It is hardly news that Volkswagen AG has been systematically murdering children across London for the best part of a decade. The mendacious German car manufacturer has been pumping kids full of nitrogen oxides till their little lungs look like black balloons in a helium factory. Politicians are outraged; why not? What better subject to outrage an MP that the deliberate infanticide of a whole generation of decent young people by a glowering Germanic monster that once worked hand-in-glove with the Hitler regime *. Poison air is about the very worst thing that can happen right? Like turning the whole world into a giant gas chamber, and if that sounds a little excitable/libelous, it really isn’t that far from the truth. It might not be as immediate as ZyKlon B, but in lying about its emissions, Volkswagen – and the German connection is admittedly unfortunate – has purposefully poisoned vast chunks of the population in a grim pursuit of profit, leaving Londoners gasping for breath under a city-wide cloud of rancid toxicity.
But what to do about it? How to remedy London's horrible air pollution? Hmmm, well, first up, and pre-dating Volkswagen’s heinous admission, came the Congestion Charge, perhaps the only genuine policy to try and stimmy the grotesque clogging of the capital’s arteries and one implemented by a man riddled with such a deep sense of integrity and conviction that no one in their right minds would ever trust him. Livingstone was a Nazi sympathiser and a holocaust denier if his critics are to be believed, but that doesn’t change the fact that his congestion charge was implemented for something like the right reasons, only to be shamelessly high-jacked by cheap lazy hacks looking to bolster their environmental credentials by turning it into a bargaining chip to promote electric vehicles. Congestion and pollution are not synonymous and the congestion charge was just that; a city congested with electric cars is still congested and the shanghaiing of what should have been a truly revolutionary policy for Londoners was in itself a deeply cynical deal.
Which brings us round nicely to the planned extension of London's Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) and the pit of hypocrisy that belies it (the real subject of this blog; sorry Volkswagen, I just wanted to stick the boot in while I had the chance).
The extension of ULEZ should be a good thing; a great cleansing of the capital’s toxic tributaries. Given the severity of the problem, any move towards reducing pollution in London should be cheered with gusto. And that is exactly how the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, will phrase it when it is unleashed upon an already impoverished population in about three years’ time.
After all, who in their right minds would argue against a policy designed to save babies? Nazi’s maybe? And motorists of course. They fall under the same grouping in the divisive world of environmental politics. Motorists are the jack-booted thugs of this age of concern, and drivers of diesel vehicles are the new SS. Evil in a way only those born under a great twisted star of hatred can be.
But there is hope, even for these death-mongers; fall to your knees and sign up to the extended ULEZ with no questions asked, scrap your car, and enjoy salvation in a new London, pure like God intended.
Well maybe not, because Khan is still pushing for a third runway at Gatwick - London needs the business. And therein lies the rub, the great agitator; you cannot square environmentalism and capitalism; never the twain and all that. ELUZ will help reduce toxicity by forcing the most polluting cars off the road, but that policy is profoundly undermined by the political desire to maintain cheap city breaks to Barcelona.
Air travel is terrible for the environment and adding another runway at Gatwick or Heathrow is very much a terrible thing to do if you genuinely want to improve things from an environmental perspective. But it is very good for business, tourism, and wealth in general. And anything that stands in the way of that has to be bad for London right? Bad in way that is far worse than watching your eight-year-old’s lungs turn to coal. Charging people with little choice to use the roads under ULEZ is a lot easier in about 150 ways than stemming the wave of Chinese tourism that helps fund policing. But it is not more beneficial in terms of the environment. No one is trialling electric planes.
It is far easier to impose another tax on motorists who can barely afford to get to work anyway and who certainly can’t afford to buy a brand new, emission-free car, even under scrappage scheme conditions.
ULEZ is a grand gesture at the expense of poor people when London really needs either a series of small gestures that support poor people or a grand gesture that fucks everyone, including big business and airports, and blasts London back to a time when hunter gatherers could roam across the Great North Wood safe from the fear of pollution but without the comfort of iPads, cars and houses.
That is a big ask and one that very few politicians would advocate, at least publically. It is almost as crazy of spending big on public transport. Why bother to do that when you have a population resigned to squeezing into late, over-crowded carriages each morning with barely an audible wail of frustration?
