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News and Comment January 2023

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8 January - Thinking about ULEZ, Part 1 - Men of Honour

When Bonkers started in 2009 it tried to present the facts and where appropriate both sides of the argument and leave readers to draw their own conclusions. Bexley Council was then at the height of its dishonest phase and there wasn’t really any need to point out the obvious with opinions. Over the intervening years BiB’s original tagline of Dishonest, Incompetent, Vindictive; stolen from The News Shopper, has become less appropriate than it used to be.

One subject upon which Bonkers has not been fence fitting is Sadiq Khan. Councillor John Davey (Independent, West Heath) once said that Khan was doing more damage to our capital city than the Luftwaffe in 1940. In the sense that London was able to recover from the Blitz but is unlikely to survive the Khanage of the past few years, the former Conservative Councillor was right.

Roy Castle Roy CastleHowever there is a minority view (the disregarded ULEZ consultation confirms it) that Khan is some sort of Super Hero for his blinkered attack on the city’s economy which ignores various reports that he will do almost nothing for air pollution. The reductions have come and will continue to come naturally. There was a 94% reduction in pollution between 2016 and 2020 (Imperial College figures) as older vehicles are replaced.

Because I am interested in how contrary views are justified the first of a multi-part analysis by @tonyofsidcup is published below. It is unedited although I personally feel some discomfort at the way the premature death of James Brokenshire from lung cancer has been used as supporting material.

His loss cannot sensibly be used to justify ULEZ in the way that smoking was restricted following the death of entertainer Roy Castle whose demise was blamed on performing in smoky environments. Polluting vehicles will be gone within a very few years with or without Khanage. Smoking is still killing people 29 years after non-smoker Castle died from lung cancer.

Note: Photos above from my own collection.


The premature death, from lung cancer, of the Old Bexley and Sidcup MP James Brokenshire shocked his friends and acquaintances among Bexley Conservatives. So it came as no surprise that when in 2022 London’s mayor Sadiq Khan proposed to expand the capital’s Ultra Low Emission Zone to include Bexley, the local party rallied behind the plan. “I welcome the mayor’s efforts to clean up London’s air”, Brokenshire’s successor Louie French stated, “We simply cannot tolerate avoidable deaths from respiratory disease”. Sidcup Ward councillor Richard Diment reminded his colleagues that a 2021 study by Imperial College London named his ward London’s worst-affected by air pollution in terms of lives lost. “As the Cabinet Member for Education, I regularly meet with the borough’s parents. I simply could not look them in the eye if I failed to support ULEZ”, he said.

Falconwood and Welling councillor Frazer Brooks agreed: “Living next to A2, my constituents suffer from the borough’s highest levels of NO2 pollution, and it would be unthinkable for me to oppose ULEZ expansion”. Councillor Smith of St Mary’s and St James Ward mentioned his post as the communications director of the national Conservative Environment Network, and said: “We may disagree with the mayor on many things, but protecting Londoners’ health is our common priority. Yes, times are tough and everyone is feeling the pinch, but you cannot tell an asthmatic child “Sorry, it was too expensive to give you clean air”.

“For me, it is a matter of Conservative principles”, Council Leader Teresa O’Neill remarked, “A true Conservative is serious about personal responsibility. If your vehicle pollutes the air that other people breathe, you accept your duty and pick up the bill. I would do this readily”. Councillor O’Neill recalled that back in 2007, the council declared the borough an Air Quality Management Area, citing high levels of nitrogen-dioxide and particulate-matter pollution. “Air quality has been Bexley Conservatives’ priority since day 1”, she said, “Every year, the Cabinet debates the annual Air Quality Action Plan, and we always ask: What more can we do to make our air cleaner?”

Ok, let’s snap out of this daydream. All of the quotes above are made up. Without exception, Bexley Tories have toed the party line and opposed ULEZ expansion, not once acknowledging Bexley residents living with respiratory disease. (Clearly, Brokenshire was an exception). The “green” Councillor Smith read out an anti-ULEZ statement in the council chamber. After Mayor Khan announced, in November 2022, that ULEZ expansion was going ahead, Bexley joined Tory-run Outer London boroughs of Croydon, Harrow and Hillingdon in opposition. In her statement, Teresa O’Neill insisted that the “decisive” victory of Bexley Conservatives in the May 2022 local election - Tories’ 51% of votes vs. Labour’s 44% - gave the council the mandate to oppose ULEZ.

(In the following month, the “rebel alliance” indicated that it was going to block TfL’s installation of ULEZ camera equipment on borough-managed roads. One wonders if, defying TfL, the councils would be able to keep the money they receive from TfL. Each year, Bexley receives hundreds of thousands of pounds from the City Hall, to fund things from bridge repair to the salaries of lollipop people. In 2020, in a Covid-related development, TfL funding went away, for six months. So did the lollipops, as Bexley failed to pony up).

Pollution map AQMAA late-2022 Freedom of Information request for Bexley’s latest Air Quality Action Plan was met, incredibly, with “We don’t have one yet”. Why “incredibly”? The Bexley Air Quality Management Area has been in place for 15 years, and devising and maintaining an AQAP is, to all appearances, a legal requirement. One can only wonder if Bexley is breaking the law (and Defra doesn’t care), or if the senior officer who responded to the FOI did not have a clue. Either way, it tells you something about the council’s - and its Conservative leadership’s - attention to air quality. Asking these people to react to the ICL study that put Sidcup, Bexleyheath, Crook Log and Blackfen and Lamorbey in the top 20 of London’s wards most affected by air pollution seems to be a pointless exercise.

As confirmed by another FOI request, Bexley did not carry out a formal analysis of the impact of ULEZ expansion before publishing anti-ULEZ articles in The Bexley Magazine, and did not even ask TfL how many Bexley-registered vehicles would be caught out by ULEZ. (I did - and was shocked to find that just over half of Bexley vans were non-compliant).

Fluke Fluke FlukeTwo Sidcup residents and stars of the Bexley Conservative scene, Louie French MP and Gareth Bacon MP, made YouTube speeches against ULEZ expansion, and ran HQ-supplied anti-ULEZ petitions on their HQ-supplied web sites. Louie never answered an email question about a claim in one of his anti-ULEZ videos. In fairness, he never answered any question I have emailed him - while a made-up “Fluke Kelso” received a prompt response to his adoring email. Our MP appears to operate a “black list” of undeserving constituents. If I weren’t on it, I could ask Louie about AQAP - after all, as Bexley’s Cabinet Member for Growth, he was likely responsible for it before moving to Westminster.

Most of the anti-ULEZ noise has appeared to originate with the Conservative members of the London Assembly. There is a Russian expression about someone “getting fired from the Gestapo for cruelty”; adapting this saying to British realities, I could say that most Tory Assembly members could be fired from Boris Johnson’s cabinet for lying. The small group spent months inflating what they called #ULEZScandal, based on a set of falsehoods which spread across the Tory anti-ULEZ discourse. In the next post, let’s look at some of these lies.

ULEZ compliance Pollution levels Pollution levels

55% of light commercial vehicles registered in Bexley are not ULEZ compliant.
Seven years ago pollution levels on Bexley were not especially good.


I promised myself that I would avoid further comment so will confine myself to saying that Louie French should seriously consider firing his office assistant.

 

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