The BBC’s ‘Climate Disinformation Specialist‘ (who knew?) has written a piece saying that “false” claims alleging that Oxfordshire County Council’s is planning to introduce a “climate lockdown” in 2024 have led to some councillors receiving death threats. While there is more than a grain of truth to the story – the Council really is intending to divide the city of Oxford into six zones and impose an annual limit on how many times people are allowed to travel from one zone to another in their cars (although commercial and emergency vehicles will be exempt) – it would be more accurate to describe it as a way to reduce traffic than a “climate lockdown”. (Although I’m not sure describing it as such constitutes ‘climate disinformation’.) To be clear, people won’t be confined to their homes or their zones – they’ll be free to travel between zones on foot or on bicycles or on public transport. I wrote a story for the Daily Sceptic about this a couple of weeks ago – “Oxford County Councillors to Introduce Trial Climate Lockdown in 2024” – and I hope that headline wasn’t responsible for any abuse received by Councillors. In the piece, I quoted from a story on Watts Up With That? which exaggerated just how great an interference in personal liberty this will be (the BBC has labelled that story as “false”.) When a press officer for the Council contacted us asking the Daily Sceptic to correct any ‘misunderstandings’ about the scheme, we added it as a Stop Press beneath the original piece. He then wrote back to say we were the only site he’d contacted who’d responded to his email!
Here is how the BBC News piece begins:
False claims that a lockdown to help fight climate change could soon be enforced in Oxford have spread on social media. Residents are confused and local politicians have received a torrent of abuse as a result.
“I’m still feeling a bit bruised, if I’m honest, and a bit cautious,” said Duncan Enright, cabinet member for travel and development strategy at Oxfordshire County Council.
The last two weeks have been unusual for him, to say the least. He has been berated by complete strangers on social media. Death threats have put him and his family on guard.
“I know people very well in this area, and they’re lovely,” he said. “This is something I’ve never experienced before in many years in local politics.”
So how did a mainly rural county suddenly find itself at the heart of a social media storm?
In November, Oxfordshire County Council approved a £6.5 million trial scheme designed to stop most drivers in Oxford from using busy city routes at peak times.
To achieve that goal, the council proposed the creation of traffic filters, enforced through cameras, in six key locations across the city.
Private cars will not be allowed through without a permit. All other vehicles, including public transport and bikes, will be exempt.After the news broke, a number of fringe media outlets began describing the initiative as an effective “climate lockdown”.
They falsely claimed that the scheme would, in practice, “lock” residents in their own homes.
They also wrongly suggested that, through the use of permits, the council was being given powers to decide who gets to travel around the city.
“It’s not a lockdown,” said Liz Leffman, leader of Oxfordshire County Council. “People are going to be free to travel around, just as they are at the moment.”
The trial scheme, which is not expected to start before 2024, is designed to cut unnecessary car journeys, while making walking, cycling and public transport more appealing.
And yet, social media posts about an alleged “climate lockdown” found a willing audience among conspiracy-minded users, who shared them thousands of times.
Worth reading in full.
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I don’t know about you, but prohibiting free movement at certain times and in certain manners sounds an awful lot like lockdown – whatever they say the justification is.
Councillors et al need to wake up to the trouble they’re causing with their “Greater Good” schemes.
Indeed, as we have learned the hard way already with Covid, slopes are MUCH slipperier than they appear!
You don’t think they think, do you? Or care!
But they aren’t prohibiting that. They’re planning to implement car traffic limitation on inner city roads with the idea to let most of the car traffic flows over the outer ring road instead.
Step back, RW. There’s a better view.
This is about restricting the freedom of movement of cars through certain roads at certain times. This may well be an ill-advised traffic regulation scheme, but it’s certainly no lockdown, let alone a climate lockdown.
Passports after WW1 were supposed to be non-binding and temporary, RW.
You know me, I don’t play Chicken Little (we never stopped travelling throughout ThePandemic™ and none of us are stabbed nor succumbed to any sticks up nostrils etc), but we have to be realistic about how things often go once bureaucrats get something between their teeth.
Have we not seen enough to understand how these things are always the thin end of a wedge?
London’s traffic restrictions started as a congestion charge.
It grew.
Then it morphed into a low emissions zone.
Then they split it into low emissions and ultra low emissions areas.
Now Oxford want to create multiple traffic zones.
Today it’s cars, tomorrow people.
Once you accept the principle that a bureaucrat can restrict your movement in some way with a stroke of his pen, he will use it for something else the first chance he gets.
