Oxford County Council is going to trial a scheme whereby the residents of the city are divided into six zones, with movement by car between the zones restricted to 100 trips per year. Eric Worrall on Watts Up With That? has more.
Imagine if your power mad politicians liked Covid Lockdowns so much, they wanted to continue them indefinitely. This is going to be trialled in Oxfordshire in Britain.
Oxfordshire County Council Pass Climate Lockdown ‘trial’ to Begin in 2024
Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15 minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods.
Under the new scheme if residents want to leave their zone they will need permission from the Council who gets to decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t. Under the new scheme residents will be allowed to leave their zone a maximum of 100 days per year, but in order to even gain this every resident will have to register their car details with the council who will then track their movements via smart cameras round the city.
Communism will make the weather better
Oxfordshire County Council, which is run by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, secretly decided to divide-up the city of Oxford into six ‘15 minute’ districts in 2021 soon after they were elected to office. None of the councillors declared their intention of imprisoning local residents in their manifestos of course, preferring to make vague claims about how they will ‘improve the environment’ instead.
Every resident will be required to register their car with the County Council who will then monitor how many times they leave their district via number plate recognition cameras. And don’t think you can beat the system if you’re a two car household. Those two cars will be counted as one meaning you will have to divide up the journeys between yourselves. 2 cars 50 journeys each; 3 cars 33 journeys each and so on.
This story is so crazy, I wanted corroboration. This is the same story published in the Oxford Mail:
Traffic filters will divide city into six ‘15 minute’ neighbourhoods, agrees highways councillor
25th October
ROAD blocks stopping most motorists from driving through Oxford city centre will divide the city into six “15 minute” neighbourhoods, a county council travel chief has said.
And he insisted the controversial plan would go ahead whether people liked it or not.
Duncan Enright, Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for travel and development strategy, explained the authority’s traffic filter proposals in an interview in the Sunday Times.
He said the filters would turn Oxford into “a 15-minute city” with local services within a small walking radius.
…
People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week.
Oxfordshire is the home of the University of Oxford, one of Britain’s premier learning institutions.
Communist states like the Soviet Union and China seem to love movement restrictions and internal passports. In my opinion Britain has been edging closer to naked communism for at least half a century, so I guess it was inevitable that an attempt would be made at some point to introduce Chinese style movement restrictions on British people. In my opinion the climate claims are just an excuse, an attempt to deflect criticism of their authoritarianism.
I would love to write that the University of Oxford is up in arms, that Oxford academics are outraged at this attempt to restrict people’s freedom, but so far I have not discovered one utterance of public outrage from university academics.
For almost a thousand years the University of Oxford stood as a beacon of intellectual freedom. A number of leading Oxford intellectuals were hanged or otherwise persecuted over the centuries, because of their resistance to authoritarianism. So it seems incredibly sad that the inheritors of that proud tradition seem so willing to turn their backs on those freedoms their predecessors sometimes laid down their lives to defend.
This story is flat out insane. Why on earth would the residents of Oxford tolerate these sandal-wearing dictators? More to come on this, I’m sure.
Stop Press: Oxfordshire County Council has put out a statement to address concerns and ‘misunderstandings’ about the plans. Read it here.
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If any place on Earth right now needed a military coup it’s Oxford.
My first thought was that I simply wouldn’t register my details with the council but I guess the roadblocks will see to that.
Should someone attempt an illegal third trip out of their zone, I wonder how it will work – are these blocks manned or will it be a barrier like you have in car parks?
I hope these nutcases are voted out pronto.
In London (and maybe other places) there are neighbourhood areas marked out by signs where only registered numberplates are meant to enter (presume residents plus anyone else with some kind of reason to go in) and they have cameras with ANPR mounted at the entry points, and if you enter without being registered you get a fine in the post.
Bloody hell.
Seen them in Islington and I think Hackney or Haringey. Some of them quite recent so Satnav doesn’t know about them. Some are 24*7, some have limited hours of operation. Must be a right royal pain in the arse if you have visitors, workmen etc – suppose it will be like residents parking permits in that you can buy extra ones for such cases that last just the day. God knows what they do about deliveries.
