What London's mayor learned when he took on the cars | Hacker News Reader

What London's mayor learned when he took on the cars

politico.eu

14 pointscassianoleal8 comments

A flat tax is deeply unfair, it allows those that have the money to do what they want, while limiting those that don't.

It's actually doubly unfair, since the rich pollute much more than the poor and even the middle class.

Far better to replace car lanes with bike lanes and bus/tram lines while removing parking. Making the downtown pedestrian only also works well.

Oh yeah and ban SUVs. Those things are killers.

This is just a tax.

The air quality in London has been tested and proven that it is good. The air quality in the Underground has been tested as dangerous.

People are not dying because of air quality. They are dying because of crime that he is responsible for (especially knife crime), eating bad food and the stress of living in "his London".

Get Kahn out.

The fact that a clearly beneficial policy is hindered by the democratic process proves that democracy itself has real limits.

The story about the vote was obvious BS, it was just a talking point to distract from them losing in other votes and very nearly losing this one.

If you add the Labour and Green party votes they exceed the "winner", so really it's about a lack of democracy holding back progress.

> A watchdog group called Valent found evidence anti-ULEZ posts may have been boosted by thousands of alleged fake Twitter accounts. No source of funding to buy the accounts was identified.

> The online campaign was matched with a blizzard of leaflets, delivered through doors in West London. One, from the Conservative Party, falsely claimed that air pollution had increased during Khan’s tenure. Some of these, of untraceable origin, promoted conspiracy theories that claimed ULEZ was part of a plot to lock Londoners into their immediate neighborhoods.

> The ULEZ expansion was facing a legal challenge, and the mayor’s office, as a party to the case, was advised that it risked losing if the court felt it was trying to sway public opinion. At the same time, rules governing communications by public bodies during elections forced the city authority to suspend much of its advertising in Uxbridge aimed at dispelling common misunderstandings about ULEZ.

Doesn’t sound much like the Democratic process is the main issue here

It's not beneficial for working class people: they are more likely to have old, polluting vehicles, and can't afford an extra tax when already dealing with rising living costs.

This is in a way very similar to the Gilets Jaunes protests in France. Why should the poorest have to foot the bill for the excesses of the richest?

Same mayor has a terrible gun crime record with criminality increasing record fold in the city under him

It's clearly not about cars.

> Even the most tentative efforts to rein in cars in cities like New York, Paris, Madrid and Buenos Aires have opened new, growling fronts in the culture wars. In his surge for a second term as U.S. president, Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked his likely opponent Joe Biden’s push to expand electric vehicle use.

Those electric vehicles being pushed by Biden are cars too.

So it's just yet another example of fossil fuel funded fascism.

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