To wonder what all the fuss is about ULEZ

[Winterday1991]

Hardly anyone is affected, only if you have a very old car. No, you should not be free to pollute the air by driving around in a polluting vehicle and so should have to pay a penalty to do so.

It annoys me as everyone agrees we need to tackle climate change, but no one wants the hit on their life/ change their lifestyles.

I know people who have or had home carers in inner and outer London. The carers travel around by public transport.

Loads of areas in London have parking restrictions so if the carer parks they risk getting a parking ticket or paying a lot of money in parking fees. So home carers are a poor example.

Oddly trades aren't even though quite a few particularly younger ones tend to use public transport. There is normally one individual with a car/van who gets stuff and transports the others to a station/home. Also shift workers e.g. hospital staff, police aren't either.

Getting up earlier won't help if you've got to drive to work after dropping off your kids at school, but school doesn't open until a specific time, so however early you get there, you can't "dump and run". Made even worse if you have 2 kids at different schools, and can't "dump and run" early enough at the first to get to the second and then to work in time.

Modern life really isn't set up for working parents. I know some schools are getting more flexible with pre-school clubs etc or earlier openings, so maybe things are getting better. Likewise, some employers are more flexible, with flexitime, part time working, etc., but a lot of firms have valid reasons for wanting their staff at work on time, i.e. shops for opening up times, call centres for having enough staff to answer calls, etc.

It's certainly not a simple as just "get up earlier"!

I should have got the tube from Northolt on the Central Line and changed at Mile End for East Ham on the District Line. Northolt station was a 10 minute walk and the office was bang next door to the station.

I've just looked it up and it takes just under an hour. Even given that tube times have improved a bit since 1990 I could have sat and read my book and arrived on time-ish and stress-free.

I was wedded to my car and didn't think about it then and lots of people who could take public transport still are.

And I'd have definitely got a seat all the way from Northolt to Mile End.

It depends which kind of modern life you choose to live. I'm a working parent and have never had a problem getting kids to school and then getting myself to work. You do not speak for all parents.

• that was to taxguru

Modern life needs to move away from cars

I take your point @taxguru. But I am afraid you are going to have to negotiate that with your employers or find other employment rather than short-cutting through my neighbourhood.

Particularly since we all know that people who are stressed for time and/or running late do not always pay attention when driving.

WTF are you talking about that I don't have to make choices? I can't work out whether you are being insulting or ignorant.

People have to make choices every day - whether 30 years ago or today.

The job I used to have that I am talking about (Northolt to East Ham, but I don't expect you to have read my rambles down Memory Lane) paid a bit more if you had a car because petrol allowance on expenses was more generous than tube and bus fares because the mileage was more flexible and had a premium to encourage you to have your own car - we didn't get company cars but the expenses system allowed for our extra costs of insurance covering work use.

Neither me nor the company was cheating HMRC; it was a legitimate claim.

It made sense from my employer's point of view because if employees had a car they could get there quicker rather than taking public transport and therefore it would facilitate their business. HMRC accepted that then and presumably does now. A company car would be a benefit in kind and would be taxed differently.

People sometimes need their own cars not only to commute but also during the working day and should be allowed to claim that on expenses/tax returns. That's an important distinction - I'm not an accountant but I don't think you can claim for travel expenses to and from your usual place of work - that's commuting and I couldn't claim for that and would not expect to,

It is choice but still don't understand what any of this is what you think I could or should be able to afford.

@limitedperiodonly

but the expenses system allowed for our extra costs of insurance covering work use.

It still does if your contract of employment requires you to use your own car for business travel (it's never applied for commuting to your usual workplace). But these days, the "extra cost" of putting business travel onto your car insurance is minimal, so it's a moot point really, often just £50 p.a. or so or even less, sometimes nothing at all, so tax relief on £50 or less is around a tenner. Hardly relevant.

@tabulahrasa for the avoidance of doubt that's my own vehicle that I used 30 years ago. It's gone to the scrapheap in the sky but if I had one now and used it in order to travel to the same jobs I'd have to wrangle expenses back from the employer commissioning me and negotiate them plus wear and tear and other legitimate expenses from HMRC.

I couldn't be arsed though it would make the job better from the perspective of the client and me. I think you would agree that human interaction, especially face to face is always better, isn't it?

I do but these days my employers and HMRC make it too difficult so I just do it over the phone because it's easier to claim.

I don't expect you to understand my particular job or life but only ask you to refrain from telling me I am privileged because that is rude and ignorant.

If I can offer you one other piece of advice I've learned in life and my job, it's this: never make assumptions about people. They are almost always going to be guaranteed to be wrong.

Let them talk and let it unfold.

Never assuming anything is what makes me quite good at my job. But the things people assume give me a clue to the kind of person they are.

No, I’m saying you keep saying that people are making choices, which indicates that you don’t seem to understand that other choices are sometimes not possible.

Where you live and what work you do are only choices if you have other options for them to be choices.

You’re talking about people driving children to school instead of walking - I’m talking about people who are having to decide whether they can survive taking a hit of £12.50 a day to work.

Thanks for the advice. You're the expert but in my amateur way I worked out it's not worth doing any more - if ever it was.