‘Bloody Hell’ is exactly what it is and will become.
But replace by who? If the Tories were as strongly against it as their former self image would suggest the government would arrange for Oxford’s antics to be illegal.
in my experience community groups have also been infiltrated by nutty green ideas.
First they came for Oxford…
Quite simple , trash the infrastructure they plan to use .Cameras on poles, pull them down.
Gates and barriers just wreck them .
Then go after the councillors who voted for this madness and point out the error of their ways !!!
Those councillors who were voted in on completely unrelated policy, or if it was related, a direction opposite to what they’re enacting? If only we hold these tyrants accountable and could vote for someone else, someone who stands by their word! If only. At least there is a choice so let’s give any new philosophies a go, Reform UK springs to mind and has, I suspect the best shot at some success because the two party system simply isn’t working (if it ever did) with people like Klauz fiddling with the puppet strings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxWKSglO0fo
Excellent.
Hairspray over the camera lens works well
Or so I am told
Or just vote in councillors who are not Net Xero nutters
The electorate will include students, who might be net zero nutters themselves. I suppose the locals could explain the deprivations that might result for students if citizens are not free to drive around their city at will.
Where is their authority to do this..?
Same question for the Rona fascism. Answer, the ruling elite does whatever they want to do. Fascism is now democracy.
‘Truth is Lies’. ‘Arbiet Macht Frei’. Oops, down the memory hole. Welcome to Nineteen Eighty-Four
Perhaps we will start to see mass migration from Commie areas to non-Commie areas (if any can be found) as we’ve seen with the flight of people from Blue to Red states in the US. I guess to an extent this is already happening with people leaving cities to go to suburbs, provincial towns and rural areas with better schools, less crime etc.
Imagine if you wanted to leave but now had to sell your house…. I wouldn’t buy in those zones.
Not an easy choice going through that kind of upheaval – work, friends, kids, activities.
It’s not clear to me whether this is an anti-congestion measure (potentially good) or a CO2 reduction measure (nonsense) or something more sinister (authoritarianism). If it is an anti-congestion measure, I am not convinced that driving rations should be allocated based on money (eg congestion charge) rather than by some “fairer” means.
There is no need to overthink this. Quite simply Oxford will be the prototype Prison City.
How about just letting it alone? If people find the congestion intolerable they can adjust their behaviour accordingly, picking their times to drive or using other forms of transport.
We don’t need bureaucrats and technocrats to solve every little aspect of our daily lives ffs!
Oh really? Please exactly define ‘fairer means’?
Well yet another whack job nutbar weirdo freak show alt right ‘literally Hitler’ conspiracy theory coming true. Shocking.
Climate Gaia thingy will be the next casus belli for their Fascism. No surprise the Uni town of Oxtard is leading the way is it.
Gaffer tape your number plate.
You won’t get through – I doubt they will use a camera to retrospectively record people, it’ll be bollards or barriers.
And ditch your smartphone
When will the insanity end? who do these jumped up,pompous deluded people believe themselves to be?
How is this even legal? Of course if the sheeple of Oxford accept this like they have every other magic thinking of their communist councillors they deserve everthing they get.
I have some personal involvement in local politics and I can say with total confidence that this policy has not been constructed by local councillors.
Local councillors are by and large and certainly if they are owned by the mainstream parties, exceedingly dim. This policy is being implemented by people way above local levels. I doubt it is national government, more likely some shady committee of WEF stooges somewhere.
Why Oxford? “For almost a thousand years the University of Oxford stood as a beacon of intellectual freedom.”
Do we remember when the city of Leicester was chosen for the first randomized city lockdown? Why?
Leicester was the first city that rioted when a vaccine mandate was attempted in the 19th century. The WEFfers do enjoy a laugh with their sly historical references. So Oxford, the very symbol of intellectual freedom is to be ridiculed by being turned in to a prison city. Oh the shame!
Manchester is set to introduce a Clean Air Zone tax in the Summer and this clearly will be a precursor to the 15 minute city.