Like him or not (I don’t, something he has duly earned) but the mayor of London has been democratically elected. Hence, the stock US domestic politics story (Unelected bureaucrats!) doesn’t fit in here at all. Same goes for the council in question. If the ‘muricans want to dismantle their state, they’re more than welcome to do so. But I don’t care for their neverchanging storylines.
The response they should have given: “my mistake, I slid down a little from that thin end of the wedge. It really is very slippery.”
Did the citizens vote on this? No.
Does it restrict movements? Yes.
Will you need papers to move around? Yes.
Did they quote reducing ‘carbon pollution’ (utter ignorance that one)? Yes
Does this fit in with WEF plan? Yes
Does the WEF and govt’s worldwide discuss ‘smart cities’ absent cars, ‘carbon pollution’? Yes
Did we not just go through a Rona Fascism? Yes
Did the LDs not destroy society and lives? Yes
Would you have to be brain dead to propose this? Yes
Should your life be threatened as a counciller? Absolutely F*ing Yes.
Manchester’s solution, quite a few years ago was to pedestrianise selected city centre streets and introduce a ring road that is within a short walk from the centre.
The difference between now and then is of course the need to generate revenue, so in the city centre they have now introduced restrictions at certain times of day where they can levy hefty fines on people who don’t see the warning signs which in some case are situated some distance from the roads concerned. One street alone is said to be yielding millions a year.
Driving in Manchester now is like a malevolent real life version of Pac Man, except they’ve replaced ghosts with fines.
And at least in PacMan you can see the walls.
The same town councils will also allow out of town shopping centres where there is free parking. It’s almost as if they want to kill off the high street.
“kill off the high Street?”
That’s the intention.
“I know people very well in this area, and they’re lovely,” he said. “This is something I’ve never experienced before in many years in local politics.”
Then how about you start representing these people instead the agenda of an insidious global cartel of wealthy technocratic bullshit artists?
Then run your city as frugally as possible, and stay the sweet F out of your constituent’s lives unless they specifically ask you for something.
Damn right.
Absolutely. Whose streets? the WEF’s streets! If we’re not careful.
From my, one, ill fated attempted entry into local politics the people local politicians “know very well” are their own friends and other local politicians; a classic examle of group think. Also, even when major local issues are involved you’re lucky to see a 25% turnout for local elections that are not run alongside a general election. At this level you get the politicians you don’t vote for! Apathy rules OK.
Speaking of disinformation. If people have to show their ‘papers’ to use their cars to travel through the city, then they clearly are not free to travel around, just as they are at the moment. They are only “free” to travel around in a manner determined by a handful of people who were never given any mandate for this purpose.
As for making walking, cycling and public transport more appealing: to make walking and cycling more appealing, they first need to make the weather more appealing and secondly, the streets safer with more police officers and more prosecution of criminals. To make public transport more appealing would require halving the price and doubling the service – the precise reverse happened after corona, where public transport was required to keep running more or less the same service with a substantial drop in passengers/revenue. The resultant debts need to be paid, which has led to price increases and service cuts.
Let me guess, council members will have a 365-days a year permit for work purposes. And they can stop whining about headlines and death threats. They are getting death threats because they are abusing their office and giving themselves powers they are not entitled to. They are sowing the wind, let them reap the whirlwind.
Completely agree.
My district is over 95 per cent Metropolitan Green Belt. That includes the ancient forest of Epping which is suffering from pollution; I don’t mean CO2, of course (actually the trees may be growing better with a bit more of that) but nitrous oxides and particulates from the heavy traffic which has to drive through the forest. Actually, the road was built only in the nineteenth century, prior to shich the old drovers road went through the middle of communities.
As we know, mopdern petril and modern diesel engines emit very little nitrous oxides and particulates but the tyres do so. So do the tyre os electric cars – more, in fact because they are so much heavier.
Part of the forest is an SSSA (? right abbreviation?) and the council is duty bound to protect it.
In order to try to justify an additional 13,000 houses within the district, in addition to the tens of thousands in other districts nearby which will generate a lot of additional traffic through the forest, they are pushing “modal shift”. This means no car parks and everything is done to make them unwelcome. Instead we are meant to walk or cycle up the steep hills (yes, Essex has them) and along narrow roads and pavements.
Needless to say, no clearance of snow was done this week and no salting on dedicated cycle lanes and footpaths. Onlt the main roads were gritted. Quite how this works we don’t yet know except it will be a disaster.
While a ban on cars in Oxford might not force people to remain at home in practice it ofte will as people will not or cannot afford the cost of buses (where they exist, when they run to timetable) or taxis.
Did any politicians receive death threats over covid lockdowns? Or were they all hushed up?
