RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Ultra Low Emission Zones are the road to ruin

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Ultra Low Emission Zones aren’t saving the planet, they’re the road to ruin

The new Tory Transport Secretary could not have been more clear. ‘We will end the war on motorists,’ he promised.

Yes, cars would have to become greener, but there would be no punitive taxation linked to emissions, no road pricing and no new money for speed cameras.

That was in 2010, and the incoming transport supremo was none other than Philip Hammond, then posing as a Jaguar-driving champion of the people, before he morphed into Spread Fear Phil, scourge of the 17.4 million people who voted Leave.

Since then, far from ending, the war on motorists has escalated to the point where anyone owning a car is treated as a pariah, a cash cow to be herded into the gutter and milked at every opportunity.

On top of Hammond’s Treasury raking in the thick end of £40 billion a year from drivers, councils across Britain are carving out their pound of flesh.

From April, owners of older diesel vehicles will have to pay £24 a day to drive into Central London. The latest scam is an Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), costing £12.50, on top of the existing £11.50 congestion charge.

The new Central London ULEZ will come into force in April and cost £12.50 on top of £11.50 congestion charge. Lorry drivers will have to pay £100

That’s just for private cars, vans and minicabs. Lorry drivers will have to pay £100. London’s mayor Sadiq Khan might just as well ban vehicles altogether and grass over the area inside the M25.

This is the opposite of a ‘progressive’ tax. It will hit hardest those who can least afford it — white van man, pensioners, parents who don’t have the money to buy a new family car every couple of years.

Why should a plumber living in the outer suburbs have to pay £120 a week to ply his trade within Khan’s low emissions zone? What’s he supposed to do, lug a new boiler and half a dozen radiators on the Underground? Failure to pay the new charge, which will apply 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, will incur a fine of £160.

So an honest mistake could wipe out any profit a small tradesman might make.


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Look, those of us who live and work in London are well aware that traffic is a nightmare and air quality leaves much to be desired. But motorists are only partly responsible. Most of the blame lies with politicians like Khan, in thrall to fanatical anti-car, pro-bike, vegan headbangers, and always on the lookout for exciting ways to raise taxes.

Far from cutting congestion and improving air quality, they have made things ten times worse. Congestion has been created by thousands of extra traffic lights every few hundred yards, which only change to green long enough to let through a couple of cars before reverting to red, causing interminable tailbacks.

Cars stuck idling in these deliberately manufactured jams can’t help pumping out pollution. London is gridlocked as a direct result of the deranged obsession with building bike lanes, which for most of the day are practically deserted, forcing vehicles into ever-decreasing road space.

Empty, diesel-powered buses sit nose-to-tail for hours on end, churning their toxic fumes into the atmosphere. Yet the politicians’ solution is not to offer tax incentives or grants to encourage us all to switch to less-polluting, clean electric cars. Low-emission vehicles were once exempt from the congestion charge. Not any more.

How Transport for London is marketing the forthcoming changes on its own website

And remember how Gordon Brown, when Labour Chancellor, tinkered with tax rates to persuade us all to buy diesels, because ‘experts’ had decided they were cleaner than petrol cars?

Now a Labour mayor of London is hammering owners of diesel cars to force them off the road. It’s not about persuasion, it’s about punishment. Don’t try to kid me that public transport is a viable alternative for everyone. It’s horribly overcrowded, expensive and prone to strikes by Khan’s mates in the transport unions.

Please don’t think this is just about London. Across the United Kingdom, at least 20 cities are planning to introduce similar ULEZ schemes.

They include Aberdeen, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Reading, Southampton and York. Hull even came up with a plan to ban diesel taxis altogether.

Apologies to those I’ve missed out, but the next phase of the war on motorists is coming to a street near you soon.

The politicians haven’t thought through the unintended consequences of their actions, either.

Only recently, we were told that Jaguar Land Rover was in difficulties (blamed, naturally, on Brexit).

Dig down and you soon discover that one of the biggest problems the company is facing, along with a drop in demand in China, is that sales of diesel models have fallen off a cliff. How many jobs in the British car industry does the determination of politicians to destroy the market for diesels put at risk?

Then there’s the knock-on effect the anti-car lobby is having on the retail sector, already struggling in the face of online competition and sky-high taxes.

Yesterday it was reported that 175,000 shop workers are staring down the barrel of redundancy this year as more big-name chain-stores face bankruptcy.

Yet who is going to shop in London’s Oxford Street, or the centre of any of our cities, if it costs them £24 a day to drive there. Councils have soaked motorists for years, imposing outrageous parking charges and hiring legions of traffic wardens to pounce on anyone lingering for a few seconds on a yellow line while they pick up a paper or prescription.

Businesses have been complaining constantly about this vindictive approach. Many have gone bust as a result of the subsequent loss of custom.

There are even plans to force people who park their cars at work to pay £1,000 a year in tax for the privilege, in the name of tackling pollution. Ker-ching!

No wonder the AA is calling it the ‘poll tax on wheels’.

Let’s agree that we need to do something to improve air quality. But if the politicians are serious, they should try a little more carrot and less stick.

For instance, rather than picking our pockets at every opportunity, the Treasury could use some of the £40 billion it raises in vehicle excise and fuel duties to offer tax breaks, or a new scrappage scheme, to drivers who switch to low-emission cars.

Better still, the Government could cancel the absurdly expensive HS2 vanity project, currently costing taxpayers £56 billion and rising — up by 70 per cent from its original estimate — and put the money into improving the roads and railways we already have.

And remind me, who was it who approved HS2 when he was Transport Secretary? Oh, yes, that would be Spread Fear Phil, the motorists’ friend.

Parp, parp!

There’s nothing our cartoonist Gary likes more than barmy wildlife stories 

 It may have been Blue Monday yesterday, the most depressing day of the year so far, but one man was a happy bunny.

There’s nothing our cartoonist Gary likes more than barmy wildlife stories and he was spoiled for choice. He’s already drawn the Thames eels on cocaine, 18 months ago, so that was a non-starter. But along came a bunch of scientists saying that street lights should be switched off to allow moths to pollinate at night.

Never mind that the rest of us will be plunged into darkness. But, on the other hand, we won’t be plagued by birdsong. A letter from a reader in the Sunday Telegraph claimed that since LED lights had been installed in her street, the birds won’t shut up. The other night she heard a full Deliverance-style duel between some songbirds and an owl.

In other bird news, a wounded magpie called Lucky, nursed by locals in Penzance, Cornwall, has repaid their kindness by attacking children after being released back into the wild.

Lucky nearly had a little girl’s eye out, and a father said the magpie attempted GBH on his ankles when he went to protect his four-year-old son.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy . . .

Gary, it’s over to you.

Sponsor a nag, win a nosebag

During the Falklands War, Private Eye ran a spoof competition: Kill an Argie and win a Metro! That’s obviously where Merseyside Police got the idea for their latest wheeze: Sponsor a police horse and win dinner with the Chief Constable!

As part of a fund-raising scheme, corporate sponsors are invited to pay to name a horse after their company, emblazon their logo on the horse’s saddle and, for the lucky winner, have a meal with the Chief Constable at Aintree Racecourse.

Another one I don’t know whether to file under Mind How You Go or You Couldn’t Make It Up.

If Jeremy Corbyn was serious about repudiating anti-Semitism in his party, he should have attended the funeral in Hertfordshire of six unknown victims of Auschwitz.

After all, he always seems keen to honour terrorists who kill Jews.   

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