By TONY MOBILIFONITIS
WORLD Economic Forum lap dog Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, is now being openly defied by Londoners and others who are refusing to pay £218m worth of fines for unpaid ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) charges.
Kahn and his gang of corporate racketeers at Transport for London, have extorted millions of dollars from Londoners and out-of-towners by imposing a fraudulent “air pollution” tax in the form of instant charges on older vehicles.
But Londoners have been fighting back. People calling themselves Bladerunners have been bravely cutting down hundreds of ULEZ cameras across the city for the past few years and now they are thumbing their noses at the automatically generated fines sent on behalf of faceless bureaucrats.
These bureaucrats pay contractors to go out an install the cameras on their behalf, subjecting them to abuse from angry locals who have to pay the charges. The contractors now wear face masks. Mayor Kahn, of course, deliberately ignores this because the political elite do not “give oxygen” to the street-level action by angry proles.
The Telegraph reported one of the Bladerunners. Matt Hardy, as describing Kahn as “a little rat”. “Have some of that,” he said, referring to shots of toppled camera poles. “It’s people pissed off about the tyranny reigning over us and getting out and doing things about it – real votes, real boys here.”
Kahn, from an Islamic Pakistani family, invites the “little rat” description because of his often emotionless, bland, but deceptive visage, hiding the elitist, ruthless power broker he really is. He is referenced on a WEF web page as a “WEF agenda contributor”.
He has a long political career with the Labor Party and occupied key shadow cabinet positions under the nominally Jewish neo-Marxist Labor Party leader Ed Miliband before getting elected as London Mayor in 2016. Kahn appears more Marxist than Islamic which would explain his adherence to the WEF.
Meanwhile, people driving into ULEZ zones are charged a minimum £12.50 (AUD$24) per day if their vehicles do not meet certain strict emission standards. Electric and newer model vehicles, of course, are not charged.
Transport for London website oozes sleazy, condescending Orwellian language: “We prefer that you drive a vehicle that meets the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) emissions standards so you don’t need to pay the charge. If you do need to pay, charging days run from midnight to midnight, every day of the year (except Christmas Day).” How charitable.
One can imaging a lot of Londoners responding by saying “We prefer you just eff off and let us drive our cars where and when we like without being penalised by bureaucratic leeches sitting behind screens in plush offices extorting money from people for the sake of some BS about creating a greener planet.”
Kahn repeatedly and brazenly lies to the public that these charges have resulted in “thousands of lives” being saved from pollution-related deaths, when in fact only one Londoner has died from issues related to air pollution, and that case is disputed as well.
The charges have been devastating for small business owners in the zones, that were extended to outer suburbs last August. There has been sharply reduced traffic, especially among people with older vehicles, who are obviously unwilling to pay $24 to go to a shop in an ULEZ zone.
Claire Dyer, from Oxted, Surrey, on the south west outskirts of London, told the BBC she had seen massive impacts from the ULEZ charges, which were the nail in the coffin for struggling small businesses on High Street. So a key player for the WEF is running a scheme that destroys small businesses? No surprises there.
She said many people were caught unawares by the system, which allows only three days to pay. In addition it was disputed that the charge qualified as a tax, as it was more accurately described as a service charge, but signs did not advertise this and thus were also seen as illegal.
According to statistics obtained by a Freedom of Information request, seven in 10 drivers fined by Transport for London (TfL) have failed to pay the £180 (AUD$346) charge with almost one million fines outstanding.
The Daily Express reported that outstanding fines or those which remained unpaid after a month totalled £218,316,553 owed to Transport for London. One driver has clocked up 200 fines and owes £47,682. Drivers who have failed to pay the £12.50-a-day levy have received an average of 12 fines.
Andy Lord, a fat cat Transport for London commissioner (yes, another one of them) told the media the Londonwide ULEZ would deliver “very significant” improvements to air quality, as if the average Londoner could give a damn about what is in reality is slightly improved air quality.
The fat cat predictably suggested the first analysis of the impact of the ULEZ expansion on roadside pollution, due this month, would justify Khan’s decision to widen the zone across Greater London last August, generating more than £160m in levies and fines by April.
As expected Lord went on to spout PR pap and drivel aboout “the impacts and benefits of the ultra-low emission zone expansion”. “We already know from our own data that the number of compliant vehicles has increased, and therefore by default the air quality should have improved.”
A spokesman for Transport for London was stupid enough to tell the Express that ULEZ was “not about raising money” and would “lead to cleaner air while generating ever smaller net revenues, as has been the case with the previous expansion to inner London where people switched to greener vehicles.”
This is the diabolical intent of the scheme: forcing people to buy expensive electric or hybrid vehicles and making older vehicles more expensive to maintain, thereby forcing low-income people on to public transport. This is also the policy of the Albanese Labor government under the “net zero” insanity also being pushed by Mayor Kahn.
Kahn, who is widely hated, in typical Labor Party (vote rigging?) fashion, won re-election for the third time last month, sparking a new wave of attacks by the Bladerunner group on ULEZ cameras across the city.