A rather naive take that ignores a lot of history.
I drive a diesel 2016 VW Passat. A very "average" car by UK standards. My car does not qualify for the ULEZ and I'd have to pay the toll. I don't drive a giant gas guzzling truck. Not do I drive a 20 year old banger. I drive a "responsible" family sedan. Yet this is not enough to escape the toll.
When I bought that car, diesel cars were heavily favoured as the more environmentally friendly option by the government. People were encouraged to buy them, there were subsidies and various incentives to buy a car like mine. Then Dieselgate hit and everyone went running away from diesel.
Now consider that the government is extending the ULEZ to cover a huge area including millions of people. Those people are all being told "cough up £12.50 EVERY DAY or buy a BRAND NEW, expensive car". Well, not everyone has 20 grand to drop on a new electric, so they're just shit out of luck. 12.50 is an hour of their salary post taxes. That's an HOUR every day that poor people need to work extra, just for the privilege of getting to and from work.
How angry would you be if you were forced to work an extra hour a day just for the privilege of getting in and out of your own neighbourhood?
Also, regarding your take on public transport; public transport is great in central London. If you go to any of the neighbouring towns, where the ULEZ is being extended to, it's a different story. Train lines only go one direction: towards London. If you're going from town A to town B and public transport is your only option, you may find yourself needing to go into London and then back out again. That takes a long time and is very expensive. People need cars to get places in those towns. Also, as someone who recently became a parent; public transport and infants do not mix well.
In short; it's a tax on the poor (doubly so for people with small children), with a side order of revisionist history punishing those made responsible purchasing choices 5 years ago.
> Train lines only go one direction: towards London. If you're going from town A to town B and public transport is your only option, you may find yourself needing to go into London and then back out again.
This plagues public transport in a lot of countries.
Want to go with public transport in 2 neighboring towns ? You might need to go a couple of tens of kilometers through another town because there is no direct connection.
(Context, I'm already within the ulez. I can see the boundary from my house.)
The diesel fraud over the last couple of decades is really unfortunate. It's messed over a lot of people and caused a bunch of needless environmental harm in the meantime.
But you don't need to get a new 20k electric car. You can get a cheap second hand petrol car of probably the same age. A quick Google shows your car is worth 10-15k, so you have some good equity for a better ulez car, of which there are plenty in that price range.
Selling a car is a faff and it sucks, but the ulez is designed to change behaviours, it wouldn't be effective of it didn't effect people.
More cops! More traffic stops and checkpoints! More inspections and fees!
No wait fuck nobody likes any of that.
Okay what about buyback programs. What about trade ins. What about tax breaks and government subsidies for buying newer vehicles with less hem fuel emissions? What if instead of paying to enforce a law, you paid to change the conditions that lead to the problems that the law was created to address in the first place?
Every tax break is a tax increase for someone else. Buying polluting vehicles would encourage people to buy harmful things because they would expect the government would eventually pay them off (or equivalently would discourage people from buying less polluting vehicles early, lest they miss out on a bailout).
It depends on who controls the cameras, but yes generally every added means of surveillance by a centralized power takes us closer to an Orwellian society.
anti-theft cameras less so, because they are controlled by individual people, but as seen with Ring doorbells, the government can still access them, so it's pretty creepy.
> People are of course entitled to show their opposition to policies peacefully and lawfully
The law was and is violently imposed on people in an escalating fashion usually by the police but sometimes by the security services, there is no evidence anyone has agreed to the law, there is no contract that anyone has signed, its not even taught in schools. And the useful idiots most notably Americans keep espousing they live a life of freedom...
The law is a con trick by people who can organise themselves, so politicians like Theresa May argue about the spirit of the law, just what is she pontificating? These blade runners are following the spirit of the law, they are taking a leaf out of the law abiding book, by taking matters into their own hands like Peelers did centuries ago, and maybe might resort to violence if they choose to organise themselves more, perhaps even with uniforms that might include a high vis jacket and sign written van to subconsciously command obedience to authority from unsuspecting members of the public who have psychology resigned themselves to the warfare called law imposed on people, who know what is what but dont know what is what, they just strut.
>there is no evidence anyone has agreed to the law, there is no contract that anyone has signed
How about: "the government built and owns the roads, and now decided to enact a fee for using said road"? Or do you think that the concept of property rights don't apply to you unless you signed a contract? In which case, I would like to know where you live, because I haven't signed any contract binding me to the concept of property rights :^)
If the govt built and owns the roads, where did it get its money from? Did it steal the money using force and called their criminal activities Taxation?
If the govt cant exert psychological coercion on the populace, ie the useful lazy idiots who want a quiet life, then it just resorts to a variety of forms of violence, some stealth some not so stealth.
I dont own any property but I'm sure you would like to demonstrate that violence always win.
https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/ule...