BPX075: Turning Red 2

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newslondon/ulez-expansion-sadiq-khan-asks-rishi-sunak-for-110m-to-double-scrappage-scheme/ar-AA17Q5WI

Sadiq Khan has often been a debated figure for London residents, London Mayors having a history of making large decisions for the city whilst also wading into party politics where they don't belong.

Khan's latest furore is over a plan to effectively extend the ULEZ zone to the edges of the London boroughs. This has caused a massive uproar as the scheme will come into effect this August and will charge owners of affected vehicles £12.50 per day. However, the scheme is based on the types and age of the vehicle, not on the emission test results taken from MOT's meaning that large numbers of low emmission vehicles will fall foul of the rules whilst some higher emmission ones will have exemption due to the way they're classified.

To promote the scheme a scrappage scheme is being implemented of £2,000 toward replacing your vehicle. However, given the costs of replacing cars, small businesses being affected, haulage drivers who live in the heavily residential regions - many are looking at having been suddenly threatened to find £10,000-£180,000 to replace their vehicles or be fined every single day simply for living where they do. Khan has also implemented the scrappage scheme without properly budgeting for it and has approached Rishi Sunak to request £110m to help to fund it.

Khan has implemented the zone extension without carrying out consultations and has rebuked criticism by saying that anyone who objects is akin to those who opposed banning smoking indoors.

Tories object to the extension citing the lack of consultation as an issue and that Khan won't fund the scrappage scheme using the £188m tax windfall London received this year that is instead being used to fund school meals to all children in London un-means tested for a limited 12 month window. They also want the scheme to be delayed two years so that Khan has to campaign to the public for re-election under it, reverse Khan's £40 council tax rise and divert money to funding zero emission buses instead.

Last time we discussed whether Labour had done enough to vote for them in the face of the Tory implosion we've suffered the last few years.

This time we're inverting that question for the specific scenario that London presents when considering schemes like the above and the other decisions Khan has made compared to that of his Tory predecessors.

Given Labour looks likely to take back Government in 2024, should they retain London or is it the one key location where the Tories might actually be better off in charge of?

[Neon Ignition]

I've always had the sense from Khan, given how often he's been on radio etc, that he's very much a career politician. Likely someone who saw being London mayor as an opportunity for himself akin to how Johnson made the leap to PM. Only now, Labour has had a huge bounce back meaning his window of opportunity has gone and he's frustrated that his moment will only ever peak at this.

[wakka]

Well if we're asking whether I'd prefer Khan or that idiot Shaun Bailey, then that's a nice easy one.

The ULEZ extension is a more difficult question. I hate the fact that it will create additional hardship for people in outer boroughs and I think the timing, mid-term for Khan, feels politically expedient. But London's air quality is bad and kills thousands of people a year. And the percentage of non-compliant vehicles is actually pretty low now. I don't know. It's tricky.

[gunrock]

Extra charges are **** - when I emptied my Mum's house in 2021 we used a Tourneo (a Transit with passenger seats) and I drove the usual route from her house to Dartford and unbeknownst to me, drove into a low-emmisions zone and because I didn't know it was there, thus missed my chance to pay. Two-weeks after we got home to Denmark, I got a 1000 quid fine The zone is only marked by a 45×30cm sign on a lamppost at the side of a busy dual carriageway, so easy to miss. And although it's been there for years, I've only ever driven normal cars in my 25 years of driving in that area, thus wasn't thinking like a mini-van driver.

So on that scale, it sucks for ordinary people, but the pollution is terrible. For SE London/Kent, the Elizabeth line is great but the public transport services to mid-Kent and beyond are still rubbish.

They should charge lorries and vans extra and exclude passenger vehicles, tbh, unless they overhaul the public transport system.

[Neon Ignition]

Fines are just an admission of failure. The whole thing needs reviewing and long term strategy put in place because it's designed around failure. If everyone made the switch to electric and the pollution vanished there'd be no need at all for a charge but you can bet it would keep going up instead. Charging fixes nothing, much faster to diversify business etc out of London.

[Anpanman]

Good point. In addition whilst recognising that the capital does have a pollution issue it isn't in fleet operators interests (or the planet's) to have EV's in London as they don't turn the miles the same as they would outside the M25.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, it all has an in built shelf life if the transition to electric goes ahead and yet the plan is to ramp it up not down in the coming years. I'd love to know what the future justification for a charge would be

[Asura]

For charges like [MENTION=278]gunrock[/MENTION] 's, you'd think it'd make sense if you could break them for free once every 24 months. So you get a warning, not a fine, mainly for the benefits of people new to the area.

But of course, these things aren't usually really to improve people's lives; they're often really just a tax. It's like a while back - I might have the years wrong, but I think it was ~97-2012 - when speeding tickets were changed to specifically go to the council & police force that issued them. Suddenly you have the police setting up speed traps in loads of places where they knew they could catch people out. There was a dramatic rise in tickets issued.

On the one hand, those people were speeding. But it misses the point of the exercise. The whole point of speed limits is for the public good, to reduce accidents and make the roads safer, not to catch people out like some kind of playground game.

Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and I believe, now, the police can only put a speed trap in a location where they can justify its placement as conducive to the public good.