Do not be surprised that Sadiq Khan is spending £150 million developing Project Detroit, new technology that will enable the introduction of pay-per-mile road charging.
There are three reasons you should have seen this coming. First, he’s very clear about his ultimate goals. He has been so clear, he might as well have drawn you a map and put road signs up. Second, the process of changing our relationship with the private car is well underway; it is death by a thousand cuts, a foot in the door or, as the nudgers know it, ‘radical incrementalism’. Once you learn to identify this (have you read Free Your Mind yet?) you can never unsee it. Third, our entire way of life and national identity is altering, not just private car ownership, everything. You have already felt it, haven’t you? You knew this was coming.
The road map
Sadiq Khan is the Chair of the C40 Cities, a group of alarmingly ‘progressive’ cities. Once you understand what they have planned for your city – London, Paris, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Montreal and more – you are likely to want to pack your bags and find a more sane city to call home. The local governments of these cities want to radically alter your way of life by 2030 to (supposedly) limit global warming. It all comes down to your problematic behaviour and expectations.
The ambitious target for meat and dairy consumption per person in a C40 city is zero. That’s correct Londoners, within six years, Sadiq Khan would prefer you to abstain entirely from meat or dairy. And the ambitious target for clothing consumption is that you will buy three items of clothing per year. Imagine only being able to buy one pair of socks, one pair of pants, and one T-shirt. And the ambitious flight target is one short-haul return flight (less than 1,500 km) every three years per person. The ambitious car ownership target? Another zero.
Clearly Khan is not on track to achieve these ambitious targets. But don’t be surprised that he is allegedly introducing another system to penalise driving, now you understand the direction of travel.
He’s not alone. There is a multitude of reports and press articles pushing forward the regressive idea that we must give up our cars. Sometimes they say the quiet part out loud. In the House of Lords report ‘In our hands: behaviour change for climate and environmental goals’, one proposal reads:
The measures that could dissuade private vehicle use include:
- Changing rules on the use of roads, such as reduced speed limits, school streets, low traffic neighbourhoods and other measures…
- Road pricing, congestion charging, low emission zones, higher parking costs, workplace parking levies and other charges.
That was all about dissuading private vehicle use. It is destined to be too costly and inconvenient for the ordinary folk.
Radical incrementalism
Radical incrementalism is the very essence of nudging: tiny changes can have an enormous cumulative impact. A thousand nudges make a shove. One study, for example, found that people were at least 25% more likely to agree to put a large safe-driving sign in their front garden if they had agreed to a smaller request beforehand, such as signing a petition or accepting a bumper sticker. If you want people to do something, it’s better to make a smaller, more reasonable request of them first; once committed, they’ll follow through on the larger ask later.
You think you won’t pay per mile? You will. You see, the problem is you already agreed to Ulez, Lez and the congestion charge. You’re nearly there. CCTV cameras were arguably one of the early precursors to the mess we are in. They were “just to keep us safe” – and now, no safer, there are legions more cameras trained on our cars.
As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Where is this going? Project Detroit is not just to squeeze more money out of you – although it is going to be a gigantic money-spinner for City Hall — but the goal is to force you to give up your car.
Techno feudalism
There’s so much liberal hand-wringing and post-modern self-flagellating, it would be easy to forget humans have pretty much never had it as good as we do in modern Britain.
A thousand years ago most people were of the peasant or serf classes. Serfs toiled hard in terrible living conditions because, in a violent era, they wanted the protection given by their lord — that was their meagre social contract.
The serfs of old ate gruel, grains and seasonal vegetables, perhaps a bit of pork if they were lucky. They wore rough clothes homemade from hemp, wool and fur — disturbingly similar to the C40 Cities’ ambitious targets for 2030. Serfs also did not have freedom of movement. They were not permitted to relocate without the lord’s approval. They were too busy working his land, as well as their own little patch, to go for a wander. It was the medieval version of a 15 minute city.
Of course, it’s important not to overstate the comparison between a medieval serf and a modern Londoner. In Khan’s utopic 2030 London, a serf citizen will enjoy the considerable privilege of a return short haul flight once every three years. There were no flights for English serfs in the Dark Ages.
