Taking the meme ‘Everyone I Don’t Like Is Hitler’ to dizzying new heights, now we’re being told it’s far right to want to drive your car. Motorist and fascist, peas in a pod. Protesters against Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and so-called 15-minute cities – policies being adopted in various regions of the UK that will severely limit where and how often a person can drive his car – have been damned as hard-right loons. Who but a modern-day Brownshirt would bristle at eco-measures designed to save Mother Earth from car toxins? One author attended this month’s colourful protest against Oxford City Council’s anti-driving policies and decreed that this motley crew of car-lovers are on ‘the road to fascism’. Only they’ll never get there, presumably, given the elites’ penchant for road restrictions.
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Samizdata quote of the day – the climate fanatics are coming for your carFebruary 23rd, 2023 |
 23 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – the climate fanatics are coming for your car |
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Einstein caused all of this. Now people can run fast to the left and claim that I’m moving to the right. Effing frames of reference.Guess I’ll go ahead and buy that “extreme right and proud!” tee-shirt.
The 15 minute city is an excellent concept. Thing is, it’s about creating a city where people can find what they need in close proximity so they can get around easily, NOT about dividing existing cities into districts and then imprisoning people in them.
For all their blather about the far right, the goons promoting these anti human schemes are far nearer to fascism than their critics.
I suggest referring to these 15 minute cells as ghettos in future.
There are plenty of excellent ideas which become intolerable if they are mandated and enforced by an overreaching state.
I wouldn’t care to have the vegetable police monitoring my dinners each night, for example.
What’s interesting about the idea is that from a logistics viewpoint I’m not sure it stacks up either? You’d need a lot more smaller delivery vehicles delivering to smaller delivery points, hugely increased levels of stock on hand and greater risk of stock going out of date and/ or theft/ shrinkage. In fact I think from my analysis of the proposals its safe to say their proponents have never worked in a logistics or transportation role in their lives. The whole idea is like some weird fetishization of the late 19th/early 20th century.
Well, they are Marxists after all, so to a certain extent their Marxist dogma does stick them firmly in that era. Not like they’ve got “Das Kapital II” coming to bookshops anytime soon.
As with all these sorts of things, but especially 15-minute cities, it takes a certain level of compliance on one hand and an absence of actual sabotage on the other.
For the Oxford scheme, I’m guessing there will be aspects of both. A fun time will be had by all, save the Marxists on Oxford Council proposing this intolerant shit. For them this may well be an idea they’ll live to regret.
It wouldn’t surprise me if some enterprising soul didn’t start offering cash to the local scrotery to take out the cameras. After all, why not? At £200 a pole, how long would it take before Oxford abandoned the scheme as unworkable?
As Katie Hopkins and others have pointed out – this plan contradicts the whole “we will all be driving electric cars” narrative.
In truth this is nothing to do with reducing C02 emissions – it is about power and control. An international elite which wishes to impose a new serfdom on the general population – and what is happening in Oxford is a very small part (the “thin end of the wedge”) of such population control.
Thing is, it’s about creating a city where people can find what they need in close proximity so they can get around easily
And who decides what they need? I’d rather live somewhere that I can pretty much get what I want
Even if the fifteen minute city concept was sound, which I rather doubt, what is being proposed in Oxford isn’t it. What they are proposing is making it difficult and expensive for people to move about in the hope that they don’t. It has the same logic as stopping people from getting ill by putting barriers between their homes and the hospital. I think that resistance to this nonsense is essential because it has profound implications for all of our futures. Each time the powers that be succeed in imposing stuff like this is another click of the ratchet.
Perhaps not. Wasn’t it famed Communist Bernie Sanders who questioned why we need so many different brands of deodorant? In 15 minute cities, you’d only get one. Maybe. When it was convenient for the leaders. So, far fewer deliveries than you might think.
Divide us into 15 minute ghettos, and control becomes much easier in every respect. This is one of those ideas with facial appeal that must be condemned and defeated.
The whole concept depends on surveillance cameras. How accurate are paintball guns? Asking for a friend.
Not sure about paintball guns, but I have a cheap air rifle that shoots a .177 lead pellet 1200fps.
I can easily hit a pop can from 60 yards with it. I wouldn’t imagine that a camera could be much smaller than a pop can.
The most restrictive thing about using roads is the huge number of cars on them.
Motorists have been moaning abut their self-inflicted misery for decades now.
But that didn’t stop many of them going out and buying those huge SUVs to make matters even worse.
Motorists are the perfect example of the victim and blame cultures.
They can always find someone else to blame and they never stop whining about being persecuted.
Like the poll tax, if enough people refuse to pay the fee or the fines the whole scheme will call on its ar*e.
Because having an SUV makes traffic worse that driving a smaller vehicle? I don’t think you thought that comment through very carefully.
Given the current level of opposition, it is likely that hardened cameras will be installed, at least at zone boundaries with mechanisms for easy cleaning paint and other adherents.
This subject was raised at another place and the most honest answer was that an angle grinder used close to the ground to take the pole down and then another one to take he camera head away would be most problematic for the council to repair, since it could not simply reinstall the pole in the same location without removing and reinstalling the current foundations.
Sure and if you were talking about Liverpool, Manchester or Leeds you could guarantee that it would fail on those grounds alone, a simple refusal to comply.
The problem with Oxford is that the fees from the posh bits would cover any shortfall from the bolshie (working class) bits. As I say, to bring this scheme down probably requires both refusal to pay and deliberate sabotage.
It’s not like the residents asked for this monstrosity, except by the very weak justification that they elected the councillors.
As I was reading about men in women’s prisons in the UK, I came upon the statement that a rather large percentage of women who are in lockup are there because of not paying the television tax. If they’re imprisoning lots of people for that, I can’t imagine them backing down on these fines.
I think nothing works short of voting them out.
If I didn’t have an SUV there would often be times when I would have to hire a van to move stuff.
If the roads are overcrowded that is partly because most of the money that is levied on motorists for the privilage of being allowed to use them is spent on other crap. If Oxford council want people to use the bypass instead of going through the town, all they need to do is build a bypass that is up to the job.
@Pete
By that logic, shut down all hospitals and nobody will get sick.
Pure clickbait. There are forums for this, but please, this isn’t one of them.
@bobby b
Perhaps not. Wasn’t it famed Communist Bernie Sanders who questioned why we need so many different brands of deodorant? In 15 minute cities, you’d only get one. Maybe. When it was convenient for the leaders. So, far fewer deliveries than you might think.
Erm, why do you even need deoderant? Those plastic bottles they come in end up in the ocean killing marine life, and the toxic chemicals in they MAY cause cancer. I mean I read that on the internet somewhere.
So really Bobby, can’t you just have stinky armpits, or do you hate sea turtles, and dolphins? Do you really want everyone dying of cancer just to fulfill your personal selfish hygiene needs? Think about the strain you are putting on the NHS!
(I’m going to omit any comments about the personal hygiene of extreme leftie protesters, because that would be a cheap shot, and I really should rise above… oh wait, looks like I did it anyway.)
@Fraser
There are those who seriously have animus towards all deodorants etc.
I remember from a decade or so ago some feminists (I think) campaigning against deodorants and the like for people going to uni lectures. I haven’t heard much about that since (then again, I am not exactly inside anyone’s loops…), but it was there for real nevertheless. So, I would not rule out your projection becoming part of the mix in time.
@A different JJM
You would be allowed one can of the people’s deoderant a week presumably.
You’d finally get to the front of the queue….”A can of reich guard please” (oh dear, I’m showing my age)
And who decides what they need?
Jimmers, above, has nailed it. Camels, noses, tents, somethingsomething.