Conservative MP and former party leader and Government minister Sir Iain Duncan Smith has said he backs the ‘blade runners’ who are disabling Ulez cameras. The Mail has more.
Usually he prides himself on being tough on crime, but the former cabinet minister said today he was ‘happy’ for the residents of his Chingford and Woodford Green constituency to destroy cameras because they have been “lied to”.
Sir Iain said: “A lot of people in my constituency have been cementing up the cameras or putting plastic bags over them.
“I am happy for them to do it because they are facing an imposition that no-one wants and they have been lied to about it.
“The actions you are seeing show how angry people are at what is being imposed on them. Sadiq Khan has gerrymandered all the information – people have had enough.”
Since his comments were first published, Sir Iain told the Evening Standard that “I do understand the frustrations of the people in my constituency who are being hit by these charges and who feel like they are not being listened to by the mayor. These sort of actions show how angry people are. But I don’t condone law breaking of any kind.”
It’s notable that no one besides Khan seems willing to defend the scheme or even state their opposition to the vandalism of the cameras. At this point it feels like it’s Khan versus the whole of London.
Meanwhile, the Transport Secretary, Mark Harper, told GB News this morning that he would stop the rollout if he had the power to do so and highlighted his reservations about the true motives behind the expansion.
I don’t have the power to stop it coming into force. That’s a decision for the Mayor of London backed by the Labour leader. I think he should think again.
He says this has to do with air quality, his own impact assessment says this will only have a minor to negligible effect on air pollution.
It’s not about air pollution, it’s about a money-raising exercise and this is absolutely not the time to be putting all those costs on hard-pressed and hard-working Londoners and those in the area outside London.
What Harper didn’t mention, though, is that the reason he doesn’t have the power to stop it is because the Government’s lawyers have said it would be contrary to the Government’s own policies on air pollution. That’s despite the impact assessment showing it will have a negligible impact on air quality! In truth, the Government could challenge it if it wished, either by changing its own policies (perhaps via legislative amendment) or by arguing that the impact is too negligible to contravene its commitments.
Harper also told LBC’s Nick Ferrari programme that the Government will be backing an amendment to the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill to make changes to the 1999 law that created the role of Mayor of London. According to the Mail:
Under the amendment, brought forward by Tory peer Lord Moylan, London boroughs would be able to opt out of future Transport for London (TfL) clean air schemes if they are meeting air quality targets.
The Transport Secretary said: “One of the problems here is that a number of London local authorities don’t support this scheme coming into force, so for the future, we are backing an amendment, a backbench amendment to a piece of legislation which will mean in future any road user charging schemes like this would have to be also backed by London boroughs.
“And that’s important because if you look at the Mayor of London’s own website for his Project 2030 scheme, he wants to roll out more road user charging schemes, pay-per-mile schemes across London.”
Sadiq Khan countered on BBC Breakfast this morning that it wasn’t about the money:
This is about helping our air be cleaner. In a couple of years’ time, TfL has predicted there will be no additional money made because the number of non-compliant vehicles (will decrease).
But if it’s not expected to make money and it won’t make the air appreciably cleaner, what’s the real motive for forcing through such an electorally disastrous policy? Could it be because, as highlighted in yesterday’s Daily Sceptic, Khan is Chair of C40 Cities, an organisation committed to “reducing car ownership” and cutting travel by car? Is it, in other words, the latest move in the global war on the motorist and the crazed scramble to ‘cut emissions’ at the expense of humanity?
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The only way faith in public health can be returned is for those who got it so catastrophically wrong to admit it, and for those who sought to profit in some manner and at the public’s expense, to be prosecuted and/or removed from office and from positions of authority or influence.
They don’t care, they only care about obedience to their global masters
I shall be tuning in. However there have been only a handful of debates in two years between GBD scientists and the lockdown/zero covid mob. I wonder which side is avoiding the other? The Cambridge union and talk radio and the BBC’s Big Question (once) tried to organise such debates but the lockdown media stars were seemingly unavailable.
Now a debate between the two here and locktivists such as Sridhar and Ferguson – that would be well worth watching! I rather doubt if the locktivists would be too keen, somehow.
How To Become a Woke Celebrity!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvYmjoowSjE
AwakenWithJP
Next events
Thursday 10th March 5pm to 6pm
Yellow Boards
A329 London Rd,
Near Running Horse/Lily Hill Park
Bracknell RG12 2UJ
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/09/pcr-disparities-btw-claims-and-actual-performance/
Great to see so much good ppl in the Collateral Global YT Channel but I’m affraid the PCR specialists are missing as usual. It would be great if CGlobal could also have on great scientists like David Resnick, Sona Peková or Andrew Kaufman because, let’s face it, the Corman-Drosten Protocol behind the PCRs being performed on our populations is so flawed that nothing good can come from ‘anallysing the numbers’ once they are deeply corrupted. If one fails to understand that paramount subject all the rest is useless tail chaising.
A fascinating discussion: two highly intelligent men, who seem to believe that they are members of a gentlemanly club, in a fundamentally reasonable society that has temporarily lost its “normal senses”.
So when they are treated badly – and they have been – they see this as a curious anomaly, not an indication of something truly rotten in the state of Denmark/the World. People need to behave better.
Ioannidis says he “wants to believe” in the collective good faith of scientists. Well, don’t we all (Bhattacharya is more dubious). The bad behaviour of certain scientists is not something they choose to interrogate – and that’s understandable.
But they appear to dismiss the problems, to put it mildly, of the “vaccines”, as though the scientists who have expressed their concerns deserve to be marginalised – should be “fringe” (rather than sensible, sound chaps like themselves).
Not seen it yet but have come to a similar conclusion watching Ioannidis before – he seems not to wish to skewer some of his peers who have very willingly sold out. Too polite or to much to lose – cannot make up my mind except that his interventions to date have been revelatory to this non scientist.
Ditto