Look out for a councillor or politician accidentally slipping “lockdown” into any discussion about this scheme. We’ll know which side they’re on then.
Beware also of this scheme being called off the day before it’s due to be implemented, but the idea will be oven-baked and ready to go, perhaps in other cities. Just as Saint Boris was constantly using the media to test public reactions, this may be just that: Oxford might be a red herring, look out for it in your home town.
Manchester intends to introduce a CAZ (Clean Air Zone) this Summer which will charge diesel drivers £10 per day.
BS Burnham can’t wait.
Authoritarian politicians have become highly complacent about infringing the liberties of the citizens they purport to serve. It is a good thing if they are starting to fear the people. The more fear they feel the better.
hmmmm, this is an ‘attack – defence’ puff piece to try to get sympathy. It is like the fact-checkers who end up proving the point by making idiotic ‘False’ judgements (the claim that 50 people died is completely FALSE, only 48 people died). No, people won’t be locked in their homes (I imagine a few read “lockdown” and think precisely that) but this is traffic restriction, private car ownership bashing, for which ordinary people will be fined etc. which most people are concerned about. I would even bet the death threats are exaggerated or even invented to aid the poor OCC ‘story’.
“…it would be more accurate to describe it as a way to reduce traffic than a “climate lockdown”.
Well that’s one way of putting it. More accurately this is a deliberate restriction on civil liberties.
If I am being generous I would say that Toby’s view is a deliberate mangling of the facts.
People buy and operate road vehicles in the full knowledge of the probable costs, taxes and restrictions involved in such ownership and random impositions such as those proposed by Oxford Council are not part of the deal.
Actually the proposal is extremely insidious and is part of the Smart Cities programme which is hidden within Agenda 2030:
” The 15-minute neighbourhoods proposal aims to ensure that every resident has all the essentials (shops, healthcare, parks) within a 15-minute walk of their home. They aim to support and add services, not restrict them.”
Abundantly clear from the Stop Press announcement referenced byToby above.
Oxford is a trial run and if they get away with it bigger cities will follow. Burnham can’t wait to have a go at this type of Ceasarship.
And if councillors are feeling nervous then good. Local councillors are nothing more than a thoroughly lawless mafia spending and wasting honest people’s money. They are an utter blight on the planet.
No, I am not impressed with this apologia – or has pressure been brought to bear?
Potatoe Potahto
Following huxleypiggles post, I found something similar from the Town and Country Planning Association talking about 20 minute cities. It is our very own totalitarian blueprint dictating how we shall live in the future, which is already part of national planning policy. If you have the strength to read through the ocean of platitudes and euphemisms that make up the document, you will clearly see the way Agenda 2030 is already implemented in our policies. It is interesting to note that this plan is entirely prescriptive; there is no recognition that evolutionary adaptation to the project should occur, and indeed it is effectively stated that this should be resisted, so a bunch of state planners have our future in their hands. In particular, ‘gentrification’ of neighbourhoods is to be actively resisted, despite years of evidence showing that through improved prosperity, a strong middle class is best equipped to provide a well functioning community. I know lots of places (including Bournville Village Trust in Birmingham) where the mandate to include a substantial element of social housing has directly led to fragmentation of the community and degradation of the environment.
Anyway, here is the link to the document I read: https://tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/final_20mnguide-compressed.pdf
Thanks richardw.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/resilient-cities-programme-another-threat-individual-liberties
Here we go.
In searching for the new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. In their totality and in their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which demands the solidarity of all peoples. But in designating them as the enemy, we fall into the trap about which we have already warned, by human intervention and it is only through changing attitudes and behaviours that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself –
The First Global Revolution (1993), report by the Council of the Club of Rome, P 115
In August 2009, at the Incheon Conference
I seem to remember Oxford Council said that the scheme would happen regarcless of the opinion of the public. That sounds pretty totalitarian to me. Not everybody will be able to get around on foot, by bicycle, or even by public transport. For some people at least, this is therefore a de facto lockdown within their locale at least. Such deliberate restrictions on our liberty to move around should not be taken lightly, especially when based on unproven science.
Spot on.
Whatever you choose to call this scheme – “climate lockdown” (a ridiculous term for how the plans currently stand), “traffic reduction scheme” or anything else – the reshuffling of the infrastructure, businesses and facilities seems impossible to achieve without destroying livelihoods and vastly diminishing the quality of life.
