To think this is ridiculous and will mostly affect the poor of London?

[mothertruck3r]

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/new-emissions-zone-to-hit-drivers-with-1250-a-day-pollution-tax-a3858531.html

I understand he wants to reduce pollution but how is this going to help the hundreds of thousands of poor people who can't afford to buy a new car, pay the fee (£12.50 per day!) or pay the fine, especially after people were encouraged to buy diesel cars?

Great if you are rich and can easily buy a new car but there are loads of poor people in London who can't do this and rely on their old car for their jobs, taking kids to school, disabled getting about etc.

It's not very well thought through. I thought Labour was supposed to be the party to help the poor. Seems all this will do is help boost new car sales for big manufacturers whilst screwing a huge part of the electorate that voted for him !

No the over investment in London sucks it from elsewhere so there is less investment, thus less income thus less investment and round it goes again.

Actually it's elsewhere sucking money from London.
Do you understand what a net contributor is and that London is the main one in this country?

I understand he wants to reduce pollution but how is this going to help the hundreds of thousands of poor people who can't afford to buy a new car, pay the fee (£12.50 per day!) or pay the fine, especially after people were encouraged to buy diesel cars?

But the article you quoted said only 100,000 cars will be affected. Why are you exaggerating this to hundreds of thousands of poor people, OP?!

I dread to think how workable and expensive getting 2 primary kids to school and 2 adults to work on time via public transport every morning would be.

Been doing it for years it's fine, but of a juggle to arrange logistics initially but in fact less stress than driving overcrowded double parked roads. Keeps us all fitter. I'm in outer London borough have 3 kids at 3 schools (2 in primary). Kids cost nothing on buses. My commute is capped at £1.50/hour on bus so never more than £3 a day, I used to get tube which was more expensive. DH still gets bus and tube so about £7/8 daily. We aren't high earners and are quite low earners by MN standards.

Definitely think this needs doing, so many kids have asthma and breathing problems.

My kids walk to school (primary and secondary, roughly a mile away). So do most children in London. DH cycles, I get the tube - annual season ticket £1600.

Sadly Boris's bike lanes screwed the buses which is how the poorest of London travel.

Actually it's elsewhere sucking money from London.

No it's not. London is where most firms have their head offices, so their profits from all over the UK (and abroad) are logged down as being London created which is complete rubbish.

If a firm with a London HO sells something in Leeds, from it's Leeds branch to a Leeds resident, the profit is shown as London, rather than where the profit was actually made, i.e. Leeds.

It's no wonder that London shows such profits when virtually all major firms have their head offices in London, and many have closed down their local branches, thus diverting locally derived profits into London.

I think we should re-work the figures to identify profits where the customer is located and then we'll see some pretty fundamental changes.

Yes Tilda because of over investment in one area. Others areas get worse so get less, London improves even more and thus gets even more. Round and round it goes.

Invest in elsewhere and they will generate more income.

If you put more investment elsewhere and made them more accessible. Head offices wouldn’t necessarily be in London.

Badbadbunny Im really confused by your post. What do you mean “profit is shown as London” - in which returns are you referring to?

The poor of London overwhelmingly do not drive cars. However they are far more likely to live near main roads or in other pollution hot spots. There will be some people caught here such as the disabled, or shift workers and I do hope there are funds available to help - however the vulnerable of London (and all large urban areas, this isn't just a London problem) need clean air.

I've spent recent years taking 3 DCs to primary school with 2 full time working parents, with London public transport and small catchment areas anyway, it is manageable (more so than driving, at least where we are).

Alright, but when are they going to do the same to businesses that create massive amounts of emissions? It's already been said that most of the pollution in the world is caused by big businesses.

Yet again shifting the blame to us and letting the big corporations off.

I think it's brilliant. Well done Sadiq. I have spent my entire adult life in London without a car but my kids get lungfuls of poison every day. I'm not sure why people think London is unmanageable without a car.

London is a massive place. Just because you have great public transport doesn’t make it the case across the city.
I don’t think many of the posters here are familiar with the north/ south circ going by these posts. There are, for example, a number of houses lining the north circular where the residents can’t leave their house unless by car- their drive opens straight into the road and there is no path to walk along. It’s effectively a dual carriage way so not exactly lined with bus stops. It’s also, as I keep saying, a suburban route. Transport really isn’t that great out of central London. You’re bus reliant unless you happen to live near one the few tubes / overground stations in that area.