@tabulahrasa I do understand the concept of choices. Take driving, for instance.

In order to drive within the law in the UK you must have a valid driving licence and insurance and a roadworthy car. There are other things like being over the drink-drive limit and other driving offences, but park that.

Sometimes you have to comply with local regulations like tolls for roads or bridges.

For 20 years, people who want to drive in the Congestion Charge Zone in central London have had to pay a daily fee. This was extended to cover a wider area and the world still turns.

As someone who lives in Central London i would tell you it is good.

In central London we have had the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) for a while and as a resident I really like it. It was extended to not much fuss but recently people have been kicking up a big fuss about a further extension.

I didn't know why because we've all managed to deal with it.

That is going to go ahead at the end of August after a £1million challenge by outer London boroughs and Surrey.

If you have a vote for the London Mayor it is entirely your choice to vote for someone who promises to scrap ULEZ either in the outer boroughs or in its entirety.

I will be voting for Sadiq Khan, as is my choice.

Ha! I agree re council workers, but it seems a risky strategy to me to rely on successful appeal of the fines, especially during a cost of living crisis.

Assumes you and/or the children can physically walk the distances even if they do set off at 7.30

Have you seen the air quality figures for the tube? If you think overground is bad you're in for a shock. Let alone the near £14 a day fair.

Yes - on a separate note I could never understand once everyone had got used to wearing a mask, they don't choose to continue to wear one in the utterly foul air in the deep tube.

It's not great but it's still better than it was. Thirty years ago I used to get black snot and see black mice running about on the Tube tracks- they weren't really black, their fur was from the dirt.

I would also see a haze of yellow smog hanging over central London where I live, which was a direct result of traffic - buses, taxis. cars and vans. It was particularly bad in July and August when it was hot and still and also in January and February when it was cold and still. You couldn't see it as much but it was still there and taste it on the fog.

The mice are sleek and brown now and I don't see or choke on the smog so much.

That's anecdotal but is my experience. You are welcome to add your own anecdotes.

But what I really want to ask is whether you think the improvement in London air quality is a good thing for those of us who live here and whether you think it should be shared in Greater London and beyond.

I've lived in both and I would say a hard yes. I don't want asthma. A family member has it through no fault of their own - they're not a smoker or anything like that. Their son has asthma, eczema and allergies which are all related to air pollution.

It's not something that can be solved with a puff on the blue or brown inhaler or a rub of steroid cream. It's a killer. Why would anyone want someone to have that if they could stop it?

ULEZ is going to be introduced to outer London boroughs.

I suppose it doesn't really matter much to me because those in non-compliant vehicles are discouraged from driving here by a £12.50 charge a day. It puts them off and has not been a problem.

But I wonder why you are so keen to embrace them in your area.

I think if we pollutants of today were visible (like the great smogs) then there would be significant public pressure to Do Something

But as they're invisible, it's out of sight out of mind

Why not tell politicians you want cleaner air and stop fannying about with people who drive polluting vehicles or those middle class people who have naice but polluting wood burners in towns and cities?

Or is that you?

You’re ignoring the point though.

There are people who can’t choose to work from home, who aren’t choosing between a company car or expenses, those types of choices are the preserve of people with more privilege.

Some people can choose to drive less, or pay the money because it’s more convenient, or buy a new car...

There are though, people who are stuck doing the job they have which they can’t use public transport for, for not enough money to afford the new car they’d need to avoid paying it or to actually pay it without it having a huge impact on being able to afford to live.

But yeah - it’s their own selfish choice 😐

There are undoubtedly those who will be caught out by this, and I would like to see the scrappage scheme be a lot more generous. Unfortunately the government have chosen not to contribute.

It’s next to impossible to make needle-moving.changes without anyone at all being adversely affected, unfortunately. But sometimes we have to do it for the greater good. And for the most part people adapt and the world keeps turning l.

It’s interesting you’re keen on the choice aspect of this. Do you not think people, especially children, living in Outer London would like a choice of whether or not they develop asthma? Whether or not they inhale particulates that increase their risk of heart disease, dementia, stroke, cancer or having a baby of low birth weight?

It’s those who earn the least who are bearing the brunt of the illegal air pollution levels in London, as they often have no choice to move out of heavily polluted areas and suffer most from them, despite contributing the least to the problem.

It wasn’t me framing it as choices. I was pointing out that some people aren’t driving polluting vehicles out of choice, they don’t have any options.

I think they need something in place that won’t make some people have to use their week’s food budget paying to work.

As is, I don’t support it. Not because I don’t think people don’t deserve clean air, but because I don’t think people on low incomes should be the ones being disproportionately affected.

I take your point and agree with it for the most part.

BUT. It is also the poorest who are disproportionately affected by toxic air. And the poorest will be able to access the scrappage scheme.

However, it would have helped if the scrappage scheme could be more generous. It’s a great pity the government decided to play silly, childish, political games and refuse to contribute - in contrast to their funding elsewhere- purely because the Mayor of London is Labour and they want him to end up with egg on his face.

Pretty much sums up the Tory government’s contempt for us all, really, but the right-wing media are using it as a stick to beat Khan with, rather than lay the blame where it truly belongs.