Sadiq Khan is always at great pains to explain that these restrictions of our freedoms are for our own protection. Just as the medieval lord protected his serfs from marauders, Khan is protecting us from climate change, low air quality and road traffic accidents. Medieval marauders were very real indeed, but climate threat is not visible on the streets of London, which are not flooded by the Thames, the air quality is actually very good (less so on the London Underground), and the seasons roll on fairly predictably despite alarmingly-coloured weather maps. In essence, if you look out of your window, there doesn’t appear to be a climate threat. Thus, to generate a sense of urgency he produces modelling, cooked-up numbers and a statue for one poor solitary girl with air quality on her death certificate.
In Techno Feudalism, Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism is dead and a new economic era has already begun. Capitalism replaced feudalism, only to now be replaced by techno-feudalism. I think many people can feel a squeeze on freedom in one form or another, a tightening of the net, a hazy shift in power from class-based politics to Big Tech’s algorithms, from gold to data, from Westminster to Davos. It’s hard to put your finger on just what is happening in the midst of it happening, but you feel it.
Human societies are cyclical and freedoms expand and contract. History shows us that. The systems that could be used to restrict freedom are technological – surveillance cameras, Project Detroit’s pay-per-mile capability, CBDCs, digital ID, AI – but the result will be a feudalism which would be depressingly familiar to our medieval ancestors.
London is not Sadiq Khan’s fiefdom. We should permit those that veer backward to feudalism nowhere near Government.
Free Your Mind: The new world of manipulation and how to resist it, is out in paperback on February 15th. This article was first published on Laura’s Substack page the Free Mind. Subscribe here.
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For goodness sake, get rid of this freak and get someone sensible in who will cancel the whole lot of it!
Trouble is there is no one sensible enough on the political scene who would have the minerals to reverse all of Khants Shiz !! The WEF / UN/ WHO etc employ nasty narcissistic freaks like him to carry out their dirty work , notice NO pushback visible from any of the Stooges in Westminster , that surely tells us all we need to know !!
Susan Hall, Tory candidate has promised to scrap the ULEZ expansion, but that doesn’t make it clear whether she will scrap it altogether. She’s not particularly likeable or popular, so it’s hard to call whether this will be enough to beat Khan. I need to work out who is most likely to topple Khan before I place my vote.
I’m sure you know this but for those that don’t, you get a second vote which is transferred to another candidate when your first choice is eliminated
This isn’t the case any more. The government changed the rules so it’s first past the post.
Ah thanks – I did not know that, having (thankfully) left London – the city of my birth and most of my adult life, unrecognisable in many ways (though not without its good points).
I am in South-East London. Much as I do not wish to vote for the Tory candidate, this is pretty much a single issue election so will do so on this occasion. Shame really as the Reform candidate is pretty strong.
As noted below, the Mayoral election will be first past the post. They’ve ditched the first and second preference system.
I say get rid of the role entirely. Too much power is concentrated in the hands of the unaccountable.
Parliament should be the only power, voting for a change of government should result in change. Instead we get the blob, quangocracy, and NGOverlords remaining constant while our ineffectual and seemingly powerless MPs play musical chairs every five years.
Same clown different shoes.
It’s been said here before. Voting is a sham and will not lead to meaningful changes.
London/Westminster and ‘techno-feudalism’? They complement each other. A deservedly lost cause if ever there was one.
We already have pay-per-mile road charging – it’s called fuel duty. Currently it’s 52.95p per litre (petrol or diesel). I average about 45mpg, which is 9.9 miles per litre, so I reckon I am paying 5.35p per mile. I do about 5,000 miles per year so I make that £267 a year I am paying in road charges.
With VAT on top, and remember that it’s flat rate duty per type of fuel, with diesel oil being quite a bit more energetic than E10 petrol.
Once your eyes are opened to the nudges, you will never be unable to see them again.
The Globalists know they’ve been rumbled by a sizeable and growing proportion of the electorate, so the nudges are turning into shoves.
All we can do is, in our own lives, is refuse to conform/comply. Do not get a Smart Meter. Do not buy an EV. Do not change your diet or your lifestyle. Use cash and tell people why you’re doing it.