By way of example, Joe the plumber (fictitious) currently serves all of Oxford and the surrounding villages, and drives a van rammed full of the vast supplies and equipment a plumber needs to handle any job on request. Most times Joe is called out he must cross at least one of the newly and arbitrarily defined zones, often crossing the city from one side to the other requiring his licence plate to be logged by “trip counters” (or whatever they’ll use) several times in one day. Rudimentary maths dictates that Joe must obviously cross zone boundaries much more than 100 times a year (the limit proposed after which the deterrent fine of £70 is issued for every boundary crossed in excess of 100). Especially because the average plumber has multiple callouts per working day.
Joe, in excess of 100 jobs that require zone breaches, could decide to pay the fine in each instance and continue working as usual. But he is unlikely, on average, to even be able to cover the cost of this with his net income. He’ll have to survive on work-from-home jobs or benefits for more than a two-thirds of the working year!
This is just one example of many. How about badly disabled people who are unable to travel to work, go to church, or visit the hospital or relatives by walking, cycling or bus routes that don’t get you very near where you need to be?
You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist who rabbits about climate lockdowns to see that the scheme is nonsensical.
Nonsensical? It’s bloody evil. And I will not be swallowing Toby’s flummery.
“People are going to be free to travel around, just as they are at the moment.” Yes, except they’re not. He’s tap dancing on the head of a pin. Must be a politician, a human rights lawyer or from HR.
“Several councillors suspect the “climate lockdown” conspiracy is being pushed by groups from outside the county.”
There wasn’t a Covid Lockdown then with people being arrested and/or receiving punitive fines? And there were no suggestions for introducing climate lockdowns? And there isn’t a ULEZ zone covering most of London, and there aren’t any eco zealots trying to stop anyone driving or flying or eating meat.
“…pushed by groups from outside the county.” – This sounds like a very bad dialogue from a B-movie.
Christianity is not a conspiracy, Islam is not a conspiracy, Judaism is not a conspiracy, Hinduism is not a conspiracy, Marxism is not a conspiracy, Fascism is not a conspiracy, Conservatism is not a conspiracy, Socialism is not a conspiracy, Libertarianism is not a conspiracy, Nationalism is not a conspiracy, Racism is not a conspiracy –
And Evironmentalism / Net Zero is not a conspiracy.
These are all widely and openly held ideologies / dogmatic creeds with commensurate practical agendas.
With the semantics out the road, issuing death threats or in any other way attacking or intimidating individuals or groups is always wrong;
So is implementing / supporting ever-increasing tyrannical and quality-of-life destroying restrictions;
The very idea of dramatically impeding freedom of movement (ie freedom full stop) using threats of fines and imprisonment in the manner proposed in Oxford is absolutely outrageous.
And it doesn’t matter at all whether the chosen covering term is ‘Traffic Management’, ‘Climate Lockdowns’ (the two are currently to some extent interchangeable in any case) or anything else.
You list a series of things you say are NOT a conspiracy with Environmentalism/ Net Zero at the end of your list. ———–But environmentalism is only NOT a conspiracy if that environmentalism is truly all about the environment. There is ofcourse plenty of evidence that this is not the case and that it has been hijacked for political purposes. And if that is the case then it most certainly is a “conspiracy” and were it not for sites similar to this one, GB News, Watts up With That etc etc etc then we would probably be oblivious to that conspiracy. ——-Remember the words of a lead author at the IPCC a few years back who said “One has to free oneself from the idea that climate policies are environmental policies anymore. We redistribute the worlds wealth via climate policy”——That is as big an admission of conspiracy as you can get from what is a political body, not a scientific one focussing on the environment. ————So, environmentalism has to be 100% about the environment. If not, it is no longer environmentalism.
People of Oxford and Canterbury need to rise up in protest and stop allowing their so called council representatives to mandate controls over them, they are supposed to serve the people, not the other way around!
I don’t like to see Toby defending Oxford CC on this. Everyone, unless they’re absolutely stupid, must surely see where this ‘15-minute city’ idea will lead. It may not be lockdown but it will make the lives of Oxford residents extremely trying, without a doubt. And in the name of climate?! How mad is that? Here in sunny Streatham, South London, we are being threatened with Lower Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) which, in other areas of London where they have already been introduced (during the first lockdown!!), are deeply unpopular with residents. Forcing all traffic onto a few main arteries will simply be moving congestion from one area to another. And what happens when something happens on one of those main arteries/roads (eg a major accident/incident or a huge water mains burst as has just happened on our road, one of the proposed main roads to be used if/when the LTN is imposed here)? The whole idea is a very thick wedge and is exactly what the Great Reset agenda has in mind, so WAKE UP! No excuse for violence though, or threats of violence, all of which are counterproductive.
Ever heard of the phrase “thin end of the wedge”?
Well I’m looking forward to seeing lots of ‘conspiracy theorists’ on the streets of Oxford the 18th Feb.