UK X: Who Wants To Live Forever

[Cassius_Smoke]

The may election is because every winter they lose a wave of Tory voters. May next year ensures that it's only 1 winters worth and not in the middle of the second wave.

[Neon Ignition]

They've got to survive this one first, I'm assuming in September they'll announce something like winter energy bills support for over 60's worth £1,000 per person. They'll support under 25's to stay warm by peeing on them in the street

[fuse]

It's weird to me seeing this assumption that all Londoners are up in arms about the ULEZ; a high proportion of us don't have cars, whereas one thing we do all have in common are lungs. Reducing the number of cars on the roads has a long-term environmental impact, but also improves our public transport, which tends to be a much higher priority to people who actually live here. That Harrow, further out into the suburbs with houses and driveways being more common, are willing to soil themselves in protest over green policies is not particularly surprising, nor representative of London as a whole in my mind. Sadly, it is also not surprising that current Labour leadership are panicking and trying to throw their own under a bus to try and distance themselves from anything at the first inkling of it being mildly unpopular.

[Anpanman]

They've got to survive this one first, I'm assuming in September they'll announce something like winter energy bills support for over 60's worth £1,000 per person. They'll support under 25's to stay warm by peeing on them in the street

That might be interesting, I'm wondering if Rishi boy could extend it to the over 59's.

[MartyG]

It's weird to me seeing this assumption that all Londoners are up in arms about the ULEZ; a high proportion of us don't have cars, whereas one thing we do all have in common are lungs.

It's classic nimby situation - people want something done, but only if it does not personally impact them.

Unfortunately, if you want to reduce the amount of climate change-inducing emissions, you're going to have to accept that means changes with how you live. It seems most folk are not prepared to do that at the moment.

[Neon Ignition]

The trouble with ULEZ's extension is that it's been handled incredibly poorly. The other issue is that it's a flawed scheme. If the sole aim is to reduce the polution within a X square miled radius over time then it will work but if it's to reduce pollution in total then it doesn't as all those offending cars eventually just make their way into other owners hands where they likely do more mileage than they already were. Likewise, public transport won't improve as a benefit either, Khan wants the money to try and fill the gaping black hole in London's finances.

Charging £12.50 a day to people who need to commute because they don't live in central London is completely counter productive to the supposed aims of the scheme. By charging so much they're taking all of the money from people that they would need in order to be able to afford to change to a compliant car. The costs are also going to flood through the pockets of those who don't pay ULEZ as well as businesses, tradesmen etc are just going to jack their prices up to compensate. They could have far more easily banned the non-compliant cars from 3-4 years from now giving owners enough advance notice to save and plan the switch rather than taking all their money off them but that would never be an option because then they wouldn't be raking in money for 2023's books.

The aim of clearing up pollution is worthy but as usual the approach is stupid and that's why their panicking now from a voter stand point. The numbers of people who are actively angry about ULEZ schemes will be a minority but because they feel the effects most directly they will vote on that basis, the majority who are indifferent won't vote on that basis so the attack lines on this have become easy. The line Starmer has to walk is that whilst he hard rides that centre left/right line that frustrates the left of the party, he's on the money in strategy because it isn't giving the Tories an inch to make any form of comeback attempt. The ULEZ expansion will definitely happen but it serves them worse if they let the Tories use it as a local tactic to win seats or even the Mayorship and pull it completely. As for Khan, the margin was so narrow Labour definitely could have swung it so it's hard to consider him having been thrown under a bus when he's had the audacity to call those with concerns about how they will survive financially alt-right sympathisers etc. There's tons of nuance to the debate but Khan has been singularly appalling at managing ULEZ and whilst the Tories are on the ropes Labour should 100% be concerned about losing the London Mayorship next year.

[MartyG]

. If the sole aim is to reduce the polution within a X square miled radius over time then it will work but if it's to reduce pollution in total then it doesn't as all those offending cars eventually just make their way into other owners hands where they likely do more mileage than they already were.

I find that a nonsense argument tbh - if the cars are not being used much and so not sitting in queues of traffic polluting, then there's no concern with paying a daily charge, after all, you're not using your car much or you can use alternative transport given the public transport connections in London are very good.

There's nothing to suggest that this happened when the ULEZ radius was smaller either, also if people are buying these cars then they're probably getting rid of older more polluting cars which would have offset all of this - ultimately there is a need to switch away from using fossil fuel-driven cars and moves like this along with no longer selling petrol cars will force improvements to the infrastructure needed for electric vehicles as the numbers grow. The price of these vehicles has reduced significantly too, it's quite possible to get a lease on a new electric car now for around £200-250 a month (and something I've been considering myself) then you'd pay no ULEZ at all (20 * £12.50 = £250), plus your savings from the cost of road tax and fuel.

[Neon Ignition]

But that's because the assumption is that people will stop using their car and switch to public transport thereby avoiding the charge, the wider a ULEZ zone expands the more it includes people who commute within the charge radius but aren't commuting into the very centre so the public transport links become worse. It's why charging has failed so much to take hold in Manchester. You can commute all you like all day in the centre but travelling from the outer ring to another point of the outer ring? Nah, and that's a much smaller area than London. The other issue is that whilst the cost of ULEZ can be weighted against the cost of car finance to balance out, it won't matter for most as they won't have the money available in the first place, instead they're facing huge costs on top of everything else that's financially slaughtering them right now. It's just too heavy handed with nowhere near enough planning and budgeting for supportive measures around it to transition its way through without being a vote killer.