And do not vote for the barstewards. Unfortunately, the imported population of London will vote to reinstate Khan, which is why they were imported.
“Unfortunately, the imported population of London will vote to reinstate Khan, which is why they were imported.”
I think this is true in part in so far as at least non-white imports tend to vote Labour more than other parties. But plenty of white British and European people vote Labour too. Strongly suspect most of my London-based work colleagues will be voting for Khan or at least not voting for a “right wing” party, because they seem to be mainly lefties from the views expressed when this kind of thing is discussed.
Well, if Khan gets voted back in, we can assume this is exactlt what Londoners want.
Or at least that is what defenders of our democratic system will have you believe.
The Muslim Sultanate of Khan, or the Khanate.
No cars.
No meat.
No traveling.
No elections (you can vote but they will simply add in more fake mail in ballots, or flip the database votes).
No churches at some point (hate crime).
London will = Lebanon.
Kumbaya.
Where I live I can drive 8 miles in 15 minutes. ——-In London it may take 2 hours. There is an argument that there are way too many cars in London. There are also too many politicians. Perhaps if we are to chop some cars we should also chop some politicians, and what better place to start than with this squirming hand wringer.
When we lived in London we didn’t have a car- just used public transport and taxis – but many choose to and I am sure they have their reasons. It’s tolerable I guess otherwise more people would choose not to drive. Public transport can be unpleasantly crowded and at times it feels unsafe.
Not to mention that strikes and engineering works have made it almost impossible to travel via public transport some days. My partner has a non-ULEZ compliant car, and has had to pay a fortune over the last couple of years. When we move in together, we may well scrap the car altogether, but in the meantime we have to use it sometimes.
Good point about the strikes – there have been quite a few occasions where we’ve intended to travel by train and ended up driving instead
Anyone who has had to go from Stratford to Heathrow in a tube will tell you it is one of the most unpleasant train journeys you could make. It is stuffed full of people crushed together like Sardines holding onto the rope thing with one hand while attempting to read a book with the other, while desperately trying to pretend labourers covered in cement dust don’t exist.
I wonder who gives the planning permission that allows for buildings with high concentrations of people, I wonder…
Public policy can be seen as an endless chain of actions each intended to deal with consequences of the previous badly thought through public policy decisions.
As a Londoner, I know many who voted for Khan last time, who have said they will not do so again – so fingers crossed. This time, proof of identity has to be shown at the poll station, so that might help get him out too this time.
Khan cannot make new laws, he is using legislation passed by Parliament.
If they were off a mind to, the Government could stop all this nonsense. Plainly they won’t, they fully support the green gestapo.
This will continue until we vote the whole lot of them out.
Absolutely.
That is why I joined ABD Alliance for British Drivers. I do believe Youtube star Geoff Buys Cars is a member. Laura, I noticed you on Talk TV with James Whale….I hope in the tea room you gave him a piece of your mind about the way he treated those that didn’t want the experimental toxin?
James Whale is about as pleasant as that LBC turd, O’Brien.
This is why I keep telling people that Brexit never happened. One of the core demands of Brexit was that Britain would make its own policies. And yet, here we are, with London being governed by the WEF by remote control.
It is already pay per mile!!!!
The more miles you drive the more petrol you use, the quicker the car needs servicing, the sooner the tyres need changing and overall the more VAT you pay.
I like the word ‘technofeudalism’. Had not heard this before.
Ironically, it’ll be the Muslims who’ll get rid of Khan
The zero emission mandate for cars includes a section in motivating “car clubs” for shared ownership.
“Welcome to 2030, you will own nothing and have never been happier” said some corporate WEF nobody who has never been happy full stop.
Excellent article!
when the hell are Londoners going to vote this tyrant out office? No one could have exposed this man , better than himself for what he really intends for folks in London
London may not be Sadiq Khan’s fiefdom – but he certainly acts like it is, and will continue to act like it is unless he is replaced when the Mayoral elections next come along. I don’t live in London, so I have no formal vote, my worry is that London is just crazy, or more likely apathetic to vote him in again, and will pretty much get what they deserve with this Fascist.