Politicians – and I hate to use that word in such a sweeping context, but this isn’t the place to be fair on those few individuals whose integrity is the exception that proves the rule – are consistently damning in their condemnation of those who reject public transport, but think for a moment what would be the consequence if everyone in London woke up one morning and took them at their word, abandoned their cars and motorcycles, loaded up their Oyster cards and joined the queuing ranks of soon to be very, very late commuters. London would grind to a halt in about three hours. It is a ludicrous request and politicians understand full well that it will never happen. That’s why they continually ask us to do it; so they can be seen to be doing the right thing without having to deal with the consequences.
There is a lot of money to be made in selling cars and petrol (or diesel, or electricity); it is a far better return than investing in a more public-transport-orientated infrastructure. At least for Volkswagen, BP, Shell, Vauxhall and all the other vested interests that lobby and influence our elected representatives and who outright lie about things like emissions in the full knowledge that doing so will result in people dying. Volkswagen got hit with a $20 billion ‘settlement’ for that little indiscretion in the US; but in Europe, where emissions standards are more lax, it isn’t paying a penny/euro. It can fix the problem easily it says, with a quick anti-lie software update **, so it is unfair that it should have to pay out in compensation. Never mind that your children will, for the rest of their lives, be filtering their oxygen through two barely permeable charcoaled lumps; never mind too, that those same politicians so keen to promote a green agenda took Volkswagen at its word when asked: “are you sure those things are safe?”
“Heilig Scheiße!!! Ve explained all zis in our previous email; EVERYZING IS FINE; LEAVE US ALONE”.
“Er, ok, sorry ‘bout that. Thanks for clarifying; auf wiedersehen baby”.
You would have to be pretty dumb, or horribly corrupt, to take a car manufacturer at its word, right? And then pretty hypocritical if, a few years later, you started demanding everyone who bought those cars scrapped them because you were too ignorant/lazy/duplicitous to check the methodology.
Yes, pretty dumb indeed….
There is no easy solution to this godawful mess; our politicians should have stamped on the problem about 30 years ago, but they are corrupt and we are indolent and so it goes on. ULEZ isn’t the answer, not in itself; it will alienate those people already struggling to cope with life in the age of austerity. You don’t fret over polar bears when you can’t afford to feed your kids.
There are only two options: keep pressing on into the void, with populist policies softening the blow; or grab the bull by its frankly enormous fucking horns, invest massively in public transport, promote flexible working hours and home working, and heavily subsidise bicycles, scooters and motorcycles. Encourage two-wheeled travel, ban cars entirely from ULEZ. And close down all but one runway at Heathrow, City and Gatwick for emergency flights only. People can always holiday in Rye.
Now there are some truly unpopular, radical and genuinely effective policies that no mayor in his right mind would ever promote publically; hell, even slurring something remotely similar in a deep alcoholic stupor on the way out of some strip club in Mayfair would have his aids reaching for their concealed Glocks for fear some passing journalist might catch wind of ‘The Mayor’s Great Betrayal’.
Anyway....I should add a word on motorcycles right? I am after all, mostly renowned for my popular writing on the subject, famous and infamous worldwide according to Amazon’s sales data, which shows my books have sold in single digits across three continents. This makes me ‘an authority’, at least in this age of ubiquitous authority.
It won’t take much because the truth is so evident only a truly cowardly politician would try to deny it; motorcycles reduce congestion; they contribute such a miniscule amount to pollution that their use should be cheered and their riders’ lauded as the new demi-gods of the green age. But that would not go down well with the many car owners recently taxed into oblivion. It is not a popular notion. And politics is nothing if it’s not popular. So fuck ‘em; charge ‘em; screw ‘em. It could be a slogan of our times….
If I had my way, I’d ban all vehicles other than bicycles, scooters and motorcycles from ULEZ and 70 miles further out and incarcerate anyone at the controls of a vehicle with more wheels than they have lungs. But that won’t happen because Volkswagen and its ilk doesn’t make bicycles, not affordable ones for the common people - which is ironic given its heritage - and if it did, it’d probably fill them full of rat poison anyway. So it’s hard to imagine the air quality in London, or any other place else with roads, becoming any cleaner, no matter how big ULEZ gets.
