5 August - Storm Antoni backs ULEZ
I don’t have
many car owning friends living in Bexley but between them they own(ed) eight cars and five are victims of the London Mayor.
One of the non-compliant cars has been sold for next to nothing, two are
unlikely to be used again and two owners are still wondering what to do.
And for what reason are so many lives to be damaged?
The fact that Bexley may not have done the best possible job of air quality
monitoring in the past really doesn’t matter, the only thing of any relevance is
that ‘it’s never my fault’ Khan (†) has admitted that the ULEZ charge is not going to make any
measurable difference to Outer London’s air quality. He nearly bankrupted TfL and
ULEZ is his way of making you pay for his incompetence.
Rather late in the day he has taken a few millions extracted from taxpayers via his annual inflation busting tax rises and
intends to distribute it to used car salesmen. £2,000 as a scrappage bonus for
the those who can scramble to the front of his beggars’ queue on 21st August to spend on a compliant car which
has gone up in price by more than that amount solely because of his money-grabbing scheme.
None of that expenditure would be necessary if it was not for Khan’s megalomania. Examine scrappage logically. He is
willing to shell out an extra £50 million
in order to reduce his ULEZ income. What further proof can there be that the real intention is road charging for all?
Khan lies that if my five (now four) older car owning friends take their
vehicles out on the road they will accelerate the death of 4,000 fellow
Londoners but if they pay him £12·50 he will give them a Licence to Kill.
Earlier in the week I decided that I would go to observe today’s anti-ULEZ rally
in Trafalgar Square. Then the weather forecast put me off the idea as it probably did
many others but the combination of the Elizabeth and Northern lines got me to
Trafalgar Square via the Bakerloo line exit while avoiding the worst of Storm Antoni.
I arrived at 11:55 and left 20 minutes later when there were only hundreds of people
getting wet rather than thousands, all waving the usual placards and shouting “Khan out”. I was struck by the fact that
most of the TfL bus drivers were sounding their horns in support.
Obviously nationwide ULEZ as advocated by some Labour front benchers is a very good reason for
all freedom loving people not to vote for that party at any election as the people of Uxbridge concluded on 20th July
but for me it is also a very good reason not to vote Conservative at the next General Election. The weak and two faced policy
flipper Sunak could have used his power to stop Khan in his undemocratic tracks but has chosen not to.
The country is doomed. None of the Lib/Lab/Con opposition party leaders appear to be entirely sane either.
Note: Following publication of the foregoing an anonymous contributor informed me that it wasn’t the
self-appointed Chair of TfL, Sadiq Khan’s fault that TfL nearly ran out of money.
The anonymous contributor believes that George Osborne caused TFL’s demise by
reducing its grant but that was announced in 2015, a year before Khan was
elected. Khan ignored the warning signs and froze fares. But bankruptcy is not his fault.