Did Uxbridge just vote for Climate Change?

[Tatami]

By 495 votes? The reason for the narrow Tory win appears to be down to a campaign against the Ultra Low Emmission Zone. Cleaner air, doing something positive about Climate Change, helped by access to the best Public transport network in the country? Nah, more of the same please; dirty air and dirty politics. FFS Uxbridge.

your totally right the government caused this by putting the wrong people in the wrong cars.
Small cars and short journeys should never have been pushed into them by the £30 a year tax
diesels are still a good idea if you do 20k miles a year. They are the only thing we’ve got at the moment for lorries and long distance vans. Hydrogen is coming (not quick enough), but for now diesels all we have for them. And it does do a good job.
and don’t get me started on DPFs and the biggest scam going with them.

Then you better tell the OP

It's the claims that Uxbridge etc. are rural that had me flabbergasted. I am fully aware that rural areas exist in the SE, but the areas being discussed here are a million miles from being rural.

if you look out to harefield (which is in the ulez) was the uxbridge constituency until recently, and is ruislip constituency, it is more rural with country lanes, farms, greenbelt etc. the local bus route is into uxbridge.

I think the ULEZ issue is a bit of a red herring - it only affects 10% of cars (although I think there are a lot of people who don't realise that). And yes while I realise that poorer people tend to own the older cars, you can't justify driving a polluting rust bucket (though the SUVs are polluting non-rust buckets, they should also have to pay it). But people are badly informed, I spoke to a taxi driver a few weeks ago who was moaning about it, but her car isn't affected. You'd think you'd make it your business to know in her position.

I think that if Boris had been defending the seat, people would have made the effort to vote to give him his Portillo moment. But because he wasn't, there was less urgency to vote anyone but Tory.

It’s not a red herring for the locals.
it is a massive massive issue.
there are not enough vans for sale to replace the number that need replacing for ulez.

Well the van drivers will have to pay the charge then won't they and add it to their costs of doing business.

I spoke to a taxi driver a few weeks ago who was moaning about it, but her car isn't affected

My car is compliant but I'm still against ulez.

Their ultimate goal is pay per mile and it will end up affecting us all.

But people are badly informed, I spoke to a taxi driver a few weeks ago who was moaning about it, but her car isn't affected. You'd think you'd make it your business to know in her position.

that was the point I made earlier about the advertising being misleading.

Also the Birmingham LEZ is a fraction of the size of ULEZ. Its smaller than the London CC zone.

If the LEZ was tightened up to ULEZ and implemented across the whole metropolitan area of the West Midlands with nine months warning then it might be a closer equivalent.

Well that 10% will be the poorest or could impact their livelihood

It’s easier for me to say great to ULEZ but I have excellent public transport and my livelihood is not impacted

They will. Or shut up shop and people won’t be able to get trades. you are taking about thousands across the m25 area. Thousands of self employed and small businesses. It trickles to affect everyone in the area. Trades are already in short supply

Yes, we fell in to this category.

That scrappage scheme ended in 2009. It had been brought in to support the car industry following the credit crunch of 2008 (and is a good example of a policy that prioritises the economy over the environment)

So cars bought under it were at least 10 years old when ULEZ first came in centrally in 2019, and 12 with the first expansion in 2021, and at least 14 now. Not all vehicles from that scheme are ULEZ non-compliant.

The average age of a car on British roads is 8.4 years (and rising)

I really don't think it's all about Ulez specifically. Look at the demographic, it has an awful lot of better off southern Asians who tend to vote this way - a lot of Rishi Sunak and his cohorts mentality . We lived in Windsor for a while and that was similar. It's not being racist by the way it's being factual. Just as an area like Islington will have a lot of left leaning intellectuals. I think it's areas like this that will be the harder ones to change direction. I think a bigger indicator is that labour could win Selby and that areas like Frome will turn away from the Tory's.

I think that 10% figure is believed to be floored as the mayor won’t release the data as to how he got to it.

rac calculated it much higher.

It's the claims that Uxbridge etc. are rural that had me flabbergasted. I am fully aware that rural areas exist in the SE, but the areas being discussed here are a million miles from being rural.

FFS - look on Google maps - I've lived there, and I've lived proper-rural - go a 2 miles left of Uxbridge and you can be surrounded by fields, growing things. Full on Rural maybe not. Urban - no, not that either.

The Mayor will also have to look at how the impact of doing nothing would affect Londoners, in terms of death rates, lung disease rates and asthma incidence.

And it's the poorest communities which bear the brunt of that.

This is a great point as it brings us back to the ulez issue today. The arse fell out the petrol market during that period as everyone was pushed into cheap to tax, cheap to run diesels. As the injection diesel engine became as driveable as a petrol.

Now the ulez bit
that age vehicle is the one that people without a large budget are looking to swap to now. However the government diesel policy meant there’s fewer petrols out there of that age, which means the prices of the ones there are, are sky high.

It’s not either or

it’s implement it with better support.
better public transport.

I'm broadly in favour of ULEZ but the timing's been terrible. When the expansion was announced pre-pandemic you could buy a compliant old petrol car like mine for a very low rate. Put away a couple of quid a week for the few years' notice period you had (a very small proportion of the cost of running a car), sell the old diesel one to WBAC and you're sorted.

Nowadays the global price of second hand cars is so much higher that those dirt cheap second hand petrol cars don't exist anymore so switching is genuinely difficult for some people. Still only a small minority of car owners, but more than there would have been.

And that goes double for small business running diesel vans, who were always going to have more of a challenge even before second hand van prices spiked.

We're about to have a different fight on our hands in inner London. Our council is taking the price of visitor permits for workmen up to thirty quid a day - even if they're just there for an hour to fix a tap or give you a quote. Operation Get Plumbers Onto Cargo Bikes. I sort of see the logic, but it'll be a painful fight.

I don't believe anything will happen. I have heard utter nonsense about the impacts of air quality....apparently the childrens hopsitals are full of kids suffering from the effects of pollution. Our kids lungs are stunted and mothers are routinely performing cpr due to it. Utter nonsense.

As has been said, many low paid people work at Heathrow or Hillingdon & Mount Vernon Hospitals. There is no public transport at 4am that would help them get to work for their shifts. The compensation needs to be better because otherwise low waged people will priced out of working. It is a huge issue in the area and one about which people feel very strongly.

Not voting for climate change (what a puerile one dimensional sound bite for the low of IQ) but voting to show that ULEZ implications haven't been through through in terms of how they impact the residents and working people of the outer London boroughs.

No it really was a bout ULEZ specifically.

Nationally everyone assumed it was a safe bet for Labour. Locally it was well known that ULEZ would be a massive issue. It was the most reported issue from canvassers of both main parties.

In Hillingdon there are three constituencies - one is safe blue, one is safe red, the third is where many Hillingdon canvassers converge as its the only potential change.

I've canvassed in that area for red, one of my neighbours for blue. Whilst I wasn't involved in this by election acquaintances from both factions were reporting this as cropping up on every doorstep. Its perceived as a a botched and badly considered policy by people who don't have to worry about money. Largely because that is exactly what it is.

Contrast with the roll out of the initial CC zone which was planned for many years under both parties (even thought it finally went live under Johnson). It gained general support because of the phasing and initial support coupled with a strong network of public transport and priority lanes for buses.

Perhaps we should be worrying about the small children in the DROC who are mining the lithium for ev batteries with their bare hands for 8p a day.

And the sea mining contracts