And all this explains why there is no great fretting about electric vehicles – quite simply we will first be taxed off the roads and then legislated off them.
None of this has anything to do with climate. The measures to be introduced would in any case have zero effect on climate even at local level. These dystopian and draconian impositions are purely and simply a means of softening up the population and preparing them for slave status.
This needs to be treated as a warning to us all.
“This story is flat out insane. Why on earth would the residents of Oxford tolerate these sandal-wearing dictators”. A genuine question – legally, what can the residents do? Anything? Could these authoritarian tw*ts trial, for example, a 9pm curfew if they wanted? Have they always had the power to force their will on the local population, but now, through the submissiveness of the masses during covid, are no longer afraid to do so?
Whatever needs to be done to stop this, must be done. Even for the sheep, surely the end game is coming into focus here. Anyone know if this is something that could be fought in the courts for example, and have legal costs crowdfunded… although the legal system is also infiltrated, so what would be the point? Anyone?
This is why you need a constitution.
Without a constitution stating sone fundamental rights, what is the legal basis to challenge this? As things are now, is there any legal right that an individual can claim to mount a legal challenge?
This will drive a massive increase in cloning of number plates.
Again, the more arbitrary rules there are, the easier life becomes for the crooks and the harder for the good guys.
I recently had to work pretty hard to get out of paying for someone’s London ULEZ penalty. Then again, when the same lovely gentleman drove off from a forecourt in Bristol without paying for fuel.
Do the authorities care? Not in the slightest. But soon, it will be even harder for the authorities in Oxford and all these other communist mini states to know who is coming or going.
Reap as ye sow.
If the residents of Oxford raise no objection to this madness then it will certainly become permanent. I get the feeling some people would tie a plastic bag over their head if the authorities told them it would save the planet or stop them catching covid.
Calling this a climate lock down is very misleading. The idea is to reduce city centre car traffic: People who have used their whole quota of permitted inner city car travel are supposed to use the outside ring road to get from one section of the city to another by car. This may well be a hairbrained idea, an example of a local authority overstepping what should be the boundaries of its powers etc but it’s no lockdown of any kind.
Imagine buying an electric car to “save the planet” then still have to abide by climate lockdowns just like everyone else
The Rights of Citizens
There are only 12 articles of the Declaration that speak of the Rights Of Cities And Citizens. In the interests of brevity I shall comment on only two of them.
Article 4: The right to clean air and water and to a greenhouse environment with minimal (eventually zero) carbon emissions, which translates into the right to take action to assure a safe and sustainable environment, regardless of the action or inaction of other levels of government.
So the future citizen can expect to travel on foot or by public transport only and will be subject to strict, control of all his daily activities in the interest of minimising his ‘carbon footprint’. The roll out of SMART utility meters between now and 2020 would appear to be part of this carbon reduction initiative.
If that prospect isn’t bad enough article 5 introduces the right to residential dignity. But before lobbying for such a future right just think for a moment about how these globalists define it.
The ‘right to residential dignity’ is ‘…the right to identity papers (visas, identity cards)’.
From an article at UK Column by Martin Edwards in 2016.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/global-parliament-mayors-and-abolition-electorate
While identity cards don’t formally exist in the UK, they exist de fact because one may need to prove that one has the right to buy age restricted products and access age restricted facilities. At least two night clubs in Reading blanket scan IDs for everyone on entry (that is, read the machine readable information and store them in some database for an unspecified amount of time) and refuse entry without such an ID. I strongly suspect this is a council licensing condition.
To put this into perspective: Every person living in Germany is required to be able to prove his identity to the police on demand. People who can’t do this may be arrested and held in custody until their identity has been established. That’s how it always has been[*].
[*] People who move into new accomodation are also required to register themselves with the responsible local authority and deregister with the formerly responsible one, but that’s usually not checked.
I’m not living in bloody Germany so do not try to legitimise ID cards. As for night clubs wanting them the answer from me would be ‘sex and travel.’