I'm not sure why people think London is unmanageable without a car.

What about small traders like me, who need to transport heavy items around in a van on a daily basis? This policy will make a massive dent in my already very modest profits and could very well be the death knell to my business. I will be having sleepless nights over this. It’s horrendous that such an ill thought-out and punitive policy is allowed to be implemented with no thought whatsoever to the thousands of sole traders and small businesses it’s going to affect. Don’t worry about Uber and Amazon - they will be fine. Also, central London is one thing but this covers huge swathes of suburbia in zones two and three as well. It’s an utter nightmare for me tbh.

Nordic: don’t worry. It will stop. Many many city companies are upping sticks because of Brexit. 5000 city jobs already gone.

But obviously that won’t benefit any other region of the U.K.

I’m far too familiar with the soi-disant “South Circular” and it’s best avoided by car altogether frankly, so I think it’s a decent boundary for the ULEZ.

The North Circular is a different kettle of fish and I can absolutely see why people would feel the need for a car if they live there. OTOH they are the people who have most to gain from a reduction in particulate pollution. The minority of them who have non-compliant cars and aren’t planning to replace them in the next 3 years are the people who will have to pay some price by swapping their existing car for a 10-15 year old petrol model at some point in the next 3 years. Not the end of the world for most people I’d have thought.

I do have much more sympathy for the small business van drivers though - it sounds really tough for them.

Happystripper a city in Spain has banned cars ( mostly) from the city Center, some years ago and it has all been fine

There has to be something done about the shitty poisonous air we are all breathing. It's not OK for your profits, big or small business, to trump children's rights to live decently.

There are now viable electric vehicles, including taxis, vans and even buses. It's time that the costs of filthy air aren't just bourne by the lady I saw stopped in the street struggling to breathe or the kids with asthma.

Unfortunately it’s not just the fuel that polluted but the brakes and tyres, little is mentioned about this www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3036644/air-pollution-government-seeks-views-on-car-brake-tyre-and-road-wear

Sadly true ivykaty. Shifting all London vehicles to electric would help a lot, and would be well worth doing but there would still be a lot of crap in the air from the brakes and tyres.

I do have much more sympathy for the small business van drivers though - it sounds really tough for them.

Thank you Behemoth - I’m glad a few PPs have acknowledged this. I’m done for, basically! It’s absolutely awful that no thought whatsoever has been given to small businesses when announcing this policy. Sadiq is a disgrace - does he realise how much worry he’s putting on small business owners? Does he even care?

When my mum was a Special Constable, she went to a post mortem. The person had lived in London, and was a non-smoker, yet their lungs were black with tar, purely caused by the pollution in the air.

That was about 30 years ago. Pollution's got much worse since then. This is what the lungs of the children of London will look like if nothing's done.

More than half of the UK’s total spending on transport networks is invested in London, research has found, prompting warnings of “chronic underinvestment” in northern infrastructure projects.

The gulf in transport infrastructure investment between London and the rest of England is set to get worse, according to the analysis by the thinktank IPPR North, with £1,943 being spent per person in London on current or planned projects compared with just £427 in the north.

Figures derived from a research report by IPPR, show Londoners receive £5,203 more per head on capital investment than people in the north-east.

Just to show the poster who says london subsidies us all, yes it does ebcause the uk government spends so much more on investment in london. Leeds doesn't even have a tram, metro etc and ot is one of the biggets cities in the uk

Many cities in the UK are trying to reduce the huge amount of pollution within them, not just London. If we do not improve the environment then it is our children and future generations that will pay the price of a slowly crumbling world. We are destroying this planet with our chemicals, fossil fuels and habitat destruction.

I think the car industry could do so much more. That’s is where the govt should be targeting their fines. Of course we need less polluting vehicles but it’s up to the govt to take control and insist car manufacturers produce cleaner cars, or face a fine. Car showrooms obsess about the techie stuff in a car - why the hell does anyone need a seat warmer? They should concentrate on car emissions, remember the VW scandal where they lied about emissions? Did they even get fined that? And don’t start me on the lie about Diesel being cleaner, what a bloody lie that was!

Pollution must be tackled, but not by fining people with older cars. This will cause untold suffering. How about giving people a grant towards buying a new, less polluting car? Oops was that a pig I saw flying by...........

This has been on the cards for years and should have been done ages ago. Boris was too wishy washy and cared about his own career too much to do it.