*I reserve the right to throw the ‘Hitler’ bomb in this instance because what Volkswagen did in lying about its emissions was truly evil and it has got off something like scot free; so fuck them.
** seriously, that is pretty much its explanation - that it won’t be too arduous to meet Europe’s sloppy standards with a software update and so all those people who purchased its vehicles based on little more than open lies should not be so petty and mean-spirited as to expect compensation even though their cars are now worth diddly squat; and it shouldn’t be fined either, that would not be fair.
But what to do about it? How to remedy London's horrible air pollution? Hmmm, well, first up, and pre-dating Volkswagen’s heinous admission, came the Congestion Charge, perhaps the only genuine policy to try and stimmy the grotesque clogging of the capital’s arteries and one implemented by a man riddled with such a deep sense of integrity and conviction that no one in their right minds would ever trust him. Livingstone was a Nazi sympathiser and a holocaust denier if his critics are to be believed, but that doesn’t change the fact that his congestion charge was implemented for something like the right reasons, only to be shamelessly high-jacked by cheap lazy hacks looking to bolster their environmental credentials by turning it into a bargaining chip to promote electric vehicles. Congestion and pollution are not synonymous and the congestion charge was just that; a city congested with electric cars is still congested and the shanghaiing of what should have been a truly revolutionary policy for Londoners was in itself a deeply cynical deal.
Which brings us round nicely to the planned extension of London's Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) and the pit of hypocrisy that belies it (the real subject of this blog; sorry Volkswagen, I just wanted to stick the boot in while I had the chance).
The extension of ULEZ should be a good thing; a great cleansing of the capital’s toxic tributaries. Given the severity of the problem, any move towards reducing pollution in London should be cheered with gusto. And that is exactly how the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, will phrase it when it is unleashed upon an already impoverished population in about three years’ time.
After all, who in their right minds would argue against a policy designed to save babies? Nazi’s maybe? And motorists of course. They fall under the same grouping in the divisive world of environmental politics. Motorists are the jack-booted thugs of this age of concern, and drivers of diesel vehicles are the new SS. Evil in a way only those born under a great twisted star of hatred can be.
But there is hope, even for these death-mongers; fall to your knees and sign up to the extended ULEZ with no questions asked, scrap your car, and enjoy salvation in a new London, pure like God intended.
Well maybe not, because Khan is still pushing for a third runway at Gatwick - London needs the business. And therein lies the rub, the great agitator; you cannot square environmentalism and capitalism; never the twain and all that. ELUZ will help reduce toxicity by forcing the most polluting cars off the road, but that policy is profoundly undermined by the political desire to maintain cheap city breaks to Barcelona.
Air travel is terrible for the environment and adding another runway at Gatwick or Heathrow is very much a terrible thing to do if you genuinely want to improve things from an environmental perspective. But it is very good for business, tourism, and wealth in general. And anything that stands in the way of that has to be bad for London right? Bad in way that is far worse than watching your eight-year-old’s lungs turn to coal. Charging people with little choice to use the roads under ULEZ is a lot easier in about 150 ways than stemming the wave of Chinese tourism that helps fund policing. But it is not more beneficial in terms of the environment. No one is trialling electric planes.
It is far easier to impose another tax on motorists who can barely afford to get to work anyway and who certainly can’t afford to buy a brand new, emission-free car, even under scrappage scheme conditions.
ULEZ is a grand gesture at the expense of poor people when London really needs either a series of small gestures that support poor people or a grand gesture that fucks everyone, including big business and airports, and blasts London back to a time when hunter gatherers could roam across the Great North Wood safe from the fear of pollution but without the comfort of iPads, cars and houses.
That is a big ask and one that very few politicians would advocate, at least publically. It is almost as crazy of spending big on public transport. Why bother to do that when you have a population resigned to squeezing into late, over-crowded carriages each morning with barely an audible wail of frustration?
Politicians – and I hate to use that word in such a sweeping context, but this isn’t the place to be fair on those few individuals whose integrity is the exception that proves the rule – are consistently damning in their condemnation of those who reject public transport, but think for a moment what would be the consequence if everyone in London woke up one morning and took them at their word, abandoned their cars and motorcycles, loaded up their Oyster cards and joined the queuing ranks of soon to be very, very late commuters. London would grind to a halt in about three hours. It is a ludicrous request and politicians understand full well that it will never happen. That’s why they continually ask us to do it; so they can be seen to be doing the right thing without having to deal with the consequences.
