Tory MP Gareth Johnson is challenging London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ulez expansion after it generated £5.3 million in its first week. The Mail has more.
Kent MP Gareth Johnson is to try to get the Greater London Low Emission Zone Charging (Amendment) Bill into law to reverse what he said was an “unfair stealth tax” on his constituents.
The Dartford Conservative is targeting August’s expansion of Ulez to all 32 boroughs, which means everyone travelling within and into Great London in a non-compliant vehicle has to pay £12.50 every day.
It comes as data shows that the expansion from inner London netted almost 300,000 extra drivers who were charged in the first week it was in operation. More than 425,000 Ulez charges were paid in the week following the extension, compared to just 140,000 the week before.
Mr. Johnson said: “This is an unfair stealth tax on the people of Dartford and across the South East, hitting the poorest the hardest. The London Mayor, Sadiq Khan has no mandate for this.
“Expanding Ulez was not in his manifesto or in his transport strategy, and the consultation on the expansion showed that people did not want it. It impacts people in Kent and other counties around London who cannot vote in or out the London Mayor. It is taxation without accountability.
“It punishes those on lower incomes who can least afford to buy a newer car to avoid the daily charge. There are also no guarantees the standard for meeting the Ulez threshold will not be changed in the future to include more vehicles.
“My proposed bill is to overturn the Ulez expansion and ensure the London Mayor cannot impose this unfair tax on the people of Dartford and beyond.”
Mr. Johnson will table the new law as a Private Member’s Bill, which is unlikely to succeed unless it attracts Government backing. …
Research by car marketplace Motorway previously showed that 16% of Londoners, or around 714,000 people, own a vehicle that is not compliant with the Ulez restrictions.
Motorway co-founder Alex Buttle told the Times: “With the continued cost of living crisis and the recent expansion of London’s Ulez, more drivers who use the zone are questioning their driving habits.”
Worth reading in full.
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But how can you act like a conservative if you have STOPPED being one? All over Europe there is a fightback by politicians with back bone in Italy, and in Poland and Hungary who refuse to accept EU migrant quotas, and Trump showed you don’t need to pander to globalists by withdrawing from the eco socialist Paris Agreement. But to do any of this you need BACKBONE and PRINCIPAL….But the current lot of phony conservatives have NONE.
Absolutely.. and Italy’s Meloni in the pic above is just another globalist posing as a conservative.. all mouth and no skirt.. or trousers..
Well she’s absolutely rubbish regarding immigration. Just one look at this person’s page and all of the video footage demonstrates that. Here they are seemingly getting rid of their passports on the boat to Italy;
https://twitter.com/RadioGenova/status/1678500489867022342
Yes.. she’s back-pedalled on immigration fairly smartish.. her overlords have obviously whispered in her ear..
I disagree. She’s between a rock and hard place. She has to walk a tightrope. If she strays too far towards conservative policies she’ll be ‘removed’. In my estimation she’s doing as best she can so far (with the exception of her apparent unquestioning support of Ukraine). At least Italy is holding out against signing the European Stability Mechanism.
You should – perhaps – one day try to understand that the USA is not the world and hence, that Whatever Biden supports must be opposed! doesn’t cut any mustard outside of America. Large parts of Europe suffered from brutal Russian occupation for decades because Stalin – the nicest guy who ever lived on this planet – was such a convenient ally for the human rights fixated western democrats and nobody except lickspittles wants the Russians back.
Well, increasingly I’m finding that Whatever Biden supports must be opposed! is a useful rule-of-thumb for conservatives (with a small c) such as myself.
Meanwhile, somebody who definitely isn’t conservative…..
But seriously, tell me this isn’t Huw Edward’s arse I’m witnessing? Do you think this has been photoshopped by Andrew Tate??
https://twitter.com/Cobratate/status/1679442903104380929
Mmmn.. that Twatter page doesn’t exist any more mogs.. I wonder why ???
Yeah it does. Just click on ”view”. Or maybe it’s only available for account holders…not sure.
The failure goes back decades. Baroness Thatcher, God bless her, failed to fight the culture war and allowed Labour to spend years undermining society while she sorted out the economy. As a result, her Civil Service fast stream allowed far left wing indoctrinated students to race to the top of the Civil Service.
The Tory Party, after the failures of William Hague and Michael Howard decided to become New Labour, then paired up with Nick Clegg’s Blairite LibDems. No one like Baroness Thatcher, Lord Tebbit, Lord Howe, Lord Parkinson, Lord Joseph and others would get close to becoming a Tory MP now. When dear old Roger Scruton was dishonestly framed by The New Statesman, they chucked their greatest modern philosopher to the wolves with a shrug and not even bothering to investigate.