The message here was twofold: Identity cards already exist in the UK for everyone under 40 (at least). While the UK may not have a tradition for requiring them, they’re perfectly common-place elsewhere.
News flash – Oxford proposing to have 6 ghettos with monitored access and egress.
Coming to a town near you very soon.
Indeed and that is a far more appropriate headline. Perhaps the Warsaw Ghetto circa 1940 could be used as an appropriate template.
I am certainly not a legal expert, but I cannot imagine that a County Council has the legal powers to introduce local laws to control their citizens in this way, other than for an immediate emergency.
In a nutshell, this is clearly “Ultra Vires”.
However, our GangGreen chums will doubtless claim that there is a “Climate Emergency”. Totally preposterous, but as we see with the Police blatantly refusing to uphold citizen’s right to use the King’s Highways whilst going about their lawfull business, whether in the face of Just Stop Oil nutters, or because of celebrants of Albanian Independence Day, this is deeply worrying.
And we can expect a good majority of the Legal Profession to prefer to excuse it (like destroying statues), rather than stand up and confront the rent-a-mob.
Personally, I think it unlikely that Oxford County Council has just gone out on a limb, a serious legal challenge (essential!) would leave their Chief Executive very exposed. More likely, HMG has decided this and Oxford has agreed to lead the charge.
As others have said, if the citizens put up with this, they’ll put up with anything.
Cue MASS exodus from Orwellian Oxford
I’m afraid that won’t work.
If there isn’t a very serious challenge to this, it will be across every corner of the UK like an express version of Omicron.
But much more damaging.
Ps: Can we restrict it to 100 crossings for dinghy divers or doesn’t water count?
I forecast a spate of sledgehammer attacks on cameras and barriers.
Was any of this in any manifesto?
No.
‘For almost a thousand years the University of Oxford stood as a beacon of intellectual freedom.’ Er, no, I don’t think so. As I remember it, Darwin didn’t go to Oxford because he could not bring himself to sign up to the ‘39 Articles’ of the religious orthodoxy of the times.
“…he insisted the controversial plan would go ahead whether people liked it or not.”
Democracy at work!
He should be immediately sacked for a comment like that.
How long, I wonder, before six zones are split into twelve and 100 days reduced to 50?
I certainly don’t agree with this policy in Oxford. But actually it is NOT as you have reported.
The proposal is to stop people using direct roads between sectors in the city for more than 100 days per year. People will not be confined to their own part of the city. If they want to visit other parts of the city for more than 100 days, they can use other routes (e.g. the ring road).
As that Oxford Mail article states, “The alternative is to drive out on to the ring road and then back in to the destination.”
We in the sceptic movement should surely have a commitment to the truth, and not try to distort it like our opponents routinely do.
Ok lets suppose you live in one zone and your child’s school is in another and both locations are at the outer extremeties of each zone. Depending on the distance between them there may not be public transport between those points and it could be too far to walk. Whether or not you should use the large diversion required to use the ring road this proposal is still communist based and undemocratic, so I see no distortion of the truth.
I may be thick but does that not *increase* carbon dioxide levels?
But they’ve cottoned on, we need to increase carbon dioxide levels but you mustn’t say it out loud. [sarc]
Presumably these communist nutters will be up for election at some point. Its up to the people of Oxford to kick them and their communist totalitarian ideas a long way out.
Academics, being the wokest of the woke, will be clapping their hands over this. The trials and tribulations of the little people are of no concern to them. They are safely ensconced in their ivory towers with tenure.
I spotted this post re this story on Twatter yesterday…Nice, thought I.
https://twitter.com/ChapelPervis/status/1599768087578181632
I believe Canterbury is proposing something similar.
I saw this debated on GB News. But the guests mostly missed the main point. Which is that pollution from lots of petrol and diesel vehicles is not what causes the alleged climate change. It is CO2 that is alleged to do that. But CO2 does not cause respiratory disease. So if this council claims they are doing it to fight climate change while at the same time insisting that it is petrol and diesel that causes climate problems then what they are doing is mixing up genuine pollution with phony pollution.