I 100% think they can do it without causing so much commosion, it's Khan's lack of effort that's the issue. Less combative messaging, better guidance and support, reassurance that the goal posts aren't going to constantly move as a 100% electric car market isn't possible meaning automatic push back from those who are facing supposed looming deadlines and no plan. It's the take people with you argument and whilst I definitely agree that Starmer is taking advantage of the situation to try and protect future London region votes, Khan deserves the blame for this one, he could have done this so much better.

[MartyG]

There's no way of changing the way people use transport without disruption, not in the timeframe it needs to be done.

Nibbyism is a thing.

There are plenty of ways to expand infrastructure too - such as have more charging points at supermarkets for example, an incentive for supermarket chains to expand this as a draw to bring in people to its shops whilst the cars are charging (in much the same way having cheap fuel at supermarkets which never used to be a thing).

It just requires a bit of entrepreneurial thinking - those that get there first will get the larger share - those that don't move with this shift will, like the remnants of what created fossil fuels in the first place, become the dinosaurs.

I guarantee the horizon will look very different come 2030.

[Neon Ignition]

It is but the practicalities are often just factual also with real impacts that voters won;t budge on. We couldn't charge a car in our house, no amount of rejigging will change that and we don't even live in a complex structure like a block of flats or dense street etc. For commuting purposes charging points need to be far faster and insanely abundant in numbers which is something that is way behind the targeted timeline curve. But, as electric is necessary to meet ULEZ it still mostly rests on cost. Even with the ban on fossil fuel cars in 2030, they're going to be common on the road for decades to come and lead a massive surgence in second hand market sales in a few years time which emphasises how the planning should be more curved to ensure people do it without facing untoward hardship in the meantime and without doing it in such a way that it allows the Tories to dismantle it in the pursuit of votes.

[Protocol Penguin]

£12.50 for a daily commute? I pay almost half that daily for cramped, unreliable public transport here in Not-London. Forgive me for not exactly being full of sympathy for a load of affluent Londoners who don’t want to pay user taxes.

[Hirst]

It's a fair point to bring up that you can lease an electric car for £200-250 a month, but if you've got a non-compliant car you almost certainly own it outright and are currently paying nothing to keep it from disappearing off your driveway. Even if you can make some savings with fuel vs electric, road tax and whatever, it's certainly going to be a significant cost to your household budget. It also means any servicing or "your fault" repairs are confined to expensive main dealer networks, rather than when you own a car and you can just do what you like as it's your car, including servicing it yourself or just stopping using it (or even selling it).

I also think it's a fair point that some people can't or simply don't want to lease a car (I'm one of the latter), but also don't have thousands of pounds sat in their account to buy a ULEZ-compliant alternative.

[MartyG]

It is but the practicalities are often just factual also with real impacts that voters won;t budge on. We couldn't charge a car in our house, no amount of rejigging will change that and we don't even live in a complex structure like a block of flats or dense street etc.

I look out of my window and see driveways with 4 or 5 cars on them - these people drive to work, are you trying to tell me that it's not possible to install charging points at car parks at work, or in multistory car parks?

It's more than possible to resolve these things, anything else is an excuse to leave things at the status quo.

I don't believe that people need 4 or 5 cars per family. Want maybe, and that's most of the battle - people don't want to give up that convenience - it's schemes like this that ultimately force change and in this case I really do think it needs more stick than carrot.

[Lebowski]

It is but the practicalities are often just factual also with real impacts that voters won;t budge on. We couldn't charge a car in our house, no amount of rejigging will change that and we don't even live in a complex structure like a block of flats or dense street etc. For commuting purposes charging points need to be far faster and insanely abundant in numbers which is something that is way behind the targeted timeline curve. But, as electric is necessary to meet ULEZ it still mostly rests on cost. Even with the ban on fossil fuel cars in 2030, they're going to be common on the road for decades to come and lead a massive surgence in second hand market sales in a few years time which emphasises how the planning should be more curved to ensure people do it without facing untoward hardship in the meantime and without doing it in such a way that it allows the Tories to dismantle it in the pursuit of votes.

I don't think charging and waiting is practical for the masses, if suddenly tomorrow every car had to be electric, every service stations on the motorway would need massive carpark style lots where people would have to sit and wait for prolonged lengths of time to charge up. We kind of need a way to top up cars on the move, induction lanes or Solar based solutions that make electric match the range of a petrol car.

The swap-able battery model, where you roll up to a garage that's got racks of cells that are user swap-able would be one way to go to avoid the wait times, (current systems require the use of heavy duty loading equipment to swap out the battery and take about 5 minutes to do, so aren't exactly practical yet but faster than waiting for a car to charge.


it feels like another way that electric cars can work is too move away form ownership and have vehicles you rent on an as use basis I watched a video where in japan they have cheap car rental systems in place at train stations, you buy time via your phone and its all completely automated you unlock the car via an app and can drop it back at the same place when your finished or drop it off at one of their other depots.

[Hirst]

I think the non-ownership systems only work in societies where people are generally respectful of public amenities. It's like when somebody proposed the idea that transport could be done by pods that are driven remotely by AI, my first thoughts were "how do you stop someone taking a dump in it".