The longstanding Tory failure to tackle the culture war is to the detriment of all of us, but there’s almost no one in the Tory Party remaining who understands culture and philosophy and how they impact politics and economics.
https://www.upday.com/uk/public-sector-pay-offer-what-it-means-for-strikes-budgets-and-inflation?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral
Teachers, doctors, nurses, coppers all to receive 6-7% pay increases.
We mustn’t worry though because none of this will fuel inflation and definitely will not fuel further societal divisions and the pay rises will not even increase the national debt. Truly a magic money tree.
The answer to all ills is self discipline and stoicism.
If you sleep well (ie wake up early), eat well ( ie cook from scratch), exercise regularly, limit screen time and give generously to your community eg volunteer at a Scout group you will be far less likely to suffer from ‘mental health’ problems nor need the welfare state to support your lifestyle.
Empower the individual needs to be the message.
Scott Morrison is surely the most treacherous Australian prime minister of all time. His part in the Covid debacle is yet to be fully investigated and exposed.
For example, Morrison called the ‘pandemic’ before the WHO…and subsequently the Australian international border was closed and Australians subjected to draconian restrictions.
Was Australia a test bed to see how far people could be pushed? Was ‘National Cabinet’ the engine room for tyranny over the people?
It was in National Cabinet that the plan was hatched to initiate the destruction of voluntary informed consent for Covid vaccination, with Scott Morrison overruling Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly and the AHPPC’s advice against compulsory vaccination of aged care workers in June 2021.
Kelly and the AHPPC eventually capitulated to Morrison and National Cabinet, and mandatory vaccination of aged care workers was imposed, precipitating a cascade of vaccination mandates around the country, impacting upon millions of people.
The seriousness of this matter, ie the theft of personal autonomy and bodily integrity, has not yet sunk in for most Australians…
For more background, see my notification/complaint to AHPRA, the regulator of health practitioners, about CMO Paul Kelly violating voluntary informed consent via vaccination mandates:
A majority of Conservative MPs in the UK aren’t Conservatives, let alone conservatives.
Cameron imposed candidates who were effectively left-wing LibDems in safe seat constituencies in order to “deal with” members he called “fuitcakes, loonies and closet racists” or the Turnip Taleban.
Of course the Not-a-Conservative-Party won’t fight the culture wars. You can’t have a fight when both sides are on the same side!
The only option open to us is to vote to destroy the Not-a-Conservative-Party.
I don’t pretend to know anything about Australian politics..but I am a fan of Ex Labour Prime Minister, Paul Keating, who isn’t mentioned here..neither is the Australian Governments views on Ukraine/Russia..and China….which follows the same well worn ‘lock-step’ path of the USA..
This is Keating’s excellent essay that he wrote in relation to the, in my opinion, scurrilous and fear-mongering headlines in Australian newspapers about the ‘red-threat’ from China…
http://www.paulkeating.net.au/shop/item/aukus-statement-by-pj-keating-the-national-press-club-wednesday-15-march-2023
This is a more recent article, giving his opinion about NATO, and in particular, Jens Stoltenberg….”Of all the people on the international stage the supreme fool among them is Jens Stoltenberg, the current Secretary-General of NATO.
Stoltenberg by instinct and by policy, is simply an accident on its way to happen.”
https://johnmenadue.com/natos-provocative-lurch-eastward-and-the-supreme-fool-jens-stoltenberg/
Besides the fact that I agree with him….the fact that every single institution and the MSM is calling him wrong, bad, outdated etc..tells me he is right…
The ‘conservative in name only’ politicians are ‘sitting it out’ because they’re…
Check out the Tory party’s LGBT shock troops, anti Brexiteers, wokists, globalists – probably 60% of the party.
A conservative vote perpetuates the wickedness.
This quote, although it’s written from a US perspective, seems appropriate.
“As we shall learn, massive and illegal immigration has proved a disaster for the idea of American citizenship by lowering wages, straining government services, undermining the sanctity of the law, energizing tribalism, fuelling identity politics, fostering racialism, and importing massive poverty – even as it is deliberately conflated with mostly welcome legal immigration and praised loudest by an elite that knows, and wishes to know, almost nothing about it.”
‘The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America’ by Victor Davis Hanson
Time for Conservatives to Fight the Culture Wars…
Does anyone here seriously believe the ‘Conservatives’ will make any real attempt to fight the culture wars? They don’t even appear to understand the problem, let alone want to fix it.