The other thing that winds me up is when other countries decide they are not taking part, there was a thing a bit back, it said that despite a lot of countries making an effort to reduce their carbon emissions, some, such as China, had actually increased theirs. What's the point in reducing your output of harmful emmisions if other countries just take that as a green light to increase theirs.

 'The first world' has exported its manufacturing, heavy energy use, and pollution to China. I used to work in manufacturing and always though the Chinese should be made to use the same environmental standards as UK factories - that would have scuppered their 'price advantage' ! It also has to be said China is building loads of massive green energy projects, and getting into nuclear to improve their own pollution far faster than anyone else.

 

[binky]

 My old fella used to say it amazed him how, considering all these adults are starving due to a lack of food, how come they still have the energy to breed? I think he had a good point.

They need lots of kids coz lots of kids die due to disease and lack of health care, and there are other social aspects like it is normal to have big families and women are expected to pop-out kids + lack of birth control. When I was a kid, 4 -6 kids was quite normal. Most families had at least 3, now 3 kids is more like the maximum (unless claiming benefits).  Pakistan worked out the ultimate population limiting measure was to empower women. Educate girls and point them at getting a career, then they will delay getting married by roughly 10 years, and have less children as they can afford health care and most want to return to work rather than clean the house.