There is a lot of money to be made in selling cars and petrol (or diesel, or electricity); it is a far better return than investing in a more public-transport-orientated infrastructure. At least for Volkswagen, BP, Shell, Vauxhall and all the other vested interests that lobby and influence our elected representatives and who outright lie about things like emissions in the full knowledge that doing so will result in people dying. Volkswagen got hit with a $20 billion ‘settlement’ for that little indiscretion in the US; but in Europe, where emissions standards are more lax, it isn’t paying a penny/euro. It can fix the problem easily it says, with a quick anti-lie software update **, so it is unfair that it should have to pay out in compensation. Never mind that your children will, for the rest of their lives, be filtering their oxygen through two barely permeable charcoaled lumps; never mind too, that those same politicians so keen to promote a green agenda took Volkswagen at its word when asked: “are you sure those things are safe?”
“Heilig Scheiße!!! Ve explained all zis in our previous email; EVERYZING IS FINE; LEAVE US ALONE”.
“Er, ok, sorry ‘bout that. Thanks for clarifying; auf wiedersehen baby”.
You would have to be pretty dumb, or horribly corrupt, to take a car manufacturer at its word, right? And then pretty hypocritical if, a few years later, you started demanding everyone who bought those cars scrapped them because you were too ignorant/lazy/duplicitous to check the methodology.
Yes, pretty dumb indeed….
There is no easy solution to this godawful mess; our politicians should have stamped on the problem about 30 years ago, but they are corrupt and we are indolent and so it goes on. ULEZ isn’t the answer, not in itself; it will alienate those people already struggling to cope with life in the age of austerity. You don’t fret over polar bears when you can’t afford to feed your kids.
There are only two options: keep pressing on into the void, with populist policies softening the blow; or grab the bull by its frankly enormous fucking horns, invest massively in public transport, promote flexible working hours and home working, and heavily subsidise bicycles, scooters and motorcycles. Encourage two-wheeled travel, ban cars entirely from ULEZ. And close down all but one runway at Heathrow, City and Gatwick for emergency flights only. People can always holiday in Rye.
Now there are some truly unpopular, radical and genuinely effective policies that no mayor in his right mind would ever promote publically; hell, even slurring something remotely similar in a deep alcoholic stupor on the way out of some strip club in Mayfair would have his aids reaching for their concealed Glocks for fear some passing journalist might catch wind of ‘The Mayor’s Great Betrayal’.
Anyway....I should add a word on motorcycles right? I am after all, mostly renowned for my popular writing on the subject, famous and infamous worldwide according to Amazon’s sales data, which shows my books have sold in single digits across three continents. This makes me ‘an authority’, at least in this age of ubiquitous authority.
It won’t take much because the truth is so evident only a truly cowardly politician would try to deny it; motorcycles reduce congestion; they contribute such a miniscule amount to pollution that their use should be cheered and their riders’ lauded as the new demi-gods of the green age. But that would not go down well with the many car owners recently taxed into oblivion. It is not a popular notion. And politics is nothing if it’s not popular. So fuck ‘em; charge ‘em; screw ‘em. It could be a slogan of our times….
If I had my way, I’d ban all vehicles other than bicycles, scooters and motorcycles from ULEZ and 70 miles further out and incarcerate anyone at the controls of a vehicle with more wheels than they have lungs. But that won’t happen because Volkswagen and its ilk doesn’t make bicycles, not affordable ones for the common people - which is ironic given its heritage - and if it did, it’d probably fill them full of rat poison anyway. So it’s hard to imagine the air quality in London, or any other place else with roads, becoming any cleaner, no matter how big ULEZ gets.
*I reserve the right to throw the ‘Hitler’ bomb in this instance because what Volkswagen did in lying about its emissions was truly evil and it has got off something like scot free; so fuck them.
** seriously, that is pretty much its explanation - that it won’t be too arduous to meet Europe’s sloppy standards with a software update and so all those people who purchased its vehicles based on little more than open lies should not be so petty and mean-spirited as to expect compensation even though their cars are now worth diddly squat; and it shouldn’t be fined either, that would not be fair.
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